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The Rise of the Video-Game Gambler (newyorker.com)
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.
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.
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41...
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
for years. Go into a pachinko parlor and play until you get a prize. Prize is worthless, but there's a store across the street (usually run by the local Yakuza) who'll trade the prize for way more cash than it's worth. I always wondered why Pachinko was so popular in Japan until I found this out.
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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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 smartphones need to have a child mode, where parents can set the volume on the phone, and control at least what apps and games on the phone that the child can access. And the point about children making in-game purchases is well made! Some kids may not realize that they are spending real money on in-game purchases and others probably simply don't care as long as they can advance in the game.
A big part of the problem is that many adults do not take the time to learn and understand the full functions of the smart-phone, and the amount of information and games (much of which is NOT appropriate for children, especially young children) out there on the Internet.
I also don't believe that use of the smartphone, television, or computer to keep children occupied for more than an hour or two a day is a good thing. Children learn to interact with other children and with adults through actually , well, , interacting! Playing non-electronic games, playing outside (all under adult supervision) are important, but I see that in families that let their young children watch TV (or a smartphone or computer) all day, these important interactions with adults and other children seldom happen.
Yes because they differ by a LOT of factors.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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/...
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.
But it's not illegal to run a Pachinko parlor and give out prizes. It's also not illegal to buy those prizes for more than they are worth. Japan has no RICO act so there's no legal framework to tie the two acts together. The people playing at the Pachinko parlor are coming to gamble (Pachinko is not generally a skill based game, it's more like a slot machine). They spend a lot of money hoping to win more than they spend.
Of course the government knows this. The point is to have a quasi-legal form of gambling. It's sort of how drug laws in the United States are enforced. If things get out of control or if you just plain don't like somebody you can send the cops in to bust everybody's chops. Otherwise you leave people be so long as they're not causing too much trouble.
Overall I think it's a terrible system (just like I think America's drug war is terrible) but hey, it's a system.
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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.
Games with Loot Boxes should get the rating "Adult Only".
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
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.
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 randos online. Even those who didn't cheat simply had more time to play the games and were invariably above my skill level. Great for them, but there's no fun to be had there. When my friends and I scheduled a game (or, commonly, got together and LAN partied), half the fun was being able to rag on my friends for being better or worse. It was far more enjoyable than playing against 14 year olds who thought teabagging was actually funny.
Personally I'd rather play an online game where a company actually monitors and bans cheaters, nice to know if I lose in a game its because I fucked up NOT because someone is using a trainer.
Moderated servers would be just fine, but let my friends and I run our own. Life has happened so getting together for a LAN party has been a bit of a mess of late...but logistics notwithstanding, there's no technical reason we can't be playing multiplayer games whose servers would have been long gone if the companies didn't put the onus on end users to run them. In 2018, there's no technical reason why both official servers and unofficial servers can't coexist, aside from the fact that game developers have made games which ship with dedicated server builds a critically endangered species.