High end restaurants absolutely do those! They track customers looking for whales, and track various random gifts and upgrades. "Monsieur? The maitre d' says he put the corner table aside for you. Please enjoy a small bisque while you wait, our compliments. And I believe it is your wife's birthday, perhaps the pianist can play her favorite song?"
Yes to whale-seeking, but this is otherwise not a valid comparison. Fine-dining patrons are not basing their visits around the hope that "this time they'll get the free appetizers."
Put another way, I'm reasonably sure that gambling addiction support groups outnumber fine dining addiction support groups by a few orders of magnitude.
Personally I don't see that as getting people hooked, more so incentivizing online ordering.
My theory is Dominos has figured out that online orders are much more efficient to take than phone orders. As such they are doing everything they can to nudge people to order online. So no I don't think it's to get people hooked on Domino's pizza because of a roulette you can play when you order, I think it's a "nudge" to get you to order online.
Regular Joe wants to order a pizza and goes to call Dominos, when he looks up the number he sees the promotion but only if he orders online. Even though Regular Joe usually orders over the phone, he orders online this time, even winning some breadsticks for his trouble. Regular Joe now orders online whenever he gets Dominos.
At that point they're winning regularly and it acts more like a 50 cent discount on each order, with no way to win big either. If you want to get hooked on that you can just pick your own random day of the week. So whatever, not predatory in the way that going for whales usually is.
Food is different. At the end of the day you can only eat so much, even if you're paid to eat. There's a physical consumption cap. This is why 'sharing a meal' has historical significance. Food is inherently anti-greed.
If anything given the cost of high quality ingredients, high end restaurants might even be losing money on food alone, and may depend on alcohol sales to make up the difference.
Most restaurants are garbage, convenience places relying on massive ads and such to succeed. Pretty much all fast food falls into this category. Sugar and cheap oils making up tons of calories to get people coming back.
Games as an entire concept use these tricks. mobile games aren't fundamentally different. The difference is that there was always a spending ceiling until mobile came along. Even if that spending celing was still something absurd in a few cases, like $2000 of train simulator DLC.
Regardless, people spending this much money are likely old enough to choose to gamble (or stealing their money, which is a different issue altogether). So I'm as concerned for them as any other gambler/alcoholic. Wish them the best but I don't care to bring the government in and regulate everyone's behaviors (My country historically tried and failed with alcohol. And is slowly losing similar efforts with drugs).
Most (US) cities already have regulations against gambling and I don’t see people having underground casinos where they are losing their life savings. AFAIK there is even regulation against e-gambling like online poker.
Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout and are engineered to take as much money from the user using techniques casinos don’t have access to because they exist in a physical space and not digitally inside a mobile phone without having to offer cash payouts for winners.
>and I don’t see people having underground casinos where they are losing their life savings.
well, it wouldn't be very undergrounds if you saw it, no? I have little doubt that they exist, even if I cannot prove it. Underground betting rings is almost a cliche in modern media.
>Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout
no, games do that (outside of like, Steam Marketplace where you can apparently sell digital items yourself. So the money traded IS the rush). MTX are a monetization taking advantadge of that dopamine rush. And nowhere close to the first one.
> regulation against e-gambling like online poker.
nit - playing poker against other people isn't gambling, it's a game of skill. Much like chess, if you're better, you win and can earn a living. No one earns a living playing roulette.
I’ve spent a lot of time in illegal poker rooms (and games in places like hotel rooms that are semi-legal). I can assure you people lose a lot of money in them.
> Wish them the best but I don't care to bring the government in and regulate everyone's behaviors
"We live in a society"
And people's behaviour is a function of their environment: blaming "personal responsibility" and leaving it-at-that is a position taken out of either ignorance of how society and complex-systems operate, or out of callous disregard and suggests you lack empathy.
>blaming "personal responsibility" and leaving it-at-that is a position taken out of either ignorance of how society and complex-systems operate, or out of callous disregard and suggests you lack empathy.
It is indeed lack of empathy. 2 years ago I didn't even HAVE $450. Let alone $450 to spend on any gaming whatsoever, regardless of ethical pricing. These are premium entertainment, not some base good nor even a (IMO unethical) attempt to promise riches like a lottery/high APR credit card/high interest loan/gambling. There is no premise that you'll be making your money back unless you're trying to flip a free mobile game account (which is against pretty much every services' TOS, if you want to get legal about it).
So again, best of luck improving themselves. Addiction is rough and it's not easy at all getting out of it. But people spend hundreds recklessly on so many items, legal and not. Or on items that are long term detrimental to our health (e.g. fast food, cigarettes, alcohol).
I don't think they should all be left to the governemt to decide. Because historically that hasn't stopped the actual addicts (given that I know/knew several friends on already illegal drugs). At some point you need intervention of self and close loved ones. Making all mobile game MTX illegal won't solve these people's problems
There is a third option: believing that I have no moral standing to intervene in other people's decision-making process, no matter how much I think they might benefit from it.
We all live in a society, but that doesn't mean we all have to agree about everything, or even that we're all on the same team. To me it just means we're willing to co-exist peacefully, and resolve disputes via due process. From there I really don't think I have the right to tell others how to spend their money, or whether or to whom to sell their kidneys.
> The difference is that there was always a spending ceiling until mobile came along.
Gamers spent huge amount of money on Steam and were even proud of it. There was whole.vulture of "Inpaid more for games I am better then you" as dumb as it sound.
And there are the people who hate mobile games the most.
True, I have run into internet commenters like that.
It's an interesting quandary. one person paying thousands for games for "clout" despite never playing 90+% of them (almost exclusively digital, so of no resale value compared to collecting physical copies), vs. one person paying thousands for a few single games they likely play way too much.
