Opinion: The game industry must face up to its gambling problem
▻https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/308232/Opinion_The_game_industry_must_face_up_to_its_gambling_problem.php
Chickens have a way of coming home to roost in the tech industry—and gaming hasn’t been immune to the lawless, “that’s tomorrow’s problem” mentality that leads to one ballooning crisis of irresponsibility after another. Instead of getting out in front of a predictable problem and putting guardrails around it, the industry tends to let things explode before admitting anything is even remotely wrong.
This was on my mind as I saw the latest debates about microtransactions and gambling swirl around. It’s all been discussed by popular gaming YouTubers like Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit, as well as gaming journalists, the ESRB weighed in (with predictable cowardice), and it’s even been brought to the attention of the British government.
That last bit should worry the industry. Its failure to self-regulate, to develop wide ranging ethical standards for the practice, will lead inevitably to the imposition of regulations from without. Gaming studios have, for the moment, been glorying in the grey area created by technological novelty, after all. Most people still don’t know or care what a “lootbox” is, much less regard its contents as in any way valuable.
I welcome your article here, I’ve been one of the most outspoken critics of these tactics in the world community for some time. When I published “Monetizing Children” (▻https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130620/194429/Monetizing_Children.php) here on Gamasutra in mid 2013, it was the first article of its kind published anywhere. I believe that is because it was the ultimate taboo subject. Now more than 4 years later, it still is. That article caused me to be summoned to Panama for the ICPEN summit where international regulators met to decided how to protect children from a threat they still did not understand.
USA regulators were a no show at the summit. Apple and Google were invited and declined. Disney did send a VP and when I presented slides of a Disney product made for young children that included a roulette wheel in the tutorial, the Disney exec ended up fleeing the summit before answering a single question from international regulators. She literally threw down her translator and went directly to the airport as regulators were attempting to question her.
Even as governments in Asia attempt to regulate gacha boxes, many of the largest Western gaming companies feel themselves too big to regulate and do their best to avoid compliance. When China mandated the exposure of gacha box potential drops and their odds, instead of complying Activision Blizzard responded by changing the method that the random reward was deployed in Overwatch ever so slightly in an effort to avoid the letter of the law but not the effect. When a Blizzard business intelligence exec asked me my opinion about the monetization system for Overwatch earlier this year, i told him it was not in the interests of consumers to not comply, and that challenging the Chinese government would not be in the interests of the company long term. He just smiled and shrugged.
And yes of course the ESRB is going to avoid regulating America’s industry. That’s what they do. But when other countries do act to protect their citizens, the result is a patchwork of global regulation that is very complex for Western game developers to navigate. So ultimately they will be forced to comply with the stricter regulations as that’s easier than having a different product in every country.