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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

#121

Post by jacobush »

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…

Again, apply my reasoning about games to this issue too. In France, you have an entire country as mirror and role model for drinking without mayhem. That is one data point to consider. :)

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#122

Post by NeedMoreTea »

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…

The old era football cards (and tea cards and petrol stickers or coins) where there were no intentionally rare ones, just randomly stuffing a few into packets, were OK. You traded a few in the playground, just about everyone got the set by end of school year.

The modern ones with carefully created low drop rate "rare" cards are lottery scratch card gambling. No better than a fruit machine, or fixed odds thing in the bookies, and in need of regulation.

Same impulses that have led to addictive purchasing until you get the winner. Same cynical house always wins. Personally I put them in the same "clearly gambling" bucket as game loot boxes.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#123

Post by NeedMoreTea »

benj111 wrote: post #116
GuB-42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Perhaps. Someone with a problem could easily convince themselves football stickers (the rare ones) are a sound investment. And where would 2p machines [1] fit into this? It's acceptable to let your kids go on those and they have real money prizes. That's not to say you're wrong though, because as I said I'm not really sure. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=su5xcK9FhRw

You can clearly see the odds are against you with the 2p waterfalls and such like. The side exits ensure the odds are with the house - you can point them out and show it's a rigged game. Opportunity to dive off into risk/reward and the unbalance of economics where some get disproportionate reward for the same inputs, perhaps? Or show how the house always wins. :)

Those aren't going to break the bank though, or start a habit, so a harmless way to let the kids get rid of parent's pocket of excess coppers.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#124

Post by DanBC »

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.

> I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue.

From the report:

"62.We were contacted by a member of the public whose adult son built up considerable debts, reported to be in excess of £50,000, through spending on microtransactions in British company Jagex’s online game RuneScape. For example, bank statements showed that in one day the individual spent £247.95 by making five separate payments to the company. The resulting debt caused significant financial harm for both the player and his parents, whose evidence attributed the situation to the fact that Jagex has no limits on the amount of time or money players can spend on the game.118 This demonstrated to us that even companies with good policies to support some aspects of player wellbeing can fall short in other areas."

You don't take £50,000 from a player without realising something's fucked up.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #105
TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. >…

Saying that all ethics must be obstructions commerce is a pretty extreme view, that I really can’t see any justification for. An economy is nothing more than the sum of decisions made by the individuals that comprise it. I’m pretty sure the only way anybody could hold such a view would be to view all decisions they disagree with as unethical. Which is an opinion, I guess...

I'm not saying all ethics is against commerce, though I can't think of an ethical rule for which I couldn't construct a situation, in which breaking it is profitable. What I am claiming, though, is that the market strives to extract profit from everything that's possible, and that it will break every ethical rule that can be broken for profit in absence of very strong controls against that.

It's not about what I personally view as ethical or not[0]; here I'm talking about the market as if it was a fire. You don't act surprised that fire will burn everything combustible it can get to.

As for "no more than sum of decisions", I disagree. Economic forces are way more powerful than any individual or group of individuals. Individuals reacting to them in aggregate give rise to behavior that's - to my current belief - best described as amoral, profit-seeking, non-human entities, essentially the closest humanity got to creating an AI.

--

[0] - if we go there, I hold that most advertising is deeply unethical.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#126

Post by DanBC »

switch007 wrote: post #5
nurettin wrote: post #2

How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?

I’m not a parent so of course have no right to make a suggestion, but could parents only buy devices without an internet connection? Games that cost X and X only?

The report isn't just about children.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#128

Post by TeMPOraL »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #119
TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. >…

Many extremely smart people have made the point you're disagreeing to before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A and your reply is not addressing it correctly. >Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside…

> This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside unethical people.

Yes, and because of that, nothing highly unethical ever happens on the market. No wide-scale environmental destruction, no robbing whole populations of their livelihoods, no murders for control over assets, or just to cut down on safety-related costs. And definitely no exposure of children to gambling.

> Your river analogy has similarly flawed premises that make it hard to even engage with.

Can you name these faulty premises?

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#129

Post by esotericn »

gambiting wrote: post #120
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…

I mean when I was a kid you'd get this sticker album for your favourite thing(be it football players, star wars, whatever) and I'd always beg mum to get me yet another sticker pack so I could complete my collection. There were always stickers that I really really wanted and yeah, the disappointment of going through a few packs and not getting what you wanted was very real. I think ultimately, this is the same thing -…

I don't really think "just digitized" captures the problem with these boxes.

Imagine a fairly boring interface that has Pokemon cards or football stickers in. Like your hands holding them and trading them and sticking them on things.

Now contrast that to the loot box stuff that has exciting music, flashing lights, A-B tested into oblivion, the money comes from some ethereal 'account' rather than involving an actual exchange, etc.

I think the analogy is more with the flashing exciting slot machines at the pub (which seem to have evolved a ton since I were a small as well...)

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#130

Post by DanBC »

kmjg88nvf8 wrote: post #8
nurettin wrote: post #2

How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?

By providing better games, and parents waking up and closing the money faucet.

The politicians report covers gambling-like mechanics that don't involve money.

> 69.Many games contain features that are highly similar to conventional gambling products, without gambling being the primary aim of the game. However, there are concerns that being exposed to such features from a young age might normalise gambling. One parent expressed concern that the game Bricky Farm, which is rated suitable for children, contains a gambling-like feature. He told us:

> > Most worrying for me is a roulette style wheel mini-game whereby differing amounts of gems can be won for further advancement. This is where the game could become addictive to someone with a susceptibility but more than that it is introducing children as young as 4 to the ‘thrill’ of gambling.133

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