Do we think there will be a Season of Triumph when D2 'ends'?
What I mean by this is Destiny 1 had Age of Triumph when the game was beginning to sunset, where some (some not all) past items lost to time made a return and became available again (RNG). Also certain items that were difficult to acquire without Silver/Dust purchases became more or less available to ALL.

Destiny 2 we have learned has Seasons and at the end of the Seasons certain purchaseable items are going to be 'going away for good'.
Do we suppose that there may be an opportunity later on down the road to acquire/re-acquire these 'locked away' items?

I'm gonna guess that the books are going to be a common thing. Bungie has found out that people really like them. And I can see how season can culminate into these books coming out (alongside DLC's)

Destiny 2 we have learned has Seasons and at the end of the Seasons certain purchaseable items are going to be 'going away for good'.
Do we suppose that there may be an opportunity later on down the road to acquire/re-acquire these 'locked away' items?

I appreciate the points you bring up and your concern for the wellbeing of folks who may be taken advatage of. There is some great reading provided here and some informed opinions on micro-transactions. However, you say the following:

So are my study-based numbers misleading? I don't think so.

And I do draw issue with that. Contextualizing data with assumptions to elicit a response supporting your existing conclusions is dangerous. The first article is being used to provide additional information and contextualize certain aspects of the business practices but provides no additional information to support what portion of people making major purchases, these "whales" as it is being referred to, are being exploited through addiction. Even the example of shifting development to support an individual spending 10k/mo can be considered misleading without sufficient additional information. 10k could literally be a budgetary afterthought. We simply do not know and so cannot treat such a conclusion as factual.

And in the context of 10% of a customer base being 50% of the revenue stream as being just as damning as presenting it as being 0.15% I just cannot agree with. Without broader context you are basically telling me that the numer 1 and the number 67 have no practical distinction. And I am not saying that there aren't folks in that group who are addicted and/or being exploited, just that you cannot present it as a fact that they all are, or (unless I missed a secontion on socioeconomic demographics) that any specific bolume are. It weakens your argument because you are presenting an unsupported claim as fact. And yeah, appealing to emotional responses gets a reaction, but it makes it harder for people to accept other conclusions you reach because there now exists a question of the validity of your conclusion.

That's my issue with your use of those numbers, because your conclusion isn't supported by them - a correct conclusion or not.

Thanks for clarifying. It's much easier to provide a nuanced response when I get a nuanced reply :)

I'm not not conflating 10% with 0.15%; they're different percentages and are not at all the same as saying 1 is the same as 67.

0.15% of players is the same as 10% of *paying* players is the same as 50% of microtransactional revenue (I actually found articles claiming as much as 70%, but I didn't find the research as generally applicable as this study - it was usually limited to a single app or family of apps). So we can tell, thanks to these numbers:

98.5% of all players pay nothing at all.
1.5% of players pay *something* Of those, 50% of the payments come from a total of 1.35% of all players.
0.15% of all players pay for the remaining 50% of all purchases, which is the same as saying 10% of all *paying* players cover half of the payments.

To describe this as 10% of the paying players vs. as 0.15% of all players is, I think, just as damning. A significant minority of the players accounts for a disproportionally higher portion of the revenue. That concerns me either way. Maybe it's because I already saw how few actual players ever pay at all, but those two numbers tell me the same information.

But that wouldn't necessarily mean you have any external representation of green, like, say, chlorophyll to put on the leaves.

Kinda my bad here, I got away from my point and I don't know that we were ever really disagreeing on this part.

But if you can simulate the representation of the concept of green in a simulated mind, you’ve de facto simulated green haven’t you? The internal representation nessesarily contains the subjective qualia of that very thing!

Green is not an external thing. Not really. Green is a concept, an experience, a quale; green is a symbolic representation invented by a human mind in response to stimuli. It doesn't matter whether or not there is anything simulated to represent the stimuli. Configured such that it has memories of a green thing, a human mind has a concept of green.

If you take that mind and assemble a perfect duplicate bit by bit, the resulting mind will still have a concept of green, even if it's been assembled in a simulation with no programmed parameters for color or light at all!

Our conceptions only necessarily relate to ourselves, not the truth of the world, or platonic ideals. They are probably an attempt to relate to and interpret the truth of the world, by way of our senses, but those are never absolutely reliable.

If you disagree with me, I will point to the fact that you (I presume) know you have a concept of green, and that your consciousness, at least, exists; but you don't actually know with complete justified certainty that there are actual green things in reality. It's just the best inference from your perceptions and experiences.

(If you don't have a concept of green, just replace it with another experience tied to a sense, argument should hold.)

So are my study-based numbers misleading? I don't think so.

And I do draw issue with that. Contextualizing data with assumptions to elicit a response supporting your existing conclusions is dangerous. The first article is being used to provide additional information and contextualize certain aspects of the business practices but provides no additional information to support what portion of people making major purchases, these "whales" as it is being referred to, are being exploited through addiction. Even the example of shifting development to support an individual spending 10k/mo can be considered misleading without sufficient additional information. 10k could literally be a budgetary afterthought. We simply do not know and so cannot treat such a conclusion as factual.

And in the context of 10% of a customer base being 50% of the revenue stream as being just as damning as presenting it as being 0.15% I just cannot agree with. Without broader context you are basically telling me that the numer 1 and the number 67 have no practical distinction. And I am not saying that there aren't folks in that group who are addicted and/or being exploited, just that you cannot present it as a fact that they all are, or (unless I missed a secontion on socioeconomic demographics) that any specific bolume are. It weakens your argument because you are presenting an unsupported claim as fact. And yeah, appealing to emotional responses gets a reaction, but it makes it harder for people to accept other conclusions you reach because there now exists a question of the validity of your conclusion.

That's my issue with your use of those numbers, because your conclusion isn't supported by them - a correct conclusion or not.

Dude, great reply, and thank you, too. I'm not quoting it because these posts are getting silly long, but I really appreciate it.

I would love to see professional help made available to gamers with a micro-gambling-transaction addiction. At casinos in Nevada, they have phone numbers you can call for gambling addiction help and you can reach professionals who specialize in just that. I would love to see games which contain gambles include similar notices. Nevada also has a state gaming commission that oversees all games and ensures that the odds are what the casinos say they are, as well as issues licenses to oversight companies to do the same. No such commission exists for video games, nor do any third party oversight committees.

In the absence of oversight, game devs have both motive and opportunity to bilk players and take advantage of any weaknesses they may suffer from, and since the devs also offer no in-game avenue for support or assistance to players who may be addicted, it is very unlikely that those people will ever get help on their own.

I wish everyone had the gumption and willpower that you have and is able to fight off their own demons. That would make these sorts of things trivial. Unfortunately, I've known too many who have given up on themselves or otherwise lack the strength to break their own destructive cycles. And I, cynically - I admit - believe that the gaming industry is preying on them right now, and will continue to do so until legally regulated. I also don't know if there is any real public support to help addicted gamers. They represent a very small fringe of an already maligned group, and they suffer alone, behind closed doors, where few can even see them. In-game they are gods. In real life, they are invisible. It's easy to see why they continue to spend whatever they have on their virtual avatars.

I think that your second point directly impacts the first. Public opinion of who and what a gamer is directly affects whether the public wants to do anything about it. Why spend state or federal funds to regulate what the general public doesn't care about? Which seems really odd to me because I would argue (although I don't have statistics) that a majority of the US plays digital games in one form or the other. And I would also bet that a majority of those people play a form that has MT's in them. The reason I beleive this is because of things like iPhone games and Candie crush :D

A lot of people don't understand games and gamers and the social mentality behind that. True story, I had signed up with some of the guys from DBO to do the raid blind when it first came out. I signed up for this weeks before it came out. We started on Tuesday and played every night until Sunday to finish it. Come Friday night, I was asked to go to another local friends birthday party at a pub. I said I can't go because I had already made plans that night, but if there was any way that I might be able to make it I would. My wife did in fact go and she knew exactly what I was doing. I later met up with a bunch of people that went to that party and they asked me what I was doing and I told them I was playing Destiny with a bunch of guys. The expressions on the birthday boys face when I told him that. He couldn't comprehend that
1. I would choose to play games over going out drinking with him
2. I actually had friends "online"
3. I found games to be more important than than hanging out with him

I'm sure lots of people have their own stories. He didn't throw a big fit about it, but I could tell he was confused and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life sort of thing. Some people don't understand. Heck, even the wife has a hard time sometimes, especially when I get frustrated, but she also hears the laughter and the joy I also get from it.

I kinda derailed a little bit... On the note of improving public opinion of gamers and the negative aspects of that, I think that things are indeed improving. One of the things that I think is helping a lot is ESports (mostly Dota 2). We are blessed in Seattle to have both PAX and The Dota 2 International in our city (not trying to brag) as well as being a very liberal place. We understand that there are a ton of different interests and large amounts of people that we didn't know flock to these things.

I think I've written more words in this subthread than I have in the last 6 months.

We know, for a fact, that Destiny was intentionally designed to create addictive loops in the gameplay and rewards systems, and was done so scientifically by a professor of behavioral psychology. them.

Just wanted to swing back to this. As a preface, I think you're pretty much on point with regard to micro transaction. Encouraging people to buy loot boxes without any kind of promise that the random stuff inside will be given out fairly seems very much not right.

I do think, however, you should probably stick to that and officially drop the implication that Destiny is worse / less ethical because it was designed with behavioral science in mind. In 2012, John Hopson took a look back at his original article (the one you quoted) and had a bunch of good points, like:

When I wrote that article a decade ago, I was a psychology graduate student and amateur game designer who had never worked in the games industry. Since then, the article has run amok, living an almost completely independent existence in the wilds of the internet.

On the critical side, there have been plenty of claims that reinforcement schedules are too powerful, that they compromise the will of the player. Again, reinforcement schedules are useful and effective, but don't represent the total sum of human psychology or the game experience.

Consider the use of loyalty cards at a coffee-shop. It is a contingency, exactly like the game contingencies covered in the original article. Indeed, it should be more powerful than game contingencies because it provides tangible real world benefits. And yet I don't think anyone would argue that "buy 10 lattes, get 1 free" is manipulative or too powerful for the average person to resist. (The chemical properties of caffeine notwithstanding.)

And specifically on the ethics of it all:

For me, the starting place for this discussion has to be the fact that contingencies always exist and reinforcement learning is always going on. Game designers can be completely ignorant of the psychology involved while still creating mechanics that draw on these principles. People had been making games with random loot drops for years before anyone pointed out that they were creating variable ratio schedules. Contingencies are the essence of games, and those contingencies shape player behavior.

Note that this would be even more true if the critics were correct in thinking that these reward structures are a subversive influence. The more powerful these contingencies are, the more seriously game makers should take our responsibilities to design them well.

In my personal view, contingencies in games are ethical if the designer believes the player will have more fun by fulfilling the contingency than they would otherwise. You have to believe in the fundamental entertainment value of the experience before you can ethically reward players for engaging in that experience.

Now, even this article was written five years ago and micro transactions have exploded since then so this article doesn't really speak to them. But I do think you have been a little too willing to link behavioral science to general gameplay design, to general reward systems, to microtransactions. As John put it in the article:

In a few years, the industry will move on and the topic will be taken for granted, but we will have permanently shifted towards a more empirical approach to game design, and our players will benefit from that.

I would love to see professional help made available to gamers with a micro-gambling-transaction addiction. At casinos in Nevada, they have phone numbers you can call for gambling addiction help and you can reach professionals who specialize in just that. I would love to see games which contain gambles include similar notices. Nevada also has a state gaming commission that oversees all games and ensures that the odds are what the casinos say they are, as well as issues licenses to oversight companies to do the same. No such commission exists for video games, nor do any third party oversight committees.

In the absence of oversight, game devs have both motive and opportunity to bilk players and take advantage of any weaknesses they may suffer from, and since the devs also offer no in-game avenue for support or assistance to players who may be addicted, it is very unlikely that those people will ever get help on their own.

I wish everyone had the gumption and willpower that you have and is able to fight off their own demons. That would make these sorts of things trivial. Unfortunately, I've known too many who have given up on themselves or otherwise lack the strength to break their own destructive cycles. And I, cynically - I admit - believe that the gaming industry is preying on them right now, and will continue to do so until legally regulated. I also don't know if there is any real public support to help addicted gamers. They represent a very small fringe of an already maligned group, and they suffer alone, behind closed doors, where few can even see them. In-game they are gods. In real life, they are invisible. It's easy to see why they continue to spend whatever they have on their virtual avatars.

Right. Completely forgot about that.

It's not a joke. I am not attempting to suggest that there is no predation/abuse/addiction occuring.

However, the article that was previously linked referencing those numbers has no information provided (no demographic information is provided at all) to extrapolate those claims, and the use of 0.15% of players providing 50% of revenue without acknowledging that only 1.5% of players are providing any MT revenue is misleading verbal spin, as "10% of purchasing customers provide 50% of revenue" is the exact same information but sounds substantially less exploitative.

I believed the statistics to be purely for example purposes. Kahzgul would have to explain further.

Here's an explanation of the data from recode.net:

https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15

It deals with both the 0.15% of all players and 10% of paying players, both sets of numbers of which are, in my esteem, pretty damning.

The article also nicely illustrates the hand-waving by devs about whales, complete with a quote from one saying that a small number of people spending huge amounts on a game does not an ethical dilemma make.

So here's an article from ign about the dangers of addiction and intentionally addictive game design:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/04/24/the-troubling-psychology-of-pay-to-loot-systems

It opens with this: “In behavioural psychology, that randomised system of reward is the one that creates the most addiction,” says Emil Hodzic, who runs the Video Game Addiction Treatment Clinic. “That’s the one that causes all the drama.”

So on the one hand we have game devs saying, essentially, it's player choice, we just show them a door, and they choose to walk through it. And on the other hand you have behavior psychologists saying that particular door is addictive. Addicts don't have free will when it comes to their addictions.

Here's a good article about the pitfalls of microtransactional abuse, from staunch F2P advocate Rob Fahey:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-01-fearing-the-micro-transaction-future

I kind of love this op-ed because he's coming at it from what I view is a very pragmatic place. To paraphrase, he's essentially saying: Microtransactions are here to stay, they are the future, and you can't fight them, but some people *will* fight them anyway, and the more we (the games industry) mess up and make them abusive, the more ammunition those naysayers will have, and that ammo is completely valid in today's market.

This is a great summation. There's opportunity to abuse (no regulation) and there's motive (massive profits). The latter is a fact and not a thing that can be (or even should be) changed. Which means regulation is our only option. We need assurances, *legal* assurances that there's no behind the scenes finger on the scale. Every roll of the gambling-microtrans dice is a big question mark... Is there someone who has figured out what item you're after, how much you'll gamble for it, and is maximizing their returns by preventing you from getting it until you've hit your cap? Remember when online poker sites were found to be cheating? For video games, there is not even a gaming commission in existence to ask to license any of the equally non-existent third party gambling oversight committees that are needed to ensure fair play.

One last thing: Do people who buy microtransactional gamble boxes know what they are actually buying? In fact, the FTC says that, no, they don't, because there are no published odds and no protections against malfeasance by the seller. There are not even guarantees that the buyer knows they are buying something or is legally authorized to buy it.

So are my study-based numbers misleading? I don't think so. I trust the findings of these organizations. Should we be concerned about devs possibly abusing (yes, that word, specifically) addicts in order to get more money out of them? It's a possibility we should be open to. And is it doubly concerning that there is absolutely no governing body regulating the microgamblactions to ensure the odds are fair and equal for all players, and that players know the odds before they purchase so that they can make an informed buy? Yes, it is definitely doubly concerning.

If there was nothing wrong with how microtransactions are implemented in video games, there wouldn't be a preponderance of evidence suggesting that something is wrong.

Now back to Destiny: As I've said elsewhere in this thread, Destiny is a mild form of microtransgamblactions. It's purely cosmetic stuff, doesn't impact gameplay, and can be acquired via non-monetary means. Good guy Bungie. But I can't ignore the gambling element which is still in place, is scientifically proven to be addictive, and was designed by someone with a PhD in human behavioral psychology, who definitely should have known about the addictive nature of this feature. Not so good guy, Bungie.

Hency my concerns.

My dislike honestly just boils down to not liking the visual style. I don’t think it made the transition to “live action” well. I don’t like the designs for any characters or most of the sets. It all just looks dumb to me, but that’s probably just the nature of trying to turn a cartoon that features a talking teapot into a live action movie.