Whaling should be an activity that players can discuss openly...

January 31, 2023 6:23 AM

These Genshin Impact Fans Spent $1,000 to $90,000 On Its Characters [Kotaku] “Whaling, the act of spending enormous amounts of money on digital games, can be a difficult topic to discuss in the gaming community. Free-to-play games often contain gambling systems designed to encourage spending, and the most prolific whales can make headlines for pouring thousands of dollars into acquiring playable anime characters. Especially in English-speaking communities, whales will often be discussed with a veneer of pity or scorn. Most players I spoke to for this piece asked to be identified by their online names, and a few requested anonymity. Those who wanted to be anonymous cited concerns about being judged by their non-gamer peers, or of having their game account hacked. “If my family and non-gamer friends ever knew, they would absolutely lose their minds,” said one government employee who spent over a thousand dollars on the game.”
posted by Fizz (50 comments total)

Some people collect photocards.

K-pop trading cards, apparently. I can see the parallels to gacha.

For starters, photocards are exclusive photos of K-pop stars included as a freebie in albums. The intention was simple: insert a random glossy photo of an idol in an album, and fans will bulk-buy albums to pull out their bias’ face.

posted by zamboni at 6:37 AM on January 31, 2023

I played Genshin Impact for about 3 months. In that time I spent about $5 (Blessing of the Welkin Moon), not because I needed the Primogems or Genesis Crystals, but because I wanted to throw a few dollars to the game creators. Genshin Impact is a very handsome game; it's a pleasure to look at. In the end, though, I found the combat system uninteresting, so I moved on to other things.
posted by SPrintF at 6:39 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm never sure how to feel about this. Spending money on stuff that brings you happiness should be fine, but addiction is real and companies that sell you anything shaped like a loot box - "spending a specific amount of money on a nondeterministic outcome" - aren't just running a casino, but they're running a casino where the house gets to stack the deck for every hand they deal.

The telemetry you can harvest out of systems like these makes it absolutely trivial to moneyball your way to an business-optimal exploitation of human weakness, and just like with any casino or drug deal the lifetime-value of a single addict will outweigh that of thousands of casuals.

I'm pretty strongly in favor of making loot-box revenue if not illegal then something that needs to be kept in a separate ledger and taxed to the gills.
posted by mhoye at 6:48 AM on January 31, 2023 [22 favorites]

I've never played Genshin Impact and just watched some gameplay footage. It seems to be what I liked about Final Fantasy, but with real-time combat, and using the sort of cel shading that made BOTW so captivating. I can see why people like it so much.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:07 AM on January 31, 2023

If you're ambiguous about this be sure to read the article, with quotes from the victims.

“I do have mental health issues, and sadly I’ve discovered that the money I’ve spent on Genshin is still cheaper than full-time private therapy around here. I’ve been using the game as a type of emotional crutch keeping me together,” said one anonymous government employee who spent over $1,000. “I know it’s not healthy, but I love the game so much. I look forward to it every day.”

(The difference being that therapy is supposed to improve your mental health, not just be a crutch.)

Around half of my interviewees said they believe that gacha is a “predatory” system, or described it as gambling. ... “In the end, it’s really just a gambling addiction,” said Lansze, an IT professional who has spent $5,000. “I do spend more than I would like to sometimes because I haven’t got everything that I would like.”

I'm a big gamer. And I have the financial means to spend money this way. I'm so glad I'm not wired with this compulsion. There's a whole cynical world of game developers focussed on extracting thousands of dollars from the small minority of folks who they've figured out how to ruthlessly exploit. It's horrible.
posted by Nelson at 7:12 AM on January 31, 2023 [17 favorites]

I'm also really glad that this article is talking about this issue in terms that are very open, honest, and direct. It's also not trying to shame these individuals for engaging in something that is rigged against their favor by a very often toxic and predatory gaming culture.
posted by Fizz at 7:18 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

If the practices of the game companies weren't predatory and toxic, I would be inclined to look at this like any other hobby where people can spend a lot of money...but the practices are predatory, focused on fostering addiction and using that. It's the game companies employing those tactics that deserve scorn.
posted by nubs at 7:31 AM on January 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Fizz: yeah, this is the first article I've seen that really talks about these guys. The only direct impressions I've gotten about them before, if any, is that they have serious problems over and above the financial. I'm thinking of a guy who legendarily spent about $20,000 on a furry art commission (a kind of custom proto-NFT) and ended up trying to claw it back because he'd been having a manic episode.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm as big a gamer as I currently can be, with a life of responsibility and money concerns and limited time. I tried out Genshin when it came free to Playstation. I had never played a gacha before, and that fact smacked me hard in the face as I was assaulted by a dozen concepts and terms that I just didn't understand the moment I hit Start Game. Pulls? Gacha? Different currencies disguised as gems, stars, crystals, etc?*

I thought it was a pretty looking game, but I lost track of what I was doing in the tutorial and my attention drifted. It was late that night, so I put it down. A few days later I tried restarting the game at the beginning so I could pay closer attention. It is impossible to do this. The game and your progress is completely tied to your Playstation login account. So you cannot restart. Or create a new game save. (They can't let you restart, or try again for free, you know!) I was kind of lost and overwhelmed by all the terms and concepts and the idea of spending money on a "free" game so I never picked it back up after that.

I know it would be "hard" to regulate gambling systems like this, but it needs to be done. I personally find it repellent. But I have never had an urge to gamble or spend money in a casino or even competitively play cards with friends for poker chips, even if money isn't involved. But I am an addict (look at my nym) who suffered in the depths of addiction for decades at one level or another. "Socially acceptable" levels of addiction, in my case—mostly. Usually. Until I was living a fucking nightmare. I pulled out of it with the help of money, family and friends. Many—maybe most—do not pull out of addiction. Many don't have family or friends or are as privileged as I am.

I hate that this stuff is so easily accessible to kids. I hate that this stuff is being pushed via cartoons (games are interactive cartoons, kinda). I hate that this stuff is being normalized by companies who are building entire games from the very ground up to be monetized gambling systems where the price is as high as the end user is willing to pay. Sure, it's harmless for most people. But addicts get sucked into this shit hard. I know how addiction works. I don't want to see young kids getting pulled into this "charming world" that exists in its entirety to suck as much money as possible from the user.

As for the weird currencies, the cryptic system of pulls, the concept of gacha... the entire skeleton and structure of games like this are built like casino machines to pull in addicts, or at least the addict-parts of non-addicts. The "ritual of addiction," the language of the junkie.

I don't know what the answer is. But this stuff is poisonous. At least a brick and mortar casino can employ waitstaff, bartenders, croupiers, cleaning staff, HVAC mechanics, interior designers, architectural firms, etc. Casinos gave Frank Sinatra, Joan Rivers, Cirque du Soliel, and a hundred other great entertainers a venue to perform. These games are built by what? A few hundred people? I'm guessing the developers and the people programming this stuff aren't making great wages (maybe I'm wrong). And there are a thousand copy cats of Genshin, but how many ever turn a profit?

I'm just disgusted by the business model. And sure, adults are most of the audience, but it's also clearly aimed at kids. Sure, the article found a few people who spend money and are OK with it. People should be able to spend on entertainment the way they want. But games like these are 24/7 casino machines in almost every regard. Sure, Genshin has a story, and lore, and cute characters. But go to a big casino and look around. The biggest slot machines are often completely branded with entertainment. A Game of Thrones slot machine. An Ellen DeGeneres slot machine. I'm not making that up. But at least they are actually called slot machines!

*I haven't played in a long, long time and I do not remember the exact details or nomenclature of the currencies other than they are numbers you accrue via playing and grinding the game or spending real-world money.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:46 AM on January 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

I know it would be "hard" to regulate gambling systems like this

Not as hard as you think! Every Country With Laws Against Loot Boxes talks about Japan, China, Netherlands, and Belgium. That's a couple of years ago, more recently European countries form up in new call for Loot Box legislation. The US is further behind; Josh Hawley did introduce a bill in 2019 but that seems to be political theater, not a sincere effort at regulation.

The specific predatory technique here is the gambling part, the way you pay a small amount of money and eagerly watch the exciting graphics to see if you won. That sweet hit of pleasure of getting a prize. This process is highly tuned to exploit people who are susceptible to gambling, it's very similar to how slot machines are designed.

There's an interesting wrinkle here, what the article calls a "pity system". Eventually you're guaranteed a win. IIRC this is a response to a specific regulatory requirement in some country (China?) that lets them say "see, it's not really gambling, you're just buying the item for a fixed price with a random discount". The fact the fixed price is $5000 for a single character, well, that's just profit. Meanwhile the gambling feel is maintained.
posted by Nelson at 8:00 AM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Well. Now I know to say 'no' when my kid asks for Genshin Impact again. My nibling loves the game and my kiddo has been eager to play. Ugh.
posted by amanda at 8:01 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I started playing Marvel Snap last year (a free to play collectible card game) and I can see how people can get into this dynamic. Marvel Snap is relatively non-exploitative in terms of how it monetizes things, being not so much pay-to-win as pay-to-have nice looking and more cards, and it only came out last June in beta, with a general release in October, but there's already someone who apparently spent 5k on maxing out the game's 'collection level'.
posted by sid at 8:02 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Many people have too much money, while most have not enough. The world gets fuckin weird and gross when a minority of people have too much money and the rest not enough + a system designed around extracting money from the planet and people at all costs. The Dark Pattern programs masquerading as games should not even be legal, but hell, neither should advertising to children but here we are, training them to become addicted gamblers who expect to own and win nothing. Just wait till they manage to convert non-games to the same shady dark pattern business models.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:41 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's been a lot of talk about why the Mass Effect franchise failed--see, for example, this previously--but I think that one of the unacknowledged culprits is that EA fell in love with the idea of a constant flow of revenue from real-money-purchasable loot boxes. Can't remember where or when I read this, but supposedly someone at EA decided that they'd go heavy on the loot box-fueled multiplayer version of ME after a whale spent something like $10K on game cards. I've always looked askance at the fact that the single-player game of Mass Effect: Andromeda stopped getting patches within months of the (very flawed) game dropping, while multiplayer patches continued.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:46 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Almost every online game uses some variant of a gacha or lootbox system. The only ones which can survive on subscriptions are World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. I've seen devs on a couple of games say that they make a lot more money putting things in lootboxes than straight up selling them.
I think that there's two kinds of behavior at play. There's "I want this thing, and I'll spend money to get it," which starts out reasonable, but can easily get out of hand, thanks to RNG. I've seen people spend $100s of dollars on lockboxes in Star Trek Online, trying to get a specific ship, only for other people to point out cheaper ways to get it guaranteed. The guy who spent $90,000 did it to max out all their characters and weapons. That's excessive, but so's the single player game where buying all of the DLC would set you back $500.
Then there are the people who just like opening the boxes. Some do it for the ka-ching, and some to support the developer. I don't think that they're mentioned in the article.
(One game, Warframe, does it differently. They have lootboxes via the relics system. They're both earned and opened via gameplay. They make a lot of their money by selling the items outright to players. So you can either pay in cash, or in time.)
posted by Spike Glee at 9:11 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well. Now I know to say 'no' when my kid asks for Genshin Impact again. My nibling loves the game and my kiddo has been eager to play. Ugh.

That's the thing that sucks the most. It's hard for young children to really understand how predatory this is, but it is worth having that convo down the road so that they can understand that this isn't the entirety of gaming, just one sad and toxic part of it (driven by corporate interest). But again, how do you tell that to a 7 yr. old who just wants to play the game and have the shiniest avatar b/c all the other kids in their class have a shiny avatar.

It's tough to find balance and I say that as someone who does have an addictive personality and I've had to really learn how to stop playing the game of capitalism and buying the next new shiny thing while only making 2% progress in the 5000+ games I have scattered across multiple systems and accounts.

Having a federal government that has the teeth to regulate and stand up to corporate self-interest is the ideal here and there are other governments/nations across the globe that have started to do that recently, but N. America is particularly craven when it comes to this issue and here we are.

*sighs.
posted by Fizz at 9:12 AM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

This somehow reminds me of talking to the proprietor of small local gaming stores. These stores are often really small, and part of a community that keeps them afloat, so much so that I have heard of community members working the cash and stocking and doing other parts of running the store without pay because it was the difference between the store being open or not open.

The people who run these stores introduced me to the concept of One Good Customer. They explained it like this: "I need One Good Customer every month to break even." One Good Customer at the time was the table top gamer with a good job who would go in and in a single big binge drop between eight hundred and a thousand dollars on buying whatever the latest thing they had gotten interested in. It might be miniatures and paint, it might be all twelve books and supplements in the new edition, or the new super heroes version, or every boxed supplement for Settlers of Catan, but someone like that only had to come into the store once, or maybe twice in a month to keep it in business.

It was also often the same small group of people. One store might have just five different gamers who would drop that much cash two or three times a year.


The other thing this reminds me of is the Panini sticker books. You buy the album and you buy packs of stickers. If I recall right there were five stickers in each pack. And you just kept buying the stickers until you got one of each of the ones you needed, although you could also order the last few stickers to be mailed to you, but the price of the stickers you ordered was rather more than the price of one pack of six stickers.

I think the difference between the Panini stickers and the loot boxes on line is that being able to order the missing Panini stickers meant that you were guaranteed able to complete your collection and not sucked into endlessly dropping money to get something that you would probably never get. Also, from having collected for six or seven books I will say that they didn't have rare items - all the stickers appeared to have the same chance of appearing in their packages - It wasn't like McDonald's Monopoly. On line gaming loot boxes is like Monopoly cards. You know that you won't get the complete set. The most highly prized ones will never be in the loot box. There's absolutely nothing in it for the company to put them there and let you complete your set.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:19 AM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

$90K on pixels. The mind boggles. But, NFTs. So.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:30 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have also been playing and enjoying Marvel Snap (without paying for anything) and I do hope that they get enough people paying $10/month for the season pass rewards to make them a big hit and shift the industry towards something that looks more like their less-exploitative model of free-to-play monetization. But it's still a less-exploitative model, not a non-exploitative model, insofar as they don't push as hard to create addicts as other games, but they still have the infrastructure to take thousands of dollars from addicts if there are addicts with money to burn.

People Make Games did a great video about specifically how Valve is managing (or failing to manage) similar scummy tactics through their Steam platform, which includes some really serious anecdotes and looks at the research about how this can seriously affect people, especially young people.
posted by firechicago at 9:45 AM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

So you can either pay in cash, or in time.

This right here is key. I'm as big a gamer as anyone else here but I don't have the kind of time for it that I used to. But I do have a lot more money. So I really appreciate games that will let me pay to shorten the time I need to spend "grinding" for resources and/or experience. Basically, I'll buy my way out of gameplay experiences I don't like enough to devote my time to them. I'd rather spend my limited time doing fun and challenging things.

It seems like the industry has mostly given up on the idea of players paying for gameplay items they couldn't otherwise get and confer some kind of gameplay advantage, a.k.a. "pay to win" nonsense. It seems that most games are pretty clear that in game items you buy are purely cosmetic. It's not just the gambling/loot box aspect of it though.

I used to play Mechwarrior online (offers a fairly similar feel to Mechwarrior 2). Early in the game's life they offered Golden Mechs. Mechs being the weaponized robots piloted by players in the game. They were exactly the same as the non-gold version of the same model except they had gold coloring and shiny textures. They were $500 each, nothing random, you pick which ones you want but

Players fielding these mechs were ruthlessly targeted by enemy players and quite often left hung out to dry by their own team. It was easy to do because that shiny texture made them easy targets to find and it's not a good idea to stand next to that kind of target. The only thing it does is tell everyone that you've given $500 to developers for this one thing that is actively worse than the free versions. Honestly, I can't really interpret that as someone having more money than sense (be it a lack of sense or abundance of money).

I think the backlash comes from gamers that feel like playing the game is why we're here so when someone devotes so much money to something you can only look at but doesn't materially change the gameplay experience. It seems like paying more to play the same game.

On the other hand, I absolutely don't mind spending like $5 for a couple of things that I want. There is a line somewhere where is goes from harmless, if wasteful (I'm wasting $5 on pixels but it's only $5!) fun and into just purely wasteful, without the gambling bit. I don't know where that line is but it doesn't seem to matter as most folks seem like they're FAR to one side or the other.

That loot boxes are gambling and should be regulated as such seems to obvious to me that the only thing to debate is what regs to implement and how to implement them. So what if it's hard? Doing hard things is exactly what we have a powerful Federal Government to tackle isn't it? Sometimes we even do things because they are hard. I'm sure I heard someone say that once. :)
posted by VTX at 10:00 AM on January 31, 2023

I have also been playing and enjoying Marvel Snap (without paying for anything) and I do hope that they get enough people paying $10/month for the season pass rewards

$120/year forever (with the sunk cost and time of your account for FOMO); in return for which — on a typical season pass — you get reskinned door prizes and a dribble of 'content.' Before further microtransactions, or periodic expansions.

Our will is not our own.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:12 AM on January 31, 2023

$120/year forever (with the sunk cost and time of your account for FOMO); in return for which — on a typical season pass — you get reskinned door prizes and a dribble of 'content.' Before further microtransactions, or periodic expansions.

It's not a renewing subscription - you can choose to buy the pass for that month at any point during the season. The last couple of season passes have included powerful 'series 5' cards that are otherwise very difficult to get. On the whole I think it's not a bad system - I can buy the pass if I'm going to be playing a lot of snap that month, or I want the card, otherwise I can play casually without having to spend a penny.

There are also plenty of free to play players who seem to climb up the ranks. Like it's nice to have the powerful season 5 cards because they're generally fun to play and might make climbing the ranks easier, but you can also reach infinite rank without them.
posted by sid at 10:19 AM on January 31, 2023

I know there will be pressure on my kids as they get older, but these kinds of things make me want to only let them play non-connected Mario and Zelda games.

Of course tradings cards are the originally loot boxes.
In high school I worked in a comics/ cards store, and was amazed at the guys who would come in and drop a few hundred bucks on sealed cases of Magic the Gathering. But that isn’t a starkly explorative is the games.
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:29 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I briefly worked with the CEO of a USA based online game. Less gacha, more Facebook style. The game was popular but not a rampant success. He had about fifteen employees and was making over $150 k a year on average
posted by Jacen at 10:34 AM on January 31, 2023

$10/month isn't that bad. It's about the cost of a lunch, and less than the cost of most of the books I've bought recently.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:39 AM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

And here I used to find it ridiculous that my ex would blow his entire paycheck on (imaginary) shit for The Sims.

I haven't been in contact with him in a billion years, but he's probably one of these people now too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:43 AM on January 31, 2023

Players fielding these [golden] mechs were ruthlessly targeted by enemy players and quite often left hung out to dry by their own team.

Of course you relentlessly bully the guy who spent massive $$$ on the game. That's how you, a poor, can subvert the pay-to-win / pay-to-not-be-annoyed mechanic.
posted by ryanrs at 10:52 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

$10/month isn't that bad. It's about the cost of a lunch, and less than the cost of most of the books I've bought recently.

What if that book came with twenty pages and you had to pay $10/mo to see the rest two at a time? And you maybe felt like reading a few different books in a year?

It turns out the long tail is more like the long tentacle.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:07 AM on January 31, 2023

What if that book came with twenty pages and you had to pay $10/mo to see the rest two at a time? And you maybe felt like reading a few different books in a year?
Weren't many novels that are considered 'classics' originally published as serials? Including all of Dickens' oeuvre, Vanity Fair, Heart of Darkness, Madame Bovary, etc etc etc.

Also, your analogy doesn't make sense for Snap, perhaps a better one would be: access to the arena and most of the weapons are free, but if you pay $10 a month, you get one special weapon per month plus lots of cool looking armour that is no better than the regular free armour.
posted by sid at 11:17 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't know much about snap, but $10 a month across multiple titles adds up when literally everything is a live service and/or a season pass and leverages FOMO as much as possible even if the micro-transactions are cosmetic only (versus pay to win, or pay not to play).

Still, the point about old serials is good.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:20 AM on January 31, 2023

Just wait till they manage to convert non-games to the same shady dark pattern business models.

Hahaha, that's brilliant -- lootboxing rental apartments! Car leases! Hell, even healthcare!

...and then, the next level: lootbox as a service for companies that want to prey on consumers, but don't much care to build out he necessary predation infrastructure.
posted by aramaic at 11:24 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Not sure about other cities, but in LA Section 8 housing is by lottery.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:28 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I play Genshin fairly regularly. To me it really is the best case scenario of this type of game. The enormous amounts you see are there not because of its predatory practices but because of the quality, size, and popularity of the game. It captures a very long tail of spenders.

It's incredibly big, fun, runs on tons of platforms, is completely free, and has no competitive multiplayer aspect at all, the part that is often the toxic bit of online loot box stuff. Collecting characters that are in no way necessary or really even better than ones you already have, or a weapon with the same story, is the only reason to spend money.

For sure there are going to be bad situations where someone is using the game as a crutch... millions and millions of people across the globe play this game. But I don't think that supports the premise that the game's basis is fundamentally unsound or unhealthy.

I get that the "gambling" aspect can be problematic if you choose to engage with it, like any purchase with an uncertain outcome. But to me it's really no different than spending $10 on a few packs of Magic cards back in the day. You might get a Shivan Dragon or Lord of the Pit, sure, but Fireballs and Frozen Shades won games and you already had 20 of those. And back then you also had people spending thousands to buy boxes of boosters so they could craft the latest meta deck. There is also an established culture of gacha in SE Asia where toy and figurine collecting has used a similar model for decades.

The thing is, the concept of what a game is has moved beyond what it was when we were playing on cartridges and discs. Taking part in an ongoing and evolving world is compelling to a lot of people, especially when it's one as generous and fun and wholesome as Genshin Impact's. There are games out there that are predatory, and in my opinion this is not one of them.

It's not the same as buying Final Fantasy 7... and that's ok. We have those experiences too. But Genshin is an example of something new that uses a progressive cost system charging those with money more and those without money nothing at all. That actually seems really great to me. But I will agree that there ought to be some kind of rails for people to set their own limits and avoid compulsive behaviors. Who ultimately is responsible for what in this situation is a pretty big, complex, and open question.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:32 AM on January 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

I have also been playing and enjoying Marvel Snap (without paying for anything) and I do hope that they get enough people paying $10/month for the season pass rewards to make them a big hit and shift the industry towards something that looks more like their less-exploitative model of free-to-play monetization.

The thing is, Genshin already has that system. You can pay $5/month to significantly increase the number of chances you get at winning one of the random characters or weapons. Or you can pay $10 every—something like every 1.5 months—for a season pass that has a bunch of rewards that help you level-up your characters faster.

But then Genshin has the whole gacha system the article talks about on top of that. So, yes, season passes are probably less exploitative, but they don't necessarily replace the more exploitative systems, they just make money from different segments of players.
posted by straight at 11:55 AM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

So, yes, season passes are probably less exploitative, but they don't necessarily replace the more exploitative systems, they just make money from different segments of players.

I think you hit the nub of it. Folks like myself who enjoy playing a game like Snap (or Genshin) but don't have compulsions can pay $10 or whatever a month to contribute to the developers and get a few nice shiny things in return, and feel good about supporting a less-exploitative game that's fun to play. They can still get many times that amount from the folks with compulsions, so in this way the company can target both classes of player, and come off looking like the 'good guys'.
posted by sid at 12:00 PM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I only play two live service games, and I don't play them constantly to the exclusion of other activities. One is GTFO, which I only play when other friends can hop on, and the other is Deep Rock Galactic. There might be something to spend additional money on in GTFO, but I haven't seen it yet; just the single purchase to buy the game, and then mission sets get rotated in and out periodically.

DRG is also a one-time purchase and seems almost overly generous compared to other games on the market. Every season, when the devs add a new season, they update the in-game currency (Scrip, to tie into the game's capitalist hellscape theme), but all of the cosmetics you weren't able to get last season get added into the normal cosmetic market that uses in-game currencies that you can't buy with real money. They even added an additional in-game currency (again, no real world conversion) to make it easier to get cosmetics you missed. They've released a few cosmetic DLCs you can pay real money for, but these literally have no effect on the game and can't be bought with in-game currency, so they're really just additional income streams to keep the devs afloat. I've bought a couple DLC packs just because I've spent a huge amount of time in DRG and bought friends copies on sale. I love this game and want more people to play it, and the devs are super responsive.

If the whole business is moving toward live service, which I genuinely, sincerely hope is not the case, DRG is a much better case study than several of the other horror stories shared here and elsewhere.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 12:02 PM on January 31, 2023

The enormous amounts you see are there not because of its predatory practices ... I get that the "gambling" aspect can be problematic if you choose to engage with it

The article we are discussing is about people who are finding the gambling problematic because they are compelled to engage in it. And the predatory business model of the game company of the game publisher that is targeted at those victims. It's great the game works for you. The article talks about people for whom it doesn't work and the game's deliberate exploitation of those people.
posted by Nelson at 12:24 PM on January 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

I play Genshin fairly regularly. To me it really is the best case scenario of this type of game.

It's really weird. My favorite part of the game is 100% free. Genshin has released four ENORMOUS regions (maybe each one is 1/2 the size of Breath of the Wild in terms of how much there is to do and explore) plus four very large interim additions. Each of them has been more beautiful and more interesting to explore than the last, adding new kinds of things to explore, new puzzles, new movement mechanics.

And you really can enjoy all of it with characters and abilities you get for free. Some of the premium characters have some nice movement mechanics or special abilities that make exploring more fun, but you'll pick up several of them for free as you play the game.

Most of what people are paying big money for are specific characters or weapons with new and more powerful combat abilities. And while those are nice in the story and open world, they're really only important for the most boring part of the game: repetitive combat arenas where you fight the same battles over and over grinding for rewards that make you 5% better at fighting those same battles over and over, all just to watch your stats go up.

Someone might spend a hundred dollars trying to get a specific random character, but you're only going to spend thousands of dollars if you're trying to get all the upgrades that make the character or their weapons do 20% more damage or reduce the cooldown of an ability by a few seconds or extend the blast radius of a power.

And yet.

They keep adding cool new characters, only available for a limited time. If I use up all my free chances to win that character, I'll turn aside from the more fun parts of the game to start doing all the grinding available to get a few more chances. And then as the clock ticks down and I haven't won the lottery, the idea of spending money to get a few more chances for that thing that's only going to make a marginal improvement to the parts of the game I like seems less obviously pointless...

STOP PLAYING GAMES WHEN THEY STOP BEING FUN. THERE'S SO MANY MORE OTHER FUN GAMES TO PLAY. —I yell at myself.
posted by straight at 12:58 PM on January 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

STOP PLAYING GAMES WHEN THEY STOP BEING FUN. THERE'S SO MANY MORE OTHER FUN GAMES TO PLAY. —I yell at myself.

One of the reasons players have a lot of respect for FFXIV head Naoki Yoshida is because he publicly states that players should be able to take time off and play other games, and the game's design helps enable this.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:41 PM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

finding the gambling problematic

I don't even consider Genshin gambling.

The system guarantees you the 5 star character on the banner by the 85th pull (hard pity) or 170th pull (soft pity). So I don't pull unless I have enough. There's no RNG or gambling involved. You can accumulate pulls normally by playing the game over time, or by buying them. I quantify that as playing for 2 months to afford a 5 star character, or spending a fixed amount of money (say $200, which I wouldn't do). Since there is no uncertainty involved, I wouldn't call it gambling, in my mind at least. I HATE gambling with a passion, I swear I have the worst luck.

(Let me tell you about the time in Lost Ark where I failed a 40% success rate process about 27 times in a row without a single success while on stream...)

Now, there are games without a pity system. Lost Ark has a combination of both: some systems (Honing) has a pity system, and some (Quality, Cards) do not. The quality system in particular, there is no reason why a player couldn't spend a near infinite amount of money gambling to improve their weapon quality and receive nothing. That's the kind of gambling I detest and eventually led me to quit the game.
posted by xdvesper at 2:44 PM on January 31, 2023

I try really hard not to let my kids play any game with currencies or loot boxes or micro transactions. My son still plays Pokemon Go and Pokemon Quest but they don't use the same gambling mechanic. Otherwise I'm happy enough to get them games for the Switch which they can play and won't be hit up for additional payments.

For a while I played One Piece Treasure Cruise, which is a mobile game, and they definitely try to get you to buy gems so that you can try to pull rare characters. I'm OK with not getting the rare characters, or at least waiting until I get enough free gems to try to pull them, but they kept on throwing so many other game play types into it, possibly with things you could buy to get better at them, that it stopped being fun. Which is a shame because the main game had you play through whole manga series so you'd get little animated shorts of the story progressing which is great if you're a One Piece fan.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:19 PM on January 31, 2023

Hahaha, that's brilliant -- lootboxing rental apartments! Car leases! Hell, even healthcare!

Then have companies that make a percentage by facilitating trade between the lootboxed good you receive and the one you really want! Got a leg x-ray from your HealthBox™ but need a transplant? EA's Origan Swap™ at your service!
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:34 PM on January 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

And sure, adults are most of the audience, but it's also clearly aimed at kids.

Absolutely. This has been a subject of enforcement actions even in the U.S. before.
posted by praemunire at 5:44 PM on January 31, 2023

Of course tradings cards are the originally loot boxes.
In high school I worked in a comics/ cards store, and was amazed at the guys who would come in and drop a few hundred bucks on sealed cases of Magic the Gathering. But that isn’t a starkly explorative is the games.

But to me it's really no different than spending $10 on a few packs of Magic cards back in the day. You might get a Shivan Dragon or Lord of the Pit, sure, but Fireballs and Frozen Shades won games and you already had 20 of those.

I was thinking about this comparison, too, because it’s the more familiar reference point for me. The thing about - well, maybe not every TCG, but Magic at least - is that there’s a version of the game that you play with fresh packs. It might even be the most fun version of the game. If you buy packs for a draft and don’t end up getting any good cards, it doesn’t feel like a total waste of money because you still got to play.
posted by atoxyl at 8:53 PM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

there’s a version of the game that you play with fresh packs
Honestly I don't think this fact mitigates the 'dark pattern-ness' of it all. Players who aren't vulnerable will enjoy a draft game and that's that, whereas those with compulsions can play that first draft game and then go home and blow thousands on boxes of boosters so they can chase the thrill of opening polar kraken or whatever.
posted by sid at 10:21 AM on February 1, 2023

There’s definitely a gambling aspect to it. It just ends up feeling like a smaller part of overall activity around the game, if that makes sense, because (due to limited formats and also the existence of more of a “real economy” of cards with relatively sophisticated reseller activity going on) individual players chasing after high value cards is not the only thing that powers the opening of packs.
posted by atoxyl at 4:29 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah if you want a rare Magic card you can just go out and buy it instead of buying packs hoping you get lucky. With the loot boxes and the like there is no other market to get the characters/items/rewards so you're stuck hoping for a lucky pull.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:32 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah if you want a rare Magic card you can just go out and buy it instead of buying packs hoping you get lucky.

well, somebody opened it in a pack

but it wasn’t necessarily a “whale” (though I’m sure they exist) versus somebody in a draft or competitive players pooling resources or a business that can absorb some risk. And for anybody who opens cards they don’t want, there’s a decent chance that they can actually find someone who does.

and historically the rarest cards aren’t strictly the best or most important, though my understanding is that WoTC has tried to squeeze more out of players since I stopped playing years ago
posted by atoxyl at 7:58 PM on February 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you have the Destiny 2 disease, there is apparently one of those get-it-while-it-lasts shard farms happening now; related to drop adjustments in advance of Lightfall.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:42 PM on February 2, 2023

I've been playing Genshin Impact since October, after my daughter started playing last May. She's built up quite a stable of characters, and I'm on my way, but neither of us have spent any money, just ridiculous amounts of time.

The game is very gentle with the upsell, there is definitely no need to spend money at all, ever. As a player, I can't help but think people spending money on the game are very impatient. Sure, some people spend more on more foolish things, but usually because there's not an easy alternative. It's not like you can wait longer and then go see a movie in the theater for free, but you can wait longer and get whatever you want in Genshin. All spending money is doing is accelerating things, there is nothing exclusive in the game behind a paywall.
posted by pwinn at 9:55 PM on February 2, 2023