• YongYea - ESRB is Ignoring its Criteria that Games with Gambling are for Adults Only
    15 replies, posted
[media]https://youtu.be/wQNEGudg4zE[/media]
Microtransactions are probably the most lucrative gold mine of money gaming has ever found. To the extent that at least one major company makes the majority of profits [I]just[/I] from microtransactions and not actual game sales. The reason for that is because this is gambling and gambling is very lucrative, the same 'money printing' principle is in work here. Either way, as a result, this is going to be the hill the industry chooses to die on. They are making so much fucking money off of gambling addicts and children and children turned gambling addicts. Could be this generation's equivalent to the violent games controversy of the 90s. If this does go to major legal action then you can expect the games industry to fight tooth and nail to keep microtransactions legally not gambling. They don't care how much that makes them blood sucking vampires, they don't care that what they're doing is wrong, even evil, on a very basic [I]moral[/I] level, when they see the profits. Unfortunately I don't think this country is in a state to make that determination.
[QUOTE=Clovis;52953688]I hate to be that person but if they phase microtransactions out, they'll find some other way to squeeze peoples money out of them There's just so many people in western countries that play video games and have some income to dispose and as long as that is the case, people are going to try vacuuming money from their consumers[/QUOTE] The hope is that the "other way to squeeze money out of us" will be through quality products and actually having something lots of people will spend money on.
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;52953630]Microtransactions are probably the most lucrative gold mine of money gaming has ever found. To the extent that at least one major company makes the majority of profits [I]just[/I] from microtransactions and not actual game sales. The reason for that is because this is gambling and gambling is very lucrative, the same 'money printing' principle is in work here. Either way, as a result, this is going to be the hill the industry chooses to die on. They are making so much fucking money off of gambling addicts and children and children turned gambling addicts. Could be this generation's equivalent to the violent games controversy of the 90s. If this does go to major legal action then you can expect the games industry to fight tooth and nail to keep microtransactions legally not gambling. They don't care how much that makes them blood sucking vampires, they don't care that what they're doing is wrong, even evil, on a very basic [I]moral[/I] level, when they see the profits. Unfortunately I don't think this country is in a state to make that determination.[/QUOTE] Except this controversy had actual merit and could be agreed upon by both politicians and gamers alike
I feel like the adult only rating would only start to mean less and less, especially considering digital downloading. Physical copies not being stocked in stores had a way more tangible impact when SA was released, nowadays I'm not so sure. Direct government regulation of lootboxes seems like the best solution. Even as a "first step" in the right direction this would be avoiding the real issue at hand.
[QUOTE=Clovis;52953688]I hate to be that person but if they phase microtransactions out, they'll find some other way to squeeze peoples money out of them There's just so many people in western countries that play video games and have some income to dispose and as long as that is the case, people are going to try vacuuming money from their consumers[/QUOTE] the issue is they've found a ludicrous way of doing so, if you eliminate the microtransaction gambling we can go back to the worst of it being alt costume DLC which is fine. Most hopefully expansion DLC. The issue is that microtransactions/lootboxes/paid consumables all are essentially money for [i]NOTHING[/i]. Why work on skins and sell them as a neat pack when you can gouge people repeatedly for shit you already made? [editline]7th December 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Mobon1;52953739]I feel like the adult only rating would only start to mean less and less, especially considering digital downloading. Physical copies not being stocked in stores had a way more tangible impact when SA was released, nowadays I'm not so sure. Direct government regulation of lootboxes seems like the best solution.[/QUOTE] Either serves a benefit to gaming though. I'd like to see AO rating be less of a death sentence. But yeah, for the issue at hand, government regulation.
[QUOTE=VenomousBeetle;52953742]the issue is they've found a ludicrous way of doing so, if you eliminate the microtransaction gambling we can go back to the worst of it being alt costume DLC which is fine. Most hopefully expansion DLC.[/QUOTE] I think Creation Club is a good case study on alt skin DLC. Without the addicting gambling aspect and pseudo-rarity of their skins it's done pretty badly. If anything I'd bet that the most likely next move should lootboxes cease to exist is time / stock limited items that you can purchase directly for real currency. I think artificial scarcity is unethical in itself and is a major part of why this is so wrong. In doing so, you get to step outside of the real value of the content you create and mislead consumers into thinking it's worth way, way more than it truly is.
I still dislike the creation club because of the bs with fake currency and the paid mods. Also because the game updates everytime and fucks everything up and you have to have the dormant files in your folder increasing the games size [editline]7th December 2017[/editline] When Paid Mods was rolled around the first time I really wanted them to take the concept and make it like their dev jam that caused so much cool content to get into dawnguard and dragonborn. I wanted them to take mods and make an expansion or "pack" out of them and sell it as a regular DLC. Instead we got a microtransaction store thats heavily overpriced and makes you buy the currency in a way you'll have leftovers constantly [editline]7th December 2017[/editline] I also found it a little annoying that they went ahead and "whitelisted" all paid mods for the achievement flag but neglected to enable this for any free mods, including the required unofficial patch.
I still don't understand the point of Adults Only as anything more than a blatant "we can't fully ban it but we want to" rating. E and T cover a large ground, but M is literally a single year of advised age below AO. With such a poorly defined and thin line given that AO seems to only give a shit about explicit sex and player gambling (which in and of itself is a vague line given how many games have both but only certain things piss them off), it's no wonder the ESRB is poorly handling the situation since they would require a competent and serious revision to even hope to start fixing anything.
The ESRB seems to cause more problems than it solves for consumers and parents rarely if ever pay any goddamn attention to the rating. I even saw one parent ask an employee if Far Cry Primal had anything too adult for their kids and get told "no" instead of reading the fucking package that tells you about the explicit sex scene, straight up dong and several violent mutilations and scenes
[QUOTE=VenomousBeetle;52953773]The ESRB seems to cause more problems than it solves for consumers and parents rarely if ever pay any goddamn attention to the rating. I even saw one parent ask an employee if Far Cry Primal had anything too adult for their kids and get told "no" instead of reading the fucking package that tells you about the explicit sex scene, straight up dong and several violent mutilations and scenes[/QUOTE] Listen man, kids need to watch violent mutilation to grow up and be kind, well adjusted adults, just a part of life Children watching a man having their throat ripped out by a man wielding a machete teaches them key important values
[QUOTE=RikohZX;52953761]I still don't understand the point of Adults Only as anything more than a blatant "we can't fully ban it but we want to" rating. E and T cover a large ground, but M is literally a single year of advised age below AO. With such a poorly defined and thin line given that AO seems to only give a shit about explicit sex and player gambling (which in and of itself is a vague line given how many games have both but only certain things piss them off), it's no wonder the ESRB is poorly handling the situation since they would require a competent and serious revision to even hope to start fixing anything.[/QUOTE] The AO rating is mostly given out to hardcore porno games, a genre that mostly died out in the west by the end of the FMV era. Games that get AO ratings due to violence or milder sexual content almost always get the rating because of a controversy surrounding their content, and would likely have gotten an M if said controversy didn't happen (see Hatred and Manhunt 2). [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AO-rated_video_games"]Wikipedia's list of AO-rated games has[/URL] one entry about gambling: Peak Entertainment Casinos, which I assume is just plain old gambling.
Reminder that the ESRB is owned by the companies doing this shit
I haven't watched the video yet but I recall ESRB classifies depictions of gambling as gambling, not the act of gambling itself
[QUOTE=Talishmar;52953954]I haven't watched the video yet but I recall ESRB classifies depictions of gambling as gambling, not the act of gambling itself[/QUOTE] He brings that up. The ESRB distinguishes real and fictional gambling in their guidelines. Playing poker in red dead redemption where it's pure fiction with no real money involved is rated teen. Gambling with real life money as in CS:GO and BF2 is [i]supposed[/i] to be rated AO.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.