The Rise of the Video-Game Gambler (newyorker.com) 76
Among the more insidious gifts that video games have bestowed on modern culture is the loot box. The New Yorker: A loot box is like an in-game lottery ticket: for a small fee, involving real money, a player can purchase an assortment of items that promise to enhance the game experience. Loot boxes are an appealing source of income for game developers, and they've been integral to the rise of smartphone "freemium" games, which are free to download but can't be fully enjoyed unless the player pays for in-app boosts. For pretty much everyone else, loot boxes are a scourge. Players hate that they have to pay extra just to be competitive. Parents hate discovering, too late, that several hundred dollars in Clash Royale arena packs have been charged to their credit card. And, increasingly, government regulators are thinking that loot boxes look too much like gambling -- gambling aimed at kids, no less.
Belgium and the Netherlands have banned in-game loot boxes as a form of gambling, and Minnesota recently introduced a bill that would ban the sale of games containing loot boxes to people under the age of eighteen. The concern isn't merely prudish. In a finding that will surprise virtually no one, psychologists in New Zealand have discovered that loot boxes do indeed bear troubling similarities to gambling. The researchers, led by Aaron Drummond, of Massey University, looked at twenty-two console games released between 2016 and 2017, from Overwatch and FIFA 18 to Madden N.F.L. 18 and Star Wars Battlefront II. They noted how closely the loot-box system of each game aligned with five standard psychological criteria for gambling, including whether the loot box must be bought with real money, whether it has tangible value in the game or can be cashed out, and whether its contents are randomly determined.
Belgium and the Netherlands have banned in-game loot boxes as a form of gambling, and Minnesota recently introduced a bill that would ban the sale of games containing loot boxes to people under the age of eighteen. The concern isn't merely prudish. In a finding that will surprise virtually no one, psychologists in New Zealand have discovered that loot boxes do indeed bear troubling similarities to gambling. The researchers, led by Aaron Drummond, of Massey University, looked at twenty-two console games released between 2016 and 2017, from Overwatch and FIFA 18 to Madden N.F.L. 18 and Star Wars Battlefront II. They noted how closely the loot-box system of each game aligned with five standard psychological criteria for gambling, including whether the loot box must be bought with real money, whether it has tangible value in the game or can be cashed out, and whether its contents are randomly determined.
Clash Royale? (Score:2)
More like Cash Royale.
also don't forget.. (Score:2, Insightful)
the virtual barbie craze.. the base game is free, but people are willing to spend stupid amounts of money on skins and models..all cosmetic.
Just a decade ago, such things were scoffed at. Now we have a whole generation of retards buying into this. oh well.
Re: also don't forget.. (Score:1)
It is pay to win.
They'll find some way to make those items affect the game.
An MMORPG I played had candy cane weapon skins that caused 3d effects on hit. It made you lag no matter the computer, it was in the netcode to wait for that effect and it did not affect the caster.
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Teachers learned a long time ago that randomly checking homework was more effective than checking homework every time. It still pisses students off that they sometimes do homework without any reward, but they end up doing it more.
And so for loot boxes. Randomly getting rewards causes video game companies to make more money than giving a reward every time. It is still pay to win, but people end up buying more.
Hell, pay to win would be more honest than what they are currently doing.
Re: also don't forget.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, it sounds just like Magic: The Gathering and others of its ilk.
With the right combination of cards (the right creature, double lands, etc.) you could win almost every game. But you had to endlessly purchase booster packs for the latest and greatest... in the hopes you might get something rare/valuable/powerful.
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Pretty much.
I see people bring up MtG as a defense for many of the gambling aspects in computer games but to be fair their business model was pretty sketchy.
You can't compare it to other board games where you buy a set and get going.
It is not like the cost to develop and print one card was higher than the other and it isn't exactly easier to manufacture packs with randomized card instead of having different packs with known cards in them.
The entire thing was set up to make kids spend their allowance on boos
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However, MtG (or any other CCG) has a big difference. When you need a specific card, you can trade/buy for it in an alternate market or your friends. No one in their sane mind would create a deck just buying boosters, they only get you started. However, most lootbox systems you cannot do that. If you want item X, you have to keep buying until you get it. And that's exactly the trap.
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If it (the cosmetics) pays for the game to keep running and have active development, then I don't see what the issue is. It's better than selling weapons / armor / etc that affect game-play (pay-to-win), and better than the subscription model (more players to play with / against).
The point is, you don't need the cosmetic items to play or be competitive, but it also allows the people willing and able to spend some money on cool looking stuff to support the game financially. That seems like a win-win to me.
Original paper (Score:5, Informative)
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41... [sci-hub.tw]
Its like email spam. (Score:1)
Dont like it? then stop buying them.
The only reason Loot boxes are still even a thing is because there are customers for them.
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Heh... you sound like someone who doesn't have children. Most of us grownups know spending real money on virtual goods is a bad idea, but your kid who's been stick on level 12 for the past two hours isn't going to feel the same way about it.
Parents who weren't smart enough to set up a restricted profile on the kid's accounts are going to learn this lesson the hard way.
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Yeah I have kids. I also know that its not good parenting to always indulge them and make life easy for them all the time.
Re:Its like email spam. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its like email spam. (Score:4, Informative)
Make them help around the house on chores beyond what you would normally expect from them to earn money. Then it's their choice what they ultimately spend it on. You may have to hold your nose, but if you have done it right and given them real life money for the work, they will come to understand how useless those purchases are versus the work they needed to do to get that money.
Below a certain age, children have poor impulse control and it gradually gets better as they get older. There have been studies indicating, in fact, that males do not fully mature in this area until about 30.
So they will not relate doing chores to spending money IRL to spending money in a game, particularly when young.
But they will to habitually learn to spend money on loot boxes, a habit that may not serve them well when they are older and in a casino.
It's less about the money, and more about the bad habits being ingrained in their psyche.
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It helps if you talk with them about getting a paycheck, explaining what a mortgage is, explaining what income tax is, etc.
We have always explained adult life in terms the kids can understand. And they're able to use a smartphone and tablet in a responsible manner.
They also get a small allowance since first grade, just to make them get some experience with balancing 'wants' with the reality of limited funds.
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I don't have kids, but have several good friends that do. Over the years I have seen the Television (with such stupidity as Barney the dinosaur etc...) being the "babysitter", something to hold the child's attention for much of the day. These days I see parents and grandparents hand the kids or grand-kids their smartphone. The kids then proceed to turn the phone to full volume and watch whatever streaming or YouTube video they want (or play whatever game) with little or no supervision. I think that all
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Some people cannot help themselves. There is a reason gambling is regulated everywhere in the civilized world and it is not just to make money via taxes.
Difference from lotto and scratchers (Score:2)
With lotto and scratchers, most of the tickets are worthless. They don't enhance your life, they don't have any monetary value. With a loot crate typically every crate wins something, even if it is minuscule. Maybe you get a different kind of tattoo for your character, or maybe a stupid looking pet. But if you've ever had a handful of worthless scratchers in your hand you'd know what rock bottom really is, and it's not loot crates.
Re:Difference from lotto and scratchers (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying that a slot machine that takes quarters but will always spit out at least a one penny prize isn't gambling... you agree to buy the pennies for a quarter a piece, even though they aren't worth that much.
I realize this analogy breaks down in that the value of a penny vs a quarter can be objectively determined while the value of a loot box might be more subjective, but the general concept is still the same.
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That's like saying that a slot machine that takes quarters but will always spit out at least a one penny prize isn't gambling...
If you've ever used those claw machines that's pretty much how they go. Some states regulate them differently and require some prize to be given after a certain number of failed attempts. Others slide by with some sort of "entertainment purposes only" nonsense to pretend it's not gambling.
I think the loot boxes automatically get a pass because whether you get an amazing item or the usual garbage, it has no monetary value. It's for in-game purposes. And your items are lost once the game ends, or they nuke yo
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With a loot crate typically every crate wins something, even if it is minuscule.
Yeah, because I really needed three pieces of Redstone, two sticks and a piece of rotted meat.
Eh. At least I got a dungeon with a skeleton spawner. Time to make a grinder!
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With lotto and scratchers, most of the tickets are worthless. They don't enhance your life...
They are a form of entertainment. For the price of a ticket you rent a fantasy about what you would do with the money if you were to win, which indeed has some known chance of actually happening. It is fantasy that lasts for a few days (or until you scratch the ticket).
Why this form of entertainment is "worthless" compared to playing an on-line game is unclear to me. Indeed, you can indulge in the lottery fantasy while doing other useful things. Not so the on-line game.
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With lotto and scratchers, most of the tickets are worthless. They don't enhance your life...
They are a form of entertainment. For the price of a ticket you rent a fantasy about what you would do with the money if you were to win, which indeed has some known chance of actually happening. It is fantasy that lasts for a few days (or until you scratch the ticket).
You can also fantasize for free and there's only a marginally smaller chance of your fantasy coming true.
Why this form of entertainment is "worthless" compared to playing an on-line game is unclear to me. Indeed, you can indulge in the lottery fantasy while doing other useful things. Not so the on-line game.
Other useful things like... watching TV or reading a book or playing a video game for entertainment? Oh, wait. The online game already has an entertainment purpose.
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Completely disingenuous, people don't buy loot crates for the normal level items which are often already available in game, they buy loot boxes for that little chance to win the high tier prizes/items And it doesn't matter whether or not they can sell these high tier items, the value is perceived and based upon 'coolness' and rarity. It is also based upon the fact that people pay for the loot boxes to get the items.
Do you work for a games company?
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Bullshit. Most loot crates have exactly zero value. A one time use item that gives you a 1% improvement in a match is precisely worthless. And you really don't understand gambling if you don't think "worthless" scratchers don't have the same "entertainment" value as a loot crate with worthless loot.
It is gambling compulsion either way.
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Some loot crate systems I've seen you get gems/etc from trading in the worthless crap. Then you spend the gems on the stuff you want. If you get lucky you get some loot that is valuable. Some loot is useful in game but not a great value like ones that give you a temporary boost on earning experience. To be fair it's kind of hart to generalize the loot crate mechanic because each game does something different.
Now if you have a game where your loot crates are zonk prizes (like winning a goat on Let's Make a D
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Yes because they differ by a LOT of factors.
Kids are primed for this (Score:2)
If we're going to honest about this, any sort of hidden collectible is the same thing.
Baseball cards, keychains hidden behind opaque plastic so you have to buy 2x the total to "collect them all". Those machines at the grocery store that show you cool things you might get but you always get the crappy temporary tattoo instead. Raffles... prizes you may win....
Anything where you can't just BUY the thing you want and have to brute force it with money.
So if we're gonna be picking on loot boxes can we please do
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Then they wouldn't be called "trading" cards anymore, would they?
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I'm fine with that.
I don't play Magic the Gathering because I'm not stupid enough to spend thousands of pounds on the cards needed to build competitive decks. It's not even the financial outlay, it's the entire business model. Fuck that.
Warhammer isn't much cheaper but at least with that you get what you're paying for.
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Ah, but you can buy the thing you want... on the after-market, where someone else has already applied the brute force. The price will vary based on the item's rarity and the demand for it, but will at least be knowable up front.
train.set.destination - invalid parameter "null" (Score:3)
People will try to apply AI to this. But tell me, when will an AI be able to determine:
When to retain what you have.
When to relinquish what you have.
When to exit the situation at a steady pace, keeping at least one foot on the ground at all times.
When to exit the situation at the maximum velocity possible, even if ground contact is occasionally lost.
Will it work out that attempting to determine P&L status in real time can be counter-productive, and sometimes a per-session summary is sufficient?
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OMG if I only had mod points
This is how the Japanese have done gambling (Score:5, Interesting)
Lootboxes are being used for much the same way. At the moment they don't even need the Yakuza for a lot of games because there's people paying big money for in game skins.
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If the prizes are worthless, why is the Yakuza paying cash for them?
What are they using this "worthless" commodity item for?
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Money laundering.
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They own the pachinko machines. The point is that they can play a game where you can win a $0.10 stuffed bear 1 time in 150, for a dollar a play. Their store across the street buys the bear for $100. Now, it's a slot machine that the police cannot shut down.
Gambling is illegal in Japan (Score:3)
Of course the government knows this. The point is to have a quasi-legal form of gamb
This article is about 10 years too late (Score:1)
Games have had paid loot boxes for a long time.
I once knew a guy who spent over $10,000 on getting randomized loot playing the North American version of Pangya during the mid-2000s.
Much too late... (Score:2, Interesting)
... this began way back when game companies took regular RPG's and relabelled them mmo's. Those of us who remember the big scam during the 90's to "convert" normal RPG games to server based rpg game with subscription. AKA instead of buying the game once you 'get the benefit' of paying over and over. It was the first big scam the game industry perpetrated on the public. The reality is market ideology is false, the human brain did not evolve to make rational decisions in a market society.
Broken games, mas
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Hosting and running an MMO costs money. And companies have found that developing an MMO costs serious money too, something that isn’t always reflected in the purchase price. They’d rather charge a reasonable fee for the game plus a monthly subscription (typically
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Rubbish. I do hope you know the difference between a regular RPG (even a multiplayer one) and an MMO,
You're an idiot, before the internet RPG games COMBIND both single player and multiplayer in the same game. They just RPG's and that had campaign and a multiplayer component. All the PC games during the 90's came with both. Companies got smart because they knew people like you were morons. That's why diablo 3 was "rebranded" an mmo... aka They took diablo which was a game fully within our control and it now requires a server in order for you to play the campaign portions of the game.
Game company CEO's
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You're an idiot, you're exactly the kind of idiot that has thrown away your right to own the products you buy and not violate everyones right to privacy. You're a fucking moron. You are a corporate CEO's wet dream you'll rationalize everything away while they charge you more money for less game.
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Wow...hows those rose colored glasses working for ya? Making the past all rosey are they? Because i played plenty of RPGs (and Mech and flight and shooters) during the 90s when anybody could run their own server and play and ya know what you got? CHEATING, tons and tons and tons of cheating!
First, keep in mind the number of single player games of late is not as high as the multiplayer games. I didn't have the issues you had during the 90's because I played by myself. Mechwarrior 2 and Descent were great like that. With more games targeting multiplayer for lots of mostly-money-driven reasons, there's more with which to take issue.
The second reason I didn't have this problem is because of this idea of only playing with people I knew. I would play multiplayer with real life friends, rather than r
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Diablo 3 doesn't require a subscription you dumb fuck.
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Diablo 3 doesn't require a subscription you dumb fuck.
Dumbass, we're talking about software that is server locked - aka diablo 3 is full online drm and takes part of the game hostage on their servers idiot. You're not buying a complete game they keep part of the game required for it to run at their office. AKA a sophisticated form of fraud.
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You're an idiot, before the internet RPG games COMBIND both single player and multiplayer in the same game
There isn't an equivalence between LAN or BBS based RPGs and a MMORPG. Very different beasts, very different level of interaction and engagement, very different costs to run.
Shit, I was playing text based multiplayer RPGs over the internet that were written and maintained by the players and they still needed cash injections to fund servers and bandwidth. Add in 3D graphics and several million players and oddly enough the cost to operate is pretty fucking far from zero.
You lost this argument with me the othe
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You're an idiot, before the internet RPG games COMBINED both single player and multiplayer in the same game
There isn't an equivalence between LAN or BBS based RPGs and a MMORPG. Very different beasts
That's where you're wrong, the equivalence is - that they are software, software that doesn't run entirely on your machine isn't yours and is basically fraud that's reality.
You're using language to hide the reality - there's no fucking rational reason to pay more for an RPG game, if I take a normal RPG like baldurs gate and call it an mmo change some lines of code and keep the server at my office and charge a monthly fee, it doesn't somehow magically make it any less a piece software, or make that software
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Rubbish. I do hope you know the difference between a regular RPG (even a multiplayer one) and an MMO,
You're an idiot, before the internet RPG games COMBIND both single player and multiplayer in the same game. They just RPG's and that had campaign and a multiplayer component. All the PC games during the 90's came with both. Companies got smart because they knew people like you were morons. That's why diablo 3 was "rebranded" an mmo... aka They took diablo which was a game fully within our control and it now requires a server in order for you to play the campaign portions of the game.
Game company CEO's want all games to be "online" and stream the files to your computer so you never control the videogame software, they've been propagandizing to you with PR. Don't think so? Go look at UBISOFT's wet dream.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/... [gamesindustry.biz]
A good point and it's not limited to RPGs.
FPS and RTS games used to be that you could host a local game with your friends on a LAN, few games will let you run a dedicated server without checking into the mothership, let alone let you run on your LAN with software included with the game. All this is done to ensure they can sell you the next minor variant of the same game in 6 to 18 months time. Of course, the holy grail for these companies is to have you pay on a monthly basis.
I find myself shunning mo
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I'm having difficulty equating something like EQ or WOW that's "15 dollars a month for all the gaming you can eat" with loot crates. Admittedly there's a dozen or two things you can buy in the blizzard store for nifty WOW cosmetic effects (different mount, pet, helmet) but they're not random. Could you please expand a bit on the connection you see? Or am I misreading it and you're not on about loot box type stuff and just focused on the subscription model itself?
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I'm having difficulty equating something like EQ or WOW that's "15 dollars a month for all the gaming you can eat" with loot crates.
MMO's (aka RPG's with drm that have a subscription), means the game is divided into two pieces where they take control of the software and thereby have fully ownership and control over it. The company can shut down world of warcraft, because part of the game required for it to run is kept at corporate offices. To put it in DVD terms, they just keep DISC2 in a DVD burner inside their office. That's all "MMO"'s are... they are just drm'd rpg's with a subscription.
So once they have control of the game soft
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Okay, so it's the subscription and client-server model you have an issue with. Not seeing how it's fraud, though. Sure, games have had multiplayer without a central server before, but I don't recall one that could handle 100 people, much less several thousand.
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Okay, so it's the subscription and client-server model you have an issue with. Not seeing how it's fraud, though.
Fraud in that before the internet was invented paying for software you don't own was impossible, aka the evil plan was to normalize and get the public used to being non owners of the cultural products they were buying. So you get a disaster, notice how all older games now have drm server locks in them like starcraft 2 and diablo 3, where as before starcraft 1 and diablo 1 / 2 were fully complete games. AKA it's all a scam perpetrated on irrational people.
While SC2 and Diablo 3 don't have monthly fee's the
NL didn't ban loot boxes, only cashing out (Score:3)
The gaming authority said that under current laws, if the items won have a monetary value, a loot box is gambling and gambling is tightly regulated in the Netherlands. They also said that items that cannot be transferred to other people don't have an monetary value, so even though they saw a lot of similarities between gambling and loot boxes containing non-transferrable items, those loot boxes are not in violation of the law. As a result, Steam blocked the selling of in-game items, while the loot boxes remain.
Possible solution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Games with Loot Boxes should get the rating "Adult Only".
Not just loot boxes, but addiction too (Score:3)
I realized that I've been out of the gaming scene for about 20 years now, and when my kid started to play Clash Royale I decided to jump in as well. If for no other reason, just to bring myself up-to-date with the way gaming is done for his generation.
I also spoke about this with a psychologist, just to have a second opinion of what is happening as I had a feeling that the developers of the game may be playing certain tricks that the kids are likely to fall for.
The game is free-to-play, with "chests" available to buy with real money and with the possibility to win them slowly, in-game.
In addition to stretching the patience of the player (after winning a chest you have to wait 3, 8, 12 of 24 hours to open it) the psychologist confirmed that the game employs a well-known method of creating addiction:
Frustrate the player first and then reward him.
- Whenever you are about to get a valuable chest you are first forced into a losing streak. This happened consistently over a year and a half of observation.
- The losses are meant to induce frustration and make the player try even harder for a win, only to get another loss. The frustration is induced via well-chosen glitches that disappear once the valuable chest is obtained.
Add to this the fact that progress is a logarithmic function of the effort (the require number of "cards" needed to upgrade grows exponentially with the level) and you got a very nice bottomless pit which the impatient will try to fill up with cash.
Chuck E Cheese? (Score:2)
Ever been to one of these? It's basically a 'ticket' casino for very small children. I don't know why/how everyone is okay with this. I am not talking about skee ball where the tickets are just kind of a bonus for doing good in an actual game that existed without tickets. I am talking about the games that are basically a kid version of the casino wheel games:
https://i2.wp.com/dorishigh.co... [wp.com]
http://agrlv.com/wp-content/up... [agrlv.com]