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Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

growth.design

221–230 of 247 posts

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#221

Earlier 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…

If you think gambling is about morality, you must've been very isolated from it's negative effects.

Gambling is about addiction, and addiction is a disease.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#222

Earlier 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…

I think I agree on your take on gambling and some of its “sinful” corollaries, but aren't this and other dark patterns more about tricking and fooling people into something? At a casino I know it is money in, very likely no money out, maybe big money. Here it is money in, for a chance to play better against.. what even humans, or just more virtualities?

I know i know, where to draw the line will be superhard or impossible, but this has the touch of plain betrayal to me, that classic gambling hasn't (as long as it is fair).

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#223
post #52
post #35

Great breakdown, enjoyable read. I think it highlights why more and more tech firms are hiring employees with psychology and economics backrounds. The attention economy combined with the ever-growing presence of a razor and blades style market with in-game purchases in pay-to-win games is insane. I understand it from a profitability perspective. In addition it allows for more enduring cashflows. From a less direct pe…

I remember a few SNES games being $79 at release. One example I remember buying was Street Fighter II.

I’m really outing how young I am…

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#224
post #35

Great breakdown, enjoyable read. I think it highlights why more and more tech firms are hiring employees with psychology and economics backrounds. The attention economy combined with the ever-growing presence of a razor and blades style market with in-game purchases in pay-to-win games is insane. I understand it from a profitability perspective. In addition it allows for more enduring cashflows. From a less direct pe…

I think DLC is a matter of inflation. publishers don't want to raise sticker prices, but their input costs are actually increasing, so they need to increase prices directly somehow. Also, expansion packs for AAA games have always been a thing, and it's always felt kind of painful to buy them.

I think it’s the pain more than anything of paying $60+ for a game only to have paid expansions and in game currency.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grim to see even Nintendo who stand by their principles to such a degree elsewhere find themselves capitulating to garbage mobile profit models when on a phone. iOS and Android app stores are where creativity, quality and talent goes to die. Whole thing could disappear tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost.

I remember the iOS pp store having tons of creative games when it first launched. You paid once and that was it. I miss those days.

And my fave games from that era are no longer runnable on modern iOS.

Shenzhen Solitaire is probably the only quality pay once game I could name on the current App Store. There was one other but the dev stopped paying for an App Store license.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#226

Never seen this site before but love the interactive + visual content. Found this one which is more broadly applicable: https://growth.design/case-studies/mental-models

Yeah, I know the format might not be everybody's cup of tea, but they have some pretty decent breakdowns and a lot of great information that would be great tools in any product or designers toolbox.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#227
post #5

Nintendo has such a great, family friendly brand. If I was in charge, I wouldn't want my brand to be anywhere close to being associated to this type of thing.

they didn't initially. their first mobile game, Super Mario Run, cost $10 and had none of the usual manipulative mobile game elements. People did not buy it so they switched to the same F2P nonsense as everyone else for future games.

I always found it weird how mobile phone apps/games trigger the "happy to pay £10 for a pizza, but not happy to pay £10 for hours of entertainment" attitude in people.

Is it perhaps because they spent a few hundred/thousand £ on the phone itself and see that as the complete price?

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic. They tried with Super Mario Run ( https://supermariorun.com/en/ ), which was a premium pay-once game introduced by Miyamoto himself at an Apple keynote. That didn't work, then Fire Emblem Heroes made a billion dol…

Yeah I remember they explicitly wanted to avoid the "free-to-play" schemes back when SMR came out.

An interesting game that Nintendo made early on in their mobile saga was Dragalia Lost [1], which was probably the most generous 'gatcha' [2] mobile game ever released.

It was so player-friendly, that it underperformed for much of it's 4 years, and ultimately shut down in November 2022.

It was unfortunate that mobile gaming is in the state that its in, but Nintendo had some good ideas in the mobile space.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragalia_Lost

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I’m baffled by this comment. I’m not really trying to argue against anybody or against any specific viewpoint so the idea that I set up a strawman has me confused. If you’re talking about rubies, emeralds, and gold, can you explain where those come from? Maybe provide a link? As far as I know, in Mario Kart Tour the key limited currency is rubies. You can exchange rubies for coins, fire them into a pipe…

> So that includes currency you buy directly with money and currency that is accepted alongside purchasable currency Mario Kart Tour is letting you trade one currency that is paid for another that is earned. That "taints" the currency that can be earned by allowing them to use it to hide the real cost of an item. And to top it off here Mario Kart is artificially limiting how many of the "earned" currency you can actu…

> You're also getting caught up on non-existent currencies that were named as digs at pay-to-win shovelware... this isn't about a literal game with "Rubies Emeralds and Gold"* it's about how currency X Y and Z are intermeshed to keep people buying.

Okay, what you said was unclear and I asked for clarification. I guess if you were trying to get me to fall into a trap, you won.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#230

Earlier 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...

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