Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49661870

by MarcScott • 7 years ago

296 309 7 years ago

bbc.co.uk

nurettin• 7 years ago

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

switch007• 7 years 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?

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

There are devices just for children available, presumably with limitations on the available content.

I think they are popular with parents, too.

xxs7• 7 years 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.

DanBC8• 7 years ago

The report isn't just about children.

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

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

tudorw4• 7 years ago

Hello sanity, we should hang out :)

Cthulhu_4• 7 years 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).

DanBC8• 7 years ago

The politicians report covers gambling-like mechanics that don't involve money.

69.Many games contain features that are highly similar to conventional gambling products, without gambling being the primary aim of the game. However, there are concerns that being exposed to such features from a young age might normalise gambling. One parent expressed concern that the game Bricky Farm, which is rated suitable for children, contains a gambling-like feature. He told us:
> Most worrying for me is a roulette style wheel mini-game whereby differing amounts of gems can be won for further advancement. This is where the game could become addictive to someone with a susceptibility but more than that it is introducing children as young as 4 to the ‘thrill’ of gambling.133

baroffoos• 7 years 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.

bluecalm3• 7 years 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.

martin-adams• 7 years 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.

tudorw4• 7 years 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.

xxs7• 7 years 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.

piokoch2• 7 years 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.

TeMPOraL7• 7 years 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.

sabas123• 7 years 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?

They can also become "successful" betters starting out from nothing, and in such a case I would be suprised if your typical parrent would notice (see csgo/dota skins)

TeMPOraL7• 7 years 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.)

xxs7• 7 years ago

I am curious who would downvote such an explanation.

otikik• 7 years 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.

jacobwilliamroy3• 7 years 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.

PeterStuer2• 7 years ago

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

AmericanChopper4• 7 years 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.

ian04• 7 years ago

Myself and my son play Apex legends. Its an online multiplayer game thats free, but you can optionally pay to unlock cosmetic items like character outfits (skins) etc.

He came into some cash recently courtesy of the tooth fairy and asked if we could buy a skin for his favorite character. I said ok. However after id purchased some in game coins we realised that we couldn't actually buy the skin he wanted, instead we had to buy 10 boxes with random contents that could potentially contain a skin similar to the one he wanted.

Watching his excitement opening up the boxes and his eventual disappointment at not receiving the one he wanted - plus subsequent enthusiasm to buy more coins courtesy of some lesser items granted, I realised Id made a horrible mistake. Id basically introduced a virtual pub gambling machine to a young kid. This sort of stuff is horrible.

kmlx2• 7 years ago

i've played apex legend for more than 50 hours, and had no idea you could actually spend money in that game.

but i also think there's a generational divide: while i would gladly pay games for a leg up (better weapons, higher jumps, that sort of thing), i would never ever buy a "skin" for my character, or anything superficial for that matter. but I see kids getting completely hooked on this. and i don't really get it. i mean, from a young age i would hack the game and add whatever i wanted (including skins), so maybe that's why asking me to pay for something as useless as a "skin" will never fly with me.

crispyporkbites3• 7 years ago

It’s exactly the same reason people pay for fashion. The clothes don’t provide practical benefit, yet people still pay 100x more for branding.

And you can’t hack this because these are multiplayer games.

lozenge• 7 years ago

That isn't generational, it is part of your personality though. You just described two of the four player profiles in this talk on monetizing games:

https://youtu.be/xNjI03CGkb4

ian04• 7 years ago

Yeah I was in the same boat. Had no idea how the coins worked and have zero interest in purchasing cosmetics.

I can kind of identify with it though. I remember going to a lot of bother to update the player DB in Sensible World of Soccer to reflect the most recent season. I also patched it and didn't pay (not even sure if there was a paid update). But it's not a stretch to imagine that if I didn't understand how to do it myself and someone offered me a pound for the floppy disk I may have bought it!

rolltiide• 7 years ago

analytics suggest that the only generational divide is the one where people admit to buying “superficial” things in game, or at all

for the generation that admits to buying these things without qualm, think about the social benefits as much as having the right console/toy/action figure had

cameronbrown4• 7 years ago

I think cosmetics are a much better alternative to purchasing advantages (that'd never work for a PC game anyway) but keep kids away from gambling absolutely.

JauntyHatAngle6• 7 years ago

Well, to be blunt, that's cos you're not a kid.

I've known teachers who specifically have had to have words with kids who are bullying their classmate for not having a skin in fortnite. I'm sure that's rare but the point is that these kids are not yet equipped to deal with the kind of manipulation companies throw at you to try to get you to buy into this economy. "Hacking" skins into the game is pointless, because it's not about looking good to yourself, it's about showing off your shiny trinket to your peers.

In Australia they had these stupid figurines they were giving to parents that were inside packets, with varying rarity. Kids were going mental for them, and were begging parents to buy more groceries to get more packs.

It's definitely gambling by another name, and kids are susceptible to it massively.

dTal2• 7 years ago

i would gladly pay games for a leg up (better weapons, higher jumps, that sort of thing)

Why?? What is the point of a game, if you can buy advantages? It reduces the competitive aspect to who can spend more money.

I wonder if there's mileage in a multiplayer version of the "I'm rich" app.

amyjess4• 7 years ago

Honestly, I wouldn't even play a game where paying for power-ups was the norm. It's not something I'm interested in.

Skins, on the other hand... so, to start with, I play FF14, which has a cash shop for things like special outfits and emotes. While I wouldn't dump all my disposable income into cosmetic stuff, and I sure as hell don't trawl the cash shop looking for stuff to buy, I'll buy stuff here and there if it really catches my eye or if it could be useful. For example, I went to an in-game wedding over the weekend, and I didn't have anything to wear that was really appropriate, so I hopped on the cash shop, looked at a couple of dresses, asked my friends for advice on which one looks better, and bought exactly one outfit. And then there was when I was first setting up by subscription after my free month ran out, and I stumbled on a set of emotes inspired by one of my favorite television franchises of all time. Those were the only things I bought from the cash shop... though I have to admit I'm tempted to buy the new cat ear hood (which was heavily advertised when it came out) just because cat ears are kind of my thing.

So I'm definitely not in the "buy all the skins" camp, but I'm fine with buying a couple of items here and there that enhance my enjoyment of the game. And, of course, this leads into why lootboxes are evil. In a game that uses lootboxes, you can't just buy one or two cool things. You have to keep buying lootboxes and opening them again and again and again and again until you get the thing you're looking for. It's exploitative, and it trains the mind to derive enjoyment from addictive behaviors.

leetcrew2• 7 years ago

do you ever buy clothes?

beobab• 7 years ago

Hmmm. I definitely don't like the "give me a ton of money, and you might get what you want" payment mechanism. I saw it with PacMan cards and football cards back in the 80's, and then Pokemon cards for my own children.

I got "stung" enough by a trader in London who demonstrated that you shouldn't buy a pig in a poke. I still keep the cheap trinket I got instead as a reminder to always find out what I'm paying for.

beatgammit4• 7 years ago

With Pokemon cards, you can at least buy specific cards from sellers. Many loot box items cannot be traded.

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

Once his money has run out, he might have learned a valuable lesson.

Also perhaps better than spending the money on sweets.

xxs7• 7 years ago

you mean, next time the kid has money would be spent again?

Teaching kids to gamble is a horrid idea.

Also perhaps better than spending the money on sweets.

Yeah, the kid must be overweight as well. What about books, toys or cinema? And for instance I don't mind my kid having an ice cream with 6 (outside school) trainings a week

scandinavegan• 7 years ago

No, you did good! He needs to learn how to handle this and you're right there guiding him.

I have the same situation with my six-year old son and Rocket League loot boxes. He wants to spend all his limited money on them, I think he's wasting it, especially since I see the disappointment when he doesn't get the things he want, but that's a learning experience. It's worse when he once in a while gets a cool skin, because in his eyes it makes it all worth it.

I see the money I give him as teaching opportunities. Kids will get in touch with these mechanics as they grow up, and now you have the chance to talk to him about it. Discuss it over and over, it's not a one-time thing, and you've made no permanent damage. Let him know you think it's not worth it, but I wouldn't put a permanent ban on it, as it may make it even more appealing. If he wants other (real-life) stuff later, remind him that he already spent his money on loot boxes and I think they will lose their appeal a bit.

JauntyHatAngle6• 7 years ago

On the plus side, at least in Rocket League you can trade others for the skins. There is a market rate of items due to this.

This is not always the case on apex legends, where some limited offer items are only obtainable from loot boxes.

jacobush4• 7 years ago

I think there is no fire-proof way of handling this that will work with all, or even a majority of children. (And parents.) Teach your kids to handle it, do it wisely, but if the best way is a puritan approach or a market value approach as above, I think it depends which is best.

Edit: to elaborate, I think it depends on many things. One that comes to mind is, how strong is the "dopamine" effect vs vs the "oh, sudden insight into how market economies work" in the child. (And parent, as a mirror and role model.)

If the reward response is very strong, I can't help but thinking about the knowledge we have about alcohol and children: we know it's harmful when parents try to teach children to drink responsibly and "let them try in controlled conditions". It works much better to not let children drink at all.

ian04• 7 years ago

Thats a good point!

In the end he did learn his lesson, sort of. He realised he had squandered his cash but in learning the game mechanics also found out some skins could be unlocked by earning points through playing. As he doesnt like shooting anyone its up to me to grind for points. I agreed for the extra turns of course. Perhaps a lesson in effective delegation to boot :)

benj1112• 7 years ago

"No, you did good! He needs to learn how to handle this and you're right there guiding him."

What's your model for what this is though?

The GP mentions a pub fruit machine. I suppose you could make the case for it being like football stickers.

As I'm writing this though, I'm not entirely sure what makes fruit machine bad, football stickers good. I would guess trading stickers is a social activity, and theres an in build limit to how many stickers you need? Where do loot boxes come out on these measures?

sjcsjc• 7 years ago

I think this is an exceptionally good response. Thank you.

gambiting2• 7 years ago

I mean when I was a kid you'd get this sticker album for your favourite thing(be it football players, star wars, whatever) and I'd always beg mum to get me yet another sticker pack so I could complete my collection. There were always stickers that I really really wanted and yeah, the disappointment of going through a few packs and not getting what you wanted was very real.

I think ultimately, this is the same thing - just digitized. I don't really have an opinion whether that's good or bad, just that it's clearly aimed at kids to buy this stuff, just like the stickers were.

jbms• 7 years ago

There is permanent damage if you rewire your kids brain chemistry to get addicted to the near-miss of getting something good. Logical explanations don't undo that.

I understand from a Louis Theroux documentary on gambling addicts that it is the feeling of the near miss that is actually addictive and not the feeling of the win. Gambling addicts are used to winning and so they don't get a buzz from that.

ihuman• 7 years ago

Its not related to the point of your comment, but Rocket League's loot boxes are going away https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/6/20757348/rocket-league-crat...

ghostbrainalpha• 7 years ago

I'm a developer in Las Vegas and have worked in actual casino gaming and slot machines and I have never disagreed with a comment on Hacker News as much as I do this one.

My perspective is that there are two kinds of people. Those who understand that slot machines are dangerous and a bad long term investment, and those who do not and gradually become more and more addicted to them.

I've never seen a casino customer who was initially attracted to slot machine mechanics, gradually learn that they a poor exchange of value, overcome their addictive nature and stop playing them.

They may stop playing because they are broke. They may learn to manage the addiction at a level they enjoy and can sustain. But they don't just suddenly understand that it's a bad deal and stop wanting to play.

jakobegger• 7 years ago

That's wishful thinking.

You don't learn that gambling is bad by gambling a little bit and losing a bit of money.

If people were rational enough for that, people wouldn't suffer from gambling addiction.

There's only one way to protect kids from gambling: don't let them get near it.

dragontamer4• 7 years ago

Its called a skinnerbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Fully grown ADULTS fall prey to skinnerboxes (aka: Slot Machines) all the time. Its basic human psychology (heck: the skinnerbox is effective on virtually all Birds and Mammals). Its extremely fundamental to the function of the modern biological brain.

Its literally a "brain hack". This isn't some "willpower away" sort of training. This is literally how your brain, and your children's brain works. As well as how your dog's brain, and the bird's brains and the cats brains, and deer brains.

The only winning move is to not play. Its literally hopeless if you get sucked into a skinner box. You can't beat the biological functions of what your brain is designed to do.

--------

I don't think there's "long term damage" to be suffered here. Human brains, just like the brains of any mammal (or bird), are prone to operant conditioning. If you RANDOMLY give a reward when a subject (be it human, mammal, or bird) pushes a button, the subject will continue to push the button over and over again.

Its just biology.

EDIT: And random-rewards are far stronger than consistent rewards. If a reward is consistent, then when it "stops", the subject believes that the pattern is over. But if the reward was Random, then the subject will continue pushing the button even long after the pattern has stopped or been modified.

dpcan2• 7 years ago

No no no no no.

"It's worse when he once in a while gets a cool skin, because in his eyes it makes it all worth it."

THAT is the whole problem. Those rewards. Kids absolutely cannot understand how to cope with that feeling. Getting lucky and opening the thing they want becomes an expectation. They EXPECT to get lucky now.

You can talk to your kid without spending a dime, without letting them engage in the activity. What else are you just going to "try" and then talk about? Let him smoke some cigarettes, get cancer, and then say, see son, there's a lesson to be learned here...... no.

hndamien• 7 years ago

This is very true! The words "it's a scam" is always fun for a kid to learn and repeat.

baybal2• 7 years ago

Watching his excitement opening up the boxes and his eventual disappointment at not receiving the one he wanted - plus subsequent enthusiasm to buy more coins courtesy of some lesser items granted, I realised Id made a horrible mistake. Id basically introduced a virtual pub gambling machine to a young kid.

I'm afraid you are going through what Chinese and to some extend Russian parents went through 1 and 2 decades ago. Chinese parents understood long ago what businesses like Google and Tencent were are all about. In China, they call them "pocket slot machines" The very reason they link the game to your bank account is to milk money from you, or god forbid, your children.

My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request he gets from people is to "remove Google nagware and lock, block or delete Google Pay" so their child will never ever buy anything "in that Internet thing," and do the same for clickfarming "social" apps.

skocznymroczny2• 7 years ago

It doesn't allow you to buy the skins directly? In most F2P games I played (HotS, Paladins), you get random skins in lootboxes, but you can buy the skin directly, it just costs more than the lootbox (but obviously much cheaper than buying lootboxes hoping for that one specific skin).

ssully• 7 years ago

Apex let's you buy most skins directly, but only using a currency you earn from playing or by getting duplicate items from boxes. You can also earn skins from boxes that you earn from leveling up, or by buying directly.

There is also a store where you can buy certain skins/items directly with money, but these items rotate (I think weekly?). Finally, there is a "battle pass" that lets you earn rewards by doing in game challenges (get so many skills in a certain part of the map, play as a certain character so many times, etc). The battle pass costs $10 US dollars. You can also spend real money to buy levels for your battle pass - so basically, dump money to earn everything, and avoid doing the challenges.

Believe it or not, Apex is one of the better F2P games when it comes to ease of getting items without paying much money. With that said, I think my complicated description above serves as a good example of how filthy these games can get. If Apex is what is considered a "good" model, just imagine the bad ones.

jason462• 7 years ago

My 13yr old son has spent $100s on fortnite, I told him he's going to regret that when he wishes he saved for a car, or something that will matter in 6months.

I definitely blew my fair share on video games, but I also believe this is a generational shift. I do not believe charging $$ for "cosmetics" would have been as successful in "my day". But what does it mean?

save_ferris3• 7 years ago

One major difference to point out is that fortnite doesn’t have loot boxes, you know exactly what you’re getting when spending their online currency.

I keep hearing about the social aspects behind these games (kids who don’t have skins in fortnite are bullied at school, etc.) It sounds like goods that make a child popular are just digital these days as opposed to physical items like Pokémon cards.

thirdsun2• 7 years ago

I always wondered who are these people/kids spending money on useless cosmetics, but the other day a friend of mine told me how his 11 year old, a fine kid, spent his birthday money (about 50€) on his PlayStation. Naturally I thought he bought a new game - it's the first thing we would have done at his age whenever we had some money at hand.

However, he wasn't interested in new games at all - instead he spend that money, all of it, on Fortnite cosmetics, which seems absolutely bizarre and alien to me. Growing up with Quake, Half-Life, Deus Ex and other classics we also loved games and didn't think twice about spending money on it, but I'm sure we would have laughed away any attempt to charge for skins and random items. Of course strong modding communities helped as well.

Anyway, this insight really surprised me - I always thought it's a few whales that participate in this nonsense, but apparently it's everyone, including the otherwise sane and reasonable kid from next-door.

SkyBelow6• 7 years ago

I'm still not seeing how this is any different than Pokemon cards where I saw the same behavior in kids back then. Is it because these days companies have thrown far more psychology at optimizing it?

benologist• 7 years ago

The difference is you walked into a shop with cash and couldn't accidentally buy 100 packets in the space of five minutes. They couldn't take your parent's bank card and let you spend thousands of dollars because your parents would come back to the store. The transaction amount and cash exchange was not deliberately obfuscated with layers of contrived pseudo-currencies when we bought packets of cards either.

Facebook maliciously obfuscated virtual currency abstractions once they realized kids disassociating the cash transaction was a great way to bump their numbers - https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-...

input_sh2• 7 years ago

Is it because these days companies have thrown far more psychology at optimizing it?

Absolutely. Including hiring former casino personnel. Cards don't have flashy lights, music, nor the concept of a near miss.

You could call them the same only if you ignore all the context around it. For example, I know of no cards where you can purchase a more expensive card pack that has slightly higher odds of getting something good. Different loot boxes costing different amounts of money with the only difference being a slight increase in percentages are a completely common occurence.

dpcan2• 7 years ago

2 wrongs don't make a right.

It's not okay to say "something has been done before" or "this is like that".

As human beings, we are learning what types of things are destructive. When we learn about these problems, it's not healthy to justify doing another thing wrong because we happened to live through doing it wrong before.

For example, people who say "I didn't wear a helmet when I was a kid" are being irresponsible. No, you didn't. But thankfully, science, data, and time have shown us that wearing a helmet makes far more sense for our health and safety, so that's what we do now. We learn, we change, we adapt. It's part of the process.

So, Pokemon, and Baseball cards, etc, were all gambling. The whole ordeal of spending money in hopes of getting what you want, then every once in a while getting a jackpot is very unhealthy and can be destructive in our development.

Are we okay after going through all that? Pretty much. But would we not be far better without having had that in our lives? Maybe. So now we know. And now we must stop these destructive business practices.

IMAYousaf• 7 years ago

FWIW, you can buy specific skins that are on the character loadout with very few exceptions. I've never paid for premium in the game, just used the in game currency.

The confusion with Apex is that there are 3 types of currency. One is the in game free currency. That's typically used to unlock characters who cost 12,000 units. The second currency are the gold coins, which are used as premium purchasing power from the devs for things like the battlepass and specific items in the rotating store. The third currency refers to materials. Materials can be used to purchase any skin/celebration/quip etc. Materials can be bought with gold. I believe that you purchased the wrong thing.

If you really want a particular skin it's not that hard to get!

ian04• 7 years ago

> Materials can be used to purchase any skin/celebration/quip etc. Materials can be bought with gold.

This is what we thought too but theres no way to buy materials with gold. Only through Apex packs. Eg [0], [1].

[0] https://www.shacknews.com/article/109806/how-to-get-crafting...

[1] https://www.techjunkie.com/get-crafting-metals-apex-legends/

droithomme2• 7 years ago

I dealt with my kids getting scammed like this in the past. I laughed and mocked them and explained how the scam works and how these companies hire industrial psychologists to facilitate their cons. Then learn how to avoid the scam in the future, and also later mock and ridicule their friends who fall for similar scams. This results in those friends learning to avoid these scams and teach others how not to get fooled.

Much transactions in the world are scams run by con men. Wise parents teach their kids. No better way to learn than from losing some real money in a scam, as long as you recognize the principles involved and it helps increase your distrust and skepticism of others in the future.

In the end, only the paranoid survive. Only con artists and rubes claim otherwise. Street skills are paramount, something few schools teach, by design.

Should we ban kids from these games? Maybe not. This is a good way to learn about scams as long as you learn. Games should instead be required to disclose the scam after fooling the prey, and thus become educational. Where people get into trouble is when they've been so sheltered and protected that they hit the legal contract age of 18 and believe fairy tales that the world is good and people can be trusted. Those poor kids are ripe for the plucking by the predators and get into a lot of trouble. Many lives are ruined at that point. Better to let them get ripped off a few times when younger for small amounts with these games. Regulation should focus an making rip offs of minors be fully refundable upon request, and to require scam disclosure. Scamming kids without disclosing how the scam works should be punishable with long prison sentences for everyone involved in the scam, executives, programmers, accountants, graphic artists. Games can be educational and there's no better lesson than how the adult world is actually going to work.

autoexec2• 7 years ago

Games should instead be required to disclose the scam after fooling the prey, and thus become educational.

this just means every company can try to scam children as many times as they want. Either they keep making up new ways to trick children, or they word their disclosure of the scams in a way children can't understand so they keep falling for it. Either way allowing companies to prey on children so that they learn better is like letting people lure children into the back of vans so they "learn their lesson" after they get raped.

It'd be far better to forbid companies from predatory practices when we identify them and also try to educate kids on the tactics used against them and how to identify them, but that kind of education has to happen throughout their development. The companies who make these games hire people with advanced degrees to research, design and and implement the most additive systems possible. The reality is that children don't have the mental capacity to fully understand everything involved.

I agree that we should instill a distrust of corporations in our children and that we should try to build their defenses against manipulation, but learning by letting them be repeatedly exploited is some very backwards thinking.

I think you could probably get the same results by creating games specifically designed to demonstrate ways companies try to take advantage of us and you could do it without giving companies a chance to profit off your "teaching" method.

piokoch2• 7 years ago

Yes, this is horrible and more and more toys, games are like this. That's why such products should get the same license as gambling companies.

They should pay for license, they should have proper responsible gaming policy, ability to self-exclude, in case of products for kids, their parents should be informed that given product is a gambling product (older parents might not be aware of this), etc.

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

Where does the money come from, that the kids spend? Shouldn't it be the parents concern to limit the spending?

While I despise many of the techniques used in modern games to make kids spend money, I also prefer them learning about these things in games, rather than in the real world (with much more money at stake).

One thing that cost us a lot of money for example are the "Panini collectible cards", that predate the computer era. I don't know if they are a thing in the US. Basically for soccer world cups and other events, you are supposed to collect all the pictures of all the players. You buy packs of 5 with random stickers, and you swap with your friends to fill the sticker book. It costs ridiculous amounts of money (easy to spend 100€ or more, on a book with some pictures). I grudgingly admitted to it, as it is almost a rite of passage in European childhoods and a learning experience to some degree.

_Understated_2• 7 years ago

Aw man, you're bringing back memories of my childhood here: I spent all my pocket money on those. Well, those and the chewing gum that had a "tattoo" in them :)

I'm with you on the "what are the parents doing while this is going on?" camp.

My son, now 8, plays some games on the iPad. He's got a bunch of Lego games and a couple of multiplayer games but he cannot interact with the other players except to fight on the same team: so no chatting or anything like that. In addition, he's been told he's not buying anything in-game and we've locked down the iPad so that he can't... in fact it pops up a message if he clicks anything to do with buying.

We've used the default list of acceptable websites when you lock down the iPad. We may have removed a couple too and added Nickelodeon I think (for the games on it) and a couple of others but nothing like YouTube... that's pure shite imo!

He moans sometimes that his pal has Fortnite and he plays it at his house sometimes but he's not getting it at our house.

In all honesty a Google search and a bit of time is all it takes for parents to protect their kids online these days. No excuse.

thirdsun2• 7 years ago

Reading this I can't help but think that Apple Arcade has to be a huge success with parents - a quality, woory-free gaming environment with fixed, affordable cost.

Cthulhu_4• 7 years ago

They're definitely a thing in the US, maybe not Panini brand but there's a huge collectors market for baseball cards. Some have a resale values of hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

I was never into these though, it's very much dependent on your own networks - is anyone else collecting them. I did have a short spat of Magic the Gathering though, but never to the point where I bought things off the trading market. I did sell off two rare cards for 30 odd euros apiece, which paid for most of what I had spent on cards. That was nice.

pingyong• 7 years ago

Shouldn't it be the parents concern to limit the spending?

You can make the exact same argument for kids playing in online (or offline, really) casinos. And yet it is fairly widely accepted that this isn't a good idea. Online casinos have to jump through a million hoops in terms of age and identity verification. Where's the difference?

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

I have no strong opinions about kids gambling in real casinos. Again, where does the money come from? Are there any studies showing gambling addiction can develop from exposure during childhood?

I think I might actually have played a few slot machines in my youth. But pocket money was just enough for one round or so.

I also plan on teaching my kids how to play Poker, I think it is a survival skill. When shit hits the fan, maybe they can play Poker with the captain of a ship to win a trip to safety.

DanBC8• 7 years ago

Where does the money come from

The report isn't just about the money being spent. It's also about introducing gambling mechanics to children at a young age.

acknowledge the distinction between licensed online gambling, social casino-style games that “have the look and feel of traditional gambling” but may not be licensed as such, and games containing features akin to gambling as one aspect of the overall product or game experience rather than the predominant quality.132 Our inquiry has focused on the latter, although the other two are both important issues that merit further consideration.
69.Many games contain features that are highly similar to conventional gambling products, without gambling being the primary aim of the game. However, there are concerns that being exposed to such features from a young age might normalise gambling. One parent expressed concern that the game Bricky Farm, which is rated suitable for children, contains a gambling-like feature. He told us:
> Most worrying for me is a roulette style wheel mini-game whereby differing amounts of gems can be won for further advancement. This is where the game could become addictive to someone with a susceptibility but more than that it is introducing children as young as 4 to the ‘thrill’ of gambling.133
70.The parent’s concern is supported by Dr David Zendle’s acknowledgment “that a really good predictor of problem gambling is the social acceptance and availability” of it.134 Indeed, the Gambling Commission told us that the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling expressed concerns in response to the Online Harms White Paper about the associations between “gambling lite behaviours and children’s behaviours”.135 Furthermore, Brad Enright from the Gambling Commission told us that even when games do not meet the regulatory threshold for gambling, but contain gambling-like features, the regulator does:
> not think the current age ratings are in line with public expectation, so that should not be available for four-plus or even 12-plus.136

kmjg88nvf813• 7 years ago

I wonder how solid the knowledge about this is? Are there actual studies showing a risk from "gambling games" at young age inducing gambling addiction? From your quotes, it sounds more like individual opinions that actual scientific knowledge?

Most games have a luck component, after all. Even Monopoly, to name one popular board game.

I don't like Roulette Wheels in my children's games, ad I have certainly seen things I don't like. For example "garden scapes" even sends notifications on the tablet computer, that new "loot" is available (I forgot how they called it).

Nevertheless, I see it as an opportunity to talk with my kids about such strategies.

falcolas3• 7 years ago

with much more money at stake

You can literally spend tens of thousands of dollars in FIFA - most of these games don’t incorporate any kind of cap. Even Apex Legends recently had a limited time promotion that would require in excess of $200 to get everything.

That’s right up there with gambling, cars, technology, and significant others when it comes to real life spending for most people.

Kpourdeilami• 7 years ago

Fifa is the biggest offender IMO, you can spend $10k on loot boxes and you'd still not get the top tier players in the game.

Around $150 CAD gets you around 100,000 in-game coins considering average yield from loot boxes. A player like Ronaldo costs 2.5 to 3 million coins (aka $3750 to $4500) for the first 4-5 months of each game cycle. And he's not even the most expensive card in the game, some cards trade for 15 million coins. To unlock all the top players for your team, you'd probably have to spend way over $10k. To top if off, every Sept. a new game comes out and you have start from scratch

dangerface• 7 years ago

Shouldn't it be the parents concern to limit the spending?

It should be, but the kids pay the price. Most parents don't care because the gambling is disguised as a game, they make it hard to track spending by making you buy and spend fake money, this again reinforces the idea that it's not real money, it's all just a fun game.

I also prefer them learning about these things in games, rather than in the real world (with much more money at stake).

The money, games and people that are affected all exist in the real world, just because it's themed as a game does nothing to prevent the harm gambling can cause.

Loot boxes aren't cheap [0] estimated $50 billion spent on loot boxes, there is serious money at stake comparable with the gambling industry [1] estimated $73 billion spent on online gambling.

Game developers are able to get away with this practice because they push the idea that it's all just fun and games but its not, they have taken a gambling mechanic like for like its gambling.

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/04/17/video-game... [1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-online-gambl...

rtkwe• 7 years ago

I think if we were starting to see these physical card packs now we would probably have a similar reaction as we're having to loot boxes but since they're older and a more normal part they're not getting as much scrutiny. Digital packs can do a lot more skinner boxing though with sound and visual cues going along with chest opening and the little dopamine hit for getting a rare item.

One thing I will say is there is a big difference between the digital version of these loot box/card pack mechanics and the physical ones; it's way easier to just keep buying the digital packs, especially for kids who may have a loose grasp of money matters anyways. There's no total racking up where they can see it and their account will generally be link to their parents card where if they want to keep buying physical packs it'd be their own (probably physical) money.

As for limiting that spending some places make it hard to limit the amount spent on child accounts until quite recently.

Slippery_John2• 7 years ago

Where does the money come from

The magical credit card fairy. Parents who aren't into gaming or technology may not be aware of the risks that these games pose, and therefore are unprepared to properly supervise their children when playing such games. Historical methods used to signal parents like ESRB / PEGI ratings are deliberately unhelpful in the regard as they draw no distinction between gambling mechanics and more straightforward purchases. And even then those are fine-print addendums that don't impact the actual age rating. So you wind up with a situation where games with gambling mechanics are rated by PEGI as being suitable for children 3+, leading many to be unaware of the risks a particular game poses. In comparison, a game that introduces "real" gambling with cashout possibilities gets an "Adults Only" ESRB rating as a matter of course. And even those flimsy addendums are actively circumvented by game companies who will wait a month or so after launch to add in the gambling features, after the game has already been rated and warning labels have already been printed.

In contrast, things like card packs or stickers are far easier to control. You give your child $20 and they can waste it as they please. Or they ask you for something and you buy it. Almost everybody intuitively understands that if you give your credit card to the child then you're playing with fire. Setting up a payment method in a game system is more risky in that credit cards are typically the only option (plus store gift cards that parents may not be aware of). Even so, it is not at all obvious to many just how much you can spend in a game. A child might ask for a $5 pack of loot boxes, and it seems reasonable. Then your numbers are in. If your child can then social engineer your password from you or get you to check the "don't ask for password" box then they have free reign. You might even knowingly do it because, again, it is not obvious that you can even spend that kind of money in a game.

tudorw4• 7 years ago

Great, finally some movement on regulating the children's video gaming industry, it's a total disgrace and reflects very poorly on the tech industry that it's most vulnerable users are frequently the least considered. The UK is working on some of the worlds most progressive child protection legislation and I hope they create an example that will be adopted worldwide.

sdan• 7 years ago

Agree that games that advertise loot-boxes should be restricted, given their relatively addictive nature to impressionable children.

Children of younger ages shouldn't be exposed to this dopamine inducing idea similar to that of slot machines.

xxs7• 7 years ago

The income from the loot boxes has to be taxed like gambling. It's a slot machine (or FBT in the UK) essentially.

Possible there should be an option to self-define a spending limit (per month, day, week) that cannot be increased immediately.

dominicr2• 7 years ago

I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue. Either they understand the issue but it's their profits at stake, so they'll ignore the potential problems. Or have these stealth gambling mechanisms entered the games gradually and without the industry realising that what it's doing is actually gambling and there repercussions to that.

tudorw4• 7 years ago

The idea that they are ignorant is repugnant, they know exactly what they are doing, and they have ALL the data that shows how the 'child whales' of their industry can be best exploited.

_Microft• 7 years ago

A while ago I noticed that a small child in my family had a jigsaw puzzle with a Disney princess on it and since that seemed unexpected, I asked how that came. The answer was that they didn't gift it to her but she wanted it herself. They were surprised themselves but argued that maybe it's really something that girls/kids like.

I couldn't help saying that it's hard for children to not like them when the other side is whole departments of grown-ups doing nothing but engineering the best ways to hack a child's brain :/

pferde• 7 years ago

Indeed they know very well what they're doing. One could even say that they're openly spitting in the face of regulators' inability to do something about it, see for example a trailer for a new NBA game, where you mostly see literal casino-like gambling machines, and only a few seconds of actual gameplay on a basketball court: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGZQDOOU6Y

EDIT: The above link is not the trailer itself, but a video discussing the trailer, from an independent game critic who has been speaking out against gambling mechanics in computer games for many years, long before it became a big issue.

prawn• 7 years ago

"I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful"

Of course it's completely wilful.

_Understated_2• 7 years ago

The purpose of a computer game is to get you to play it. All the time. Every waking moment if possible. Companies know this.

You will make more money for the company if you're addicted!

Facebook, YouTube etc. are all doing the same: the more you use it, the more money they make.

Until the law intervenes, they'll keep doing it.

xxs7• 7 years ago

"I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue. "

This must be sarcastic, the entire monetarization model depends on being gambling and -unregulated- gambling at that. No laws, no deposit/spending limits, no gameplay limits, no age restrictions, no regulatory reports, no compliance, no declared 'return to player' (save China), No Taxation. It's a loophole.

Cthulhu_4• 7 years ago

It's willful and there's seriously smart people and engineers that crunch the numbers and do customer testing to optimize these. It came from mobile and Facebook games (Zynga) and made the transition to console/PC games about ten years ago, in the west it was popularized by Team Fortress 2, followed by multiple games, e.g. FIFA and Mass Effect 3.

pdkl95• 7 years ago

They know exactly what they are doing. If anyone wants proof, see Torulf Jernström's talk "Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play"[1]. He discusses strategies for building the perfect Skinner Box, and how to design your game around operant conditioning and other psychological tricks that help people become addicted.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

DanBC8• 7 years ago

I wonder if the reluctance of the gaming industry to tackle gambling is willful or due to ignorance of the issue.

From the report:

"62.We were contacted by a member of the public whose adult son built up considerable debts, reported to be in excess of £50,000, through spending on microtransactions in British company Jagex’s online game RuneScape. For example, bank statements showed that in one day the individual spent £247.95 by making five separate payments to the company. The resulting debt caused significant financial harm for both the player and his parents, whose evidence attributed the situation to the fact that Jagex has no limits on the amount of time or money players can spend on the game.118 This demonstrated to us that even companies with good policies to support some aspects of player wellbeing can fall short in other areas."

You don't take £50,000 from a player without realising something's fucked up.

loa_in_• 7 years ago

It's cold calculated and willful. It's just too damn easy to sidestep the law in this matter.

dominicr2• 7 years ago

I'll clarify a little: I know basically nothing about the games industry, so my thinking was along the lines of...

Many years ago, when social media was just starting, maybe somebody thought "Wouldn't it be cool if we could share photos so that we knew what our friends were doing." At the time they might not have forseen all the negative outcomes, the social anxiety, addiction, body dysmorphia, bullying, etc... caused by our buggy psychological processes.

In a similar way I was wondering if the first developer that thought about adapting the normal random item drop in a game and instead making it a purchasable mystery box, actually realised that this fits the definition of gambling and the myriad legal and moral problems that introduced.

In the present day I'm sure there are plenty who know exactly what they're doing or are willfully ignoring the moral issues around loot boxes. But quite often how something is today doesn't fully explain how it started.

dingdingdang• 7 years ago

That should also include watching adverts as a competitive advantage within games marketed for kids - it leads to constant intake of essentially user hostile videos being shown to young kids and it's predatory imho.

demonbae• 7 years ago

Years ago, when I was about 12 years old, I was addicted to RuneScape. Every evening after school, you'd find me cutting down trees, cooking, or venturing into the PvP zone for some awesome gear. One day, someone retired from the game by killing their character, which resulted in all of their items being dropped. I lucked out and snagged more gold than I could have ever imaged. I remember running around the house in joy.

In RuneScape at the time, there was another PvP zone where you could fight another player and bet gold on whether you would win. Now having "expendable gold" and false confidence, I dropped some big money on this PvP zone, and over the course of a day, I lost it all. I was devastated. I've never lost a ton of money in real life, but this left a really sick feeling in my stomach even in the digital world.

Reflecting on this experience, I feel it has actually benefited me. I've experienced the pain and risk that gambling can bring, and have never felt a need to do this with my actual money. To me, games can be a sandbox to learn life lessons without major consequences.

Grangar• 7 years ago

I know right? Runescape back in the day was the perfect sandbox to learn these lessons. I remember lending out my expensive sword to an online "friend" who promptly logged off and blocked me. Lesson learned.

Nowadays all these sorts of transactions have been shifted into auction house-like marketplaces to prevent abuse. I think taking out this human interaction component does more harm than good, especially bundled with the new ability to (legitimately) buy game money for real cash. The adversary moved from other players taking your ingame stuff, to the game's maintainer itself taking real world money.

DanBC8• 7 years ago

When we talk to people who have problems with gambling we tend to see that they all started young, and had an early win.

You can see how if you'd gambled this huge amount of gold, and then won, that things may be different?

ApolloFortyNine• 7 years ago

I used to play a game Puzzle Pirates as a 12 year old, which had an in game currency that could be used to play poker. I easily put 200 hours into that.

And I would say I had a similar experience, you win some, you lose some, but it helps show that it's not just up and up. I haven't spent more than $50 in a casino in my entire life, and the gacha games I have played I haven't spent money outside of the starter packs.

Some people are gonna lose money gambling, with or without games with similar mechanics. I've never seen a study show that the two are in any way correlated. Just that kids are playing these games (with money they get from their parents, if they do spend money).

antpls• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

As it's written in the article, problems arise for a minority of children. From the article, we know little about the background of these children and about their parents. It is possible that those children would have developed an addiction to something else if it wasn't video games loot boxes. Yes, some of them spend thousands, but what if they are millionaires's kids? They play by different rules.

In my opinion, gambling in videos game means your kids will experience the risk of gambling sooner, and if you watch your kid and educate them about it, they can experience it in a safer environment than when they are adults.

To me, banning virtual loot boxes is extreme and doesynt solve the actual problem (education programs are misaligned, lack of mental healthcare programs, etc). Addiction might reveal a problem, but it's not necessary the root cause.

crispyporkbites3• 7 years ago

Honestly those boosters are a scummy product and we would all be better off without them.

dgellow• 7 years ago

We even have an alternative system that has been proven: the Living Card Games (LCG) system from Fantasy Flight.

Instead of boosters a serie of card is divided in “chapters” that are fixed and have a balanced distribution of cards. Every other month a new chapter is released, at a fixed schedule. All cards are known so you can decide which chapter you care about and want to buy. And a few times each year a big expansion pack is released, dedicated to one faction or group of cards.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/more/living-card-games...

JauntyHatAngle6• 7 years ago

Because magic the gathering cards are an actual item tradeable for actual money to other players and resellers. It's still questionable in many ways, sure.

But many of these virtual items are closed economies with the supply entirely owned by the producer of the game. These have no intrinsic value outside of this closed system and there is no ability to exchange them for real money.

I'm not saying booster packs are necessarily morally correct either, but want to highlight that there is a qualitative difference between them and most loot box economies.

seventhtiger2• 7 years ago

So the reason Magic is different is because you are actually gambling for things with monetary value? That doesn't sound right.

I'd think it'd be less like gambling if the rewards had no monetary value, like random candies or skins in a video game. Then even the hope of getting your money back isn't there. You know all you're getting is just candy or toys.

preommr• 7 years ago

Not having intrinsic value is why these mechanics were allowed in the first place. If they do have intrinsic value then it's straight up gambling. There's almost no difference between gambling with casino chips and magic the gathering cards in terms of what makes it gambling.

earenndil• 7 years ago

Even millionares' kids should not be spending thousands of their parents' dollars indiscriminately. If we don't hear horror stories about it, it is because those parents are able to absorb the cost, but it still doesn't teach the kids good money habits.

bsder2• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

I don't necessarily disagree.

However, if I want card X for Magic/Pokemon, I can look up the card online, find its value, and buy the card. Sure, I can buy booster packs, but they are not the only way to get the card I want.

With online games, loot boxes are often the only way to get what you want. That's not good.

In my opinion, gambling in videos game means your kids will experience the risk of gambling sooner, and if you watch your kid and educate them about it, they can experience it in a safer environment than when they are adults.

The problem is that you are up against companies that are spending a lot of money to optimize the addictiveness of their product. We already know how the lack of regulation turned out in one sector(smoking)--and we especially penalize them if they try to target children.

davemp• 7 years ago

However, if I want card X for Magic/Pokemon, I can look up the card online, find its value, and buy the card. Sure, I can buy booster packs, but they are not the only way to get the card I want.

If anything, Magic teaches you that gambling is usually the worst way to get the card you want.

Smithalicious• 7 years ago

The difference is that loot boxes can drain an arbitrary amount of money whereas with trading cards you will eventually have enough duplicates that you can sell them and buy all remaining cards at market price. And if you want a specific thing you can just buy it outright.

skocznymroczny2• 7 years ago

The physical boosters are different, because they are set in stone and they're just there, ready to be bought. The odds are set and won't change.

With lootboxes, you allow dynamic regulation, which can be abused. For example, a famous streamer is opening your lootboxes live? Give him better droprate so that he constantly opens "Epic" items, so that his followers think it's so easy and want to try it for themselves too. See a whale opening your lootboxes? Starve him when it comes to loot for a bit to make sure he buys more lootboxes.

henrikschroder• 7 years ago

Another aspect is that the physical items take up actual physical space. You have to store them somewhere, and you have to look at them, and you might easier come to the realization that what you are doing is completely ridiculous.

And for the sellers of these physical items they also take up space, shelf space, and seeing a large number of extremely similar items for similar games in one retail location, might also clue you in faster on how ridiculous the thing is.

The physical items quickly run into physical limitations, which is good. The virtual items on the other hand have zero limitations, zero rules, it's all just pixels and database entries, and the presentation of what you "have" can be managed, hidden, manipulated, so that you still think you have nothing and need to buy more pixels.

PeterisP• 7 years ago

Scratch-off lottery cards also are set in stone and they're just there, ready to be bought. The odds are known to the public (and probably right there on the card), the card has a fixed value but until you've bought it you just don't know if this card will be worth $0.25 or $500.

That's 100% gambling. And the concept is soooo very similar to booster packs.

PeterStuer2• 7 years ago

Yeah ... except the whole video game gambling is fine-tuned and relentless in its pursuit to prey upon the vulnerabilities and blind-sights of the very exploitable. It is an addiction machine fishing for kids to enthrall.

By all means educate your kids, but also make sure to protect them at their most vulnerable against an 'opponent' in a very uneven playing field.

As for your comparison to trading card game boosters: sure, there are some dimensions of the experience that are similar. Varying rarity and desirability of items contained in a purchased container that does not reveal its content until after purchase. There are also things that are vastly different. There are things like the virtualization of the transaction (spending online virtual coins, even though you purchased them with real money has been proven to be psychologically very different from a cash transaction), the sensory stimuli that are build into the opening rituals (real card packs at most can optimize the tearing experience and the smell of the freshly opened pack, which they do btw) which makes it a very different matter.

Sometimes there are real grey zones when it comes to the balance of overprotectiveness vs predation. It is not because the delineation can't be made extremely precise that we can't identify that some things are clearly outside of the acceptable middle.

IMHO lootboxes do not fall into this grey area, and are clearly a predatory mechanism that the most vulnerable should be prevented from having to be in a perpetual armsrace against.

faceplanted• 7 years ago

It's not just virtual currencies, it's permanence and tradability, kids don't just buy booster packs and take what they can get, they trade cards in complex ways, in some cases gift them to friends who wants to play, and the stack of cards is a visual representation of how much you've spent, whereas in some games, PUBG Mobile for example, your cosmetics literally disappear after a fixed time and if you have many duplicates of a common item, you can trade them, but only for the in game currency that can only buy the cheapest forms of crates.

Also, depending on the platform kids can spend their parents money with no oversight if their parents don't understand how in app payments work, whereas most parents would never send their small child to a store with their credit card unsupervised.

wickerman• 7 years ago

Because the crucial thing about lootboxes is that in-game currency obfuscates the actual value of your purchase. You know when you buy a booster pack how much that booster pack is worth in real life money; you don't when you're buying lootboxes. When I was a kid and bought booster packs I knew how much they were worth because I also knew the value of each card and how much they compared to other physical stuff I could buy (candy).

daemin7• 7 years ago

To me banning virtual loot boxes is the right way to go. There is no real reason for them to be there except to trigger that random reinforcement mechanic that gambling also triggers. They also make the gameplay of the game worse in order to support the economy of loot boxes.

swebs• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

Yes please! Or at least just the slot machine aspect. It would be great if you could buy a box of cards and know exactly what's inside.

Horba• 7 years ago

You can. These are called Challenger Decks.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/challe...

lawtalkinghuman2• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

Video games are always available. You can purchase lootboxes 24/7 without any real effort. They use the same techniques to manipulate people as various casino gambling games. There have been players, especially some with learning difficulties, who haven't really been able to tell the difference between virtual currencies and real currencies and have ended up spending quite staggering amounts of money on lootboxes or virtual crap.

Pokemon cards, Panini football stickers and so on generally have to be purchased in a real world shop - either a newsagent or a comic book or games shop. There is a physical limit there, and a limit imposed by social reality. I'd like to think that if a twelve-year old walked into my local supermarket and wanted to buy £1,000 worth of Pokemon cards, the shop owner would probably query whether that's a good idea.

(There's also the issue that, strictly, by common law in England, any contract entered into by a minor for all but the most essential goods is voidable on the grounds of capacity.)

Lootboxes and gambling-like mechanics now exist in all sorts of games. The latest FIFA game has lootboxes and has been determined by PEGI to be rated '3+' and by the ESRB to be suitable for 'E' (Everyone). Up until they were patched out in response to critique, NBA 2K20's lootbox functionality took the form of literal slot reels, in a $60 premium game.

If a parent goes and buys children Pokemon cards or Panini stickers, they kind of know what's going on. If a parent goes and buys a game with zombies and chainsaws on the cover, and a Mature or Adults-Only rating from the ESRB/PEGI, they know their kids might see a fair amount of blood and guts.

No ordinary person who isn't familiar with the details of the video game industry thinks a FIFA or NBA game contains gambling. When faced with Doom, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, something like FIFA or NBA 2K seems a relatively 'safe' option - except 3+/Suitable for Everyone rated games now have gambling in them.

For some real examples of how this is affecting people: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48925623

beatgammit4• 7 years ago

I buy booster packs for MTG because I like drafting and sealed deck events. Randomness here is a good thing because it makes gameplay more skill based than money based when compared to constructed decks (build from your collection).

If I want a specific card, I'm not going to gamble with boosters, I'll just buy the card outright at the store.

And that's the primary reason I stopped playing online games like MTGA and Eternal: playing draft was too expensive and not as fun as playing in person. A lot of people online would "rare draft" instead of drafting to win, and the social aspect is completely missing compared to FNM. I think that's because you can't trade cards online, so your options are: pull the cards you want or use craft them, and rare drafting improves your ability to do both.

I'm not very happy about the direction online gaming is going, so I'll have to be very careful about how I introduce my children to the concept to help them see it for what it is.

fnord123• 7 years ago

And that's the primary reason I stopped playing online games like MTGA and Eternal: playing draft was too expensive and not as fun as playing in person.

I've never played them online and just assumed you would get access to all the cards so you could build your deck as you wished. You have to pay for the different cards?

dragontamer4• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

Because I can buy the actual cards I want on the secondary market and avoid the bullcrap that is booster-packs.

Secondly: Drafting and "Sealed" decks are extremely fun. Being stuck with only 6-booster packs worth of cards (no trading allowed) is great. You have enough cards to probably make a good deck. MTG is well balanced that some of the best cards are common (Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, etc. etc. are "power" commons that would be a first-pick in drafts). So the drafting / sealed format ensures that most decks have the important, powerful, cards needed to make a decent deck.

--------

You can't sell skins on a secondary market. Heck, you don't even own the skins in a video game.

In effect, MTG is fine because the company who makes MTG cards aren't predatory assholes. MTG could very well become predatory in the future, but they're actually very well balanced in my experience.

decoyworker• 7 years ago

They probably should be. If you are buying a chance then it is gambling. If it is gambling then laws should treat it as gambling.

zumu• 7 years ago

If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops?

We really should.

Generally, buying and opening a $4 magic booster pack gives you a shot at a card worth $30+ (sometimes 10x more) on the secondary market, but it's a lot more likely you get card worth $1.

This is clearly gambling.

AFAIK, Wizards only gets away with this by pleading ignorance to the secondary market value of the cards and claiming the contents of each pack is worth the same amount. To this end, they can't discuss prices internally, even though they definitely know if a card is very powerful, it is likely to be sought after and expensive.

Now a lot of you will say, "No one opens packs for cards, people just buy the cards they need." Well, that is easy to say when you have $500 dollars of disposable income to put towards a single Magic deck (which will be obsolete within the year due to rotating sets). As a child, I couldn't afford all the cards I needed for my decks, so I bought packs and cracked them. Specifically, I would buy a box of booster packs and hope to get lucky. This is what all my friends did, and AFAIK continues to be extremely common among kids.

Moreover, despite feigned ignorance, they do know the relative desirability of each card in a given set. They test very heavily internally. Therefore, they can know how many copies the market will demand, and adjust the rarities accordingly to boost sales of booster packs to the secondary market (the card sellers are also buying bulk booster packs and cracking them to get their stock).

madisfun2• 7 years ago

I wonder when someone in power finally recognizes that Magic the Gathering and other CCGs, especially their digital versions, are essentially gambling machines.

mschuster91• 7 years ago

With collectible card games, one has at least a tangible, transferrable object - meaning if someone wants to sell off their Pokemon/MtG cards, there is a pretty healthy market available. Even if the original manufacturer would go out of business, you would still have the assets.

With DLC gambling (which is what lootboxes really are), however, there are many problems:

1) the device OS manufacturer (Google/iOS) can go out of business, rendering the money one spent on the collectibles worthless

2) the application developer not providing updates for the software to run on new OSes or revoking the software outright, leading to the same result

3) there is no real transferability - at best one can restore their account on a different device, at worst (like in Train Conductor) there is no transferability at all. Moving DLCs across platforms (Android <-> iOS <-> PC <-> consoles) is extremely rare. Selling off the collected DLCs is not possible anywhere.

madisfun2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if transferrable and sellable rewards make CCGs less of a gambling activity. If anything, obtaining a physical object which can be exchanged for cash, with a potential for profit, is the definition of gambling.

Non-transferrable rewards exploit the same weakness of the human psycology, but offer even less in return.

Both kinds of gambling in games should be regulated. It's not easy to define what constitutes a lootbox, and what kind of randomized output is safe. The industry will probably argue that the lootboxes are actually randomized content, not prizes.. From that point of view they sell a non-transferrable experience (service), not a tangible item (product).

Yuval_Halevi• 7 years ago

Good point. 99% of the games for smartphones are free but involved a lot of gambling.

You might win a price every few minutes. It makes people pretty addictive to the games

aglionby• 7 years ago

I completely agree -- it's exploitative and relies on parental intervention for those kids who don't know any better. As others have mentioned, these could be an educational opportunity, but I don't think the experiences described here are representative.

My exposure to these things isn't through any free apps, but Minecraft. The biggest server by player number has 9 different types of boxes for sale from $3 for 10 [1]. Some of them guarantee a number of boxes at a high 'level' of reward - this seems like reinforcing gambling as something that is certain to be beneficial?

[1] https://store.hypixel.net/

FerretFred• 7 years ago

This is a good idea, but they really need to stop all the gambling advertising disguised as kids games on daytime TV. I've observed (UK) that daytime TV commercials mainly consist of Personal Injury Compensation, mail-order-fashion and "games that you can play on your phone, tablet or computer". Always brightly coloured, very animated, and always played by attractive people. Often there's a "social" theme were the participants all get together with their phones and tablets and game, er, gamble a day away together at bingo. Very sad, very cynical and very pervasive. But hey, it brings in lots of tax revenue, so it won't stop anytime soon.

robjan• 7 years ago

I think those adverts are targeted at lonely housewives/husbands and the unemployed rather than children. As you said, they make it seem like these virtual fruit machine/bingo games are very social, when in fact the users are probably sitting on their sofa alone. It's a similar problem though, it's aimed at exploiting a problem (loneliness) and replacing it with another problem which generates a recurring income.

tonyedgecombe• 7 years ago

But hey, it brings in lots of tax revenue, so it won't stop anytime soon.

The current government seems willing to crack down on other areas of gambling, Ladbrokes have announced they are closing 700 shops because of tighter regulations around slot machines.

tenebrisalietum• 7 years ago

No one watches daytime TV anymore except old people in the US. Is it different in the UK?

travisoneill1• 7 years ago

It might actually be better to let them learn the hard way before they have real money to lose. Has anyone studied the relation between this and gambling as an adult?

deepnet• 7 years ago

Sounds like a solution a desk jockey lawmaker, or at least to their knee-jerking constituent pitch-fork mob demanding justus wouls come up with!

But in reality a ban prevents regulation and will usher in an era of illegal underground loot-box mods with hyper effective sublimal hypno-tech.

Well I mean the prohibtion of kitten-huffing should be example enough of the consequences of an unregulated drugs bazaar.

Better to have government issued loot boxes provided to children at school, like the UK lottery or the sugar-tax

/Sarcasm

But seriously the way things play out on the street is rarely how they look on paper as idealistic laws.

The solution ?

A little of both ;-)

DanBC8• 7 years ago

The actual report is here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z...

I found this remarkable: "‘Lack of honesty and transparency’ reported among representatives of some games and social media companies in giving evidence."

Some quotes from the report:

62.We were contacted by a member of the public whose adult son built up considerable debts, reported to be in excess of £50,000, through spending on microtransactions in British company Jagex’s online game RuneScape. For example, bank statements showed that in one day the individual spent £247.95 by making five separate payments to the company. The resulting debt caused significant financial harm for both the player and his parents, whose evidence attributed the situation to the fact that Jagex has no limits on the amount of time or money players can spend on the game.118 This demonstrated to us that even companies with good policies to support some aspects of player wellbeing can fall short in other areas.

You don't take £50,000 from a player in microtransactions without realising something is fucked up.

65.With so many games featuring microtransactions, we asked other leading games companies what they do to prevent people from spending more than they are able to in a game. Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite: Battle Royale, said that although it has no specific cap on how much people can spend, purchases are limited to what is in the virtual shop and so the maximum anyone could spend would be about $200 a day.124 The company’s director of marketing suggested that it is an individuals’ responsibility to manage spending and that the company provides tools, including parental controls, “to allow players to make those decisions for themselves.”125 However, as we have already examined, parental controls are of limited effectiveness when it comes to adult players.
66.The games companies we spoke to were generally reluctant to accept that they might have a role or responsibility to intervene proactively if a player’s spending fell outside of normal patterns. Moreover, they said that it would be too difficult to determine what level of spending might be harmful. Alex Dale, senior vice president for King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga, told us that while it used to alert users when they reached a certain spending threshold, it had stopped doing so because of player feedback. He told us:
> we would send an e-mail out when a player’s spend was $250 in a week for the first time. It was an e-mail that said, “We notice you are enjoying the game a lot at the moment. Are you sure you are happy with this?” […] We got back, “I wouldn’t spend the money if I didn’t have it” and things like, “I’m fine, please leave me alone”. We felt it was too intrusive so we stopped doing that.126
67.Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones told us that the games industry might learn from approaches in the gambling industry, which has much clearer, industry-wide protocols enabling people to self-exclude from spending.127 She told us that “gaming is several years behind gambling in relation to protecting the vulnerable”, a situation that the then Minister described, if true, as “lamentable”, adding that “the industry has a job to do.”128 When we asked Neil McArthur, Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission, whether games companies should be obligated to monitor how much people spend, identify people with a problem and proactively support them, he responded that, “this is an area where progress needs to be made.”129 His colleague Brad Enright went on to tell us that self-exclusion measures to protect players “could be adopted by the video games industry voluntarily to address some of the concerns about excessive time [and] excessive expenditure.”130 Yet the Royal College of Psychiatrists goes further in suggesting that:
> There should be no in game spending by children. Children are less prepared to deal with the potentially addictive nature of some modern computer games and are less able to make informed decisions about spending.131

Apple, Google, and game makers need to understand what's happening here. This is a push towards regulation. They need to implement pretty effective self regulation or UK government will impose strong regulation upon the industry.

Slippery_John2• 7 years ago

Apple, Google, and game makers need to understand what's happening here.

I'm pretty sure Apple understands. That seems like the whole point behind their new game subscription deal - the games included aren't allowed to have microtransactions. On the other end of things their screen time and ask to buy features are global, powerful, and not super hard to discover.

Google has similar parental control tools, though that's tempered by the fact that they can't be made global. The Fortnite port on Android, for instance, completely side steps it.

That said, I'm pretty sure neither stores make distinction between gambling and other forms of in app purchases.

darepublic• 7 years ago

Too old to have gambled in games as a kid, but I was at the right age for the POG phenomenon. I remember a rough afternoon at the schoolyard where I went past my limit and lost some of my most cherished pogs.

tablethnuser• 7 years ago

Remember when loot boxes promising valuable rookie cards of baseball players captured America's youth and squandered the nation's fortune back in the 20th century?

Or the countless families devastated by beanie baby addiction?

Me neither. Collectibles aren't the problem.

And it isn't gambling if you can't cash out. Why do you think there's so many casino games in the app stores even though digital gambling is illegal? Cuz they aren't gambling - they're hobbies. Thirty years ago you bought a $20 handheld slot device from the department store. Now you download an app.

notTyler• 7 years ago

1) They have perceived value, which for children who don't know any better, is really important. 2) In many cases you can cash out. Fortnite accounts with'valuable' or rare skins getting hacked and sold is a real thing. Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 both have real actual economies where things that come out of loot boxes have listed values that someone will probably pay you for in REAL WORLD DOLLARS. 3) Gambling is gambling regardless of whether it fits into your worldview and these companies shouldn't be able to sidestep defined and enforced regulations that exist for a reason. That's the issue here.

nabergh• 7 years ago

I don't think people are arguing that collectibles are the problem. They're arguing that the gambling is.

In this context, we're defining gambling as exchanging money for a chance at receiving something of value. I think that's a reasonable definition and it certainly fits here.

someexgamedev• 7 years ago

Do Happy Meals constitute gambling then, because they contain one of eight great toys?

nscalf• 7 years ago

I came into this thread with a strong opinion: Ban loot boxes. I think they weaken the value of all gaming, and I think they take advantage of people. Plenty of things have been banned for attempting to take advantage of people.

Going through this thread, I am softer on the view, but I think there is two big differences between what most people here are saying. First, with cards, you have a physical exchange of money---kids see that money going away and they can't just hit "OK" in a game again to spend money. Second, with online games like demonbae mentioned, you are spending your own money, not your parents money. YOU reap the consequences, not your parents bank account.

I'm less convinced these need to be banned, but I still don't see any upside for people who are not benefiting by getting as much money as possible to be spent in their game.

bazooka_penguin3• 7 years ago

Why this coming into the spotlight now as opposed to collectible sports cards, trading carding games, coin operated gacha/cache capsule machines, etc?

ianferrel• 7 years ago

None of those could result in $thousands charged to parents' credit cards without a lot more effort.

bazooka_penguin3• 7 years ago

These games shouldnt either with parental/family friendly controls. Would that make it good enough? Because I'm pretty sure at least on consoles you need to go through the platform to use saved credit data, and consoles offer parental controls.

GaryNumanVevo• 7 years ago

With trading cards, you can trade with your friends, or buy rare cards on Ebay. Since they're physical, there's no DRM. With skinner boxes, most games don't let you transfer skins so there's no marketplace and the only way to get rare skins is to buy coins and gamble.

bazooka_penguin3• 7 years ago

Physical comes with its own set of problems, like bootlegs, which I've fallen before. And there are games that do have aftermarkets like PUBG and Counster Strike iirc. Are those blameless? They were/are some of the biggest lootbox games actively played today

Edit: it's to its

knlam• 7 years ago

This has me thinking all games with loot box mechanic should be labeled 18+

scarface74• 7 years ago

And this is the unsung hero of Apple's new Apple Arcade subscription -- 100 games, no loot boxes, pay to win crap. You can safely pay $4.99 and the entire family can have access to the games without having to worry about this crap or advertising.

It's a win for everyone.

Publishers are reportedly getting paid up front so they don't have to worry about not making their money back on their investments.

Consumers avoid the above mention pitfalls of modern mobile gaming.

Apple is "commoditizing its complements" and making iOS/MacOS/iPadOS/tvOS a more attractive platform for casual gaming.

EDIT: Corrected the price is $4.99 not $5.99.

nacs• 7 years ago

You can safely pay $5.99

Minor correction: It's $4.99 per month

Ban kids from loot box gambling in games

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