You could probably replicate a lot of Skinner box psychology that game devs use to feed on gambling addictions, but then just replace the instant value of any prizes with time value of money. For example, you could make a slot machine game where if somebody wins, the game just buys a 5 year bond for them with equivalent return to what a slot machine would normally pay out instantly.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Without the instant payout, would it still feel the same?
Probably not, but if the bond's present value was equivalent to what the machine would have paid out, it's still a prize.
I really just want it to be as similar as possible. They can purchase the $5 loot box just like in a normal game. Get that excitement of opening it and getting rare items. But instead of throwing their money in an insatiable black hole it is wisely invested. Win/win
So you want a game dev to be paid by a player in exchange for some in-game reward, but then the game dev basically gifts the money back to the player? Because it's their money at that point in the transaction.
The player doesn't pay for it. I do. It is their money. They could cash out the funds and walk away. They will get an instant reminder what they spent, money that would be thrown away for a fancy sprite. Those games don't cost anything to develop, they target people's weaknesses and exploit them.
This doesn't make any sense. So you would have people give you their money, and then when they open a loot box, instead of a skin or whatever it would just be a message like "haha, you expected a skin for your character, but it's actually just shares in an S&P 500 ETF!"
Wouldn't that get old pretty quickly? Like, it's not a surprise. Why would people play this "game" instead of literally any other game where their microtransactions at least go toward the semblance of fun (even if that fun is fleeting and exploitative)?
The idea is that they get both. The reward of the game but also growing their bonds. There are fees that need to be paid so this is not as easy as the idea makes it out to be but i like the concept.
So the game takes your money, puts it in the stock market for you, and then gives you a loot box with some skins in it. What's to stop me from taking my money out of the stock market, putting it back into the game, and buying another loot box?
The money sounds irrelevant to the loot box here. What we really have is a game that is moving your money to somewhere kind of inconvenient and then separately from that transaction just giving you a free loot box. Part of the fun of lootboxes for people who enjoy them is the fact that you are paying something for them. If you don't actually give anything to the game, then the game might as well just be a big button that generates a new loot box every time you click it. There's no cost associated with opening a loot box in this idea.
The game is supposed to be a piggy bank for gambling addicts. You do not get money back right away. In the market you could sell your shares but the game manages it for you as a means to protect the gamer from downwards spirals.
Why does this need to be linked to real money at all? Why not just use tokens that aren't convertible to or from real money?
Something like the GB Pokémon tcg game or the GBA Yu-Gi-Oh ones.
The last thing you want to do for someone with an addiction is put up layers of deception and trickery around them.
It is 100% counterproductive.
I appreciate the intention, but don’t try to help an addict by tricking them into not getting their fix. It will not help.
How would it be tricking them? It's not like I would hide it. It's sole purpose would be to reduce the current scams already prevalent on apple and Google app stores. People will still spend their money anyway they wish but this would be an alternative to the current biz model to nickel and dime the users to death.
It sounds like taking the gambling out of gambling, by making loss impossible.
I guess as long as you’re open about it, like “instead of gambling you can do this other thing”.
But if returning the money is a surprise thing, that’s bad. It means they didn’t consent to the actual game they were playing.
I’ve been an addict and I used the harm of my own addiction as part of my own wake-up process. Anyone reducing harm would have just been giving my inner addict justification for continuing.
I was in a dance with my subconscious, trying to avoid pain but also trying to wake up, and I repeatedly steered myself down, in aikido with my addict self, to steer toward moments of clarity.
But maybe I read the post wrong. If you’re totally up front about “The money will be returned to you later”, it’s cool. Like non-alcoholic beer is cool so long as it’s labeled as such.
How would you make money yourself?
I have another business that makes money. This would be just to mess with greedy bastards. I would just change the graphics to the most popular/insidious ones. It's just so much easier if the funds didn't have to route thru the game company. Crypto is obvious but not the financial lesson I want to teach. Just seeing if anyone has a creative solution but the easiest method would be to require them to setup an investment account first and have those moneys directly deposited (without fees hopefully)
The margins on even the most successful mobile games are surprisingly small. Once you take into account the cost of running the servers, code maintenance, customer service, platform fees and advertising the roi will typically be less than 10%... if you're lucky.