[Mirioron]

>This is a narrative the game industry has been successfully pushing through organized PR campaigns and astroturfing online discussions, of course parents share some responsibility but this angle is disingenuous and lets publishers off the hook too easily. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much here you're aware of the situation and actively involved in fixing it.

It is almost entirely the parents' fault. Parents are the ones that have to raise their children, especially when the parents are letting the kid play a game that's meant for somebody 4+ years older.

>This + the instantly available secondary market which allows you to gamble with your digital goods/currency is the major difference between this and it's predecessor: baseball/pokemon/magic the gathering card packs.

But those exact same things happened with those games too. The reason those card games weren't so popular was that they weren't as fun and they were prohibitively expensive.

>Belgium/EU are making strong moves on this but very doubtful we'll see any movement in the US anytime soon, a New Hampshire senator dared to question the situation and was blasted by an aggressive letter from the ESRB claiming loot boxes are not at all gambling.

The EU might agree, but that's because the EU makes all kinds of decisions to curb the freedom of its citizens. I say this as a European. And the reason why the ESRB told that senator that lootboxes are not gambling is because they do not fall under the legal definition of gambling.

>Most games are just a vessel for the 'marketplace' which is an online casino for kids. The current state of gaming is shocking, regulation is desperately needed.

I find it ironic that you're asking for regulation on a topic you seem to be completely ignorant of. Most games do not even have a marketplace. What's shocking about gaming is the amount of misinformation floating around. I guess this is our generation's "video games cause violence."

[UnrealIncident]

>It is almost entirely the parents' fault. Parents are the ones that have to raise their children, especially when the parents are letting the kid play a game that's meant for somebody 4+ years older.

That just isn't true. Game publishers and developers these days use psychological tricks to keep people engaged and paying money into them.

>The EU might agree, but that's because the EU makes all kinds of decisions to curb the freedom of its citizens. I say this as a European. And the reason why the ESRB told that senator that lootboxes are not gambling is because they do not fall under the legal definition of gambling.

Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them. You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will. Protecting your citizens from predatory practices is not curbing the freedom of it's citizens.

>I find it ironic that you're asking for regulation on a topic you seem to be completely ignorant of. Most games do not even have a marketplace. What's shocking about gaming is the amount of misinformation floating around. I guess this is our generation's "video games cause violence."

There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling. One is that a marketplace requires trading of some kind. Trading can reduce their income on usually cosmetic items. Look at Overwatch, there's no marketplace because Activision Blizzard know they can make more money through just lootboxes because most people only want a skin for a specific character not a random chance to get something they probably don't want. The other reason is they don't want to be associated with "real gambling". Everyone's seen what's happened with Valve and the fire they've been coming under for just ignoring third party gambling sites for years. But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.

[Mirioron]

>That just isn't true. Game publishers and developers these days use psychological tricks to keep people engaged and paying money into them.

"Psychological tricks."

Do you use that term to describe your restaurant experience as well? "The cook used psychological tricks to make the food more delicious."

People have simply figured out what others like and made games more in line with that. Yes, they are psychological tricks, but almost everything humans create employ psychological tricks of some kind to make the experience better.

>Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them.

Not according to the law.

>You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will.

There is a guarantee that you will get something every time.

>There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling.

A business is not supposed to "have a heart." It makes absolutely no sense to expect that. A free market doesn't actually work if you expect people "to have a heart."

The reason why most games don't have marketplaces is that most games do not have a large amount of players or it does not fit into the theme of the game. It simply is not worth the effort to implement such a system for most games.

>But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.

Do you know what else uses the same tactics as slot machines? Almost everything that involves people. Humans seem to enjoy getting rewarded in a semi-random manner more than consistently. This even includes people interacting with one another. We grow more attached to people who sometimes treat us coldly than people who always treat us nicely.

I don't know if you use these terms on purpose or if it's simply an accident, but the way you refer to things such as "just like slot machines" or "this is gambling because xyz simplification" shows that you're trying to evoke an emotional reaction to paint something in a negative light. Those types of arguments don't work when the other person isn't emotionally invested in the same values as you.

I loathe lootboxes. I think they're disgusting, but I also understand that this kind of demand for regulation will only hurt players. If other people don't like lootboxes as well, then the market will take care of it. If the market doesn't take care of it then it turns out that some people do like lootboxes. You can then have a niche for games that have and games that don't have lootboxes.