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It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

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Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#61

Post by solar-ice »

jack_pp wrote: post #2

I've watched a lot of discussions about this from twitch streamers and I'm not sure where I stand.. On the one hand I'm amazed at how good this game looks on mobile and if you're just the type to casually play a game not really caring about being the best at it you could have fun playing it for free or for very cheap. On the other hand this game is clearly exploitative and while other games like Hearthstone or Clash…

Casinos and machine-based gambling are fairly heavily regulated in a lot of places, requiring a license with auditing, with rules on everything you can possibly think of. The mobile gaming industry has so far avoided this body of law by never providing anything of value in return.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#62

Post by can16358p »

gspr wrote: post #49
can16358p wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predatory? Casinos shouldn't be regulated too. If nobody is forcing anyone to attend into something (like going to a casino or playing a pay-to-win game) nobody should have the right to change or regulate the inner dynamics. As long as the game doesn't clearly lie (e.g. telling a lootbox does something that it doesn't) everybody knows what a lootbox is. Playing the game is a voluntary action taken by an individual, j…

> Casinos shouldn't be regulated too. If nobody is forcing anyone to attend into something (like going to a casino or playing a pay-to-win game) nobody should have the right to change or regulate the inner dynamics. This is, of course, a position that is yours to hold. But I do hope that you recognize that it's quite a small, fringe one. It's a bit strange to use a fringe opinion about casino regulation as the steppi…

I was replying to the argument by parent comment which gave that specific example of gambling vs. loot boxes.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#64

Post by bobnamob »

lozenge wrote: post #23
bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, most "super rich" people don't get "super rich" by doing super stupid things.

The Chinese proverb “rags to rags in three generations” says that family wealth does not last for three generations. The first generation makes the money, the second spends it and the third sees none of the wealth.

That phenomenon probably has more to do with wealth being spread increasingly thin across ever-larger generations

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#65

Post by dtech »

jack_pp wrote: post #41
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the "we have ways to play the game without spending lots of money" excuse these companies are constantly peddling. I refuse to accept this new default of "games" explicitly designed to abuse children and addicts.

Children don't have access to a credit card unless you give it to them. If in 2022 you're giving a kid a device where he can make payments without your input then you're responsible for it. If you're addicted to spending money online irresponsibly I doubt there is any law that will protect you, there's millions of ways to spend money to get gratification online.

"We shouldn't restrict heroin, if you're prone to addiction you can get a candybar in any supermarket"

These games are explicitly designed to prey on people prone to gambling-like addictions.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#67

Post by mafaa »

seydor wrote: post #28
AdvicePlz wrote: post #3

I knew someone who worked for EA as a UX researcher. He said that games like these are primarily targeting whales who will drop $10k on a game. They are the real money earners. The really sad part was the he said the most whales aren't super rich, they're just people with an addiction.

10k over a long period is very small compared to what one can lose in a casino night, and casinos do exist. What kind of game was your friend working on? Whales do exist but they are not the bulk of the revenue

Under 1% of users for over 50% of your mobile gaming revenue with a not single purchase model has been a good general estimate since 2010; I invite you to google an publicly available data on that. From what I've seen privately 50% is a vast understatement. And no, most of those users cannot afford what they spend.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#68

Post by matheusmoreira »

AdvicePlz wrote: post #3

I knew someone who worked for EA as a UX researcher. He said that games like these are primarily targeting whales who will drop $10k on a game. They are the real money earners. The really sad part was the he said the most whales aren't super rich, they're just people with an addiction.

> they're just people with an addiction

Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself.

Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups reinforce each other's behavior. The goal is to get them to log in every day and invest in the game.

People pay money to uncap their progression. This turns these games into spending competitions: whoever spends the most money wins the game. The corporation is the only true winner of course.

I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating. I reverse engineered the game and wrote a bot for it. All those silly tasks were now getting done automatically, my progression was assured and the game's hold over me was destroyed. The best part was my bot was statistically indistinguishable from a sufficiently addicted player due to the game's own design. I'd like to believe I helped destroy that game.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#69

Post by yuzugit »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #50
mywaifuismeta wrote: post #43

I regularly play games with gambling (gacha) mechanics and I love them. The short bursts of fun are exactly what I'm looking for in my current busy life. I have nothing against this model of monetization. Gambling is fun. Casinos are fun. I am not a big spender by any means, but I've probably spent ~$2k on these kind of games over the past two years or so. I don't regret it, and for me the fun is in figuring out how…

Heroin is fun too, at least at first. The problem with gambling is that it taps into the dopamine system in ways that people are not aware of, even if they know about probabilities. The effect is cumulative, and the more the person gambles, the more they will gamble, take risks, create unbalance and spend money. Now, just like with anything related to dopamine, many people will only have a mild effect. E.G: I've play…

I work on video games (not on the design side but programming) and had to implement some on those systems on several mobile games. I agree with the comment above that it’s hard to draw the line between gambling addiction and à faire amount of random that brings fun to a game. Diablo 2 has already those kinds of random behavior to retain your attention and trigger dopamine rushes but without trying to grab cash from you.

The only solution to me is legal regulation, companies won’t listen as it brings money and most people like to play them. Features like battle pass for example are pretty moral and a good balance between making the game profitable, having a rétention and not milk users.

I hope EU will flag lootboxes based games as casino games globally and that other big countries will follow (like Korea, Japan and USA) to stop this trend and force designer to find better mechanics.

Also users should also be educated to pay for a game that they enjoy. Nowadays with all the free services, it’s harder to make users pay for something they can get for « free » elsewhere. So it’s a complicated issue.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#70

Post by michaelmrose »

taurath wrote: post #45
holoduke wrote: post #4

Lootbox games: I don't understand why these kind of games are not getting banned or heavily restricted. There is absolutely not a single positive thing about these games. Moral doesn't matter.

Investors love the monetization model and they get to decide what is just right and moral in our system of economics. The “fiduciary duty” to investors means sociopathy is the only way that businesses are allowed to conduct themselves. If you can make money, you MUST make it. Someday I hope we find some way as a society to give value to other things. Its not really working out.

> sociopathy is the only way that businesses are allowed to conduct themselves.

It would be great if we could stop spreading this misunderstanding. Fiduciary duty is a duty not to deliberately destroy shareholder value. Basically you can't set it on fire or loot it. It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders. Leaders are free morally and legally free to consider intangible factors that bear on the long term health and viability of the company and indeed do so every day.

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