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[etgfrog]

Before the mobile games became widespread, you saw these same business practices being used on web games and korean mmos.

One of the biggest problems is you have no way of knowing with any mobile game just how much the game balance is being set so that only a "whale" and "dolphins" can do the end game.

[Frumple]

*scratches head* Before web games and korean mmos you had the general ethos being applied to, y'know. Whatever. Exploitative marketing and all the related mess isn't exactly a phenomena of the modern times.

... that said, what's changed more is that we're both better at it and better at noticing it (if perhaps not better at avoiding getting hooked), so the effects probably are being magnified to some degree. Finally got around to starting to starting to codify crap snake oil salesfolk probably used to stab each other over or somethin'.

Pretty sure we actually do have ways (or are very close to developing them) to know with any particular mobile game how much the game is inclined towards the minute's latest sucker, though, so long as someone's able and/or willing to get and parse the data. Everything else aside, it's pretty difficult to actually be subtle about this crap if you're dealing with someone able to see the whole picture rather than be immersed in a particular slice of it. Junk relies fairly heftily both on there being a curve (for lack of a better word) and the target not being able to notice it, which is a lot harder when someone can actually sit there and look at the entire line.

[Aoi]

Somewhat to my amusement, I'm actually reading this thread after I just finished a session at Harrah's Laughlin...

To be fair, if that guy didn't have mobile games he almost definitely would have found a casino and lost a lot more money a lot faster, and had less fun doing it.

I'm not so sure about that; a lot of non-casual gamblers of gaming age (admittedly, a lot of judgment calls there) are negative on micropay gaming. The people who tend to pay for the mobile slot games that are so prolific are mostly old women-- to the point I was actually watching a woman playing at a slot machine, staring at her phone, playing a different slot on it at the same time.

I became a gambling addict over a game where there is no return, no reward, for spending my money.

I Flushed $16,000 down the toilet over a game.

Actual casino gambling would almost definitely show some kind of return, which, superficially makes it better, even. Sticking around long enough to pull 15k in actual losses over the course of a year, assuming you're not doing something downright stupid, aren't playing out of your depth, and your luck isn't abysmal, would be enough to get them to cover a lot of food and possibly something like a cruise or two. Plus it's not guaranteed; you could always be up, against expectations, too.

[Gabeux]

I thought I knew videogame addicts, but that is just next level (and definitely way more related to gambling than videogames).

With videogames becoming the biggest media and being taken super-serious in the next years, be sure a lot of absurd stuff preying on all kinds of addictions, needs and urges will find its way into the industry.

[Ludorum Rex]

This is not a new phenomenon. Gambling dens and lives wrecked therein go back to ancient times. It's a mix of biological vulnerability (some brains are hard-wired to be risk-takers), escapism and human nature. We're not rational beings. We spend huge amounts of resources and time on achievements and stuff, that to an outsider sufficiently removed, seems insane. The problem in this case isn't just the mobile game gambling / mtx, it's how effortlessly he can accrue debt and spend money. When you have to physically fork over hard cash, it serves as a very effective barrier to stupid spending. But now you can press a button, and not only spend your money, but also go into debt, and our brains aren't very well equipped to deal with that.

If it's not mobile games or gambling, it's shopping, micro-investments, art, partying, charity or something else. As long as the barrier to spending money you don't have is this low, there'll be a problem. There's a reason social taboos and legislation have been used to limit the ability to acquire debt or become a lender for almost all of human history. It's unhealthy for a society and for individuals when debt becomes not only available for, but a socially acceptable source of, liquidity for frivolous spending.

The point someone made about mobile gaming spending being "invisible" is a good one, though. The physical artifacts are much less apparent than many other ways to stupidly spend money. But there's nothing inherently wrong with stupid spending. It's human nature and cannot be stopped. The problem is how easy our monetary and financial systems make it for relatively well-functioning individuals to wreck their lives. Note that I am not advocating any particular political-economic system here, it's perfectly possible to address this issue within the framework of basically any system, just as we see this problem in countries with a wide variety of economic systems. I think it's an example of the devastating effects of artificially pumping liquidity into the economy, which sadly is a very popular policy around the world.

[Shadowgandor]

I know exactly what this guy went through, although the amount I paid was a lot less severe. I spent a month or two playing Naruto Online. I played it without paying for anything for about 2 weeks, that's when I decided I enjoyed the game and spent 30 euros on it to "subscribe" for 6 months and get a really cool and strong ninja (Kazukage Gaara for those interested). More ninjas allowed for more options which made the game more fun. Then an event game which gave a ton of crafting materials and offered a chance for more ninjas, so I bought a couple of tickets and tried that. Then the scrolls that allowed you to pull rare ninjas were in sale, so I bought those as well. Before I knew it, I had spent in total over 800 euros trying to get the ninja's that I wanted and trying to keep up with all the events. The thing is, I knew it was wrong to spend so much money on a F2P Facebook game, but you don't quit because "I already spent X euros on this game and leaving now after X days feels like a waste of time and money". I forced myself to uninstall it and stop playing altogether, or it would've gotten worse and worse.

[Majestic7]

Sunk cost fallacy, it is very typical for human behaviour including the stock market. While not directly connected to addictions, if you good people are interested in fallacies in our brains, I strongly recommend "Thinking, fast and slow" by Daniel Kahnemann. Kahnemann is a Nobel prize winner and his book is all about how our brains have bugs and how we are not as rational as we like to think.

[Zangi]

You guys ever checked the games category in Google Play or Apple? 
They have a listing actually called 'Top Grossing'. 

That is a strong indicator of 'whale' bait.  Clash of Clans and Game of War are still in the top 100 on Google Play.  I've actually tried out both. 

Clash of Clans gets super grindy after a certain point.  If you want to grow faster, pay monies.  Or whale to catch up if you want to play with the big boys.  You can see there are clones of the game in the top 100 now...  Even one that that is currently sitting in the top 10.

Game of War on the other hand is super exploitive shit.  You start the game and you grow relatively quickly, they throw you in one of the new servers, where things start out benign.  If you are active, you could keep up with the top 500 on the server.  The rift between active player and active whale is not as noticeable the first 2 weeks, then it starts to slowly grow as the advertisement puts up better 'deals' for the whale.  About 3 weeks in, you've already invested a lot of time and might consider throwing some money in to keep up.  Then about 4-5 weeks in, growth of active whales pretty much explodes in comparison to non-whales.  Plus the fact that Game of Wars encourages players to steal resources from others to fuel growth. 
Players are highly encouraged to spend money to protect themselves from whales looking to acquire resources, extremely hard without.  Or they'll be shat on.  Exploiting the 'I've spent so much time and probably some monies, so I'll stick around mindset.'  Then 6-7 weeks in another server opens to repeat the same shit.  With a buncha people crossing to the new server.
There are a buncha similar games that try to exploit things the same way actually.  Still a fair number of the type in the Top Grossing 100. 

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, I noticed that category, Zangi. Anything that shows up there is automatically on my Games to Stay Away From list. (Currently I have five games on my phone, none of which have IAP or ads. One has an in-game donate button. Another is funded through patreon to the tune of $31k/month (!).)

I have a hard rule to never, ever, ever spend money on microtransactions or loot boxes or anything similar, so that I can't inadvertently fall into this sort of thing. If I get to a point where I would have to pay real money to keep playing a game (or it's just really grindy or an obvious gambling skinner-box game), I stop playing and uninstall the game because 🖕 that noise.

I noticed my father spending money on a subscription* for some mobile game a couple months ago (he was having a problem getting it to accept his credit card or something, I forget). Maybe I should talk with him and make sure he isn't blowing a bunch of money on nothing, but I kind of doubt I could convince him to stop if he is.

* The kind that gives you "premium" for a month so you get more rewards while playing. Like with world of tanks and such on PC.

[Paul]

The sunk cost fallacy hurts businesses too.

A local restaurant just wasn't pulling a profit, and went into the red some months. They kept going because they already had so much invested into the equipment and so much time invested in training the employees and advertising and etc. But at the end of the year they poured their time into it and barely broke even and they were struggling financially. But they were still so invested in the time and money they had already spent on it they didn't want to close, despite trying everything they could think of to improve sales and dumping even more money into advertising.

In the end they eventually realized it just wasn't going anywhere and leased the place (with equipment) to another restaurant. Now instead of working hard for nothing, they're sitting back and getting a nice check every month. And they can put their time into more profitable pursuits.

[AlStar]

In the end they eventually realized it just wasn't going anywhere and leased the place (with equipment) to another restaurant. Now instead of working hard for nothing, they're sitting back and getting a nice check every month. And they can put their time into more profitable pursuits.

Only tangentially related to the topic, but I'm curious - is the new restaurant doing any better than the original did in the same location?

Edit: On topic, I'm glad to say that I've never fallen into this trap. Never spent a cent on any of the various mobile games that I've played - if I've got the in-game currency to spend on the month's loot chest, great. If not, or if I don't get what I want - ah well.

I can't imagine dropping literally hundreds of dollars trying to get a specific piece of loot.

[Damiac]

Sunk cost fallacy/gambler's fallacy. I sometimes think there should be critical thinking classes all throughout school, kindergarten up to graduation.

We are capable of rational thought, but we are also capable of rationalizing ways around rational thought.  This is the default manner of thinking, that a slot machine that hasn't hit is 'due', that a die that hasn't come up 6 in 100 rolls is more likely to come up 6 in the next roll.

These 'brain bugs' are well known, so why aren't we telling children about them so they can avoid developing bad thinking patterns around them?  We tell kids not to take candy from strangers because we know kids like candy, and strangers can be dangerous.  Why don't we tell kids why they shouldn't throw good money after bad?

The whole microtransaction thing has also been all twisted up into the 'entitled gamer' meme that the game industry has been cultivating for years.  "We need microtransactions because the price of games isn't going up, and we gotta pay for that development somehow! Do you want to pay 200 dollars for games or do you want games with lootboxes?"

They make it a political thing.  And they're taking advantage of another aspect of the sunk cost fallacy.  The people who have already bought into the system can't say it's bad, otherwise they have to admit they got cheated.  So they jump on the 'entitled gamer' bandwagon and parrot the industry's lines.  Like with politics, a huge diversity of opinions on a huge diversity of issues gets boiled down into two camps, and you've gotta always be on your team's side, even on the issues you disagree on, because that's what the people on the other team are doing! We must present a united front!

That's not the truth of course, but it's hard not to get sucked into it.  A lot of it boils down to people not wanting to face the possibility that maybe they were operating under a mistaken assumption.  As long as that keeps happening, companies, political parties, and anyone else who stands to gain from people acting against their own best interests will keep taking advantage of it.  Society moralizes being right and wrong, rather than the process by which the decision was made.  Someone who guesses right based on ridiculous assumptions is more valued than someone who makes the wrong decision based on a perfectly logical thought process because they were given bad information. 

Logic says a coin has a 50/50 chance to land heads or tails, regardless of previous results.  Instinct says a coin that came up tails 10 times in a row is unlikely to come up tails again.  But society says "trust your instincts".  We elect people who make confident choices, not people who carefully deliberate based on known information, and even worse, upon receiving new information sometimes choose differently!

Of course the confident guessers are wrong more often, but they can always find someone to blame. The rules of logic don't suddenly change because it's convenient, but there are no rules of instinct. 

Sorry this turned into a huge rant... I feel for whoever posted this story originally.  Hopefully the application of this extremely expensive lesson will be worthwhile over the course of this guy's life.

[Empty]

Sunk cost fallacy/gambler's fallacy. I sometimes think there should be critical thinking classes all throughout school, kindergarten up to graduation.

We are capable of rational thought, but we are also capable of rationalizing ways around rational thought.  This is the default manner of thinking, that a slot machine that hasn't hit is 'due', that a die that hasn't come up 6 in 100 rolls is more likely to come up 6 in the next roll.

These 'brain bugs' are well known, so why aren't we telling children about them so they can avoid developing bad thinking patterns around them?  We tell kids not to take candy from strangers because we know kids like candy, and strangers can be dangerous.  Why don't we tell kids why they shouldn't throw good money after bad?

The whole microtransaction thing has also been all twisted up into the 'entitled gamer' meme that the game industry has been cultivating for years.  "We need microtransactions because the price of games isn't going up, and we gotta pay for that development somehow! Do you want to pay 200 dollars for games or do you want games with lootboxes?"

They make it a political thing.  And they're taking advantage of another aspect of the sunk cost fallacy.  The people who have already bought into the system can't say it's bad, otherwise they have to admit they got cheated.  So they jump on the 'entitled gamer' bandwagon and parrot the industry's lines.  Like with politics, a huge diversity of opinions on a huge diversity of issues gets boiled down into two camps, and you've gotta always be on your team's side, even on the issues you disagree on, because that's what the people on the other team are doing! We must present a united front!

That's not the truth of course, but it's hard not to get sucked into it.  A lot of it boils down to people not wanting to face the possibility that maybe they were operating under a mistaken assumption.  As long as that keeps happening, companies, political parties, and anyone else who stands to gain from people acting against their own best interests will keep taking advantage of it.  Society moralizes being right and wrong, rather than the process by which the decision was made.  Someone who guesses right based on ridiculous assumptions is more valued than someone who makes the wrong decision based on a perfectly logical thought process because they were given bad information. 

Logic says a coin has a 50/50 chance to land heads or tails, regardless of previous results.  Instinct says a coin that came up tails 10 times in a row is unlikely to come up tails again.  But society says "trust your instincts".  We elect people who make confident choices, not people who carefully deliberate based on known information, and even worse, upon receiving new information sometimes choose differently!

Of course the confident guessers are wrong more often, but they can always find someone to blame. The rules of logic don't suddenly change because it's convenient, but there are no rules of instinct. 

Sorry this turned into a huge rant... I feel for whoever posted this story originally.  Hopefully the application of this extremely expensive lesson will be worthwhile over the course of this guy's life.

There will always be two groups against critical thinking.

Politicians and Religious groups.

One does not question the puppet on the stick if one doesn't understand whom the stick belongs to.

[Zangi]

Eh, it is probably happening to a lot of people. 

It is pretty shameful to admit that you've effectively spent your kid's college tuition on gacha or you know, to be one of the top 10 200 on a random server of a 'competitive' mobile game. 

Triple A publishers sees the dosh them gacha mobile games are rolling in and wants a cut of the action.  Even Fallout Shelters was a hit.  I suppose free grindy singleplayer mobile game gacha is 'acceptable' for the mainstream.
Overwatch, full price game, is into the gacha thing too, but it is all cosmetics, so it can be seen as acceptable.
Then you have EA's gacha to win at PvP in a full priced Triple A game. 

Yes, loot boxes/gacha/random draws are a gambling mechanic.

Yes, Murrican education could use some improvement.

[Frumple]

The sunk cost fallacy hurts businesses too.

A local restaurant just wasn't pulling a profit, and went into the red some months. They kept going because they already had so much invested into the equipment and so much time invested in training the employees and advertising and etc. But at the end of the year they poured their time into it and barely broke even and they were struggling financially. But they were still so invested in the time and money they had already spent on it they didn't want to close, despite trying everything they could think of to improve sales and dumping even more money into advertising.

In the end they eventually realized it just wasn't going anywhere and leased the place (with equipment) to another restaurant. Now instead of working hard for nothing, they're sitting back and getting a nice check every month. And they can put their time into more profitable pursuits.

*waggles hand* It's entirely possible there wasn't much sunk cost fallacy involved there. Businesses with substantial fixed costs (e.g. equipment, employees and brand building to lesser/not quite fitting degrees) can pretty easily end up operating at a loss for a good long while before shutting down or doing what that one did becomes more or less their optimal course of action.

Fiddly bits of how that sort of investment works can mean the eventual net cost to the business is less if they're using it up but still bleeding money for a while, instead of just hemorrhaging over a short(er) period and getting it over with. Sunk costs are definitely involved, and there's no telling if that particular one had actually crunched the numbers and was trying to minimize loss, but rather than being bad decision making it's making the best of a situation that turned sour, for whatever reason.

Basically, while sunk cost fallacy can indeed hurt businesses, there's also times where something that looks like it (to someone without access to their financial reports et al), is something pretty different. A lot of what you mention there looks a fair bit like they were trying for the latter rather than falling prey to the former, too.