CAGcast #601: A Whale of a Problem

CheapyD

CheapyD

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Good show guys, just wanted to pop in and say thank you for discussing the predatory side of gaming. For anyone who want's to watch a truly disgusting talk about how to abuse peoples weaknesses look up a guy named Torulf Jernström on YouYube the video is called something like "Lets go whaling". The talks about how to lure in people on mobile platforms but the practice bleed into PC/Console gaming as well.

Watching it will probably leave you sad and depressed.

 
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More about Internet Gaming Disorder

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming

The DSM-5 notes that gaming must cause "significant impairment or distress" in several aspects of a person's life. This proposed condition is limited to gaming and does not include problems with general use of the internet, online gambling, or use of social media or smartphones. The proposed symptoms of internet gaming disorder include:

  • Preoccupation with gaming
  • Withdrawal symptoms when gaming is taken away or not possible (sadness, anxiety, irritability)
  • Tolerance, the need to spend more time gaming to satisfy the urge
  • Inability to reduce playing, unsuccessful attempts to quit gaming
  • Giving up other activities, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities due to gaming
  • Continuing to game despite problems
  • Deceiving family members or others about the amount of time spent on gaming
  • The use of gaming to relieve negative moods, such as guilt or hopelessness
  • Risk, having jeopardized or lost a job or relationship due to gaming
Under the proposed criteria, a diagnosis of internet gaming disorder would require experiencing five or more of these symptoms within a year. The condition can include gaming on the internet, or on any electronic device, although most people who develop clinically significant gaming problems play primarily on the internet.
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Free-to-play: About addicted Whales, at risk Dolphins and healthy Minnows. Monetarization design and Internet Gaming Disorder

Introduction
Video games are not only changing due to technical innovation, but also because of new game design and monetization approaches. Moreover, elite gamer groups with financial in-game-investments co-finance all users of free-to-play-games. Besides questions on youth protection, the growing popularity of free-to-play games has fostered discussions on supposed associations to Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD).
Method
Children and adolescents using free-to-play browser games were examined in a German school-based representative study (N = 3967; age range 12 to 18). Based on a clinical self-report AICA-S (Wölfling et al., 2011), students were categorized into non-problematic, risky, and addicted users. Psycho-social problems (SDQ; Goodman, 1997), perceived stress (PSS; Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, 1983), coping strategies (BriefCOPE; Carver, 1997), and Average Revenue per (Paying) User (ARPU) were investigated as dependent variables. Furthermore, an industry classification (Freeloaders, Minnows, Dolphins, and Whales) for free-to-play gamers was used for additional relations regarding IGD, SDQ, PSS, BriefCOPE, and ARPU.
Results
Among free-to-play gamers the prevalence of IGD amounted to 5.2%. Subjects classified with IGD displayed higher psycho-social symptoms than non-problematic users, reported higher degrees of perceived stress, and applied dysfunctional coping strategies more frequently. Additionally, we found a higher ARPU among subjects with IGD.
Conclusion
ARPU (Average revenue per user) is significantly associated with IGD. Whales share significant characteristics with addicted video gamers; Dolphins might be classified as risky consumers; Minnows and Freeloaders are rather non-pathological gamers. Vulnerability for stress, dysfunctional coping, and free-to-play gaming represent an unhealthy combination.
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Shipwreck's remark about "killing Mickey" reminded me about my childhood and Disney media. I knew Mickey Mouse existed but rarely saw a cartoon. I grew up with Ducktales and had a Donald Duck doll, but most of my Disney exposure were the movies and Saturday ABC cartoons, which were original content. If anything, Disney buried the Mouse for so long, until like my early adulthood, where I learned about new cartoons for babies and older children! The company can really do what the heck it wants, but with the onslaught of original Marvel content coming in the next few years, I don't think they can kill Spider-Man like their original properties. The current pop culture audience want new stories with the same old characters instead of new characters and new stories. Very few of us want to watch something like Recess or the Weekenders or that Dog who became a student.

 
I think it's a huge reach for cheapy to say the average Apex player has never seen F2P beside from phone games when the biggest F2P game out there is another battle royle that is on every platform and while fortnight has good mircotractions, Apex has predatory and overprice mircotractions though cheapy is right that people need to be aware about how mircotractions can be abused by companies.
Good show again this week
 
Shipwreck and Cheapy were right to be skeptical of Wombat's claims that, if Marvel and Sony don't work out a deal on Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man will be used less frequently in other Marvel stuff. You don't really need to look any further for proof of this than...everything Marvel did from like 2008 through 2016, when Marvel didn't have Spider-Man in the MCU and yet I seem to recall quite a bit of Spider-Man out there in the world! Could it be different this time around, since Marvel might want to punish Sony for not bowing to their demands? I guess it's possible, but Disney just announced new Marvel theme park rides coming up, with the first of them themed around Spider-Man, so, no, I think Spider-Man is still going to be kind of a big deal, regardless of whether Sony and Marvel/Disney work something out.

Also, Wombat keeps talking about how Marvel minimized X-Men during in recent years because of the Fox license, and I think that's a bit of an overstatement. Despite the Fox deal, in the past 5-10 years Marvel had long runs of X-books from Brian Bendis, Jason Aaron, Rick Remender, Jeff Lemire, Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, and had countless events, spinoff series, etc. I will agree that the license explains some dumb story stuff they forced on the X-Men where they involved the Inhumans a lot because Marvel had plans to make the Inhumans the MCU analog to the mutants, but then that Inhumans movie got downgraded to an Inhumans TV show, and then they actually made that TV show and...yeah, I think Marvel has good reason not to try to going down that path again.

 
I think it’s pretty amusing to see Cheapy go full bore into the anti-gambling in video games discussion. More power to him, and I agree, but you’re also like 2 years late to the party. Better late than never?
 
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