The LCG model already exists. You just buy a playset of each expansion. Way simpler than selling singles, no gambling, and more convenient.
Is that something WotC runs themselves? I know you can redeem full sets from Magic Online (or one of the digital versions), but that still involves cracking virtual packs or buying individual cards to get the full set for redemption, at least based on the old system they had in place.
Many shops seem to do this of their own accord, and getting a full set is often cheaper than I'd expect it to be, but getting 1 still carries a substantial price tag, let alone 4 of them.
No, WotC doesn't do it. They don't make anything in that model - it's mainly Fantasy Flight I think (e.g. Netrunner).
Fantasy Flight does it and it's honestly one of their big selling points: That you always know the exact cost to get into a game.
But yeah, I guess my main point with CCG's and sports cards or heck even those stupid blind boxes for figures is that the kids toy industry is full of stuff that would constitute gambling were it to ever reach a foothold to become a commodity (as MtG and other large CCG's have) and that case of being near to gambling usually means the companies using science on compulsion and gambling industry exploitation isn't really good or something acceptable.
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.
the players with the best cards/loot will be, as a whole, the whales who are willing to invest more into the game in the first place. How many top players out there, in any of these games where random loot is a factor, whether it be in the physical or digital world, are players who just lucked into getting the most powerful cards? I'm willing to bet that number is 0.
It's my understanding that many top players will 'proxy' cards and entire decks (often before they're even available for purchase), and the highest tier of pros will often have arrangements with shops and friends to borrow or otherwise procure the cards for tournaments. Having a vast array of cards is an advantage for sure, but turning it from a CCG to an LCG doesn't eliminate the Pay for Power. Reduces it, but as someone who also played Netrunner, believe me, over a year the pack releases can add up. I took a loss when I sold out my collection and I still made back several hundred dollars.
Random chance as a sales tactic is and has always been exploitative, whether it be in CCGs, mobile games, or even those stupid-ass LOL dolls. People should be able to buy whatever product they want, provided they are willing to pay fair market price for that item. Chance should have no role in such transactions.
So randomized product should be illegal, no exceptions, in your opinion? To be clear on what you're expressing here.
I feel like I'm verging on advocating for the devil, but I think the disparity is that I see these things on a spectrum of predatory nature. Mobile games pulling in hundreds of millions per year for 'crystals' and 'runes' and 'gold' or whatever they call their premium currency can be wrong, and CCG gambling similarities can be wrong, but I don't view them as equally bad. If fixing the former allowed for tidying up the latter, great. If I had to choose one (for simplicity, expedience, whatever), I'd tackle the former first. I'm not trying to defend CCGs in general or Magic in particular as some kind of moral crusade, but if one is a mess the dog made, and the other is a dog park after the first thaw of spring (a horrifying experience, let me tell you), that's where my priorities are.
I'm also curious how old the average magic player is, but google isn't giving me anything I feel confident in sharing with the class. Honestly, I don't think age restricting that particular game would be a massive dent in annual sales, though if we added in Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon and whatever else is being played, that might make an impact.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Not to mention Dominion.
But yes, there are some differences with physical stores, such as the amount you can buy at any given store being limited by their stock, and by the physical nature of it giving you a better idea of how much you've spent (by comparison, judging the cost of a digital collection is more complex... this goes back to psychological stuff like whether you use a card or cash affecting your spending profile IRL).
But in general, outside of silly one-offs like pot-lucks, the inherent business model of selling a booster pack is gambling, and needs to be treated as such in almost all its forms. Especially if it costs you money for each 'pull of the lever', it's psychologically manipulative.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I would not be opposed to children being unable to buy Pokémon cards if those cards function equivalently to gambling. A parent may on the surface assume that the cards are the same as the game but if they are forced to face the reality of the difference, and its corresponding cost, that may not be a bad thing.
There's still a rather fundamental difference between lootboxes and cards (well, virtually anything physical really), in that lootboxes prey and count on you not knowing how much you've bought and spent. With anything physical, there is a point where you will look down where you will see and know exactly how much you just spent by virtue of the massive pile of cards in your lap. Most people at that point tend to go "Oh what the fuck have I done?!", the spell is broken, and they stop spending. Companies absolutely know about this phenomenon and will do everything to delay a person from reaching it, because they know once someone hits it, they're gone. Lootboxes do this by design, always keeping you in the moment, only showing the small amount of items you just bought. Shit, casinos have known this for decades. Chips, credits, anything that represents money but is not actually money so that you disassociate the two (easier to justify "I only lost 100 credits" than "I only lost $100"). Obfuscating exactly how much you've won or lost so you don't look down and say "Oh look how much I've won/lost! I need to get the fuck out of here!".
Anything physical is going to at the very least have that sort of barrier. You still have to actually pick up your shit and carry it out. That's the danger zone for companies.
That said, that's not really supposed to be a defense against cards. Just that there's a fundamental difference between how card packs can prey on somebody and how digital lootboxes do. And ultimately, my stance regarding the "But what about the ccg's???" in all of this is "...OK". Acceptable losses and all that. If they go down, so be it. Let's deal with the lootbox problem first, and then in the aftermath we can worry about and consider rebuilding the CCG market.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It seems problematic to start making distinctions between digital and physical purchases. Do we have evidence that consumers are more or less likely to compulsively buy physical packs vs. digital packs? If so, to what degree? Also, does it matter? The argument against lootboxes seems to be that a small percentage of the population cannot regulate their behavior and is prone to compulsively purchasing them. If a slightly smaller portion of the population is prone to compulsively buying physical packs, does that matter for the sake of this argument?
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs of cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
I would not be opposed to children being unable to buy Pokémon cards if those cards function equivalently to gambling. A parent may on the surface assume that the cards are the same as the game but if they are forced to face the reality of the difference, and its corresponding cost, that may not be a bad thing.
I mean, I wasted way too much money as a kid on Pokemon cards because I didn't have the same comprehension of how shitty gambling odds are that I do now. Like, I guess some of that is on my parents for indulging me in it, but I still think it's predatory at its core and should be regulated.
There's still a rather fundamental difference between lootboxes and cards (well, virtually anything physical really), in that lootboxes prey and count on you not knowing how much you've bought and spent. With anything physical, there is a point where you will look down where you will see and know exactly how much you just spent by virtue of the massive pile of cards in your lap. Most people at that point tend to go "Oh what the fuck have I done?!", the spell is broken, and they stop spending. Companies absolutely know about this phenomenon and will do everything to delay a person from reaching it, because they know once someone hits it, they're gone. Lootboxes do this by design, always keeping you in the moment, only showing the small amount of items you just bought. Shit, casinos have known this for decades. Chips, credits, anything that represents money but is not actually money so that you disassociate the two (easier to justify "I only lost 100 credits" than "I only lost $100"). Obfuscating exactly how much you've won or lost so you don't look down and say "Oh look how much I've won/lost! I need to get the fuck out of here!".
Anything physical is going to at the very least have that sort of barrier. You still have to actually pick up your shit and carry it out. That's the danger zone for companies.
That said, that's not really supposed to be a defense against cards. Just that there's a fundamental difference between how card packs can prey on somebody and how digital lootboxes do. And ultimately, my stance regarding the "But what about the ccg's???" in all of this is "...OK". Acceptable losses and all that. If they go down, so be it. Let's deal with the lootbox problem first, and then in the aftermath we can worry about and consider rebuilding the CCG market.
I don’t know, I definitely managed to turn big piles of cards into smaller piles of (better) cards with CCGs, somewhat obscuring what I’d spent along the way. Not in one sitting, but over years of buying and selling and trading and downsizing. I do agree that digital collections often make this easier though. For instance when opening a FIFA pack you can tag the cards you want to actually go to your collection (the good ones) and then shred the rest for coins. They never hit your pile.
My wake up call, personally, was when we discovered that the chemistry system never worked for special cards in FIFA. When I say “we” I mean I was actually (as a player and community member) part of the process of determining that this glitch existed, and had always existed, meaning they’d been selling a defective product for years. Anyway, I went to Microsoft with this and requested a full refund of what I’d spent on packs in FIFA. And they actually agreed to refund one year worth. And so I saw that number. All at once.
$20 here and $50 there adds up very, very quickly.
It seems problematic to start making distinctions between digital and physical purchases. Do we have evidence that consumers are more or less likely to compulsively buy physical packs vs. digital packs? If so, to what degree? Also, does it matter? The argument against lootboxes seems to be that a small percentage of the population cannot regulate their behavior and is prone to compulsively purchasing them. If a slightly smaller portion of the population is prone to compulsively buying physical packs, does that matter for the sake of this argument?
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs are cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
I'm not sure that's a charitable read of the discussion. Even I, probably the biggest WotC whor.... shill in the thread, will agree it's a form of gambling. You pay money for random returns. Fine, gambling.
But yes, there are distinctions, if we want to dive into the exacting particulars.
Have you ever opened a booster box? Like, sat down and cracked open 36+ packs of cards? It rapidly becomes a mess of cards and wrappers and other garbage. It takes time just to open and assess the contents, let alone if you sort them by rarity (or god, colour and rarity). I'm sure some shop guys and gals can rip it down like a professional hunter skins/butchers an animal, but someone who does it a few times a year or less? It's quite a process.
And call me a pedant all you like, but that is a difference. You can open 50+ Hearthstone packs in a fraction of the time with almost zero effort. The digital aspect versus physical does come into play. Lugging 1, 2, 6+ booster boxes is a sizable amount of product. It takes up space, it can even get a little on the heavy side. Digital lootboxes are built on the casino slot machine style. Sparkly lights! Sounds! Animations! Forced hints of suspense! But a minimal amount of effort. I can spend hundreds of dollars in a few clicks on my phone, in a way that doesn't entirely correlate 1:1. Someone can snag and blow through thousands of dollars in digital boxes in a matter of minutes or hours in a way that having to physically handle that much product incurs distinctions.
That doesn't make it 'not gambling', but at the very least the difference between, say, having to go to the horse track to bet, versus doing it on your phone.
We (collectively) can impose limits and stipulations based on the similarities, but there are distinctions that do separate the two. I would find it odd to put a hard limit on how many booster boxes a person can buy at once in the way I'd be fine with putting firm or even hard limits on how many lootboxes one could buy in a set timeframe. The immediacy and ease of accrual are worthy of recognition, imo.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
There's still a rather fundamental difference between lootboxes and cards (well, virtually anything physical really), in that lootboxes prey and count on you not knowing how much you've bought and spent. With anything physical, there is a point where you will look down where you will see and know exactly how much you just spent by virtue of the massive pile of cards in your lap. Most people at that point tend to go "Oh what the fuck have I done?!", the spell is broken, and they stop spending. Companies absolutely know about this phenomenon and will do everything to delay a person from reaching it, because they know once someone hits it, they're gone. Lootboxes do this by design, always keeping you in the moment, only showing the small amount of items you just bought. Shit, casinos have known this for decades. Chips, credits, anything that represents money but is not actually money so that you disassociate the two (easier to justify "I only lost 100 credits" than "I only lost $100"). Obfuscating exactly how much you've won or lost so you don't look down and say "Oh look how much I've won/lost! I need to get the fuck out of here!".
Anything physical is going to at the very least have that sort of barrier. You still have to actually pick up your shit and carry it out. That's the danger zone for companies.
That said, that's not really supposed to be a defense against cards. Just that there's a fundamental difference between how card packs can prey on somebody and how digital lootboxes do. And ultimately, my stance regarding the "But what about the ccg's???" in all of this is "...OK". Acceptable losses and all that. If they go down, so be it. Let's deal with the lootbox problem first, and then in the aftermath we can worry about and consider rebuilding the CCG market.
No reason to separate Cards from lootboxes, they are the same at its core, and if there is a movement to regulate one, it would only make sense to include the other. Im sorry if Mtg is something that you enjoy and wouldnt want to see their company affected, but this "lets deal with boxes first" is the goosiest argument Ive read on this thread.
The only reason I could see to separate trading cards from lootboxes, is that this thread is focused on lootboxes and online gambling, but most definitely not because they are any less exploitative.
TLDR: Magic cards should die in the same fire that lootboxes should
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
It seems problematic to start making distinctions between digital and physical purchases. Do we have evidence that consumers are more or less likely to compulsively buy physical packs vs. digital packs? If so, to what degree? Also, does it matter? The argument against lootboxes seems to be that a small percentage of the population cannot regulate their behavior and is prone to compulsively purchasing them. If a slightly smaller portion of the population is prone to compulsively buying physical packs, does that matter for the sake of this argument?
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs are cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
I'm not sure that's a charitable read of the discussion. Even I, probably the biggest WotC whor.... shill in the thread, will agree it's a form of gambling. You pay money for random returns. Fine, gambling.
But yes, there are distinctions, if we want to dive into the exacting particulars.
Have you ever opened a booster box? Like, sat down and cracked open 36+ packs of cards? It rapidly becomes a mess of cards and wrappers and other garbage. It takes time just to open and assess the contents, let alone if you sort them by rarity (or god, colour and rarity). I'm sure some shop guys and gals can rip it down like a professional hunter skins/butchers an animal, but someone who does it a few times a year or less? It's quite a process.
And call me a pedant all you like, but that is a difference. You can open 50+ Hearthstone packs in a fraction of the time with almost zero effort. The digital aspect versus physical does come into play. Lugging 1, 2, 6+ booster boxes is a sizable amount of product. It takes up space, it can even get a little on the heavy side. Digital lootboxes are built on the casino slot machine style. Sparkly lights! Sounds! Animations! Forced hints of suspense! But a minimal amount of effort. I can spend hundreds of dollars in a few clicks on my phone, in a way that doesn't entirely correlate 1:1. Someone can snag and blow through thousands of dollars in digital boxes in a matter of minutes or hours in a way that having to physically handle that much product incurs distinctions.
That doesn't make it 'not gambling', but at the very least the difference between, say, having to go to the horse track to bet, versus doing it on your phone.
We (collectively) can impose limits and stipulations based on the similarities, but there are distinctions that do separate the two. I would find it odd to put a hard limit on how many booster boxes a person can buy at once in the way I'd be fine with putting firm or even hard limits on how many lootboxes one could buy in a set timeframe. The immediacy and ease of accrual are worthy of recognition, imo.
I've previously suggested putting a hard cap on per-month spending on repeatable in-game items, which would completely stop the whole whale-based economy, not just lootboxes. Basically, you can have whatever you want in-game, but if the player can only spend $20/month in your game, there's no good reason to set up your game to encourage more than that. (Repeatable in-game items would include lootboxes and consumables, but not directly purchasing a skin or an expansion pack.)
EDIT: this would be done by platform holders such as Apple, not by legislation.
It seems problematic to start making distinctions between digital and physical purchases. Do we have evidence that consumers are more or less likely to compulsively buy physical packs vs. digital packs? If so, to what degree? Also, does it matter? The argument against lootboxes seems to be that a small percentage of the population cannot regulate their behavior and is prone to compulsively purchasing them. If a slightly smaller portion of the population is prone to compulsively buying physical packs, does that matter for the sake of this argument?
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs are cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
I'm not sure that's a charitable read of the discussion. Even I, probably the biggest WotC whor.... shill in the thread, will agree it's a form of gambling. You pay money for random returns. Fine, gambling.
But yes, there are distinctions, if we want to dive into the exacting particulars.
Have you ever opened a booster box? Like, sat down and cracked open 36+ packs of cards? It rapidly becomes a mess of cards and wrappers and other garbage. It takes time just to open and assess the contents, let alone if you sort them by rarity (or god, colour and rarity). I'm sure some shop guys and gals can rip it down like a professional hunter skins/butchers an animal, but someone who does it a few times a year or less? It's quite a process.
And call me a pedant all you like, but that is a difference. You can open 50+ Hearthstone packs in a fraction of the time with almost zero effort. The digital aspect versus physical does come into play. Lugging 1, 2, 6+ booster boxes is a sizable amount of product. It takes up space, it can even get a little on the heavy side. Digital lootboxes are built on the casino slot machine style. Sparkly lights! Sounds! Animations! Forced hints of suspense! But a minimal amount of effort. I can spend hundreds of dollars in a few clicks on my phone, in a way that doesn't entirely correlate 1:1. Someone can snag and blow through thousands of dollars in digital boxes in a matter of minutes or hours in a way that having to physically handle that much product incurs distinctions.
That doesn't make it 'not gambling', but at the very least the difference between, say, having to go to the horse track to bet, versus doing it on your phone.
We (collectively) can impose limits and stipulations based on the similarities, but there are distinctions that do separate the two. I would find it odd to put a hard limit on how many booster boxes a person can buy at once in the way I'd be fine with putting firm or even hard limits on how many lootboxes one could buy in a set timeframe. The immediacy and ease of accrual are worthy of recognition, imo.
Put me in the camp that is not a fan of that definition of gambling.
None of the reasons you claim are problematic with lootboxes apply to going to the track and betting on a race horse and everything to do with obfuscating how much money your are spending/have to spend on a digital game through incremental random rewards + the ease of spending small amounts online.
Arguing that loot boxes are gambling is a big red herring. Loot boxes are no more gambling than a paper tcg but as you point out, paper tcgs are not problematic in the same way. Nothing about what you argue is problematic with lootboxes stems from that expansive definition of gambling. So skip the gambling argument.
I think that the existence of a secondary market is a big difference. If you want a specific card you can just buy it at a known price, and almost everyone will rather than keep buying packs just for one card. For Hearthstone or Arena I would have to pay absurdly more to get enough dust or wildcards and it would be the same amount for a jank mythic as it would be for the meta flavor of the week.
As for LCGs, playing both I'll just say you get what you pay for. Keeping up with a full collection may be cheaper but the card pool is smaller, the OP is incompetent more often than not, and FFG can't even deliver product on schedule half the time.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Put me in the camp that is not a fan of that definition of gambling.
None of the reasons you claim are problematic with lootboxes apply to going to the track and betting on a race horse and everything to do with obfuscating how much money your are spending/have to spend on a digital game through incremental random rewards + the ease of spending small amounts online.
Arguing that loot boxes are gambling is a big red herring. Loot boxes are no more gambling than a paper tcg but as you point out, paper tcgs are not problematic in the same way. Nothing about what you argue is problematic with lootboxes stems from that expansive definition of gambling. So skip the gambling argument.
Let's look at it from the perspective of someone who has actually cracked open booster boxes in the past. It has been years, but it is a memorable experience.
So, the set comes out, let's look up the spoiler! Hrm, that looks like a card I'd put in a few decks, and that bunch of cards would be fun to combine into a brand new one, and wow that one is worth a shit load of money for pre-order already!
You buy the box, set aside an hour or two, and start cracking. Ugh, shit, shit, shit, oh that's good, shit, wow that's amazing, etc. Time passes, the empty packs start collecting, the piles of cardboard grow.
At the end, did I get value for my money? Well, if I add up the value to purchase those cards from a shop, yeah, I probably came out ahead. But that's a narrow way of viewing it. A more accurate way of looking at the matter is "did I get enough value in cards *I would have bought from a store*? And then... maybe. Do enough of the cards I got fit into those decks in the quantities I desired, or do I need to put in an order or two at my usual online seller to finish off what I'm interested in getting (that falls within my budget, as I've noted, I wasn't chasing $100 cards)?
So in the end, I'm trading $120 (or whatever) for $??? worth of cards. Maybe I get lucky, and crack open a box that has a foil chase mythic, something I can probably sell for the cost of the box (give or take) without much trouble! Far more likely, it's something in the middle ground; more value than had I bought those cards from shops, but I took a chance, 'gambled' even, that I'd walk away better off than had I gone through online/local shops and/or eBay.
I don't think it's inaccurate to call Magic card booster packs a form of gambling. Yet, funnily enough, something like a premade Commander deck would not be; you know exactly what you're getting when you open it up, end of story.
So the same product exists in both 'luck of the draw/game of chance' and 'known quantity' versions.
How is it not gambling? The value of the cards (appreciation for the artwork, desire to use in a deck, financial value on the secondary market, etc) within is randomized and indeterminate until you've paid up front to find out. It's basically a 'scratch and win' ticket that you can have other uses for once the foil has been cracked and the waveform collapses.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I'm fine with making a distinction between random loot mechanics (digital or otherwise) and gambling.
We can simply call them exploitative marketing tactics. Regulating such conduct could even potentially fall under the mandate of the FTC or the Competition Bureau in Canada, wherin the argument could be made that loot boxes/random selection of goods are, by design, dependent on inherently false or misleading representations as to the actual value of the goods being purchased.
I think it likely that it wouldn't be too hard to uncover evidence to show that such tactics were established with the sole purpose of boosting profits by exploiting customer tendency to spend money on a product that has no inherent value prior to making the purchasing decision. A kind of Shroedinger's loot, if you will. Whenever you spend money on this stuff, you are spending money only on the possibility of gaining something valuable.
This is why we have laws against false advertising. I shouldn't have to guess that the product I'm about to buy is what it says it is, or that it does what the ad/package says it does. As a customer, I have a right to make an informed purchasing decision BEFORE I buy something, not after I open the box and find out it's not what I wanted.
Such regulation could even circumvent state/provincial regulations on gambling, as the FTC and Competition Bureau are Federal Government enforcement organisations.
I think the most straightforward, achievable solution is to roll lootboxes under the existing digital regulations for online gambling. Every region has a framework in place for this, it's easy to write legislatively, and it would solve most of the exploitative issues with these systems. A more nuanced approach, region by region, just seems improbable. EA and similar will fight this tooth and nail, but... fuck em.
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs of cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
Mmo's are gambling though.
Just instead of X pulls for Y$, it's Z time for Y$ (but you can only run the same boss for loot X times in Z total time).
But really, the cutoff for me is the expected cost of the gambling.
If you can only lose like 2$ over the session because it's 5c a pop and it's slow or demoralising or you get what you want after that or whatever, then it probably doesn't matter whether it's a Stacker machine or MMO or lootbox or casino.
It's not going to be particularly harmful to anyone, so we may not need to regulate it at all.
Although I do think the previous 'harmless' forms of gambling are what opened the door to lootboxes being okay.
So if we just got rid of all gambling, like 'skill testing' machines at arcades, and plastic Moose blind bags, I'd be fine with that too.
But I recognise that's probably not possible or acceptable to most.
It seems problematic to start making distinctions between digital and physical purchases. Do we have evidence that consumers are more or less likely to compulsively buy physical packs vs. digital packs? If so, to what degree? Also, does it matter? The argument against lootboxes seems to be that a small percentage of the population cannot regulate their behavior and is prone to compulsively purchasing them. If a slightly smaller portion of the population is prone to compulsively buying physical packs, does that matter for the sake of this argument?
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs are cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
I'm not sure that's a charitable read of the discussion. Even I, probably the biggest WotC whor.... shill in the thread, will agree it's a form of gambling. You pay money for random returns. Fine, gambling.
But yes, there are distinctions, if we want to dive into the exacting particulars.
Have you ever opened a booster box? Like, sat down and cracked open 36+ packs of cards? It rapidly becomes a mess of cards and wrappers and other garbage. It takes time just to open and assess the contents, let alone if you sort them by rarity (or god, colour and rarity). I'm sure some shop guys and gals can rip it down like a professional hunter skins/butchers an animal, but someone who does it a few times a year or less? It's quite a process.
And call me a pedant all you like, but that is a difference. You can open 50+ Hearthstone packs in a fraction of the time with almost zero effort. The digital aspect versus physical does come into play. Lugging 1, 2, 6+ booster boxes is a sizable amount of product. It takes up space, it can even get a little on the heavy side. Digital lootboxes are built on the casino slot machine style. Sparkly lights! Sounds! Animations! Forced hints of suspense! But a minimal amount of effort. I can spend hundreds of dollars in a few clicks on my phone, in a way that doesn't entirely correlate 1:1. Someone can snag and blow through thousands of dollars in digital boxes in a matter of minutes or hours in a way that having to physically handle that much product incurs distinctions.
That doesn't make it 'not gambling', but at the very least the difference between, say, having to go to the horse track to bet, versus doing it on your phone.
We (collectively) can impose limits and stipulations based on the similarities, but there are distinctions that do separate the two. I would find it odd to put a hard limit on how many booster boxes a person can buy at once in the way I'd be fine with putting firm or even hard limits on how many lootboxes one could buy in a set timeframe. The immediacy and ease of accrual are worthy of recognition, imo.
Put me in the camp that is not a fan of that definition of gambling.
None of the reasons you claim are problematic with lootboxes apply to going to the track and betting on a race horse and everything to do with obfuscating how much money your are spending/have to spend on a digital game through incremental random rewards + the ease of spending small amounts online.
Arguing that loot boxes are gambling is a big red herring. Loot boxes are no more gambling than a paper tcg but as you point out, paper tcgs are not problematic in the same way. Nothing about what you argue is problematic with lootboxes stems from that expansive definition of gambling. So skip the gambling argument.
But gambling really is paying money for random returns.
Unless you're cheating, I mean.
I understand you're not a fan of the definition, but it is very much a good definition. A better definition would be you're paying money on random results that are slightly weighted against you winning. Shuffling of cards, roulette wheels, slot machines, etc. It's all random, but weighted against the bettor.
A bit of software can be exploitative because the actual, real mechanics of what gets picked for a lootbox are obfuscated. Casinos have to abide by regulators to a large degree. Game companies can literally do whatever they want right now. They can make it so it takes $20 worth of lootboxes before someone gets anything of value. $100. $500. There's zero regulation against it because it's not currently considered gambling.
Software can be exploitive in other ways even if they do not obfuscate drop rates. The rate at which you can gamble and manage that gambling can be exploitive. The fact that you dont have to see the price as you buy can be explotive. The fact that you dont get a bill until far after the purchase can be exploitive.
The easy example might be the “starter pack”. So lots of games start you off by giving you a free roll of the gatcha. This free roll is often not legitimate. Its weighted towards better rewards compared to normal rolling. Better rewards intentionally to trick your brain into thinking that rewards are better. Even if you tell them this the majority wont notice until the bug has caught hold. You cannot do this in a physical ccg because you have nonway to limit the initial roll to starting players.
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.
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.
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random.
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.
What benefit to society is it to allow such a system to exist?
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random.
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 more than they otherwise would.
There isn't. It's the fundamental, inescapable, and cruel fact about gambling: You're putting your money up against the whims of the universe, as it were. The rush you get for beating the unthinking, unflinching laws of physics and the accompanying chemical feelgood juice is what drives someone forward.
All things are randomized. People with gambling problems often try to find "patterns" or "tricks" in gambling, but there aren't any when it's you vs. a cold, dead machine. The only real way to "win" at gambling is games where you play against other peoples randomness, like Poker or Blackjack, but even then you might get a "bad night" of cards or a losing streak.
It's a definition of gambling that would apply to buying a happy meal since the toy inside is random.
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 more than they otherwise would.
Well, in this case, I think it depends on how you define "profit". If by profit you're limiting yourself solely to a cash return, then sure, but I think the fact that speculator markets exist in the CCG field would complicate your definition, as I'm sure there are people out there who do buy cards hoping to obtain a rare card (which is rare only due to a controlled, false scarcity), which they can then sell for a profit.
Then, if you widen your definition further, you can include people who spend money in the hopes that they might luck into a (again, artifically) rare card/piece of loot/what have you that will give them a competitive advantage in a game. Can becoming more competitive due to completely random chance be considered "profit"? I think an argument can be made.
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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.
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 more than they otherwise would.
There isn't. It's the fundamental, inescapable, and cruel fact about gambling: You're putting your money up against the whims of the universe, as it were. The rush you get for beating the unthinking, unflinching laws of physics and the accompanying chemical feelgood juice is what drives someone forward.
All things are randomized. People with gambling problems often try to find "patterns" or "tricks" in gambling, but there aren't any when it's you vs. a cold, dead machine. The only real way to "win" at gambling is games where you play against other peoples randomness, like Poker or Blackjack, but even then you might get a "bad night" of cards or a losing streak.
Which is encouraged btw
For example, the previous company I worked for would save your results on roulette and let you filter it by things like most common numbers, colours, or lines. Not a full on analytics engine or anything, just a simple sort function that'll let people who want it see patterns that we made very very sure didn't exist.
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.
You're arbitrarily limiting 'profit' to 'monetary return'.
If I go drop 100 gemstones in Puzzle & Dragons the 'profit' I'm hoping to reap is pulling the creature card(s) I'm looking for. It's not a monetary reward but it's still a random system I put money into with the hopes of getting certain rewards.
If I set up a craps table in an alley where winning gets you a hit on a crack pipe the people giving me money to roll for a chance at the pipe are still gambling despite that their only 'profit' is getting high.
Just because something is gambling doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, though. The reason why lootboxes are a bad form of gambling is that they are pervasively and aggressively marketed at children, who have no conception of money or developed senses of restraint or relative value. The existence of lootbox-driven game elements sucks for adults from product-quality, aesthetic, and gameplay experience standpoints but those are just lame. The bombarding of children with ads driving them to gamble is an actual, societal problem.
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.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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
You can buy toys from McDonalds directly as well. At least you used to. I remember it being common for adult collectors to ask to or for parents who wanted multiple toys but not the meals.
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.
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).
the cards have monetary value
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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.
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.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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.
That's entirely ignoring the fact that people want things besides money.
People can and do gamble for things that can't be sold, or which they have no intent of selling.
Also, if it only counts as 'gambling' when you are receiving actual legal tender for your wins then casino games aren't gambling. You're getting chips in return. You can exchange those chips for money, but I can also open up a pack of Magic cards in a game shop and then exchange the rare for money with the cashier if I 'win'.
Or, going further, if you contend that it becomes gambling at the point you exchange your chips for cash, does that mean it stops being gambling when I start playing with chips I won?
If I walk in with a $10 chip, bet it, win back my $10 and two $5 chips, when I bet and lose one of those $5's, was I gambling? That chip was not and never will be money for me so, by your definition, the first hand either was or was not gambling but the second hand couldn't be since I wagered not-money and lost, thus netting me no not-money to convert to money.
Is it even gambling by the strict 'you have to make a profit of cash money' definition if I bet actual dollar bills and always lose? If the dealer never gives me anything it doesn't really matter whether they might have given me dollars, chips, Magic cards, a fish sandwich, or 10 seconds looking at a photo of a cute puppy. Is the activity itself gambling, then?
I mean ultimately, were it mcd's policy that happy meal toys only be distributed randomly, I would be ok with calling that gambling.
McD's would just start letting people pick. The randomness of happy meal toys isn't the selling point of happy meals so it just wouldn't be a problem.
I dunno, the argument of like "but if we start treating things other than money for money gambling as gambling then suddenly all these things will be gambling!" falls flat to me.
Those things should be regulated as gambling. They add no value to our society, and if the businesses can only survive by exploiting people's psyches then those businesses deserve to die.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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No, WotC doesn't do it. They don't make anything in that model - it's mainly Fantasy Flight I think (e.g. Netrunner).
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But yeah, I guess my main point with CCG's and sports cards or heck even those stupid blind boxes for figures is that the kids toy industry is full of stuff that would constitute gambling were it to ever reach a foothold to become a commodity (as MtG and other large CCG's have) and that case of being near to gambling usually means the companies using science on compulsion and gambling industry exploitation isn't really good or something acceptable.
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.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
It's my understanding that many top players will 'proxy' cards and entire decks (often before they're even available for purchase), and the highest tier of pros will often have arrangements with shops and friends to borrow or otherwise procure the cards for tournaments. Having a vast array of cards is an advantage for sure, but turning it from a CCG to an LCG doesn't eliminate the Pay for Power. Reduces it, but as someone who also played Netrunner, believe me, over a year the pack releases can add up. I took a loss when I sold out my collection and I still made back several hundred dollars.
So randomized product should be illegal, no exceptions, in your opinion? To be clear on what you're expressing here.
I feel like I'm verging on advocating for the devil, but I think the disparity is that I see these things on a spectrum of predatory nature. Mobile games pulling in hundreds of millions per year for 'crystals' and 'runes' and 'gold' or whatever they call their premium currency can be wrong, and CCG gambling similarities can be wrong, but I don't view them as equally bad. If fixing the former allowed for tidying up the latter, great. If I had to choose one (for simplicity, expedience, whatever), I'd tackle the former first. I'm not trying to defend CCGs in general or Magic in particular as some kind of moral crusade, but if one is a mess the dog made, and the other is a dog park after the first thaw of spring (a horrifying experience, let me tell you), that's where my priorities are.
I'm also curious how old the average magic player is, but google isn't giving me anything I feel confident in sharing with the class. Honestly, I don't think age restricting that particular game would be a massive dent in annual sales, though if we added in Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon and whatever else is being played, that might make an impact.
But yes, there are some differences with physical stores, such as the amount you can buy at any given store being limited by their stock, and by the physical nature of it giving you a better idea of how much you've spent (by comparison, judging the cost of a digital collection is more complex... this goes back to psychological stuff like whether you use a card or cash affecting your spending profile IRL).
But in general, outside of silly one-offs like pot-lucks, the inherent business model of selling a booster pack is gambling, and needs to be treated as such in almost all its forms. Especially if it costs you money for each 'pull of the lever', it's psychologically manipulative.
Anything physical is going to at the very least have that sort of barrier. You still have to actually pick up your shit and carry it out. That's the danger zone for companies.
That said, that's not really supposed to be a defense against cards. Just that there's a fundamental difference between how card packs can prey on somebody and how digital lootboxes do. And ultimately, my stance regarding the "But what about the ccg's???" in all of this is "...OK". Acceptable losses and all that. If they go down, so be it. Let's deal with the lootbox problem first, and then in the aftermath we can worry about and consider rebuilding the CCG market.
My biggest gripe with the 'loot boxes are gambling' argument is that it first has to argue that loot boxes are gambling and thus expands the definition of gambling and then ties loot boxes to being bad for the same reason that gambling is bad. That there exists a small subset of the population that cannot handle it. This part of the argument also seems problematic because video games prey on addictive personalities in many other ways. Ask anyone that wasted months or years of their lives in a mmo.
Instead of just saying that loot boxes are bad because they obfuscate the cost of playing a game and are a dishonest business practice, here we are trying to figure out why physical packs of cards are not gambling but digital packs of cards are gambling.
yay
I mean, I wasted way too much money as a kid on Pokemon cards because I didn't have the same comprehension of how shitty gambling odds are that I do now. Like, I guess some of that is on my parents for indulging me in it, but I still think it's predatory at its core and should be regulated.
I don’t know, I definitely managed to turn big piles of cards into smaller piles of (better) cards with CCGs, somewhat obscuring what I’d spent along the way. Not in one sitting, but over years of buying and selling and trading and downsizing. I do agree that digital collections often make this easier though. For instance when opening a FIFA pack you can tag the cards you want to actually go to your collection (the good ones) and then shred the rest for coins. They never hit your pile.
My wake up call, personally, was when we discovered that the chemistry system never worked for special cards in FIFA. When I say “we” I mean I was actually (as a player and community member) part of the process of determining that this glitch existed, and had always existed, meaning they’d been selling a defective product for years. Anyway, I went to Microsoft with this and requested a full refund of what I’d spent on packs in FIFA. And they actually agreed to refund one year worth. And so I saw that number. All at once.
$20 here and $50 there adds up very, very quickly.
I'm not sure that's a charitable read of the discussion. Even I, probably the biggest WotC whor.... shill in the thread, will agree it's a form of gambling. You pay money for random returns. Fine, gambling.
But yes, there are distinctions, if we want to dive into the exacting particulars.
Have you ever opened a booster box? Like, sat down and cracked open 36+ packs of cards? It rapidly becomes a mess of cards and wrappers and other garbage. It takes time just to open and assess the contents, let alone if you sort them by rarity (or god, colour and rarity). I'm sure some shop guys and gals can rip it down like a professional hunter skins/butchers an animal, but someone who does it a few times a year or less? It's quite a process.
And call me a pedant all you like, but that is a difference. You can open 50+ Hearthstone packs in a fraction of the time with almost zero effort. The digital aspect versus physical does come into play. Lugging 1, 2, 6+ booster boxes is a sizable amount of product. It takes up space, it can even get a little on the heavy side. Digital lootboxes are built on the casino slot machine style. Sparkly lights! Sounds! Animations! Forced hints of suspense! But a minimal amount of effort. I can spend hundreds of dollars in a few clicks on my phone, in a way that doesn't entirely correlate 1:1. Someone can snag and blow through thousands of dollars in digital boxes in a matter of minutes or hours in a way that having to physically handle that much product incurs distinctions.
That doesn't make it 'not gambling', but at the very least the difference between, say, having to go to the horse track to bet, versus doing it on your phone.
We (collectively) can impose limits and stipulations based on the similarities, but there are distinctions that do separate the two. I would find it odd to put a hard limit on how many booster boxes a person can buy at once in the way I'd be fine with putting firm or even hard limits on how many lootboxes one could buy in a set timeframe. The immediacy and ease of accrual are worthy of recognition, imo.
No reason to separate Cards from lootboxes, they are the same at its core, and if there is a movement to regulate one, it would only make sense to include the other. Im sorry if Mtg is something that you enjoy and wouldnt want to see their company affected, but this "lets deal with boxes first" is the goosiest argument Ive read on this thread.
The only reason I could see to separate trading cards from lootboxes, is that this thread is focused on lootboxes and online gambling, but most definitely not because they are any less exploitative.
TLDR: Magic cards should die in the same fire that lootboxes should
I've previously suggested putting a hard cap on per-month spending on repeatable in-game items, which would completely stop the whole whale-based economy, not just lootboxes. Basically, you can have whatever you want in-game, but if the player can only spend $20/month in your game, there's no good reason to set up your game to encourage more than that. (Repeatable in-game items would include lootboxes and consumables, but not directly purchasing a skin or an expansion pack.)
EDIT: this would be done by platform holders such as Apple, not by legislation.
Put me in the camp that is not a fan of that definition of gambling.
None of the reasons you claim are problematic with lootboxes apply to going to the track and betting on a race horse and everything to do with obfuscating how much money your are spending/have to spend on a digital game through incremental random rewards + the ease of spending small amounts online.
Arguing that loot boxes are gambling is a big red herring. Loot boxes are no more gambling than a paper tcg but as you point out, paper tcgs are not problematic in the same way. Nothing about what you argue is problematic with lootboxes stems from that expansive definition of gambling. So skip the gambling argument.
As for LCGs, playing both I'll just say you get what you pay for. Keeping up with a full collection may be cheaper but the card pool is smaller, the OP is incompetent more often than not, and FFG can't even deliver product on schedule half the time.
Let's look at it from the perspective of someone who has actually cracked open booster boxes in the past. It has been years, but it is a memorable experience.
So, the set comes out, let's look up the spoiler! Hrm, that looks like a card I'd put in a few decks, and that bunch of cards would be fun to combine into a brand new one, and wow that one is worth a shit load of money for pre-order already!
You buy the box, set aside an hour or two, and start cracking. Ugh, shit, shit, shit, oh that's good, shit, wow that's amazing, etc. Time passes, the empty packs start collecting, the piles of cardboard grow.
At the end, did I get value for my money? Well, if I add up the value to purchase those cards from a shop, yeah, I probably came out ahead. But that's a narrow way of viewing it. A more accurate way of looking at the matter is "did I get enough value in cards *I would have bought from a store*? And then... maybe. Do enough of the cards I got fit into those decks in the quantities I desired, or do I need to put in an order or two at my usual online seller to finish off what I'm interested in getting (that falls within my budget, as I've noted, I wasn't chasing $100 cards)?
So in the end, I'm trading $120 (or whatever) for $??? worth of cards. Maybe I get lucky, and crack open a box that has a foil chase mythic, something I can probably sell for the cost of the box (give or take) without much trouble! Far more likely, it's something in the middle ground; more value than had I bought those cards from shops, but I took a chance, 'gambled' even, that I'd walk away better off than had I gone through online/local shops and/or eBay.
I don't think it's inaccurate to call Magic card booster packs a form of gambling. Yet, funnily enough, something like a premade Commander deck would not be; you know exactly what you're getting when you open it up, end of story.
So the same product exists in both 'luck of the draw/game of chance' and 'known quantity' versions.
How is it not gambling? The value of the cards (appreciation for the artwork, desire to use in a deck, financial value on the secondary market, etc) within is randomized and indeterminate until you've paid up front to find out. It's basically a 'scratch and win' ticket that you can have other uses for once the foil has been cracked and the waveform collapses.
We can simply call them exploitative marketing tactics. Regulating such conduct could even potentially fall under the mandate of the FTC or the Competition Bureau in Canada, wherin the argument could be made that loot boxes/random selection of goods are, by design, dependent on inherently false or misleading representations as to the actual value of the goods being purchased.
I think it likely that it wouldn't be too hard to uncover evidence to show that such tactics were established with the sole purpose of boosting profits by exploiting customer tendency to spend money on a product that has no inherent value prior to making the purchasing decision. A kind of Shroedinger's loot, if you will. Whenever you spend money on this stuff, you are spending money only on the possibility of gaining something valuable.
This is why we have laws against false advertising. I shouldn't have to guess that the product I'm about to buy is what it says it is, or that it does what the ad/package says it does. As a customer, I have a right to make an informed purchasing decision BEFORE I buy something, not after I open the box and find out it's not what I wanted.
Such regulation could even circumvent state/provincial regulations on gambling, as the FTC and Competition Bureau are Federal Government enforcement organisations.
Mmo's are gambling though.
Just instead of X pulls for Y$, it's Z time for Y$ (but you can only run the same boss for loot X times in Z total time).
But really, the cutoff for me is the expected cost of the gambling.
If you can only lose like 2$ over the session because it's 5c a pop and it's slow or demoralising or you get what you want after that or whatever, then it probably doesn't matter whether it's a Stacker machine or MMO or lootbox or casino.
It's not going to be particularly harmful to anyone, so we may not need to regulate it at all.
Although I do think the previous 'harmless' forms of gambling are what opened the door to lootboxes being okay.
So if we just got rid of all gambling, like 'skill testing' machines at arcades, and plastic Moose blind bags, I'd be fine with that too.
But I recognise that's probably not possible or acceptable to most.
But gambling really is paying money for random returns.
Unless you're cheating, I mean.
I understand you're not a fan of the definition, but it is very much a good definition. A better definition would be you're paying money on random results that are slightly weighted against you winning. Shuffling of cards, roulette wheels, slot machines, etc. It's all random, but weighted against the bettor.
A bit of software can be exploitative because the actual, real mechanics of what gets picked for a lootbox are obfuscated. Casinos have to abide by regulators to a large degree. Game companies can literally do whatever they want right now. They can make it so it takes $20 worth of lootboxes before someone gets anything of value. $100. $500. There's zero regulation against it because it's not currently considered gambling.
The easy example might be the “starter pack”. So lots of games start you off by giving you a free roll of the gatcha. This free roll is often not legitimate. Its weighted towards better rewards compared to normal rolling. Better rewards intentionally to trick your brain into thinking that rewards are better. Even if you tell them this the majority wont notice until the bug has caught hold. You cannot do this in a physical ccg because you have nonway to limit the initial roll to starting players.
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.
There are obvious exceptions like weighting towards new players, most of which is due to regulations than physical limitations.
What benefit to society is it to allow such a system to exist?
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
There isn't. It's the fundamental, inescapable, and cruel fact about gambling: You're putting your money up against the whims of the universe, as it were. The rush you get for beating the unthinking, unflinching laws of physics and the accompanying chemical feelgood juice is what drives someone forward.
All things are randomized. People with gambling problems often try to find "patterns" or "tricks" in gambling, but there aren't any when it's you vs. a cold, dead machine. The only real way to "win" at gambling is games where you play against other peoples randomness, like Poker or Blackjack, but even then you might get a "bad night" of cards or a losing streak.
Well, in this case, I think it depends on how you define "profit". If by profit you're limiting yourself solely to a cash return, then sure, but I think the fact that speculator markets exist in the CCG field would complicate your definition, as I'm sure there are people out there who do buy cards hoping to obtain a rare card (which is rare only due to a controlled, false scarcity), which they can then sell for a profit.
Then, if you widen your definition further, you can include people who spend money in the hopes that they might luck into a (again, artifically) rare card/piece of loot/what have you that will give them a competitive advantage in a game. Can becoming more competitive due to completely random chance be considered "profit"? I think an argument can be made.
Which is encouraged btw
For example, the previous company I worked for would save your results on roulette and let you filter it by things like most common numbers, colours, or lines. Not a full on analytics engine or anything, just a simple sort function that'll let people who want it see patterns that we made very very sure didn't exist.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
You're arbitrarily limiting 'profit' to 'monetary return'.
If I go drop 100 gemstones in Puzzle & Dragons the 'profit' I'm hoping to reap is pulling the creature card(s) I'm looking for. It's not a monetary reward but it's still a random system I put money into with the hopes of getting certain rewards.
If I set up a craps table in an alley where winning gets you a hit on a crack pipe the people giving me money to roll for a chance at the pipe are still gambling despite that their only 'profit' is getting high.
Just because something is gambling doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, though. The reason why lootboxes are a bad form of gambling is that they are pervasively and aggressively marketed at children, who have no conception of money or developed senses of restraint or relative value. The existence of lootbox-driven game elements sucks for adults from product-quality, aesthetic, and gameplay experience standpoints but those are just lame. The bombarding of children with ads driving them to gamble is an actual, societal problem.
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.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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
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.
the cards have monetary value
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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.
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.
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.
That's entirely ignoring the fact that people want things besides money.
People can and do gamble for things that can't be sold, or which they have no intent of selling.
Also, if it only counts as 'gambling' when you are receiving actual legal tender for your wins then casino games aren't gambling. You're getting chips in return. You can exchange those chips for money, but I can also open up a pack of Magic cards in a game shop and then exchange the rare for money with the cashier if I 'win'.
Or, going further, if you contend that it becomes gambling at the point you exchange your chips for cash, does that mean it stops being gambling when I start playing with chips I won?
If I walk in with a $10 chip, bet it, win back my $10 and two $5 chips, when I bet and lose one of those $5's, was I gambling? That chip was not and never will be money for me so, by your definition, the first hand either was or was not gambling but the second hand couldn't be since I wagered not-money and lost, thus netting me no not-money to convert to money.
Is it even gambling by the strict 'you have to make a profit of cash money' definition if I bet actual dollar bills and always lose? If the dealer never gives me anything it doesn't really matter whether they might have given me dollars, chips, Magic cards, a fish sandwich, or 10 seconds looking at a photo of a cute puppy. Is the activity itself gambling, then?
McD's would just start letting people pick. The randomness of happy meal toys isn't the selling point of happy meals so it just wouldn't be a problem.
I dunno, the argument of like "but if we start treating things other than money for money gambling as gambling then suddenly all these things will be gambling!" falls flat to me.
Those things should be regulated as gambling. They add no value to our society, and if the businesses can only survive by exploiting people's psyches then those businesses deserve to die.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
This sounds less like gambling and more like a futures market. Or is that also gambling?