5 ms·

The same arguments could apply to physical card packs (e.g. MtG cards) sold at tabletop gaming stores. Yet nobody seems to mind there?

yAnonymous 8y ago
With digital goods, the distributor can stack the odds against you to make you spend more money. They know what you want and they can make sure you don't get it. And then you possibly don't realize how much you've spent, because unlike real cards, digital ones don't pile up. It's definitely different.
pavlov 8y ago
I guess buying physical cards is not so addictive that anyone would pay attention. In mobile games, everything is set up for you to make repetitive purchases in the hope of winning bigger: your credit card is on file, the design of the boxes echoes casinos, etc.
- bsder 8y ago
  > I guess buying physical cards is not so addictive that anyone would pay attention. Ummmm, they call Magic the Gathering "cardboard crack" for a reason ...
  - pavlov 8y ago
    Perhaps, but it's a very niche audience. What's the revenue of the company that makes MtG? Some mobile game companies do billions per year. That kind of sales attract regulatory attention.
    - bsder 8y ago
      Hasbro gets roughly a billion a year in the gaming category and explicitly calls out Monopoly and Magic the Gathering as the vast majority of that. https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-first-quarter-2018-financial-results https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-detai...
      - baud147258 8y ago
        But that's a lot less than what Blizzard is making on lootboxes (4 billion, just on lootboxes). And MtG is the biggest of its type, whereas the lootbox industry is much bigger. So I think the difference of scale is important before a legislation is considered.
Pinckney 8y ago
Card packs are also obviously gambling.
monkeywork 8y ago
thank you. I've been saying it is nothing new... baseball/hockey/MtG/Pokemon cards are essentially the exact same. as long as you aren't hiding game changing content in loot boxes (ie. all skins or something) I think they are perfectly fine.
- Cub3 8y ago
  Does saying it's nothing new make it ok though? Pokemon cards realistically target children, isn't this teaching them gambling mechanics?
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  That's an odd distinction to make, since MtG/Pokemon cards are practically nothing but "game-changing content."
fnordsensei 8y ago
This point comes up a lot when discussing loot boxes. Essentially, it's a matter of practicality and extent of impact on the public. Industry regulation with regards to some widespread practice is usually the final step of an extended period of failure to self-regulate [the practice that is producing some undesired side-effect].
saintPirelli 8y ago
When I was ~8 I spent 700 Schilling on trading cards in one go (I guess about 100 in today's Dollar, it was everything I had saved up to this point). My parents minded very much.
EtienneK 8y ago
I mind. That’s why I stopped playing.
bsder 8y ago
Mostly because you can directly buy the cards you want in MtG on the secondary market. Consequently, this limits the "whale effect"--even the most expensive decks of cards in "Standard" tops out at about $1200 ($20 times 60 cards), and generally MUCH less than that gets you championship level decks. If the ONLY way to get an MtG card that was required to compete was to open $200 boxes over and over and over, I suspect that people WOULD start complaining. Most of the "skinner box" games explicitly prevent you from being able to buy specific cards precisely to keep you on the hamster wheel.
usrusr 8y ago
But card packs are random at least. The very rarest card will be equally rare for every buyer, any time. Loot boxes can be much worse than gambling on a random number generator: game servers know the inventory of a player and can tailor box contents to always keep the inventory close to one of the many thresholds that are usually designed into game rules. Maybe some operators are voluntarily staying away from these dark patterns, maybe using them could theoretically get you into legal trouble, but it would be very difficult to prove anything. Basically my point is this: it can be perfectly reasonable to allow one form of gambling-like transactions where it is easy to ensure that the house is playing fair while outlawing a superficially similar one were making sure that the house is not cheating would require enormous regulations and oversight efforts.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Couldn't you prove operators were doing it by running a large number of accounts, checking the distribution of inventory and figuring out what the likelihood of distributions?
  - usrusr 8y ago
    How many non-free transactions would you be willing to pay for? Ps: Also, a manipulative pretend-random drop function could easily be made to adhere to defined overall droprates without sacrificing any individual manipulation. Detecting "bad luck" that only strikes when the system detects willingness to keep rolling the dice until some local goal is achieved would not be easy even with a complete dataset.
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      I agree the non-free transactions thing is a problem, however some organizations might be willing to do it as part of an investigation? However for the second point, given what I know about programming as a discipline, I'm not sure that the probable bad actors have gone through a lot of effort to hide their gaming of the system, or that if they have made the effort to make said function that it actually works as envisioned and does not leave its own telltale traces.

yAnonymous 8y ago

With digital goods, the distributor can stack the odds against you to make you spend more money. They know what you want and they can make sure you don't get it. And then you possibly don't realize how much you've spent, because unlike real cards, digital ones don't pile up. It's definitely different.

pavlov 8y ago

I guess buying physical cards is not so addictive that anyone would pay attention. In mobile games, everything is set up for you to make repetitive purchases in the hope of winning bigger: your credit card is on file, the design of the boxes echoes casinos, etc.

bsder 8y ago
> I guess buying physical cards is not so addictive that anyone would pay attention. Ummmm, they call Magic the Gathering "cardboard crack" for a reason ...
- pavlov 8y ago
  Perhaps, but it's a very niche audience. What's the revenue of the company that makes MtG? Some mobile game companies do billions per year. That kind of sales attract regulatory attention.
  - bsder 8y ago
    Hasbro gets roughly a billion a year in the gaming category and explicitly calls out Monopoly and Magic the Gathering as the vast majority of that. https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-first-quarter-2018-financial-results https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-detai...
    - baud147258 8y ago
      But that's a lot less than what Blizzard is making on lootboxes (4 billion, just on lootboxes). And MtG is the biggest of its type, whereas the lootbox industry is much bigger. So I think the difference of scale is important before a legislation is considered.

Pinckney 8y ago

Card packs are also obviously gambling.

monkeywork 8y ago

thank you. I've been saying it is nothing new... baseball/hockey/MtG/Pokemon cards are essentially the exact same. as long as you aren't hiding game changing content in loot boxes (ie. all skins or something) I think they are perfectly fine.

Cub3 8y ago
Does saying it's nothing new make it ok though? Pokemon cards realistically target children, isn't this teaching them gambling mechanics?
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
That's an odd distinction to make, since MtG/Pokemon cards are practically nothing but "game-changing content."

fnordsensei 8y ago

This point comes up a lot when discussing loot boxes. Essentially, it's a matter of practicality and extent of impact on the public. Industry regulation with regards to some widespread practice is usually the final step of an extended period of failure to self-regulate [the practice that is producing some undesired side-effect].

saintPirelli 8y ago

When I was ~8 I spent 700 Schilling on trading cards in one go (I guess about 100 in today's Dollar, it was everything I had saved up to this point). My parents minded very much.

EtienneK 8y ago

I mind. That’s why I stopped playing.

bsder 8y ago

Mostly because you can directly buy the cards you want in MtG on the secondary market. Consequently, this limits the "whale effect"--even the most expensive decks of cards in "Standard" tops out at about $1200 ($20 times 60 cards), and generally MUCH less than that gets you championship level decks. If the ONLY way to get an MtG card that was required to compete was to open $200 boxes over and over and over, I suspect that people WOULD start complaining. Most of the "skinner box" games explicitly prevent you from being able to buy specific cards precisely to keep you on the hamster wheel.

usrusr 8y ago

But card packs are random at least. The very rarest card will be equally rare for every buyer, any time. Loot boxes can be much worse than gambling on a random number generator: game servers know the inventory of a player and can tailor box contents to always keep the inventory close to one of the many thresholds that are usually designed into game rules. Maybe some operators are voluntarily staying away from these dark patterns, maybe using them could theoretically get you into legal trouble, but it would be very difficult to prove anything. Basically my point is this: it can be perfectly reasonable to allow one form of gambling-like transactions where it is easy to ensure that the house is playing fair while outlawing a superficially similar one were making sure that the house is not cheating would require enormous regulations and oversight efforts.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Couldn't you prove operators were doing it by running a large number of accounts, checking the distribution of inventory and figuring out what the likelihood of distributions?
- usrusr 8y ago
  How many non-free transactions would you be willing to pay for? Ps: Also, a manipulative pretend-random drop function could easily be made to adhere to defined overall droprates without sacrificing any individual manipulation. Detecting "bad luck" that only strikes when the system detects willingness to keep rolling the dice until some local goal is achieved would not be easy even with a complete dataset.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    I agree the non-free transactions thing is a problem, however some organizations might be willing to do it as part of an investigation? However for the second point, given what I know about programming as a discipline, I'm not sure that the probable bad actors have gone through a lot of effort to hide their gaming of the system, or that if they have made the effort to make said function that it actually works as envisioned and does not leave its own telltale traces.