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Note that the "it's just cosmetics" argument is flawed. Loot boxes are still exploiting the human psyche to earn enormous amounts of money from a small amount o

Note that the "it's just cosmetics" argument is flawed. Loot boxes are still exploiting the human psyche to earn enormous amounts of money from a small amount of customers (or whales, as they put it, ugh...), regardless of the perceived value they actually offer. There's actually the toxic culture revolving around cosmetic upgrades in games, where using the default skins is considered a sign of poverty, and leads to discrimination among groups of young people. Fortnite is one of the games where this issue is more prominent.

Twisell 6y ago
Yes it's far from perfect, my point is that is was still better than pay2win. Whether free2play is more or less discriminating than DRM AAA titles with price starting at 12x the price of an optional pass is a whole other real question. Regulation of virtual goods economics market will be an important debate. But most people don't even know about these huge markets, let alone politicians. One key point is that current copyright laws are totally inadequate to latest technologies. Company can build empire based on copyrighted material in a heartbeat while decades are needed before anything enter to the public domain. So much energy is wasted fighting legal roadblock instead of innovating on previous concepts...
- daemin 6y ago
  Actually I'd say that it's not any better than pay-to-win, and could actually be worse. At least with pay-to-win you know that it's a sham and that it's only the amount of money that you spend which influences how good you are at the game (more or less). With cosmetics and appearances it's much more stealthy since you're still a good player if you win, but there is peer pressure to pay for a skin so you can keep up with the latest fashions. You could easily spend more and more money this way before realising what a sham it is, and all you'd have to show for it is maybe a full digital wardrobe of stuff you never wear. (With no way to sell that to recoup even some of the costs).
- mech422 6y ago
  >>Regulation of virtual goods economics market will be an important debate. But most people don't even know about these huge markets, let alone politicians. Thats not quite true w.r.t. loot boxes. Several EU and Asian countries have already classified them as gambling and regulated them as such. I believe EA's Fifa soccer was pulled from several countries because of this.
alias_neo 6y ago
My nephews who are _barely_ into double digits in age spend more on Fortnite than I spend in an average year on games games themselves. I'm a gamer on PC and several consoles. A lot of that is driven by "default" culture. They joke about it between themselves and use the terms to call each other names jokingly, who knows what they're calling others online. As a and parent in my 30s I despise Fornite as a game and the culture it's creating with young children and the money it has them spending on a cosmetic candy cane or whatever it is this week.
- Twisell 6y ago
  Not a parent yet, and not a Fortnite player either, so I might miss the point. But I totally recall that my parents in theirs 30's were desperate that I requested to wear mostly "surfers's brand clothing" which was the big hype when I was a teenager. Peer pressure is a thing, videogame is one way to express it, but I don't think it's the root cause.
  - alias_neo 6y ago
    I think you're right on point. At least with clothing, you're getting clothing out if it (though frankly I prefer the system of my high school which was to have a uniform; evens the playing field, particularly for me as a working class child at a grammar school in an upper class area). My issue with Fornite is the speed and cost with which they produce this stuff. I see my nephews spending 10s of £s at a time every week or so. I'm not sure how I'll deal with the peer pressure issue, my child is too young right now, but Fornite has a strong affinity to children, I'd argue it's mostly played by children and the culture is a real issue which they're doing nothing to resolve that I can see.
    - Twisell 6y ago
      Spoiled kid always was always a thing. Electronic communications & transactions enable theses mechanics to happen faster & without schedule constraints if left unchecked. Same as for bullying by the way. As far as social interaction goes we live in uncharted territory. Does it necessarily mean that it's bad? On the other side of the spectrum this enable YouthForClimate, BLM, and things yet to come... It's really hard to analyze thing as they happen, this is not new either ;) PS: Also not spoiling you kid seems like a good old advice still standing!
Blaiz0r 6y ago
I'm also not a fan of cosmetics because they make the games harder to play, when the silhouettes of characters change it becomes a nightmare. Not to mention that they break immersion in the game too, Call of Duty Modern Warfare started off last year as a slick game with mostly realistic skins and characters, now it's full of pink anime guns, colourful tracksuits and even a Hyena...
pc86 6y ago
Can we stop infantilizing people who choose to waste money on digital cosmetic items and acting like they're being exploited and have no power to stop it? If someone wants to spend $1,000 on weapon skins that's their choice. At what point does personal responsibility play any role?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- inertiatic 6y ago
  Literally who does it hurt if there are no lootboxes that are essentially slot machines? Does it hurt the people who waste huge amount of money, who further develop bad economic habits and potentially harm their loved ones (their parents or god forbid their kids)? No. Does it hurt regular consumers that want to buy the item they want instead of gambling for it? No. Does it hurt a large abstract entity that doesn't get to maximize their profits? I guess it would! (Epic has grown from a few hundred million company in the early 2010s to an almost 20 billion company in mid 2020, literally all of it based on Fortnite which only brings money through these microtransactions) So you're arguing for a business model that is not beneficial to any consumer, that decreases net happiness, all in the name of "freedom". There are a million other things we don't allow because if we let people take personal responsibility for them they consistently fuck up. It's the exact same situation with a lot of softer drugs.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Gambling addiction is very real and should be treated as seriously as drug addictions. (Serotonin is quite a drug, even if we do manufacture it ourselves in our own glands.)
bostik 6y ago
In a way, we're not that far then from the world of Snow Crash[ß]. The thing in the book that always struck me as both unlikely and remarkably accurate as far as human vanity is concerned, was the idea of high-end custom avatars. Stephenson's notion that in a future with ubiquitous VR there would be well-paid artists who crafted detailed, posh avatars for the well-off might just come true. I always thought it pretty far-fetched: sure, people are vain but they wouldn't be that vain. It appears I couldn't have been more wrong... ß: We already have the mafia issuing extortion bonds. (ref: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-09/there-are-extortion-backed-bonds-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-09/there-...)

Twisell 6y ago

Yes it's far from perfect, my point is that is was still better than pay2win. Whether free2play is more or less discriminating than DRM AAA titles with price starting at 12x the price of an optional pass is a whole other real question. Regulation of virtual goods economics market will be an important debate. But most people don't even know about these huge markets, let alone politicians. One key point is that current copyright laws are totally inadequate to latest technologies. Company can build empire based on copyrighted material in a heartbeat while decades are needed before anything enter to the public domain. So much energy is wasted fighting legal roadblock instead of innovating on previous concepts...

daemin 6y ago
Actually I'd say that it's not any better than pay-to-win, and could actually be worse. At least with pay-to-win you know that it's a sham and that it's only the amount of money that you spend which influences how good you are at the game (more or less). With cosmetics and appearances it's much more stealthy since you're still a good player if you win, but there is peer pressure to pay for a skin so you can keep up with the latest fashions. You could easily spend more and more money this way before realising what a sham it is, and all you'd have to show for it is maybe a full digital wardrobe of stuff you never wear. (With no way to sell that to recoup even some of the costs).
mech422 6y ago
>>Regulation of virtual goods economics market will be an important debate. But most people don't even know about these huge markets, let alone politicians. Thats not quite true w.r.t. loot boxes. Several EU and Asian countries have already classified them as gambling and regulated them as such. I believe EA's Fifa soccer was pulled from several countries because of this.

alias_neo 6y ago

My nephews who are _barely_ into double digits in age spend more on Fortnite than I spend in an average year on games games themselves. I'm a gamer on PC and several consoles. A lot of that is driven by "default" culture. They joke about it between themselves and use the terms to call each other names jokingly, who knows what they're calling others online. As a and parent in my 30s I despise Fornite as a game and the culture it's creating with young children and the money it has them spending on a cosmetic candy cane or whatever it is this week.

Twisell 6y ago
Not a parent yet, and not a Fortnite player either, so I might miss the point. But I totally recall that my parents in theirs 30's were desperate that I requested to wear mostly "surfers's brand clothing" which was the big hype when I was a teenager. Peer pressure is a thing, videogame is one way to express it, but I don't think it's the root cause.
- alias_neo 6y ago
  I think you're right on point. At least with clothing, you're getting clothing out if it (though frankly I prefer the system of my high school which was to have a uniform; evens the playing field, particularly for me as a working class child at a grammar school in an upper class area). My issue with Fornite is the speed and cost with which they produce this stuff. I see my nephews spending 10s of £s at a time every week or so. I'm not sure how I'll deal with the peer pressure issue, my child is too young right now, but Fornite has a strong affinity to children, I'd argue it's mostly played by children and the culture is a real issue which they're doing nothing to resolve that I can see.
  - Twisell 6y ago
    Spoiled kid always was always a thing. Electronic communications & transactions enable theses mechanics to happen faster & without schedule constraints if left unchecked. Same as for bullying by the way. As far as social interaction goes we live in uncharted territory. Does it necessarily mean that it's bad? On the other side of the spectrum this enable YouthForClimate, BLM, and things yet to come... It's really hard to analyze thing as they happen, this is not new either ;) PS: Also not spoiling you kid seems like a good old advice still standing!

Blaiz0r 6y ago

I'm also not a fan of cosmetics because they make the games harder to play, when the silhouettes of characters change it becomes a nightmare. Not to mention that they break immersion in the game too, Call of Duty Modern Warfare started off last year as a slick game with mostly realistic skins and characters, now it's full of pink anime guns, colourful tracksuits and even a Hyena...

pc86 6y ago

Can we stop infantilizing people who choose to waste money on digital cosmetic items and acting like they're being exploited and have no power to stop it? If someone wants to spend $1,000 on weapon skins that's their choice. At what point does personal responsibility play any role?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
inertiatic 6y ago
Literally who does it hurt if there are no lootboxes that are essentially slot machines? Does it hurt the people who waste huge amount of money, who further develop bad economic habits and potentially harm their loved ones (their parents or god forbid their kids)? No. Does it hurt regular consumers that want to buy the item they want instead of gambling for it? No. Does it hurt a large abstract entity that doesn't get to maximize their profits? I guess it would! (Epic has grown from a few hundred million company in the early 2010s to an almost 20 billion company in mid 2020, literally all of it based on Fortnite which only brings money through these microtransactions) So you're arguing for a business model that is not beneficial to any consumer, that decreases net happiness, all in the name of "freedom". There are a million other things we don't allow because if we let people take personal responsibility for them they consistently fuck up. It's the exact same situation with a lot of softer drugs.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Gambling addiction is very real and should be treated as seriously as drug addictions. (Serotonin is quite a drug, even if we do manufacture it ourselves in our own glands.)

bostik 6y ago

In a way, we're not that far then from the world of Snow Crash[ß]. The thing in the book that always struck me as both unlikely and remarkably accurate as far as human vanity is concerned, was the idea of high-end custom avatars. Stephenson's notion that in a future with ubiquitous VR there would be well-paid artists who crafted detailed, posh avatars for the well-off might just come true. I always thought it pretty far-fetched: sure, people are vain but they wouldn't be that vain. It appears I couldn't have been more wrong... ß: We already have the mafia issuing extortion bonds. (ref: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-09/there-are-extortion-backed-bonds-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-09/there-...)