Do you have the same thoughts on tobacco and alcohol as you do gambling in games?
Yes. Until the kid is old enough to make their own choices, it is the duty if the parent to make those choices for them, and teach them why they should make the same choices. Obviously once your kid is old enough to make their own decisions, its up to them what they’re going to do.
If the parent is doing their job, theoretically government regulations wouldn’t need to exist. I would argue that governmental regulations for children are primarily the result of parents continuing to fail at their job and blaming everyone else but themselves.
This type of story was pretty common to sci-fi in the 1970s and 1980s (and it lingered into some 1990s stuff as well), so you’ll have the best bet with stuff from that time period. Generally they featured dystopian societies, and typically had one big evil company that made every product and owns the world pretty much.
For movies and tv: Terminator, Robocop, Bubblegum Crisis 2033 and Bubblegum Crash!, Aliens, Star Trek (some episodes), The Matrix, etc. all have themes that either feature an evil all powerful AI, or a society that resulted from AI being given more authority than humans, or a society that features androids or other highly advanced AI that are shown in a negative light.
Some video games also feature this type of story, such as System Shock or Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
So when they’re kid spends 3000 dollars on vbucks, my first thought is “how the FUCK is that even allowed to happen in the first place???”
I agree but from the perspective of “why is the parent allowing this to happen or not knowing this is happening?” A business exists to make money, the business will never turn you away if you’re trying to pay them. Race, age, gender is not important as long as you have money. It’s not their responsibility to know that the person logged into an account is actually a child and to limit that account’s ability to spend money. That’s up to the parent to not allow the child to buy anything without their permission.
Obviously, sometimes a kid will steal money or your credit card, I mean, they’re kids they usually don’t know better. But that’s a time to sit down with your kid and teach them that stealing is wrong, especially from family, and to put in place discipline that will help the kid to make better choices, etc. But if the kid is routinely stealing from a parent, there are much more significant problems going on there and the most likely cause is parental neglect, or possibly worse.
To me, it just keeps on cycling back to being the parent’s responsibility. Sure, without gambling it would be easier for parents, but gambling is literally never going away, sadly.
Game companies have greasily been pushing the limits of what they can get away with, and it NEEDS to stop.
Yes I agree. Though I worry that this particular lawsuit could cause a problem with legal precedent since the primary issue is so legally unsound. It may bolster the company’s ability to defend against a real lawsuit over predatory business practices. And that is not a future I want to see.
People, children or adults, have the ability to become addicted to anything.
Correct. But that’s not the fault of the company. Its the person not exercising self-control. Saying “no” to smoking a cigarette is much easier than trying to quit smoking, but that addiction is the fault of the person who says “yes.”
What the REAL, ACTUAL PROBLEM IS, is the gambling and microtransactions that are injected into every game.
Yes, but that’s not what the lawsuit is primarily about. It’s a small part tacked on at the very end. The primary issue is that the plaintiff argues that Epic and Microsoft intentionally make children addicted to their products. That’s mental.
You cannot claim that McDonald’s is responsible for diabetes because they make products high in sugar and other unhealthy ingredients. Video games are a luxury product and not a requirement for life, a person doesn’t have to use them to live. I can’t win a lawsuit against Konami if I get addicted to gambling because I played one of their pachislot machines and didn’t control my spending.
Not every game company practices this to such an evil degree, especially not Nintendo, no where near as bad as Epic.
Sony? Paradox? Creative Assembly? Konami? SEGA? Konami and SEGA Sammy literally make pachislot gambling machines.
Nintendo is just as guilty, like the time when they only sold Mario All Stars for a limited time. Nintendo sure loves their FOMO oriented time limited products. NES mini and SNES mini are other recent ones, continual low stock problems for time limited products. Sounds predatory to me.
Regardless, the answer to all that is the adult just saying no. It’s literally that easy. That’s not to say your kid can never play video games, but the parent neglecting to monitor their kid’s screen time is not the game company’s fault. I hate to defend a game company, but this woman is mental.
I mean, I do, but whether or not I have kids is not really important to this subject. Even a person without children can make the same comment.
If a child develops an addiction to video games (which I’m not sure exactly how that is classified, does the child suffer physical withdrawals from not playing video games? Might they die from it like people addicted to hard drugs?) that is the fault of either the parent neglecting to keep track of how much time their kid spends playing video games, or the fault of the parent allowing their kid to spend too much time playing video games. Its not the fault of the kid, its not the fault of the game development studio or publisher, its not the fault of the ESRB or anyone else, its not anyone’s fault but the parent’s.
While I agree that gaming companies regularly engage in shady business practices, it is the responsibility of the parent and not a company to teach their kid that not every hour of every day is for playing video games. The world is not a circus, and as difficult as it may be, sometimes you have to say no to your kid. I never want to say no, because I often wish I could be a kid again and not have to worry about real life responsibilities. But not saying no to your kid (when appropriate) is telling them that you do not love them, because you are setting them up to fail later in life.
TLDR: The point is, the woman filing this lawsuit is trying to dodge parenting responsibilities by passing it off as “not her fault,” but “the company’s fault.” That’s mental.
Yes, but it’s 100% the duty of a parent to keep track of their kid. Its not the company’s fault that she isn’t a good parent. Just like it isn’t McDonald’s fault if a person chooses to eat there every day for a year and dies of diabetes.
Theyre throwing everything with the kitchen sink into the lawsuit hoping something will stick. This sounds like a case from a person that attempts a lot of frivilous lawsuits like this all the time hoping for a big payout, and not a person actually concerned with bad business practice. Strange how Sony and Nintendo are not mentioned here when they also market their products to children. A Nintendo or PlayStation game is equally as addictive as an Xbox game, so why aren’t they included? Probably because their cash reserves are much lower than Microsoft.
So it’s the company’s fault that the parents were not properly monitoring their children? How is this not going to be immediately thrown out?
EDIT: Holy crap, the woman who filed this suit is psycho
“These video game companies have targeted and taken advantage of kids, prioritizing their profit over all else. As a mom, I knew I had to do something to ensure they don’t get away with destroying the wellbeing and futures of our children.”
So are we going to sue every soft drink company next because they put sugar and caffeine in their drinks and it makes us addicted/fat when we don’t exercise self control?
These kinds of things are typically just a money sink. When was the last time you played an Atari game? How often do you find yourself wanting to play them?
I bought an Atari Flashbacks for my mother, and she played it one time. The ColecoVision I got her, she played one time, and that was a console she grew up with. Nostalgia alone isn’t enough to really justify buying it, especially if you only use it once and then it collects dust.
99% of the time, hard levels were to prevent people from beating the game when they rented it from a video rental store. The publisher wanted to basically “force” people to buy the game.
Those things have so many preservatives in them that they will probably be discolored, have a bad texture / taste, or be rock hard long before eating them makes you physically sick.