not worried about video games' effects on kids in a "video games cause violence" way, but worried about video games' effects on kids in a "many games deliberately use the language and psychological hooks of gambling to coerce their userbase to spend money, including games targeted at children, and not only do kids not have the impulse control development to defend against these tricks, but parents aren't informed about the danger these games pose" way
eukynikos occami
- it, they, she but like a spaceship
- cash.app/$unstignified
peach eating vagus nerve cultist of the house of tool ape
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in reply to @ChaiaEran's post:
im currently in high school, this is definitely an issue with kids now. I hear (usually middle schoolers who havent learned the value of money) talking about how they spent a bunch money on skins in a game and got in trouble with their parents.
Definitely as people get older they learn more of the real value of money and how expensive things are. The differences in emotional maturity that i see from a 6th grader to an 8th grader is incredible, going from basically a little kid to someone who is responsible and i would trust.
me too. i think “sanitized” gambling-adjacent mechanics have done incalculable damage to developing minds… i say this because i think TCGs actually fucked my brain up. and opening booster packs is way overshadowed by the amount of predatory patterns in the current landscape. pokemon unite comes to mind as a particularly pernicious example. its fucked up, and neurodiverse kids are really vulnerable to this.
I think TCGs are worse now too. When I was in the fourth grade opening YuGiOh cards I only had a vague idea of what was good. But now there are all these YouTube channels dedicated to just opening up cards and seeing them react to it and show off what is cool in a set I think really drives people (esp younger ppl) to want to buy more.
I think the abundance of information now is both good and bad. For sure youtube channels do contribute to some social pressure, but they also give out a lot of information that mitigates some of the worst aspects of TCGs. “Buy singles” is advice that is ubiquitous, well justified and redirects money towards less gamified product, which I think is a net positive, They also help give perspective on the relative value of cards so fewer kids get scammed into unfavorable trades. Overall, I do think TCGs are worse but mainly due to manufacturer’s practices. Due to how information spreads now, people have an easier time figuring out that the business model of TCGs is to simply obsolete older product as soon as possible to sell you better cards. I attribute the problems TCGs currently have with acquiring and retaining new players to this.
Yeah I see that for sure. I got back into Pokemon TCG around the time XY was starting to be phased out and it was mostly Sun Moon. I know for people who played the advice was buy singles of the good cards, but the good cards were so expensive and were only "good" for so long that it kinda turned me off from getting really invested in it. I just simply don't have that kind of money. I still get cards from time to time for the fun of opening them, but I can't justify getting into league play again.
I work in games and trying to explain this shit to the people around me makes me feel like a conspiracy theorist. They really don't understand!
Gambling and all those kinds of microtransactions have gotten a pretty big problem in the gaming industry, and they reveal some of the most scummy ways to gain money. It's annoying that it seems to have gone a way, that it almost feels like it's getting more normalized, when personally it's a thing that should be frowned upon.
I'm a fan of having options to donate to developers in order to support them, but including gambling, p2w, all the lootbox and other similar garbage is a plague that has a negative impact on the reputation of the gaming industry, especially free and mobile games.