Only 16? Can 16 year olds go into casinos?
I think games like this having an increased rating is a step in the right direction.
20 or more years ago, when my step son was 12/13 he wanted to play GTA San Andreas, and Halo. At the time, they were both had an ESRB Rating of Mature 17+. My gut didn’t want to let him play either game. I bought them both. I spent about 3 hours playing GTA and decided it wasn’t something I was going to let my kid play. I played the entire Halo campaign because it was actually really fun, and the entire plot was space marines shooting aliens. I let my kid play Halo, because aside from alien guts and shooting, there wasn’t much there that really warranted a mature rating. GTA on the other hand let me pick up prostitutes, had themes involving gangs, organized crime, and sex. It was also a really fun game, but not something a 12 or 13 year old should be playing.
Ultimately, it’s up to parent’s to police what their kids are doing and being exposed to. The ESRB rating system here gave me pause about letting my kid play a game, forcing me to review them on a case by case basis.
Any game with loot boxes giving a random item or content should have a rating that reflects age restrictions for real life gambling.
Good.
Next they should ban blind box toys and other rarity based gambling like Pokémon cards or those lol dolls and similar.
I get kids like Pokémon, they like surprise boxes, but it’s gambling. Variable reward systems are gambling. I worked in the collectables industry for a very short time, I saw how much money people spend on this, it’s abusive.
If they sold only deterministic boosters and externally numbered packs the kids would have just as much fun and it would ruin the gambling aspects that lead to scalping and addiction.
There’s no scalping if a pack says “Pack No. 232” and you can look up the contents online, and cards are only allowed a maximum rarity (I.e. if the average number of packs to open to get any card is a multiple higher than the twice or triple the average number of cards, then you’re gambling — that is determined by the geometric distribution and the math is simple).
This is even verifiable without opening packs, because you can use the numbers to assess relative frequencies.
Short form content, engagement-oriented algorithms, and loot boxes are basically going to be our leaded gasoline
Going to be?
This half-measure in disguise as a civic duty is little more than a play to justify age-checks. Fuck this twice.
I used to play a lot of CS, but I hadn’t in years. I never really spent money opening crates (maybe once or twice) and the game was gifted to me by a friend who got me into it. Basically, I just had tons of crates and things sitting in my inventory, that weren’t worth much to start with. I downloaded a plugin to bulk-sell stuff on Steam and liquidated it, and it ended up being hundreds of dollars (probably close to $600, but that’s just an estimate) just for having played CS.
This isn’t endorsing any of this. It was obviously never a reason I played. If anyone else was like me though, you should look into liquidating it all. It’s not doing any good sitting in your inventory.
“pertect tha chillerns” 😵💫
