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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

#301

Post by tripzilch »

dpcan wrote: post #234
SkyBelow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not seeing how this is any different than Pokemon cards where I saw the same behavior in kids back then. Is it because these days companies have thrown far more psychology at optimizing it?

2 wrongs don't make a right. It's not okay to say "something has been done before" or "this is like that". As human beings, we are learning what types of things are destructive. When we learn about these problems, it's not healthy to justify doing another thing wrong because we happened to live through doing it wrong before. For example, people who say "I didn't wear a helmet when I was a kid" are being irresponsible…

My entire COUNTRY didn't wear a bike helmet when they were young. (this is a historical fact, am I being irresponsible?)

Thankfully due to science and data, we now know that providing infrastructure, bike lanes, good traffic rules for bikes, lessons in school for biking, car driving lessons including bike safety and just being the nr.1 method of transportation besides legs, increases safety AND public health AND bike usage AND decreases car usage with all its negative externalities.

There is no brain damage epidemic here. But maybe we don't wear helmets, but we DO regulate the ever loving shit out of what we can advertise and sell to children.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#302

Post by tripzilch »

save_ferris wrote: post #252
jason46 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel 20 or so years ago kids that spent money on something that didn't provide a clear benefit would have been bullied. My wife was a gamer, when my son first asked for a gift card to buy a skin it was fun watching him try to explain that there is no benefit and it only changes the look. My wife kept asking him why do you want this?

You and I grew up in very, very different worlds then. Most things that made kids in my community were purely consumerist. Air Jordans, Pokémon cards, brand name clothes like hollister and AE, and then popular phones like the razer were ubiquitous among those that were popular. Kids who didn’t have those things were bullied relentlessly.

That sounds awful. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Sounds like an American high school sitcom TV series scene.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#303

Post by thirdsun »

_Understated_ wrote: post #24
kmjg88nvf8 wrote: post #7

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…

Aw man, you're bringing back memories of my childhood here: I spent all my pocket money on those. Well, those and the chewing gum that had a "tattoo" in them :) I'm with you on the "what are the parents doing while this is going on?" camp. My son, now 8, plays some games on the iPad. He's got a bunch of Lego games and a couple of multiplayer games but he cannot interact with the other players except to fight on the s…

Reading this I can't help but think that Apple Arcade has to be a huge success with parents - a quality, woory-free gaming environment with fixed, affordable cost.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#304

Post by kalcode »

input_sh wrote: post #205
beatgammit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Pokemon cards, you can at least buy specific cards from sellers. Many loot box items cannot be traded.

They can't be traded for legal reasons. If you were able to trade them, that would mean they'd have monetary value. As such, they'd be a nail in the coffin of labeling loot boxes as gambling. A quote from the report[0]: > At present, the Gambling Commission states that purchasing loot boxes does not meet the regulatory definition of licensable gambling under the Gambling Act 2005 because the in-game items have no rea…

Pretty important point for how far we should regulate something.

I think the gaming community would want loot-boxes completely banned under the guise of "gambling".

The individuals that would spend an unhealthy amount on these loot-boxes are not individuals that will stop their behavior if lootboxes are banned or even regulated.

These individuals have know that you can't get your money back, you can't earn more money and you can blow your life savings on it. With no return promised, monetarily, these individuals know the money they spend can't be gambled back. Thats the crux of gambling and their laws. People truly believes one more bet and they can get it all back.

It's insane if a person on Overwatch or Fortnite truly believes the money they waste if beyond their budget is a good investment at all. That problem lies with the individual not EA and loot boxes.

Those people will have constant issues with their finance until they seek the help they need to stop. That could be learning better budgeting behavior to identifying they have a gambling problem.

That could be a gambling impulse but really we know people that constantly spend their money carelessly regardless of some mental addiction. A lot of people lack of financial control shouldn't create laws to dictate to companies what they should do, especially in a market saturated with competition that don't deploy any of these practices simply because these people refuse to follow a monthly budget thats within their means.

We don't remove things from society just cause others have difficulty with it. Now I have no issue with more regulations especially targeted at kids, but let's be honest here. Most of this should still fall on parents and education. Companies caught pushing to sell these random loot-boxes to kids should be addressed and fined. Especially the ones that use streams that buy these boxes and open them with kids audiences. These companies that sponsored these streamers should receives fines for targeting kids. Also like to see some form of guarantee or odds exposure.

Long rant, but I find the fact you can't get monetary value back makes it extremely different than the current types of gambling and should effect the way we regulate it. End of the day, when no monetary value can be extracted we are regulating random chance and rewards...silly path to go down to call anything random and rewarding essentially gambling.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#305

Post by moate »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #285
moate wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If there's a CS gun/skin/whatever in a loot box, you can't just go out and buy that thing for money. 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.

I will stop using this specific game as an example. This particular dev might allow this, but many others don't which is a huge problem on the issue since these things are functioning as gambling for access to a service (the right to use a feature) instead of access to a commodity (that you can trade/sell).

I think the best example of a way to deal with acquired in game intems I can think of personally for something that didn't suck, was Diablo 3 when it first hit. If the game randomly dropped a high tier weapon, you could use it, trade it, or sell it for real money. The real money auction house was a great addition imo.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#306

Post by bart_spoon »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #264
moate wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are definite parallels between something like MtG and lootboxes, but I think the barrier for purchase is much lower with lootboxes. A physical product like MtG cards must be purchased at a store, which will have limited quantities. It requires effort and occasionally timing to actually obtain the items. Even in our modern world of online shopping, there is typically a wait time between the impulse to buy and the reward of receiving the items of at least 24 hours, often more.

With lootboxes, the payoff is immediate. The barrier between the impulse of someone with an addiction and the payoff is virtually non-existent. I think that makes a difference in the potential for addictive behavior that shouldn't be overlooked.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#307

Post by bart_spoon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #181
losvedir wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this isn't correct. For instance, any drop has a chance of being "painted" and among painted items there's an equal chance of any of several colors. However, because of demand, Titanium White painted items are much more valuable than, say, Burnt Sienna.

That's a weird quibble. If there are ten variants and only one of them is Titanium White, the desirable one is only available in 10% of the drops and is thus rare. Yes, desirability plays a role, but it's still rare .

Its not really a quibble, but you aren't wrong either. Its true that valuable items will be rare, but it isn't true that all rare items will be valuable. Both the titanium white and the burnt sierra colors are equally rare, but one is much more valuable because demand is not equivalent.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#308

Post by SkyBelow »

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #288
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…

The magic cards that cost thousands only cost so much because they aren't in print anymore. Ones with that kind of price point are collector's items and aren't even legal to use in the formats that are commonly played

But the booster packs that contains those cards are still available for sell. So why WotC isn't the one profiting off of it, private businesses still are selling them and some people do open them hoping for one of those rare cards. While it isn't a price point a normal child can afford, I don't see why it is different given that the items are still being actively sold.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#309

Post by SkyBelow »

benologist wrote: post #200
SkyBelow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not seeing how this is any different than Pokemon cards where I saw the same behavior in kids back then. Is it because these days companies have thrown far more psychology at optimizing it?

The difference is you walked into a shop with cash and couldn't accidentally buy 100 packets in the space of five minutes. They couldn't take your parent's bank card and let you spend thousands of dollars because your parents would come back to the store. The transaction amount and cash exchange was not deliberately obfuscated with layers of contrived pseudo-currencies when we bought packets of cards either. Facebook…

It seems in this case, the use of a fake virtual currency to disassociate it from real money is the underlying problem. And in that case, I do not see any analogies to existing TCG booster packs. Also, it would mean the problem extends to more than just loot boxes, and as such even in games where there aren't lootboxes regulation would still be needed when virtual currency can be bought with actual currency.

Re: Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

#310

Post by Horba »

swebs wrote: post #144
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,…

>If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops? Yes please! Or at least just the slot machine aspect. It would be great if you could buy a box of cards and know exactly what's inside.

You can. These are called Challenger Decks.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/challe...

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