Let's start by simulating a world that you definitely don't want in reality, but it's possible that we'll live in one soon.
It's Monday, you're in a hurry to catch the bus. You quickly go to the frog for something to drink and you see that there is a promotion for Oshee paddles. Perfect, a divine drink at 60% of the price.
You go to the cash register, the lady scans the bottle and the price appears... but without any promotion. You ask what's going on, you have the frog application. And the lady behind the counter informs you that to activate the promotion, you need to watch a dedicated advertisement in the application, which lasts two minutes. Two minutes to save a penny. Not bad. You leave irritated.
Because of this whole situation, you missed the bus, so you quickly order a Bolt. The driver arrives, you get in, and you drive in silence until suddenly the guy stops.
You ask what's going on, there are still a few kilometers left. And he points to the application, which says that to unlock the second part of the ride, you have to pay an additional PLN 5. And now you know why the price when ordering was lower than usual.
You get off nervous. You decide to walk the rest of the way home to cool down a bit. An evening walk is soothing, and you wanted to stop at a parcel locker on the way anyway.
You call him, open the text message, which normally contains the pickup code, but this time you only have 3 digits out of the 6 needed. The content of the text message shows that you need to make a micropayment of 50 groszy to unlock the remaining digits to open the locker in the parcel locker. Otherwise, the parcel will be returned within 3 days.
Sounds absurd, right? Now imagine this is what the gaming world looks like. As a result, young minds are accustomed to this image of the world. Minds that have not yet developed defense mechanisms that protect against monetization systems created by specialists.
On the contrary - young minds consider it a norm that at a certain stage of advancement in the game you have to pay extra for something, otherwise you will be excluded from the game or even from your friends' circle - you don't pay - you are too weak - you have an ugly skin - you don't deserve to play with us.
A child who is learning mechanisms today, for example those related to microtransactions, will soon be an adult and will translate the learned mechanisms into reality. You can read more about this in the article "Microtransactions in computer games - a threat to child development."
Videos such as Bonkol's "Micropayments Generation" should have hundreds of thousands of views, but this is not a topic that divides society, most will say: what is this boomer talking about, it's just children spending money on microtransactions in games.
That's the problem, these children will grow up, but their habits and operating system will remain, so watch until the end so that the film reaches as many people as possible. Why is this material so important?
In this episode, I will show you how game developers literally create the game world in such a way that the child player leaves as much money there as possible. This involves manipulation, laws governing human nature and social behavior, and carefully designed game mechanics. And the consequences mainly affect young people who, from their teenage years, may be exposed to mechanisms similar in their characteristics to gambling.
And personally, one sentence from me why this topic is so important. Young people brought up on microtransactions, for them this is normal - when they grow up, corporations will be able to add microtransactions everywhere, because the TikTok generation will be used to it. Children are literally brought up and accustomed to the fact that there is nothing wrong with microtransactions. This is therefore an ideal ground for introducing micropayments for everything - from food to place of residence to travel.
The topic of micropayments is about our freedom in this world.
But before we talk about the consequences, let's first answer the question:
What are microtransactions anyway?
Microtransactions are defined as small payments made in exchange for additional game content. The subject of the transaction may be all kinds of digital goods that expand the basic game with additional elements. Depending on the manufacturer's decision, these may include, among others: new heroes, equipment, tasks, maps, and additional story content.
So, as in the example from the beginning of the episode - you have access to reality, but some element of it is behind a paywall and you have to pay to use it.
And there is no big problem if this element of reality is completely additional, unnecessary for survival. But game developers are increasingly creating mechanics that make purchasing some digital good a necessity for the player, rather than a matter of desire. Then, making a purchase is necessary to continue the game or advance to a higher level.
1/4 of respondents aged 11–16 paid to open a loot box at least once
31% of young gamers admitted that they have difficulty keeping track of how much money they spend on crates
33% do not feel in control of the expenses caused by these types of microtransactions
Add to this the fact that companies base their profits on microtransactions. For example, between July 2019 and August 2020, Activision Blizzard recorded over $1.92 billion in profit, of which $1.2 billion came solely from microtransactions.
Then you begin to understand: firstly, what profits are behind this business, and secondly, that microtransactions are part of a young person's life.
Touro University Worldwide has divided microtransactions used in video games into four sample categories: premium currency, random content boxes, premium items and limited items. If you are not interested in discussing them in detail, skip the material by two minutes (to the next time stamp), there we return to the topic of threats and gambling. But if you want to better understand the whole thing, I recommend listening.
Premium currency is a type of in-game money used to purchase various types of digital additions and improvements to the game. In most games, the only way to obtain it is to purchase a package containing a certain amount of a given currency for real money. So these are tokens in the game - money in the world in which the game takes place. For example, gold in Candy Crush Saga, platinum in Warframe.
Boxes with random content are called loot boxes. And it cannot be denied that this is an element of games that arouses a lot of controversy. The box itself is often free and its contents are generated randomly, but opening the box can be done using the special currency mentioned earlier. So look - you pay by making microtransactions for an uncertain, random profit... It's a bit like gambling.
Additional items also contain an interesting mechanism. Their basic version is usually available from the gameplay level - by completing specific tasks, you can obtain the necessary item. But! There are also premium items that give you an advantage over other players. And then you can pay extra to get such a premium item. This mechanism is nicely referred to as pay to win.
The last category of microtransactions listed by TUW are items subject to various types of limits - e.g. time limits. After using them, you can pay extra for further use. So the creators let you see for a moment what it's like to have this cool item, and then they take it away - clever.
In each of the mentioned types, the mechanism is exactly the same: it is impossible to obtain something through the game itself (and if it is possible, it is not enough), which provokes players to spend real money on all premium things such as currency or items. Limited items sometimes have collector's value, and boxes with random content are simply like...
Imagine that a certain game is taking place in the real world. The company, which has parcel locker devices and hundreds of thousands of customers throughout Poland, selects 10,000 people once a month and sends a random parcel to them. The parcel arrives at the parcel locker for free, and selected customers receive an SMS notification that they can collect the parcel.
The contents of the package are also random - you may find a gift worth several thousand, or you may find... some set of advertisements. But there's a catch. The parcel comes to the parcel locker for free, but to generate a code to open the locker, you need to make a micropayment of PLN 10.
Pay attention to what mechanism is used here. On the one hand, there is an element of randomness in winning, and on the other hand, you can decide whether you want to play it. But what's even more interesting is that your parcel with a potential prize is already waiting for you in the parcel locker. So it's at your fingertips. All you need to do is send a Blik and you might just win. And since this package has already arrived here, why not give it a try, hmm?
Loot boxes in games work very similarly. And now imagine that the mechanism just described is not addressed to adults, but also to children who do not have developed defense mechanisms against gambling threats.
A long-time researcher of youth gambling, Mark D. Griffiths, distinguishes five factors common to gambling activities:
1. "the exchange of funds depends on a future event, the outcome of which is not known at the time of the bet,
2. the result is completely or partially random,
3. financial benefits are not derived in the course of productive work by either party,
4. it is possible to avoid losses by resigning from participation in a given activity,
5. winners only gain at the expense of losers.”
Some researchers propose one more, sixth factor, i.e. the possibility of cashing in on virtual winnings. In other words - you win a virtual currency or item and have the opportunity (regardless of how) to exchange it for real money.
At this point, it is worth mentioning something that is closer to your life than you think. Because in the common understanding, addiction is mainly associated with substances that have an appropriate effect on a person.
However, it turns out that it is not the substance itself that is addictive, but the reaction to it. This leads us to a question - what if a person reacts to some activities in the same way as to substances? Then we may be dealing with a behavioral addiction:
It is "a process in which an activity is performed that may be a source of experiencing pleasure or brings relief from internal suffering, which is characterized by a repeated loss of control over this behavior and continuing it despite negative consequences."
And even if loot boxes cannot be directly called gambling, because it depends on the legal status and legal interpretation, many mechanisms used by parcels with random content bear the hallmarks of gambling and may lead to addiction.
The problem is that these mechanisms are used on children. As a society, we have agreed that we want to protect children from addictions, for example by making certain substances illegal for those under 18 years of age (the most recent example is energy).
On the other hand, however, children have access to games that are designed by teams of specialists in building micro-transaction mechanisms in such a way as to earn as much money as possible.
I mentioned that teams of specialists work to make the game mechanics as profitable and monetizable as possible. Loot boxes are of great importance here. That's why it's worth answering the question
How much are these gambling mechanics worth?
I will answer that in a moment, but first let's see how important the mechanics of micropayments and loot boxes are for game studios. David Zendle decided to check the impact of removing crates from the Heroes of the Storm game on how players spend money. You certainly can't guess what the effects were - the amount of money spent by people who were defined as problem gamblers dropped significantly.
In addition, expenses on loot boxes correlate with:
risky use (the higher the expenses, the higher the risk)
and with impaired use.
Taken together, this suggests that there is a strong connection between risky gambling and the use of loot boxes. Not only do both cases have similar mechanics, but people using loot boxes themselves feel as if they were taking part in a gambling activity.
So how much is all this worth? In short – tens of billions of dollars. It is difficult to estimate this clearly.
As we said earlier, between July 2019 and August 2020, Activision Blizzard made over $1.92 billion in profit, $1.2 billion of which came solely from microtransactions. So you can see what scale of revenues we are talking about.
And it's quite a clever move on the part of the game developers. Because if the game is cheap (i.e. the entry threshold is low), it's easy to attract customers. But once someone becomes a customer and likes the game, the gaming environment will offer the player opportunities to spend a few dollars from time to time. As a result, he will spend much more money than if he paid a higher price to buy the entire game at once.
“The report published by the British Parliament described the case of a player who spent over £50,000 on microtransactions in the RuneScape game, which exposed him and his family to serious financial damage. In one session, the player made up to five individual transactions totaling almost £250.”
Financial damage is one thing. But this is just a slice of life that starts to get complicated. Behind it, other spheres may fall apart, because - just like in the case of addictions - microtransactions in games start to consume (especially young) people, as the next story perfectly proves:
“(…) concerns a 19-year-old who spent over $10,000 on microtransactions over the course of two years. In an open letter titled: "I am 19, and addicted to gambling", posted on the Reddit forum and addressed to DICE and Electronic Arts, the teenager describes the impact that microtransactions in games had on him. (…). "What deserves special attention is the fact that the player was unable to control his expenses, which significantly worsened his financial situation and contacts with his family."
As you can see, the consequences are not only for the player himself, but also for his loved ones. Just as a person addicted to alcohol, for example, may spend their last savings on getting another dose of the substance, similarly, someone addicted to gambling may spend their last money on gambling. I would like to remind you that the mechanisms used in loot boxes are considered gambling.
And what, you probably didn't expect that this seemingly innocent thing could have a negative impact on your family life? You see, apparently anything can be a poison depending on the dose. And in this case, the dose strongly depends on the level of self-control.
Loot boxes and microtransactions are based on the phenomenon of spontaneous, impulsive buying. This means that the player is presented with specific conditions during which he must make a purchase decision. A seemingly attractive offer is presented, limited in time, but potentially giving a big advantage in the game. But this is an amateur technique, high caliber is still ahead of us.
Do you know something called grinding from real life? Especially gentlemen watching this episode who are familiar with the manosphere may associate that it is about maximizing the potential of your character and skills in order to achieve some benefit.
Games use a similar mechanism. You can achieve the goal set in the game in two ways. Or by grinding, i.e. spending a lot of time and repetitions on something before you maximize the result. Or... well, by buying a "shortcut" using micropayments.
“(…) an example of exposing players to extreme grind is the case of PlayerUnknown's Battleground, also known as PUBG, in which it would take an average player about 80 years to unlock the rarest item - a jacket. It can only be found in a special Motorcycle Crate and the chance of drawing it is 0.01%.
And it still wasn't the highest caliber. It turns out that a very interesting patent was granted to Activision, the manufacturer of, among others, Call of Duty game series. The document titled System and Method for Driving Microtransactions describes a system that would encourage players to make more micropayments.
The system is based on a game engine that exposes the beginner player to the characters of very advanced players more often. Such exposure, or even competition with him, is intended to make an inexperienced player want to acquire everything even faster, which usually requires many hours of playing a given game.
It's just like in life... In other episodes, we often talk about the phenomenon of exposure to the perfect life of influencers on Instagram. Not everyone feels that seeing such life has any impact on them. And it turns out that the same exposure mechanism is used in games and helps corporations earn millions of dollars.
What I have described so far are only general rules. I will now present to you 7 techniques that are straight from manipulation and social psychology books and that game creators use to make money from unaware recipients. And again, if this particular fragment is not that important to you, then scroll to the next time stamp - we respect your time.
Matching offers to player types. There is a classification of players that divides them into: conquerors, explorers, life of the party and killers. Each of them spends money differently because they are guided by different motivations in the game. Offers are built in such a way as to most effectively meet the desires of each of these types. Winners spend the most money in games.
Staged monetization – it involves matching the offer to the player's level of advancement. Just like in life. Stores with the most expensive clothes are located in the most expensive districts because that is where the people to whom the offer is addressed live live. You probably don't expect a Prada store in some working-class housing estate with social housing blocks. The offer is tailored to the customer's status.
Selling a hope, not an object. “No matter how much money you spend, you can't directly get the card you want. You have to keep paying to get a bunch of random cards and hope that what you want is among them.” In other words, you are buying an opportunity, not a guarantee.
Reluctance to lose collected goods. Players are put into situations that make them averse to losses. Protection against loss may then be a solution for which you have to pay.
Anchoring - exposing the player to something expensive first, so that the things that the developers really want to sell seem much cheaper.
Social proof is nothing more than confirming the player's belief that making micropayments for individual items in the game is normal.
Building the game economy so that you can spend as much money there as possible.
And the most interesting and at the same time the most morally questionable thing is that sitting opposite these teams of specialists are often... children who are forced into micropayment mechanisms.
“The way players are tricked into making microtransactions is particularly important in the context of research conducted by David Zendle, Rachel Meyer and Harriet Over in 2019. They concerned the relationship between pathological gambling and the motivation to buy loot boxes among the 16-18 age group. The results obtained by the researchers showed a stronger relationship between these factors among adolescents than in the previously studied group of adults.
Other studies conducted on 611 people aged 13-24 provide further confirmation that younger people are more vulnerable in the face of the mechanisms that are prepared for them.
In most cases, young people are simply defenseless. They cannot reflect on their own that what they are participating in is a machine built to monetize them.
As a result of exposure to such mechanisms from an early age, a young person may develop a distorted perception of money - that money is essentially tokens that are used to unlock something new in the game or in life. Children notice this spending and consumption side. But do they also see the work behind the real value of money in real life? Or maybe money in the real world is the same as a token in the game...
Corporations care about Excel, not you. On March 31, 2024, the servers of Ubisoft's "The Crew" game are to be shut down. You understand, you bought the game for PLN 250 and after some time, in order to sell the next part of the game, the servers of the previous one are turned off and you cannot play it.
This is just an example of corporate decisions being driven by Excel. Microtransactions bring the greatest profits, so why create great missions, locations or focus on stupid things like the plot. If the microtransactions segment is crucial for the company's monetization, this is where the most attention from the game producing company will be directed. Instead of thinking about how to take the game to a higher level, now everything revolves around what skin to create and how to best monetize it.
And even if you give up buying games or burning money in microtransactions, it doesn't matter, because the company's target is not you, the viewer. I don't know, but I will find out, but Maciek, 11, who will buy games and burn his parents' money.
Corporations do not take into account the opinion of minorities because they use mechanisms that work for the majority and the numbers in Excel will match.
Raising children on a microtransaction farm is fertile ground for pathology. An entire generation is getting used to subscriptions, microtransactions, commitments - they are getting used to the idea that such things are not bad. Ask yourself what you will do if some millionaire or corporation buys the land and says you can enter the park for a micro fee. You will probably think that this is unacceptable - but for the generation raised on TikTok and such payments, such things will be possible to push through. It doesn't happen overnight. This can be compared to slowly cooking a frog so that it doesn't jump out of the boiling water. A person raised on typing aezaks into GTA San Andreas will have a hard time spending money, but even a 10-year-old who receives PLN 200 for his birthday will run to buy in-game currency or a new skin, because it is something - what peers, their idols do on the Internet or the game itself encourages them to do so.
Games are designed to make you impatient, because patience takes away money from the corporation - it's better for the player to spend the money now, because in 3 weeks he may get bored with the game. That's why there is a generation of people who need to get something now, and deferred gratification is one of the most powerful tools regarding the quality of life. Patience is necessary to build strong relationships with people or a professional position.
There are (fortunately) no microtransactions in life yet. Nobody expects you to pay extra for the fact that someone, for example, respects you. Unfortunately, many parts of life require patience, which children are deprived of. Well, you can buy something now, just click and buy. But some things in life can't be bought.
Sources:
1.Górecki B., LOOT BOXY – GAMBLING IN VIDEO GAMES, “Zeszyty Naukowe WSG. Education – Family – Society” 2022, vol. 40, no. 7.
2. Lelonek-Kuleta B., Behavioral addictions - theoretical foundations, [in:] "Behavioral addictions and problem behaviors of young people: theory, diagnosis, prevention, therapy", J. Jarczyńska (ed.), Bydgoszcz 2014, pp. 15- 29.
3. Markowska K., Microtransactions in computer games as a threat to child development, Kraków 2022; access: https://izss.uken.krakow.pl/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2023/01/Klaudia-Markowska_Mikrotransakcje-w-grach-komputerowych-zagrozenie-dla-rozwoju-dziecka.pdf, [date accessed: 15/05/2024].
4. Micropayments Generation (online), access: https://youtu.be/WEGkHmMDyuU?si=UrgDGb8s9Ew8D9zI, [access date: May 15, 2024].
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