When you have "investors" with insane expectations, pubs/devs have to be "creative", right? o.O

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/314/853/a3d.gif

It's mentioned in another thread but Belgium is looking into EA's Battlefield:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/16/technology/battlefront-ii-star-wars-game-ea-costs/index.html

The minister of Justice wants to ban in-game purchases, if you don't know exactly what it will contain. "Combining gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child.

The commotion started last week with the new game Star Wars: Battlefront in the the game you could buy so called "loot boxes", virtual boxes which could contain advantages for the game. You don't know however what it contains beforehand.

"The combination of money and addiction is gambling", ruled the gambling committee. VTM News brought the news and a few days later EA withdrew the function from the game, partially because Disney complained, which has the rights to the Star Wars merchandise.

Geens now wants to prevent that these kinds of funtions will be in any games going forward. "But that takes time, because we have to go to Europe. We will definitely try to ban it."

https://nieuws.vtm.be/vtm-nieuws/binnenland/geens-wil-gokken-games-verbieden


http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

it's borderline narcotics business model. it's exploitative, it's all caveat emptor stuff. and it goes beyond that in fact because it pollutes the games which have to get altered to receive it. it's fucking weird, it creates horrible situations for some people playing the games, and I think personally there are weird parallels with the pharmaceutical industry specifically with antibiotics that's just weird and concerning.

The director of the Dutch Gambling commission has a slightly different take on it apparently.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7ei9jn/head_of_dutch_gambling_commission_appears_on/

Summary from first post: While I get your point, you do realize this has been part of gaming since pretty much back in the day of arcades? Those rewarding sounds and flashing lights and highscores etc were all intended to keep you playing (spending). The advent of home gaming has diminished that sort of spending and MT's are bringing it back, but realistically this has been there since the dawn of gaming.

Besides that, feeling rewarded and wanting to continue playing is something I'm pretty sure we all want from our games. (minus the spending), though I agree the least exploitative the monetary scheme around that is the better. But if you look at MMO's for instance, I was happy to pay monthly for that , because it kept me entertained, and it kept me hooked for so long, it was simply worth putting more money into. (many people would call MMO's addictive or close to it)

1. "This shitty practice has existed for a long time" is a bad argument in defense of the practice.

2. When you're paying for a (proper) MMORPG subscription, you know what you're buying: a set amount of game time. Sure, the experience may vary, but that's the case with all media that's monetized with upfront payments. Regular games and movies can also suck. As a commentary on existing laws, this is unfortunate but ok. As a driving principle, it's Kantian bullshit. Many states have laws against Ponzi schemes. Yet, it turns out the chance to lose money in a Ponzi scheme (as a layperson, not a scammer) is 90%, while the chance to lose money in an MLM pyramid is 99% (the distinguishing feature of the latter is they're selling goods and are allegedly sustainable). The commission not regulating loot boxes is not "fine", it's an oversight.

(Then again, maybe they meant "if box content is not redeemable for real money, you're in the clear FOR NOW according to current law". I can't Dutch.)

I'd also like it a lot if we as a community moved away from "addictive" as a colloquial descriptor of nice things in general. Nice things are things people like to partake of, it's, like, in the definition. Addiction on the other hand makes people feel miserable but return to the game over and over. Here's a rare example of an addictive but not evil game. (Remarkably, no content in this game is paid-only, the dev has an unlimited refund policy, and the sequel will now be a regular paid game without microtransactions.)

Anyway, the matter is not about addiction, it's about gambling. IMO gambling should cover most if not all situations in games when a repeatable monetary transaction offers a rare reward regardless of whether the reward can be liquified or not. E.g. there's a Russian lottery where the top prize is an apartment. Would it be less of a lottery if the T&C said you couldn't sell it if you won?

I don't disagree with you but just to devil's advocate here a little.

What if there's still an ingame way get random rare rewards, say lootbox buyable with ingame currency that gives random + (highly desirable) rare rewards. No way to buy them directly. However there's plenty of microtransaction means to either buy ingame currency directly, or boosters for currency gains, or gear etc to help you get currency faster.

Is that acceptable? Where would it stand vs gambling laws?

I don't know where it would stand vs gambling laws, but under my definition, any repeatable real money -> rare reward conversion whose per time period spending cap is huge compared to regular market prices or nonexistent would be gambling, regardless of how many steps it takes or how many parties it involves.

E.g.
- buying in-game currency with real money at a set exchange rate is not gambling, because the rate is set;
- having a "reasonably-priced" premium subscription that rewards a random account-bound rare item per month is not gambling, because it's "reasonably" hardcapped;
- selling a character such as Darth Vader for an exorbitant sum and have him be otherwise available through an extremely unfun ~yearlong grinding process (win a match, get a box, open for a random reward) is not gambling, because the random path and the real money path are alternatives;
- betting items bought for real money on various outcomes at an external site *is* gambling.

There's also a separate problem of selling in-game resources -- as in, numbers, not content someone had to take the time out of their day to create -- for real money in singleplayer games. Singleplayer games should be moddable as a civil right. Sure, "seamless drop-in, drop-out, so no modding for you" is a blatant loophole - okay, fine, don't allow mods in competitive multiplayer. But buying additional pylons or whatever for private gaming shouldn't be a thing.

"Please note: No content in the game is gated by Gold. All content can be acquired naturally through normal gameplay."

Maybe they should define normal gameplay?

Anyway, it's good to know. It shows how micro-transactions spoil the fun of a game. If you pay to win, where is the challenge?

Pay to play is the only thing that works.

Addictiveness is precisely why gambling is an extremely lucrative industry, and if this were not the case there would be little or no cause for concern.
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The challenge lies in dealing with the consequences of irrational spending.

I mean, it's pointless and counterproductive to charge one agency with regulating all things that can potentially ruin a person's life. Addiction is a sprawling medical issue, and objects of addiction are all over the place. Gambling is one of them, a specific type of commercial service that can be targeted by financial regulators.

Agreed, it's like taking aspirin for a headache caused by a brain tumor. The problem lies in the fact that some people behave like predators -- literally -- and we are socialized to think that this is normal, acceptable behavior -- it isn't.

Legislation/regulation simply cannot make up for an absence of ethics, for very obvious reasons.

I do see your point, but I never really considered the whole arcade argument a valid justification for this stuff. where are the arcades now? they're dead. the financial aspect wasn't the only reason that consoles replaced them but it was part of it. back in the day, part of the reason you played on console was you knew you could play on your own terms, including more if you liked, without the knife's edge constantly being up against you.

another thing I never see anybody mention when they talk about the arcades is that change used to grow on trees. it was just there. it was in your pocket, in your car's drink holder, underneath your couch, in your shoebox. it was around. nobody ever brings up the relationship between inflation, economic consolidation/stifling and how the arcades existed. not to mention the move away from physical coinage.

while it is very true that the ancillary aspects of the arcade were affected by monetization and psychological manipulation interests, I believe it's overblown when it's applied to how much it affected the design of the actual videogame software itself. things like high scores, one-note game design, excessive difficulty curves, were all heavily influenced by the limitations that the technology imposed upon game developers. game developers applied these more simplistic methods to fuel or pad their game simulations because it was much more difficult to go beyond them in those days. it's true that the relationship between these things and the motivation to monetize aggressively did exist in the way you're saying, not disputing it, but it was not to such a great level in every case. even today, high scores and difficulty curves are used identically to how they were back then. many games still come with min-maxy side missions. dark souls is a perfect example of a game leaning real hard into difficulty to elevate itself from what it would be without it there.

besides all that, blindboxs are purely just rng for money. in the arcades you would punch in more money, but you were then in control of the simulation. a closer analogy would be an arcade cabinet without any joystick or buttons on it that you just watched it go after you put in your money. I'm wondering if they could get around legislation by having the lootbox screen just be an arcade machine that you play some shitty little 8bit 2d sidescroller on and your highscore affects your droprate (which will be near impossible to score high enough to affect in any meaningful fashion). I guess that's not really likely because the cheat developers would then have a field day.

so while I definitely concede that stuff similar existed before, I don't agree that it was the same thing. and after all, now it's gone.

But that's not much fun then. So where is the challenge and the fun if you pay to win. Pay to play should be the goal of everyone.