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Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#91

Post by ajscanlan »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #57
crispyporkbites wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fashion smells like classism to me. I don't see anyone below a certain tax bracket playing the fashion game. Fortnite has already become kind of classist, with the well-off kids bullying people who don't gamble their parent's money for skins. I think the whole system is name-brand evil.

> I don't see anyone below a certain tax bracket playing the fashion game.

I grew up in lower middle class area and i saw it A LOT. To me it seems less like classism and more tribal or human nature.

Unless by certain tax bracket you mean poverty in which case yeah _maybe_ fashion stops mattering then, but I don't have any experience with that.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#93

Post by wickerman »

antpls wrote: post #42

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops? As it's written in the article, problems arise for a minority of children. From the article, we know little about the background of these children and about their parents. It is possible that those children would have developed an addiction to something else if it wasn't video games loot boxes. Yes,…

Because the crucial thing about lootboxes is that in-game currency obfuscates the actual value of your purchase. You know when you buy a booster pack how much that booster pack is worth in real life money; you don't when you're buying lootboxes. When I was a kid and bought booster packs I knew how much they were worth because I also knew the value of each card and how much they compared to other physical stuff I could buy (candy).

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#94

Post by 05 »

GuiA wrote: post #90
jacobush wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is no fire-proof way of handling this that will work with all, or even a majority of children. (And parents.) Teach your kids to handle it, do it wisely, but if the best way is a puritan approach or a market value approach as above, I think it depends which is best. Edit: to elaborate, I think it depends on many things. One that comes to mind is, how strong is the "dopamine" effect vs vs the "oh, sudden…

> we know it's harmful when parents try to teach children to drink responsibly and "let them try in controlled conditions". It works much better to not let children drink at all. Do we? In French culture it’s not uncommon to let kids as young as 12-13 take a few sips of wine at weddings, family meals, etc; and having attended university in France, the UK, and the US, my experience is that French students are by far t…

> France has one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in Europe, with the country trailing behind only Estonia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic in the quantities of alcohol it drinks, according to the World Health Organization.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#95

Post by GuiA »

05 wrote: post #94
GuiA wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we know it's harmful when parents try to teach children to drink responsibly and "let them try in controlled conditions". It works much better to not let children drink at all. Do we? In French culture it’s not uncommon to let kids as young as 12-13 take a few sips of wine at weddings, family meals, etc; and having attended university in France, the UK, and the US, my experience is that French students are by far t…

> France has one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in Europe, with the country trailing behind only Estonia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic in the quantities of alcohol it drinks, according to the World Health Organization.

Sure, there’s a long cultural history of drinking a glass of wine with a meal.

What’s your broader point?

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#96

Post by tialaramex »

kmjg88nvf8 wrote: post #60
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though - games nowadays are ridiculously good. Doesn't mean they're successful, but they're good. And they don't even HAVE to be good - I mean pubg looks and runs like shit but it was ridiculously popular. Fortnite's popular battle royale mode was more like a weekend project (iirc), but it had a benefit over pubg in that it had a big professional studio behind it that was able to scale its production…

Maybe there isn't really a problem with all of those games. To adults it seems ridiculous to spend money on virtual items, but to be honest, a lot of other things kids would spend their money on also seem ridiculous. If those games cost a lot of money to make, perhaps it is fair to ask for money for some items.

The nasty trick isn't the "asking for money for some items". As you observe that's not so different from asking for money for sugar candy, it's basically useless but it did cost money to make and you don't need it per se, so fine.

But what is being called out here as _gambling_ is that you pay your money and then you get something random. It will probably be something you don't want, it might even be something you consider utterly useless.

Example: You want the Funky Guitar for Tara, your favourite character in a game. A Funky Guitar is "often" found in a Cluster Artefact the game tells you. For $10 you can buy 480 diamond blibbets. For 600 diamond blibbets you can buy a Cluster Artefact, so you give them $20, now you have 960 diamond blibbets, you can buy a Cluster Artefact. The Cluster Artefact is then smashed open by your character to reveal... a Top Hat wearable only by Steve, a character you hate playing. Too bad, buy more blibbets and maybe Tara will get lucky next time?

Gambling. A bad idea for grown-ups, obviously not something we should encourage children to do.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#97

Post by aglionby »

I completely agree -- it's exploitative and relies on parental intervention for those kids who don't know any better. As others have mentioned, these could be an educational opportunity, but I don't think the experiences described here are representative.

My exposure to these things isn't through any free apps, but Minecraft. The biggest server by player number has 9 different types of boxes for sale from $3 for 10 [1]. Some of them guarantee a number of boxes at a high 'level' of reward - this seems like reinforcing gambling as something that is certain to be beneficial?

[1] https://store.hypixel.net/

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#98

Post by pferde »

tudorw wrote: post #20
dominicr wrote: post #12

I 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 idea that they are ignorant is repugnant, they know exactly what they are doing, and they have ALL the data that shows how the 'child whales' of their industry can be best exploited.

Indeed they know very well what they're doing. One could even say that they're openly spitting in the face of regulators' inability to do something about it, see for example a trailer for a new NBA game, where you mostly see literal casino-like gambling machines, and only a few seconds of actual gameplay on a basketball court: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGZQDOOU6Y

EDIT: The above link is not the trailer itself, but a video discussing the trailer, from an independent game critic who has been speaking out against gambling mechanics in computer games for many years, long before it became a big issue.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#99

Post by GuB-42 »

benj111 wrote: post #86
scandinavegan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you did good! He needs to learn how to handle this and you're right there guiding him. I have the same situation with my six-year old son and Rocket League loot boxes. He wants to spend all his limited money on them, I think he's wasting it, especially since I see the disappointment when he doesn't get the things he want, but that's a learning experience. It's worse when he once in a while gets a cool skin, becau…

"No, you did good! He needs to learn how to handle this and you're right there guiding him." What's your model for what this is though? The GP mentions a pub fruit machine. I suppose you could make the case for it being like football stickers. As I'm writing this though, I'm not entirely sure what makes fruit machine bad , football stickers good . I would guess trading stickers is a social activity, and theres an in…

> As I'm writing this though, I'm not entirely sure what makes fruit machine bad, football stickers good.

Slot machines pay out real money. It helps contributing to the illusion that you can recover from your losses by playing more. Football stickers, loot boxes, etc... make it clear that the money is spent.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#100

Post by FerretFred »

This is a good idea, but they really need to stop all the gambling advertising disguised as kids games on daytime TV. I've observed (UK) that daytime TV commercials mainly consist of Personal Injury Compensation, mail-order-fashion and "games that you can play on your phone, tablet or computer". Always brightly coloured, very animated, and always played by attractive people. Often there's a "social" theme were the participants all get together with their phones and tablets and game, er, gamble a day away together at bingo. Very sad, very cynical and very pervasive. But hey, it brings in lots of tax revenue, so it won't stop anytime soon.
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