(Loot Box's) Number of child gamblers quadruples in just two years....

[Puupi]

No, but in the ways that makes one more okay than the other.

No, gambling is gambling.

[ro9ue]

No, gambling is gambling.

No, everything can be framed as gambling. Risking time or money on a thing without knowing the future outcome. It's important to not have an absolutist view of gambling. There are nuances like having a physical item with real world value vs data on a server you cannot freely transact with, or have any control over.

[Puupi]

No, everything can be framed as gambling. Risking time or money on a thing without knowing the future outcome. It's important to not have an absolutist view of gambling. There are nuances like having a physical item with real world value vs data on a server you cannot freely transact with, or have any control over.

When it comes to child gamblers, it's actually quite important to have an absolutist view.

[Deleted]

Great. It's not one. And there's science backing up the claim.

You have science proving that gaming companies are preying on kids trying to turn them into gambling addicts? Well let's see.

[Deleted]

I'm all up for removing loot boxes from gaming, and I sure wouldn't mind that they age restriction in card packs as well.

Trading Card Games are meant for kids.

Actually all games are.

[Netherling]

Trading Card Games are meant for kids.

Actually all games are.

What a ridiculous thing to say.

[Necroxis]

Right you did put the "etc" after it :P

Only reason I brought up Activision-Blizzard first is that Jim Sterling talks about them and Overwatch specifically, also this is largely a Blizzard-based forum.

[Deleted]

When it comes to child gamblers, it's actually quite important to have an absolutist view.

When I was a kid I bought packs with stickers for my sticker albums. They had certain themes like Arielle the Mermaid. You'd buy a pack for a couple of cents and you'd get like 8 stickers randomly out of a total of 150 collectable stickers for example. Then you'd put them into your album. It was always fun buying new packs, opening them, seeing if I'd get any stickers I didn't have already. I'd collect the doubles and trade them with friends or I'd get a second album and put the doubles in there. I would never complete a single album.

I didn't know that all along, I was gambling as a child in the 80's and 90's.

What does your absolutist view say to that?

Aren't those horrible sticker album companies taking advantage of children and forcing them into becoming gambling addicts?

[Necroxis]

It really does blow my mind the lengths people will defend a horribly toxic and anti-consumer practice like nickle and diming gamers with microtransactions and lootboxes under some flawed libertarian stance about government influence.

[Puupi]

When I was a kid I bought packs with stickers for my sticker albums. They had certain themes like Arielle the Mermaid. You'd buy a pack for a couple of cents and you'd get like 8 stickers randomly out of a total of 150 collectable stickers for example. Then you'd put them into your album. It was always fun buying new packs, opening them, seeing if I'd get any stickers I didn't have already. I'd collect the doubles and trade them with friends or I'd get a second album and put the doubles in there. I would never complete a single album.

I didn't know that all along, I was gambling as a child in the 80's and 90's.

What does your absolutist view say to that?

Aren't those horrible sticker album companies taking advantage of children and forcing them into becoming gambling addicts?

I did the same thing with hockey cards and stickers. I, or my parents really, spent shitloads of money on that.

Those hockey stickers I collected were inside these chocolate wafer packages so I sometimes bought like 30 of them just for the random stickers. My desk drawer was full of opened and uneaten chocolate wafers.

It's an expensive, addictive, obsessive and thus unhealthy thing for kids to do. Collecting stuff is fine, the gambling part wasn't.

[Deleted]

I did the same thing with hockey cards and stickers. I, or my parents really, spent shitloads of money on that.

Those hockey stickers I collected were inside these chocolate wafer packages so I sometimes bought like 30 of them just for the random stickers. My desk drawer was full of opened and uneaten chocolate wafers.

It's an expensive, addictive, obsessive and thus unhealthy thing for kids to do. Collecting stuff is fine, the gambling part wasn't.

It's really a stretch to call this gambling. And I don't see how it's unhealthy, you can collect tons of things and the random aspect makes it more exciting. Cause you can buy a pack of TCG cards and sure, often there's nothing special in there, but when there is, it's amazing.

People lose everything they own when they succumb to a gambling addiction, they might get into debt, borrow money from a loan shark and end up getting killed cause they can't pay their debt back. This does not happen when you are buying products like toys. No one's life has been ruined by Magic The Gathering. There are no homeless people out there, who lost their home and their belongings cause they played too much Overwatch.

[Puupi]

It's really a stretch to call this gambling. And I don't see how it's unhealthy, you can collect tons of things and the random aspect makes it more exciting. Cause you can buy a pack of TCG cards and sure, often there's nothing special in there, but when there is, it's amazing.

People lose everything they own when they succumb to a gambling addiction, they might get into debt, borrow money from a loan shark and end up getting killed cause they can't pay their debt back. This does not happen when you are buying products like toys. No one's life has been ruined by Magic The Gathering. There are no homeless people out there, who lost their home and their belongings cause they played too much Overwatch.

Well, you are just wrong about everything - and especially the bolded part. You don't even need to gamble and that happens.

[kail]

It really does blow my mind the lengths people will defend a horribly toxic and anti-consumer practice like nickle and diming gamers with microtransactions and lootboxes under some flawed libertarian stance about government influence.

The way I go against bad business practices is by not buying them. Trying to get baseless legislation to fix it for you is a terrible way go about it.

- - - Updated - - -

Card packs are way more common than loot boxes, there are sports trading cards as well.

There are two major differences:

A) in cases of TCGs, you are guaranteed particular rarities

B) in the cases of all card packs, you are getting physical items that you have complete freedom to sale and trade as you see fit. With video game loot boxes, it's gambling real money for random chance at pixels you don't even own, they exist on a server somewhere, so it's a completely closed system.

So so long as it's tradable and guranteed a certain rarity, it's not gambling?

[Deleted]

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationshi..._to_magic_the/

That's just tiny bit of a quick google search.

Being addicted to playing it =/= being addicted to buying packs.

You can find the same stories about people playing too much World of Warcraft. Even more so. World of Warcraft is notorious for making people addicted of the game.

Is it now unethical to create games that are so good people forget everything else around them?

I thought the issue was about "gambling addiction"?

- - - Updated - - -

Well, you are just wrong about everything - and especially the bolded part. You don't even need to gamble and that happens.

Really? People lost their homes because they played too much Overwatch?

1) Source
2) What's your solution? Ban video games?

[ro9ue]

So so long as it's tradable and guranteed a certain rarity, it's not gambling?

Never said it wasn't gambling. Said it's different.

[Deleted]

I guess you didn't read it, let me give you a hand:

Spending a lot of money on the game doesn't mean his life is ruined because of it. Is he homeless? Are they poor now because he bought too many Magic Cards? Is it an irreversible mistake?

I recently sold all my Trading cards and made like around 1000 Euros. This isn't gambling. He owns a product and he can choose to resell that product any time he wants. If anything it's closer to an investment.

It's no different than if he bought a new car without asking his wife.

[Necroxis]

The way I go against bad business practices is by not buying them. Trying to get baseless legislation to fix it for you is a terrible way go about it.

Except it's not baseless legislation in any stretch of the word.

Also children are not you.

Shockingly people can care about others that are not ourselves.

[Deleted]

Except it's not baseless legislation in any stretch of the word.

Also children are not you.

Shockingly people can care about others that are not ourselves.

You don't care. Don't tell me you care about how much money children spend on a videogame. You are just looking for a reason to complain online.

[Necroxis]

You don't care. Don't tell me you care about how much money children spend on a videogame. You are just looking for a reason to complain online.

Do you actually have a point about the thread or do you want to just keep distracting by bringing up irrelevant stuff?

[Deleted]

Do you actually have a point about the thread or do you want to just keep distracting by bringing up irrelevant stuff?

How is it irrelevant?