Loot boxes too similar to “problem gambling” to avoid regulation, report says | Hacker News Reader

Loot boxes too similar to “problem gambling” to avoid regulation, report says

arstechnica.com

24 pointselsewhen15 comments

Major discussion 3 days ago;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26680235

Looking forward to the day mobile game developers stop their whale-harpooning degeneracy. It's extremely difficult to do discovery of good games on the play store when the top lists are full of games with lootboxes. It is almost always a signal of in-game incentives to push you to pay to advance.

Harpooning a whale is a strange metaphor for selling a product to a willing and consenting customer.

If it looks like a whale, swims like a whale, and spends like a whale, then it probably is a whale.

These companies have created an entire industry on identifying, tracking, and incentivizing whales, at the cost of wrecking casual gaming "for the rest of us".

Maybe I'm just selfish, but I want these companies to go fishing, target MY consumer behaviors, set ME in your sights. My wants, and perhaps the wants of a vastly larger player-base, are being ignored in favor of whales.

Crack addicts are willing and consenting consumers. Doesn't mean they aren't acting under a physiological and psychological duress from their addiction. The evidence has clearly shown that gambling is analogous for many people.

A willing and consenting customer is not always of sound mind or capable of consent. Spending tens of thousands on mobile games may be fair evidence of lacking the capacity for consent.

I'm not sure that a gambling addiction comprises an inability to consent. It's a common belief that someone needs to "save addicts from themselves", but I can't see any moral basis for anyone else to claim the authority to do so.

I think the argument goes like this: If you think anyone can be incapable of consent at any time, you probably think that because sometimes people's brains are not able to figure out what they really want. If you think that sometimes people's brains can't figure out what they want, then you probably think that irrational behavior is a good sign of that. If you think that irrational behavior is a good sign of incapacity to consent, then you probably think that spending tens of thousands on mobile games is evidence of the incapacity to consent to do that.

You're welcome to get off that line at any point, but you'd have to pick one of the steps, and they all seem reasonable.

I'm not 100% sure how the following quote applies, but it seems like it's relevant somehow:

"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

Nearly all human behavior is irrational.

if your plan to make big money is to take advantage of people's addictive personalities so they give you more money than is good for them, then you're scum lol

>> or at least requiring more fully transparent "odds" statements about the likelihood of specific in-game items in those loot boxes

Published odds is definitely needed. When I bought physical packs of baseball cards as a kid, by the mid/late 90s they had odds listed on the back of getting the special cards, autographs, etc. That was absolutely vital to being an informed consumer.

What is a loot box?

Thing mostly used in games where you pay real money to be able to randomly obtain set of digital items. You often don't get the thing you want. It's also worse than gambling as you can't sell or trade the thing you got for real money again. Also known as gacha in eastern countries (origins from gachapon).

The games usually use dark patterns to lure people into doing the gambling to get over obstacle faster, or getting the milestone the player wants faster, by having a really long time consuming task otherwise. Before lootboxes, in west these kind of things were offered as micropurchases, but gacha popularized the more toxic approach. Another dark pattern is that, you have to first purchase digital currency before you can roll for a gacha. However, the amounts you can purchase are set amount and you usually will have some left over currency left after all the gacha rolls, and can't use that leftover for anything else. It's there only to make it feel like next time it will be a "bit more cheaper".

Gacha games nowadays are very popular with young and adults alike and make millions. We live in a weird world huh?

Thanks. My kids keep asking to buy shit on games and we have a firm 'no fuckin way' policy.

electronic pokemon cards/football stickers that can't be traded, crossed with a slot machine's presentation (flashy lights, nice sounds, etc)

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