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Walmart and Unity To Bring Immersive Commerce to Games, Virtual Worlds and Apps
(corporate.walmart.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Calling the grindstone of continuous manipulation "conscious choice" - when YOU propose outlawing some of these abusive mechanisms - is blame. Why the hell would you discuss outlawing any portion of this, if you don't recognize people are being harmed?
Hello, and welcome to the point.
Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them... games. Literally fundamental. When a game makes all its money by manipulating people into throwing money at bullshit, over and over and over and over, the entire rest of the game is just a gaudy funnel toward that "choice."
Making you think you wanted it is how it works.
Because there's a difference between a scam and a stupid, conscious choice. The former misrepresents or replaces what you're buying, whereas the latter does not. The former should be illegal, the latter should not.
That's totally different from what I'm talking about.
If you actually value the thing and want it, you're not a victim for buying it, you're a customer. If you're buying it because it seems required (and it's not), that's a scam. Dark patterns influence both behaviors, but that doesn't automatically mean all dark patterns should be illegal, it really depends on the details.
I think we should treat it similarly to cigarettes: put a bunch of warning labels on it and prevent children from buying it, but don't make it illegal for consenting adults.
Need and want are equally artificial. It's a game. And these games will use whichever lever works best, to subvert your rational decision-making and maximize how much money you throw at them, for the absolute least quantity of effort.
All apparent value is arbitrary. There is no relevant difference between cajoling people into craving a different-colored hat, versus some scimitar with bigger numbers. The mechanisms of this manipulation are identical.
But you will never change anything by attacking those mechanisms - because developers will find new ones. They already have. They already do. "Lootboxes" became a dirty word, finally, but do you think this bullshit makes less money now? Nah: they squeeze people for additional billions, doing the same old bullshit with new language.
They make the fishhook gentle enough that people defend the taste of the bait.
That may be true, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Laws shouldn't be crafted to eliminate stupid decisions, laws should penalize and discourage fraud and other direct forms of harm. Saying "you should buy this" isn't fraud in any way, provided the customer gets what they paid for, even if that thing is worthless (provided they were fully aware that it's worthless). People put a lot of value in vanity, and they're usually using money to stroke their own ego.
And that's totally fine, provided the transaction was consensual and the product wasn't misrepresented. It's disgusting and I will never work for or purchase from a company that does that, but I don't think it should be outlawed. We should absolutely make information public about how these things work so people can be informed and choose to make different choices.
Like charging real money to flip a bit inside a video game. So you can say you have something that's already in the game, because it's already onscreen, in the game, on your machine. When the whole game exists to make you want that bullshit.
Which is now a multi-billion-dollar industry unto itself. That is the only way they make money.
They take money for things they will just give you, if you play long enough. As if playing is labor. As if another dozen hours of grinding would mean they owe you a hundred bucks. Nah: they just take that much, so you'll avoid that frustration. You are paying money to play the game less.
That's a scam.
That's a big fuckin' hint that rational purchases leading to optimal consumer value are not what's happening.
That's an environment where all apparent positives are made-up by the people taking your actual money.
Misrepresentation is what manipulation is. There is no form of it that's not exploitative, and when that's just for yuks in a game you already bought - great! That is how games do. That is central to the concept. But when it's exploitation for money, we have words for that, and none of them are pleasant.
Information will never stop human beings from being predictably irrational. That's... what those words mean. More data won't help. That's why this shit works, at all, despite widespread vitriolic hatred toward the entire business model. It works no matter how anyone feels about it.
This business model is the entire problem. Wagging a finger at individuals only makes it worse.
Legislation is the only thing that could possibly help.
If the customer knows that's what they're paying for, there's no fraud.
No it's not. The player gets exactly what was advertised, so it's not a scam. There's no fraud there.
That may be true, but I firmly believe it's immoral to restrict a consenting adult's choices just because you don't agree with them and think you know better (you probably do, but that's beside the point).
Not all problems need solutions. If an alcoholic wants to destroy their life with alcohol, that should be their right. However, I think society should provide tools to help that alcoholic recover once they decide to fix their life (free rehab funded with taxes on alcohol, for example). That obviously won't help all alcoholics, but it provides options to help people fix their lives.
The same should apply here. Tax MTX and use it to fund game addiction rehab. But don't ban the MTX.
In other words, the ends do not justify the means. An immoral law is immoral even if it was created to help people, and restricting choice and limiting self-determination are immoral.
jUsT bEcAuSe YoU diSaGrEe yeah fuck all the other words I keep saying. And some of the words you keep saying.
You know this is rife with exploitation. You refuse to acknowledge the exploitation is all there is.
Charging money per-goal in soccer is fraud, even if you "get" the goal, for the money. The game, the stadium, the sport, exist solely as a dark vortex toward that decision. Your consent was manufactured because the entire thing is manufactured.
This business model is intolerable. There is no ethical form.
Taking back part of the money they ripped off will solve nothing.
Exploitation in general isn't illegal, only certain forms are.
A casino that offers free alcohol and has enticing games isn't illegally exploiting its customers, even if those customers get addicted to the games and their inhibitions are reduced due to the effects of alcohol. However, there are limitations, such as not allowing obviously drunk people to gamble since they're sufficiently impaired so as to not be able to legally consent.
I don't think MTX rise to that standard.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Are you saying viewers are charged per goal scored while they're watching? Is that actually a thing that happens, or even remotely similar? And how is that fraud? Fraud is when you misrepresent something:
Maybe if the ticket to the game said $50, but in the fine print you need to pay $100/goal and that's not disclosed anywhere prior to purchase.
Or are you saying that P2W is fraud generally? That really depends on how the free or lower cost tier is advertised.
I agree, which is why I don't engage with it. But something being intolerant or untasteful doesn't mean it should be illegal.
I find gambling to also be intolerable, so I don't gamble. However, I'll be first in line to support making it legal because it's tyrannical to prevent people from consensual gambling.
Yes.
Jesus, why do I bother typing words?
That's not what intolerable means! You're fucking tolerating it! You're fucking DEFENDING it!