6 ms·

How does a free market self-regulate this problem? What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items?

switch007 7y ago
I’m not a parent so of course have no right to make a suggestion, but could parents only buy devices without an internet connection? Games that cost X and X only?
- kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
  There are devices just for children available, presumably with limitations on the available content. I think they are popular with parents, too.
- xxs 7y ago
  Pretty much every single game adopts loot boxes alike - as it's profitable. That leaves very options (if any) for a decent games overall - children excluded. Children are not the only target - far from, but the argument is easier to make. Video Game industry suffers massively, lacking good content as loot boxes dominate most popular titles - the freemium model. Kids would like to play what their friends play and often online - the latter statement is not limited to kids at all. Also a parent is extremely unlikely to limit phone usable (prime target) to no inet connection. It's doable of course but it's futile and the kids feel excluded.
- DanBC 7y ago
  The report isn't just about children.
kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
By providing better games, and parents waking up and closing the money faucet.
- tudorw 7y ago
  Hello sanity, we should hang out :)
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  That's the thing though - games nowadays are ridiculously good. Doesn't mean they're successful, but they're good. And they don't even HAVE to be good - I mean pubg looks and runs like shit but it was ridiculously popular. Fortnite's popular battle royale mode was more like a weekend project (iirc), but it had a benefit over pubg in that it had a big professional studio behind it that was able to scale its production up enormously once Fortnite took off. And Apex was developed from scratch (or well, probably based off of a lot of work done for Titanfall) and intent. Another example is Overwatch, which was salvaged from the remains of Blizzard's Project Titan. Anyway long story short, a lot of these games are really really good. And that's also why they have microtransactions (according to the manufacturers / publishers) - they take a lot longer and cost a lot more to make. They (feel like they) have to earn money from a game for at least one year, preferably more after the initial release / purchase. (one year for the annual game series - CoD, Assassin's Creed, FIFA, etc, more for the longer term ones that will likely not get a sequel like Apex, Fortnite, even Minecraft).
  - kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
    Maybe there isn't really a problem with all of those games. To adults it seems ridiculous to spend money on virtual items, but to be honest, a lot of other things kids would spend their money on also seem ridiculous. If those games cost a lot of money to make, perhaps it is fair to ask for money for some items.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      The nasty trick isn't the "asking for money for some items". As you observe that's not so different from asking for money for sugar candy, it's basically useless but it did cost money to make and you don't need it per se, so fine. But what is being called out here as _gambling_ is that you pay your money and then you get something random. It will probably be something you don't want, it might even be something you consider utterly useless. Example: You want the Funky Guitar for Tara, your favourite character in a game. A Funky Guitar is "often" found in a Cluster Artefact the game tells you. For $10 you can buy 480 diamond blibbets. For 600 diamond blibbets you can buy a Cluster Artefact, so you give them $20, now you have 960 diamond blibbets, you can buy a Cluster Artefact. The Cluster Artefact is then smashed open by your character to reveal... a Top Hat wearable only by Steve, a character you hate playing. Too bad, buy more blibbets and maybe Tara will get lucky next time? Gambling. A bad idea for grown-ups, obviously not something we should encourage children to do.
baroffoos 7y ago
The free market doesn't regulate flaws in human psychology. Gambling is designed to hit all these flaws to trick and manipulate you out of all your money. Children are especially vulnerable to this. The correct solution is for governments to ban companies shoving gambling at kids.
- bluecalm 7y ago
  I think education would be more effective than a ban. Teach children to recognize gambling at early stage. Show them with examples how the house/gaming studio wins by exploiting human nature. If you just protect children from exposure to gambling you will end up with vulnerable adults and adults don't have a guardian who can stop the bleeding even if the cost is a lot of kicking and screaming.
  - lvturner 7y ago
    That only works however if the parents or schools are capable of providing the required teaching, many (most?), are not. The games industry also goes to great lengths to obfusticate and hide the mechanics - it is truly predatory. I agree that regulation is no panacea, but in this instance, combined with additional approaches such as education I belive it to be a suitable approach.
  - distant_hat 7y ago
    Would you also be in favor of removing age related gambling restrictions on real world gambling like slot machines? How about on things like purchasing tobacco? Let the free market handle it. These things literally hack the developing brain in not so nice ways. If you were to let marketers control it, you'd end up with a bunch of brain damaged teenagers. Countries like Singapore don't even let adults gamble freely.
    - bluecalm 7y ago
      I think gambling is harmful similarly to the worst of drugs. I would much rather see cocaine legal than gambling. I just think children are a demographic the least vulnerable as there is always a guardian to put stop to it, they can't lost life saving etc. I am all for limiting gambling (or outright banning many forms of it). I see the whole loot box thing as very low priority though and I think better results can be obtained by education and maybe even slight exposure to the exploitive mechanisms. If anything it's better if a child learn the hard way and lose pocket money than an if an unaware adult gets suckered in and lose their live savings, family, job.
martin-adams 7y ago
My only thinking is that promoting non-gambling like games to parents would be the advantage. Doubt it would work as there’s too much noise in the marketing and children probably convince the parents. I find it tedious to find the in app purchase amounts of an app or game before purchasing, and even then you’ve no idea what it’s for.
tudorw 7y ago
This is a moot point, there does not need to be a competitive advantage in not providing chance items. A 'free market' (an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.) does not equate to zero regulation.
xxs 7y ago
Gambling doesn't self regulate overall. It gets predatory. Gambling industry is ==heavily== regulated throughout EU (Swiss too) for instance to a point each slot game [very similar to chance items] is reported to the regulator (Italy, Spain) in close to real time. Responsible gaming options and self exclusions are available everywhere, incl. state-wide options. Also gambling tends to 'enjoy' very heavy taxation.
piokoch 7y ago
I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? Side note. Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. The same way democracy does not mean that majority can do everything ignoring minority. Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. Some people believe that ethics can be replaced by law and regulations. To some extent this can be true, but the law will never cover all aspects of human life and in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. (...) Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. In real markets, there are feedback loops that are much stronger than individual ethics. Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors, because the former can sacrifice more human values. > in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot Unfortunately, in a society that is less accepting of unethical behavior, that is still only one input to the economy as a system, and to the extent the society is malleable, the input may diminish. Consider the following mental picture: imagine society's ethical standards as a tilted landscape, through which the river of market activity flows. In a maximally amoral society, the landscape would be so that the river flows straight. The more ethical/moral concern the society has, the more meandering the river becomes. Now two effects happen: one, a strong enough river flow will outright cut corners and flow over some bends. This can be compared to companies acting unethically and getting away with it. Second, the current will erode the landscape over time, bringing it closer to the amoral straight-line terrain. This can be compared to effects of competitive pressure described above, when viewed over longer time spans.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Saying that all ethics must be obstructions commerce is a pretty extreme view, that I really can’t see any justification for. An economy is nothing more than the sum of decisions made by the individuals that comprise it. I’m pretty sure the only way anybody could hold such a view would be to view all decisions they disagree with as unethical. Which is an opinion, I guess...
TeMPOraL 7y ago
It doesn't. As a baseline, games with gambling elements will be more profitable than games without, ceteris paribus. You have two competing effects here: games with gambling are better able to monetize their players, but might find it harder to attract these players in the first place if the gambling element is known and understood by the players beforehand. Unfortunately, that "if" is trivially eliminated with marketing, through popularization (people start to play despite their knowledge of gambling mechanisms) and disinformation (people don't know about the gambling elements up front, or about their true impact). This is the case of the market exploiting a quirk of human psyche. Like always, it will stop doing so once exploitation becomes less profitable than not doing it. For that to happen, new costs related to gambling mechanisms must appear that aren't there before - hence the proposal for regulatory intervention, as this is the standard way for market economies to adjust the costs landscape. (Regulatory solutions impose additional overhead on the market, and it would be more profitable to everyone if people voluntarily refrained from an activity instead of having that activity banned. However, a different quirk of human psyche precludes the market from ever doing that.)
- xxs 7y ago
  I am curious who would downvote such an explanation.
otikik 7y ago
> How does a free market self-regulate this problem? On a free market, if someone has it and someone else wants it, that's all that's needed. A truly free market can not self-regulate against gambling, drugs, child pornography, or slavery. > What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items? Engaging on these practices isn't exactly riskless. State legislators could decide that "chance items" are, in fact "gambling". And that your company has been doing that to children. So a lot of "fun" can ensue: mass-action lawsuits, cessation of activity in a whole country, incarcelation, etc. The "competitive advantage" is that your competitors might simply become illegal.
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
In my experience, a free market does not self-regulate in order to gain a competitive advantage. The self-regulation I've seen has been done in order to avoid punishment by the state or federal government. The formation of the ESRB, for example, or the manta tourism permitting system on Moku O Keawe.
PeterStuer 7y ago
The ESRB thinks gambling is pretty much an open season from age 13.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
Well in a free society you might think parenting should be left to parents, not governments. Because this is entirely a parenting problem. No market, free or otherwise is going provide parenting to children.

I’m not a parent so of course have no right to make a suggestion, but could parents only buy devices without an internet connection? Games that cost X and X only?

kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
There are devices just for children available, presumably with limitations on the available content. I think they are popular with parents, too.
xxs 7y ago
Pretty much every single game adopts loot boxes alike - as it's profitable. That leaves very options (if any) for a decent games overall - children excluded. Children are not the only target - far from, but the argument is easier to make. Video Game industry suffers massively, lacking good content as loot boxes dominate most popular titles - the freemium model. Kids would like to play what their friends play and often online - the latter statement is not limited to kids at all. Also a parent is extremely unlikely to limit phone usable (prime target) to no inet connection. It's doable of course but it's futile and the kids feel excluded.
DanBC 7y ago
The report isn't just about children.

kmjg88nvf8 7y ago

By providing better games, and parents waking up and closing the money faucet.

tudorw 7y ago
Hello sanity, we should hang out :)
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
That's the thing though - games nowadays are ridiculously good. Doesn't mean they're successful, but they're good. And they don't even HAVE to be good - I mean pubg looks and runs like shit but it was ridiculously popular. Fortnite's popular battle royale mode was more like a weekend project (iirc), but it had a benefit over pubg in that it had a big professional studio behind it that was able to scale its production up enormously once Fortnite took off. And Apex was developed from scratch (or well, probably based off of a lot of work done for Titanfall) and intent. Another example is Overwatch, which was salvaged from the remains of Blizzard's Project Titan. Anyway long story short, a lot of these games are really really good. And that's also why they have microtransactions (according to the manufacturers / publishers) - they take a lot longer and cost a lot more to make. They (feel like they) have to earn money from a game for at least one year, preferably more after the initial release / purchase. (one year for the annual game series - CoD, Assassin's Creed, FIFA, etc, more for the longer term ones that will likely not get a sequel like Apex, Fortnite, even Minecraft).
- kmjg88nvf8 7y ago
  Maybe there isn't really a problem with all of those games. To adults it seems ridiculous to spend money on virtual items, but to be honest, a lot of other things kids would spend their money on also seem ridiculous. If those games cost a lot of money to make, perhaps it is fair to ask for money for some items.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    The nasty trick isn't the "asking for money for some items". As you observe that's not so different from asking for money for sugar candy, it's basically useless but it did cost money to make and you don't need it per se, so fine. But what is being called out here as _gambling_ is that you pay your money and then you get something random. It will probably be something you don't want, it might even be something you consider utterly useless. Example: You want the Funky Guitar for Tara, your favourite character in a game. A Funky Guitar is "often" found in a Cluster Artefact the game tells you. For $10 you can buy 480 diamond blibbets. For 600 diamond blibbets you can buy a Cluster Artefact, so you give them $20, now you have 960 diamond blibbets, you can buy a Cluster Artefact. The Cluster Artefact is then smashed open by your character to reveal... a Top Hat wearable only by Steve, a character you hate playing. Too bad, buy more blibbets and maybe Tara will get lucky next time? Gambling. A bad idea for grown-ups, obviously not something we should encourage children to do.

baroffoos 7y ago

The free market doesn't regulate flaws in human psychology. Gambling is designed to hit all these flaws to trick and manipulate you out of all your money. Children are especially vulnerable to this. The correct solution is for governments to ban companies shoving gambling at kids.

bluecalm 7y ago
I think education would be more effective than a ban. Teach children to recognize gambling at early stage. Show them with examples how the house/gaming studio wins by exploiting human nature. If you just protect children from exposure to gambling you will end up with vulnerable adults and adults don't have a guardian who can stop the bleeding even if the cost is a lot of kicking and screaming.
- lvturner 7y ago
  That only works however if the parents or schools are capable of providing the required teaching, many (most?), are not. The games industry also goes to great lengths to obfusticate and hide the mechanics - it is truly predatory. I agree that regulation is no panacea, but in this instance, combined with additional approaches such as education I belive it to be a suitable approach.
- distant_hat 7y ago
  Would you also be in favor of removing age related gambling restrictions on real world gambling like slot machines? How about on things like purchasing tobacco? Let the free market handle it. These things literally hack the developing brain in not so nice ways. If you were to let marketers control it, you'd end up with a bunch of brain damaged teenagers. Countries like Singapore don't even let adults gamble freely.
  - bluecalm 7y ago
    I think gambling is harmful similarly to the worst of drugs. I would much rather see cocaine legal than gambling. I just think children are a demographic the least vulnerable as there is always a guardian to put stop to it, they can't lost life saving etc. I am all for limiting gambling (or outright banning many forms of it). I see the whole loot box thing as very low priority though and I think better results can be obtained by education and maybe even slight exposure to the exploitive mechanisms. If anything it's better if a child learn the hard way and lose pocket money than an if an unaware adult gets suckered in and lose their live savings, family, job.

martin-adams 7y ago

My only thinking is that promoting non-gambling like games to parents would be the advantage. Doubt it would work as there’s too much noise in the marketing and children probably convince the parents. I find it tedious to find the in app purchase amounts of an app or game before purchasing, and even then you’ve no idea what it’s for.

tudorw 7y ago

This is a moot point, there does not need to be a competitive advantage in not providing chance items. A 'free market' (an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.) does not equate to zero regulation.

xxs 7y ago

Gambling doesn't self regulate overall. It gets predatory. Gambling industry is ==heavily== regulated throughout EU (Swiss too) for instance to a point each slot game [very similar to chance items] is reported to the regulator (Italy, Spain) in close to real time. Responsible gaming options and self exclusions are available everywhere, incl. state-wide options. Also gambling tends to 'enjoy' very heavy taxation.

piokoch 7y ago

I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? Side note. Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. The same way democracy does not mean that majority can do everything ignoring minority. Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. Some people believe that ethics can be replaced by law and regulations. To some extent this can be true, but the law will never cover all aspects of human life and in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. (...) Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. In real markets, there are feedback loops that are much stronger than individual ethics. Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors, because the former can sacrifice more human values. > in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot Unfortunately, in a society that is less accepting of unethical behavior, that is still only one input to the economy as a system, and to the extent the society is malleable, the input may diminish. Consider the following mental picture: imagine society's ethical standards as a tilted landscape, through which the river of market activity flows. In a maximally amoral society, the landscape would be so that the river flows straight. The more ethical/moral concern the society has, the more meandering the river becomes. Now two effects happen: one, a strong enough river flow will outright cut corners and flow over some bends. This can be compared to companies acting unethically and getting away with it. Second, the current will erode the landscape over time, bringing it closer to the amoral straight-line terrain. This can be compared to effects of competitive pressure described above, when viewed over longer time spans.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Saying that all ethics must be obstructions commerce is a pretty extreme view, that I really can’t see any justification for. An economy is nothing more than the sum of decisions made by the individuals that comprise it. I’m pretty sure the only way anybody could hold such a view would be to view all decisions they disagree with as unethical. Which is an opinion, I guess...

TeMPOraL 7y ago

It doesn't. As a baseline, games with gambling elements will be more profitable than games without, ceteris paribus. You have two competing effects here: games with gambling are better able to monetize their players, but might find it harder to attract these players in the first place if the gambling element is known and understood by the players beforehand. Unfortunately, that "if" is trivially eliminated with marketing, through popularization (people start to play despite their knowledge of gambling mechanisms) and disinformation (people don't know about the gambling elements up front, or about their true impact). This is the case of the market exploiting a quirk of human psyche. Like always, it will stop doing so once exploitation becomes less profitable than not doing it. For that to happen, new costs related to gambling mechanisms must appear that aren't there before - hence the proposal for regulatory intervention, as this is the standard way for market economies to adjust the costs landscape. (Regulatory solutions impose additional overhead on the market, and it would be more profitable to everyone if people voluntarily refrained from an activity instead of having that activity banned. However, a different quirk of human psyche precludes the market from ever doing that.)

xxs 7y ago
I am curious who would downvote such an explanation.

otikik 7y ago

> How does a free market self-regulate this problem? On a free market, if someone has it and someone else wants it, that's all that's needed. A truly free market can not self-regulate against gambling, drugs, child pornography, or slavery. > What is the competitive advantage of not providing chance items? Engaging on these practices isn't exactly riskless. State legislators could decide that "chance items" are, in fact "gambling". And that your company has been doing that to children. So a lot of "fun" can ensue: mass-action lawsuits, cessation of activity in a whole country, incarcelation, etc. The "competitive advantage" is that your competitors might simply become illegal.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

In my experience, a free market does not self-regulate in order to gain a competitive advantage. The self-regulation I've seen has been done in order to avoid punishment by the state or federal government. The formation of the ESRB, for example, or the manta tourism permitting system on Moku O Keawe.

PeterStuer 7y ago

The ESRB thinks gambling is pretty much an open season from age 13.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

Well in a free society you might think parenting should be left to parents, not governments. Because this is entirely a parenting problem. No market, free or otherwise is going provide parenting to children.