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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing but lip service. The problem with loot boxes isn't that there are unfair odds - most companies use consistent odds for their loot boxes. There are some shady practices where the odds change on a per-player basis, but that's really beside the point. Apple is willing to "fix" this because it has zero effect on their bottom line.

The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted. Showing the odds somewhere in the app doesn't change this deceptive and unethical practice.

What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria. If it were visible enough, and filterable enough, we'd see the developer landscape change to make games that are better for players.

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> What they should really do is force apps to disclose the maximum amount a player can spend, front-and-center in the app store. And then also display other statistics - like the ARPU and ARPPU (average revenue per user, and average revenue per paying user). And then allow us to filter apps based on that criteria.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I recently quit Hearthstone once I realized that the game was slowly sucking me into paying more. It's a great game. But they obfuscate the true cost of playing.

In that digital card game, players want specific cards to build a specific deck. But the manner in which you acquire specific cards is expensive, and the expense is heavily obfuscated. I doubt that most players understand the real cost of playing.

To get a card, you need to buy a card pack. Card packs have 5 random cards (with a rather complex algorithm behind what cards are in a pack). These cards can be duplicates, which you could transform into "dust" (a kind of currency) to buy the card you actually want. The true cost of buying a specific card that you might want depends on a bunch of factors, such as how many duplicates you already have.

In Hearthstone and other "free to play" games, the true cost of playing is nebulous. The game acquires players partly by advertising that playing is free. However, in reality they are likely among the most expensive games you could play.

The cost of acquiring a complete set of all cards in a Hearthstone expansion is around $400 [1]. Which is insane. In order to play competitively, you probably need half that -- which is still around $200.

If the costs were clearly and honestly labeled, players wouldn't play. So they aren't.

I hope the industry self-regulates, like they did with the ESRB and censorship. I hate the direction the industry has taken here.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/14/it-costs-...

To be fair, Hearthstone is one of the better value games! It is still a "collectible" card game, from a very reputable company, with a lot of expected longevity -- based on a huge universe. You get to use your cards against other players, etc They also give you fairly consistent means of getting free cards.

There are so many Gacha style games that are WAY more of a rip off than that. They get you sucked into the game, then the only way to progress is to become a whale. It is awful

I'm not sure that "Hearthstone is less predatory" is a fair argument. The criticism against Hearthstone is still valid, even if there are other offenders.

I see hearthstone cards as more of an expansion pack per say, its also got a long established history in the physical space (games like Magic, etc)

There are huge tournaments every month, a huge twitch scene, etc

Its a legit game and most people know what they are getting into.

DBZ Dokkan battle on the other hand....

???

Tournaments or a huge Twitch scene don't make it legit or not. They tell us something about a game's size or impact.

Small (indie) games can be loads of fun. I had more fun with a simple game like Airmash [1] than I ever had in WoW because that game is fair, and you need skill. You can't grind towards an advantage. If you did, you can lose it very quickly. Evens playing field.

Blizzard games, with the exception of Starcraft II, are made for carebears with too much time who want to feel good beating players who put less time in the game not by becoming better (as games used to work) but by getting better gear/equipment/cards/characters. A dog eat dog world, essentially. I've learned and adapted to find that evil.

[1] https://airma.sh/

Is it? I can play ranked and do fairly well, and I've never spent any money on cards. It just takes a bit of patience. Of F2P games I've played, it's been the best at this.

Hearthstone is an especially great value if you're comparing it to traditional TCGs. The cost to play something like Magic The Gathering is absurd, but you can play Hearthstone for free if you want to.

I used to view it as good value for a casual game until the announcement of where as new expansion sets are rolled out, previous ones are sunsetted. It essentially gives a 1-2 year expiration date on any new packs purchased rather than making a limited or ban list for certain specific cards. Then again, Activision stock has increased by a decent margin so there's at least one group of people who likes it.

Yeah, but there's still "Wild" where nothing sunsets. Of course, some would say Wild is even more expensive as there's mostly legendary in most decks.

Wild is not a very well supported format though.

From the game director, in response to a criticism from earlier this year, says as much:

> I don't think we've done a good job historically supporting Wild enough. But I do think we've been doing better lately, and it's very important to us that Wild be a real format that is properly supported.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/6ynecq/an_open...

Good marketing speak. They can't cater both formats equally. They'll have to balance Wild which costs resources. If players go for the latest and greatest (Standard) you can forget it with your old cards. Even if you won them in single player (those get removed as well). They won't take Wild too serious because the money's at Standard. So Wild will always be a second class citizen.

It also seriously pisses me off because I spend a good fortune on cards when Hearthstone came out and I didn't expect them to go the MtG route. Boy, was I wrong. Many of them are worthless now.

That just means they need to do some "hall of fame" actions in Wild to balance which could have backlash (ppl expect Standard to rotate/change, but Wild is Wild!) - any changes they do to cards in Wild may have impacts to Standard (i.e., if it's a Standard card that's reacting to Wild cards)

But this is Blizzard, and they released balance updates to Starcraft for years. Just takes focus.

> with a lot of expected longevity

This is a great thing to bring up, because Hearthstone churns out expansion packs on a two-year basis. The "standard" game mode, which is presently the most well-supported and popular, only allows cards that were created in the last two years. If you want to keep up, you need new cards, and you need a lot of them, and they are expensive, and they are getting more expensive [1].

Blizzard has a great reputation, as you said. Hearthstone's monetization model puts their reputation at risk.

1. https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/12/16763594/hearthstone-expe...

> It is still a "collectible" card game, from a very reputable company, with a lot of expected longevity

That's 3 elements you mention. Lets see:

> It is still a "collectible" card game

Yeah, it is, but only the last X expansions are valid for play. So old cards become invalid for standard play. (Forgive me if I used the wrong term for 'standard'; I'm an old Magic: The Gathering player who has seen Wizards of the Coast adopt this model in the 90s; Blizzard just copied it.)

Hence,

> with a lot of expected longevity

is rather relative.

> from a very reputable company

Activision Blizzard, Inc. or Blizzard.

As for reputable, well. Blizzard is very good with RNG in their games. A lot of their games are evolving around RNG, and loot, trying to keep the player playing for their dopamine shot. Lets see: Warcraft 3 was already about RNG (it contained loot), then we got Hearthstone (yup), we got Diablo 3 (yup), we got Overwatch (yup), we got Starcraft II (nope, standard RTS, doesn't contain crit AFAIK), Heroes of the Storm (not sure, not into MOBA at all, seems not?).

Blizzard are the masters of RNG. Not every of their game is P2W (Pay 2 Win), I admit that, but if there is one of these where RNG or loot matters and be downright bought, it is Hearthstone (you can buy gold in WoW legally, but not loot). If you want to play a game competitively, forget Hearthstone. The only fair game mode is the single player one, and the arena one (which requires in-game currency).

They're also masters of grinds, that's deeply entwined in every Blizzard game except Starcraft II. Fat grinds with shortcuts is one profit model. Not all Blizzard games have this model, but one of their games stands out: the P2W Hearthstone game.

> There are so many Gacha style games that are WAY more of a rip off than that.

I don't know that game. I'm sure there are evil schemes out there, but I know about this particular company and this game and this game type quite well.

If you want to play Hearthstone competitive you're going to have to shell out like 200-400 EUR per expansion. Some successful players and streamers can afford, but it stays a gentlemen's elite club that way. Just like Magic was a game for rich student kids. Been there, done it.

And let us not forget, we are ignoring that we're getting children, teenagers, and young adults hooked on gambling.

On the flip side I enjoy playing Hearthstone and getting a chance to enjoy it for free. In a way it is kind of like shareware back in the day.

Sort of. Shareware... except the price of the game is actually unlabeled, and turns out to be hundreds of dollars per year.

The key to playing competitively without spending money is the arena where it’s a level playing field for everyone. Unfortunately arena play is still limited (unless you’re willing to pay of course!)

It takes considerable will, but I have a HS account that I use that essentially paid nothing for (except the starter kit for $10 b/c it's a great deal). I can't play competitively but Arena and Tavern Brawl are usually newbie friendly.

One friend of mine setup a bot years ago and essentially mined gold (got banned and reinstated) and got most cards. Of course, that's cheating but as my old JH football coach once said "if you're not cheating you're not trying"

Hoping for industry self-regulation is like hoping Wall St. will suddenly grow a conscience. Especially given who's doing the regulating these days.

> It takes considerable will

And time. Time where you're weaker than your enemies who are further in the grind. How about this shortcut here? Points at booster packs

If only arena isn't payed with gold too.

This was already pissing me off for real life TCG..

I stopped playing them because of that.

The synergy between cards is interesting but I don't have the patience or want to invest the money into getting card x or y. Not to mention that I don't want 'whether you can spend 500$ on cards' to be a deciding factor in a match..

I find this even more ridiculous in a video game (and even predatory).

$400 for all card might be insane but I know many friends that spent thousands on magic the gathering cards under the same concept. I suppose those should have been regulated too but as other have pointed out baseball cards operate under similar premises. You pay for pack hoping to get rare cards and or cards you don't own. not really sure where to draw the line

It's a giant grey zone, for sure. Morally I find baseball or Magic cards fundamentally different because they are an end in and of themselves... Lootboxes are generally attached to an audio/visual pleasure center simulator which is constantly encouraging further investment into tweaking that pleasure/dysphoria loop.

Honest gambling, like with slot machines, are also straightforward about their purpose. Attaching a slot-machine experience to ordering food at McDonalds isn't deceptive per se, but would seem as dubious as lootboxes.

It's obvious if a game has IAP (says there right on the app store page, along with a list of the top purchases). It's not reasonable to say people are being tricked.

This is just one example of a huge philosophical question -- how much should we, as a collective, try to set things up to save people from themselves?

I tend to come down on the favoring individual autonomy side.

Give me my drugs, my alcohol, and my F2P.

Caveat emptor!

(But I do like requiring odds to be disclosed, and purities of alcohol and drugs enforced. Those are hard things to do as an individual, so bringing collective strength to bear makes sense. But partaking or not is something I can do alone; please don't force me to do what you think is good for me, society.)

I think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between in-app purchases of add-on functionality and other such one time upgrades on the one hand, and things you can keep buying indefinitely, like loot boxes.

I've also seen the "add-on functionality" go sideways. Look at some of the Lego Whatever games vs. their console counterparts. They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP. It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them. Instead of just labeling the game the true $49 it's bucketed under "free" instead.

> They make the install free but then make every. single. level. a separate IAP.

That's just the shareware model though; there's no gambling involved. Granted, it could be labeled better.

> It's literally not a complete game unless you buy all of them

I like this model as it removes the risk of you not liking the game and being out $49. If you get bored after the first few levels you're not out the full amount–I'd be willing to try out more games this way.

There is even a distinction to be made between loot boxes than can be used once, ever, and provide a one-time bonus to one play-through, and loot boxes that get restored every time you reinstall the game, start a new character, or reset your player account.

And there is a distinction to be made if any of the benefits from in-app purchases can be acquired without actually making an in-app purchase--earned through gameplay or traded from paying players, for instance. In those instances, it would be useful to report the number of hours of unpaid gameplay per dollar of in-app purchase. If I know up front that it takes 1000 hours of in-game farming to get something that a paying player can get instantly for $1, I'm probably not going to bother with that game.

I recently saw an article about Star Wars Battlefront's upsell options that basically said all new players will now start without legs, and legs could either be purchased immediately in the in-game store, or players could earn their legs without paying by dragging themselves through a 100-hour questline using just their arms and buttocks. I had to check that it was actually satire.

It's obvious if an app has IAP. It isn't obvious it has burn cards/gacha bullshit, nor that it's exploitative and psychologically coercive until you're already in. Like, I made an Android (React Native, so eventually iOS, but I'm very lazy) remote control for Open Broadcaster Software[1]. Asking for seven bucks to unlock it for full use, once, is represented the same way as a game that does burn cards or loot boxes. It's extremely, extremely fucking shady because games in particular don't start demonstrating their upsell and their engagement patterns until you've started playing and until they have their hooks in you.

At absolute minimum, ARPU and ARPPU should be required disclosures for any application. (Mine would be around $0.75 and $7.00 even, respectively. I made it for myself, so I don't care, but it's interesting.) It's a partial patch and doesn't solve it. But it's better.

[1] - (shameless-ish plug) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tracecompl...

Fair points, and I could definitely see benefit to having a more fine-grained breakdown of the nature of IAP in the app description.

(As a practical matter, if you check top-purchases and it's something like "bucket of gems", there's probably gunna be gacha. :-)

Totally, but that's not something people are encouraged to do or is made Very Up Front And Apparent.

Games have power. They get in your head and they can mess with you. When that's done for the purposes of gambling, that sucks.

There's a massive range of IAPs though. Some games have stickers or hats or other little bonuses that don't impact the playability of the game. Some have a purchase to remove ads or unlock extra levels. It's not obvious if IAPs are part of the gameplay or not just because a game says on the tin that it has in app purchases.

>how much should we, as a collective, try to set things up to save people from themselves?

people in this case often means minors, because the extreme gamification of gambling, often attached to other videogames, tends to target very young audiences. Hell, even none gambling games explicitly reward this carrot and stick behaviour.

This isn't an issue of individual autonomy, it's one of animal conditioning. Companies use their data, their feedback and the basic things we know about human psychology to groom themselves customers with loose pockets. There's no autonomy involved in any of this.

If you want to have people grow up to be free and autonomous citizens, you better reign those businesses in

i think this is a misconception, and most of the payers and players of F2P games are actually adults. (and in fact, companies target adults, for the simple reason that they tend to have more money than kids, who are usually more or less broke.)

but of course some players are kids. so what?

just because kids play games doesn't mean we have to go full-collective-control -- kids have parents that can act as proxies for their individual will until they're of age.

and i strongly disagree with the idea that companies using psychological tricks to motivate people in any way materially weakens the argument for individual autonomy.

of course every action that every person takes is the sum result of the multitude of influences tugging at them, but again, so what: either i have the freedom to make the choices i want, or i am compelled via (ultimately) physical force to do something else. that's the difference i care about.

There's a big difference between games where IAP is essentially used to enable a free demo, where you pay once to unlock full functionality, or where it's used to buy cosmetics; and cases where someone essentially designs a fun, well-balanced game and then deliberately breaks it to be increasingly slow and unsatisfying, requiring you to pay continuously to get that initial fun back.

I suspect most people would not consider buying a $5 loot box if there was a 95% chance of only getting duplicate items, or a 0.0002% chance of getting the item they're hoping for.

Developers will probably increase the drop rates for things so that people will continue to buy their crates.

I agree it's still gambling but this is a step.

People are pretty bad at intuitively understanding probability - it’d have to be stated in a way they’d understand.

“You’d probably have to buy this one thousand times to get what you’re looking for”

People still buy lottery tickets though because “there’s still a chance”.

Not sure how you fix that.

I can't seem to find the video, but I remember Sid Meier talking about how he had to manipulate the battle odds to what people thought was fair combat. For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost. Even though they won 2 out of every 3 matches, on average.

The average person doesn't understand expected outcome, that it means ON AVERAGE it will take this many times to obtain the thing. Lottery tickets are a bad example because the expected outcome is still really high, though most people still understand this.

Pretty sure this was after Civ 1, when you'd lose a battleship to a spearman surprisingly often. Been a while since I've played Civ 2, don't think there was the concept of cumulative damage, yet, but there was by Civ 3. Definitely seems "fairer". Sure a spearman can possibly damage a battleship, but unlikely to destroy one.

Also, it's Sid Meier.

I can't remember which Civ it was, but I remember he was talking about an early one. I'd love to find that video again.

(Also, fixed my post. Thanks)

This is a huuuuuge issue in the world of informed consent too. When you tell someone the odds regarding a procedure, do they really understand those odds?

For example, they thought that if they had a 2/3 chance of winning, they should win practically every time and thought it was unfair when they lost

Like that time I lost my entire squad in X-Com because they all kept missing their 80% to 95% chances to hit. There was much rage that day.

I always hear this with X-Com, and have experienced it myself. Though it is really possible to miss 90%s several times in a row. It shouldn't happen often, but our monkey brains hate it and it feels unfair. It is a hard balancing problem.

Why not have a system that is able to average out the rolls to happen in a way that good/bad rolls don't clump together and are spaced more evenly? Couldn't you generate the rolls and then sort them in favorable way or reroll whenever a roll is too far outside of some predicted thresholds?

Sure. But that's not what X-COM was (or the new ones are, though they mess with the rolls a little at lower difficulties).

Sometimes you just roll snake eyes. Then you deal with it.

Sometimes you roll snake eyes two or three times in a row. You still have to deal with it, and doesn't mean the dice are loaded.

There's a question of how you want to play with statistics. Do you want to play with fair dice or dice that give you an advantage? You might be saying to yourself that your storage tactic is still a uniform distribution, but you're forgetting sample size. You're also removing some uncertainty.

So, you can roll dice over and over, but you actually need a lot of samples for the stats to converge. That's why it is called the law of LARGE numbers. It is still possible to roll two 12s in a row on dice, but we wouldn't expect it to be common. By your clumping together, you need to not only store a lot of data, but now your "random" events are dependent rolls and not independent.

Really it is just a question of what you want to do and how you want fairness perceived. Do you want your game to act like dice? Or do you want a slight advantage? BTW, i2om3r linked the video I was talking about there Meier discusses peoples' perception of fairness. In the end, you have to determine what is best for your game. Maybe stacking the deck makes better gameplay, maybe it doesn't.

For reference, here is the video: https://youtu.be/MtzCLd93SyU?t=19m28s

THANK YOU!!!!! I've looked for that video several times and have been kicking myself for not bookmarking it.

The same thing happens with weather forecasts, where "95% chance of sun" gets downgraded to "80% chance of sun" because people assume 95% == a sure thing.

Sid (and others) did much the same thing that F2P games do now; make the odds 'flexible' using accumulators, counters and other tricks. For example, the odds displayed may be 66% chance of victory, but over time, that number changes based on a number of fuzzy factors (number of consecutive victories/losses, time since last victory/loss etc...). He even had a random coin flip in there cause 'randomness is what makes games fun'. So even though it said 66%, there's something like a 1 out of 10 chance that you'll just lose, to spice things up. I mean really, how fun would it be if tanks always beat archers. :-)

In the pursuit of making a fun and interesting experience, it's not as bad as it sounds since it leads to a rewarding experience (though getting 2 hours of sleep because Civ is so addictive could be construed as negative). When providing questionable reward to the player and in a money grab via psychological manipulation, well, yeah, seems pretty exploitative and not so honorable.

What's most interesting to me is the wildly different perspectives that gamers on different platforms will tolerate. Zynga/Facebook gamers seemed to never care. Mobile gamers follow suit but some are a bit sensitive to this manipulation. Console gamers are familiar with these tactics since the horse armor days but have a red line (Destiny 2 just crossed). PC gamers have zero tolerance and will go up in arms as soon as their precious games are violated with F2P mechanics (though Ubisoft is doing pretty good here since they're doing it somewhat respectfully).

The probability of loot boxes for most games has been reverse engineered and is available online.

Making it available in the app is no different; the user would have to be rational and look for it.

A user that would be stopped by this can already go online and find the probability.

It’s a terrible trap for a smart person, to assume that x,y, or z is “something which is known to each and every schoolboy,” you know? Everyone isn’t like you.

The point is that the apps will display it where they display Open-Source license notices: off in some deep menu no one but a suitably dedicated hunter would find.

The same sort of person that would google it.

Right, but most people wouldn’t even consider that. Most people don’t even know what “open source” means! It’s hard, but most people live in a combined state of technical ignorance, and a kind of aggression toward learning new things in that field. The result is that the average person thinks it’s all techie noise, so what you consider incredibly basic concepts are really overlaid on a framework of existing knowledge, intelligence, and most of all, interest.

I think we're talking past each other and agree that people won't look for the probability or, even if they see it, won't care.

I am not assuming people look it up. I'm just pointing out this isn't really changing anything because people who would look at it or care, already could look at it often... but most people won't, so the change of requiring apps to show it in the app matters basically not at all.

How many people buy state lotto tickets?

What is the EV on those? Some it's something like .5 or less. HORRIBLE odds. If you want to gamble, go play $1000 hands of blackjack or something, you can get something like a .97 EV.

The EV on Canadian lottery odds sometimes exceeds 1. They're required to pay out 50% of intake, but if the jackpot isn't won a bunch of times in a row (with payout under 10%), the payout for a single draw sometimes exceeds the intake for that draw.

It's not profitable to buy all the tickets, though: that changes the odds enough that it becomes unprofitable.

I don't think the EV often goes over 1 though, because of the multiple winner situation. I.e. even if the jackpot is 150 million with 1:100 million odds to win... there is a chance there is 2 or more winners who SPLIT the jackpot.

There have been cases of people buying out all the numbers.. and there are times when it is worth the risk.. but not really relevant to my store. Millions of people buy lotto tickets every day, with an EV of .5.

The point of state lotto tickets is that a win is life changing and the price is negligible.

Since you mention odds, it's interesting to look at the stats of the companies that provide official information about their odds.

For Blizzard's Hearthstone, for example, their stated odds of getting their highest category of cards (legendary) is 1:100 and given that that 1% chance is spread across several different cards across multiple sets, getting a specific legendary card is only a fraction of that 1%.

For Nintendo's Fire Emblem Heroes, the chance of getting their highest category of characters (5 stars), is a relatively generous 6%. However, that's split across 2 batches of 3%, one of which is split across 3 specific characters (i.e. 1% specific card) and the other which has about 100 cards (0.03% to get a specific character). As each character is one who appeared in the long-running Fire Emblem series of games, there's significant incentive to try and get specific characters.

And these are games from companies that behave relatively ethically in this space. I can think of Asian games that are much worse.

[0] https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics

[1] https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Summon_Heroes

It should be noted that Hearthstone's odds are not stated (in the US): they were only found out by user research, and as a result of Apple's new rule, would likely need to be explicitly disclosed.

In contrast, Fire Emblem Heroes has always been upfront about the odds, and you can see the odds whenever you want. (although in my personal experience the 5 star odds are less than 6%, hmrph)

As the link notes, Blizzard complied with Chinese law regarding posting odds and posted a page on their Chinese Hearthstone site (http://hs.blizzard.cn/articles/20/9546) stating that, on average, 1 legendary card could be expected for every 20 packs (of 5 cards).

It is possible that Blizzard uses different odds by region but that seems unlikely.

Fair distinction; added edit.

It would not surprise me if odds were indeed different by region. It would be smart to do that, anyways, since player behavior may be different.

I think that in addition to the problem of boosting interest by concealing probabilities, you have the added problem that probabilities are difficult to intuitively grasp, even if they're straight up given to you.

The same way that a person can have a correct (at least within a few orders of magnitude) understanding of their numerical odds of winning the lottery, yet still go on purchasing tickets. Our intuitive grasp of the idea of one in a million, billion, trillion, etc is such that those odds all "feel" the same. But those differences might make all the difference in whether purchasing a lottery ticket is rational.

> The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted.

Not to say these gambling mechanics aren't reprehensible but you're focusing on the wrong thing. There is no "tricking" involved; games with in-app purchases are clearly labelled and gambling-like mechanisms are so standard now that it would be more surprising to find a popular game with IAP that _didn't_ use a gambling-like mechanism than one that did.

I think the tricking he is referring to is the fact that as games progress they turn from skill-based to money-based games, which is how all of these games get people hooked.

Setting a "max payed" will most definitely warn you of a game that will eventually become money-based.

There is “trickery” in the sense of dark UI patterns involved though.

There is no easy way to distinguish between the IAP for Mario Run ($10 once, to buy the full game) and $10 in coins for spins for lives for Candy Crush (or however it works now).

The result is that people don’t want to spend ANY money on mobile because so much of it is scamming garbage, that the rest of It might as well be too.

Probably would be good to at least distinguish between "has once-off IAP" and "has indefinitely repeatable IAP" in the store UI.

It isn't a loot box, but Candy Crush had (and maybe still has) a wheel you can spin once a day to win some bonus item. I spun that thing hundreds of times over a few years and never won the big prize on the wheel.

I've always wondered what the logic behind that was. Why not have a fair wheel?

I made a wheel like this in a popular free to play game.

Each section was equal in size but not in weight. We wanted to give the feeling that they could win big but not give so much currency that people would not spend on the currency.

It worked so we kept the wheel weighted.

Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil.

I'd love to see the grand parents' suggested made active. Hunting whales isn't about making fun games. It's about exploiting addictive behavior with a tiny set of people.

It's not fun to make and it's not fun to play.

Why not make them unequal in size to make this more transparent?

We wanted people to feel like they had a higher likelihood of winning than they actually did.

It's the same reason slot machines always "almost" hit the jackpot.

It's more addictive that way.

Relevant HN topic from Nov 6: "How slot machines are designed to be addictive" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15632058

> Anon because making free to play games is admittedly kinda evil.

Don't be cowardly.

If you're ashamed, then don't participate. Otherwise, own it.

Shame is a step on the road to leaving it. Question is, can GP think of a way to make $$ without being evil?

I could make more money than I do right now by doing things I believe to be unethical. Should I?

If I shouldn't, why should someone doing what they believe to be unethical things not take a paycut in order to stop doing those unethical things? And why should we not criticise those who do unethical things for money?

Very unhappy to see you downvoted. It says a lot.

I would much rather have anonymous knowledge leaked out via participation on HN than somebody being quiet because they don't like what they are doing.

> It worked so we kept the wheel weighted.

Did you do experiments with the weighting to find this?

>The real problem is that players are getting tricked into installing a "free" game but later sucked into gambling once they're invested and addicted.

The real problem is that hardly anyone wants to pay for anything upfront.

Developers much prefer to make traditional games with no tricks in them to hook free customers. But take those systems out and charge $1 upfront on the App Store and watch your number of installs fall by orders of magnitude.

The market spoke, and freemium games is what they got.

That explains shareware, demos, and perhaps DLCs. We're talking about non-transparent costs via RNG and loot(boxes). Its not that people don't wanna pay; its that it works better to give them some free cocaine to get them hooked. Nothing new; in the physical world we call that "sampling"

I agree with your assessment. I also personally feel like this needs to be regulated by governments. I don't think that companies can be trusted to govern themselves, and I think that what we're seeing not just in f2p mobile games but also in AAA games proves that fact out: the "fiduciary duty" to shareholders is proving to win out the battle against competing ethical duties, primarily because the former is mandated and the latter is merely a suggestion (if that). This is where regulations need to step in, and force businesses to have a duty beyond the shareholder fiduciary duty and require them to provide transparency and avoid exploitation of addiction.

Perhaps better, just have tools to filter ratings (both for top lists and individual review displays) by total or per-month IAP spend of the reviewer, defaulting to a limit of zero until and unless modified by the user.

I don't care if a free game makes lots of money from paying users, I care if I'm likely to find it satisfying without becoming a heavy payer. Actually, if a company does that and gets people willing to recurringly spend lots of money on the game to subsidize it, that's a plus, as far as I'm concerned.

Players aren't being tricked. They are given the opportunity to play first, see if they like it, and if so they can engage in micro-transactions.

How are they being "tricked"? No one is secretly siphoning money from them. They are for the most part consenting adults who have free will.

The true cost of playing is hidden. It's obfuscated behind a very complex set of systems. It's optimized to hide the true cost from the player as much as possible.

It's problematic. It makes players feel bad, in retrospect, when they realize that they've spent more than they would have wanted to spend at the outset.

I would hate for the loot box model to move beyond video games. Can you imagine going to the store and having to buy a mystery box filled with groceries, which you may or may not need or want? Gosh that would be horrible. Not that it would happen but, still. I feel like we should encourage a society with clear prices on specific, concrete products. I give you $10, you promise me specific thing X. If I don't actually get X I can ask for a refund, or I can sue you even if it turns out you're acting in bad faith, etc. Loot box systems don't seem to transact in good faith.

What's "complex" about a very clear prompt "Do you want to buy 1000 gold coins for $10" and then you have to enter your credentials?

The lottery is legal and government run in many (most?) states. We already live in a society where people willingly give their money to get something.

Well, many people have a problem with the lottery too.

Also the X gold coins for $X is less of a problem. The old League of Legends style of a "free to play" game was great. They were one of the first to do it. You paid money for a currency, and then the currency purchased items. All items had an alternative cost as well for a currency you could only earn in game. It was explicit about what you were buying.

Loot box systems on the other hand are not explicit. Blizzard's Hearthstone for example, as I talked about in this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983166

> I would hate for the loot box model to move beyond video games

The loot box model is video game adaptation of the collectible card game model which is itself a gaming adaptation of the (non-gaming) trading card model, both of which predecessors have other non-video-gaming derivatives, so the basic model is already lots of places besides video games.

> I would hate for the loot box model to move beyond video games. Can you imagine going to the store and having to buy a mystery box filled with groceries, which you may or may not need or want?

Its already there, targeted at kids! Its all the collectible toys in food such as chips.

Wuppies, flippos, "voetbalplaatjes" [1], are just a few local examples.

McDonalds Happy Meal toys must be a world-wide example?

[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voetbalplaatjes

An array of psychological attacks are used to separate players from a lot more money that they'd have willingly chosen to part with if directly asked up front. Seems like trickery to me.

It's still a step in the right direction because it will let people calculate the true cost of loot box items, which will help expose the absurdity of the pricing model. A good recent example is Battlefront 2, where it would cost $2,100 to unlock everything (or 4,500+ hours of playing without spending any extra money).

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