Retail-store "lootboxes" targeting KIDS??? When did this get to be a thing? Gambling with parent's money at an early age?

[VirtualLarry]

Barbie Biggest Blind Bag, Kids Toys for Ages 3 Up, Gifts and Presents - Walmart.com

Buy Barbie Biggest Blind Bag, Kids Toys for Ages 3 Up, Gifts and Presents at Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

How is this even legal, what they're doing to kid's minds these days? I fully support BANNING lootbox games directed at children, and LIKEWISE for RETAIL "lootboxes".

The mfg's should be BOYCOTTED!

This cannot be healthy for kids. ("indoctrinated into addiction")

 

[nakedfrog]

Blind boxes have been a thing for... well, years at the least.

 

[sdifox]

Pretty sure lootbags existed long before personal computers.

 

[SKORPI0]

 

[lxskllr]

Grab bags can be fun when they're operated right. In the case of the Barbie set, the value of the contents should be >$10. What's the point when you get exactly what it's worth, but not what you want? I've gotten bags of rope ends. One of them kinda sucked, but I found a use for most of the stuff, and my others ranged from "decent" to "awesome". Shit, one box I got had rope in it that could hardly be considered an "end". One was 189' and another was 161'. Nothing was under 96'. Any single one of those lines was worth the $75 I paid much less all of them.

 

[NutBucket]

You can thank YouTube for that. Mystery boxes, etc. Just lots of little crappy trinkets. Luckily my kids tired of them rather quickly.

 

[yottabit]

Wait until VirtualLarry hears about Pokemon cards.

Or McDonalds Happy meals!

I consider it a nice early life lesson on deterministic vs probabilistic events

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Agreed! The general public is ridiculously dumb and need to be protected form their idiotic decisions... How about we ban the lottery too - morons who are poor spending their money on scratchers and quick picks.

We can't protect everyone from their stupid decisions but I'd like to!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Agreed! The general public is ridiculously dumb and need to be protected form their idiotic decisions... How about we ban the lottery too - morons who are poor spending their money on scratchers and quick picks.

We can't protect everyone from their stupid decisions but I'd like to!

I'm not talking about banning gambling for adults here. In moderation, for entertainment, with disposable cash, I don't have huge issues with.

But I do have issues indoctrinating children from an early age on the gambling addiction-response pathways in their brain, most likely causing addictive-personality issues when of a more mature age.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I went to an arcade with my nephews once when we were on a family vacation down south and it occurred to me that arcades are basically a casino for kids lol.

 

[yottabit]

Make sure you also ban those gumball machines that dispense toys for a quarter too

While we are at it maybe best to ban games like “duck duck goose” and “eenie meeny minie moe” unless they can be proven to have a uniform distribution

We can’t risk the future leaders of our society being subjected to the pain of not being selected or being unfairly singled out.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Remember buying sports cards, magic cards, etc….never knew what you were gonna get

edit: apparently magic is really misgivings per my phone

 

[ch33zw1z]

Wait until VirtualLarry hears about Pokemon cards.

Or McDonalds Happy meals!

I consider it a nice early life lesson on deterministic vs probabilistic events

I would definitely say that this type of stuff mentioned here is why I don’t really gamble at casinos or lotto tickets, stuff like that.

gambling for me is like my 401k, having a drink a day, or riding my bike on narrow rural roads with big ole trucks on em, or speeding on the highway lol. Things of that nature

 

[Torn Mind]

Except for select ethnic cultures that insulate themselves, Americans are developed as consumerist to the point of taking on debt or dodging bills. That's why places like rent a center exists.

Even I personally had a gotta get phase.

And this also winds up into having very warped ideas of how to improve credit scores.

 

[RLGL]

The mfg's should be BOYCOTTED!

Why not ban the parents

 

[dullard]

I went to an arcade with my nephews once when we were on a family vacation down south and it occurred to me that arcades are basically a casino for kids lol.

Yep. Fair games have always been gambling for kids (put in money and you might get a prize). The border between arcade and gambling blurs quite a bit at the Circus Circus Vegas hotel. https://www.circuscircus.com/entertainment-amenities-1/the-midway/

 

[pmv]

Yeah, there's always been the fairground (or country fair) tradition of the 'lucky dip'. It didn't seem to turn children into gambling fiends.

But I suppose with the moral panic around 'loot boxes' in games, it seems odd to be alarmed about the new-fangled computer version but not the traditional physical real-world kind.

I suppose one could argue that the difference is the frequency and ease of repeating that dopamine hit, when it's computerized? You could probably claim it has more of an effect when it's something you can constantly repeat in your own home.

But I don't know what I think about gambling in general - the trouble is it's an unavoidable part of life, because so many decisions one makes are necessarily gambles - do I quit this job for what might be a better one, do I buy property now or rent, etc? It's probably more like eating disorders than drug addictions, in that regard, as you can't simply avoid gambling entirely, just as you can't avoid eating.

 

[IronWing]

As I pointed out in the last loot-box thread started by the OP, in games where the goal is to murder as many people as possible, loot-boxes are not the most concerning message the game might be sending to children.

 

[dullard]

But I don't know what I think about gambling in general - the trouble is it's an unavoidable part of life, because so many decisions one makes are necessarily gambles - do I quit this job for what might be a better one, do I buy property now or rent, etc? It's probably more like eating disorders than drug addictions, in that regard, as you can't simply avoid gambling entirely, just as you can't avoid eating.

Your post reminds me of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons. He wouldn't buy insurance since it is a gamble as to whether it pays out.

We shouldn't think of gambling as good/bad, on/off, or white/black. There are many shades of gambling. Gambling should be thought of with more of a risk/reward mindset.

• There are different expected "reward" levels. Gambling in a casino, on average, leads to you losing money. Gambling on a better job, on average, leads to you gaining money. People should gamble on things that have a positive expected outcome. Gambling in excess on sports to the point of being broke is not what we want. Gambling to pursue a new idea / business / etc is what we want.

• There are different expected risk levels. It is a gamble with your life to drive to work. But, the chance of you dying on the way to work is quite low (but non-zero). The chance of you dying from starvation if you have no food is nearly 100%. People shouldn't be overly concerned with ultra-low risk gambling unless it is done to excess.

• There are different severity levels. The severity of harm of the cost of homeowners insurance is noticeable but small (if it costs you too much, then you bought too much house). But the severity of not having insurance and your home burns down is quite severe (it is the primary source of wealth for many people, not to mention the devastation of having no where to live and no way to replace it).

I read a study once where ant colonies need a small percentage of gambling ants that wander aimlessly. If no ant wanders and all ants go to their known food sources, then the food runs out and the colony dies. If all ants wander aimlessly, then few get food and the colony dies. Only if a small percentage of ants gamble by wandering aimlessly will the colony thrive.

 

[pmv]

Your post reminds me of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons. He wouldn't buy insurance since it is a gamble as to whether it pays out.

We shouldn't think of gambling as good/bad, on/off, or white/black. There are many shades of gambling. Gambling should be thought of with more of a risk/reward mindset.

• There are different expected "reward" levels. Gambling in a casino, on average, leads to you losing money. Gambling on a better job, on average, leads to you gaining money. People should gamble on things that have a positive expected outcome. Gambling in excess on sports to the point of being broke is not what we want. Gambling to pursue a new idea / business / etc is what we want.

• There are different expected risk levels. It is a gamble with your life to drive to work. But, the chance of you dying on the way to work is quite low (but non-zero). The chance of you dying from starvation if you have no food is nearly 100%. People shouldn't be overly concerned with ultra-low risk gambling unless it is done to excess.

• There are different severity levels. The severity of harm of the cost of homeowners insurance is noticeable but small (if it costs you too much, then you bought too much house). But the severity of not having insurance and your home burns down is quite severe (it is the primary source of wealth for many people, not to mention the devastation of having no where to live and no way to replace it).

I read a study once where ant colonies need a small percentage of gambling ants that wander aimlessly. If no ant wanders and all ants go to their known food sources, then the food runs out and the colony dies. If all ants wander aimlessly, then few get food and the colony dies. Only if a small percentage of ants gamble by wandering aimlessly will the colony thrive.

Maybe. You bring up a load of different issues.

For example there's the difference between "investment" and "speculation", or "production" vs "rent collecting" - starting a business and buying land in the hope its value goes up are both gambles for the individual, but have different consequences for society. Maybe it's in society's interest to encourage certain kinds of gambling but not others? And something like the stock market seems to involve a complicated mixture of the two.

But mainly I'm just aware how often I find myself doing 'expected value' calculations and realising I am essentially 'gambling' - when deciding whether to buy a game on Steam that might go lower in another sale, or whether to buy a certain broken item on Ebay on the chance that the fault is one of the ones I know how to repair, or (one that's currently ongoing!) whether to buy a memory card on Amazon when its quite likely going to go down in price on Black Friday.

And that's not even talking about the big ones, like when I quit a secure job with a great pension to go back to studying (that one didn't pay off and I regret it to this day). Or the way everyone is pretty much forced to take a huge gamble on our insanely-erratic housing market.

And for a lot of life's gambles you just don't have enough information to make a rational judgement.

 

[pmv]

Even with things like "gambling in a casino means on average losing money" (which is true of course) slightly side-steps the point that the value of money isn't necessary linear. That is, a huge gain can be life-changing, while a moderate loss doesn't make a huge difference to someone's overall experience of life.

So that winning, say, $100 million is a positive that someone might consider worth more than 100 million times losing $1. Which is presumably why people play the lottery.

 

[JM Aggie08]

How's this any different than a pack of Pokemon or baseball cards?

 

[Captante]

The "problem" I have with loot-boxes in multi-player video games is that they quickly transform the the game from "play well to win" into "pay to win". (which isn't actually "winning" at all)



Nonsense like the above (along with cheating and nasty/toxic players) ruins online gaming for everyone and in the long-term makes many people not want to bother at all with things like "PVP" or even to them avoiding any kind of "multiplayer" games.

As for "loot boxes" in stores, they're "grab-bags" by a different name and are in no way comparable to multiplayer game "loot-boxes" except in that they're "pushed" onto kids who don't know any better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I read a study once where ant colonies need a small percentage of gambling ants that wander aimlessly. If no ant wanders and all ants go to their known food sources, then the food runs out and the colony dies. If all ants wander aimlessly, then few get food and the colony dies. Only if a small percentage of ants gamble by wandering aimlessly will the colony thrive.

That's actually interesting.

 

[dullard]

Even with things like "gambling in a casino means on average losing money" (which is true of course) slightly side-steps the point that the value of money isn't necessary linear. That is, a huge gain can be life-changing, while a moderate loss doesn't make a huge difference to someone's overall experience of life.

So that winning, say, $100 million is a positive that someone might consider worth more than 100 million times losing $1. Which is presumably why people play the lottery.

Combine the bullet points. The severity of losing $1 is negligible. The severity of gaining $100 million is immense. Thus, even though gambling on the lottery is a net negative, the negative point (losing $1) is so negligible that it isn't an issue and gambling could be done as far as I'm concerned. That is, until you repeat it to excess (such as dumping your life savings into $1 lottery tickets so the severity of a loss is no longer negligible).