Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is no stranger to costly in-game cosmetics, but its latest super expensive mount is so popular it’s causing a shortage of WoW Tokens in the in-game auction house.
And I think Blizzard recognizes that WoW has largely run its course, so it’s trying to extract maximum profit from those who remain. That’s what happens when a company shifts from innovation to profit maximization, and it should be a signal for players to move on.
‘just boycott!’ utterly useless
It’s only useless if your metric for success is Blizzard changing their behavior. But if you shift your metric of success to “less predatory companies are viable,” it can absolutely be a success.
Depending on your metric of “success,” maybe legislation is the only option. But we don’t need every company to behave “properly” (however you define that) in order to have a competitive market for games. If you look beyond the handful of top-grossing games w/ manipulative in-game stores, you’ll find a vibrant market of games to play.
“scam victims.”
A scam is something else entirely. “Problem gambling” is largely a choice, and if you ask any gambler, they’ll be able to confirm that they understand that the casino always wins eventually, but that they continue to play because they think “this time will be different.” However, if you ask a scam victim, they’ll tell you they thought the scammer was legitimate and continued because they honestly believed they were making a good choice. Those are very different things.
Games fall under the “problem gambling” umbrella (players know what they’re paying for), not the “scam” umbrella (it’s rare for players to not know what they’re getting for their money). If there are incidents of the latter (e.g. loot boxes with lower than advertised odds of getting something of value), those should be aggressively litigated by regulators, and honestly anything where there isn’t a guarantee (i.e. not paying X to get Y product) should be considered “gambling” and regulated as such (restricted for minors, age verification required, etc).
Spending $90 for a mount is a stupid decision, but it’s not a fraudulent transaction if you get the mount when you pay. I don’t think that should be regulated, but it should spark outcry from news orgs and players and push people away from the game.
I see spending stupid amounts of money on a game to be similar to spending stupid amounts of money on any other vanity purchase, like lifted trucks, designer clothing, or expensive jewelry. If you want to buy those things, you should absolutely be allowed to, even if a lot of people would say it’s a stupid idea if they understood your finances. Adults must be free to make stupid choices, and the only limits IMO should be if you were deceived and wouldn’t have made the choice if you had more accurate information.
Ignoring how thousands of brand-new games pull this shit from day one.
The existence of good options means nothing. This abuse should be criminal. The fact companies don’t have to commit this intolerable exploitation against their users, does not lessen the problem when some companies do it anyway. If you just mean to nitpick the word “nothing,” sure, congratulations. Someone somewhere will dodge this bullet. But I’m on about all the people getting taken by this systemic problem that’s already half the industry by revenue.
Any real money spent in games was defrauded, because all apparent value was made-up. As surely as someone selling you the deed to scrap the Brooklyn Bridge. The paper is real! You get the paper! But the paper is not why you handed someone a suitcase full of cash. There was a story you were told, and it’s not real. That’s what games are.
Games make you value worthless things. That is what makes them games. There is no real-world value to points or shards or rare drops. They’re arbitrary goals with arbitrary obstacles. They’re achievable so that your brain will squirt the happy juice. But treating them as valuable, the way money is valuable, is a category error.
The small charges are more insidious. Like the naked greed of paying instead of watching a counter tick down - a transaction that is neither a good nor a service. Or the lootboxes that everyone now agrees are intolerable, once the industry has moved on to calling them keys. Or anything consumable, proving your money went to something so worthless, the game will just hands them out in unbounded quantities. Even peacocking for other players makes people go, oh, it’s just a dollar. It’s just cosmetic. It’s just the only reason the game exists in the first place, to grind you against that constant nagging temptation.
These games are no longer optimized to make you feel good when you’re good at them.
They’re optimized to make you feel good when you open your wallet and look away.
And until you do, they’re as addictive and frustrating as we can manage.
This business model is built on exploitation of innate human shortcomings. Your brain is not very good at distinguishing sources of happy juice. It can easily be tricked, and literally the entire games industry exists to trick it. Again: that’s what games are. Their enjoyability comes from that fiction. That’s why pretending any of it can have real monetary value is a scam.
I’m on about all the people getting taken by this systemic problem
What do you mean by “taken”? Were they not aware of what they were buying? Was there fraud at any point in the transaction?
A bad deal isn’t criminal, it’s only criminal if it’s misrepresented. And given that there are a ton of repeat customers, I fail to see how it’s being misrepresented. When exactly did the fraud take place? Did the customer get something other than what they expected to get?
At the end of the day, all value is made-up, especially with digital licenses. I may value a cosmetic skin a lot more highly than you do, but that doesn’t mean I was defrauded, it just means I find more value in it than you.
The small charges are more insidious
Oh, they absolutely are, and I definitely don’t like the stupid dopamine machine that mobile gaming has become. But you also have to understand that the value in paying for a ton of MTX in those games is often less about those incremental dopamine hits and more about showing off to friends/randoms online (Look how big my base is! Look how cool my character looks! Look how high on the leaderboard I am!). That’s the real dopamine hit IMO, and that’s where the analogy with luxury items comes in (lifted trucks, designer bags, etc).
lootboxes
This one is different and I consider it gambling, and it should be regulated as such, because the value is undetermined.
These games are no longer optimized to make you feel good when you’re good at them.
Right, these are casual games, where you can pay to appear successful. That’s what luxury goods are. If I go into debt to buy a fancy car, I look rich to other people, and that gives me that dopamine hit. This is just the digital equivalent of that, in many cases.
The F2P players are being used to give these whales an audience so they can flaunt their “skill” (read: how much they paid).
That’s why pretending any of it can have real monetary value is a scam.
And that’s where I disagree. It’s only a scam if you get something other than what was advertised. If the advertising is simply “buy this to instantly complete X” and buying it instantly completes X, then there’s no fraud, therefore no scam. You paid a stupid tax for being impatient, and you did that while understanding that you’re buying a temporary high.
Just because something is addictive doesn’t mean it’s a scam. Cigarettes and alcohol aren’t scams. Gambling isn’t a scam. Lotteries aren’t scams. Using any of them to excess is a really bad idea, but I don’t think they’re scams. And that’s why I think any legislation should be limited to kids, since kids are assumed to be more susceptible to dark patterns and addictions, whereas adults are assumed to have responsibility for their own actions.
And I think Blizzard recognizes that WoW has largely run its course, so it’s trying to extract maximum profit from those who remain. That’s what happens when a company shifts from innovation to profit maximization, and it should be a signal for players to move on.
It’s only useless if your metric for success is Blizzard changing their behavior. But if you shift your metric of success to “less predatory companies are viable,” it can absolutely be a success.
Depending on your metric of “success,” maybe legislation is the only option. But we don’t need every company to behave “properly” (however you define that) in order to have a competitive market for games. If you look beyond the handful of top-grossing games w/ manipulative in-game stores, you’ll find a vibrant market of games to play.
A scam is something else entirely. “Problem gambling” is largely a choice, and if you ask any gambler, they’ll be able to confirm that they understand that the casino always wins eventually, but that they continue to play because they think “this time will be different.” However, if you ask a scam victim, they’ll tell you they thought the scammer was legitimate and continued because they honestly believed they were making a good choice. Those are very different things.
Games fall under the “problem gambling” umbrella (players know what they’re paying for), not the “scam” umbrella (it’s rare for players to not know what they’re getting for their money). If there are incidents of the latter (e.g. loot boxes with lower than advertised odds of getting something of value), those should be aggressively litigated by regulators, and honestly anything where there isn’t a guarantee (i.e. not paying X to get Y product) should be considered “gambling” and regulated as such (restricted for minors, age verification required, etc).
Spending $90 for a mount is a stupid decision, but it’s not a fraudulent transaction if you get the mount when you pay. I don’t think that should be regulated, but it should spark outcry from news orgs and players and push people away from the game.
I see spending stupid amounts of money on a game to be similar to spending stupid amounts of money on any other vanity purchase, like lifted trucks, designer clothing, or expensive jewelry. If you want to buy those things, you should absolutely be allowed to, even if a lot of people would say it’s a stupid idea if they understood your finances. Adults must be free to make stupid choices, and the only limits IMO should be if you were deceived and wouldn’t have made the choice if you had more accurate information.
Ignoring how thousands of brand-new games pull this shit from day one.
The existence of good options means nothing. This abuse should be criminal. The fact companies don’t have to commit this intolerable exploitation against their users, does not lessen the problem when some companies do it anyway. If you just mean to nitpick the word “nothing,” sure, congratulations. Someone somewhere will dodge this bullet. But I’m on about all the people getting taken by this systemic problem that’s already half the industry by revenue.
Any real money spent in games was defrauded, because all apparent value was made-up. As surely as someone selling you the deed to scrap the Brooklyn Bridge. The paper is real! You get the paper! But the paper is not why you handed someone a suitcase full of cash. There was a story you were told, and it’s not real. That’s what games are.
Games make you value worthless things. That is what makes them games. There is no real-world value to points or shards or rare drops. They’re arbitrary goals with arbitrary obstacles. They’re achievable so that your brain will squirt the happy juice. But treating them as valuable, the way money is valuable, is a category error.
The small charges are more insidious. Like the naked greed of paying instead of watching a counter tick down - a transaction that is neither a good nor a service. Or the lootboxes that everyone now agrees are intolerable, once the industry has moved on to calling them keys. Or anything consumable, proving your money went to something so worthless, the game will just hands them out in unbounded quantities. Even peacocking for other players makes people go, oh, it’s just a dollar. It’s just cosmetic. It’s just the only reason the game exists in the first place, to grind you against that constant nagging temptation.
These games are no longer optimized to make you feel good when you’re good at them.
They’re optimized to make you feel good when you open your wallet and look away.
And until you do, they’re as addictive and frustrating as we can manage.
This business model is built on exploitation of innate human shortcomings. Your brain is not very good at distinguishing sources of happy juice. It can easily be tricked, and literally the entire games industry exists to trick it. Again: that’s what games are. Their enjoyability comes from that fiction. That’s why pretending any of it can have real monetary value is a scam.
What do you mean by “taken”? Were they not aware of what they were buying? Was there fraud at any point in the transaction?
A bad deal isn’t criminal, it’s only criminal if it’s misrepresented. And given that there are a ton of repeat customers, I fail to see how it’s being misrepresented. When exactly did the fraud take place? Did the customer get something other than what they expected to get?
At the end of the day, all value is made-up, especially with digital licenses. I may value a cosmetic skin a lot more highly than you do, but that doesn’t mean I was defrauded, it just means I find more value in it than you.
Oh, they absolutely are, and I definitely don’t like the stupid dopamine machine that mobile gaming has become. But you also have to understand that the value in paying for a ton of MTX in those games is often less about those incremental dopamine hits and more about showing off to friends/randoms online (Look how big my base is! Look how cool my character looks! Look how high on the leaderboard I am!). That’s the real dopamine hit IMO, and that’s where the analogy with luxury items comes in (lifted trucks, designer bags, etc).
This one is different and I consider it gambling, and it should be regulated as such, because the value is undetermined.
Right, these are casual games, where you can pay to appear successful. That’s what luxury goods are. If I go into debt to buy a fancy car, I look rich to other people, and that gives me that dopamine hit. This is just the digital equivalent of that, in many cases.
The F2P players are being used to give these whales an audience so they can flaunt their “skill” (read: how much they paid).
And that’s where I disagree. It’s only a scam if you get something other than what was advertised. If the advertising is simply “buy this to instantly complete X” and buying it instantly completes X, then there’s no fraud, therefore no scam. You paid a stupid tax for being impatient, and you did that while understanding that you’re buying a temporary high.
Just because something is addictive doesn’t mean it’s a scam. Cigarettes and alcohol aren’t scams. Gambling isn’t a scam. Lotteries aren’t scams. Using any of them to excess is a really bad idea, but I don’t think they’re scams. And that’s why I think any legislation should be limited to kids, since kids are assumed to be more susceptible to dark patterns and addictions, whereas adults are assumed to have responsibility for their own actions.