Change my view: loot boxes aren't as bad as people claim they are.

Inb4 “sense of accomplishment” I’m not taking about obviously predatory practices here, more of the basic stuff.

So from what I understand, people are against loot boxes, because they are like gambling for children. I argue that gambling isint inheritly bad, and therefore loot boxes aren’t either. The vast majority of people are able to go to a Casio and have a fun night. The vast majority of children can go to chuck E cheese and not become degenerates. Yes some people go overboard with it, but that’s the same with alhocol, weed, food, etc.

I think a teenager pulling a double shift and spending some money on a virtual slot machine to win a virtual knife skin or some shit is perfectly fine. Yes, some will go overboard, but I think most people are okay.

Change my view

Edit: down voting because you disagree with me is going to lead to the same echo chamber we had on reddit. I’m actually trying to have a discussion on this

robbieIRL,

I think with kids and loot boxes, it’s not an issue of people should spend money how they want, but more about being left out.

If it was one game and one kid, loot boxes sure, it’s a bit of harmless fun. But as soon as there are a bunch of kids, and one kid has a better item, every kid has to have the better item. And it’s all blind luck who gets what,unless you spend everything you have

ryathal,

The big difference is loot boxes don’t actually return real value. Gambling in a casino has the potential to win money, trading cards have 3rd party markets, arcades are getting pretty crap now but still have prizes. You can’t sell things from almost all loot boxes, you can’t just buy the reward instead.

PenguinTD,

Just to lay out the points, I think real life stuff like card packs, gacha ball/box, rigged claw/arcade machines are at similar addiction level but slightly better than game loot box. There are aspects why it’s worse than even casinos and we(including this generation that heavily inflicted by lootbox) will be paying the aftermath in the future.

For physical gambling, casino is heavily regulated, all the “approved” machine are giving out reward listed in that odd table and they get audited for payout etc. And people can “opt-out” by signing agreement that get themselves banned from casinos in that region per local government regulation. Maybe they want to stop it, or the doctor determine that you don’t have the self control etc, there is way to get out of that financial/mental trap and are enforceable by law.

Next, the play for fun but only get some chance to win physical stuff (card packs/gacha/arcade), I don’t like them cause it’s very obvious designed mental traps that drives people too churn their coins. They have a lot lower barrier of access, their labeling is not regulated like casino(no odd table on the claw machine because apparently it’s “skill” issue? yeah right, that’s exactly what it’s deceiving. ) And if you are not there to just play machine like Racing/DDR/TimeCrisis etc, you have much better time/odd doing those basketball machines. The goal was to have fun doing competition between friends, the reward tickets are just extra. (And if you do the math, those things you can buy at dollar store at much cheaper price. ) For card packs/gacha I’ve seen fucking grown adult argue with store staff why they can’t get the card/thing they wanted, like accuse of staff cheating etc.(while everyone else was there mostly for table top games.) People that are addicted really goes to extreme and disregard what they might inflict to themselves or others.

Last, the loot box, the barrier to access is just the phone, a child can literally click an ad on your phone, install a shiny cute game and started playing and keep pressing the “5 more tries” button, and then they might throw that big button with so many gem that are overflowing the box/bag icon and say you can “save 30% when you buy more with this bundle, plus extra!”. And it’s up to the parent to gate that access and setup their phone/creditcard in ways to prevent bad thousands of dollars outcome you see in the news. Children does not understand until much later. (if you ever see the herd of pokemon go player with more phones than their limbs can access, it’s not healthy “gaming” and is very obvious for any external observer. And they can’t ban themselves from this type of access like casino/lottery.)

Future consequence, everything is statistics, when you have a population, you have distribution, certain amount of people will be vulnerable to these type of psychologically refined “experience” and can’t get out of that dopamine trap specifically designed to trick your age group. When you have your children age group expose to this type of environment, all the stress for preventing them to get addicted to those game is fully on the parent. What “else” can you attract them more? What’s your solution when all they want is 20 more pokemon ball? It’s like exposing people that may or may not be alcoholic and treat them with unlimited cheap booze, it’s only 25c per hit. Then when certain percentage of them became addicted and have social/mental issues, it’s the society’s problem to get them back on track. Social support, medication, consulting, extra regulation, etc, etc all the fallout are not the responsibility of those company selling it, you as tax payer will be paying for it. And you know what they do if they make big bucks using lootbox? They hire economist/psychologist to further refine that experience, people that addicted would rather skip snack or better food just to have those extra money to throw at the app. AND, for economics, there is that opportunity cost, the money that sunk into those corp would have be doing something different, which IMO even just spend them on chocolate has better outcome than lootbox. Money that eventually become more addictive app is worse then pretty much anything else.

Saying it’s not too bad and you should have self control or parent needs to teach their children properly is the typical misunderstanding of how or why people can become addict and then blame the victim. It’s more or less like you don’t throw Li-ion battery into fire, it’s very violent chemical reaction that there is no stopping once triggered, and for addiction you just need that person and environment to match and then the brain go full steam ahead. They are born vulnerable to that specific substance, thrill of winning and can only regain self control after heavy intervention/regulation. Dare I said it, lootbox games are wiring children’s brain so they become more vulnerable to similar stimulation later down the road. I don’t have actual study to back it up, it would take another 510 years for children playing lootbox games to become adults and then another 510 years to study the aftermath.

conciselyverbose,

Children's brains aren't adult brains. Some of the dopamine manipulation of casinos is bad, but doing the same thing to kid's brains is outright evil. It breaks how they develop, and every kid you sell a loot box to should be an extra felony charge of illegal gambling operations filed against the CEO.

Ignoring that, lootboxes are unregulated gambling, which means they can (and do) manipulate your win rates specifically to optimize for addiction, so they're extremely malicious to adults as well.

Ignoring the gambling stuff, literally all microtransactions fundamentally break the design of games by taking elements designed to reward gameplay and replacing them with mechanics explicitly designed to be unfun and suck money out of you.

Yendor,

These ”gaming” companies are even worse than Casinos, because they’re unregulated and are studying the psychology of addiction to exploits peoples weaknesses to maximise their profits.

They use techniques such as an “early win” to hook people and override their common sense. (It’s illegal for Casinos to do this in most places.) Examples of other techniques are using artificial in-game currencies to dissociate it from real money; and soft-gating, where something is technically free but it has a delay, so you pay a little bit to skip the delay. It’s super predatory.

Also, exposing kids and teenagers to this is wiring their brain to crave gambling as an adult. It’s the same reason we don’t let 13 years olds smoke - by the time their brain has finished maturing, the desire for nicotine is hard-wired for life.

Shere_Khan,

Oh yeah I’m totally down with them needing to be regulated.

As for the kids thing, I don’t put nicotine in the same camp as gambling. The addiction rate in smoking is way higher then gambling. Most 13 year Olds are able to play cool math games black jack without robbing a liquor store

shifty51,

The issue is the potential age of the potential audience. Some people are too young to understand they are gambling money that has fixed value on a CHANCE to win big without understanding the ODDS of winning big, and the marketing team behind this are counting on that. It’s predatory behavior on people too inexperienced to know they are being scammed as the item they get has no real monetary value.

Shere_Khan, (edited )

I have to say again, just because some people have a problem, doesn’t mean we all have to miss out. My uncle is an alcoholic, should I not be able to have some brews and watch the chiefs? Some people eat to much sugar, my kid can’t have a popsicle? Some people gamble to much, so it’s bad for my kiddo to play that coin dropping game?

It’s our job as parents to educate our kids on this stuff.

hayes_,

As a different take, I think it’s just an un-fun mechanic that infects an increasing number of what I’d otherwise consider “good” games.

Because the (broad-stroke) economics of it mean that only 1/100 people actually need to engage with loot boxes for the company to see a profit, they’re incentivized to shove that shit in all of our faces constantly even if most of us hate it.

So, “we all have to miss out” is a huge mischaracterization of how I’d react to loot boxes being banned.

codRL,

What is better, offering that skin for a one-time price or putting it in a random box and selling a chance at getting the skin? Let’s say the regular price is $20. Now if the gambling gave a guarantee at around $25, it might be ethical because you could get the skin much earlier and “save” some money. But these companies aren’t doing that (at least not to my knowledge) because they are predatory and not ethical by nature. If they were, they would offer items for a one-time price AND the opportunity to gamble for it with a chance to get it much cheaper.

Shere_Khan,

That’s what makes it gambling, tho. You can’t go a casino and just buy the prize from a slot machine.

Oneeightnine,
@Oneeightnine@feddit.uk avatar

What if Chuck E Cheese was in your bedroom and it was marketed to make you feel like you were missing out if you didn’t have the thing your friend’s had, but you can’t buy the thing, oh no that’s too easy. We’ll let you buy the chance to own the thing.

Shere_Khan,

I’ll give you the proximity point, it is easier to access loot boxes when they are in a game.

But as for the missing out part, yeah that’s how it works. Your friend wins something from the claw machine or gets a bunch of tickets, now you want that. That’s part of the fun, your parents could just buy the toy but that’s lame

DarraignTheSane,

But your parents can’t just buy the toy. The only way to get the toy is through the element of chance - sometimes with a near zero win chance - by spending real world money.

The only reason it’s not de-facto gambling is that there are consolation prizes, but in most peoples’ view that doesn’t make it morally okay to push on children, nor does it make it completely not gambling either. It’s just gambling with consolation prizes.

Shere_Khan,

I disagree that most people view it as bad. Arcades and stuff have been around forever, and are still being used by a ton of people. Just because you don’t want send your kids to chuck E cheese doesn’t mean most people agree with you

DarraignTheSane,

You keep relying on the Chuck E. Cheese anology, but it simply doesn’t work. At Chuck E. Cheese the prizes are a bunch of toys that your parents could otherwise buy, and the fun is in playing the games themselves which pay out tickets toward earning those prizes. That is in no way the equivalent of gamble boxes in video games.

Gamble boxes contain prizes that can’t be bought outside the game, and in nearly every case contain prizes that can’t be bought with the “consolation prize” (i.e. “tickets”) that are dropped when you otherwise win nothing or very little compared to the actual prizes. And there is no inherent “fun” in clicking an “UNLOCK BOX” button compared to actually… playing a game in order to earn prizes. Not comparable at all, really.

If you’re going to try to convince people they’re not gambling (and you have quite the uphill battle to fight), you’re better off likening them to blind bag grab-packs of card games / collector cards / toys, etc. - Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, sports cards, blind-bag toys etc. That is their closest real-world equivalent. Many would argue that those are also a form of gambling, as well.

Shere_Khan,

I like a lot of your points, but I have to correct you in one area, I’m not trying to convince people this isint gambling. I don’t think that casual gambling is a bad thing.

DarraignTheSane,

Well fair enough, that is a different conversation. I’m not ready to take a hard stance on how it impacts children, people with addictive personalities, etc. but all I know for certain is that it doesn’t feel right to include it in virtually every online video game, and it sure as hell got very annoying and tiresome very quickly years ago when it started.

Shere_Khan,

Oh to be sure, there are way to many examples of jerks taking the loot box concept too far. But I’m not sure I’m ready to demonize it like some people do

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