131–140 of 208 posts
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So much that could be done with those. Mandating age checks. Covering at least 80% of them with warnings about gambling. Maybe plain packaging and only allowing them from behind counter or unmarked automated systems. Treat them as tobacco products.
You can just ban them. Pass a law that says if someone buys an item the identity of which is undisclosed, and they're not happy with it, they're entitled to a full refund.
"Lootboxes", "cases", "packs" and other chance-based systems that involve spending real money or an in-game currency that could be obtained by spending real money should be banned completely, all of those systems exploit brain vulnerabilities for profit. Also, prediction markets, sports betting, online casinos, shitcoin exchanges.
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Hmm, so why do your perfectly reasonable thoughts on how to reduce alcohol abuse in light of not being able to simply ban it not apply to loot boxes as well? How is it different such that "completely banning", as you suggested, is a good idea there where it isn't for alcohol, drugs, smoking, and gambling (of which loot boxes are clearly a subcategory)?
Alcohol has been deeply embedded in human culture for thousands+ years, that's why prohibition is a bad idea. Loot boxes are a new invention, if they're deemed too harmful we can just do without them.
Do they let 16 year olds gamble in casinos in Europe? Odd to ban it for kids but only some kids.
What are "kids"? Age of majority is all over the place, there's no hard and fast rule for when adolescents become adults, every society on the planet has a different take on it. For example, you can get married at 16 in the UK, but can't drive until 17 (it's not a priority as we didn't build so many car-dependent hellscapes), and you can buy alcohol at 18 or be given it with a meal by your parents at younger ages, be…
Anyway, in my estimation the threat of gambling addiction is far higher for teenagers than young children, since teenagers may often have sources of revenue other than their parents, so they can feed a budding gambling addiction longer without supervision, increasing the risk of addiction. 16 year olds don't belong in casinos, nor should they be engaging with loot box gambling.
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Doesn't stop people from treating them as one, with all the corresponding issues. TBH I think a comparison with CCGs should make people question the CCG model itself, which tends to get far too easy a pass in most people's minds.
The “gambling” aspect of CCGs is mostly tacked on by outsiders, though driven by decisions of the manufacturer. That said, when you have a deck of, say, Pokémon cards in your hand, there’s nothing about it that encourages a gambler’s mindset. My 8yo has a bunch of Pokémon cards and he just likes playing with them, he has no idea of any monetary value they might have. There’s nothing about the physical product or game…
The games themselves are fine: if, for example, you could just buy specific cards from the manufacturer, fixed price, print-on-demand (and also buy packs for e.g. draft play), then I would have no problems with the business model at all, but it's the sales model that is predatory.
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With the rise of online storefronts and employees who just don't care I beg to differ.
Differ all you want. No child will bankrupt a family at a trading card game store. These are physical goods paid in bulk with provisioning and there are laws for returning them. Another point of contention is the randomness of packs. The way you play is: You save up to buy the entire set of boosters and already get almost all cards you need for competitive or fun play. The rest you need to trade for or buy individual…
If you want to allow Pokémon cards and not casinos you have to accept that your rule isn't just "kids can't gamble".
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Alcohol has been deeply embedded in human culture for thousands+ years, that's why prohibition is a bad idea. Loot boxes are a new invention, if they're deemed too harmful we can just do without them.
We absolutely could do without alcohol too and it's certainly far more harmful than lootboxes by any metric.
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> The proliferation of gambling over so many domains has radicalized me against it in a way that I didn't think would've been possible a few years ago. I grew up in Italy when sport betting was illegal and you had to do it through illegal channels, and I did it now and then like everyone else, and thought we should totally make it legal. At some point all betting, slot machines etc.. became legal and it's been a disa…
The best solution is through education. For example by showing in big letters the return-to-player ratio: On 100 EUR you will get → 79 back, if you put them again in the machine you will get → 62.41 → 49.30 → 38.95 → 30.77…
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And having a smaller addiction rate makes it any more moral?
Yes, it does. Only Sith deal in absolutes. You can say the same about, let's say alcohol. For most it's an entertaining social lubricant. For a much smaller number, it leads them to wreck and ruin. Is it therefore a wicked evil sin that no God-fearing person should engage in, and I'm going to ban it to protect the morality of society? The USA tried that out with Prohibition, and only after years of misery and gangste…
It's a bit as if ice cream shops suddenly decided "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we put alcohol into most of our sorts? It's just tiny amounts and alcohol-laced sweets have a long history already, so what's the harm?"