We are the problem in so much it’s very well known that psychologically conditioning tactics work on the human brain.
The real problem is a lack of education and regulation. People know regular casino gambling is a problem but governments act to make people aware and limit its harm. Meanwhile even rating agencies play coy about the effects of lootboxes in games rated for actual children. They try to argue that it’s not “real gambling” because players can’t officially redeem rewards as money, but it’s exactly the same as far as the negative effects go, incentiving compulsive spending which can be financially damaging.
I’m not sure there is much intersection between PC & console gamers and social/casual gamers.
I can’t speak for anybody else, I guess, but neither I nor any gamers I routinely interact with play these freemium/social/mobile type games. Like, at all.
I think that looking to ourselves and our habits for answers will not tell us much, as those gamers are not in our sphere of influence.
I’m not drawing some elitist lines between hardcore and casual, I’m saying that the “video gaming revenue” graph is fundamentally defective because it’s lumping together genuinely different enterprises, with different audiences, marketing, and revenue models
“Around 85% of all video games revenue comes from free to play games”
We really are the problem. They wouldn’t add all these microtransactions and manipulative payment methods if we didn’t sucker up.
We are the problem in so much it’s very well known that psychologically conditioning tactics work on the human brain.
The real problem is a lack of education and regulation. People know regular casino gambling is a problem but governments act to make people aware and limit its harm. Meanwhile even rating agencies play coy about the effects of lootboxes in games rated for actual children. They try to argue that it’s not “real gambling” because players can’t officially redeem rewards as money, but it’s exactly the same as far as the negative effects go, incentiving compulsive spending which can be financially damaging.
I’m not sure there is much intersection between PC & console gamers and social/casual gamers.
I can’t speak for anybody else, I guess, but neither I nor any gamers I routinely interact with play these freemium/social/mobile type games. Like, at all.
I think that looking to ourselves and our habits for answers will not tell us much, as those gamers are not in our sphere of influence.
I meant the collective “we” as in humanity. You are an outlier among gamers I assure you, the vast majority are just “normies”.
I’m not drawing some elitist lines between hardcore and casual, I’m saying that the “video gaming revenue” graph is fundamentally defective because it’s lumping together genuinely different enterprises, with different audiences, marketing, and revenue models