7 ms·

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part i

• beebmam 3y ago
  If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.
  • tetris11 3y ago
    If the main audience is the uninformed or the desperate, isn't that just predatory behaviour
  • efitz 3y ago
    In a casino, you know what you’re there for and what you’re up against. Gaming commissions have curbed many of the worst abuses with inspections, posted odds, etc. With mobile gaming you have a free for all that is intentionally exploiting the same neuroanatomy of addiction, but it’s wrapped up in pretty pixels and you can do it anywhere, privately. The industry is too big for gaming commission type controls to work. I think that mobile game monetization is populated by morally deficient actors and we should consider banning the whole thing.
    • anonymous_sorry 3y ago
      In a meatspace casino, if someone shows you 4 face down cards, asks you to pick one, and then turns them all up to reveal 3 prizes and 1 "you lose" card, you can be fairly sure you had a 25% chance of losing. If the croupier used sleight of hand or secret e-ink cards to turn your card into the "you lose" card after you'd picked it, that would be fraud. The dark patterns and dopamine manipulation are bad enough, but isn't it fraud in this case? They're using a visual metaphor that is a straight-up lie.
      • meheleventyone 3y ago
        In that specific case sure, but Casino slot machines do a loooooooot to present distorted odds.
        • kawhah 3y ago
          But they do it within, often, quite tight regulation on game mechanics. People compare loot boxes to slot machines, but often loot boxes are allowed to be much more manipulative than would be allowed for a casino slot machine in many jurisdictions. For example, slots can juice the number of near misses (two cherries, and the third reel has a cherry that's just offcenter), compared to what would arise naturally if the reels were independent. But they might not be allowed to vastly increase the likelihood of near misses just as the player gets to the last few spins before inserting more cash (each spin has to be essentially the same game). Mobile game monetization does stuff like this all the time.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
  • keithalewis 3y ago
    Do you mean people should be held personally accountable for their actions? Next thing you know we might be living in a country full of responsible citizens. /s
    • pjc50 3y ago
      People probably should be held personally responsible for defrauding punters, yes.
    • ehnto 3y ago
      They are accountable, they lose their money just like you'd expect. But I don't think we should let companies get away with exploiting people either. They have the upper hand, when it comes to exploiting psychology of the everyman.
      • keithalewis 3y ago
        Like advertisers do? Every day. All day long. We might be in agreement about the pernicious effect those have on society. Education is the antidote, not more feckless laws.
  • peterlk 3y ago
    > If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. I find this to be a very naive perspective. It’s not how addiction works, and even people who want to stop sometimes cannot. And even if you buy into the belief that we shouldn’t help them, what about their kids? What about the communities around them that are worse for having addicts who are pouring money from their jobs into a black hole? > I personally don't care. I’m sorry to hear that, and I hope you can change your mind one day. We’re all going to die one day, and life is better if we care about each other
    • spondylosaurus 3y ago
      IRL casinos employ all kinds of tactics to get people in the door, too. Cheap food, "free" gifts, all in the hopes that you'll cave and start gambling once you're in. And then they have their claws in you.
      • Ensorceled 3y ago
        Yes. IRL casinos are also bad.
      • tetris11 3y ago
        Everybody and their dog has a vice of some kind. If casinos knew what your vice was, they would serve it up to you with a pretty bow and tell you that the first hit is free.
  • squeaky-clean 3y ago
    One problem is a lot of those people spending that money (or should I say their parents money) are not old enough to be allowed into a casino or otherwise gamble. But since it's a reward of bytes and not dollars it's currently legally okay to take advantage of a child the way a casino takes advantage of adults.
• efitz 3y ago
  >something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow No, they are very much a part of the experience. The anticipation of the reward and the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism. This is why we wrap presents and why “blind bags” are so successful (and also why toddlers will watch “surprise egg” videos for hours).
  • spondylosaurus 3y ago
    Aesthetic loot crates are for sure still predatory/addictive, but I think the point here is that they don't directly impact the core gameplay experience. You can still get fragged by a player who's wearing the default skin (and sometimes that's a flex in itself...).
  • Semaphor 3y ago
    > the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism Is this why BG3 has this extremely annoying and unskippable dice-rolling animation (technically, the rolling of the dice is the only thing you can actually skip)? Because other people somehow enjoy this? It’s so bad, that the dice thing popping up induces a feeling of dread and annoyance in me.
    • meheleventyone 3y ago
      That’s there half because it’s a tabletop system and half otherwise there is a break in causality. Just having a random chance of success or failure isn’t very obvious and you don’t see near misses and so on. For most people showing the action is more satisfying. The underlying system comes from D&D so is full of quite crunchy randomness where results are usually rolled in front of everyone so you get a much more social experience and failure isn’t quite so bad (usually).
      • Semaphor 3y ago
        My main complaint about BG3 is actually how far they changed it from D&D. My favorite games are owlcat’s two Pathfinder games which is a tabletop system far crunchier than the streamlined D&D 5e. But you are missing what I said. The information is great, the unskippable animations are not.
• dendrite9 3y ago
  I remember reading about Yanis Varoufakis studying the economics of games for Valve at a time when I played TF2 occasionally. Several years later I went back to play some games and it seemed like a wholly different world with loot crates and markets for cosmetics. My timing may be off, and I suppose the idea was already there. But hearing someone talk about markets inside popular games was a bit concerning.
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  gamification? No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines. The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regressive cost nature on poor/middle class. What I'm really concerned about: outright cheating. There is implied probabilities involved here, and the apps are not doing the implied distribution. Sure, go ahead and point to the fine print. There is a reason gambling is so heavily restricted and regulated. These games are acting like they aren't subject to these laws. What I'm really really really concerned about: the use of gambling payoff/reward psychology/neurotransmitter biology in games that CHILDREN are being subjected to, or even worse, they are ACTIVELY targeted by the "free to play" games, by the "click/watch ad to keep playing" ads in the FTP games. This is OUTRAGEOUS. This has to end. This has to be strictly regulated. Many of these free to play games, which even cursory experience educates you to a world where "whales" that are paying thousands of dollars a month or more. These games are among the most popular/heavily downloaded games in the app stores, with hundreds of millions of revenue, which Apple and Google are feasting at the trough on. Absolutely outrageous. Apple and Google should be ashamed of themselves, and fined billions of dollars over this. Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me.
  • jonasdegendt 3y ago
    Some countries have taken steps to curb loot boxes, Belgium comes to mind and games like the Diablo mobile one aren’t even available to play there because of the regulations.
  • WA 3y ago
    > Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me. Thing is, regulations do exist but as long as Apple and Google are not forced to comply at least partially in these regulations, nothing will ever change. Take the GDPR as an example: - Europe says: "Your app must comply with the GDPR if you want to be in the European market." - Apple says to app developers: "It's up to you to comply with local laws." Obviously, Europe can only go after companies, which have a presence in the EU, such as the big tech ones. Now how would anyone ever enforce regulation such as the GDPR for app devs from China, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, ...? There's simply no way. There is no one responsible for that. There is no customs office checking goods (apps) imported to the EU. And the same is true for casino apps. So, the solution might be to force Apple/Google to comply with all local laws for all apps in the stores. Sounds like a lot of work, but that's the only way. After all, if you buy in-app-items, Apple/Google are the sellers, not the app developers. If you think about it, it's odd that Apple and Google get away with this, because they effectively "sell" these apps to end customers.
• dspillett 3y ago
  > It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. A step worse too: they are being trained that being bombarded with adverts is acceptable. Genuinely heard (couldn't avoid hearing, the voices were fairly loud) on a train the other week a dad explaining to his charge how he should “watch the adverts all the way through because he'd get an extra coin to spend in the game” and that if he went to a particular screen he could find more adverts to watch. No idea what game it was he was playing. Pay-to-win is winning, and people are encouraging kids to pay by opening themselves to a little light brainwashing. [Not a parent myself, intending to never be, before anyone weights in with “you don't know how hard it can be to keep a child entertained”: I know full well, and it is one of the many reasons I'm planning to stay childless, my position on this is an informed one!]
  • bondarchuk 3y ago
    >A step worse too: they are being trained that being bombarded with adverts is acceptable. We have all been trained that way. The cities in the developed world where you can step outside and walk around for a bit without seeing billboards can be counted on one hand.
    • dspillett 3y ago
      Though in the case I heard the viewing was less passive: the kid was being encouraged to seek out adverts for more in-game whatevers.
  • MandieD 3y ago
    No, you're right to be horrified, and I'm the mom of a three year old who will look for things to take apart if left to his own devices. Current screen policy: only "his" laptop, only videos I've picked out for him (currently, he's into Alphablocks and Numberblocks), laptop gets closed and put up for the rest of the day the instant he whines about having to stop watching for whatever reason.
    • 3y ago
• malteof 3y ago
  You’re talking about mobile games. I have to kids, 4 and 6, and the only games we’ve introduced them to are 1) board games and 2) Nintendo Switch games. This largely avoids the problem (for now!)
  • xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    Same. The thing with content is that it costs money to produce, and so you (generally) have to pay money to get it. I know some parents who have super strict "screen time" rules but let their kids watch (during the allotted time) any random dumb youtube show, or play those shitty iPad games. Those parents are not tech savvy, and they assume that all digital experiences are shit. In contrast I pay lots of money for Nintendo first-party games because I know (I play them too!) that they are engaging digital experiences with good screenwriting. I pay recurring subscription to streaming services and apps because real storytelling for children DOES exist on devices with screens!