I mean, Roblox is a child labour ring.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
25 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
628 readers
1 users here now
Sub for any gaming related content!
Rules:
- 1: No spam or advertising. This basically means no linking to your own content on blogs, YouTube, Twitch, etc.
- 2: No bigotry or gatekeeping. This should be obvious, but neither of those things will be tolerated. This goes for linked content too; if the site has some heavy "anti-woke" energy, you probably shouldn't be posting it here.
- 3: No untagged game spoilers. If the game was recently released or not released at all yet, use the Spoiler tag (the little ⚠️ button) in the body text, and avoid typing spoilers in the title. It should also be avoided to openly talk about major story spoilers, even in old games.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
People have gone over the ptw mechanics for Diablo in some depth. It's not exactly a kids game, but it has all the things. Kids are kind of a bad choice for the real predatory stuff, you might get them to give you a couple of grand once, but if you can hook an adult you get to hit them every month.
If it must be kid focused, have a look at those cutesy merge games. Or just hit a popular game and look at the ads it's running.
Thing is, most of these games are kind of bad unless those little pleasure hits really work for you, so you might not find them 'fun'. These aren't supposed to work on everyone, rather they are designed to really work on a minority of people.
@vis4valentine Roblox & Fortnite
Cool, but they are heavy to install and I need an account (I never played Roblox or Fortnite before), and I want something simple and easy to install straight from play store, and that uses my saved card info from my google account.
Why not a video of it instead? Easy, predictable, can use many games that way
Could be, I'll see.
My wife made me play fornite with her - they are actually pretty generous with skins etc. If you buy a battle pass once, it's pretty easy to keep unlocking it in future seasons. Maybe that is predatory in some addictive way I guess.. but persoanlly after avoiding fornite for years, I was pleasantly surprised how they let you earn things.
I got in pretty deep on Marvel Future Fight a couple years back. It really bothers me how a family friendly franchise will be packed with pressure points and gambling mechanics.
The game starts fine, as a short mission based story line, and progress happens fairly quickly. You play missions to get character bios (points) to unlock more marvel characters, and then you can build small teams for different missions.
As you start unlocking more characters, you also need to rank up the characters you own to make them more powerful. Again, the basic level upgrades are easy, as you collect material per mission, but as you start getting into the middle game, ranking a character happens through RNG.
You upgrade a character though multiple resource points, Rank, then Tier, then weapons, uniforms, gear, and crystals. There is no set "cost" for upgrading one part of a character. You build up a bunch of materials, and then you take a spin. There's a random amount of progress made spending the material, and each upgrade path becomes its own slot machine, with its own materials to spend. You MIGHT get lucky and get a full upgrade to a power crystal in one turn, but more than likely you'll need to burn HOURS of game time grinding to build up the materials, spend all the materials, and be left with nothing.
If you want to shortcut that progression, it can cost HUNDREDS of dollars to rank ONE character to a point where you can be competitive in online events and in guild play. You won't be competitive with just a couple high ranking players, you need a FULL roster for the multiple events available.
At present, Marvel Future Fight includes over 250 playable characters. Each needs to be ranked and upgraded through multiple game mechanics, and new uniforms are regularly released that also require RNG mechanics to own and upgrade.
Whales will spend THOUSANDS of dollars at the start of a new event, and when new characters are released, to chase the game's meta. Sure, you aren't "buying a lootbox", but players are spending money to build up resources, only to throw those resources away at multiple slot machines built into EVERY character. It's one of the most insidious games I've ever played, and it's marketed at kids and teens.
Another factor is how addictive the game is designed to be. A quick search led me to https://www.video-game-addiction.org/what-makes-games-addictive.html which covers some of the things. For example:
Games that hook players are often designed to be just difficult enough to be truly challenging, while allowing players to achieve small accomplishments that compel them to keep playing. In that respect, the design of video games is similar to the design of gambling casinos, which will allow players to have small “wins” that keep them playing.>
Going over addictive design elements like this can at least let people be more aware of why they keep wanting to play.
Clash of Clans? Progress is time gated, but can be skipped with gems.
Literally any mobile game made in the past 5 years
I don't know how popular Pokemon Sleep is yet, but that concept of a „game“ is seriously fucked
It's not a game, it's a gamified tool. It's a sleep tracking app with gameplay elements to keep one interested.
I would classify it in the same mental bucket where I put activity and workout monitor apps that track steps or calorie goals.
Now, whether it actually produces consistent, net positive health results, I can't say either way.
Pretty much. If they made a "Pokemon Fitness" that tracked steps or heart rate and calories burned, it would be the same thing. "Your steps were converted to fitness energy! Here are the Pokemon you met in your walk!"
Battle Cats