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Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

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Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#141

Post by stephentmcm »

ethbro wrote: post #96
nostromo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at someone who spent $30k on ships in Star Citizen. http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-a-fan-who-has-spent-30000-on-sta... He seems like a reasonable person to me. He's not in financial ruin. He doesn't seem to regret his purchase. He's just putting money into his hobby, the same way a different 40 year old would buy an "unproductive" boat or an "unproductive" Rolex.

I think both the original article's and your points are valid. Especially when you start to see games/virtual items as a "thing" (which probably started with UO/WoW) as opposed to a "fake thing". That said, as a thought experiment, I disagree with the fact that government and regulation have no place in the way a society consumes things like this. If you accept that our knowledge of psychology, biochemistry, and neur…

>b) We overturn the majority of our current social psychology knowledge and realize that yes, people actually do have absolute free will

Err... All current research suggests that you have almost no free will and are little more than a complex set of reactions to external stimulus.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#142

Post by pandaman »

I might be reading this wrong but this gentleman's problem seems to be that some companies make way more money than he thinks is "fair". Because all his sources are about who made how much. If this was similar to gambling he might be able to show a story or two of somebody mortgaging their house and/or losing job, taking a loan from mob and unable to pay it etc. etc. over addiction to Candy Crush as we have plenty of such stories about gambling.

I have never seen anything similar about f2p games. At most you learn about kids dropping out of school to play DOTA/LoL/WoT/etc but this had been happening ever since there had been video games. Same kids dropped out over EQ/UO/WoW, which are not f2p. Heck, a dude dropped out of my school over a single player PC RPG (was either one of M&M or Wizardry games). I never heard of anybody becoming homeless trying to get their Farmville's dog to lv85. All there is are stories about somebody spending thousands of dollars at once to by some magic crystals in some stupid cell phone game. While it looks pretty stupid it does not seem any more danger to society than people buying pieces of painted canvas for millions and even tens of millions at art auctions.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#143

Post by bduerst »

maxerickson wrote: post #112
bduerst wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not putting money into his hobby. If you buy $30k worth of golf clubs, you have $30k worth of golf clubs. If you put $30k into a kickstarter project for some digital assets exclusively in a piece of software that isn't even written yet, you don't own that. That's not putting $30k into a hobby, but giving $30k to someone without even a contractual obligation for delivery. It's exactly why the SEC won't let non-a…

There is at least an implied contract on Kickstarter. They say as much in their TOS: https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use#section4

Has this ever been held as legally binding in civil court?

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#144

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #112
bduerst wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not putting money into his hobby. If you buy $30k worth of golf clubs, you have $30k worth of golf clubs. If you put $30k into a kickstarter project for some digital assets exclusively in a piece of software that isn't even written yet, you don't own that. That's not putting $30k into a hobby, but giving $30k to someone without even a contractual obligation for delivery. It's exactly why the SEC won't let non-a…

There is at least an implied contract on Kickstarter. They say as much in their TOS: https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use#section4

[deleted]

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#145

Post by RHSeeger »

purpled_haze wrote: post #114
adrtessier wrote: post #12

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

> how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? The mean amount of money spent and time played per week per user would be a good place to start. If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game or more than 20 hours/week playing a game, it's a problem.

> If any user is spending more than $40 USD/week on a game

So, we'll ban all professional sports events because some people pay more than that to go to every game for their team? Or pay more than that to be able to watch lots of sports on TV? I know a fair number of perfectly normal people that pay thousands of dollars for season tickets.

I'd rather see the government help people that have a problem, rather than put limits on people that don't.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

wildmusings wrote: post #131
peterashford wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole free-to-play market is premised on exploiting the psychology of a few people with cash and very little self control ("whales"). As a game developer, I think it's pretty slimy.

To put a slight spin on the aphorism: there will always be someone to part a fool from his money. There's tons of laws to protect people from false advertising, fraud, and such. But if, armed with the facts and all of these protections, someone still spends their money unwisely, that's no longer the government's problem. To use another aphorism: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

> There's tons of laws to protect people from false advertising, fraud, and such. But if, armed with the facts and all of these protections, someone still spends their money unwisely, that's no longer the government's problem.

Laws hadn't caught up with progress in game industry yet. It's high time for it though. I understand the reluctance to regulate things, but when we have a whole industry which explicit purpose is figuring out the best way to abuse bugs in human psychology to part them with their money, I think some reaction is warranted.

> To use another aphorism: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Oh, but modern marketing is all about exploiting horse's cognitive heuristics to make it drink.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#147

Post by wildmusings »

bduerst wrote: post #138
wildmusings wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want to spend $100,000 on ephemeral virtual items in a video game that might never actually be released, that's my problem, not the government's. I'm the one that earned the money, so I'm the one that decides how to spend it. It's totally inappropriate for the government to insert itself between two informed and consenting parties. A paternalist government is not compatible with a free society.

The reason we have "paternalistic" organizations like the FTC and SEC is because many parties make informed, consenting agreements, and don't obligate them. How are you going to enforce your $100k agreement without a "paternalistic" organization? Consumer rights and protections are what creates scalable trade by enabling trust in our society.

Laws that arm people with more information are great. I'm a big fan. I'm not a fan of laws that prohibit certain contracts no matter how informed both parties are. It's sometimes necessary when there's a huge asymmetry in power, like in landlord-tenant relationships and in standard-form contracts that waive all liability (interestingly, this is something courts have recognized as a matter of common law, even in the absence of legislative protections). I don't think video game pre-orders, in-game purchases, and Kickstarter pledges by informed adults should one of the exceptions.

As for who's going to enforce my $100k agreement, the same people that enforce any other contract, the courts.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#148

Post by Retra »

vinceguidry wrote: post #127
Retra wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Look, this is just commerce at work. And? Oil drilling and pharmaceutical production is just commerce at work. As is child labor, sex trafficking, drug trade, and slavery.

So they are. Are you really equating them?

Nothing is "just" commerce at work. This is also a prime example of the naturalistic fallacy. Just because these things happen to be legal doesn't necessitate that they should be.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#149

Post by fbbbbb »

marknutter wrote: post #18

I really don't understand the opening rant against Star Citizen. This is a game that quite literally would not even have started production if it weren't for crowd sourcing because the big boys are too busy cramming the next Call of Duty down everyone's throats than taking chances on interesting new IPs. If Star Citizen never materializes it will still have done the gaming industry a huge service by signaling to the…

Star Citizen employs microtransaction, you just pay them in advance. There are also whales, like the guy who paid 30000$, and many more who pay between 100$ and 1000$. In comparison with other mentions it is even worse, because this game isn't even completed yet. It fits in the narrative.

Re: Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us

#150

Post by Retric »

guntars wrote: post #43
adrtessier wrote: post #12

> "We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically." I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders , which was released, oh, 58 y…

So in your opinion there's nothing a gaming or marketing company can do that's legal now, but really shouldn't be? I'm also not buying that it's a slippery slope and banning, say, cross compiling profiles on customers from different, unrelated platforms would "take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry". In capitalism, companies will do everything within the legal framework to make more money.…

Society already had this discussion and gambling is highly regulated for a large number of reasons. Some games have destroyed lives, and enabling that is not in society's best interst.

PS: We can fantasize about people being rational, but reality disagrees.

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