I think the first stat in the graph is the most important one and really speaks to the reason for the last one. I said this is another post about this article, but video games have become their own kind of third space. Going out with friends has become so expensive, whether you’re going to a movie or something else, and in a lot of places you can’t go to hang out without having to spend money anyways, so video games have become a replacement way to hang out with friends. And that’s before you start talking about stuff like friends who moved across the country for work or something.

If you wanna see more, this guy has a YouTube channel all about his work with lions, cheetahs, hyenas, jaguars, etc. It’s called The Lion Whisperer.

So the way Tumblr works is that your account is basically a blog, with your home page on the site being populated with posts from the accounts that you follow. You can reblog posts onto your own account and comment on them to create individual conversation threads like this one. At one point, there was a bug in the edit post system that let you edit the entirety of a post when you reblogged it, including what other people had said previously, and even the original post. This would only affect your specific reblog of it, of course, but you could edit a post to say something completely different from the original and create a completely unrelated comment chain.

The question is whether or not Tumblr users would want such a thing.

I feel like the same thing will happen like when WordPress introduced a (bad) TikTok/streaming clone called Tumblr Live. I think less than 10% of the userbase ever interacted with it, most of the community openly hated it, and the people who did use it largely didn’t use Tumblr themselves.

I could see Tumblr users actively finding a way to defederate their blogs from everything Fediverse related.

This smells to me like WordPress reducing their workload more than anything since they own Tumblr (unless maybe there’s some sort of financial incentive to increasing the number of WordPress blogs?).

But also, considering that at one point in Tumblr’s history, you could edit other people’s posts, maybe it is an improvement.

Better than blaming addicts for being addicted.

As usual, vote local, vote often applies here, but personally, I’m in 100% agreement that the odds of it happening in our lifetime are slim to none.

But when people think “whale,” they think of the rich idiots with more money than sense. They don’t think of the addict being fleeced like kids by cigarette companies. And we need to change that mentality. Because we’re just victim blaming here. You can’t shame a heroin addict into a sober person.

And there are plenty of irresponsible parents. There was a story about 5 years ago I remember of a young kid (like 6 years old) who literally emptied his parents’ bank account on mtx in an iPhone game because they didn’t know it had mtx in it.

And saying that people with mental health issues need to git gud is like saying that people in wheelchairs need to git gud and use stairs. What we need to do is replace the idiots with people who understand how bad this shit is so we can get something done about it.

Unfortunately, the biggest group of people buying mtx are those with mental health issues/addiction issues and kids who have no concept of fiscal responsibility. And as the saying goes, there’s a sucker born every minute.

These companies have literally hired psychologists to tell them how to best exploit the human brain for maximum wallet extraction. They’re doing the equivalent of casinos pumping extra oxygen into the room to keep you more awake and not having any windows so you don’t realize how long you’ve been in there (plus the easy booze to loosen the purse strings).

Nothing’s gonna change until we can hold these companies responsible for their actions. Ironically, I think review bombing on Steam actually helps since it can make people aware of the exploitative practices these companies are doing and make them avoid these games.

Except the big money isn’t coming from the whales. It’s coming from the gamer equivalent of the little old lady at the casino with her bucket of quarters.

So the answer is neither.

Whales are largely a myth created by game companies to create a false class war amongst us rather than holding the truly responsible parties at fault. No different than pitting the middle class against the poor.

Do whales exist? Absolutely. However, the vast majority of mtx money comes from people with addiction problems, mental health issues that make fiscal responsibility difficult, and kids who don’t know any better. Many of whom who are spending money that they can’t afford to spend but can’t help themselves from spending.

These companies quite literally hire psychologists to tell them exactly how to exploit people’s own brain chemistry against them to most effectively extract money from their wallets. Epic Games got in trouble because it was believed that they were trying to create a culture in Fornite that shamed kids for having default skins. Everything from daily login bonuses to seasons and battle passes to rotating stores are designed to keep you logging in and playing and therefore paying. They turn logging in into a habit and then hit you with the FOMO and completing your collection needs.

You’re not going to fix this by shaming people any more than you can cure drug, alcohol, and gambling addiction by shaming people.

To remove any residual feces or salmonella that might still be on the shell.

Huh, TIL. I’d always heard that you need to wash eggs before using them.

There are pre-rinsed eggs in the US? I know our rice comes pre-washed, but I’ve never heard of pre-washed eggs.

But how does the little spoon factor into all this? Is it being stepped on by the “big foot” like a Lego, or are there other factors at play?

3-player main campaign plus a 3-player co-op operations mode that will start out as a side story happening simultaneously to the main campaign that they’re going to add more content to going forward.

It sounds like they’re specifically catering content towards me.

Yeah, I had to zoom in to read it.

Were/was

What’s the saying? Something like, “There’s plenty of fools in the game, and there’s a new one born every minute.”

I feel like the casual mobile gaming crowd falls into the same category. Regardless of how old they are, spending money on mtx is normal because they never knew a world where you just bought a game rather than downloading one onto your phone and putting up with both ads and mtx.

It’s like how words like “unalive” have entered common usage - people have gotten so used to obeying what advertisers want on the internet that it’s started dictating daily life, especially for younger people.

The unregulated gambling aspect designed to exploit human psychology to target vulnerable people to spend money that they probably can’t afford to spend is also a huge issue, but that at least would be easy enough to regulate, if politicians cared enough to do something about it.

There’s a big flaw in your logic.

The biggest portion of people buying this stuff aren’t “gamers” in the way that it’s often used around these circles. It’s the millions of people who buy coins for their Bejeweled clone of choice and have never owned a console in their life. And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world. I remember a Twitch streamer talking about how heartbreaking it was when AC6 came out and gave you the full color wheel plus multiple channels to customize your mech, and their chat was full of kids shocked that you didn’t have to buy skins or color packs. That’s how it used to be. You’d unlock skins by playing the game, not buying them in the store, but that hasn’t been the case in decades now.

And the often touted story of the whale with more money than sense is a myth. Do they exist? Sure. But the vast majority of money coming from mtx from gamers is from people who are psychologically vulnerable to addiction/gambling and people with a poor ability to comprehend finances like kids. These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way. From lootboxes to battle passes and seasonal content to daily quests and washing money through funny money currencies, it’s all been designed to prey upon people with addiction issues, ADHD, training young kids into gambling addicts, etc. It’s the Lotto tickets and pumping extra oxygen into the air of casinos and making sure there’s no natural light in there so you don’t realize how long you’ve been playing slots of the gaming world. Look at WoW, with its daily quests. They train players using Skinner Box techniques to continue logging into the game and paying the monthly subscription long after they’ve stopped enjoying it because it’s become a habit and they are afraid of falling behind.

Voting with your wallet isn’t going to fix it. You’ll never get your average Facebook mom to care enough not to buy Farmville tokens or whatever, and these companies will never stop abusing psychology on their own. Only industry regulation will stop this.