Poll of the Day > If video games killed 13,000 lives each year, would you support regulations?

(+) Yeah! (+)

TitanusGodzilla posted...

If we're gonna do something about guns and gun violence, why not do something for alcohol as well.

For the same reason why we won't restrict sugars and fats in spite of them being huge health issues that cause medical problems and increase insurance rates and general health costs (and let's be perfectly honest - things like preventable heart disease and diabetes/obesity complications kill far more people in a given year than gun accidents or crime ever do).

The underlying question always boils down to "Do the benefits outweigh the costs?" With a touch of "Do you have the right to enforce your opinions about how I should live my own life?" thrown in for good measure.

People will argue that alcohol serves a purpose, therefore, shut the fuck up. Whereas one of the main points of attack against guns is the argument that they serve no meaningful purpose in modern times (ie, no one needs to hunt for food and there's no value in sport hunting). The real question is whether or not you actually accept that argument.

But that also starts to brush up uncomfortably against the concept of being willing to dismiss things you don't personally like out of hand. Which is where most "video games are bad" arguments come from - because they're coming from people who don't play games and thus have no vested interest in supporting them (or in some cases, may have a vested interest in restricting them). Video games aren't a necessity, therefore, it should be perfectly fine to restrict or even ban them "for the sake of the children". But should people who don't play video games (or understand video games) ever be allowed to pass laws concerning video games? Should vegans be allowed to pass laws concerning the meat industry? Should people who don't drink be allowed to pass laws about banning alcohol (especially if they lack the historical context of Prohibition)?

Should someone who has literally never owned, used, or even been near a gun in their entire life be able to make authoritative and definitive statements about gun ownership, and have their opinions taken seriously in any meaningful way?

One could even argue that this idea has parallels with the "Why are most of the people with the strongest opinions about abortion old white men?" question. Should laws about women's bodies be passed by men who will literally never experience the scenario they're legislating against?

The biggest problem with representative government as a concept is when the representatives don't even remotely represent their constituents, and barely understand how their constituents live their lives at all (one of the pitfalls of the concept of the career politician).

Let me answer it this way. I smoke and drink and am fine with those being legal.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

loot boxes aren't gambling,

adjl posted...

There's some (very little) room to debate whether or not loot boxes are technically gambling, given the lack of direct monetary reward, but it's unquestionably true that they have the same potential for mental and financial harm that real gambling has. Given that that potential for harm is the sole reason gambling is regulated, video games should see similar regulation.

I don't even need to add to that. You should really try to avoid making arguments that have already been shot down.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

if they have their credit card saved on the system, and don't require a password for purchases, that's their own damn fault.

Nobody that hasn't actively followed the gaming industry's shenanigans over the past few years would ever dream that was even possible for their kid to spend thousands of dollars on pretend soccer men. When parents leave their card saved and unsecured on the system, that's usually because they only expect it to be used to buy whole games and they trust their kid (often quite reasonably), never imagining that the game they've already paid for is going to manipulate their kid into spending hundreds or thousands more on it. Heck, in a lot of cases, the kid doesn't even realize they're spending money (or if they do realize they're spending money, they don't realize it's a significant amount) and might need to ask their parents for permission, because these games do so much to obfuscate the amount of money players are spending (a common trick in casinos).

Are there safeguards in place to allow parents to prevent their cards from being misused like that? Yes, and a lot of these problems could be prevented by using those safeguards. But the companies making all of that money absolutely could and should be doing more to make it obvious that those safeguards are needed. They very deliberately choose not to because that would interfere with their ability to manipulate children into spending thousands of dollars on pretend soccer men, and that is a choice for which they absolutely should be held accountable.

Count_Drachma posted...

However, considering the almost non-existent regulation on alcohol which does far worse

It wouldn't be a Zeus post about a social problem if he didn't manage to whatabout alcohol in there somehow.

I don't disagree that laws around alcohol need some work (mostly driving: interlock systems should be in every car and drunk drivers should automatically be sentenced as though they killed somebody, with zero room for mitigating factors that might let anyone with a good enough lawyer stay on the road), but saying "we don't regulate alcohol strongly enough for my liking, so we shouldn't regulate any other dangerous things" really doesn't contribute anything to any discussion.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Booster Packs are gambling

That's debatable, but that is indeed an argument that can be made. They're decidedly less egregious about it than most loot boxes, given that they're paid for directly with money (no intermediate currencies to confuse things), the odds are clearly stated, and the overall systems are generally designed so you don't need to buy a ton to put together a decent deck, but they do appeal to the same principles of using random rewards to reinforce addictive behaviour and preying on FOMO to get people to spend more than they otherwise might.

Legally speaking, they tend to get around potential gambling regulation by saying that they haven't incorporated any kind of variable value into the booster packs: From their end, every card is equally valuable, so every booster pack is equally valuable and any deviation from that comes entirely from a secondary market that they can't control. That's definitely more of a technicality than a genuine argument, but it's enough for them to have dodged regulations so far. There's a fair chance those regulators will revisit them if lootboxes are regulated, though, given the obvious parallels.