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Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

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Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#31

Post by arrosenberg »

oneoff786 wrote: post #11
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite is its own evil. They only show an extremely small fraction of the items available each day, with no indication of whether they'll return, so that you feel you have to buy things now in case you never have the chance again.

I don’t have any interest in fortnite but I don’t follow why this is bad. These are just skins right? Like no differentiation besides personal aesthetic preference? Couldn’t these be sold with no ambiguity, never ever coming back, and have literally no impact on your desire to buy? Have you ever felt a desire to buy a shirt because it won’t be available to purchase again? Is there really a world where they say “this…

Introducing artificial scarcity on digital goods seems incredibly anti-consumer. Consider a different scenario where someone wants the skin both now and later (for whatever reason - value is driven by the desire of the purchaser), but doesn't have the financial wherewithal to purchase frivolous things at a whim. In that scenario the consumer has to make a choice between purchasing an artificially scarce good or making a good personal financial choice.

From a neutral party standpoint (i.e. I neither want to purchase the skins, nor do I benefit financially from their purchase, nor do I wish to ban their sale outright), it seems obvious that a fungible, non-exhaustible digital good (with it's near-0 maintenance cost) should be restricted from exclusive periods of sale. There is no reason for it, other than to take advantage of human brain chemistry to drive a specific type of sale by producing artificial demand.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#32

Post by animal_spirits »

_fat_santa wrote: post #28
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

> While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. The more I think about it, the more I realize loot boxes to kids now are what trading card packs were to kids back in the day. When I was in elementary school, I was deep into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Card packs ran ~$4 and carried the chance that you got a super powerful…

But they still have to pay for it right? How is this different than say if you bought your game cards, opened them up outside the store and after you realized you didn't get the card you wanted, you went back inside and bought another one? I'm confused how this is different

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#33

Post by kmeisthax »

icu wrote: post #6

I was really hoping that the pushback on videogame gambling by minors would gain more regulatory momentum, not less. I think it's going to take longer to see regulation stick due to a lack of first hand knowledge of lootboxes by politicians and judges, who to be fair, are of a generation that just do not understand the subject matter.

I don't think legislators are entirely ignorant of the problem. They probably don't want to even try regulating artists; and the companies selling these lootboxes have insisted that any regulation would impinge upon freedom-of-speech. The regulations we have on gambling applies because the games involve wagering money; things like loot boxes[0] get around this primarily by not offering anything of value.

Of course, the counterargument (which I agree with) is that these have the spirit of gambling - i.e. being designed to maximally fuck with the heads of people who are even slightly vulnerable to dopamine. You will probably get politicians to agree with you on that, but they won't want to waste political capital on an antipartisan[1] issue. Sure, it might have popular support, but it harms the country's interests to be regulating things that make money.

[0] And their historical antecedents such as TCG booster packs, figurine blind bags, coin-op arcade games, and so on

[1] Political issues can be broadly categorized into "partisan", "bipartisan", and "antipartisan":

- Partisan issues are ones that typically find their way into a political party's "agenda". They are issues that one or more parties support and one or more parties oppose. Examples include basically any wedge issue in American politics.

- Bipartisan issues are ones that are obvious to a supermajority of politicians. These are issues that "everybody supports" and pass Congress with wide margins. Examples include things like copyright law.

- Antipartisan issues are ones that are obviously bad to a supermajority of politicians, regardless of whatever popular support they might have. Examples include things like right-to-repair.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#35

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

animal_spirits wrote: post #32
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. The more I think about it, the more I realize loot boxes to kids now are what trading card packs were to kids back in the day. When I was in elementary school, I was deep into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Card packs ran ~$4 and carried the chance that you got a super powerful…

But they still have to pay for it right? How is this different than say if you bought your game cards, opened them up outside the store and after you realized you didn't get the card you wanted, you went back inside and bought another one? I'm confused how this is different

I agree; is the premise here that audiovisual spectacle of opening the box in the video game somehow compounds the problem? Or that there's some manipulation of scarcity or something? The "core mechanic" seems exactly the same.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#36

Post by vlunkr »

animal_spirits wrote: post #32
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. The more I think about it, the more I realize loot boxes to kids now are what trading card packs were to kids back in the day. When I was in elementary school, I was deep into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Card packs ran ~$4 and carried the chance that you got a super powerful…

But they still have to pay for it right? How is this different than say if you bought your game cards, opened them up outside the store and after you realized you didn't get the card you wanted, you went back inside and bought another one? I'm confused how this is different

I assume because an 8 year old kid needs a ride, and more money to buy another pack.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#37

Post by dna_polymerase »

animal_spirits wrote: post #32
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. The more I think about it, the more I realize loot boxes to kids now are what trading card packs were to kids back in the day. When I was in elementary school, I was deep into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Card packs ran ~$4 and carried the chance that you got a super powerful…

But they still have to pay for it right? How is this different than say if you bought your game cards, opened them up outside the store and after you realized you didn't get the card you wanted, you went back inside and bought another one? I'm confused how this is different

You quite certainly did not sit in front of the supermarket's cash register with your mom's credit card shoving packs of cards over the counter for hours on end. The overall physicality of the process back in the day prevented the feedback loops to manifest. The lack of speed decoupled spending from gratification thus ensuring your behavior wouldn't devolve into a bonafide gambling addiction.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#38

Post by roofio »

abcc8 wrote: post #34

I haven't played a FIFA game in probably 20 years so please excuse my potentially uninformed question. Do loot boxes improve the play experience of the game in any meaningful way?

They made a mode where you assemble a team of players from past and present called Fifa Ultimate Team (FUT). You start with a team of players who each of a rating of about 70.

EA will release packs that contain star players with much higher ratings. In order to get these higher rated players on your team, you can either grind the game for several hours a day or pay to open some packs that might have the high rated players inside.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#39

Post by mFixman »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #8

This is so disheartening. I work as an admin in a school that serves all grades, and the impact that this stuff has on kids is very real. I've witnessed first-hand a grown in sort of a "gambling" culture amongst kids, as early as elementary school. While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. Part of me, thoug…

I'm sure my parents would disagree that Pokémon trading cards weren't a giant money sink designed to take their money.

I can see a lot of problems with giving children access to credit cards, but I honestly fail to see how loot boxes are different from trading cards marketed to children. My high school enacted and enforced a ban on all card and board games because some parents were worried about child gambling; I'm still mad that they took the fun away from school recess because of a dumb moral panic.

Re: Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court

#40

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

animal_spirits wrote: post #32
_fat_santa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While loads of us may have had fun experiences trading cards and whatnot, this all still happens with kids but with a much more overt monetary component. The more I think about it, the more I realize loot boxes to kids now are what trading card packs were to kids back in the day. When I was in elementary school, I was deep into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Card packs ran ~$4 and carried the chance that you got a super powerful…

But they still have to pay for it right? How is this different than say if you bought your game cards, opened them up outside the store and after you realized you didn't get the card you wanted, you went back inside and bought another one? I'm confused how this is different

I think the effect is similar to what Peter Norvig described in his "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data" lecture (which if you haven't seen, you should really check it out -- its awesome).

In essence, yeah, the core mechanic is the same, but the digitization of it fundamentally transforms its ubiquity, how often it can be iterated, optimized for more and more segmented group of kids, etc. I think there is an argument to be made that enough of that can effectively change the character of the activity itself, even if it is at first glance "sorta the same thing."

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