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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Aboxolypse
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - The Aboxolypse
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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That said, I wholeheartedly agree with this comic though. The "you should be a parent and control what your kid gets into" argument starts to break down when almost every game advertised to kids these days has lootbox mechanics baked into it somewhere. At a certain point you've basically gone Amish to keep your kids from blowing their allowance on "Premium Currency". Even just forcing all games with gambling mechanics (defined as the ability to trade real world money, or a secondary currency that can be bought indirectly with real world money, for a chance at an in-game item) to be flagged as such would go a long way as it would let parents disable all of those for their kids (or themselves, in the case of gambling addicts) in a single stroke.
Well, to be fair, think back to your days as a kid. I "blew" a ton of my allowance on trading cards, "collectables", video games, and popping quarters arcade. But I wouldn't be the guy I am today had my parents restricted me from spending my allowance on the stuff I wanted to, even if they thought it was a dumb waste of money. So (and as a dad with three boys), I feel like there is a lot of parenting that has to go on here. You have to teach you kids some of this stuff...regulation isn't going to stop them from making poor decisions.
All that being said, I agree 100% that games with loot boxes and microtransactions should be clearly marked, and they should all have the option to disable or hide microstransaction content. I also know a few adults who would greatly benefit from these options as well. But going back to the kids thing, it's not so much the urge to gamble as it is very poor impulse control, as well as a distorted sense of value. The adults I know who over-indulge in lootboxes, magical keys, and fake sparkle ponies also have a really bad sense of value. They tend to equate in-game costs with real world value, even though none of these items have any value.
It's the idea that they can "invest" $1 for a chance to "win" an item that (via obfuscated in game value exchanges) is "worth" $500...when it's worth exactly $0. But that's the other sinister side of this that I also think erodes enjoyment people get from video games. When your leisure activity starts to become measured in how many "dollars" per hour you're "earning" based on the inability to correctly distinguish between fake game value and the real world, it destroys your ability to just enjoy playing video games.
That's why, going full circle, we as parents have to instill those values in our kids so they can understand what is real, and what is fake. I want my boys to grow up understanding what those loot boxes or whatever evolves out of them really are. I'm not going to leave that up to the government or the game companies to handle.
These things aren't going away. Just like drugs, alcohol, sex, cigarettes, or any other number of "vices", education is the best armor you can wrap you children in.
Something horribly happened around Diablo, when the addictiveness of the loot pinata was discovered. And nothing against Diablo in saying that. At least the first two. But that near as I can tell began the Skinner Boxification of gaming, and now we're basically in Gatcha Hell where games have weaponized all the addictiveness of gambling, with none of the possible rewards.
Pretty sure when/if my daughter starts gaming, it will be on an airgapped machine with nothing but retro games. And she can have her friends over and look at each other's screens like god intended.
For the various sins of Diablo III (frankly, Diablo II was also guilty of a few different things too), "casinos in your home for children" isn't one of them. Even the Real Money Auction House, mistake that it was, went some way to undermine the concept by adding a venue for you to spend real money on specific things--taking gambling out of it as much as it possible could be.
That being said, all the Diablo games are pretty guilty of the whole "Keep trying for the best of the random outcomes," as the fundamental looter mechanic.
I'm guessing this is a bit of hyperbole, but as a parent, you owe it to your budding gamer kid to try harder.
There's countless games out there for kids (and adults) to play that don't rely on lockboxes, skinner boxes, or other abusive mechanics. Hell, you can always fall back on Nintendo...I bought my boys a Switch 3 months ago, and they love it. Plenty of games for the guys to dig into. In addition, my two oldest have their own Steam accounts, and I do my best to curate a library of games that they can enjoy. And my youngest (started at 3, now 4) has been cranking away with some serious Minecraft on his tablet.
I've shown my kids a bit of retro gaming. I fired up Super Mario 3 and Legend of Zelda on an emulator, and they were less than impressed. But they've really enjoyed Mario on the Switch, and I intend to re-expose them to Zelda when the remaster of Link's Awakening shows up later this summer.
Anyway, don't fall into the trap of being that parent that every kid resented when they were young because you're too cynical or afraid of dealing with what's out there in the virtual world. Educate your kids, set and example, and help them grow up to be intelligent and responsible gamers.
You can’t just buy a Mario keychain, you have to keeping buying blind bags until you get him. It’s not a new concept, but I feel like video games have encouraged toy makers to push it harder.
For video games, sure. For all games I remind you of Pogs and the explosion of CCG games after Magic took off.
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blind boxes where you can just buy the display box and you get all of them are fine, but chase items suck butt.
Hopefully the "think of the kids" angle will serve as foot in the door for "also think of the adults with addictive personalities these companies are squeezing tens of thousands of dollars from. "
Isn't that just them removing the toys from the machine?
And let's not forget the various kinds of collectible cards that there have been over the last several decades. You never knew what you were going to get in that pack of baseball cards, for example. (Although when I was a kid I was big on the collectible cards for Return of the Jedi.)
-Tycho Brahe
There are mechanisms in human behaviour that gambling companies can exploit to rip money out of vulnerable people. Yeah, it can happen to most people, but some are more susceptible than others. Also, companies have become way better at it in the last 20 years, even if this kinda thing has always been around in some form.
It's fucking reprehensible and it should be kept away from children.
I know this phrasing makes me sound like a moraliser but I really do think this is different to those slippery slope "guns in media" or "somebody think of the children" arguments of the past.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
It actually is different. There are exploitative psychological tactics in place here, proven to work on most people, and children are effectively more vulnerable to it than the average adult. There's a reason for the law in Canada (or in Quebec at least) that makes it illegal for advertisements to address *directly* to kids.
Let me amend that then more "full service" casino's. Sure there are pubs and dives that have one form of gambling and nothing else but if your going to slap a casino onto a triple A game or property then the point is to not half ass it like some backroom poker joint. If anything players like us are more likely to put money in if we see effort being put into something and it looks good or at least the threshold of complaint will be lower (since some of us will complain no matter what really).
Also not treating us like we're stupid and can't tell you rushed something out the door, or only put in half the effort cause most of us have been around long enough to be able to tell the difference.
Then once someone has bought the game they feel like they have to play it to justify the expense, no matter how grindy it is. Then you spend money to try and make it fun.
To me it's like how many people go to Walmart because they are convinced it's the cheapest and most convenient place to get groceries when in most cities, it's not.
Sure, you have your Overwatches which would be the equivalent of a big fancy casino which works really hard to give you a good time so you spend your money. But then you also have the broken and half-baked games that use the gambling itself to keep you interested. Have you ever seen the rows of old people staring dead eyed at the slot machines? Are they enjoying themselves? A lot of these "games" which are basically just a vehicle for gambling are more like the equivalent of gas station scratch-offs.