this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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There's a big flaw in your logic.
The biggest portion of people buying this stuff aren't "gamers" in the way that it's often used around these circles. It's the millions of people who buy coins for their Bejeweled clone of choice and have never owned a console in their life. And there's so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world. I remember a Twitch streamer talking about how heartbreaking it was when AC6 came out and gave you the full color wheel plus multiple channels to customize your mech, and their chat was full of kids shocked that you didn't have to buy skins or color packs. That's how it used to be. You'd unlock skins by playing the game, not buying them in the store, but that hasn't been the case in decades now.
And the often touted story of the whale with more money than sense is a myth. Do they exist? Sure. But the vast majority of money coming from mtx from gamers is from people who are psychologically vulnerable to addiction/gambling and people with a poor ability to comprehend finances like kids. These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way. From lootboxes to battle passes and seasonal content to daily quests and washing money through funny money currencies, it's all been designed to prey upon people with addiction issues, ADHD, training young kids into gambling addicts, etc. It's the Lotto tickets and pumping extra oxygen into the air of casinos and making sure there's no natural light in there so you don't realize how long you've been playing slots of the gaming world. Look at WoW, with its daily quests. They train players using Skinner Box techniques to continue logging into the game and paying the monthly subscription long after they've stopped enjoying it because it's become a habit and they are afraid of falling behind.
Voting with your wallet isn't going to fix it. You'll never get your average Facebook mom to care enough not to buy Farmville tokens or whatever, and these companies will never stop abusing psychology on their own. Only industry regulation will stop this.
That's the real big issue here, IMO: The North Korea approach. Kids are starting to become able to spend money who were indoctrinated with this. Because to them it's the north. It's just a part of this entertainment that you continuously spend small amounts of cash. To them it's normality.
What's the saying? Something like, "There's plenty of fools in the game, and there's a new one born every minute."
I feel like the casual mobile gaming crowd falls into the same category. Regardless of how old they are, spending money on mtx is normal because they never knew a world where you just bought a game rather than downloading one onto your phone and putting up with both ads and mtx.
It's like how words like "unalive" have entered common usage - people have gotten so used to obeying what advertisers want on the internet that it's started dictating daily life, especially for younger people.
The unregulated gambling aspect designed to exploit human psychology to target vulnerable people to spend money that they probably can't afford to spend is also a huge issue, but that at least would be easy enough to regulate, if politicians cared enough to do something about it.
Those are the real criminals! With all the good they could have done in today's society, choosing to use their knowledge and training to manipulate people against their best interest is just the worst!
Don't forget that they were hired by companies looking to make a profit off of exploiting the psychology of people and that the blame also lies with those who hired them for those jobs.
The same companies who have fought tooth and nail to prevent regulation to protect those exploited by these practices when politicians have actually cared enough to try to do something about it.
Thank you kindly for your good write-up. If you were to permit it I would like to use excerpts of this in slightly rephrased forms in similar future discussions.
By all means, go right ahead. I simply summarized my own observations and what I've seen other people say over the years.