A devoted voter probably won’t change his vote over a video game. But someone who can’t be bothered to even walk to the polling station can be easily converted if you give him something he cares for. And gamers care about gaming.
This opens a realpolitical position. Not a position of ethics or ideas, simply a poll-tested career politician move: cater to gamers by regulating games. This is perfect, because it has no opposing group. If you raise taxes, you anger the free market people. But if you ban lootboxes, or set up a government agency that accesses game data to verify if there isn’t rigging, there aren’t any voting groups that will get mad at you.
Even better, both traditional parties can integrate such policies into his agenda. A social-democrat can claim that monetization is evil by nature as it rewards the rich over the poor. A conservative can demand meritocracy and fair competition and shun the immorality of gambling. But it’s just bullshit anyway, the point is to get the votes of the gamers by banning the most obnoxious developer behaviors: lootboxes and rigging (game behaving differently than assumed by the players and hinted by devs).
Maybe a few calls to the “young adult outreach” staffer of politicians can help, as it makes them understand that there is a whole virgin field for politicians to claim and the first one gets to harvest these non-motivated voters. But I guess it will happen anyway. Not like there aren’t gamers on party staffs who can add 1+1 and realize that the problem annoying them at their entertainment time can be fixed at their work hours.
I can see this happening with lootboxes.
I wouldn’t want this happen with rigging, because that’s too nebulous of a concept and will give government too much control over the design process.
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@Maxim: it doesn’t need control, just forced transparency. So
“companies must disclose all mechanics of a game or else pay penalty” and “whistleblowers who reveal that their company have not disclosed all mechanics can’t be sued over NDA or whatnot” would be enough. Then designers can still make microtransaction-driving matchmaker, but everyone will know about it and only idiots would play.
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Games are entertainment. It’s not a serious issue and any politician trying to use it will be laughed at.
Besides, exactly the type of people that could vote for “fair games” are also the people who don’t like big government. They will assume that however bad it is now, the government will make it worse.
Games now are a free market. Like it or not, this is what the buyers want. If there’s a better alternative, somebody will come up with it and make gazillions. If governments start regulating they will clamp down on any innovation and petrify the market at the current state, especially when the biggest companies start lobbying for rules benefitting them.
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@stawek: boxing is entertainment. It’s not a serious issue. Please set up a rigged boxing game with people able to bet on the winner and see how it goes (hint: 20 years in prison).
Games are free market in the sense as Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was operating on the free market. After all the customers were consenting adults. I ask for forced transparency, not regulation.
However this is offtopic and political. My point is that a politician can jump on this and regulate it for easy votes. It won’t necessarily be right. You or me will probably won’t agree. But this is how politics works. Consider games as abortion or transgender bathrooms. You shouldn’t say “this is immoral”, you should argue why would an immoral politician not abuse it.
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@Gevlon
“companies must disclose all mechanics of a game or else pay penalty”
So what you are describing is “informed consent”, something that a player should be given before they play a game. How would this disclosure work? Would it be hidden deep within some EULA or TOS agreement that a player would just scroll through before blindly hitting “accept/agree”, which is what the majority of gamers do anyways before playing a game?
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@Noguff: sure, it would be several hundred pages long of obscure technical documentation. But you don’t have to read that. You just have to read your favorite blogger who says that “that thing on the 117. page describes how they give extra damage to those who bought cosmetic minipets”
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The state does not regulate boxing, it regulates financial transactions around boxing aka betting. If there was a billion dollar market on bets around LoL games, they would most likely intervene, too, after a few rigging scandals.
Madoff customers did not give informed consent as he was lying to them in his financial reports.
What they could do is regulate loot boxes and such as gambling. If I buy a loot box and the game fudges with my win chance, I’m being scammed.
Our fundamental problem is that people don’t want fair games. They want wins. As you observed yourself, Eve play time is worth less than Eve SP injectors. People don’t value the act of playing the game at all, they value the wins over other players. No game can be successful if it acts against human nature. Monetization is just a very effective tool of utilizing it.
Sometimes wins come from inherent skills (sports that use physical bodies, weaklings should not apply), sometimes from intellect (chess), sometimes from years of practice (almost everything), sometimes from years of paying subscription (Eve), sometimes from buying premium ammo (WoT), sometimes from buying new heroes (LoL), sometimes from buying slightly overpowered ships (WoWs), sometimes from buying the game at all (all single player RPGs where the hero always wins). Games that don’t offer wins for money are rare. But, they have the major advantage of attracting the rare people who like to compete, which then get good and get money for wins. Scrubs pay to win, serious people win to get paid.
By rigging matchmaking the games get best of both worlds – scrubs pay to win, but the top level tournaments are outside the MM scope so they can capitalize on fair competition. It’s brilliant strategy and it works because everybody loves it.
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@Stawek: the RMT scene is way over a billion dollar.
While people want wins, they want something even more: no losses. The guy with the free win is less happy than the guy with the sure loss mad. So people prefer playing fair game if they are aware that the alternative is one free win, one sure loss. The current games hint pay-to-win, but never give informed consent about free-to-lose or even worse: pay-to-lose.
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> Games are entertainment. It’s not a serious issue and any politician trying to use it will be laughed at.
The same can be said of gambling in general, which in most countries is heavily regulated for good reasons.
Those whales that spend thousands each month on microtransactions aren’t all millionaires, but mostly addicts fucking up their lives.
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Loot boxes be serious business and probably a form of gambling.
UK government responds to loot box petition
http://metro.co.uk/2017/10/26/uk-government-responds-to-loot-box-petition-7029179/
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