151–160 of 769 posts
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.
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To me this "ultra-wealthy" thing has always sounded like a convenient lie whale-game devs tell themselves to sleep soundly at night. These dark pattern black holes are made purely to form an addiction and turn it into profit, they don't care about who's on the receiving end. There's an increasing number of players who expect that either a) a game will take unlimited money and feed them dopamines in return, or b) they…
It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. Most long lived whales are likely to be from wealthy families, or the fun side addiction for a very wealthy individual. That doesn't change the fact that there are addicted people who spend a large percentage of their income on a game. Whales are one thing and addicted players are another.
They don't have to. Repeatedly unearthing cow-clickers whom you can milk for $10'000 before sending them into financial ruin sounds like a much more viable business strategy to me than trying to build a portfolio of people both rich and dumb enough to sustainably cow-click.
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It’s your choice whether to install them or not. Let’s stop treating people like children please.
You mean like... all the actual... children who play these games? Should we stop treating those like children too?
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The deflection point for me on Regulation is purchases vs loot boxes If the game is implimenting direct purchases, where you buy Item X for Y price then I feel regulation is unwarranted even in the context of harmful levels of purchasing However if the game is using a loot box system where the play buy a "chance" to "win" an item they desire, then I think that should be considered a "game of chance" like a lottery or…
To be fair, many such games do disclose the odds. The difference to older tech like mechanical slot machines is that the game records everything the player does, and can then drop a "discounted" special offer at the right time to maximize the likelihood of keeping the player hooked.
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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…
You just got to look at a company like Boeing and how it changed over the years. The fiduciary duty of the directors didn’t change; but the directors certainly did.
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so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves. Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?
Even if you thought that being addicted to gaming or gambling is no different for the creature than any other hobby, like kayaking, it might help you to look at the other side of the question: How much should we allow others to enrich themselves off the addictions/compulsions of others? I always thought that was a compelling point even when I was a libertarian for one year as a uni freshman. That people should be abl…
the current line is drawn at 18+ and non-chemical addiction, or light chemical addition like nicotine. It is worthy of debate, whether psychological addiction ought to be included.
My guide would be that if it causes external harm, then it should be regulated, where external harm is defined as harm that, while undertaking said activity, would befall a third, unrelated party.
The thing is - is it necessary to have the best gear to enjoy the game? As a different example - I'm sure it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to max out your characters and gear in Genshin Impact, but I've played very enjoyable 100h+ and it's perfectly fine even if you don't have the max ascended characters and gear, I have a feeling those are there basically for the wales to spend money on but aren't necessar…
> The thing is - is it necessary to have the best gear to enjoy the game? Yes, at least in those types of games. Gear improvement is a big part of the game progression. Before microtransactions that just meant spending ungodly amounts of time in those games. Nowadays it means bankrupting yourself.
The worst thing (for me) about this is that whenever I go to the Apple App store I get bombarded will all these "games" that just try to make my life actively worse. I don't understand why they pollute their brand like that.
That's the key! The Play Store and the App Store do not even have a search filter for games without in-app purchases. I'm sure that is on purpose.
For me, Blizzard has always been the WarCraft 1-2 and StarCraft 1-2 company. Never liked the rest of their output over the years.
That said, it's a shame the company has been reduced to a gambling shop. Sign of the times, I guess. The writing was on the wall 10 years ago but I am no longer scared about my hobby. So what if the big guys all do lootboxes. Don't buy from them.
Activision used to have stellar catalogue 15 years ago. Now look at them. It's all junk
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.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-public-p...