What if Chuck E Cheese was in your bedroom and it was marketed to make you feel like you were missing out if you didn’t have the thing your friend’s had, but you can’t buy the thing, oh no that’s too easy. We’ll let you buy the chance to own the thing.
I’ll give you the proximity point, it is easier to access loot boxes when they are in a game.
But as for the missing out part, yeah that’s how it works. Your friend wins something from the claw machine or gets a bunch of tickets, now you want that. That’s part of the fun, your parents could just buy the toy but that’s lame
But your parents can’t just buy the toy. The only way to get the toy is through the element of chance - sometimes with a near zero win chance - by spending real world money.
The only reason it’s not de-facto gambling is that there are consolation prizes, but in most peoples’ view that doesn’t make it morally okay to push on children, nor does it make it completely not gambling either. It’s just gambling with consolation prizes.
I disagree that most people view it as bad. Arcades and stuff have been around forever, and are still being used by a ton of people. Just because you don’t want send your kids to chuck E cheese doesn’t mean most people agree with you
You keep relying on the Chuck E. Cheese anology, but it simply doesn’t work. At Chuck E. Cheese the prizes are a bunch of toys that your parents could otherwise buy, and the fun is in playing the games themselves which pay out tickets toward earning those prizes. That is in no way the equivalent of gamble boxes in video games.
Gamble boxes contain prizes that can’t be bought outside the game, and in nearly every case contain prizes that can’t be bought with the “consolation prize” (i.e. “tickets”) that are dropped when you otherwise win nothing or very little compared to the actual prizes. And there is no inherent “fun” in clicking an “UNLOCK BOX” button compared to actually… playing a game in order to earn prizes. Not comparable at all, really.
If you’re going to try to convince people they’re not gambling (and you have quite the uphill battle to fight), you’re better off likening them to blind bag grab-packs of card games / collector cards / toys, etc. - Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, sports cards, blind-bag toys etc. That is their closest real-world equivalent. Many would argue that those are also a form of gambling, as well.
All companies do bad things. The only question is whether or not you know about them. I personally am of the opinion that not buying particular products is only useful as part of a coordinated boycott. Otherwise, it’s just empty virtue signalling.
Perhaps we should have some sort of a gamers consumer organization that coordinates boycotts over specific issues. I would be willing to participate. And it’s not like you can’t allow the company’s reputation figure in to your decision to buy. But no form of absolute morality, divorced from reality, is either helpful, or even particularly healthy.
I dunno, I normally use my bash script + ffmpeg to convert batch flacs to mp3s
<span style="color:#323232;">#!/bin/bash
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">cd "${1}"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">for subdir in *; do
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> cd "${subdir}"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> for input in *.flac; do
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> echo ${input%.*}
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> ffmpeg -i "${input}" -ab 320k -map_metadata 0 -id3v2_version 3 "${input%.*}.mp3" && rm "${input}"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> done
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> cd ..
</span><span style="color:#323232;">done
</span>
Then i’d just run my script.sh [directory that contains flac]you might want to remove && rm “${input}” if you don’t want it to delete your flac files automatically.
I presume the Linux version is the same (I used the Windows version) but WiiUDownloader gives you a lovely graphical interface to download anything from the WiiU eShop servers. Even copies files straight to an SD card ready to install on your WiiU.
Minecraft (as usual), just finished Wolfenstein New Orden again. Just started Breath of Fire (GBA version). Nonogram (picross, android). Maybe I’ll get back to ToTK (what a drag, that game is huge). Not touching my huge backlog yet.
Yes, I’m a parent and patient gamer, how did you know?
For example, would you take a shortcut and make items appear because you’re fishing them in the pond (which makes pond a source of “outworldly” items), or rather come up with something more creative? The logistics of it can tell the story better than 1000 words on a wall made to push the narrative. Of course, at the same time, you don’t want to make this a main focus to the player, unless it’s an objective.
Playing Danganronpa v3 and FF7 Crisis Core Reunion, both on Steam Deck.
I started Danganronpa a couple weeks ago. And so far, it’s definitely the weakest of the main trilogy. I really don’t like any of the characters. They’re all just too edgy, weird, and/or outright dumb. And not in a funny endearing way often seen with characters in the first two installments. I just finished the the second class trial; the twist there was pretty stupid. The first trial and murderer at least made sense and was unexpected. This second murderer, while also unexpected, just had the dumbest reason; totally unbelievable. That said, the game itself isn’t terrible. And the story is just interesting enough that I wanna see where it goes.
I started FF7 Crisis Core Reunion last week and I’m still in the early stages of it. Don’t really have any opinions on it so far. After finishing FF16, I was in the mood for another action-based FF game, so tried this out.
Continuing to play FF14; still in Shadowbringer expansion (SHB). I’ve been taking my time with it as I had to level up a Machinist so that I can take advantage of the experience gained from MSQs. I finished the Titania trial over the weekend. I am enjoying the level of difficulty with SHB; I felt like Stormblood was a walk in the park. Admittedly, I was massively overleveled through most of Stormblood, but even with level adjustments, it felt easy. So it’s nice to see some challenge again.
Also I’ve gotten back into Eve Online after taking a few months off again. Idk; null blob fleet stuff is something to do, I guess.
Metro 2033 Redux: I’m not usually big on first person shooters, but love horror games so I gave it a try. The atmosphere and mechanics combine to make it a really immersive and tense experience. I loved that they put a stealth option in a FPS. There’s limited gas mask filters which pushes you to move faster, while at the same time the traps and lack of ammo make you want to slow down; which keeps up the tension even if there’s nothing elsr happening at the moment. There’s a good variety in the types of levels, so you’re not just blasting your way through everything all the time.
Their approach to moral choices was also very well implemented; instead of giving you clunky and obvious dialogue options, they just watch how you play the game to determine which ending you get.
Prosperous Universe is quite different from a typical incremental game, but it scratches the same itch for me. The game is very complex, and other players drive the economy, leading to some price/availability unpredictability that is interesting. Gotta keep your bases fueled, but you also want to wait for prices to rise or fall, and potentially use your ships to trade at other markets.
It’s quite nonlinear in progression and there’s a lot of ways to expand.
Continuing the PSO2:NGS grind. Leciel is extremely fun, just the right amount of tension and challenge, and constant novel boss “twists”. Yesterday we had a boss with breakable parts and a breakable bomb, as well as buffs to damage to breakable parts. The strat was to stagger him by breaking his legs then do a mad rush to break the bomb before it wiped the entire party.
Beyond that, continuing my journey through .hack//IMOQ. It’s immediately clear how special this series is. Not just for being the seminal story about an imaginary game, and being fairly unique in actually looking at how people interact with games as a third place, and the queer potential of video games; but also for actually providing a playable version of the imaginary game. Including an MMO version of the MMO!
I really want .hack to come back. Log Horizon rules, and I like the more heroic, legendary, and optimistic tone and theming, but there’s something really appealing at how realistic .hack is without being dark, gritty, or cynical. The sense of romance in the game’s backstory is great too. All this weird background fabric about genius programmers singlehandedly changing the course of the world, people overhwelmed by emotions; meanwhile the spotlight is on real people.
In my opinion, It helps to know the rock bottom basics (like why is this d20 being rolled all the time and what the stats are) but it’s certainly not a necessity.
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