I'll stick to Mario Kart 64, keep your slimy addiction-enabling loot boxes Nintendo, sad to see how the mighty have fallen.
Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
191–200 of 247 posts
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have the data so they would certainly know better than me, but my anecdotal experience was just so wildly different. I bought it, and nearly everyone I know did. It was a great game, and did not of the scummy things that so many games did! The always online and the "won't run on rooted device" checks were very annoying to me, but it didn't exceed my tolerance threshold. I and many others praised them for just ch…
Yeah, but you only spent $10. The investors aren't going to stand for that crap when all these other companies are scamming their way to thousands. $10 or $4000 in revenue...take your pick. Gambling needs defined and outlawed in every way possible. The recent supreme court ruling that released the sports gambling hounds has me gobsmacked with absolute disbelief.
This is such a strange take.
From a legal standpoint, why is it a qualified use of government paternalism to outlaw gambling? We should not be asking the government to set laws based on morality.
Practically speaking, and apologies in advance for how obvious this argument is…when you ban gambling, it doesn’t disappear, it simply goes underground. Criminal actors benefit while the state is unable to enforce any protections or see any recompense. Moreover, it’s unclear what brightline exists between “gambling” and a ton of economic decisions. If I buy a plot of land because I think it might have oil, is that gambling? When I lock in an insurance policy, is that gambling?
I get it’s popular to immediately call for government enforcement whenever you experience personal moral outrage, but the real world contains far more nuance. Making gambling and some of its “sinful” corollaries like drug use illegal has never solved the problem, and has exacerbated it for the worst off.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mind elaborating on the "overcharging for games" part? Console games in the 80s were about $45, so games today are actually cheaper if inflation is taken into account.
Console games really benefited from economy of scale. The Legend of Zelda had an MSRP in 1986 of $50. That is $136 in 2022 money. You can preorder The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for $70, or roughly half the price. Imagine how many more hours of labor goes into a modern game compared to a 1986 game. The 1986 game has nine people in the credits. Three people with the role "programmer". Two things kept prices…
Throwing more people mostly making graphics, and creating movie like sequences where characters explain things isn't as hard with the tools available compared to making everything fit memory-wise making choices not faced today. Those three programmers interfaced with the hardware directly, solved os problems to get things working enough to put in a custom game engine they created into the smallest amount of memory before they can even start creating a world where there game could exist. The challenge today is how can I generate enough content to create a story to put into my unreal game engine. The 3d part, driver development, the memory management all is handled by something else.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never been into Nintendo but after having kids I kept hearing this about how great they are for families so I bought a Switch. That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is: overcharging for games, nickle and dimeing for everything, and abusing their fan's nostalgia. I definitely don't want to get my kids invested in their platform so I got rid of the Switch. Steam has more than we need anyway.…
Random question for the HN crowd piggybacking off your comment: What age did you introduce video games to your kids? My oldest is 5 and I let him tinker on the PS5 when I’m around playing things like Sonic or he really likes Astro’s Playworld. We limit it to maybe 15-20 min a day but I swear it’s like I tell people I let him watch R-rated movies or something when I mention that I let him play video games at his age.…
My son has been playing various Mario games since age 5. He can hold his own on Mario Party and has finished Odyssey. When we were kids, I was playing GTA, Mortal Kombat etc, so my childhood wasn't necessarily a good example.
That being said, his reading and math abilities are quite good and we attribute that to videogames, and a healthy dose of Mo Willems books.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
That video on Fortnite seemed a little unfair to me. It's not nearly as bad as the pay-to-win ilk like this Mario Kart game.
> That video on Fortnite seemed a little unfair to me. What part is wrong? Fortnite has been called pay to win itself from time to time For examples, see https://www.sportskeeda.com/fortnite/the-history-pay-to-win-... or https://old.reddit.com/r/FortniteCompetitive/comments/l2qywf... or https://www.sportskeeda.com/fortnite/fortnite-finally-proves...
It is not pay-to-win. There is no way to use actual money to improve your chances of winning. The only things you can buy are cosmetics, and there are no randomized lootbox/gambling mechanics.
There have been some cosmetics that give a slight advantage (blending in with the background too much), but they're pretty good about updating these to reduce the impact they have. Basically, those articles are complaining about the game being pay-to-win by accident.
Don't get me wrong though. Fortnite does use the psychological tricks described in the video to make you want to buy things, and I'm sure the tricks are very effective at separating kids from their money, so he's not entirely off the mark. I just think it's a bit better than most free-to-play games, and it would have been fair to also call out some of the tricks that Fortnite won't do. I play the game and I feel like I've gotten way more enjoyment out of it than the $10 I spent on a battle pass.
But maybe this is just an indication of how much worse it's gotten in the 3 years since the video was made?
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but you only spent $10. The investors aren't going to stand for that crap when all these other companies are scamming their way to thousands. $10 or $4000 in revenue...take your pick. Gambling needs defined and outlawed in every way possible. The recent supreme court ruling that released the sports gambling hounds has me gobsmacked with absolute disbelief.
This is such a strange take. From a legal standpoint, why is it a qualified use of government paternalism to outlaw gambling? We should not be asking the government to set laws based on morality. Practically speaking, and apologies in advance for how obvious this argument is…when you ban gambling, it doesn’t disappear, it simply goes underground. Criminal actors benefit while the state is unable to enforce any protec…
> We should not be asking the government to set laws based on morality.
What an odd opinion. What about laws against murder, fraud, or narcotics? Aren't those also based on morality?
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
They walk an awfully thin line, offering “expansion passes” and Amiibos. Not to mention locking game content behind two different tiers of subscription plans.
Yeah, amiibo content is definitely on the exploitative side. Most of the things you get with it in games like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild should have been available in the base game, and it irritates me that quality of life features in games like Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda Skyward Sword are locked away in the same way. It's very much on disc DLC, except with a plastic figure associated with it.
I absolutely do not recommend you visit Etsy and absolutely would never suggest you search for NFC cards that emulate amiibos.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#198This was a really great writeup and an amazing way to present it. My hunch is, there is another dark pattern hidden which he didn't discuss yet: the quantities in which you buy gems. You'll often land just one or two gems short of the number you actually needed. Then you can either buy the 3 gem pack for the worst relative price or buy another larger pack, encouraging you to come back later. It seems hard to really s…
> the quantities in which you buy gems
This is a fairly common tactic when you have intermediate in-game currencies that you actually use to buy stuff in the game. For example, you can only use gems to buy stuff in-game, and most items in-game are worth a multiple of 200 gems. But when you buy the gems with cash, they're somehow only offered in multiples of 500 that are also not multiples of 200. You end up buying a few extra that maybe you didn't want, and they can later hook you in with the 'well, you already have some in your wallet' approach.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but you only spent $10. The investors aren't going to stand for that crap when all these other companies are scamming their way to thousands. $10 or $4000 in revenue...take your pick. Gambling needs defined and outlawed in every way possible. The recent supreme court ruling that released the sports gambling hounds has me gobsmacked with absolute disbelief.
This is such a strange take. From a legal standpoint, why is it a qualified use of government paternalism to outlaw gambling? We should not be asking the government to set laws based on morality. Practically speaking, and apologies in advance for how obvious this argument is…when you ban gambling, it doesn’t disappear, it simply goes underground. Criminal actors benefit while the state is unable to enforce any protec…
It is deemed a qualified use to limit gambling because gambling addiction hurts more than just the addict. Their family suffers, maybe society suffers because of crime. Limiting (not outlawing) allows for outreach, voluntary blacklists, escape for their family should they cross the line and other safety measures.
As for the brightline between economic decisions: yeah, the definition is not perfect. Poker isn't gambling for some definitions because it is 'a game of skill'. While buying a plot of land with oil is certainly a skill AND it is expected to generate profits. But we can't protect as m well against hopeful stupidity.
Buying an insurance policy isn't gambling as it reduces risk. ...selling one is gambling if you didn't do the math though.
Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money
#200SP had it right.
Freemium - the 'mium' means "not really"