- We do think the way
that we have implemented
these kind of mechanics, and
FIFA of course is our big one,
our FIFA Ultimate Team and our packs,
is actually quite ethical and quite fun.
- [Announcer] Unethical!
♪ Born different ♪
♪ Born innocent ♪
♪ Born perfect ♪
♪ I'm just not like you I'm a ♪
♪ Born lover ♪
♪ Born livid ♪
♪ And I know I'm ♪
♪ I'm not like you I was ♪
♪ Born clever ♪
♪ Born knowledgeable ♪
- Today's Jimquisition, both
personally and professionally,
is an important one.
You could almost say
this one is, the biggie.
This is the result of me having spent
a lot of time talking
to Jimquisition viewers
who have been kind enough
to share their own stories,
this is the result of me
watching on in utter disbelief,
as the game industry
proudly boasts and gloats
about the ways in which it
psychologically hooks people into
unethical, unnecessary, aggressive
video game monetization.
This episode, more than any other,
should indicate to you,
should portray to you,
should explain to you, exactly why,
I am so committed to
expressing my disgust,
towards the so-called "Triple-A Industry".
This, is a video on the internet.
Please enjoy.
Addiction is a disease defined
by compulsive use of a substance
or pattern of behavior
that one cannot stop,
even as it has a severe
negative consequence
on a person's quality of life.
The most famous form of addiction
is of course uncontrollable drug use,
as people can all to easily
find themselves dependent
on any number of chemical substances.
Non-chemical addiction
can be just as harmful.
And because there is no
exterior chemical component
to point at as the villain,
it's often misunderstood
in a way that directly harms the addict.
Sex addiction, for example,
is often portrayed as people
just being horny miscreants,
hiding behind an excuse,
for infidelity and similar indiscretions.
Those with eating disorders
are dismissed as greedy,
while on the opposite end of the spectrum,
compulsive exercising is often overlooked
because, hey, exercise
is good for ya right?
Not if you're doing it so much
that you're actually
tearing your body apart.
Meanwhile, those with gambling problems
or shopping addictions
are all too easily written off as idiots,
who can't handle their money correctly.
Non-chemical addiction
is no less destructive
than drug addiction,
and I can speak from experience with both.
I was in constant chronic
pain for over two years
with a spinal hernia,
for which the only genuine
treatment I got for the most part
was armfuls of painkillers.
Which after two years,
became a severe dependence.
At the same time,
I've had friends cope
with chemical addiction,
and sex addiciton.
And among my many non-chemical
vices is a workaholism issue
that sees me pour a
dangerous, unhealthy amount
of my self esteem and sense of identity
to the quality and success
of the work I put out there.
And in many cases, such as mine,
there are deeper psychological issues
which addictive behavior
is used to cope with.
My doctor, for example,
cited Hyper-manic Depression
as a root cause for my abuse of drugs,
a story all too common
for too many people.
Societal misunderstanding
regarding addiction
can compound the problem,
but there are hundreds of
thousands of businesses out there
that do understand the
power of addictive behavior,
all too well, and use that
understanding to make money.
One such industry is
the video game industry,
which has seen revenues
skyrocket by billions
since the widespread use
of gambling mechanics,
raking in cash off the back
of those who need help,
not animated treasure chests, help,
to get themselves to a better place.
But it isn't just loot boxes,
they're an offshoot of microtransactions
and they themselves can
be part of the problem.
They themselves use psychological tricks,
manipulation, to encourage
compulsive spending.
To appeal to compulsive shoppers.
A huge amount of mobile games
and microtransaction-led Triple A games
make the majority of
their money from "whales",
the tiny percent of players
who spend thousands of
dollars on a single game.
Who are these whales?
Are they just rich kids
with more money than sense?
Sure, some of them will be.
But not all of them.
Maybe not even most of them.
Just look up the stories of the people
who get themselves into
debt over FIFA games.
Or the children who get
their parents into debt
over such titles.
And some of these spenders,
some of these wales,
may indeed be addicts,
they may be depressed people
looking for a temporary high.
Some of them may have had their
addictions actively egged on
by complete fucking scumbags,
like Tribleflame CEO Torulf Jernstrom,
whose gleefully malevolent
lecture, "Let's go whaling",
is a proudly-offered confession,
of exactly how low the
game industry will sink,
to prey on both gambling
and shopping addicts.
- Some of you will probably
be slightly shocked
by all the tricks I have listed here.
But I'll leave the morality
of it out of the talk,
we can discuss it, if we have time, later.
- [Jim] Oh yeah, shocked is the word!
And when I watched
this 19-minute celebration
of exploitation,
I understood exactly why
morality was left out of it,
because there is no fuckin' morality here!
Jernstrom lays out exactly
how addiction plays a role
in so-called "whale hunting".
Describing how the upsale
of player convenience
gets people forming habits
around a video game.
This technique is known
as Hook, Habit, Hobby.
And I'll let Torulf explain it.
- Hook Habit Hobby,
this is model from Dmitri Drovanov,
of Flare Games.
It's a model for how
people progress in a game,
the hook is what gets you into the game
to try out a free-to-play game.
Then you build it into a habit
that you play multiple sessions every day.
And then at the end, it's the hobby phase
where people see it as
one of their main hobbies
and they put lots of time
and resources into it.
- [Jim] With the Hook Habit Hobby scheme
we see an insidious method
of monetizing compulsion.
Like a cartoonish drug dealer
from an 80's PSA video,
the game introduces a good deal first
with the aim of getting the customer
habitually desirous of more.
The concept of the "ice-breaker
deal" is downright sinister,
and you'd think a
casually-dressed game dev
explaining the concept
like it's no big deal
would lessen how ghoulish it
sounds, but nope, oh my, nope.
- The hook is where you
put up an ice-breaker.
You want to give a
really really good deal,
something that's a no-brainer,
you would be crazy to
turn it down, as a player.
The reason to give a really
good deal upfront is,
by making people spend upfront,
they are also emotionally
committing to your game,
their attention will go up.
And, the first spend, it breaks the ice,
then they think of themselves
as spenders in the game,
"It's okay for me to spend in the game."
Lots of people, otherwise,
have this wall up,
"I will never pay for a mobile game."
So you need to break the wall first.
- [Jim] We'll get back
to more from this...
Person, later on.
Right now, let's look at a
very different statement.
A statement not from a whale hunter,
but the brother of a
so-called whale himself.
A whale with a very
genuine gambling problem
whose love of video games helped
him deal with that problem,
only for said games to
stab him in the back
when money was to be made.
(poignant piano music)
- [Jim] These are the whales,
so callously hunted by
assholes with lanyards.
It's very easy to suggest,
that these are people who should
be smarter with the money,
that only a fool lets it get this bad.
I refuse to believe
that anyone that churlish
about the situation,
has ever dealt with addictive
behavior in their own lives.
I simply refuse to believe it.
Because addiction simply
does not work that way,
you can't just switch it off,
it's not that easy to simply stop.
You can even know, all day long
that what you're doing is wrong
and you can consider yourself stupid,
and you can know that it's
harmful, but that won't stop you.
It doesn't just stop on a dime,
and the game industry knows this.
That's why they go after
those who will form habits.
As we've already noted,
addiction doesn't tend
to form in a bubble.
It more often than not is a symptom of,
and a response to, other
mental health issues.
And it's not uncommon to find an addict
with multiple chronic habits.
In this next testimonial,
we learn once again how easy it can be
for the right victim to fall prey
to the subtle machinations
of video game gambling.
As well as how those in
recovery for addiction
are playing a dangerous game,
when all they want to do
is play an actual game.
(poignant piano music)
- [Jim] When game industry mouthpieces
claim microtransactions
and loot boxes are fine
because "Nobody's forced to buy them".
I think of those who have had to move
from video game to video game,
actively pursued by the microtransactions
that threatened to drag
them back down the hole.
The industry loves to
claim "It's optional"
to justify microtransactions,
willfully ignoring how video games
are designed to be grindier
and less convenient
to make their time-saving
in-game purchases
way more appealing.
None of us have the option to avoid
deliberately bad game design
in the video games we buy.
And those with shopping addiction
and gambling addiction have no option
to even play these games
without the risk of slipping
back into destructive behavior.
Now I've shared my disgust
with the video game
industry here many times.
Some understand my outrage,
others not so much.
It is my hope that with
these testimonials,
juxtaposed against the sheer
negligent insensitivity
of men like Torulf Jernstrom,
will go some way to explaining
why an addict like myself,
who would more than likely be
a victim of in-game gambling,
were I not already so
professionally against it,
would be so utterly fucking furious
at what the video game
industry has encouraged
in recent years.
The industry not only
knows what it's doing,
it's celebrating it.
It's doing it in public.
At conferences and in calls,
sharing the knowledge and the tactics
that instill habitual spending
among their audiences.
There is a veritable treasure trove
of evil fucking wisdom out there.
That doesn't attempt to hide
how predatory this industry has become.
None of this is a secret.
None of this is obscure.
This is out in the open.
- Hot state, there's an excellent book
about behavioral psychology
called Thinking Fast and Slow.
I'm telling you that
the fast thinking mode is what you want.
The slow thinking is
your analytical brain.
What's 12 times 47?
I'm sure all of you can answer that,
but you have to start your
actual thinking brain to do that.
Our brain works in these two modes,
and starting the analytical
part of your brain
is too much to ask for a spend.
Make stuff immediately useful,
immediate gratification.
If you have a level-based game
and you sell some boosters upfront.
For instance, a coin doubler,
or some other stuff that will help you.
People will have to analyze
and think it through,
"These things are good for me,
"these things will help me
progress", before they do it.
If on the other hand, you do,
like for instance in this temple run.
Once your game is over.
"Save me, I have a few
seconds to spend hard currency
"and I get to continue."
The IKEA effect.
This is to say,
stuff that we put work into,
we value more highly.
IKEA really sells you
cardboard stuff, it's shit.
But you value it, still,
(audience laughs)
somehow slightly higher,
because you actually built it yourselves.
There's a trigger to
remind us to do something,
then we go an action, we
get the variable reward,
just like the gotchas, we
get the lottery ticket.
And then, to really hook it down,
we need to ask people
to do something for us,
do a little bit of work,
because then they become
emotionally attached to that.
Anchoring is fun.
Anchoring means that, when we
don't know the price of stuff,
the first price we hear suggested for it,
becomes our anchor.
And then we compare everything to that.
Some games immediately,
when you're in the tutorial,
they suggest to you, "You
should buy this good IAP
"for 50 euros" or something like that,
I go like "Oh that's
expensive I'll never do that."
Of course no, and I expect them to say no.
Then again I come back
like a few sessions later
and suggest they buy it for 15.
And now they will say
"That's a good value,
"because my anchor was at 50."
- [Jim] Get people to knee-jerk spend,
to not think about what they're
doing as they're doing it.
Keep the pressure up with limited offers,
fixed prices to make each
spend more appealing.
Get players a sense of emotional,
as well as financial investment.
Maintain the Sunk Cost
Fallacy as long as possible.
Everything I've ever
ranted and raved about
on the Jimquisition is not only supported,
but gloated over by
people in the industry.
Right down to the bullshit excuses
I've had to demolish before.
Such as spreading the nonsense
that microtransactions are required,
in order to support developers.
In fact, Jernstrom notes
that you don't even have to be
all that convincing in your lies.
- If we tell people
they are a certain way,
if we compliment on
being nice, good citizens
they are more likely to
behave as nice good citizens.
So you should actually tell your players
that they are generous individuals
who have a taste for good art
and want to support their game developers
by paying you and buying IAPs.
Related to that,
also telling people the
reason to do something
makes them much more likely
to actually follow through and do that.
Spend because...
Reasons.
The reasons don't even
have to be that good,
in order for this to work.
- The total bollocks spouted
on behalf of the game industry
justifying aggressive microtransactions
and gambling mechanics,
is not only perpetuated by
people within the industry
but people without it as well.
And, it's always dismaying to me
to see games media, games journalism,
structures that should hold
the industry to account,
going to bat for them.
Most recently, and most disgustingly,
there was an article on Polygon called
"Anti-Loot Box Bill
"Poses a Real Threat
to Sports Video Games."
With the tagline,
"How else are these billion
dollar licenses paid?"
Fuck you.
"These modes,
"if they don't pay directly
for the games we enjoy,
"at least justify the
workforces and development costs
"that make them work playing.
"That oily microtransaction money,
"hard as it is to defend,
even in the abstract,
"helps those women and
men deliver something
"that meets the unrelenting
it's-in-the-game standard
"we've taken for for granted
for a couple of decades."
No they don't, they were being delivered
before microtransactions happened.
You fool.
And as we've already explained,
the whole "Microtransactions
support the developers" line,
is bullshit.
It's bullshit.
The routine layoffs this industry has,
often to celebrate things
like record revenue intake,
wholly demonstrates that.
People are losing their jobs all the time,
regardless of how much money
is flowing into the industry.
The article essentially boils down to
"Won't somebody please
think of the corporations?"
And relies on the age-old myth
that video games are just too expensive
for multi-billion dollar
companies to make them anymore.
In doing so, the article does
hit upon a very real problem,
but the understanding
of the problem presented
is completely fucked.
"Nobody publicizes exactly how much
"their cash cows bring in of course,
"but it's instructive that Take Two
"agreed to a deal paying
the NBA $1.1 billion
"over the next seven years.
"That's double the value of the last deal
"which was inked in 2011,
"well before Virtual Currency
was introduced to MyCareer.
"I don't think Visual
Concepts replaces that dough
"by reselling NBA's Greatest DLC
"or the Sprite Slam Dunk contest."
Polygon's writer suggests
that sports games would suffer
under recent pushes to regulate loot boxes
because the licenses for
the sports in question
are now costing billions.
And it's frustrating because the writer
is so close to the truth
there, so close to the issue.
But decides the best solution
is to put gambling mechanics
in these fucking video games
rather than ask why a sports association
is charging to much bloody money
for the rights to make a game
that said association
directly benefits from.
Let's not forget these licenses
were perfectly affordable
before loot boxes came along,
it's only post-loot box
that suddenly they're
"far too expensive!"
I mean imagine a hypothetical world
where Electronic Arts
suddenly couldn't afford
the rights to make a FIFA game.
As if FIFA would allow a year go by
without a FIFA game existing.
Get fucking real.
If for some reason one of these publishers
couldn't afford to make a FIFA game,
and let's be honest, they'd
find the money somehow.
Likely the price for the
licenses would go down.
All this fucking Polygon article does
is argue in favor of the
perpetuation of a problem
in order to perpetuate another problem.
Suggesting gambling mechanics
should stay in video games,
so that sports associations
can keep charging through the
arsehole for their licenses.
Fuck right off.
This weak, weak article,
completely hand-waves
away any real issues,
any real concerns people
have with gambling mechanics.
As coming from people who just hate EA
or were just angry about Star
Wars: Battlefront 2, piss off.
I knew this video I was
working on was coming
when that article went out
and I had to bite my tongue at the time,
because I was saving it for now.
Having had already spoken
to gambling addicts,
shopping addicts about this topic.
To see concerns so sneeringly batted away
in favor of complete corporate propaganda,
thoroughly disgusted me,
and continues to disgust me.
Games press should be holding
these companies to account,
but they can't even comprehend
why loot boxes and
microtransactions overall
are so fucking poisonous.
Because they don't think about the prey,
they don't think about the people
these companies are preying on,
they only see them as
whales, dehumanized wales.
And that misunderstanding has to stop,
they're not rich kids with
enough money to spare,
they're not goddamn sea mammals.
They're people with vulnerabilities
that this game industry is exploiting.
Knowingly, gladly, greedily.
And I am over hearing
and defense for them,
because they are un-bloody-tenable.
The regulation of loot
boxes might not be pleasant
and it's not something
I explicitly gun for,
but I did warn the game
industry that it was coming,
that if they kept pushing
these microtransactions.
If they kept pushing the limits
to see exactly how much
they could get away with.
They would end up with
a fight on their hands
once politicians got interested.
I said this time and time again
and no-one bloody listened
and now look where we are, and
it's on the industry's head.
It's on their head, nobody
else's, it's their problem,
they do not deserve people
taking up arms and defending them,
because they merrily
walked into this situation.
And ultimately, if you
need gambling mechanics
to keep your fucking games going,
you shouldn't be in business.
The world can do without
your exploitative crap.
Not that you really need them,
you didn't need them before,
you'd find a way to work around
it if they were to go away,
it's always about greed,
it's not about need.
And if you trip over yourself
to apologize for what
these corporations do,
you are little more to
them than a useful idiot.
- [Narrator] To have any chance
of turning players into payers,
game developers need to get
their in-app purchases right.
Offers and scarcity, plays
into the loss aversion,
if there are rare cards up here,
and you see the goblin going
with his clocks, tick tock.
"I'll take it away from you,
I'll take it away from you."
They are scarce, they go away,
this is a brilliant way to get more.
- [Jim] Monetize.
Retain.
Acquire.
This is the mantra of the
modern video game industry.
It's been the creed of the
shit-sucking mobile sector
for years and years, and in recent times,
from the tail end of the
last generation to now,
it's increasingly become the creed
of the so-called Triple-A game publisher.
Monetize.
Retain.
Acquire.
Form those habits, trick those customers,
turn those players into payers,
as one disgusting
organization once suggested.
Much of what they are doing is unethical,
much of it is certainly immoral.
So much so that "little talk givers"
need to check their morals at the door.
To even discuss the tactics at play.
And the industry gets away with it,
because such addiction is
so often misunderstood.
Another testimonial I received,
one of many more than
discussed in this video,
described how they got hooked on a MOBA
that used social pressure
to keep people spending.
And how nobody would help them
when they sought support to stop.
"Uni's response?
"It's not gambling, it's
not an addiction, they said.
"They offered me zero support
"because the councilors
"simply couldn't get their heads around
"that I was addicted to wasting money
"just for friends on a video game.
"There was nothing.
"No support.
"Just another round of adults
who drowned my voice out
"and I was berated for
not having a real problem
"and just being a spoilt child."
Peer pressure is just another way
the industry makes money off
the back of vulnerable people.
Recently, news broke that
kids are being bullied
for only having default skins in Fortnite.
While the game is free,
children are pressured to
keep up with their friends
to maintain a social status
by not being the poor scrub
with the bargain basement cosmetics.
Youngsters are reportedly
begging their parents
for Fortnite money
because nobody will play
with them otherwise.
And the word default itself
has become a derogatory term in schools.
And if you think that's
just kids being kids,
that the game industry cannot possibly
be held to account for this.
(laughs sarcastically)
Well, guess what else Mr. Jernstrom said.
- We are herd animals,
we tend to do what all of the others do.
You all sit quiet listening to me
because that's what all
of the other guys do here.
So.
Especially when people are similar to us.
This means that
the socially accepted way
of behaving in your game should be paying.
You want to tell people, for instance,
when a clan member of
theirs spend IAP money,
you want the whole can to know.
Because then,
that becomes the socially
acceptable way of behaving.
You absolutely do not want to tell them
that the majority of people in
your game never spend money.
That's poison.
Never tell them that.
- Am I demonstrating this
fucking clearly enough now?
Am I effectively showcasing
that this industry has nasty
parasitic bastards in it?
That know exactly what they're doing,
and not only don't care,
but are proud of themselves?
And it's not just Jernstrom.
You'll find men like him
absolutely everywhere
if you know which stones to turn over.
David Zendle is a researcher and lecturer
who has devoted much of his
time to the study of loot boxes.
In a paper published in June of 2019,
he noted that while he
cannot claim loot boxes
create problem gamblers,
there's evidence to
suggest problem gamblers
are certainly exploited by them.
According to his findings,
when loot boxes were removed
from Heroes of the Storm,
problem gamblers, and
only problem gamblers,
spent less money on the game.
The spending habits of
other players didn't change.
The spending habits of the gamblers did
because the gambling was gone.
There are many studies
showing a correlation
between gambling addiction and loot boxes
but correlation is not
causation, I will say that.
However, the near-identical
psychological similarities
between loot boxes and gambling
coupled with reports
like those from Zendle
support the idea that those
with addiction struggles
are routinely preyed
upon by an industry that,
regardless of whether they
create compulsive gamblers,
sure as shit profit from them.
And as Electronic Arts' Legal VP
sits before a parliamentary committee
trying to rebrand loot
boxes as surprise mechanics.
And claiming they're ethical
because people enjoy them,
I need to stress just how dirty
the game industry's money is.
It's not just dirty, it's
filthy fucking money.
The billions upon billions
being funneled into
the offshore tax havens
of these video game
companies stink of abuse.
Shameless profiteering abuse.
If it's not outright evil,
it is amoral in the extreme.
And they flaunt their immorality in public
with the smug satisfied self confidence
of monsters who've gotten away with it.
Just go back and watch,
again, the sneering manner
in which EA's Kerry Hopkins
patronizes her way through an explanation
of what loot boxes are.
Just go and read the articles
from dozens of industry mouthpieces
who disregard criticisms
of microtransactions
because "If people didn't want them,
"they wouldn't spend money on them."
That argument, in face
of the compulsive strings
microtransactions pull,
is as weak as it is despicably dishonest.
There was a comment on
Reddit once that said
"Jim Sterling is not
pro-consumer, he's anti-Triple A."
And I'll take that.
That sounds fine by me.
I do hate what the mainstream industry
has done to the medium.
How the unchecked, unimpeded greed
that fuels corporate decision making
has turned games into grindy,
unsatisfying money vacuums.
All in the name of psychological ambush.
I say this not with
affected internet outrage.
But with a genuine,
understated, ice-cold fury.
I genuinely hate most
video game publishers.
Their executives,
and every seedy, slimy,
corrupt thing they've done.
To both the industry at
large, and, more importantly,
their many victims.
You damn right I'm anti Triple-A.
Hopefully this video has gone
some way toward explaining
at the level of anger I have
when it comes to talking about
mainstream Triple-A video games,
it should explain why,
whenever I say Triple-A,
I struggle not to do it
in a sneering condescending mocking voice
because, I mean I've always found
that the designation
"Triple A" is arrogant
on the part of the game industry.
It's a sign of arrogance,
just showcasing that they think
they're so far above everything else,
when nothing they do
actually qualifies them
for a designation of three As.
A is supposed to be good in grading.
And the Triple-A video game industry
is not triple A, it is triple...
Shit.
Ah, that's showed them,
they're triple shit.
Anyway.
I hope that this video indicates to you
that I don't do this for,
as some people call it, "outrage clicks".
I do this because I fucking care.
Because I give a shit,
because I truly believe, in my heart,
that this is an important topic.
That I do hold the values that I express
when I talk about microtransactions
and loot boxes and whatnot.
I hold those values true to myself,
I really do believe that when
I talk about this, I am right.
I wouldn't say it if I
didn't think I was right,
if I didn't know I was right.
I truly am not optimistic
about where the so-called
Triple-A video game industry is going.
Comprehensive,
complete-feeling productions,
are becoming rarer and rarer.
Shallow, threadbare unfinished games,
that are designed deliberately poorly,
so that you can pay extra
to improve the experience,
they're becoming the norm.
The idea of the "service
video game" is a lie.
Because it isn't a service,
well, it's not a service
they provide to you.
It's a service you provide to them.
You are giving them,
you are inviting them.
Direct access to your wallet.
They sit back and collect money off you,
simply for existing.
And they spout lies.
Lies and propaganda, that
are then perpetuated.
By their defenders, by
certain journalists,
by spokespeople in the industry.
And it's a racket.
And it's shameless, and it's disgusting.
Thank you so much to the people
who did share their stories.
Thank you so much to people who showed me,
some of these open boasts
from the video game industry itself,
thank you to CaseyExplosion,
to Hbomberguy,
for reading the testimonials we had,
thank you for watching, and of course.
Of course.
Thank god,
for me.
(discordant music)
(upbeat funk music)
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Yeah alright ♪
♪ Yeah everybody's thinkin' 'bout me ♪
