Brain vulnerabilities? So ban alcoholic drinks and thrill rides too?

What are "kids"? Age of majority is all over the place, there's no hard and fast rule for when adolescents become adults, every society on the planet has a different take on it.

For example, you can get married at 16 in the UK, but can't drive until 17 (it's not a priority as we didn't build so many car-dependent hellscapes), and you can buy alcohol at 18 or be given it with a meal by your parents at younger ages, because we didn't have puritans making motorway funding contingent on passing strict drinking laws like the USA did.

Anyway, what I remember from the UK's Gambling Commission giving committee evidence to MPs on this topic is to ask the question: what is gambling? What activities need strict regulation, audit trails, compliance inspectors, etc? Village fête tombolas? Fundraising prize draws? Radio station cash giveaways? Top trumps? Panini sticker albums?

Lootboxes are not slot machines or FOB terminals. If they can't be "cashed out", they are more like collectible card games... which are also IMHO a plague on humanity, but not the same level of destructive activity as gambling for cash. They do need regulation, given how prevalent they are in games popular with teenagers, but need different regulation from casinos.

Games like Fortnite deserve regulation too, weaponised FOMO to keep money rolling in is sketchy.

Age of majority is a whole mess. For example, the UK is busy reducing the voting age to 16 (from 18) for the next election, but simultaneously they are requiring online age verification to restrict much of the internet to 18+...

If you're forbidding people from doing things they could do yesterday, it's best to be a little conservative with your scope.

16-yo kids might do some amount of part time work, and should at least have enough of a concept of money to understand why pressing the "more loot boxes" button is a Bad Idea. They're also old enough that they might potentially have their own bank account and their own card, which then caps the damages to their allowance.

You can buy trading cards in lots of stores. Pokémon, soccer and so on. It's hard to draw a line without banning those as well.

You can still buy mystery boxes etc in brick and mortar stores. Most of these are targeted at <= 10 yo

I strongly believe that this is mostly performative, honestly

Pretty much all of Europe is 18-21.

I feel like labeling is probably the best approach here. While I personally hate the business model of "Gatcha" type games and wouldn't mind if we banned lot boxes, it is a model does seem to work for a lot of people.

I also think the odds should also be not only disclosed, but made prominent

Because in real life the store clerk won't let a child spend $1000 on their parents card making purchases again and again and again and again and again, but a video game will let a child do it in less than an hour and consider that a success and try to understand how to stimulate another child to do so.

Pokemon cards have gone full circle, GameStop now has an online service where you can gamble on cards digitally just like lootboxes. You buy a roll at different price points to win a PSA graded card from a set of probabilities, and then you can sell it back for 90% market value to GameStop or have them ship it to you.

The proliferation of gambling over so many domains has radicalized me against it in a way that I didn't think would've been possible a few years ago.

Resale value protects The Pokémon Company. Your child spent all your money on Pokémon cards? Resell the cards. You've just realized your 15 years long obsession has broken your life? Resell the cards.

Aggrieved parties can partly get restoration. That way there never is enough political momentum to legiferate them. Try to resell your Fortnite account and they close it.

Pokemon cards are addictive and fun but they're kind of analogue. Loot boxes are more like slot machines - they have flashing lights, animations and jingles to hook you in deeper. And because the lootboxes are in game they can be tuned in frequency and payout just right to keep you playing in a way boring cards could never be (beyond just boring probabilities)

Those are gambling too, and were criticize as such not just now but also when they were new (but people ignored that criticism because pokemon was hype and adults complaining about trendy things are always uncool and ignored.)

There’s something to be said about the visibility of gambling as a signal to people that someone may have a problem. Gambling on your phone just looks like being on your phone. It even improves access to the addiction. Needing to go to a casino looks a lot different, provides some friction, and could spur intervention. The same could be said about loot boxes vs buying Pokemon cards in a store.

I will say card packs are somewhat useful for drafting formats where you need a sealed pack of random unknown cards.

Just ripping packs hurts my soul. What a waste.

The single layer of abstraction.

Pokemon cards have utility within the game of pokemon. They additionally have value in secondary market places which is not strictly tied to the rarity of the item. These markets are not required to exist for the game to function.

Lootboxes, especially for competitive games, do not have any utility within the game and are often cosmetic. Their value is strictly tied to the rarity of the item which the vendor fully artificially controls. Absent the secondary markets the cases would not be purchased and the items ignored.

So you have a choice. You can make pay to win items and publish the probabilities of actually winning them. Or you can have items that can't be traded. Otherwise you're trending very close to widely known regulated activity like gambling.

Tradeability. In real life you can just buy the card. That sets a hard upper limit to the losses.

Whereas gacha games and lootboxes are notorious for unpublished, ridiculously bad odds for "desirable" things with no way to outright purchase them.

When you buy a pokemon card at least you get a card

This is the same argument Valve is presenting.

Because neither loot boxes nor Pokémon cards are actually that addicting. There is no strong link to actual gambling and these mechanics. The reason loot boxes get regulated at all is because people simply don’t like them, and they scream the loudest for someone to fix it. Very bad precedent.

Yeah we should just let 8 year olds into casinos to help them develop their risk reward instinct. Also, the risk reward instinct doesn't work as well when you're gambling moeny someone else earned.

You can not trade or sell the contents of lootboxes.

Vast majority of those games don't allow trading or selling the things you got from lootboxes.

And "learning" about gambling doesn't need to happen at 8 years old. What a fucking delusional view

It’s not for technology to replace parents in their responsibilities to teach their kids how to cope with stuff of life.

Age ratings are an aid but still require passing good habits and developing your child’s ability to think and solve this for themselves. So not letting your kids get addicted to in-app purchases sounds like good parenting. Keeping your kids away from tablets and smartphones until they’re 16 is even better parenting.

Which, frankly, is fine. Regulations like this are great to help guide parents, but ultimately it is the parent's responsibility to decide what is fine and not fine for their child. I wouldn't agree with a parent that gets their kid into loot boxes, but that's their choice.

And if a parent is blindly skipping an age verification screen for their kid without figuring out why that age verification is there in the first place, then they're a bad parent. You can't really fix that, unfortunately, outside of extreme cases.

> Okay? How will this actually change anything?

It's my understanding that lots of parents use these numbers as guidance. I will make my own decisions about what my child can play, but the ratings and all the labels makes it much much easier to make an informed decision.

For the parents that are not into gaming, being able to just go by these numbers is much better than having no such guidance.

> Does anyone do outside of fundamentalist parents who wouldn't let kids play most video games anyways?

Yes. In fact I believe they help breaking down the fundamentalism by making it so clear that gaming is not inherently bad or good for your child. It all depends on the content.

> I don't think I have ever paid attention to a single age rating in my entire life.

You mean when you've selected games for yourself to play? That's... fine.

If you mean when you've selected (or allowed) games for your kids to play, that's... pretty irresponsible.

Having age ratings is useful so I dont have to play a game to know its age suitability. Its common for very young children to play games, and age ratings help parents make informed responsible decisions. There are some dark addictive patterns being used in gaming such as changing the odds of reward to optimise engagement (and make money) - these patterns need an age rating. Additionally, I think age ratings encourage developers to avoid content which would increase the age rating, since they then target a wider audience.

This is not a regulators move. This is the industry slightly adjusting their recommendations to parents. Will this change anything? Maybe it will help the industry avoid being targeted by actual regulation.

We won't know until we try it.

This law in worst case doesn't cause any problems and in best case solve problems. So win-win.

Well, this is going along with all the new requirements for companies to actually verify ages, so it won't be up to the parents.

Kids have different maturities and should face increasing responsibilities as they age.

I guess it's not gambling, or it'd be covered by the UKs existing laws around gambling that set the minimum age to 18.

edit: I'm pointing out the UK has apparently decided lootboxes are not gambling, because if they did classify it as gambling it'd be covered by existing gambling laws that restrict it to 18+.

Not that I personally hold that opinion, though I can see how I could have phrased my original message better.

It's a stupid decision by the government, they should be 18+ and recognised for being gambling.

Brain development of a 16 year old is at least further along than a 13 year old.

How does an age recommendation take away liberties?

I have kids and as a parent I use these ratings as a very loose guide combined with my own experience and understanding of the game in question. Other parents ignore them completely.

I agree more could be done to directly affect the companies, and there have been a lot of legal cases surrounding loot boxes aimed at children.

But this is a good complement to that. It makes it easier for parents to get aware of the issue.

Adjusting an age-ratings system doesn't take liberty away from anyone. Parents can still allow their kids to play whatever games the parent deems is ok.

I agree with some of your other points, though: we should have legally mandated return periods for this sort of thing. Not sure how you'd enshrine price limits into law, though; that seems impractical.

That is just equalizing forms of gambling tho

"Traditional" gambling is already not allowed below 18yo

Yeah, kids should be able to wander into bookies and place bets as they please. Let's let them buy cigarettes too while we're at it.

The term "loot box" has, since I want to say the early 2010s, referred to the mechanic described in the quote. It's hard for me to say what the earliest games were to create this mechanic, especially since its origin seems not to be in the traditional Western games but in East Asian games.

The model is very strongly associated with the rise of "live service" gaming, with Overwatch and Battlefield being some of the more notorious offenders.

It’s an expression. You don’t really win them by “exploring”, but by “playing the game”. You end a match? Lootbox. You played 3 days in a row! Lootbox. You opened the options screen? Lootbox.

They usually have a very involved opening animation with music and sounds specifically designed to maximize the feeling of anticipation. Once you see it it feels completely different from what you are describing, because it’s so obviously trying to maximize the gambling aspect of it. It’s like confusing genuine love with prostitution.

I started seeing this term come up everywhere when Overwatch first released. The common usage is much closer to mystery bundles as you describe, and regulators tend to be upset about them when real money gets involved. It feels an awful lot like gambling at that point.

The purchases are purposely similar to previous examples of gameplay in design and language.