This is a culmination of a trend that has been going on for at least a decade:
First it was the lootboxes that became widespread:
~2010 Steam Team Fortress 2, later Counter Strike
2012 EA's Mass Effect 3
2014 Call of Duty and Battlefield
2016 Overwatch
After that it seemed lootboxes were everywhere. In 2017 there was some backlash for EA's Star Wars game and they removed lootboxes, but it did not change the situation overall.
Then in 2020 western gamers were exposed to gacha mechanics with the release of Genshin Impact, where you "roll" with special currency for weapons and characters that you can't get otherwise. And this currency is either bought with real money or VERY slowly accumulated by playing game. The game is free to play otherwise.
In february this year there was a western release of Lost Ark - MMO ARPG(genre similar to Diablo) that involves probabilistic gear upgrades where you either play weeks to months to fully upgrade it, or drop hundreds to thousands of dollars on upgrade materials, game itself is free to play. It was backed by Amazon and promoted by huge Twitch events.
Both Genshin Impact and Lost Ark have very impressive amount of content, beautiful visuals, music - all while being free to play. Could these games be made and succeed without gambling mechanics? I don't know. My experience with Genshin has been that I got a lot more out of it in terms of fun per money spent than out of most from what I buy on Steam sales - which I play for few hours and forget.
I think the regulations about these kinds of games should at the very least require devs to:
- State all the probabilities
- Define a guarantee or a "pity": at which attempt will you succeed with 100% probability.
Then for each desired outcome, e.g. fully upgrading weapon, there should be displayed an expected and maximum "price", preferably in real currency. This would at least help the adults to moderate their spending. And as for children, yeah, these games should be 18+, I don't believe a child can handle the urge to spend in these games.
There is a large difference in lootboxes that have the ability to give you more power in the game versus lootboxes that just drop new cosmetic items with no gameplay affect.
Some of those games that you mentioned only contained cosmetic items in the lootboxes.
Gamers as a community have a much more visceral reaction to paying for power in the game, compared to paying for cosmetics.
FIFA is missing from your timeline and it's what really started EA on this pathway into darkness - the 'success' there is what inspired lootifying ME3. FIFA remains one of the biggest lootbox games around.
Interesting, just recently read about similar concept from Chris Hadfield's book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth". He puts all team newcomers intro three categories minus ones, zeros and plus ones. Basically minus ones will think they always know better and do not spend effort on familiarizing themself with existing system, they also ignore epistemological category of "unknown unknowns". Chris recommends always to strive for being a zero at first.
Yes, a really cool book that I enjoyed with a good laugh. There is also a somewhat sequel that I'm hoping to read someday "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
> The downside of this approach is that if we all did it then the world would be a much worse place.
Or not, maybe it would be better. Imagine country where people are mindful about their immediate surrounding and don't buy into ideological bullshit sold by mass media.
Want to send young men to some war? Well tough luck, if there is no conflict at the doorstep then this move is probably to benefit someone else, not you.
Refugees overflowing streets? Common sense tells you to take a look at what kind of people they are and if they are good and acknowledge their situation and want to better it, then help them. But if they act like arrogant invaders then common sense would be to tell them to bugger off. Yet media adhering to its ideology would tell you that you are wrong to use common sense. That somehow WYSIWYG is not right here and that some abstract oppression these people are fleeting from is more important.
>and the consequences of climate change are critical to a healthy and functional nation
Lets see how in future china deals with climate change as opposed to societies with 'well informed' citizens.
>aren't we distancing ourselves from how a majority of the world lives and thinks
If I wanted to know how majority world lives and thinks I would go and sample this information in real world by traveling and talking to different people, and not getting this info from people who have their own agendas to push onto me and who call themselves journalists.
> Many people talk about forgetting things as soon as the test is over
It could be argued that when learning specifically for a test people tend to forget things asap, because things learned this way now carry with them a spirit of something being forced on you.
>but why would they remember it even that long without a test?
If you learn something that bores you, sure. But I claim that when you learn not for a test you would properly inspect things and their domains and try to get insights into them, their necessity to the object being studied and so on.
>I have to admit that the science side of this is very compelling: zero documented negative health outcomes is pretty compelling evidence for its safety.
Until there is, of course. And if it turns out that this evidence comes out decades later or in next generation, it will of course, a little bit too late for them.
First it was the lootboxes that became widespread:
~2010 Steam Team Fortress 2, later Counter Strike
2012 EA's Mass Effect 3
2014 Call of Duty and Battlefield
2016 Overwatch
After that it seemed lootboxes were everywhere. In 2017 there was some backlash for EA's Star Wars game and they removed lootboxes, but it did not change the situation overall.
Then in 2020 western gamers were exposed to gacha mechanics with the release of Genshin Impact, where you "roll" with special currency for weapons and characters that you can't get otherwise. And this currency is either bought with real money or VERY slowly accumulated by playing game. The game is free to play otherwise.
In february this year there was a western release of Lost Ark - MMO ARPG(genre similar to Diablo) that involves probabilistic gear upgrades where you either play weeks to months to fully upgrade it, or drop hundreds to thousands of dollars on upgrade materials, game itself is free to play. It was backed by Amazon and promoted by huge Twitch events.
Both Genshin Impact and Lost Ark have very impressive amount of content, beautiful visuals, music - all while being free to play. Could these games be made and succeed without gambling mechanics? I don't know. My experience with Genshin has been that I got a lot more out of it in terms of fun per money spent than out of most from what I buy on Steam sales - which I play for few hours and forget.
I think the regulations about these kinds of games should at the very least require devs to: - State all the probabilities - Define a guarantee or a "pity": at which attempt will you succeed with 100% probability.
Then for each desired outcome, e.g. fully upgrading weapon, there should be displayed an expected and maximum "price", preferably in real currency. This would at least help the adults to moderate their spending. And as for children, yeah, these games should be 18+, I don't believe a child can handle the urge to spend in these games.