> “The F.T.C. has made enforcement of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act a high priority,” said Juliana Gruenwald, an agency spokeswoman.
> “These sophisticated tech companies are not policing themselves,” the New Mexico attorney general, Hector Balderas, said. “The children of this country ultimately pay the price.”
> “This is as much a black eye on the federal government as the tech space,” Mr. Balderas said. “I’m trying to get lawmakers at the federal level to wake up.”
This is like going after drug dealers for parking violations and calling a press conference to proudly brag about it. Game publishers are doing much worse stuff and you're making a big deal about going after them for tracking!?
To not even mention in passing loot boxes, really NYT? one of the most pervasive unethical rackets in modern tech targeting children, much worse than tracking because it causes real harm to individuals.
FTC: Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit as long as you're not tracking them.
Whereas what you’re doing is sort of like going after drug dealers and someone else says, “But what about the murderers?!” In fact this is bad, it does violate the law, and it should be called out and punished. Gambling mechanics in games should be too, but part of the problem there is that the laws in most countries haven’t caught up to them yet. Meanwhile tracking children is actually against existing laws.
I also wish that the NYT and other outlets were more interested in covering the worse stuff you mentioned, but in no way is their covering of this other bad stuff anything less than a positive development.
No, This is like going after murderers for being late on their taxes. Call me a cynic/skeptic but I don't see cracking down on tracking that's ubiquitous in big tech (google, fb) on some small devs as a positive. This is a distraction and an attempt to by this DA get PR points for "cracking down on tech" for the next election.
> Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit
Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few). Children learn about the real world through play, and gambling is a part of that. Risks give benefits or consequences that are often unpredictable. I don't see the explicit benefit of excluding these gambles from children's games.
> Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few).
You're not wrong, can also point to baseball cards, magic the gathering or pokemon cards. The key differences today are
1) Instant-availability of the secondary market and third party sites that allow you to gamble with virtual currency you've won.
2) Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences to release the perfect amount of dopamine to get users addicted, with frightening efficiency. In comparison your examples are extremely mild.
You could say it's the parents responsibility to educate and protect their children from these practices - but would you say the same about the tobacco industry advertising to children? For me this is the same addiction from profit motive the tobacco industry exploited for many years until they were rightfully regulated.
>Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences
Honestly, I think this happens in children's television programming more than in electronic games, and I can actually find sources for this if given an hour or two (I used to be very interested in the developments that took place towards psychology around the 60's). If you can provide sources for your claim I'd be more inclined to discuss this seriously, but as it stands it seems unlikely that a small, 5-employee company pushing racing games for children would hire psychologists and CB specialists to advise their games. I am not specifically talking about the example used in the article, but most such games are released by very small companies and independent devs. I think they rely on heuristics and statistics to tell them which games work and why, for sure, but that's just good design.
there "Instant-availability of the secondary market" you're just talking bullshit, there is no such thing, as per your second point so what? do you think pokemon cards people didn't hired "specialists" either? What are those design choices to make them addicted, is a box it opens and that's it. This kind of post is what I hate about NY, people thinking they are so smart, while having quite a narrow/naive/first world view.
> “These sophisticated tech companies are not policing themselves,” the New Mexico attorney general, Hector Balderas, said. “The children of this country ultimately pay the price.”
> “This is as much a black eye on the federal government as the tech space,” Mr. Balderas said. “I’m trying to get lawmakers at the federal level to wake up.”
This is like going after drug dealers for parking violations and calling a press conference to proudly brag about it. Game publishers are doing much worse stuff and you're making a big deal about going after them for tracking!?
To not even mention in passing loot boxes, really NYT? one of the most pervasive unethical rackets in modern tech targeting children, much worse than tracking because it causes real harm to individuals.
FTC: Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit as long as you're not tracking them.