The psychology of how rewards work. If a reward is completely predictable, it's not all that compelling. At what point do those kinds of incentives becomeof exploitation? How much does the fact that gaming addiction is now formalized chaine the equation on that? This is what regulated games companies are starting to wrestle with.
The lightning-fast spread of a seemingly milder coronavirus variant may represent a shift from pandemic to endemic; we ask how that would change global responses. Concern about video-game addictiveness is as old as video games themselves—but the business models of modern gaming may be magnifying the problem. And newly publicised photographs shed light on Bangladesh’s brutal war for independence.
For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer