Comments from Discord
All I'm saying is, if you don't like the event, don't spend our time and yours with campaign speeches and requests for support. Just don't play, like most people.
That's how you get a dead game.
The truth is, if you rely on only people supporting you and putting in no money, you're going to have an unrealistic time. This event is not about anyone in truth, but SBS making money. So the idea is, for people to spend it. And since this event is so hollow in what you have to do...it is basically a competition to see who can spend more money supporting their pick for the two rewards.
Casino or a Contest? Do We Want Either?
The above comments were exchanged the other night, following an image I posted, in which I did a rough estimation of how an individual could purchase vault supplies—this action guaranteeing a coin, then use store credit from that purchase to earn more coin and incidentally more store credit, and continue this process for as long as their initial injection of cash was of a large enough sum.
I described this process as disenfranchising then, though in retrospect, I do not feel I should have began from there. The problem at the root is this: This event is a cousin to an online casino featuring a singular game, more than it is about a contest, or about community engagement.
By the end of this, I’ll have illustrated that this event is predatory and is deserving of protesting with one’s wallet. Nevertheless, for however deserving an event it is to protest, I will describe exactly a foundational reason why whales in our community should not be admonished, humiliated, brigaded, attacked, but guarded, commended, and spoken to about this predatory behavior on the part of Soulbound Studios.
Now, do not misinterpret my intent in making this argument. The other day, this exchange occurred in which it was implied that this campaign is an indisputable act of selfishness—
I was spurned quickly into making this campaign for several reasons, but none of them amount—even when stacked together—to be called in white and black terms: selfish. A pillar of engaging in this campaign is to rebuke SBS for taking us down this path, and to dissuade these movers and shakers to not do so again.
I will not, as a previous and bolded comment from Discord advises, just “not play.” This is an unacceptable alternative to inspiring positive change. It pains me to do this in such a harsh way, but I think it is important to our community whales especially, to show how they are settling with their purchases to be vulnerable and exploited by this process.
Now, I would, and I think should spend days after this event, lauding SBS for their impressive qualities and activities worthy congratulating, but in these moments for the duration of these events, I am not going to sugar coat this.
Now, getting to the meat, it is important to now show what it is that is beneath the dragon scale of a whale. Broadly this is a susceptibility to problem gambling. To support this claim, I am linking a few research papers to peruse at your own pace.
I recommend that in, Are Loot Boxes Gambling? Random reward mechanisms in video games, you give a read from the bottom of pg.6 through pg.7, where the taxonomy of gambling more readily reveals itself as having similarities to Raiders of the Lost Vault event’s Adventurer Supplies. “Losses disguised as wins” (pg.7) is a particularly interesting section, where we begin to see how Glowing Potatoes, for instance, however appealing—as losses which pale in comparison to the value of an ancient coin—an item with value that can be submitted to earn the actual rewards, described quite plainly as Grand Prize and Runner-Up Prizes. Players are in effect using vault supplies to gamble for tickets to what looks suspiciously like a raffle.
This becomes a danger, compounded and illustrated by this paper, Video game loot boxes are linked to problem gambling: Results of a large-scale survey, where, if you just want to skim, can give us a glimpse into the spending habits—habits you might even identify with. You may even recognize your own spending during this event as well in excess of these figures.
If these papers are too dry, try scanning this article, which provides a more human-interest investigation on people, who, if they shared in this environment and event with you, would be your peers: Chasing the Whale: Examining the ethics of free-to-play games
. In this very article, there are people who describe facing very harsh consequences for indulging in the features where spending is as it is here, today. There is however an individual, like some of my detractors to this position I’m posing—he is quoted as saying, “Lots of people have tried to draw the parallel between people spending money in social games, and real-money gambling... however, the motivations for playing a gambling game versus any other game, or any other type of entertainment, are very different.” The author subsequently notes this individual observing, “in gambling games, there is a risk of loss, and the opportunity of winning -- therefore the addiction that players have to free-to-play games is very different.”
In the following, we’re going to explore in more depth if that “risk of loss, and the opportunity of winning” exist in this context of this Raiders of the Lost Vault event. If true, it would show the addictive element of gambling and this event is similar. If false, it would confirm the above individual’s assertion that such an event as this and gambling are “very different.”
As I wrote above, in this event, there are items actually described as Prizes. We’re going to call that a win condition, as potatoes, for instance, are not the win, but a loss disguised.
Just as a brief visual:
Here, you can see very clearly how these losses are disguised, and if you wanted you could compare their material value. Potatoes and chalices might be worth a dollar, but when you look at an Ancient Coin, it is apparent the value of that item follows the same trend as raffle ticket for a $5.000 or $10,000 winning. It’s like sitting at the slots, before a prize car, just hoping that one of these is going to payout big—and yet you keep playing to win more coins, because the gambling doesn’t stop there. It is necessary to pool your winnings into the bucket of the server you’re playing in. Now, there are several things stops this from being a true-to-form raffle. The coins are not shuffled, and a single token is pulled out to determine the winner—however, by nature of all the coins submitted being concealed, this creates a frustratingly and unacceptably similar relationship to a raffle. The concealing does, in effect, however, create a risk of loss and opportunity of winning—and the individual quoted before does demand that characteristic before he calls a game a “gambling game.”
So, not failing a legal standard, by my eye, to be called a raffle true-to-form, we at least prove to this layman who appeared in the coverage of an article on whales, that his definition would align to his instincts of calling this a gambling game.
Now, why is that so important? Because, when the articles before suggest that there are individuals in our community vulnerable to gambling, and the event is itself an event of gambling, then it suggests the Raiders of the Lost Vault is an event exploitative of that population.
I think I can fairly say that even all this above information is information you instinctively know, so why are there individuals still who defend it or serve as detractors to these points I make? Well, the answer is usually this one: SBS needs to make money.
If you’re up for round to, we’re going to explore this claim too. Let’s assume that if there are 232 people who have bought a duke package (and there are not. The number is lower). And then we divide 2M of the 5.448M currently made from the store, that’d be $8,620 per person, so where does all the other money come from? It comes from numerous small spenders, who are not paying in excess of $5,000 to support the game. So why is it that we have to assume that if whales are not spending then the game isn’t making money? If that’s the business model, how is that fair to you as a whale, especially under the auspices of a community engagement event that plays more like a casino floor.
There are so many ways that a company can engage with its customers, making money, and not creating a predatory environment for gambling. SBS can continue to skirt the allure that gambling brings to events, but is that fair to you? **Is it fair knowing your impulsivity, the anxiety of not knowing you might win or lose? And then to perhaps passively, in some zombie-like state believe the only immediate comfort comes with spending more—is that ethical? Is that something you want done to you and your peers? If no, why defend the practice of predation.
Rebuke it—not SBS as a whole, not Chonicles of Elyria, but rebuke this type of event with this type of problematic system, so that the point is abundantly clear this event perfunctory to past alarm bells. Rebuke its type of system, because it plays and feels like the image at the top. This is not a condemnation on the value or the existence of the packages as rewards. Pledges / titles, are after all not a subject I'm tackling nor calling pay-to-win—it is merely this system if this event we shouldn't tolerate in the future, and if you can stand in agreement the assertions I've made now.
… though quite cynically I think some of you will feel compelled to spend your holiday money on Vault Supplies—a store item which emulates in no way how Vault Supplies would function in CoE (read immersion ploy to reskin a lootbox). Virtually any other support through traditional seasonal promotional items would be preferable to the purchase of such an item for the reasons described above. Indeed, Dungeoneering Kits, which would be items of material value are preferable to lootbox Vault Supplies. To do so would not give power to the first form of gambling we addressed, but to buy these for Ancient Coins—one coin per $10, you would still be setting yourself up to be victim to the raffle-like nature of that a hidden entry for prizes.
Should SBS attempt something of this nature again, to strike the lootboxes should be first priority, and second should be striking the concealment of entry tokens—in that way, SBS will be presenting us with an auction—a route, that if judged with information included above, is a less predatory method of packaging this event. As for solutions, auctions are still an undesirable form of event for us, provided we are an audience of gaming customers—not mentioning a slew of other issues worth arguing, only when SBS shows us an auction on the horizon. Informed of our complaints, we should trust SBS will strategize an event that will sufficiently engage us and not exploit us in the process.
Vice mayor of 