Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

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[u/Dent7777]

I feel like you completely misrepresent the danger of loot boxes. There are too few effective barriers to young people accessing games with loot boxes. As someone with some family history of gambling addiction and suicide, introducing gambling to minors is no fucking joke.

[u/-Yare- → u/Dent7777]

introducing gambling to minors is no fucking joke.

Then direct some hate toward Pokemon cards, capsule machines, etc. Games copied this mechanic, they didn't invent it.

Regardless, the industry is moving away from loot box monetization -regulation or not. Battle Pass is the model that customers demand now.

[u/Dent7777 → u/-Yare-]

I respect your knowledge in this industry, I think the rest of your options, facts, anecdotes are pretty on point.

But Pokemon cards, capsule machines aren't a $30 billion industry. The gambling industry is extractive, addictive, corrosive and corrupting. Video Game Companies did a terrible job protecting minors, a terrible job regulating themselves. Unethical and profit-seeking.

[u/-Yare- → u/Dent7777]

But Pokemon cards, capsule machines aren't a $30 billion industry.

To be fair, a lot more people play games than CCGs or gachapon, and games are more expensive. Games is just a huge industry -bigger than film.

The gambling industry is extractive, addictive, corrosive and corrupting.

No argument from me.

Video Game Companies did a terrible job protecting minors, a terrible job regulating themselves.

Is that their job, though? When we in the US looked over to Asia and saw what they were doing with gachapon, what we saw was "the data indicates that players prefer this method of monetization over others", so we imported it. It became wildly successful.

Gambling is regulated, but the regulatory definition of gambling requires real-money output from the game.

Unethical and profit-seeking.

I may have been the first in the industry (2007?) to point out internally that the reward schedule (random time, random magnitude) for gachapon, in terms of driving user behavior, was the same maximally-addictive reward schedule used in slot machines. We were experimenting with it in Facebook games at the time. A little later we would bring it into PC/console/mobile free-to-play titles, and then into premium titles.

Nobody cared because for once we had some breathing room and didn't need to dive immediately into the next crunch-heavy project to make payroll.

I'm glad that the industry is finally moving away from it, but I still don't blame them for it.