The first Atlantic City expedition for Fallout 76 will be released Dec 5, 2023. It will be on the public test server starting Oct 3.

pimento64, 7 months ago

Oh yeah, Fallout 76 exists. But if that wasn’t offensive enough already, we’ve already been down this road in RuneScape (especially with the help of Mod Jed) and innumerable others: adding a casino to an MMO in which players can gamble in-game money is done for the purpose of “cleanly” courting gambling addicts and the people who prey on them. Not to mention the fact that you can always find a way to parlay a microtransaction into more in-game money, no matter what. But tricking people into gambling their money away isn’t the full picture. Real-world trading is a fact of life for every MMO, and by instituting a new game mechanic that encourages it, Microsoft gets to play the same game Jagex does: create the demand for account selling, gold/caps selling, and item selling, attract the RWTers who have no issue paying for membership on a dozen different accounts, and enforce the rules against the ones who start making trouble. Do some of that yourself and you’re effectively double and triple dipping on your own customer base. Ban the most egregious sellers when they get too recognizable and you’re all set. The RWTers don’t care because the account membership costs are a comparatively small amount of overhead for them, so the system is stable: foster addiction, encourage a flow of dirty money, skim some off the top of all of it, and cut yourself a slice whenever you want. Oh, and make a shitload more money on subscriptions alone. Given how businesses operate in 2023, I suspect that you get fired by your investors if you don’t do this, because that’s money on the table.

DarkGamer, 7 months ago

When engagement and player counts are important, promoting addictive aspects of games is lucrative. Many games are addictive not because they are skinner boxes giving occasional rewards, (and many are,) but rather because they are fun to play. In that sense, every game aims to exploit addictive and compulsive behaviors.

Some additional context:

• In Fallout 76 there are already buildable slot machines in C.A.M.P.s, but players can only gamble insignificant amounts of in-game currency, (10 caps,) at a time presently. They're more useful for the luck buff they provide than making the number go up.
• Fallout 76 is already a skinner box in the sense that a lot of getting to endgame involves trying to craft weapons and armors that have specific randomly assigned bonuses, from a pool that includes many undesirable ones. With a few exceptions, the most desired weapons and armor are not tradeable so lots of farming is needed to get additional random chances to get the perfect item, with low odds of doing so. This is far more exploitative than what I suspect they have planned for casino gameplay.
• There is a real-world market for Fallout 76, but this game doesn't encourage real-world trading as much as one might assume. Players are limited to 40k caps, and caps are not as valuable as other in-game currencies. Currencies like the ones needed to roll random item bonuses, or to get special item plans from vendors, are far more valuable and are not tradable or purchasable with caps. Most long-time players are at the cap limit and have to find random stuff to spend it on even as they farm other needed currencies.