F2P, the new online gambling addiction?

[Julius]

http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/u ... es-market/

More than 2 billion $ turn-over for F2P offerings...

1st thought: my god are people stupid
2nd thought: the only reasonable explanation is that these "games" are in fact comparable to gambling addictions

The only difference I see that that horse betting or online poker has a certain social stigma, but I am starting to think F2P games should too.

[charlie]

Well you start playing and they're well made games that are fun, but soon you realise it is a massive grind to get just basic new stuff and the difficulty of new areas ramps up considerably, leaving you to grind over old ground or pay for an upgrade. Warframe is a great example. There's a good 8-10 hours of amazing free fun but if you want to go further, well probably 50 hours of grind or pay £15.

[Julius]

Well that would mean a hundred million players each paying 20$, which is possible given the total number of 65 million subscribers of the Steam service, but I am quite sure that there must be a large group that pays significantly more than 20$ (which is also what I read about F2P studies, e.g. a majority pays nothing and a small (addicted) minority pays through their nose Makes sense actually, as there is also a 15% part of the population that statistically gets addicted to drugs etc.).

[Julius]

(found on reddit... somehow fitted here)

[gouessej]

Hi

Can we really talk about addiction when it deals with video games, like for drugs and alcohol? I don't think so. Video games (F2P or not) can be a kind of escape, a mean of running away from the reality but I wouldn't use the word "addiction" in this case and it can hide social problems and/or a real pathology. Video games shouldn't become a scapegoat. If a young child prefers spending a lot of time in gaming because some school boys insult him and beat him at school, the abuse of video games is a consequence, not a cause. I remember that I wrote 2 articles about that several years ago.

[NaN]

Hi

Can we really talk about addiction when it deals with video games, like for drugs and alcohol? I don't think so. Video games (F2P or not) can be a kind of escape, a mean of running away from the reality but I wouldn't use the word "addiction" in this case and it can hide social problems and/or a real pathology. Video games shouldn't become a scapegoat. If a young child prefers spending a lot of time in gaming because some school boys insult him and beat him at school, the abuse of video games is a consequence, not a cause. I remember that I wrote 2 articles about that several years ago.

From my understanding the one is a behavioral addiction the other is a substance addiction. Both are addictions nonetheless. I agree that the addiction can arise or be a symptom of some underlying psychological or social issue.

(Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist )

[Evropi]

Not all drugs are substance-addictive... for instance, cannabis does not contain any substance that could addict you to it (like tobacco's nicotine). Addiction to cannabis is based entirely on the (perceived) pleasurable effects of consuming it. Same goes with video games.

Gouessej is right, all addiction has a cause. That said, when a person becomes genuinely addicted like my brother was, who wouldn't go out of the house for weeks on end and even then spend his day playing Age of Empires, you have to pull the plug on the games to get him back. So while everything has causes to it, let's not shy away from treating addiction too because that's the only way to step forward once addiction has occurred.

[Elvano]

Why not listen to someone who is then? =p

[gouessej]

In my humble opinion, some people abuse of the word "addiction" about video games.

Ok, I've found my articles (translated in English of course):
http://gouessej.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/jeux-video-et-sante/
http://gouessej.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/les-joueurs-compulsifs-ne-sont-pas-dependants/

In the second one, I quoted an article in which a specialist makes a clear distinction between compulsive players and addicted persons.

[Julius]

My point wasn't about comparing gaming to drug abuse, but rather to the well established fact of gambling addiction, which is engineered to make you spend as much money as possible to give you short adrenaline boosts and "brain-pleasure" rewards. All that, which is generally seen as abusive and borderline criminal (for example in many countries gambling is under state monopoly to prevent/lessen abuse) is starting to show up more and more in F2P online games.

[gouessej]

Yes, the article Elvano quoted points out this kind of reward. I don't like the term F2P, I prefer using the word "freemium", it's less confusing to me because F2P should mean "free to play" but it doesn't mean it's entirely free of charge whereas "freemium" is a mix of "free" and "premium" which reflects better the fact that it's partially free of charge. Lol I'm not sure that state-controlled casinos really care about lessen the abuses, there are still about thirty casinos controlled by the "towns" in my country, I see no difference. If I understand well what you wrote, you point out something similar to gambling inside F2P games.

[Julius]

My point basically is that if one looks at the absurd amount of money made with these games, if would seem to me that they broke the holy grail of gambling, e.g. having people continue playing the game (e.g. online gambling) but never actually winning any money thus all money earned is profit for the "house".

OT: Yes state owned gambling is often not very preventive, but at least where I come from the state owned ones are using some of the profits to support social projects.