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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

#261

Post by a1369209993 »

daemin wrote: post #239
SkyBelow wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Shouldn't this make it a bigger problem, not a smaller one? >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 thi…

To be able to have point #2 you have to have point #1. Someone has to take the risk to open the booster packs and get those cards out onto the market. Sometimes business oriented people do that, other times a group of friends buy a booster box to play with at the time. At least in these circumstances the people opening the packs know what could happen. I think if you could buy all of the items that were included in t…

> To be able to have point #2 you have to have point #1.

Well, no. You can require (on pain of jail time) that the producer provide all N possible skins for individual sale at prices that add up to less than or equal[0] the cost of N 1-skin loot boxes.

0: To preempt the obvious "make individual skins so expensive noone can actually buy them" strategy.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#262

Post by someexgamedev »

nabergh wrote: post #248
tablethnuser wrote: post #189

Remember when loot boxes promising valuable rookie cards of baseball players captured America's youth and squandered the nation's fortune back in the 20th century? Or the countless families devastated by beanie baby addiction? Me neither. Collectibles aren't the problem. And it isn't gambling if you can't cash out. Why do you think there's so many casino games in the app stores even though digital gambling is illegal…

I don't think people are arguing that collectibles are the problem. They're arguing that the gambling is. In this context, we're defining gambling as exchanging money for a chance at receiving something of value. I think that's a reasonable definition and it certainly fits here.

Do Happy Meals constitute gambling then, because they contain one of eight great toys?

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#263

Post by Qwertystop »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #233
input_sh wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it because these days companies have thrown far more psychology at optimizing it? Absolutely. Including hiring former casino personnel. Cards don't have flashy lights, music, nor the concept of a near miss. You could call them the same only if you ignore all the context around it. For example, I know of no cards where you can purchase a more expensive card pack that has slightly higher odds of getting something…

No, they definitely had those special, more expensive packs for Pokemon, and Yugioh. But I agree with your overall point that the games are more flashy and do exploit more than cards ever could.

Do they? I've only ever seen major TCGs sold three ways (not counting secondhand): Regular booster packs (fixed number of cards, odds of rarities in small print on the back), preconstructed decks (fully known, no randomness), and bundles (box with five or ten regular packs plus one specific card or random known-rarity card).

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#264

Post by Wowfunhappy »

moate wrote: post #236
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling is that randomized packs of baseball cards were never great either—but they were never pervasive enough to be a "problem". Video games have managed to make the items significantly more valuable. And it increasingly feels as though _most_ games are built around these gambling mechanics, as opposed to just the occasional game like Magic The Gathering which worked that way.

One major difference between Magic and most skinner box video games: I can sell my magic cards for real world money, and I can just buy the cards I need as singles. There's a lot of games that try to nudge closer to this with card "crafting" where you destroy card A to create in game currency that you can then use to purchase card B. This is ALMOST to the point where I find it acceptable, but until I can trade card A…

> I can sell my magic cards for real world money

And you can sell CS:Go and TF2 items for Steam credit. I'm not convinced this makes anything better. A slot machine isn't the only way to get money, but I still don't think we should market slot machines to children.

I think a lot of the people who dislike "lootboxes", but grew up with collectible card games like Magic, try to rationalize why one is okay and the other is not. And the hard truth is that it was never okay when Magic did it either, but the problem wasn't pervasive to the point where we had to address it. This isn't to say that Magic is evil or that everyone who bought random card packs as a child is now scarred for life, but it's not a great practice.

Collectible card games should not be a reason to allow loot boxes, and any laws we make ought to apply to both, instead of attempting to create strange carve outs.

---

Disclaimer: I've never played Magic, and I avoid any video game that contains micro-transactions.

Edit: And just to be absolutely clear, this isn't to say that Magic should be banned any more than all video games should be banned, just that consumers should know what they're paying for, unless they're explicitly in a casino.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#265

Post by close04 »

dragontamer wrote: post #257
droithomme wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as fatalistic as you suggest: that randomly offered rewards always lead to complete zombie slave status in 100% of subjects, there's no way out, and the situation is hopeless. Studies have found propensities not absolutes across all subjects and species. For example, river otters are notoriously difficult to train using operant conditioning because they are extremely curious, but also bore easily. Getting th…

> Addictions can be hard to overcome for many. I don't think this is "addiction". Its clearly operant conditioning. You aren't going to suffer physical ailments like an Alcoholic or Heroin-abuser (or heck: even a coffee-drinker) would if you "stop pushing the button" I'm pretty sure that our concepts of "addiction" (including "willpower") are mostly pseudo-science. While psychologists are carefully studying the issue…

And this mechanism might be more palatable if it got applied both ways: I get a game and then we roll the dice [144] to see if I have to pay full price or just with some junk I have lying around in the house. Same odds as that legendary(?) skin.

[144] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dice_by_number_of_sides#D...

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#266

Post by vkou »

beatgammit wrote: post #173
jacobush wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't alcoholism be very correlated with total consumption?

Maybe? There's a lot of other things to consider, such as the number of drinkers and whether it's customary to drink throughout the day or only during a small window (night). Drinking 4+ glasses of wine all at once is quite different from drinking one glass at each meal and one before bed. Extrapolate that to weekly statistics and someone who drinks a lot of wine culturally can look worse than someone who only drinks…

4 glasses of wine over a day, on a regular basis is alcoholism. That's ~20 drinks/week.

It may be functional alcoholism, if it doesn't affect your finances/job/relationships, but it's still alcoholism.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#267

Post by PeterisP »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #84
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,…

The physical boosters are different, because they are set in stone and they're just there, ready to be bought. The odds are set and won't change. With lootboxes, you allow dynamic regulation, which can be abused. For example, a famous streamer is opening your lootboxes live? Give him better droprate so that he constantly opens "Epic" items, so that his followers think it's so easy and want to try it for themselves to…

Scratch-off lottery cards also are set in stone and they're just there, ready to be bought. The odds are known to the public (and probably right there on the card), the card has a fixed value but until you've bought it you just don't know if this card will be worth $0.25 or $500.

That's 100% gambling. And the concept is soooo very similar to booster packs.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#268

Post by Wowfunhappy »

dragontamer wrote: post #257
droithomme wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as fatalistic as you suggest: that randomly offered rewards always lead to complete zombie slave status in 100% of subjects, there's no way out, and the situation is hopeless. Studies have found propensities not absolutes across all subjects and species. For example, river otters are notoriously difficult to train using operant conditioning because they are extremely curious, but also bore easily. Getting th…

> Addictions can be hard to overcome for many. I don't think this is "addiction". Its clearly operant conditioning. You aren't going to suffer physical ailments like an Alcoholic or Heroin-abuser (or heck: even a coffee-drinker) would if you "stop pushing the button" I'm pretty sure that our concepts of "addiction" (including "willpower") are mostly pseudo-science. While psychologists are carefully studying the issue…

> I don't think this is "addiction"

I would love if we as a society would use the word "compulsion" for things that are not physical addictions, but I feel like that battle was lost some time ago, so I gave up.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#269

Post by tialaramex »

someexgamedev wrote: post #262
nabergh wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people are arguing that collectibles are the problem. They're arguing that the gambling is. In this context, we're defining gambling as exchanging money for a chance at receiving something of value. I think that's a reasonable definition and it certainly fits here.

Do Happy Meals constitute gambling then, because they contain one of eight great toys?

So this goes like lotteries and several other things we already write laws about. What we care about is the behaviour. If your product triggers the problem behaviour then that's a problem.

If I go to McDonalds and there's a queue of people buying Happy Meals because they want a specific toy, and they either don't actually take the meal or it goes straight in the garbage, that's a huge problem -> gambling.

If I go to McDonalds and every kid just seems to be eating Happy Meals and enjoying whatever crap they got by chance, no problem -> not gambling.

You might argue, well, how can McDonalds control this? There are a bunch of things they can do to avoid causing the problem and thus avoid triggering an investigation. For example when somebody proposes "Ooh, let's make Toy #3 way better than the others, and then also only give it out 0.1% of the time" don't do that. That's going to trigger the problem. Or if a parent comes in and says they really need Toy #6 and they're willing to give you the price of a Happy Meal for that toy, you should say "Yes" and hand them the toy, if you insist they keep buying Happy Meals to have a chance you are encouraging the problem behaviour.

We see this stuff with other industries that trigger problem behaviour, we say "Don't do that" and we tell them things they should avoid to prevent the problem behaviour. Good actors work very hard to avoid a problem. Bad ones work very hard to avoid getting caught. Either way we did our best to protect people.

For example "Direct Sales" companies are told not to allow their "sales partners" or whatever they choose to call them to build up stock, because that's part of a negative behaviour. They're told to make sure those "sales partners" are deriving revenue from actually selling the product, which is ostensibly the point of their business, not from selling the opportunity to also become a partner, which would be a Pyramid Scheme, also negative behaviour. Invariably the people who own (and profit from) these companies insist the problem behaviour isn't what they want, and yet so often they do encourage it, because of course it makes them rich. Similarly with video game gambling.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#270

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kube-system wrote: post #215
gambiting wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is the same though. With pinball you pay 20c or whatever, and you get to play the game. That's it. It's like paying $100 for an entry ticket into a bike race - you pay, you get to do the activity, the outcome is "random" in that it only depends on your own skill and external factors. With sticker packs the contents are truly random, there is no skill involved, you literally don't know what you are bu…

Pinball games at the time often paid out prizes and didn’t always do so based solely on skill. The shift towards the modern idea of what pinball machines are like today was a reaction to laws threatening to ban them.

> The shift towards the modern idea of what pinball machines are like today was a reaction to laws threatening to ban them.

Then, sounds like the hubbub at the time was both mostly reasonable and effective.

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