[andrei_says_]

My friend’s 11 year old plays games on his iPhone, downloaded from the Apple App Store.

I spent a few minutes looking over his shoulder.

A bit of gameplay followed by increasing amounts of gambling for power ups and constant reminders to buy power ups. This should be absolutely illegal.

Dark patterns upon dark patterns manipulating the kid to squeeze his parents for real money, by habituating gambling habits and normalizing a horrible experience.

Apple will never address these issues because these games make them truckloads of money.

[Gorbzel]

Shouldn’t your friend be monitoring his kid’s usage? Why is everything always some government/capitalist entity’s responsibility?

[andrei_says_]

Gambling is closer to smoking than regular gaming.

All the boy’s friends play the game and similar games. It’s an uphill battle and an extraordinary pressure on the parents to control each game that gets played and micromanage to that extend - to the detriment of their relationship with the child, because fighting these intentionally instilled addictive patterns will create upset in the child and tension in the relationship. The game devs pay psychologists to create the addiction at scale which the parents just cannot compete with.

In reality parents have finite amounts of energy and a finite numbers of battles to fight. Eat your food, go to school, do your homework, keep your phone charged and call me when you need me to pick you up. That kind of thing.

Having week longs drama forbidding a game that everyone else plays is just not on the map.

[johnnyanmac]

I agree with you in spirit, but I also can't help but think that most other internet denizens won't be satisfied with just banning the loobox aspects. most of the AAA games industry already moved past that and into battlepasses or flooding a store with direct purchase cosmetics.

It's more the nickle and diming people hate, not the actual gambling. And I don't know if we can or should regulate that.

[andrei_says_]

The gambling patterns are related to taking additional action to getting the rewards - like spinning a wheel, choosing to take an additional step risking the current reward for the chance to win another one. That’s gambling, intentionally constructed to be addictive. It changes habits, normalizes addiction and is harmful.

[johnnyanmac]

Sure, and the console industry is already moving past it. It's now just asking you to lay $10-20 for a "season" of a battle pass, where you grind and get more rewards for your grinding. No RNG at all, just one input, and X actions to guarantee Y rewards. No more, no less.

But the games discourse online isn't exactly giving games like Fortnite any slack despite no longer using lootboxes for its monetization. Or on a fighter game (of which few ever used lootboxes) for offering dozens of skins.

That's the dangerous part on what to or not regulate. Do we want thr government regulating how many add-ons or cosmetics a game can sell?

[Guvante]

You could say the same about the post above it.

Why is it different?

Having safer defaults is fine, but why is there no way for alternatives to exist? (30% of all revenue is why BTW)