101–110 of 319 posts
How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?
Where 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…
You can make the exact same argument for kids playing in online (or offline, really) casinos. And yet it is fairly widely accepted that this isn't a good idea. Online casinos have to jump through a million hoops in terms of age and identity verification. Where's the difference?
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> 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.
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I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? Side note. Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. The same way democracy does not mean that majority can do everything ignoring minority. Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. Some pe…
> Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. (...) Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. In real markets, there are feedback loops that are much stronger than individual ethics. Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors, because the former can sacrifice more human values. >…
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Because magic the gathering cards are an actual item tradeable for actual money to other players and resellers. It's still questionable in many ways, sure. But many of these virtual items are closed economies with the supply entirely owned by the producer of the game. These have no intrinsic value outside of this closed system and there is no ability to exchange them for real money. I'm not saying booster packs are n…
So the reason Magic is different is because you are actually gambling for things with monetary value? That doesn't sound right. I'd think it'd be less like gambling if the rewards had no monetary value, like random candies or skins in a video game. Then even the hope of getting your money back isn't there. You know all you're getting is just candy or toys.
1) You can sell your cards and get money from them (could be less, could be more) and they have some tangible value to other people.
2) You don't have to acquire magic cards through booster packs (aka loot boxes) only. If you want a particular card then you can go to the store and buy it. This was the major concern from the parent in the top comment of this post, that you couldn't just buy the skin directly but had to gamble for it.
Additionally if you just want to play with your friends and experiment there's no reason you can't just use proxy cards or fakes and have fun playing a deck. Though that's not for tournaments or anything serious.
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,…
I wonder when someone in power finally recognizes that Magic the Gathering and other CCGs, especially their digital versions, are essentially gambling machines.
With DLC gambling (which is what lootboxes really are), however, there are many problems:
1) the device OS manufacturer (Google/iOS) can go out of business, rendering the money one spent on the collectibles worthless
2) the application developer not providing updates for the software to run on new OSes or revoking the software outright, leading to the same result
3) there is no real transferability - at best one can restore their account on a different device, at worst (like in Train Conductor) there is no transferability at all. Moving DLCs across platforms (Android iOS PC consoles) is extremely rare. Selling off the collected DLCs is not possible anywhere.
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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.…
I think cosmetics are a much better alternative to purchasing advantages (that'd never work for a PC game anyway) but keep kids away from gambling absolutely.
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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 co…