“People don’t like to admit they’re able to be manipulated because it destroys our idealised conceptualisation of free will, which is why people are loathe to support rules to limit this kind of thing.”

DLC you know what you are getting though, not the same thing as loot crates at all.

IMO spending 15 dollars compared to 500 dollars and never getting ur item (which lootboxes are doing) are very different

They’re slot machines in everything but name, meticulously crafted to encourage player spending and keep them on the hook.

So it’s the players fault? Hmm, lets break that down.

Jason is on point! Its a shameless collection of tactics that came over from mobile gaming (which I’m not as upset about because the games are at least “Free”), Japanese Pachinko, Las Vegas gambling machines, etc. What offends me more is that it masquerades itself as the evolution of “expansion packs” which were…

Where does getting angry about other people getting angry fit in this? The endgame seems to be that no one can get angry about anything that isn’t a life-and-death scenario. That ignores the actual arguments being made.

Yeah, that’s not going to fly.

That’s exactly why Jim Sterling hates them, because he acknowledges that he is one of those people with an addictive personality and that loot boxes are specifically designed to pray on people like him. If he wasn’t strictly sticking to his principles of saying “fuck you” to every game with loot boxes’ temptations,…

You still don’t get the major difference when you buy any pack of cards it holds actual physical and monetary value compared to a game where it doesn’t

Even if it’s not “gambling,” that doesn’t mean it isn’t playing on the same exact psychological appeals that gambling does. And when they give people the ability to pay actual money for the loot boxes—even children—that’s just super poor form. It makes me think back to comments that Jonathan Blow made in a game design…

ESRB was created by the games industry, exactly for the purposes of avoiding any real regulation by the government. What did anyone expect from them?

of course they don’t, true gambling involves the (small) chance that you may come out ahead financially. Loot boxes are more akin to...

So putting real money into a slot machine isn’t real gambling, but putting fake slot machines into Pokémon immediately makes it a T rated game? This organization should lose its funding.

That’s fair?

Oh look, a dipshit! Hello, dipshit!

Just to nip this in the bud.

So maybe companies should charge more than 60.

OOOOOR, don’t spend 200,000,000 making a game.

“Games haven’t increased in price.” other than slicing up games into DLC, season passes, legendary editions, etc.. In order to get all content in a game you need to often spend upwards of $100 and you then there’s still microtransactions in those same games.

Gambling. Loot boxes are gambling. You aren’t buying an orc or weapon you know the stats of.