That should also include watching adverts as a competitive advantage within games marketed for kids - it leads to constant intake of essentially user hostile videos being shown to young kids and it's predatory imho.
Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
21–30 of 319 posts
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#22Myself and my son play Apex legends. Its an online multiplayer game thats free, but you can optionally pay to unlock cosmetic items like character outfits (skins) etc. He came into some cash recently courtesy of the tooth fairy and asked if we could buy a skin for his favorite character. I said ok. However after id purchased some in game coins we realised that we couldn't actually buy the skin he wanted, instead we h…
i've played apex legend for more than 50 hours, and had no idea you could actually spend money in that game. but i also think there's a generational divide: while i would gladly pay games for a leg up (better weapons, higher jumps, that sort of thing), i would never ever buy a "skin" for my character, or anything superficial for that matter. but I see kids getting completely hooked on this. and i don't really get it.…
It’s exactly the same reason people pay for fashion. The clothes don’t provide practical benefit, yet people still pay 100x more for branding.
And you can’t hack this because these are multiplayer games.
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#23Myself and my son play Apex legends. Its an online multiplayer game thats free, but you can optionally pay to unlock cosmetic items like character outfits (skins) etc. He came into some cash recently courtesy of the tooth fairy and asked if we could buy a skin for his favorite character. I said ok. However after id purchased some in game coins we realised that we couldn't actually buy the skin he wanted, instead we h…
i've played apex legend for more than 50 hours, and had no idea you could actually spend money in that game. but i also think there's a generational divide: while i would gladly pay games for a leg up (better weapons, higher jumps, that sort of thing), i would never ever buy a "skin" for my character, or anything superficial for that matter. but I see kids getting completely hooked on this. and i don't really get it.…
That isn't generational, it is part of your personality though. You just described two of the four player profiles in this talk on monetizing games:
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#24Where does the money come from, that the kids spend? Shouldn't it be the parents concern to limit the spending? While I despise many of the techniques used in modern games to make kids spend money, I also prefer them learning about these things in games, rather than in the real world (with much more money at stake). One thing that cost us a lot of money for example are the "Panini collectible cards", that predate the…
Aw man, you're bringing back memories of my childhood here: I spent all my pocket money on those. Well, those and the chewing gum that had a "tattoo" in them :)
I'm with you on the "what are the parents doing while this is going on?" camp.
My son, now 8, plays some games on the iPad. He's got a bunch of Lego games and a couple of multiplayer games but he cannot interact with the other players except to fight on the same team: so no chatting or anything like that. In addition, he's been told he's not buying anything in-game and we've locked down the iPad so that he can't... in fact it pops up a message if he clicks anything to do with buying.
We've used the default list of acceptable websites when you lock down the iPad. We may have removed a couple too and added Nickelodeon I think (for the games on it) and a couple of others but nothing like YouTube... that's pure shite imo!
He moans sometimes that his pal has Fortnite and he plays it at his house sometimes but he's not getting it at our house.
In all honesty a Google search and a bit of time is all it takes for parents to protect their kids online these days. No excuse.
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#25How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?
It doesn't.
As a baseline, games with gambling elements will be more profitable than games without, ceteris paribus. You have two competing effects here: games with gambling are better able to monetize their players, but might find it harder to attract these players in the first place if the gambling element is known and understood by the players beforehand. Unfortunately, that "if" is trivially eliminated with marketing, through popularization (people start to play despite their knowledge of gambling mechanisms) and disinformation (people don't know about the gambling elements up front, or about their true impact).
This is the case of the market exploiting a quirk of human psyche. Like always, it will stop doing so once exploitation becomes less profitable than not doing it. For that to happen, new costs related to gambling mechanisms must appear that aren't there before - hence the proposal for regulatory intervention, as this is the standard way for market economies to adjust the costs landscape.
(Regulatory solutions impose additional overhead on the market, and it would be more profitable to everyone if people voluntarily refrained from an activity instead of having that activity banned. However, a different quirk of human psyche precludes the market from ever doing that.)
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
i've played apex legend for more than 50 hours, and had no idea you could actually spend money in that game. but i also think there's a generational divide: while i would gladly pay games for a leg up (better weapons, higher jumps, that sort of thing), i would never ever buy a "skin" for my character, or anything superficial for that matter. but I see kids getting completely hooked on this. and i don't really get it.…
It’s exactly the same reason people pay for fashion. The clothes don’t provide practical benefit, yet people still pay 100x more for branding. And you can’t hack this because these are multiplayer games.
yes, but fashion in games? paying for worthless pixels?
i do get what you're saying thou...
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#27I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue. Either they understand the issue but it's their profits at stake, so they'll ignore the potential problems. Or have these stealth gambling mechanisms entered the games gradually and without the industry realising that what it's doing is actually gambling and there repercussions to that.
"I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful"
Of course it's completely wilful.
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
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Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#29I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue. Either they understand the issue but it's their profits at stake, so they'll ignore the potential problems. Or have these stealth gambling mechanisms entered the games gradually and without the industry realising that what it's doing is actually gambling and there repercussions to that.
The purpose of a computer game is to get you to play it. All the time. Every waking moment if possible. Companies know this.
You will make more money for the company if you're addicted!
Facebook, YouTube etc. are all doing the same: the more you use it, the more money they make.
Until the law intervenes, they'll keep doing it.
Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games
#30How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?
The free market doesn't regulate flaws in human psychology. Gambling is designed to hit all these flaws to trick and manipulate you out of all your money. Children are especially vulnerable to this. The correct solution is for governments to ban companies shoving gambling at kids.
I think education would be more effective than a ban. Teach children to recognize gambling at early stage. Show them with examples how the house/gaming studio wins by exploiting human nature. If you just protect children from exposure to gambling you will end up with vulnerable adults and adults don't have a guardian who can stop the bleeding even if the cost is a lot of kicking and screaming.