As an avid Genshin Impact player, I think this style of game needs to be heavily regulated. Besides endless grinding for slightly better random stats on a few items, there is little endgame progression possible outside of rolling for new characters in the "gatcha", and the prices are insanely high!
I find that this setup generates a compulsion in me to spend money for "one more roll". And while I've never been to a real casino, this resembles accounts of gambling addiction. At a minimum, these games should be rated 18+. There's no way it's healthy for kids to be exposed to mechanics that amount to unregulated gambling before they've even developed some modicum of self control.
Experiences can be compelling without being addictive, which is a distinction I think sometimes lost here. Civilization is compelling and I for one have lost some sleep to Just One More Turn, but one rarely loses one's job or family over Civilization, which is not true of gambling addiction. Inability to stop despite sincere desire to stop, negative impact across multiple outside-the-activity areas of life, etc, are diagnostic criteria for addictions of all sort for basically this reason.
As a parent, I probably wouldn't encourage my children to play either WoW or Genshin Impact or similar until I had a strong bead on their level of self-regulation capacity.
I think the difference here is that Genshin only has variable rewards and allows you to pull levers for them with real money. Civilization (for the right player) has bottomless gameplay time, A game like WoW has a fixed subscription cost (with cosmetics) and a bottomless gameplay time; what Genshin Impact adds to the danger list is the “gacha” style gameplay progression where you gamble with as much money as you are willing to spend for game items, stat boosts and characters, many available for only a limited time.
I have no doubt this model is much more lucrative but it feels like there is a slot machine standing in the way of what is otherwise a very impressive fusion of different ARPG ideas.
> I think the difference here is that Genshin only has variable rewards and allows you to pull levers for them with real money.
It's even worse than that. You can only earn a relatively small amount of gatcha currency in-game. Once you've exhausted that pool for a given patch, no amount of grinding will get you more and the only way to "pull the lever" is with real money.
>but one rarely loses one's job or family over Civilization, which is not true of gambling addiction.
debatable. Maybe not with Civ specifically, but I remember huge scares in the MMO days over some people literally playing themselves to death from malnourishment. In particular this was targeted towards dedicated gaming cafes in Korea from what I remember. Addiction can be just as deadly even if it "only costs $10/month"
I imagine it's more common than expected, mmo's have just become "more accepted" over time as it acclimated into society.
> There's no way it's healthy for kids to be exposed to mechanics that amount to unregulated gambling before they've even developed some modicum of self control.
I don't disagree but TCGs are basically unregulated gambling for kids and it has been the case for several decades.
Incidentally, it's heavily regulated in China, where the developers are based. It's only a free-for-all overseas. There are regulatory limits on how many loot boxes a player can open, etc.
I mean, that's why we outlaw heroin sales. Sometimes free markets have a natural tendency to evolve towards predatory exploiting brain quirks to extract money out of people, and we need some roadblock to have an entertainment industry that isn't nothing but casinos.
I find that this setup generates a compulsion in me to spend money for "one more roll". And while I've never been to a real casino, this resembles accounts of gambling addiction. At a minimum, these games should be rated 18+. There's no way it's healthy for kids to be exposed to mechanics that amount to unregulated gambling before they've even developed some modicum of self control.