291–300 of 340 posts
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A glaring oversight in and of itself. If you're going to have interoperability between mobile and console games, the ratings agencies should have jurisdiction across the spectrum.
The ESRB is already a cancer, why would we want it to spread?
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> It's strange then that most of these games aren't that interesting. Who are the players of these that make up the new class of gamers? It's just one data point, but my mother-in-law, who's in her late 60's, plays a lot of free games. She did an audit of her spending last year and discovered she'd spent over $500 in Candy Crush (I think that was the game). She complained to them and they gave her a partial refund, t…
What exactly does one complain about? If I complain to a movie theatre for all the money I've spent on tickets, they're just going to say "Um, okay..?"
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The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. The physiological effects of substance abuse is generally worse, but the cause is the same, from my experience and people I know the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in sel…
Your armchair theory is wrong though. The root cause of nicotine, hard drugs and alcohol addiction is overwhelmingly physical, not psychological.
I'd say its a vicious circle, some are more susceptible to addictions than rest of us, and once those fall into addiction trap, its much harder to get out.
Mobile free to play games now make up the majority of money made in video games today. It's strange then that most of these games aren't that interesting. Who are the players of these that make up the new class of gamers? It would seem that the payers are the exploitable - those able to be swindled with casino mechanisms. As an ex- free-to-play game developer and one who believes regulation often does more harm to co…
Start with why Nintendo games are non-exploitative: no microtransactions, and a single retail purchase. Regulate children's games such that they must have a minimum price (eg. $4.99) and contain no microtransactions. The same could be done with pornography: require $4.99/month as the minimum charge, paid via credit card, to access, and DNS ban all sites which do not acquiesce.
On mobile this isn’t true. I worry that now that Nintendo has gotten a taste of the F2P riches via Fire Emblem Heroes these ideas will seep into other parts of the business.
Another one of those oversensationalized outrage articles that can be boiled down to "I cannot put even a minimal effort in keeping an eye on my children, so I will blame someone else for it and make it their responsibility." There is literally a setting on iOS for that specific specific scenario, which allows to prevent in-app purchases[0]. And it is very easy and intuitive to set up too, so it isn't like it is hidd…
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I think, like with other addictions, you need to take a holistic view of video game addiction that also includes the circumstances of the addicted people during their transition from casual use, to abuse, to addiction. Why? Because most people don't get addicted to video games, just like most people don't get addicted to alcohol. And while you might be able to chalk some of it up to addictive personalities (predispos…
The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. The physiological effects of substance abuse is generally worse, but the cause is the same, from my experience and people I know the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in sel…
At that level, lots of non-addiction behavior is indistinguishable.
> the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in self destructive reward seeking behaviour as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
That's, AFAIK from the actual research, far from true; there are complex relationships between addictive behaviors and other psychological trauma and disorders, but what you describe does not seem to be the dominant relationship. Often, behaviors where use creates a risk of addiction are sought out because they also, outside of their addictive properties, offer mitigation of adverse symptoms of the other condition. But that's not the other condition causing “self-destructive reward-seeking behavior”.
> we never bother to teach people how to look after their mind.
Sure we do, we spend lots of time doing that; the messages are mixed, conflicting, and probably of negligible value because we actually have very little solid information and lots of conflicting and unvalidated folk wisdom when it comes to preventive mental health care (self or otherwise.)
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The concern over fraud goes the other way in Europe. We don't like the "pull" model and worry about our card number being used without our authorization. Debit card payments usually require card presence and PIN for each transaction, making stuff like that impossible.
>Debit card payments usually require card presence and PIN for each transaction Presence and pin? How does that work online? Even if it's pin only, aren't you still screwed if you get phished?
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…
If you don't remove the cause of the addiction, the person will fall back or into a new one.