281–290 of 319 posts
Why this coming into the spotlight now as opposed to collectible sports cards, trading carding games, coin operated gacha/cache capsule machines, etc?
None of those could result in $thousands charged to parents' credit cards without a lot more effort.
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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…
Its called a skinnerbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber Fully grown ADULTS fall prey to skinnerboxes (aka: Slot Machines) all the time. Its basic human psychology (heck: the skinnerbox is effective on virtually all Birds and Mammals). Its extremely fundamental to the function of the modern biological brain. Its literally a "brain hack". This isn't some "willpower away" sort of training. Th…
Myself 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 dealt with my kids getting scammed like this in the past. I laughed and mocked them and explained how the scam works and how these companies hire industrial psychologists to facilitate their cons. Then learn how to avoid the scam in the future, and also later mock and ridicule their friends who fall for similar scams. This results in those friends learning to avoid these scams and teach others how not to get fooled…
this just means every company can try to scam children as many times as they want. Either they keep making up new ways to trick children, or they word their disclosure of the scams in a way children can't understand so they keep falling for it. Either way allowing companies to prey on children so that they learn better is like letting people lure children into the back of vans so they "learn their lesson" after they get raped.
It'd be far better to forbid companies from predatory practices when we identify them and also try to educate kids on the tactics used against them and how to identify them, but that kind of education has to happen throughout their development. The companies who make these games hire people with advanced degrees to research, design and and implement the most additive systems possible. The reality is that children don't have the mental capacity to fully understand everything involved.
I agree that we should instill a distrust of corporations in our children and that we should try to build their defenses against manipulation, but learning by letting them be repeatedly exploited is some very backwards thinking.
I think you could probably get the same results by creating games specifically designed to demonstrate ways companies try to take advantage of us and you could do it without giving companies a chance to profit off your "teaching" method.
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Its called a skinnerbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber Fully grown ADULTS fall prey to skinnerboxes (aka: Slot Machines) all the time. Its basic human psychology (heck: the skinnerbox is effective on virtually all Birds and Mammals). Its extremely fundamental to the function of the modern biological brain. Its literally a "brain hack". This isn't some "willpower away" sort of training. Th…
Not sure what you mean by "You can't beat the biological functions of what your brain is designed to do" ?? I have played slot machines many times and picked up and walked away when I won a decent amount or when I hit my allocated budget for the night. I find it fun (at least for a little while), but it's hardly overpowering.
At least, that's what the various casino engineers tell me.
EDIT: In particular: it costs money to pull the lever in a Slot Machine. So you have a penalty every time you pull the lever. Even with this penalty, many people pull that level compulsively, hoping for the slight chance to win.
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> 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…
Like I said in my post, I think they're grayer than a lot of skinnerboxes, but that doesn't make them clean. My understanding is that the vast majority of loot boxes are the sole way of acquiring the in game objects they posses. If there's a CS gun/skin/whatever in a loot box, you can't just go out and buy that thing for money. Transaction behavior is fine to me. That's one problem. Another is that you don't "own" th…
So, in Valve's games, this isn't true. Lootboxes are the only "first party" way to buy skins in CS: Go, but you can use the Steam marketplace to trade with other players.
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No, it has a monetary value, But you can't resell it. People spend thousands on skins, with some of the items only accessible by repeatedly rolling the dice on a loot box. (Others have price ceilings for direct purchases). The closed nature of the economy just means you can only purchase from the one person who is setting the price and you have no ability to trade it back in for cash. Magic cards you can resell your…
It has value sure but it's not monetary if you can't convert it to money. These things have no monetary value. So you should know going in you will never make your money back. You will only get better or worse game items. That's farther than gambling than the trading card model.
You don't require this to be sucked into destructive tendencies in the same way as gambling. This isn't a logical choice, it's kids getting manipulated by the game into purchasing these lootboxes.
I erred in my use of monetary value, I mean that kids are very willing to spend lots and lots of money to get these skins - just as much as magic, if not more.
As I originally commented, I don't think magic is a good thing either, and Hearthstone is basically the equivalent of it in video game form - but at least you can sell out of Magic at a later date, and there is some form of market for trading old cards with others. Hell, you can even just be given your deck by a friend - this is not possible in hearthstone or fifa or Apex Legends (for cosmetics), you can't with games like Hearthstone and Apex Legends, you never get your money back, and people are just as willing to drop lots of cash on it as Magic.
Myself 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…
FWIW, you can buy specific skins that are on the character loadout with very few exceptions. I've never paid for premium in the game, just used the in game currency. The confusion with Apex is that there are 3 types of currency. One is the in game free currency. That's typically used to unlock characters who cost 12,000 units. The second currency are the gold coins, which are used as premium purchasing power from the…
This is what we thought too but theres no way to buy materials with gold. Only through Apex packs. Eg [0], [1].
[0] https://www.shacknews.com/article/109806/how-to-get-crafting...
[1] https://www.techjunkie.com/get-crafting-metals-apex-legends/
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The reason Magic is different is for 2 major reasons: 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,…
>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…
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The thing about sticker packs, Pokémon cards, etc. is that you could trade the ones you didn't want with your friends, so even getting a shiny that you already had was exciting because then you had something that you could swap for another shiny or a couple of lower-value cards/stickers. You'd naturally come to the point where some stickers were much more frequent than others so you'd end up with this little schoolya…
Lots of loot boxes and in game cosmetics can often be traded in the same way though? For example in Dota 2 people can trade skins for heroes they don't play. Isn't that the same thing as trading a pokemon you don't want?
The majority of free-to-play games from Asia don't provide a mechanism for that.
Myself 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…
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…