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'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#171

Post by verisimilitudes »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all d…

>I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's.

Get off it. There's a strong difference between playing a game like ''Super Mario Odyssey'' and the trash Google allows because it makes money on trickery and theft.

>Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously.

China locks up people who have ''Internet addictions''; they might find ''lies'' about political protests in China, as an example.

>I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all day and all night, at the expense of one's social life, academic success and even career.

Clearly one's career is said person's most important aspect. They could be working or participating in office politics instead of having fun.

>That's not normal behavior; it's behavior indicative of addiction and dependency. And I'm referring to adults.

Yet, nowhere in your message do you wonder why people would rather play games than do other things. You seem to think games are at fault, rather than the sorry state of society.

>Now, regulating video games like alcohol may not be the best idea.

It's important that every medium be heavily regulated, to prevent the wrong ideas from getting through.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#172

Post by cwkoss »

ryandrake wrote: post #98
cwkoss wrote: post #39

Every game should have to display a "Maximum cost of online play" on the cover with ESRB rating and on the app store listing. If not limited just show ($10,000+). Would give parents a rough idea of how exploitive a game's online currency system is.

Wouldn’t they all say “$10,000+” in that case? Are there really any games out there that stop you before you make a purchase saying “You already spent $100 this month. Please don’t give us any more of your money!”

I think some apps have 'parental controls' that allow for this, but this kind of labeling would provide a strong incentive to set an upper limit.

I think this would benefit the game ecosystem greatly, because the effects of a relatively small proportion of the audience dropping 80-90+% of revenue really distorts game design to try to capture this upper end.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#173

Post by apsdsm »

Retric wrote: post #135
thom wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone done a breakdown of Apple's profit from hardware vs (in-)app purchases? Feels like this is a situation where they're not selling the devices as loss leaders, and could easily improve people's experiences and perceptions by cracking down a bit, without it really costing them much. Feels along the same lines as the privacy push - they _could_ make lots of money selling your data, but they're selling the peac…

That is somewhat misleading as some apps are essentially shareware, aka free with a single in app purchase to the the full version. I think Apple would be well served by limiting in app purchases to either 200$ over the lifetime of app or 20$ per month. That would get rid of most bad press without costing them much. They could even then allow specific exceptions on a case by case basis.

This would make the business model for gatcha games (which rely on a small fraction of their player base sendings tens of thousands of dollars each) essentially impossible.

So a net gain for everyone, then.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#174

Post by ej10 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all d…

Anecdata:

I live this, I agree with you. An MMO was the only thing in my life I've stayed up all night for and then been able to set an alarm and wake up for after 2 hours of sleep. This was a game I committed to for 14 years. I've slept through finals, been tardy my entire life, yet for this MMO I could do anything. I was "sick" instead of seeing my girlfriend, I was otherwise occupied instead of working, or school.

I made the conscious decision years ago to never install WoW for exactly this reason. In the same way AA teaches that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic but can be sober, I choose to stay sober. I miss it. I think about it. But I have to make the active, conscious decision to 'choose life'.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#175

Post by kibwen »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all d…

The problem that I've observed is that people get too bogged down over the use of the word "addiction" to describe this phenomenon, contrasting their psychological effects with the physiological effects one normally finds in drug addicts. In the process what gets lost in this dismissal is that, regardless of mechanism, the consequences of excessive gaming (or similarly, excessive internet consumption) echo those of some of the hardest drugs: complete withdrawl from society, neglect for self-care, chronic sleep deprivation, and thieving to support their habit. Any nerd who went to college in the 00s knew people in their freshman year who dropped out from spending too much time in EverQuest or WoW. I myself had an epiphany in 2011 after having played the newly-released Skyrim for 100 hours in its first two weeks (and those numbers are tame by comparison). It took about eight years of cold-turkey for me to stop jonesing, literally jonesing for World of Warcraft.

As humans we have yet to develop ways to cope with an overabundance of mental stimulation, in much the same way that humans are still trying to figure out how best to survive in a world where food calories are no longer scarce. What we're looking at for the next decade is the obesity crisis for the brain.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#176

Post by ysavir »

Is there any way to link the games/play account/icloud accounts to a wallet with limited funds?

I feel like the real problem here is how these games link up to a payment method that isn't actually intended to be used for the game. Unlinking them from each other should go a long way to resolve these "my child spent a lot of money because I gave them access to all my money" problems.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#177

Post by rcfox »

oaw-bct-ar-bamf wrote: post #102
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever use a debit card over a credit card?

Why would you ever use a credit card over a debit card??? With debit you spend the money you own. With credit you take debt. On every single payment. You are taking debt. Only at the end of the month you pay your debt. If you spent too much, (by accident) you now have to pay overdraft interest. With debit you spend the actual money you own. If a purchase (fraudulent or not) exceeds your current balance, the payment w…

I asked my bank to automatically pay off my credit card in full at the end of each month. (It might help that my credit card is affiliated with my bank, I'm not sure.)

I've never come close to spending near my limit, so I don't know about an overdraft fee. I assumed it would decline further payments.

My credit card gives me reward points for money spent on it. Having a credit card that I keep paid helps my credit score.

I make some tiny amount of interest on the money in my account each month. I might as well collect that before parting with the money. And it's not like credit card debt accrues daily.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#179

Post by d1zzy »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all d…

Anything can be an addiction, meaning if it stops you from going to school/work, building and maintaining relationships, having food and shelter then it qualifies IMO. So while I support trying to help people in this situation I would be careful to not make it harder for everyone else that is responsibly enjoying those things.

Re: 'My son spent £3,160 in one game'

#180

Post by jbob2000 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #101
jbob2000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s something for these businesses to figure out. In the real world, we had the advantage of the card holder needing to be present. Maybe the model needs to change to force digital currency purchases to happen outside of the game? That way the purchase is divorced from the play and the parents can still retain control. Or maybe accounts need to be set up in “child mode” by default, which caps spending at $50/month…

I don't think that's too much to ask. If I spend more than an extra £10 my phone company will start sending me messages. Plenty of families would be financially crippled by an unexpected £3000 bill.

Actually, that's a great point. In Canada, we passed legislation that caps the amount a phone company can charge you in a billing period. We ought to do something similar for micro transaction businesses (though I loathe the appearance of a dialog box - "You have reached the daily spending limit as permitted by your jurisdiction")
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