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There's no slippery slope. The difference is easy to distinguish. Is real money a substitute for skill at whatever decisions the game asks you to make? If so,

There's no slippery slope. The difference is easy to distinguish. Is real money a substitute for skill at whatever decisions the game asks you to make? If so, you're being scammed. Content expansions in AAA games are obviously not substitutes for skill. Nor are cosmetic customization options like skins or accessories. Cards in virtual card games like Hearthstone get a bit more interesting to analyze. There are better and worse decks, and it takes the right cards to build better decks. Spending money is a much faster way to get the right cards than doing daily quests. But there are two factors that keep Hearthstone out of scam territory. First, someone can get any card they want without spending money, and if they're really good in drafts, they can even do it relatively quickly. So, the more skill you have, the less spending money helps you. Second, there's a maximum that spending money can help you. Once you have the decks you want, whether you win or not comes down to skill (and some luck) in the exact same way as everyone else. You get no advantages over someone who built the deck they want without spending money. So yeah, there's a simple framework to apply to make these decisions. Where's the slippery slope?

BoorishBears 10y ago
I wasn't referring to Content expansions, I was referring to games like Halo or Fifa where you can buy (or earn) a "pack" of "cards" that unlock (non-cosmetic) items that are in the base game that you use in actual gameplay. In these mobile IAP-fests you can unlock anything with "enough play" and beat most challenges with "enough skill" but the idea is "enough play" is supposed to be so much that if you committed to it, you'd have better luck working a job to just pay for the items you unlock. And there's no difference between items earned and bought, just a difference in expected quantity one has access to. So those games pass both tests you mention. You end up needing to add more and more constraints to have a framework that works on multiple genres and eventually you'll find you're making exclusions that aren't really fair.

BoorishBears 10y ago

I wasn't referring to Content expansions, I was referring to games like Halo or Fifa where you can buy (or earn) a "pack" of "cards" that unlock (non-cosmetic) items that are in the base game that you use in actual gameplay. In these mobile IAP-fests you can unlock anything with "enough play" and beat most challenges with "enough skill" but the idea is "enough play" is supposed to be so much that if you committed to it, you'd have better luck working a job to just pay for the items you unlock. And there's no difference between items earned and bought, just a difference in expected quantity one has access to. So those games pass both tests you mention. You end up needing to add more and more constraints to have a framework that works on multiple genres and eventually you'll find you're making exclusions that aren't really fair.