Surprise.

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Surprise.

Post by felter » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 05:19

Have you seen the trailer for NBA 2K20, it's all the talk in the gaming press right now and you need to watch it, that's the NBA 2K20 - MyTeam Trailer. Yeah that's rated for 3 year olds and up. Now tell me is that a basketball game or a simulated casino game and do you think it is a suitable game for a 3 year old to play. Tell me it isn't gambling, I dare you.
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Re: Surprise.

Post by pjknibbs » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 08:12

By the strict legal definition it isn't, that's the trouble--this is the loophole these companies are using to foist such exploitative practices on their users. Since the things you can "win" via their gambling mechanics explicitly have no set monetary value, the powers that be will let it slide.

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Re: Surprise.

Post by RegisterMe » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 11:04

Link is unavailable for me?
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Re: Surprise.

Post by pjknibbs » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 12:42

The video's been set to private, I guess due to backlash! Jim Sterling did a video on this subject which is still up, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGZQDOOU6Y

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Re: Surprise.

Post by felter » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 13:04

Try this link it's still live NBA 2K20 - MyTeam Trailer.
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Re: Surprise.

Post by Olterin » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 13:17

Is that a trailer for a Collectable Card Game (CCG)? A virtual CCG? That also features a casino slot machine? Or what's the actual game :P
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Re: Surprise.

Post by Grim Lock » Fri, 30. Aug 19, 17:43

I thought it was about running a basketball themed casino :D
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Re: Surprise.

Post by felter » Tue, 10. Sep 19, 22:37

So the game has ben released this week with all it's surprise mechanics, bugs and glitches and the metacritic user score is in. That has to be in contention for the lowest score of all time.
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Re: Surprise.

Post by felter » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 03:35

I'm going to throw this in here even though it isn't directly relevant to NBA 2K20 but it is about gambling in games.

It turns out the UK MP's that have been investigating lootboxes and gambling in video games have said:
In-game spending should be regulated by gambling laws and so-called loot boxes banned entirely for children
But here's my thing how do you know how old someone is that is playing a game it's currently impossible to do so as there is no way to check someone's age or even if that person is who they say they are. So I say the only way is to ban lootboxes altogether. They have also accused the gaming industry of obfuscating the truth when asked about certain things their words:
they had sometimes found it difficult to get full and clear answers from the gaming industry representatives who had appeared before them, in particular when it came to answering questions about what data they collected, how it was used and the psychology underpinning how games were designed.
The part I like the most is when they talked about gambling the had this to say:
"Buying a loot box is playing a game of chance and it is high time the gambling laws caught up.

"We challenge the government to explain why loot boxes should be exempt from the Gambling Act."
OOPS not looking good at all. So they have said lootboxes are gambling, just not in the way the law currently looks at gambling, but they want that law changed. Personally to me I've always said, if it's a game of chance then it's gambling, cash/ money does not have to be involved.

This should be interesting.

Ban children from gambling in games, MPs say
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Re: Surprise.

Post by CBJ » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 08:51

While I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I draw the line at the part where you say that it's gambling even if money isn't involved. Snakes and ladders is entirely a game of chance, and I don't think you're really suggesting that children be prevented from playing that! The important thing about gambling is that there has to be some stake that you can lose based on the game of chance; it doesn't have to be actual money but it does have to have some value, even if that value is derived purely from the time taken to obtain it.

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Re: Surprise.

Post by pjknibbs » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 13:39

CBJ wrote:
Thu, 12. Sep 19, 08:51
The important thing about gambling is that there has to be some stake that you can lose based on the game of chance; it doesn't have to be actual money but it does have to have some value, even if that value is derived purely from the time taken to obtain it.
In the case of lootboxes you *can* lose actual money to buy them, of course, but you can't win anything of monetary value in exchange, which is why I'm baffled they're considered somehow less "gambling" than the National Lottery, where you can actually win money!

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Re: Surprise.

Post by CBJ » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 14:47

Absolutely. I wasn't disagreeing with the premise of banning lootboxes; quite the opposite in fact. I was just pointing out the money (or at least value) element was important, not just the chance element.

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Re: Surprise.

Post by Tamina » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 17:13

Back in the day, a lot of children had these trading cards that were very expensive as far as I remember. Isn't this kind of the same but as a video game?

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Re: Surprise.

Post by CBJ » Thu, 12. Sep 19, 17:24

Yes, it's pretty much what Panini do as a business; they're very much like physical lootboxes. The difference, of course, is that in order to buy them, you have to hand over cold hard cash rather than some form of invisible currency, whether that invisible currency represents "real money" or some substitute for it. The more you dissociate the stake with cash, the easier it is to get people to gamble. That's one reason why casinos use chips and tokens rather than cash. It's doubly ironic that the first advertised card set on their site comes from a video game!

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Re: Surprise.

Post by felter » Fri, 13. Sep 19, 00:17

CBJ you are perfectly right just my bad at explaining what i was meaning, never thought about snake and ladders as gambling but yeah it is gambling, not nearly at the same level as others but yeah it's in there.

Panini cards are different, while you can buy the packs you don't actually have to buy them as you can buy the cards directly from Panini, mind you that's mainly to allow people to finish a book of any missing cards. There is also places where you can trade your cards, so if you are looking for one certain card you can trade another for it one that you have multiples of. Also lastly, they do not lower the odds of receiving certain cards, you have an equal chance of getting any card, I think they did do that years ago now they don't.

So compare that to loot boxes say from Fifa. The only way to get any card is by buying a loot box, you can't buy that one certain player you are after. You are not allowed to swap players that you have gained from a loot box for another player, you have to buy another loot box and hope it has the player you are after. They play with the odds of getting certain player, they do not all have an even chance of getting certain players, they go so low that the best players have a less than 1% chance of being in a loot box. One other thing after you complete a Panini sticker book you can sell it as complete, try doing that with a Fifa game not that you could ever make that perfect team to sell.

This is why they do not compare loot boxes to Panini card packs.

Jim Sterling has released his video on the report, be forewarned he does use the F word once or twice but it's worth a watch. He has a special announcement about NBA 2K20 at the end, just to keep it on topic. :D
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Re: Surprise.

Post by felter » Sat, 14. Sep 19, 05:12

Pretty Good Gaming have done a good video on the responses from the likes of EA and ESA to the damning report and they are not happy about it, and yeah NBA 2K20 gets a mention.
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Re: Surprise.

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 14. Sep 19, 10:33

This reminds me of a really bad joke I heard years ago from some neanderthals. "It's not rape if you yell 'Surprise!' first." So not funny, and neither is this "surprise". Of course, no one is dumb enough to believe this fairy tale of "surprise mechanics" are anything but gambling.

I'll be honest, I've bought into loot boxes in a couple of different games. I'm an adult. I'm a home owner, I work for a living, I pay my taxes, I do my own laundry, all those fun adulting things... And yeah, it was my choice to open my wallet. But I gotta say, it's so easy to fall into those traps where you justify throwing down a couple hundred here and there to get one rare item in a video game. At the time, I had the cash to spare and my brain was focused on getting those one things, but was it worth it? In hind site, absolutely not. I have nothing to show for it. Even if I was playing those games today, those items would all be obsolete by now. Even if I had, instead, gone to a carnival and spent 25 bucks for a 5 dollar stuffed bear at one of their games of chance, I would at least, still have the bear =p

I know developing video games is expensive. I get it. The developers need to earn a living. Loot boxes generate tons of money and require little effort. On paper, it makes good business sense just in the pure black and white figures. So does selling cocaine, but I would advise against it =p

I think these folks know they're wrong for doing it. It just went unnoticed for so long by governments, they got comfortable in a moral grey area until it became so murky that governments started noticing. Now they're afraid of government regulation snatching away a chunk of their revenue stream. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about the governments regulating video games either - of course, not for the same reasons as the developers.

My main concern is that we get some crotchety old senator, or what have you, that has never played a game in their life, writing laws that adversely impact the industry in such a way that stifles the creativity of the developers.

Take the whole Grand Theft Auto fiasco, for example. I'm sure most of you know GTA had this huge deal where it was under the spotlight for sex, violence, alcohol and drug consumption, where a lot of people were blaming society problems on video games. Mortal Kombat was another such title that was slammed for glorifying violence. Even today, there are still naysayers out there that blame video games for the dumb things people do, despite there being numerous studies that have not proven that violent video games are responsible for people behaving violently.

Something definitely needs to be done to put an end to these shenanigans. I'm just torn on how it should come to be. I really don't trust the video game industry to self-regulate. I know some developers will make the honest attempt, and others *cough* EA *cough* couldn't be bothered. On the other hand, government enforced censorship could mean bad things for all of us.
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