Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Rated R for Lootboxes”.
Australia debates mature rating for loot boxes, a proposal by the government of Australia would apply an R rating and 18 plus restriction to video games containing simulated gambling games containing paid loot boxes would carry at a minimum a mature rating and 15 plus restriction. It won’t be illegal for minors to play these games, but it would be illegal for a miner to buy them I’d say that’s going to be much harder to enforce in this day and age. It used to be that at the store at the point of sale. Someone was liable for selling the game to a minor like trying to buy alcohol, but now you want to buy like Halo when you were underage or something but yeah. If you’re just digital distribution, it relies on parents to set up restrictions and that’s so uncommon. That’S another thing too: back to the bubbles conversation we were having earlier encountering other parents just with no tech, savvy filter.
In my interactions, Discord are you like? What’S Discord parent Tech friend for your, like the people that I don’t have time to be the School parent Tech friend, but, like you know, my kid was the first one with a Discord server so that I knew what everyone was talking about and could keep an Eye on things, I never even like thought about dealing with Discord, yeah so anyway, all right, um, but yeah. So so imagining that parents are practicing proper. I’Ve heard some of the usage statistics on those tools and like they get used, they should keep being made. But it’s not that common yeah, which is kind of surprising to me, because I would think that I mean like parental controls, yeah yeah, I I don’t know I mean it’s.
It’S super easy on. A lot of devices like Nintendo makes it really simple. I think a lot of people just here kid I bought you.
The thing have fun, you alone yeah, I don’t know uh anyway, especially with Matt and flip the kind of stuff you can access on a phone in like two seconds. It’S actually the internet’s crazy. It’S a safe search, even pretend to work anymore. Like I’m gon na try something go go ahead. All right sounds good um. The average Gambler using online casino games is typically 45 or older. However, research typically shows that gambling among teenagers is rising and that teens exposed to gambling from a young age are more likely to struggle with gambling uh with a gambling addiction as adults. I wonder if the gambling mon teenagers Rising has anything to do with a lot of the gambling creators that have been rising up over the last few years. Over 80 percent of adults in Australia engage in some form of gambling whoa the highest rate in the world.
Okay, okay, that makes sense, with around one percent of the population suffering serious consequences due to problem gambling. That’S really high, because I wonder what serious consequences means. It’S probably actually like quite serious, because that would be that would require reporting.
The change would affect many games that are currently rated G, such as FIFA, but also games with gambling minigames, such as the slot machines in early Gen Pokemon. Oh, I didn’t even think normalizing gambling with little kids is actually a huge problem. Yeah, I’m glad that they’re trying to do something, but I do worry about what the effectiveness will be, where we’re relying on a lot of open world games, have some form of Casino sure and where’s.
The line between a loot box that is actually paid and a gambling like or loot box-like game mechanic I mean – is the entire game of Pokemon, just a giant gambling machine because of like walking the grass you don’t know RNG, it might take you two hours to Get that Abra and that you might be able to trade for real money with a friend, especially with internet connectivity yeah. They they also go on to mention stardew Valley. The thing that jumped into my head was Fallout.
New Vegas yeah, like you, can yeah it’s in Vegas, you can gamble and Fallout. Does that make it a gambling game? I wouldn’t immediately think that. But it’s interesting discussion question. If these kinds of laws become widespread, how would it affect game development? Should this be adopted elsewhere I mean like we just said it’s been interesting: no, you can go first, it’s been interesting, watching gambling get deregulated in real time in our lives.
Yeah like watching uh like ads for sports. It’S just constantly like you want to gamble on the results of the game whoa. It was always under the table back alley stuff when we were growing up, and now it’s like very in your face all the time. Yeah, like it’s, it’s kind of like going down to the States and every other ad on TV is for a pharmaceutical products. They’Re like weird yeah. It weirds me out because so you’re not you’re not allowed to advertise um pharmaceutical products in uh in Canada, at least not in the same way that you can in the states like you, won’t just see a commercial on TV for Cialis or whatever um, and so It’S it’s jarring, it’s like really jarring and in the same way, growing up as kids, where gambling was a thing that you know know your limit play Within it.
You know, like I, I know the anti-gambling slogans yeah far better than I know the gambling slogans and as someone who hasn’t had a TV service like a paid TV service as an adult and can’t see ads whenever I do see a gambling ad, it’s like whoa, Really like you could do that, I I thought we. I thought we actually invest like Public Funding in making sure people don’t do that and then but then okay sure I get uh all right. I guess that’s how it works now, right, um, that’s odd! I do find the just to jump on the Pharmaceuticals thing. I know this has probably been memed to death, but it is so funny that, like over half of the pharmaceutical ad, is this gigantic disclaimer about how it can do horrible things to you. I always find that very entertaining.
Oh, the Canadian regulation. According to Twitch chat, which is very reliable, apparently you can say the medication name because yeah as soon as I said that I was like no, I think I’ve seen a commercial for Cialis. You can say the name, you can say what it does, but not both.
Oh, so it’s kind of like you know how alcohol commercials uh sometime in our lifetime, they change. So you couldn’t actually show people drinking it. Oh you could show people holding it. You could show it being poured, you could show them having fun and being like you know, hot or whatever um, but you couldn’t yeah.
You always see them fill the glass, but then they just stand there. I never like thought about this. Yeah. That’S funny interesting yeah. It’S a whole, it’s a whole thing. I think it could definitely affect things, but I feel like this law would affect things significantly more if it was implemented like you were saying earlier, when people were buying all of their games physically and in person yeah um, as it is now you just VPN into Whatever region deregulated game developers are not going to care, they’re gon na be like that. What do I care if they do that, and then, if we ever worked with a game developer, Luke would lose his because we’re supporting bad people. I said you could do it.
Anyways – and I don’t need to prove everything I did not lose my oh, my goodness, um I’m gon na I’m gon na take a shot back by talking about an AI topic actually hold on hold on. Can I just try to defeat safe search in like yes, yeah yeah, let’s see how long it takes, I’m gon na start with boobies, which presumably will be birds, birds, okay, good, okay, oh nope, that didn’t take long. Not if you click on images. There’S this Obama one is pretty good, but it’s kind of funny um, you guys, that’s actually a thing: okay, yeah, it gets pretty. Uh gets pretty racy, pretty fast yep, um, yep yep, there’s a lot of birds in fairness. There’S a and it seems like it goes through phases like there was birds, and then there was pictures that you would expect.
If you weren’t on Safe Search and then there was, did it just stop you, I add nude and it says, results hidden to see results manage your safe search settings. Oh okay! If you were on a kid account, I’m assuming it wouldn’t give you that option. Yeah yeah, I guess that’s possible, but again that assumes that I am that I am managing the kids account properly right, but there’s even like and there’s there’s like you think of Nintendo like Nintendo’s, probably the company that I would say most promotes its parental controls.
Sure, if that makes sense, people are still using like Nintendo DS’s browser back in the day to look at stuff like people are gon na find a way it’s gon na happen. .