It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Also people buying magic boosters (having been one myself) are absolutely attempting to make a 'profit', otherwise you would only ever buy singles.
They're scratcher level gambling. Spend a fiver, maybe get $20, $50, $100! Just because you don't intend to sell the chase cards doesn't mean its not a profit. MTG players know what those cards sell for, they know the prices tend upwards on good cards. It's how you justify the purchases to yourself instead of just buying singles.
Yeah, actually that is what that means. If you don't recoup the financial cost of purchasing the cards you aren't making a profit.
And yes, you need to sell things for money to make a profit (or at least walk away with something with more monetary value that you plan on selling).
You cannot make a profit if you are not intending to sell.
I have mentioned that I am selling out of the game, right? I think I've been pretty explicit about it.
And while I don't have the spreadsheet to back up every last penny I dropped on packs and singles, uh, I'm definitely making a lot more back per card than I spent. Even if I sold the remainder for half their current value, I'm pretty sure I'd be comfortably ahead of the game (even accounting for inflation).
This might not be a common experience, but I cannot imagine it's a terribly unique one either.
And yes, waiting years and decades sees a lot of fluctuation. Even day to day, the app I'm tracking a fraction of my cards in (~2,600 right now) will see cards swing. One day I see a card has lost like $10 and is now worth a buck, another day some old rare I happen to have 2 of went from 50 cents to $20 because new cards were revealed that had incredible synergy with those. It's like a stock market, except instead of little imaginary bits of a company, it's literal card stock. Some go up, some go down, the general trend is that the value of what I own has increased about 7% since I started tracking it earlier this year. On average.
This does require actually, you know, being able to sell this stuff. If a card is 'worthy' $50 but nobody is interested in buying it, well I guess I might have to drop the price or try to reach more people. Condition is a big thing in this community, the tiniest of nicks or imperfections can take a card from 'near mint' (nm) to 'played' and suddenly they expect 10 or 20% off. Which is why I price on the low end of things and note that, to account for any minor discrepancies in grading.
Hell, there are professional services for grading Magic cards (along with sports cards), but that's its own controversy (it's considered by many to be a scam). One of the several Magic financial youtube channels went over this recently (Alpha Investments, who is in and of himself a bit of a controversial figure).
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Futures markets aren't randomized and aren't controlled by the house. They hit some of the same *buttons* but not exactly gambling.
That said the value of very old packs *is* gambling. Because of the nature of the pack and why it's bought and sold.
Physical gambling machines nowadays can make use of most of the videogame psychological tricks like portraying a random loss as somehow close. A slot machine just needs to pay out a certain average over time so lottery machines can put in as many fake almost wons of two out of three matching and whatnot as they can.
There are obvious exceptions like weighting towards new players, most of which is due to regulations than physical limitations.
That reminds me of the time I got someone pissed off at scratch tickets by correctly predicting the hidden bits based purely on assuming that they put as many fake almost wons as possible in there.
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
Well no. But that is OK because neither is McD ok with such a definition: and its for this reason that Happy Meals do not meet it.
1) Happy Meal toys arent random. You can choose which toy you want.
2) Happy Meals are not sold to childrnen. They are sold to adults with children so that the children have something to play with when they eat. Its no more gambling for the child than receiving a gift is gambling
The issue is how do you legally define gambling in such a way that CCGs are gambling, but happy meal toys aren't. Legally defining things is always a tricky business, even if you can easily sort them.
With that in mind, being able to (optionally) pick your result sounds like a good way to legally define something as not-gambling. Applying that to Magic, you end up with the ability to buy an arbitrary set of cards at retail for about the cost of a pack; this would certainly have an effect on Magic card prices.
I... i just did? They currently avoid the broadsst definition of gambling.
1) you do not recieve a random reward in a happy meal ergo it cannot be gambling
2) the person purchasing the product is not consuming any randomness if it did exist ergo it cannot be considered gambling.
It would also be easy to place arbitrary spending limits on those things if you called them “psuedo-gambling” (IE things which are gambling but we dont want to call gambling for some reason) and just said “there is a maximum purchase rate on all psuedo gambling equal to x dollars/month
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Futures markets aren't randomized and aren't controlled by the house. They hit some of the same *buttons* but not exactly gambling.
That said the value of very old packs *is* gambling. Because of the nature of the pack and why it's bought and sold.
Not the correct answer
The correct answer is that there are legitimate reasons to pre purchase commodities that are exactly the opposite of gambling.
Lets say you run a sausage factory and so need pork bellies. You know youre going to be producing x sausages/year and so need y bellies/month. You however dont know the prices of pork bellies at the future time and you dont want to take the risk that things change. So you go and buy futures for when you need the product. Then you have the product and you have your price.
Similar thing happens for the seller. They dont know what will happen and also may need capital to produce. So they sell the bellies in advance in order to buffer their business and reduce risk.
Futures markets definitely can be used for speculation but its hard to prevent the speculatory function (IE gambling) without preventing the legitimate reason. That being said; reducing speculation is a valuable goal because it is often just gambling.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Also the futures market is pretty regulated, not as gambling no, but I doubt 13 year olds with their parents CC can use it.
Plus all that reporting and tracking stuff they have to do.
Physical gambling machines nowadays can make use of most of the videogame psychological tricks like portraying a random loss as somehow close. A slot machine just needs to pay out a certain average over time so lottery machines can put in as many fake almost wons of two out of three matching and whatnot as they can.
There are obvious exceptions like weighting towards new players, most of which is due to regulations than physical limitations.
That reminds me of the time I got someone pissed off at scratch tickets by correctly predicting the hidden bits based purely on assuming that they put as many fake almost wons as possible in there.
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
Well no. But that is OK because neither is McD ok with such a definition: and its for this reason that Happy Meals do not meet it.
1) Happy Meal toys arent random. You can choose which toy you want.
2) Happy Meals are not sold to childrnen. They are sold to adults with children so that the children have something to play with when they eat. Its no more gambling for the child than receiving a gift is gambling
The issue is how do you legally define gambling in such a way that CCGs are gambling, but happy meal toys aren't. Legally defining things is always a tricky business, even if you can easily sort them.
With that in mind, being able to (optionally) pick your result sounds like a good way to legally define something as not-gambling. Applying that to Magic, you end up with the ability to buy an arbitrary set of cards at retail for about the cost of a pack; this would certainly have an effect on Magic card prices.
I... i just did? They currently avoid the broadsst definition of gambling.
1) you do not recieve a random reward in a happy meal ergo it cannot be gambling
2) the person purchasing the product is not consuming any randomness if it did exist ergo it cannot be considered gambling.
It would also be easy to place arbitrary spending limits on those things if you called them “psuedo-gambling” (IE things which are gambling but we dont want to call gambling for some reason) and just said “there is a maximum purchase rate on all psuedo gambling equal to x dollars/month
To be clear, I was building off what you said instead of disagreeing with you.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Also something being considered gambling doesn't make it fall under the strictest regulations automatically. There are tiers to this.
Raffles are gambling, they need to meet certain criteria in terms of reporting and value etc, but they can be run by private individuals and I'm pretty sure children are allowed to buy raffle tickets, or if not I've never seen it enforced.
Bingo's treated differently from Poker which is treated differently from slots, and they're all treated differently whether they are online or physical.
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Also the futures market is pretty regulated, not as gambling no, but I doubt 13 year olds with their parents CC can use it.
Plus all that reporting and tracking stuff they have to do.
I didn't say futures markets were bad or wrong or should be more regulated or anything. I just said it's gambling.
Or, rather, to address Goumindong's comment, it can be gambling. If you're buying futures because you actually want the product later then sure, that's not gambling*, but the percentage of people trading futures who actually expect to get a truckload of pork bellies at some point is low enough that brokers will liquidate a futures contract by default if your last trade date is coming up and they haven't heard word from you explicitly saying, "Yes, I actually want my pork bellies, please."
The world is fucking full of gambling and gambling-based mechanisms. The global economy basically runs on a deep stack of gambling. Gambling isn't inherently evil. It's just fucked up that companies are profiting (a lot) on the back of mainlining gambling to kids.
(* I mean, it's still a little bit gambling but only in the sense that, for example, insurance is gambling. You're gambling that paying a little now will save you a lot later. But referring to that sort of wager as 'gambling' in the same sense as Magic cards or Fortnite loot boxes is a bit of a stretch.)
Gambling is economically neutral. Nothing runs on it. (You could maybe consider revenue as the value of entertainment but not for the stock market et al)
Secondary market makes it not gambling or exploitative? Happy meals are gambling, thus... other forms of gambling are ok? I feel my grip on reality is weakening
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Secondary market makes it not gambling or exploitative? Happy meals are gambling, thus... other forms of gambling are ok? I feel my grip on reality is weakening
I think secondary markets (or at least, secondary markets outside of the control of the people making the gambling-esque thing) gives the company a reason to not make it as massively exploitative as it could be.
Little late to it, but I remember a report NPR did on Magic the Gathering a few years ago, and it sounded like from it that WotC (at least at the time) factors in the secondhand prices for cards when deciding on reprints, because it's in their best interest to make sure those prices are low and the cards *just* common enough that people are willing to pay for booster packs to get them. A lot of their contemporaries saw their early rare cards getting sold at triple digit prices and saw $$ from people buying hundreds of dollars of boosters getting those cards, but WotC realized in time that sort of rarity (at least for too many cards) would make the price for entry for new players too high, drive off current players unwilling to put down that much money for the cards they want, and have their game dry up and fail because the whales willing to pay that had noone to play with using their deck that was worth it's weight in gold. Although, this was before random pack tournaments became popular, so that may have thrown a massive wrench into the whole thing.
Video games OTOH have complete control of the existence and methods of any sort of "secondhand" for lootboxes. It could be like Overwatch, where there is no trading, which allows you to do limited time drops and rewards that get people to spend money to get stuff they could never get any other time of the year, or you could have a trading/store system, but set it up to take a cut of real money (like D3's old RMAH) or at least drain premium currency out of the system so more money has to be spent. Most games that do the latter, I believe, also have yearly or biyearly releases where they can end support of the previous game and use FOMO to get people to move on before the non-paying players abandon in droves and the people willing to pay get their finger on the rarity and actual value of whatever it is that the loot boxes drop (Which is something else a physical CCG can't do; WotC can't force everyone to move to a theoretical MtG2, because even if they completely stop printing MtG cards they can't stop people from playing MtG.)
I'm not saying that the whole thing can't be exploitative. But if someone does drop the question "How can lootboxed be bad and CCGs be okay?" and it's an audience that you would lose if you went straight to "they're both horrible," the above is an answer that is at least backed by actual reporting.
Yeahhhhh..... but, why would we cater to an audience that put facts aside if I criticize the card game they played 15 years ago. Should we really shape the conversation around them? Are they really interested in the resolution of Lootboxes, Microtransactions and Gambling in gaming, or are they just shielding a game, outside the scope of the thread, because they have fond memories of it?
Edit: I only answered that part of the post, becase WotC managing rarity to increase profit seems kinda meh to me, it just tells me they will do what it takes for money, wich is what one would expect from most companies.
FANTOMAS on
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Yeahhhhh..... but, why would we cater to an audience that put facts aside if I criticize the card game they played 15 years ago. Should we really shape the conversation around them? Are they really interested in the resolution of Lootboxes, Microtransactions and Gambling in gaming, or are they just shielding a game, outside the scope of the thread, because they have fond memories of it?
Edit: I only answered that part of the post, becase WotC managing rarity to increase profit seems kinda meh to me, it just tells me they will do what it takes for money, wich is what one would expect from most companies.
I get that it's their hobby. If someone came after video games and told me they're the reason for some problems I'd be taken aback and a bit defensive too.
But it does need to be treated like what it is, it's gambling wrapped up in a pretty bow. Shit people who play magic make the joke around "just buy your kid some magic cards and they won't have money for drugs." You can't say that or smirk at that line without acknowledging the point of the comment that you're churning through money and it's addictive as fuck.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
To be clear, who exactly are we talking about 'catering to' in terms of MtG?
Because I feel like it's aimed at me, and I've called it gambling like 5 times now.
Is anyone reading these posts, or am I just wasting time moreso than usual?
Aside from a "but what, like, IS gambling, man?" tangent, I'd say that those who have played and enjoyed the game recognize the lootbox/gambling nature of the randomized packs (there's some wiggle room on scope/severity, but offhand I'd say it's all but a consensus). So it's weird to have it come back up every couple of pages when the conversation comes back to lootboxes.
"BUT THEN WE SHOULD LOOK AT MAGIC!" someone proclaims.
"... okay, sure. We've been over this. A lot. Why are we doing it again like it's new for the fifth time?"
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Yeahhhhh..... but, why would we cater to an audience that put facts aside if I criticize the card game they played 15 years ago. Should we really shape the conversation around them? Are they really interested in the resolution of Lootboxes, Microtransactions and Gambling in gaming, or are they just shielding a game, outside the scope of the thread, because they have fond memories of it?
Edit: I only answered that part of the post, becase WotC managing rarity to increase profit seems kinda meh to me, it just tells me they will do what it takes for money, wich is what one would expect from most companies.
IMO it's not the Magic fans that the argument is for, it's for the people that have little experience with either being told by the ESA that lootboxes are no different from collectable cards and we've had Magic around for decades and baseball cards for just around a century.
With them, you could probably go with "Well there are and have been problems of exploitation with those too, but they can't control whether the people who buy their cards can trade them or earn money from secondhand trading, nor does WotC has the power to stop every game of Magic across the globe to force people to play their new game and start from scratch, both allowing for a level of exploitation and abuse beyond what we as a society had previously deemed acceptable."
As for the controlling rarity thing, oh yeah it's devious, but in the capitalist society we live in often the best we can hope for w/o strict regulation is for circumstances dissuading companies form taking the greediest, most exploitative route that treats customers worse than dirt. And while I wouldn't contest that WotC could come up with a monetization policy that is less exploitative and still keep the lights on, I would humbly suggest that they at least have a higher level of concern for us than they do dirt.
"Ruining it for everyone" isn't just a thing that happens in 2nd grade recess. Lootboxes didn't just appear out of nowhere, the baby steps that arrived where we are now predate video games entirely, and in a legal/political sense they've been treated as various levels of maybe to probably scummy but not a societal level problem.
Eventually a baby step becomes such a problem problem and if we only walk back the last step we're still a baby step away from a problem and we'll be back here next fiscal year having the same argument. How far back we draw the line is a *hard fucking question* but an actual durable solution to this problem is going to mean more than fixing Call of Duty's unlock system, some of the old is going to get scraped off with the new. I don't know how CCGs will weather the fire (if it comes, there's still time for the industry to self regula I can't even type that with a straight face), but they're uncomfortably close to the problem, with things like the old World of Warcraft cards pretty much directly bridging the gap.
To be clear, who exactly are we talking about 'catering to' in terms of MtG?
Because I feel like it's aimed at me, and I've called it gambling like 5 times now.
Is anyone reading these posts, or am I just wasting time moreso than usual?
Aside from a "but what, like, IS gambling, man?" tangent, I'd say that those who have played and enjoyed the game recognize the lootbox/gambling nature of the randomized packs (there's some wiggle room on scope/severity, but offhand I'd say it's all but a consensus). So it's weird to have it come back up every couple of pages when the conversation comes back to lootboxes.
"BUT THEN WE SHOULD LOOK AT MAGIC!" someone proclaims.
"... okay, sure. We've been over this. A lot. Why are we doing it again like it's new for the fifth time?"
I think it's because "It's like Magic!" Is what the video game industry and the ESA are hoping to use as their trump card because they think it would mean that politicians would either have to be okay with it or get lobbied to death by WotC, and perhaps even better for ESA, the Pokemon TCG.
Even if you believe CCGs are not just gambling (which I do) but gambling that needs to be strictly regulated, I think it's good to have a decent argument that puts a wedge between the to so you only have to deal with one at a time. Even if dealing with both would be preferable.
Yeahhhhh..... but, why would we cater to an audience that put facts aside if I criticize the card game they played 15 years ago. Should we really shape the conversation around them? Are they really interested in the resolution of Lootboxes, Microtransactions and Gambling in gaming, or are they just shielding a game, outside the scope of the thread, because they have fond memories of it?
Edit: I only answered that part of the post, becase WotC managing rarity to increase profit seems kinda meh to me, it just tells me they will do what it takes for money, wich is what one would expect from most companies.
I get that it's their hobby. If someone came after video games and told me they're the reason for some problems I'd be taken aback and a bit defensive too.
But it does need to be treated like what it is, it's gambling wrapped up in a pretty bow. Shit people who play magic make the joke around "just buy your kid some magic cards and they won't have money for drugs." You can't say that or smirk at that line without acknowledging the point of the comment that you're churning through money and it's addictive as fuck.
I was definitely defensive too during all those times that people claimed video games make youth violent, and my first answer was "But what about action movies?!", and in thinking and reading about the topic more, I realiced that they were at least part right, for all the wrong reasons, but now you have 10yo kids playing games that glorify war and violence in first person, and games that are used as recruiting tools for the military, some overtly, some not so much and I am deeply ashamed of having dismissed any argument simply because I grew up playing DooM and havent killed anyone yet.
In a previous draft I was considering that simply moving lootbox mechanics and microtransactions to the adult content column would force companies to sanitize their product or at least keep it from the most vulnerable demographic, but I think I was being a bit naive and its probably going to take a more direct and targetted aproach, else we will be playing loophole whack-a-mole for eternity, like we have seen with very violent content marketed to very young audiences with blood colour sliders and such.
And to all those MtG players here, defending the same exploitative mechanics we are trying to erradicate from video games, Ill tell you all one thing, my 2/4 thicket basilisk would have destroyed your deck, might as well turn to collecting pebbles after I play him. (I know its a shit card, but I got a lot of mileage out of it)
Edit: still waiting for the anti-ghosting legislation, Im the real victim here.
FANTOMAS on
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
To be clear, who exactly are we talking about 'catering to' in terms of MtG?
Because I feel like it's aimed at me, and I've called it gambling like 5 times now.
Is anyone reading these posts, or am I just wasting time moreso than usual?
Aside from a "but what, like, IS gambling, man?" tangent, I'd say that those who have played and enjoyed the game recognize the lootbox/gambling nature of the randomized packs (there's some wiggle room on scope/severity, but offhand I'd say it's all but a consensus). So it's weird to have it come back up every couple of pages when the conversation comes back to lootboxes.
"BUT THEN WE SHOULD LOOK AT MAGIC!" someone proclaims.
"... okay, sure. We've been over this. A lot. Why are we doing it again like it's new for the fifth time?"
Because it keeps being brought up and being defended. The last like 3 pages were people defending magic not being gambling or sufficiently different. I didn't think "it's harder to steal mom's credit card to buy mtg cards" was a good defense tbh.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
To be clear, who exactly are we talking about 'catering to' in terms of MtG?
Because I feel like it's aimed at me, and I've called it gambling like 5 times now.
Is anyone reading these posts, or am I just wasting time moreso than usual?
Aside from a "but what, like, IS gambling, man?" tangent, I'd say that those who have played and enjoyed the game recognize the lootbox/gambling nature of the randomized packs (there's some wiggle room on scope/severity, but offhand I'd say it's all but a consensus). So it's weird to have it come back up every couple of pages when the conversation comes back to lootboxes.
"BUT THEN WE SHOULD LOOK AT MAGIC!" someone proclaims.
"... okay, sure. We've been over this. A lot. Why are we doing it again like it's new for the fifth time?"
I think it's because "It's like Magic!" Is what the video game industry and the ESA are hoping to use as their trump card because they think it would mean that politicians would either have to be okay with it or get lobbied to death by WotC, and perhaps even better for ESA, the Pokemon TCG.
Even if you believe CCGs are not just gambling (which I do) but gambling that needs to be strictly regulated, I think it's good to have a decent argument that puts a wedge between the to so you only have to deal with one at a time. Even if dealing with both would be preferable.
Off the cuff, Fortnite is (was?) pulling in roughly an order of magnitude more than WOTC is off Magic. Galaxy of Heroes allegedly pulls in similar money (to Magic), with zero physical production or distribution costs.
Sports Card packs and CCGs may (and in this thread, are indeed) where this shit started, but video games have monetized the fuck out of it in ways that I imagine WOTC would commit crimes against humanity (beyond those they already do...) to achieve.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you. More noting that if anyone is worried about lobbying efforts, I'd keep a close eye on EA and Epic Games these days. But someone from Hasbro should probably get their wrist slapped at some point as well.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Yeah we should craft the law in such a way that hasbro and wotc have to do a little bit of legwork to not target teenagers and children too. EA and Epic pulling silly money because they're using unregulated slot machines needs to definitely be dealt with.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Well, it's not gambling if you lock the agricultural department courier inside a cage on a train, dressed as a gorilla.
Because it keeps being brought up and being defended. The last like 3 pages were people defending magic not being gambling or sufficiently different. I didn't think "it's harder to steal mom's credit card to buy mtg cards" was a good defense tbh.
From my reading of the issue, there are two separate matters at play;
1) are packs of magic cards, physical lootboxes as they are, gambling? I say yes. Some may disagree. I felt the post a page or two ago about gambling being on a spectrum (and regulated accordingly) was very astute. A raffle at a Stag & Doe party is not regulated to the same extent as a billion dollar powerball draw, despite both very much being 'gambling'. Magic is far from a little indie thing or without sin, but digital lootboxes have refined that bullshit into pure liquid malevolence.
2) the severity and likelihood of abuse. This has been a big part of my point. Digital offerings don't take up space. They don't need to be painstakingly sorted. There are realities associated that should be recognized and addressed if we're going to take a serious look at them. That doesn't make it "not gambling", but it makes it "harder to ruin ones life with" in the way that 'whales' spending thousands of dollars per month on mobile games have shown up. I even concede that there are likely some people who have made incredibly poor life choices around CCGs. But the physical vs digital elements are mitigating factors. I can spend ten grand on a mobile game and nobody (but my credit card company) knows. If I buy dozens and dozens of booster boxes of cards, storage alone is either going to eat up a closet or I now have a fashionable new coffee table (that if anyone spills anything on, I will murder them).
I hope it's not being mistaken, but my posts haven't intended to address 2 as a reason they don't fall under 1. Quite the opposite. I started in this thread a little baffled, but the similarities/gambling (gambling adjacent, whatever) elements grew on me.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Nah it's not you at all forar, we're just trying to rebuff the "yeah but I like magic so I don't want it to be regulated and cost slightly more" style posts.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random. You think a definition of gambling that applies to happy meals is a good one? Great.
There needs to be more than spending cash for random returns. The gambler has believe they can make a profit in playing. No one is buying a booster box of mtg cards or buying loot boxes in hopes of making a profit. It's just a system that encourages people to spend (much much) more than they otherwise would.
Unless people are spending $500 in lootboxes in hopes they can sell their account for $1000... If that's the case, sure it is gambling.
Oh. Uh, sorry, but you're wrong. It has a term ("ev", or "estimated value"), people hoard booster boxes for years, decades even, in the hopes of selling them for piles of money, and people will buy and crack boxes (or avoid) based on their EV as established by the community and secondary market.
Why do you think I was able to sell old Alliances packs for $20 apiece when they had an MSRP of $3? Because there existed a chance of pulling a Force of Will, which can be worth well over $100 in mint condition. There are like 5 cards in the entire set that hold some substantial value, the vast majority in the set (and thus, the packs) are worth pennies, maybe a buck or two if one is lucky.
The 'value' in a box is very much something that many (not all) will consider. Savvy players will either go right to the secondary market for what they want (bypassing the randomness and simply paying what they feel is a fair price for the cards they want), or will choose to flat out gamble on opening packs. Drafting is considered by many to be a multi-faceted thing. People will intentionally pick the most valuable cards in the packs they open, but that often leads to a lesser quality deck (random power/expensive cards don't necessarily share synergy between them), so even while opening packs is viewed even by many in the community as a sub optimal choice, some get to enjoy the experience of having limited resources to deck build with, along with a gambling thrill of maybe cracking a super valuable card (who cares if I miss out on $20 in store credit or packs if I get a $50 card in one of the ones I open).
There's a subreddit with 48,000 members (mtgfinance), people who will 'speculate' on a card, hoping to buy them by the dozens or hundreds while cheap only to make a tidy profit when they spike due to an increase in demand.
This is a game with a tiny handful of cards that have sold for six figures USD recently (mint condition Alpha Black Lotus). While many (perhaps most) players aren't eternally contemplating the ev and spec prospects of every pack they open and card they buy, it is nonsensical to dismiss the financial elements present as you are.
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
Futures markets aren't randomized and aren't controlled by the house. They hit some of the same *buttons* but not exactly gambling.
That said the value of very old packs *is* gambling. Because of the nature of the pack and why it's bought and sold.
Not the correct answer
The correct answer is that there are legitimate reasons to pre purchase commodities that are exactly the opposite of gambling.
Lets say you run a sausage factory and so need pork bellies. You know youre going to be producing x sausages/year and so need y bellies/month. You however dont know the prices of pork bellies at the future time and you dont want to take the risk that things change. So you go and buy futures for when you need the product. Then you have the product and you have your price.
Similar thing happens for the seller. They dont know what will happen and also may need capital to produce. So they sell the bellies in advance in order to buffer their business and reduce risk.
Futures markets definitely can be used for speculation but its hard to prevent the speculatory function (IE gambling) without preventing the legitimate reason. That being said; reducing speculation is a valuable goal because it is often just gambling.
I wrote a research paper based on this type of futures based hedging. I used steel and fuel instead of pork bellies, but that was the original intent of the futures market, as a hedge against price increases, and with futures ETFs small businesses can hedge as well. Essentially for the cost of 7 dollars I can protect myself against price increases for steel or fuel for next year.
Nah it's not you at all forar, we're just trying to rebuff the "yeah but I like magic so I don't want it to be regulated and cost slightly more" style posts.
Okay, cool.
I like Magic, and I'd be fine with some regulations landing to improve the consumer experience. It's important to be able to provide critique of things we enjoy, and just because it's a reckoning long overdue doesn't mean it should get swept under the rug. Especially if it's a practice that led to another industry going full Dr. Evil.
I think it's possible to find a happy middle ground, even if an example or two must be made.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
You can usually just ask for a specific happy meal toy when you get one.
I think it's actually corporate policy. So as not to be accused of gambling, I may be remembering it wrong, but I think I heard it somewhere a while ago...Memory is weird though.
Speaking as someone who actually plays gacha games, they are absolutely gambling, even when you don't spend money. Trying to rigidly define "profit" as only relating to real world dollars is asinine and trying to kneecap actual discussion with arbitrary definitions.
I can spend 30 of a currency in a game, even if the game gave it to me for "free", to pull ten random cards from the pool. If I get nothing, have I lost anything? Yes, I have lost a set quantity of a limited resource that now cannot be used again and have thus spent the TIME it took to get that currency for no return. If I got something rare, have I gained anything? Yes, I may have also lost a set quantity of a limited resource in this scenario, but the difference is I have spent the time used to gain it but can now save time in the future using what I have gained. Money never enters the equation, but I have still gambled in hopes of making a profit. Same applies to TCGs.
Speaking as someone who actually plays gacha games, they are absolutely gambling, even when you don't spend money. Trying to rigidly define "profit" as only relating to real world dollars is asinine and trying to kneecap actual discussion with arbitrary definitions.
I can spend 30 of a currency in a game, even if the game gave it to me for "free", to pull ten random cards from the pool. If I get nothing, have I lost anything? Yes, I have lost a set quantity of a limited resource that now cannot be used again and have thus spent the TIME it took to get that currency for no return. If I got something rare, have I gained anything? Yes, I may have also lost a set quantity of a limited resource in this scenario, but the difference is I have spent the time used to gain it but can now save time in the future using what I have gained. Money never enters the equation, but I have still gambled in hopes of making a profit. Same applies to TCGs.
Oh yeah. I've seen the amounts of money that whales throw at Fate: Grand/Order (probably the most visible gacha game) for a single character and is ridiculous. For example, saw a streamer saying that it took him like 800$ to get a particular character. And that's afterJapan had laws passed addressing even more outrageous examples back on 2012:
As widely anticipated, Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has officially declared kompu gacha illegal. According to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun, any developers using the controversial monetization mechanic in their games after July 1 will be subject to fines.
Kompu gacha, or “complete gacha” is a monetization mechanic in social games that heavily incentivizes the practice of gacha — paying a small amount of money to get an item at random, similar to purchasing toys from a vending machine.
Games that use kompu gacha typically promise rare “grand-prize” items to players who can manage to amass a set of specific items, which encourages players to spend more money on randomized gacha draws in order to complete their collections. Although extremely lucrative for Japan’s social game companies — some developers see half their sales coming from gacha — the kompu gacha system had come under fire recently for encouraging gambling, particularly in children. According to industry watcher Serkan Toto, the ban does not affect gacha, just kompu gacha.
As predicted, the ban is covered under Japan’s Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations and the Law for Preventing Unjustifiable Extra or Unexpected Benefit and Misleading Representation. During a press conference announcing the ban, Jin Matsubara, Japan’s minister of state for consumer affairs and food safety said “significantly increasing the passion for gambling is not appropriate to the education of children.”
Bolded emphasis mine. Lootboxes/CCGs/gatchas are gambling, and they deserve to be treated and regulated as such, no matter what companies like EA and Blizzard and WOTC do to get around laws. If they suffer, too fucking bad.
I think I just came up with the one-word answer that encompasses the difference of physical CCGs like Magic and lootboxes/microtransactions. Better yet, it's a word you could almost certainly get the average American behind, and the fear of it reaching it's logical conclusion would probably get the Video game industry to self-regulate, if not take the Facebook approach of agreeing to legislation in hope of having some amount of say in it.
And that word is: Ownership.
When you buy a Magic booster pack, you legally own the cards within that pack and are free to do pretty much whatever the fuck you want with them, with very few exceptions (usually around copyright) and backed by tons of case law. However every game that offers microtransactions or lootboxes will have a clause in their ToS or EULA (which you have to agree to in order to play online) that states that you do *not* in fact own any digital item you purchase, and because of that, the company as the actual owners can dictate what you can do with them, whether that includes trading or a marketplace or not, and that they reserve the right to take away your access to these items for any reason or no reason whatsoever.
And it's that lack of ownership (as this argument would go) and the ethical and legal protections that it entails, that allows videogames to exploit their customers in a way that physical CCGs could never do without breaking the law or going out of business.
Considering that argument could threaten not just lootboxes, but the entire Games as a Service model, I'm pretty sure any politician that's successful in popularizing it would get the ESA to go on their knees to make sure it stopped with just lootboxes... or research every time they ever touched another person to see if they can find a sexual assault scandal to pin on them. One or the other.
I... dont think you found the right answer, or at least not to the problems we have been discussing, unless Im missing something.
On a second reading, no, I strongly disagree with everything on that post, and every single point has been discussed and debunked to exhaustion in the past 50 pages.
FANTOMAS on
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Just ban digital gambling. MtG safe, FIFA not. (Obviously the wording would need to be sorted out, but the key difference is digital / non digital.)
Why? You can kill two birds with one 1/1 stone, they use the same mechanics, the same lures, they target the same vulnerable customers, why should we try to shield one, while trying to take the other down? Please explain this to me.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Maybe I just need to take a step back and relax for a bit, stupid gotcha arguments like that aren't really my usual style. Sorry about that.
I'm just looking around and trying to see what else we could possibly do short of outright trying to limit boosters. Because whatever you're targeting on something like Magic you're going to also have to enforce on something like Pokemon, and "clerk having to decline sale of Pokemon cards to kids" is something that's going to create an epic-level shitstorm in some places about just how far this law would have been taken- and, of course, you're going to get people then saying "What, my kid can buy a Pokemon game all by themselves, but I have to buy him Pokemon cards? WTF, they're the same thing!"
I mean, as far as LCGs, just how successful is L5R these days? I know they still sell the cards, but... you don't hear much of anything outside of what Fantasy Flight themselves advertises. They still have store events and the like, and judging by their store, you're going to be stuck with a pretty hefty bill if you want to have all the cards to go ahead and play top-level...
I mean, if you really want to take it to the extremes, you could also look at all those MMOs that offer the paid things that supposedly get you more loot or better loot on stuff, but don't tell you just how much- I mean, that would be about the same kind of thing, wouldn't it?
This just has to be done well, or it's either going to be ineffective or it's going to snowball out of control and hit everything regarding chance or luck in games in general under the sun and cause a huge mess for all parties involved, because there are people who would take it and run with it saying it doesn't do enough, even.
Nobody is arguing that you shouldn't be able to buy Magic or Pokemon cards. What they're arguing is that the model used to sell Magic and Pokemon cards shouldn't be predatory. Wizards of the Coast could easily change to a model where they sell only pre-made decks or complete card sets for a fixed fee. They don't do so, because they make much much more money by selling card packs. Why sell someone their complete product for $100 when they can get you to gamble to build your collection for $500?
And what about those failed CCGs? How much value does someone's Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Battletech: Dark Ages or Dragon Dice have today?
Posts
How is a futures market not gambling? It's literally betting on the outcome of a future event. Replace "a price increase in pork bellies" with "a touchdown by the Jets" and you have no loss of generality in describing the activity.
I have mentioned that I am selling out of the game, right? I think I've been pretty explicit about it.
And while I don't have the spreadsheet to back up every last penny I dropped on packs and singles, uh, I'm definitely making a lot more back per card than I spent. Even if I sold the remainder for half their current value, I'm pretty sure I'd be comfortably ahead of the game (even accounting for inflation).
This might not be a common experience, but I cannot imagine it's a terribly unique one either.
And yes, waiting years and decades sees a lot of fluctuation. Even day to day, the app I'm tracking a fraction of my cards in (~2,600 right now) will see cards swing. One day I see a card has lost like $10 and is now worth a buck, another day some old rare I happen to have 2 of went from 50 cents to $20 because new cards were revealed that had incredible synergy with those. It's like a stock market, except instead of little imaginary bits of a company, it's literal card stock. Some go up, some go down, the general trend is that the value of what I own has increased about 7% since I started tracking it earlier this year. On average.
This does require actually, you know, being able to sell this stuff. If a card is 'worthy' $50 but nobody is interested in buying it, well I guess I might have to drop the price or try to reach more people. Condition is a big thing in this community, the tiniest of nicks or imperfections can take a card from 'near mint' (nm) to 'played' and suddenly they expect 10 or 20% off. Which is why I price on the low end of things and note that, to account for any minor discrepancies in grading.
Hell, there are professional services for grading Magic cards (along with sports cards), but that's its own controversy (it's considered by many to be a scam). One of the several Magic financial youtube channels went over this recently (Alpha Investments, who is in and of himself a bit of a controversial figure).
Those cards could theoretically be sold for a profit by people who got lucky. They were also definitely still gambling.
Futures markets aren't randomized and aren't controlled by the house. They hit some of the same *buttons* but not exactly gambling.
That said the value of very old packs *is* gambling. Because of the nature of the pack and why it's bought and sold.
I... i just did? They currently avoid the broadsst definition of gambling.
1) you do not recieve a random reward in a happy meal ergo it cannot be gambling
2) the person purchasing the product is not consuming any randomness if it did exist ergo it cannot be considered gambling.
It would also be easy to place arbitrary spending limits on those things if you called them “psuedo-gambling” (IE things which are gambling but we dont want to call gambling for some reason) and just said “there is a maximum purchase rate on all psuedo gambling equal to x dollars/month
Not the correct answer
The correct answer is that there are legitimate reasons to pre purchase commodities that are exactly the opposite of gambling.
Lets say you run a sausage factory and so need pork bellies. You know youre going to be producing x sausages/year and so need y bellies/month. You however dont know the prices of pork bellies at the future time and you dont want to take the risk that things change. So you go and buy futures for when you need the product. Then you have the product and you have your price.
Similar thing happens for the seller. They dont know what will happen and also may need capital to produce. So they sell the bellies in advance in order to buffer their business and reduce risk.
Futures markets definitely can be used for speculation but its hard to prevent the speculatory function (IE gambling) without preventing the legitimate reason. That being said; reducing speculation is a valuable goal because it is often just gambling.
Also the futures market is pretty regulated, not as gambling no, but I doubt 13 year olds with their parents CC can use it.
Plus all that reporting and tracking stuff they have to do.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
To be clear, I was building off what you said instead of disagreeing with you.
Raffles are gambling, they need to meet certain criteria in terms of reporting and value etc, but they can be run by private individuals and I'm pretty sure children are allowed to buy raffle tickets, or if not I've never seen it enforced.
Bingo's treated differently from Poker which is treated differently from slots, and they're all treated differently whether they are online or physical.
There's a lot of nuance to be had.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I didn't say futures markets were bad or wrong or should be more regulated or anything. I just said it's gambling.
Or, rather, to address Goumindong's comment, it can be gambling. If you're buying futures because you actually want the product later then sure, that's not gambling*, but the percentage of people trading futures who actually expect to get a truckload of pork bellies at some point is low enough that brokers will liquidate a futures contract by default if your last trade date is coming up and they haven't heard word from you explicitly saying, "Yes, I actually want my pork bellies, please."
The world is fucking full of gambling and gambling-based mechanisms. The global economy basically runs on a deep stack of gambling. Gambling isn't inherently evil. It's just fucked up that companies are profiting (a lot) on the back of mainlining gambling to kids.
(* I mean, it's still a little bit gambling but only in the sense that, for example, insurance is gambling. You're gambling that paying a little now will save you a lot later. But referring to that sort of wager as 'gambling' in the same sense as Magic cards or Fortnite loot boxes is a bit of a stretch.)
I think secondary markets (or at least, secondary markets outside of the control of the people making the gambling-esque thing) gives the company a reason to not make it as massively exploitative as it could be.
Little late to it, but I remember a report NPR did on Magic the Gathering a few years ago, and it sounded like from it that WotC (at least at the time) factors in the secondhand prices for cards when deciding on reprints, because it's in their best interest to make sure those prices are low and the cards *just* common enough that people are willing to pay for booster packs to get them. A lot of their contemporaries saw their early rare cards getting sold at triple digit prices and saw $$ from people buying hundreds of dollars of boosters getting those cards, but WotC realized in time that sort of rarity (at least for too many cards) would make the price for entry for new players too high, drive off current players unwilling to put down that much money for the cards they want, and have their game dry up and fail because the whales willing to pay that had noone to play with using their deck that was worth it's weight in gold. Although, this was before random pack tournaments became popular, so that may have thrown a massive wrench into the whole thing.
Video games OTOH have complete control of the existence and methods of any sort of "secondhand" for lootboxes. It could be like Overwatch, where there is no trading, which allows you to do limited time drops and rewards that get people to spend money to get stuff they could never get any other time of the year, or you could have a trading/store system, but set it up to take a cut of real money (like D3's old RMAH) or at least drain premium currency out of the system so more money has to be spent. Most games that do the latter, I believe, also have yearly or biyearly releases where they can end support of the previous game and use FOMO to get people to move on before the non-paying players abandon in droves and the people willing to pay get their finger on the rarity and actual value of whatever it is that the loot boxes drop (Which is something else a physical CCG can't do; WotC can't force everyone to move to a theoretical MtG2, because even if they completely stop printing MtG cards they can't stop people from playing MtG.)
I'm not saying that the whole thing can't be exploitative. But if someone does drop the question "How can lootboxed be bad and CCGs be okay?" and it's an audience that you would lose if you went straight to "they're both horrible," the above is an answer that is at least backed by actual reporting.
Basically just poker where you have to buy your hand ahead of time.
Edit: I only answered that part of the post, becase WotC managing rarity to increase profit seems kinda meh to me, it just tells me they will do what it takes for money, wich is what one would expect from most companies.
I get that it's their hobby. If someone came after video games and told me they're the reason for some problems I'd be taken aback and a bit defensive too.
But it does need to be treated like what it is, it's gambling wrapped up in a pretty bow. Shit people who play magic make the joke around "just buy your kid some magic cards and they won't have money for drugs." You can't say that or smirk at that line without acknowledging the point of the comment that you're churning through money and it's addictive as fuck.
Because I feel like it's aimed at me, and I've called it gambling like 5 times now.
Is anyone reading these posts, or am I just wasting time moreso than usual?
Aside from a "but what, like, IS gambling, man?" tangent, I'd say that those who have played and enjoyed the game recognize the lootbox/gambling nature of the randomized packs (there's some wiggle room on scope/severity, but offhand I'd say it's all but a consensus). So it's weird to have it come back up every couple of pages when the conversation comes back to lootboxes.
"BUT THEN WE SHOULD LOOK AT MAGIC!" someone proclaims.
"... okay, sure. We've been over this. A lot. Why are we doing it again like it's new for the fifth time?"
IMO it's not the Magic fans that the argument is for, it's for the people that have little experience with either being told by the ESA that lootboxes are no different from collectable cards and we've had Magic around for decades and baseball cards for just around a century.
With them, you could probably go with "Well there are and have been problems of exploitation with those too, but they can't control whether the people who buy their cards can trade them or earn money from secondhand trading, nor does WotC has the power to stop every game of Magic across the globe to force people to play their new game and start from scratch, both allowing for a level of exploitation and abuse beyond what we as a society had previously deemed acceptable."
As for the controlling rarity thing, oh yeah it's devious, but in the capitalist society we live in often the best we can hope for w/o strict regulation is for circumstances dissuading companies form taking the greediest, most exploitative route that treats customers worse than dirt. And while I wouldn't contest that WotC could come up with a monetization policy that is less exploitative and still keep the lights on, I would humbly suggest that they at least have a higher level of concern for us than they do dirt.
Eventually a baby step becomes such a problem problem and if we only walk back the last step we're still a baby step away from a problem and we'll be back here next fiscal year having the same argument. How far back we draw the line is a *hard fucking question* but an actual durable solution to this problem is going to mean more than fixing Call of Duty's unlock system, some of the old is going to get scraped off with the new. I don't know how CCGs will weather the fire (if it comes, there's still time for the industry to self regula I can't even type that with a straight face), but they're uncomfortably close to the problem, with things like the old World of Warcraft cards pretty much directly bridging the gap.
I think it's because "It's like Magic!" Is what the video game industry and the ESA are hoping to use as their trump card because they think it would mean that politicians would either have to be okay with it or get lobbied to death by WotC, and perhaps even better for ESA, the Pokemon TCG.
Even if you believe CCGs are not just gambling (which I do) but gambling that needs to be strictly regulated, I think it's good to have a decent argument that puts a wedge between the to so you only have to deal with one at a time. Even if dealing with both would be preferable.
I was definitely defensive too during all those times that people claimed video games make youth violent, and my first answer was "But what about action movies?!", and in thinking and reading about the topic more, I realiced that they were at least part right, for all the wrong reasons, but now you have 10yo kids playing games that glorify war and violence in first person, and games that are used as recruiting tools for the military, some overtly, some not so much and I am deeply ashamed of having dismissed any argument simply because I grew up playing DooM and havent killed anyone yet.
In a previous draft I was considering that simply moving lootbox mechanics and microtransactions to the adult content column would force companies to sanitize their product or at least keep it from the most vulnerable demographic, but I think I was being a bit naive and its probably going to take a more direct and targetted aproach, else we will be playing loophole whack-a-mole for eternity, like we have seen with very violent content marketed to very young audiences with blood colour sliders and such.
And to all those MtG players here, defending the same exploitative mechanics we are trying to erradicate from video games, Ill tell you all one thing, my 2/4 thicket basilisk would have destroyed your deck, might as well turn to collecting pebbles after I play him. (I know its a shit card, but I got a lot of mileage out of it)
Edit: still waiting for the anti-ghosting legislation, Im the real victim here.
Because it keeps being brought up and being defended. The last like 3 pages were people defending magic not being gambling or sufficiently different. I didn't think "it's harder to steal mom's credit card to buy mtg cards" was a good defense tbh.
Off the cuff, Fortnite is (was?) pulling in roughly an order of magnitude more than WOTC is off Magic. Galaxy of Heroes allegedly pulls in similar money (to Magic), with zero physical production or distribution costs.
Sports Card packs and CCGs may (and in this thread, are indeed) where this shit started, but video games have monetized the fuck out of it in ways that I imagine WOTC would commit crimes against humanity (beyond those they already do...) to achieve.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you. More noting that if anyone is worried about lobbying efforts, I'd keep a close eye on EA and Epic Games these days. But someone from Hasbro should probably get their wrist slapped at some point as well.
Well, it's not gambling if you lock the agricultural department courier inside a cage on a train, dressed as a gorilla.
From my reading of the issue, there are two separate matters at play;
1) are packs of magic cards, physical lootboxes as they are, gambling? I say yes. Some may disagree. I felt the post a page or two ago about gambling being on a spectrum (and regulated accordingly) was very astute. A raffle at a Stag & Doe party is not regulated to the same extent as a billion dollar powerball draw, despite both very much being 'gambling'. Magic is far from a little indie thing or without sin, but digital lootboxes have refined that bullshit into pure liquid malevolence.
2) the severity and likelihood of abuse. This has been a big part of my point. Digital offerings don't take up space. They don't need to be painstakingly sorted. There are realities associated that should be recognized and addressed if we're going to take a serious look at them. That doesn't make it "not gambling", but it makes it "harder to ruin ones life with" in the way that 'whales' spending thousands of dollars per month on mobile games have shown up. I even concede that there are likely some people who have made incredibly poor life choices around CCGs. But the physical vs digital elements are mitigating factors. I can spend ten grand on a mobile game and nobody (but my credit card company) knows. If I buy dozens and dozens of booster boxes of cards, storage alone is either going to eat up a closet or I now have a fashionable new coffee table (that if anyone spills anything on, I will murder them).
I hope it's not being mistaken, but my posts haven't intended to address 2 as a reason they don't fall under 1. Quite the opposite. I started in this thread a little baffled, but the similarities/gambling (gambling adjacent, whatever) elements grew on me.
Okay, cool.
I like Magic, and I'd be fine with some regulations landing to improve the consumer experience. It's important to be able to provide critique of things we enjoy, and just because it's a reckoning long overdue doesn't mean it should get swept under the rug. Especially if it's a practice that led to another industry going full Dr. Evil.
I think it's possible to find a happy middle ground, even if an example or two must be made.
I can spend 30 of a currency in a game, even if the game gave it to me for "free", to pull ten random cards from the pool. If I get nothing, have I lost anything? Yes, I have lost a set quantity of a limited resource that now cannot be used again and have thus spent the TIME it took to get that currency for no return. If I got something rare, have I gained anything? Yes, I may have also lost a set quantity of a limited resource in this scenario, but the difference is I have spent the time used to gain it but can now save time in the future using what I have gained. Money never enters the equation, but I have still gambled in hopes of making a profit. Same applies to TCGs.
Oh yeah. I've seen the amounts of money that whales throw at Fate: Grand/Order (probably the most visible gacha game) for a single character and is ridiculous. For example, saw a streamer saying that it took him like 800$ to get a particular character. And that's after Japan had laws passed addressing even more outrageous examples back on 2012:
Bolded emphasis mine. Lootboxes/CCGs/gatchas are gambling, and they deserve to be treated and regulated as such, no matter what companies like EA and Blizzard and WOTC do to get around laws. If they suffer, too fucking bad.
And that word is: Ownership.
When you buy a Magic booster pack, you legally own the cards within that pack and are free to do pretty much whatever the fuck you want with them, with very few exceptions (usually around copyright) and backed by tons of case law. However every game that offers microtransactions or lootboxes will have a clause in their ToS or EULA (which you have to agree to in order to play online) that states that you do *not* in fact own any digital item you purchase, and because of that, the company as the actual owners can dictate what you can do with them, whether that includes trading or a marketplace or not, and that they reserve the right to take away your access to these items for any reason or no reason whatsoever.
And it's that lack of ownership (as this argument would go) and the ethical and legal protections that it entails, that allows videogames to exploit their customers in a way that physical CCGs could never do without breaking the law or going out of business.
Considering that argument could threaten not just lootboxes, but the entire Games as a Service model, I'm pretty sure any politician that's successful in popularizing it would get the ESA to go on their knees to make sure it stopped with just lootboxes... or research every time they ever touched another person to see if they can find a sexual assault scandal to pin on them. One or the other.
Yeah, “ownership” is a useful word if you actually like CCGs and want them to continue exploiting kids while regulating digital lootboxes.
We all agree that FIFA cards are worse than Magic cards. And that lack of ownership is part of why. But Magic is still *bad.*
On a second reading, no, I strongly disagree with everything on that post, and every single point has been discussed and debunked to exhaustion in the past 50 pages.
Why? You can kill two birds with one 1/1 stone, they use the same mechanics, the same lures, they target the same vulnerable customers, why should we try to shield one, while trying to take the other down? Please explain this to me.
Nobody is arguing that you shouldn't be able to buy Magic or Pokemon cards. What they're arguing is that the model used to sell Magic and Pokemon cards shouldn't be predatory. Wizards of the Coast could easily change to a model where they sell only pre-made decks or complete card sets for a fixed fee. They don't do so, because they make much much more money by selling card packs. Why sell someone their complete product for $100 when they can get you to gamble to build your collection for $500?
And what about those failed CCGs? How much value does someone's Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Battletech: Dark Ages or Dragon Dice have today?