Reporting From the Snooping Trenches: Changes in Attitudes and Perceptions Towards Behavior Tracking in Digital Games

Abstract

There is an undeniable growing trend among players towards unconditional acceptance of behavior tracking in digital gamesThis trend has muted one of the two interlocutors necessary for a transcendent Hegelian dialectic that finds a viable synthesis between a corporate thesis that attempts to gather more and more data aimed at maximizing profit, and an antithesis that seeks individual players’ interests and resists privacy-infringing practices.Both as researchers and as professionals utilizing behavioral tracking, we believe it is essential to establish a dialectic relation with the users that we monitor and collaborate with. An ethical synthesis can be found only through a negotiation of interests and methods between polarized corporate and personal desires.