Belgium declares loot boxes gambling and therefore illegal - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-declares-loot-boxes-gambling-and-therefore-illegal <comment><USER2> Netherlands is close to drawing similar conclusions.

And it makes sense. You can buy, using real money, a virtual ticket for a virtual item. Then that virtual item can in turn often be sold to others for real money. In other words, players can participate by gambling real money in return for less or more real money.

In short, it is gambling. Not all countries make gambling illegal, but those who do, should treat loot boxes the same. And virtually all countries make gambling illegal for minors, and there's currently no working mechanism in play for 15 year olds not to be able to play these games.

Currently in the Netherlands it's required for the proceeds of loot boxes to be tradeable in the real world, giving them economic value, for it to be considered gambling. If it's purely virtual, it's not gambling but just part of the game. (you can question this of course.) The problem is that it didn't matter for the Dutch government whether the items were traded on external platforms (which are often in violation of the games EULA itself), or on a platform of the game itself.

What would help stay legit is for the games to prevent loot box items from being traded between characters at all.

Here's the weird thing though. My entire childhood was filled with opaque plastic packs of cards, pokemon cards, football cards etc. You didn't know which 5 cards were in there. The cards were semi-randomly distributed in the packs in the factory, just like these loot boxes are semi-randomly generated by an algorithm. And you'd pay, not knowing what you'd get. And indeed, sometimes you paid $10 for a pack with a rare pokemon you could sell for $100. That was gambling too under this definition.

<comment><USER3> > _" Here's the weird thing though. My entire childhood was filled with opaque > plastic packs of cards, pokemon cards, football cards etc. You didn't know > which 5 cards were in there. The cards were semi-randomly distributed in the > packs in the factory, just like these loot boxes are semi-randomly generated > by an algorithm. And you'd pay, not knowing what you'd get. And indeed, > sometimes you paid $10 for a pack with a rare pokemon you could sell for > $100. That was gambling too under this definition."_

Is that so weird? I came to the conclusion that industry was gambling when I was a kid. I saw my friends spend their allowance on those packs of cards, open them up, then become disappointed because they only received "trash". Yet again and again they'd do it. It seemed totally irrational to me.

<comment><USER4> After my first 6 packets of trash I started printing copies of them and reselling them for 40¢ each (50¢ for more rare ones) making a little fortune (3€ a day).

It lasted a week before other parents were incredibly annoyed by this. Aaaaand they kept paying a lot of euros to buy real ones.

:shrug:

<comment><USER5> Copyright infringement: every parent's worst nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The entire mobile app store economy needs major regulation. The platform operators have shown they are willing to allow hugely profitable apps whose business models prey on gambling tendencies in children and they will look the other way, while bragging about their curation of their stores in some cases. It's shameful hypocrisy.

The entire industry knows this is going on. Parents have complained for years, but nothing's changed.

<comment><USER7> So if we assume gambling should be regulated, and that pay-to-play loot boxes are gambling...

Why haven't the licensed gambling venues (casinos, lotto, and what have you) pressured the regulators to stop the unlicensed gambling? Or have they and I'm not aware / the regulator is dragging its feet?

Do the licensed gambling entities not perceive this as a threat? Or has gambling revenue increase overall because these games / apps basically groom young people in to being habitual gamblers as they age?

<comment><USER8> I bet it's somehow not on their radar. Because they have done this in the past. They shut down online poker in the US in 2011 by paying off a couple Senators to attach the ban into a Port Security act, which most legislators didn't want to not pass as they don't want to appear weak on security (also they probably didn't read the whole act).

My Dad's a great poker player and his secondary source of income vanished overnight. He still complains about it.

[https://medium.com/@bostonirishblog/the-simple-science- behin...](https://medium.com/@bostonirishblog/the-simple-science-behind- senator-bill-frist-torpedoing-internet-poker-and-gambling-fd55d3ae21cd)

<comment><USER9> I'm still annoyed. It really clamped down on the culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I mostly agree with the idea. Many F2P apps prey on people and something should be done.

That said I'm curious what happened and why these things are so addictive. As a kid I collected Wacky Packages. They were parody stickers that came in a pack of like 3 or 5 with a stick of gum just like Baseball Cards. While I probably owned 150 stickers or so I would never have considered myself addicted nor my friends. We were into them for a couple of months, probably spent no more than $20 total each.

Compare to my nephew who was into Pokemon Cards and spent hundreds of dollars. Of course I new a few kids that seriously into baseball cards but they were the exception. With Pokemon cards it seemed much much better. Also before that a large percentage of my adult friend spent hundreds on Magic the Gathering cards. Some spent thousands.

Now we have IAP in apps and some people are spending like crazy.

What happened? What made Magic the Gathering and Pokemon so big compared to Baseball Cards? What made IAP so big? I can only guess 2 things about IAP. One that it's super each to buy being connected directly to your account. Two that being a video game they can more easily use psychological techniques to manipulate people. That might explain the IAP issues. Not sure it explains Pokemon + Magic the Gathering vs Baseball Cards.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER11> I think it's just people have more money to gamble.

Baseball cards became a thing because Americans already had too much money. Other countries that got hit by world wars didn't have baseball cards.

New milenium came and now money is more useless than ever and people have much eadier time to gamble it away.

<comment><USER12> Maybe because other countries do not play baseball? (Except japan Canada Cuba and a few other island countries)

<comment><USER13> The UK and Ireland had cards representing Premiership soccer players. You would buy a book in which to collect the cards and the goal was to fill in every player on every team in the league.

The cards were sold in packs of ten or something, and kids used to trade them with each other in the playground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, like, pokemon card packs and lego packs and friends should be illegal too.

There are you tube videos my kids liked to watch of people just literally opening pokemon packs. I'd actually be OK with making this illegal.

Especially considered the frenzied buying and selling of pokemon cards at their school..

This is actually pretty huge. There is a very massive industry both virtual and non that relies on preying on kids and their gambling instinct.

Steam makes a lot of money on Counter Strike via this.

<comment><USER15> I'm all for seeing items with random distribution inside as gambling too. I recall the monetary value of some pokemon cards caused my school to ban them. This didn't really have any effect other than to allow the school to say, "well, they are banned," if there was any fights or thefts relating to them. I think they probably had a net social negative amongst my friends at the time. In fact the only social positive I saw from them was in getting people, who wouldn't otherwise interact, interacting -- which wasn't always a good thing.

But I do see a few tiny differences in general between loot boxes and physical items like trading cards:

1\. the packet does contain physical items which cost money to produce, whereas a duplication of a virtual item is effectively the distribution cost.

2\. Retailers made a profit on physical items too. With virtual items sold by developer-publishers like EA and Valve, it's really just one party.

3\. There is typically no limit on the number of loot boxes you can purchase. With physical items there is the stock of the shop.

4\. Loot boxes can in some cases be purchased with other people's (usually parents) cards by default and without their immediate knowledge.

5\. It isn't routine for somebody to give you a pack of physical tradable items for free to go and feel what they are like. If you go and buy them, there is a small amount of honesty in terms of what you are getting. With loot boxes, you are presented with them through in game events and then provided with the opportunity to buy more.

6\. With physical items, you don't know how things are distributed but you can be reasonably certain that they can't be targeted at you. If you're looking for card X, the shopkeeper usually has no way of knowing what pack contains that and withholding that pack from you to maximise profit. You have no idea how the loot boxes are distributed. It is entirely possible for developers to detect when somebody is "hooked", work out what they are after, and attempt to maximise profit by withholding the desired item.

The only thing that could prevent such abuses is to regulate loot boxes as gambling as several countries have now done and respond with immense penalties where regulations are violated (a multiple of what would be made * estimated chance of being caught or a fraction of published turnover).

<comment><USER16> >If you're looking for card X, the shopkeeper usually has no way of knowing what pack contains that and withholding that pack from you to maximise profit.

Although I believe they do weigh Pokemon booster packs to find the ones with more valuable shiny cards.

<comment><USER17> I actually have a coworker that's very active in the Pokémon community, and there are now countermeasures to make this ineffective. IIRC, there are now variances in the weight of a "code card" inside the pack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't honestly know if lootboxes are gambling or not, but it's time to be honest with the mechanisms behind them, and follow Chinese and Japanese regulations: be transparent and open about the probabilities behind them. Yes, even if it includes pity counters, etc.

Apple has started mandating this: [https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/21/16805392/loot-box-odds- ru...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/21/16805392/loot-box-odds-rules-apple- app-store)

But Steam, Google Play, PlayStation, XBox, and smaller platforms all need to follow suite, very quickly. Or they'll face even harsher legislations around the world.

<comment><USER19> Was your use of the phrase "follow suite" intentional? Because if so, bravo, that's the funniest thing I've read all day :)

<comment><USER18> Classical typo, enhanced by non-native writer skills ;-)

<comment><USER19> Haha! I actually missed the typo altogether. I thought you were intentionally using a phrase originating in gambling ("follow suit") as a joke, given the context.

<comment><USER20> Games in which you follow suit are not generally gambling games.

<comment><USER19> Bridge is the first that springs to mind, and that is most definitely a gambling game.

<comment><USER20> Do you say that because of the bidding mechanism itself, or is there actually a culture of wagering on bridge games? I wasn't aware of that.

<comment><USER19> The latter - although I've read that it's never attracted the kind of money you see in high stakes poker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the one side I am glad that they banned such in-app purchases because sometimes it can get ridiculous on how much people (especially young children without realizing the cost) spend on them but I can't help but feel the irony because many "more legacy" things offer similar system. I remember spending far more then $100 for soccer stickers. You would basically buy a pack of maybe 10 stickers and you didn't know if you needed them or not. There were also stickers that were less common so in the end you ended up with over 300 excess stickers just to complete a book and you ended up doing that every other year for the euro and world championship.

I don't think there is much of a difference and both cases should be more regulated (especially those catering to children who do not know any better).

<comment><USER22> I was thinking exactly this - I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and blind-pack card games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price products where you don't know the contents, with the value of said contents varying massively from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell the contents on secondary markets.

Trading Pokemon cards, I reckon I spent more on booster packs trying to get a Charizard than I've spent on all of the chests, loot boxes and packs in games, for nothing more than a piece of card that (sadly) eventually gets water damaged...

<comment><USER23> > I'm not massively clear on where loot boxes and blind-pack card > games/sticker collectables differ. Both are fixed price products where you > don't know the contents, with the value of said contents varying massively > from the invested cost, along with the ability to trade/sell the contents on > secondary markets.

I'm also not clear how this differs from an MMO where you kill monsters over and over hoping for piece of random loot that can then be virtually sold.

<comment><USER24> Two difference with an MMO are that it needs some sort of skill to kill the beast; and time makes it so you can't just mash a button and max out your credit card.

It's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't - presumably - cost real money every time you try.

<comment><USER25> _It 's exploiting dopamine hits but not as aggressively, and it doesn't - presumably - cost real money every time you try._

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the people in these discussions who gloss over the "pay money to roll the dice" portion of the gambling issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like with much in law things exist in an context. In order to compare physical card packs to loot boxes one has to first figure out the market size of each.

So I took a glance doing a few Google searches and it seems that physical card packs has a global market of a few billions. The number varies a lot since some of the data include card trade as well as pack sells. One data point argued a 450 million from news packs and 3 billions from card trade, specific for sport cards. For loot boxes I would estimate the number to be around 100x of that, give or take. For every $10 in the past there is $1000 dollar being spent on virtual packs.

It seems reasonable to me that a government body might not care too much about a $450 million industry, but do care a lot when it is a $100 billion industry.

<comment><USER27> On which numbers is your 100x estimation based? Or is it just some number you made up.

<comment><USER26> I did say that I took a glance at google search. This is not a academic paper with careful study with tight citations from the last 100 years. If you want that, go and do the work yourself.

Here is a few new random google glances: [https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/28/newzoo-game-industry- grow...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/28/newzoo-game-industry-growing- faster-than-expected-up-10-7-to-116-billion-2017/) $116 billion in total video game market, $50 billion for just the mobile market. How much of that is micro transaction? Don't know. How much is loot boxes. Don't know.

Blizzard reported more than half their revenue, $4 billion, was from micro- transactions. [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard- made-4...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard- made-4-billion-on-microtransac/1100-6456669/)

EA reported similar $2 billion, almost half of their revenue, from micro- transactions. [https://www.tweaktown.com/news/57475/ea- earns-1-68-billion-m...](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/57475/ea- earns-1-68-billion-microtransactions-fy2017/index.html)

According to this random article, loot boxes are around $30 billion this year and expected to reach $50 billions in 4 years. [https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-17-loot- boxes...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-17-loot-boxes-skins- gambling-to-hit-usd50-billion-by-2022-report))

</comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 I understand the idea but what apply to loot boxes may apply to a lot of things.

The first ones are trading cards, including games like "Magic: the Gathering". If you are lucky, you can sell a card you got from a booster pack for way more than what you originally paid. And chances that you can don't even have to leave the shop to do it.

What makes gambling is that you get money for money, not worthless prizes like in the case of most loot boxes. It is an additional risk because there is always hope that you will be able to recover your losses and you may spend more than you can afford. With loot boxes and most other random prizes, it is clear that while you may get something nice, that money will be gone for good.

As for game developers, they don't lack options for Skinner box schemes. Loot boxes are just one among others, there are things like energy systems that are popular on mobile games that don't involve chance but have the same effect of making you spend more money than originally intended.

It is just that loot boxes look more like gambling, even though it isn't really, and are disliked by the majority. The rest is politics.

</comment><comment><USER28> I see other posters saying that it has to do with probabilities and the way they're designed or how you can play a game with the cards etc... and I disagree.

I think what triggered the problem with lootboxes is that the monetary value of the items is immediately obvious and you can trade those items without any friction over the internet at any moment. For many games an item is just equivalent to some amount of money. It's not a good, it's casino tokens that you can exchange for real money at the counter. Selling cards, especially before the internet, was way more complicated and most 12yo at the time probably wouldn't bother unless they were extremely lucky and managed to acquire a very expensive card "charlie and the chocolate factory" style. Cards have pretty limited liquidity, unlike digital goods that can be traded quickly and safely across continents in an instant.

I don't play a ton of games featuring random item drops but if I look at my Steam inventory for instance I can get the immediate value at which any item is trading (including loot boxes and their keys, but also skins, cards, emoticons, profile backgrounds...). Valve itself plays into this by tracking the price and making it easily available to anybody. You can directly, from Steam, trade these items for money (well, money locked into your Steam account, but money nonetheless).

On the other hand when I was a teen and played Magic: The Gattering most of the time I had no idea of the value of an individual card and checking it would have involved buying specialized magazines (the internet was only in its infancy at the time). We traded cards only for other cards and based mostly on our own subjective assessment of their relative values and how they fit into our decks (or even if the drawing looked cool), not based on some global card exchange with real-time trading.

On top of this there are a huge number of 3rd party "casino" sites for these in-game items who add another layer of gambling on top of the lootbox concept. Those websites don't hesitate to pay Twitch streamers to "play" on their site, sometimes even tweaking the odds to make them win more than average to make it even more enticing for the (often very young) watchers. It's scummy as hell and while Valve & friend don't directly partake in this they very clearly enable this behavior with their policies (and they APIs).

I could see the point of somebody arguing that MtG and Pokemon are gambling but these video game economies are on a whole other level.

<comment><USER8> > Those websites don't hesitate to pay Twitch streamers to "play" on their > site, sometimes even tweaking the odds to make them win more than average to > make it even more enticing for the (often very young) watchers.

I doubt it was only sometimes. I bet it was pretty much every time. A few have actually been caught red-handed doing just that.

<comment><USER29> It goes even deeper than that - some of the twitchers/youtubers were caught _owning_ those gambling websites, and claiming no affiliation with them in their videos.

<comment><USER30> They got caught, prosecuted, and went right back to making money from said sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Serious question; why isn't Magic the Gathering illegal? Don't booster packs perform the same function.

<comment><USER32> At the time it was considered, but the randomness in the packs was considered a 'sales tactic', not gambling. (I'm not sure wether Carta Mundi, the printer for a.o Magic the Gathering being a Belgian company had anything to do with it). Loot boxes otoh are compared to slot machines.

I know it sounds 'illogical', as they both at first glance seem alike, but there are aspects of difference to consider. Loot boxes are generally packaged with 'addiction triggering' opening ceremonies. Furthermore, the probabilities are not publishes (afaik they are for trading card games), and the digital platform also enables for far more ingenious addiction/purchase/retention inducing psychological gaming than physical card packs.

<comment><USER33> > addiction triggering

Sorry, but virtual flames shooting out of a box and a "here, you lost" screen doesn't exactly stimulate a dopamine response.

<comment><USER32> from [https://www.pcgamer.com/behind-the-addictive-psychology- and-...](https://www.pcgamer.com/behind-the-addictive-psychology-and- seductive-art-of-loot-boxes/)

Overwatch's loot box is a masterpiece of audio-visual design. "It's all about building the anticipation. When the box is there you're excited at the possibilities of what could be inside," says senior game designer Jeremy Craig. Click the 'Open loot box' button and the box bursts open, sending four disks into the sky. Their rarity is indicated by coloured streaks to further build the suspense. "Seeing purple or gold you start to think about what specific legendary or epic you've unlocked. This all happens so fast, but it was those discrete steps that we felt maximized excitement and anticipation."

<comment><USER33> Nothing about that sounds substantially addiction producing. Just flashy and designed, like anything else in a video game. Is there a proper study on that being a substantial addiction causing effect compared to card games and such? I've seen people lose ridiculous amounts on completely boring gambling games like SatoshiDice where all they do is push send. The fact that you get the random outcome seems much more likely to be the primary culprit than any flash effects around it.

I get the impression people saying that are just making excuses because they don't like loot boxes as a business model for games. Would you be accepting of it if they replaced it in the game with a simple click and get the result system?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd find it fair for these games to be classified only for adults.

As for adults however, my philosophy is that we should stop treating them as kids that need to be told what they are and aren't allowed to do. Loot boxes are addictive? So is sugar, alcohol, sex and 1000 other things. Do we want to go down that road?

If someone wants to gamble a percentage of his income, that should be his choice. If he wants to gamble away all his money or even put himself into debt, also his choice.

<comment><USER35> Belgium has declared loot boxes are illegal because they violate Belgian gambling laws, not because all gambling is outlawed there. They could be implemented in ways that don't, and people would be able to spend their money on them again. Your suggestion that 'these games to be classified only for adults' is _exactly_ what the gambling law says is necessary.

<comment><USER34> Requiring you to get a gambling license is a bit different than just requiring your games to be classed as adult-only.

For starters there are limits to how many gambling licenses are available from the government each year and companies have to apply and pay for them.

But my comment was mostly targeted to several other comments here that seemed over-eager to accept something should be rendered illegal simply because it's addictive and some people can't control themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So where does this leave sticker albums (Panini, etc) or any other collectable that does not serve what is seen as a generally practical purpose in the World? (don't think that digital vs. physical should play a part in this)

In gambling you are mostly doing it for a clear financial gain: you play for money/fiat. Loot boxes, sticker albums, and so on, the primary purpose is not a financial gain. That is a byproduct and secondary, which some elect to make it their primary purpose for engaging in it.

IMO this is a symptom of people not being able to manage their finances properly and identify potentially destructive behaviours. This would push the solution for the problem to Education, how schools should help people in learning the skills necessary to both manage their money and notice when a certain behaviour they are about to engage in, or repeat one too many times, will produce a generally negative outcome for their mental and financial health.

And no, I'm not a fan of loot boxes. Never bought one and think they are mostly used by the publishers in a very bad, and silly, way.

</comment><comment><USER37> Not sure when chance is considered gambling, I presume artificial chance?

Does that include bitcin mining, the probability that your facebook post is visible for your friends, the probability that an advertisement is shown to a specific user, is sortition illegal?

<comment><USER38> I assume that their definition of gambling also requires a payment to be sent to some party who is offering the probabilistic reward. I doubt that bitcoin mining and Facebook posting would qualify.

<comment><USER39> The gambling commission which made this report/recommendation apparently uses four criteria:

(1) It's a game /* hello, Wittgenstein */

(2) There's a (financial) stake

(3) The player can win or lose (i.e. they're not guaranteed a specific return)

(4) An element of chance is involved

<comment><USER40> > It's a game /* hello, Wittgenstein */

This element is generally included more to avoid accidentally outlawing insurance and financial securities than out of an idea that fun is inherently evil.

Which is to say, they don't care if something IS a game; they care that it ISN'T something they consider productive.

<comment><USER39> Oh I understand why that's there, it's just another amusing instance of "I'll know it when I see it" [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

<comment><USER37> yes it is another instance of ad hoc after the fact "I know it when I see it".

Since the problem does not affect me specifically (not a child nor a gamer, nor a parent of such a person) I can see why this seems ammusing in the sense that we see lawmmakers drown in their own rules again, even though I don't think it is amusing in general.

In fact it bothers me, because I am very much against "void for vagueness" rules, while in this case it is very hard for me to formalize a general prinicple differentiating good and bad (although I consider a lot of the insurance stuff nonsense tbh...).

If I had to formalize a principle, I think it would start from informed consent: i.e. a lottery ticket should define exactly the probability of each possible return scenario, and also the expectation value of the return. And then in order to legally buy lottery tickets you would need a non-expired certificate that proves you understand expectation value, where the certificate is issued after passing some automated exam say at the city hall. Just passing it once should not suffice to gamble the rest of your life after forgetting how expectation values work.

In this way children, or uneducated adults, or elderly with dementia are prevented from gambling unless they "regularly" prove to society that they understand what an expectation value of return of 50% means (if you buy $1000 worth of lottery tickets with 50% expectation value, on average you get $500 dollar back, and that is already taking into account the cases you win the top prize), and how to calculate this in general...

All the places where the tickets get sold would have to be mystery-shopper checked by the government so that if a place sells a ticket to a person without the valid certified status, they get a big fine.

If the same was done for insurance etc, then at least the consumer can be said to have given informed consent to the transaction. But don't get surprised if suddenly a large part of the population stops different kinds of insurance, or at least systematically en masse switch to whoever has the best offer, putting pressure in order to get democratic pricing of insurance etc...

Not just licenses for the gambling houses, but also for the gamblers, like driver licenses...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've never heard about loot boxes before. But I wonder: how is this any different from "Kinder Surprise" (a chocolate egg with a small surprise toy inside that you can buy in supermarkets)?

<comment><USER42> A key difference would be that the little plastic toys are all nominally the same value. A much closer physical equivalent would be Magic:tG boosters, where the different play values arguably create value differentials. But even they contained a defined mix of different rarity classes, probably to fend off anti gambling laws. And with M:tG boosters, at least you knew the dice were pre-rolled so you could absolutely trust the cards to not be individually stacked against you. Online gaming loot boxes on the other hand can have all kinds of dark patterns hidden in supposedly random distributions that are actually manipulative sequences tailored to each player.

(And also, Kinder Surprise contain chocolate, which makes them infinitely better than any virtual loot box could ever be, but that's just my personal opinion)

Edit: I was assuming gameplay-relevant loot boxes here, apparently some/all of those under Belgian scrutiny are just cosmetic mods, which brings them much closer to the Kinder Surprise analogy (although strictly speaking, I would not consider cosmetics entirely without gameplay effects in something like CS:GO, relative camouflage qualities of avatars were absolutely a consideration no my day)

<comment><USER43> I don't think Kinder is a good comparison, because the Kinder toys, while they are collectables, largely do not interact with each other. Getting one Kinder toy does not really require you to get the others, the way some of these games hold themed events with limited-time lootbox content.

A better example would be if Barbie, with her thousands and thousands of iterations, completely stopped selling the prepackaged outfits. Instead, you now have to buy a mysterious box, that has one top piece of an outfit, one bottom piece of an outfit, and one accessory. The pieces you get don't necessarily match.

On top of that, there are bigger value packs that give you five random ones of each type, or ten, or a hundred, depending on how much cash you want to spend. And on top of that, let's say that these outfits are impossible to trade.

I basically just described Overwatch lootboxes. The problem is not necessarily the lootboxes, which are fine as an in-game reward earned by completing games or leveling or what have you. The problem is that the only way to purchase more cosmetics is by chance; as a new player, there's no way to get a specific cosmetic guaranteed unless you either grind every waking moment or spend untold amounts of money.

<comment><USER44> Also worse, that Overwatch pack may contain 1 character skin (that you already own) and then 3 relatively worthless things like sprays, gold etc.

At least when buying a pack of cards you know all of them will be cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What about buying card packs in a digital card game like Hearthstone? Does that count as a loot box?

<comment><USER46> I don't think it does, since you can't sell individual Hearthstone cards for money or trade them between accounts. It's still an ethically questionable business model imo, but it's in a somewhat different category than loot boxes (or physical trading cards).

<comment><USER47> but they banned Overwatch lootboxes, a purely cosmetic addition to the game that cannot be resold or traded between accounts and has no impact on gameplay. the legislation seems to just be a knee jerk reaction to something that someone told them is bad, without fully understanding the ecosystem. there are definitely some predatory systems out there, but identifying those wrong from the onset makes me think they aren't fully informed here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you pay fixed price for unknown outcome it should be clasified as gambling/investment and regulated. Odds should be published (if known) or past performance if known, expected value and such. Deviation from any information stated at the moment of sale should nullify the sale and give you your money back. If the company hesitates, funds should be seized immediately and put on hold until people who bought the tickets come for their money.

I have no hard rule about which kinds of gambling/investment should be completely forbidden but all should be scrutinised and some limitations should be imposed. Like a ban on advertising.

App economy is now gambling economy and at some point it will trigger heavy regulations.

<comment><USER48> How do you foresee this working with insurance policies?

<comment><USER49> Insurance != Gambling. You will not get more out than you lose. It will only make you whole.

You may get more money out than you put in, but they are compensating you for a loss. You are paying for risk mitigation, not potential profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Isn't this mostly about targeting in-app purchases that offer random awards?

<comment><USER51> It is

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The thing we didn't realise / understand when countries outlawed or restricted gambling is that gambling isn't about the tangible reward per se.

Psychologically some humans receive a very powerful reward sensation specifically for gambles that pay off. It doesn't matter what the "reward" is so much as that they gambled and won, they get their buzz if they win a slice of cake for guessing how many puppies the secretary's greyhound would have, for a $50 win on the scratch-offs, or for finding the rare Pink Darth Vader in the loot box.

This compulsion is very powerful, and when harnessed it can be good for society - ordinary people do not try to fly faster than the speed of sound for the first time - and it can take individuals to the height of high-risk activities most of us wouldn't have the nerve to try, all the very good Poker players are gamblers for example. But it's also potentially catastrophic for the individual, because they can't stop - or at least they don't want to, and gambles never pay off forever.

This means that restricting gambling for money only worked because that was the most harmful practice available that triggered off this harmful pattern. Once video games began to rely on it too, offering $10 "loot boxes", there was a new way for problem gamblers to destroy their lives, even when you can't "cash out" your winnings, because the psychological compulsion doesn't care about that.

</comment><comment><USER53> What about Kinder Surprise? Are they going to make it illegal?

<comment><USER54> Is there anything of value in a Kinder Surprise? In my experience it's always been a tiny plastic toy with no (even perceived) monetary value. I think the point is to ban things where people are paying money for random items in the hopes that those random items are worth lots of money so they can resell them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Loot boxes which have actually different values should be illegal, but the loot boxes in overwatch don't. They don't change the gameplay of the game at all, having a legendary skin just makes you look cooler and doesn't change your abilities or damage. It also isn't possible to sell/trade the skins, so they don't have any inherent value.

That being said, what about card packs in games like hearthstone? The cards can't be traded or sold, but they do change the gameplay and some cards are inherently stronger than others so gambling and getting "lucky" can give players an advantage. This is definitely closer to gambling than loot boxes in overwatch.

Opening 20 loot boxes in overwatch and getting no legendary skins feels bad but isn't frustrating, you don't need the skins. But opening 20 card packs for a new hearthstone expansion and getting none of the strong legendary cards feels super frustrating, you're at a disadvantage to players that did open those cards.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's important to note that there's a distinct difference between virtual and physical loot box systems. I've seen collecting MtG cards turn into quite considerable theft, but virtual systems are worse, because

* there's no physical item involved

* the distribution in virtual systems can be changed to the customer's disadvantage

When a kid buys 30 card packs in a store, people notice. Also, holding 30 packs in your hands is very different from opening 30 virtual loot boxes, because the packs and contents don't just disappear into some virtual table.

And then, you can be sure that the distribution of cards has been decided before the packs have been put in the store and not changed on the fly to prey on the customer's addiction and make them buy even more.

Physical loot box systems are still addictive and borderline gambling, but the limits are much more defined.

</comment><comment><USER32> For those that can read Dutch: Google turned up a copy of a study they did November last year on the issue. Note that this is not the report in which they looked at the four titles in depth, but a broader study looking into 'social gaming', 'Loot boxes', 'Skin gambling' and 'eSports betting' [https://ds1.static.rtbf.be/uploader/pdf/d/d/b/rtbfinfo_5c742...](https://ds1.static.rtbf.be/uploader/pdf/d/d/b/rtbfinfo_5c742f9b8996afe274e39ad9b4acb453.pdf) [pdf]

</comment><comment><USER57> I have goggles around a bit but I don't quite get it - what is a loot box, and what are they doing in what i would consider "safe for my kids" games like FIFA and Starwars ?

<comment><USER58> Look up battlefront 2 for a good explanation. Generally a loot box may be "dropped" as a reward during play, just as games have long given gear or in- game currency. But in this case the loot boxes (which contain gear, in-game currency, or other in-game items of value such as skill ups) cannot be opened without something extra. That something extra is available for a real money fee. In some games the boxes are just bought and open when bought (perhaps the only way to get them), in others you can also open them with time (always slower that your rate of acquisition) or perhaps you can get keys to open them as random drops (always at a lower rate than box acquisition). End result is that in addition to any price you paid for the game itself you can pay to open these which each have a chance to be "worth it", but usually arent.

A few common objections:

Pay-to-win: for those that are focused on skill and competition it sucks to be beaten and taunted by those that beat you because they paid extra to essentially make the game easier.

Balance: many games build their progression curve under the assumption that your stats are improving at a rate that can only be achieved by buying boxes, so the game may be fun but new content frustratingly out of reach unless you pay up.

And in both cases, if you decide to pay up...you probably don't get what you need because of the random and unbalanced design. So you pay again. And again. It is designed to hammer dopamine triggers, so you get just enough of happy payoffs to not stop, but not enough of a payoff to stop either.

Some are fine with the model but object to it hitting children who may not be able to recognize the cost/benefit balance.

Me? I'm glad to see it discouraged as gambling because it is just not fun for the base game. Skill or even just time invested in playing is replaced not only by money, but an unknown amount of money. This distorts game options - think of how many mobile games are time gated constantly with the option to buy stuff (gems, coins, etc) that will let you skip the waiting. Absent the profit, who would make a game where you can play for a few minutes and then have to wait hours to play again? But we fall for it. Or if we don't, we just don't get to play at all.

That's my beef with the "no one makes you play" argument. If i don't play, I'm the one that loses out. If the abuse human weaknesses and make bank (and they do! Unbelievably so), there are no equivalent competing products.

But short story long, that's what loot boxes are and why people object. They aren't a new concept, but they are so successful and profitable that each wave is more extreme.

<comment><USER57> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Now the issue is whether or not many F2P titles can find some form of monetization that satisfies the increasing regulation, or if they will just shutter the Eu market entirely. Apparently Jagex is shuttering the EU runescape servers because of the GDPR, but this is going to make it even more difficult for surviving games to monetize.

I have the feeling europeans are going to wake up one day and find the end result of all this legislation is to make a market very unfriendly to exist in.

</comment><comment><USER60> Now I am curious if a method used by Wargaming Inc will get a pass and be adopted elsewhere. Their "boxes" always return a reward of equal or higher value than what the box cost. The key is that the publisher defines the value.

So in WGs case what dollar amount the assign to a reward may not be what players perceive as correct. However they were not one of the companies investigated.

</comment><comment><USER61> Threads on these kinds of posts (both here and on other websites) always result in large number of "but what about <other thing>, why isn't that gambling too?" It always just seems like an attempt at a gotcha and not a genuine point of discussion.

</comment><comment><USER62> "A loot box is a consumable virtual item which can be redeemed to receive a randomised selection of further virtual items."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box)

</comment><comment><USER63> I think the biggest issue here isn't the money spent on loot boxes but how variable rewards are addicting and can change children's minds about how they percieve value in the world more generally.

</comment><comment><USER64> Are toys in cereal boxes gambling? Are fortune cookies gambling? Are mystery flavor candy gambling?

I find this a mind boggling decision

Disclaimer: I don't know jack shit about Belgian legislature history

<comment><USER65> It is unfortunate that you have been down-voted. It seems that thinking is a luxury these days. Prohibition supposedly works even though a pile of empirical evidence suggests otherwise, and the Government supposedly has good intentions. All they have to do is claim it's (whatever the heck they want) for the safety of you, your kids, and vulnerable people, and they can do virtually anything. They are doing just exactly that. It's OK though, in this case they give you the illusion of safety at the cost of other people without said other people even realizing it, and you can shift the blame: you no longer have to admit to yourself that you are a horrible parent and keep continuing the terrible parenting.

I wonder if the same people who have down-voted you and I also spoke out against Facebook and its anti-privacy issues.

EDIT: my friend just bought a bag of chips assuming it will taste good but it really doesn't. I guess if he's not allowed to taste it before buying, then it's gambling! Did you know that eating chips could contribute to numerous health and financial issues? Ban chips effective immediately! Think about the children!

:)

<comment><USER66> > Did you know that eating chips could contribute to numerous health and > financial issues? Ban chips effective immediately!

Not sure about wherever you are from, but in Europe there is an expectation that food you can buy in stores is reasonably safe (milk is pasteurized, etc). It wouldn't be much of a stretch to regulate unhealthy ingredients. In fact, they do regulate stuff like this, it just takes time, see trans-fats.

<comment><USER65> Not the point. The point is that it's not banned merely because it _could contribute_ to health and financial issues. According to many people here, it should. I'm merely mocking their idiocy to prove a point, hence why my karma went from 20 to 4 within hours.

I'll let you in on a little secret: regulations and expectations don't always reflect reality, and in many cases you'd be surprised what's in your food and how your food has been handled. Ignorance is bliss, and thinking that regulations and expectations have significant effects are naive to say the least. Let me ask you, and any further down-voter, do you live under a rock?

Albeit it's about pollution, it's still worth reading: [https://mises.org/library/libertarian-manifesto- pollution](https://mises.org/library/libertarian-manifesto-pollution)

Regulate the amount of calories people can consume to prevent or treat obesity! Enforce it! Don't ever stop!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What are loot boxes?

<comment><USER7> Those things in (computer) games which, when opened, offer up a random item or items.

<comment><USER24> Random? Are you sure, presumably the algorithm for choosing the item can be anything the dev wants - for example hold back rare items for people more willing to spend to get them. They want to reward you just enough, no more, so as to get the maximum money out of you.

Even if they say it's random and "X chance" who's auditing the code to check.

<comment><USER68> Which kinda is the point, gambling is highly regulated (and highly taxed). The code is required to be audited by state gambling authorities and meet a certain criteria.

Basically, the argument is they are running a gambling operation without meeting the gambling regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Maybe next Belgian legislators will declare the stock market gambling and therefore illegal.

</comment><comment><USER70> Loot boxes are a great way to get teenagers to gamble away all of their money.

</comment><comment><USER71> Great stuff, let them get back to game mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER72> Why not simply regulate it like gambling, instead of outright banning?

Are cosmetic item lootboxes affected too, and if so, why, if they're completely optional and offer no advantage? Are "lootboxes" that can be purchased with in-game resources affected as well, even when the game offers no option to purchase them for real money?

<comment><USER73> I guess gambling is illegal in Belgium.

<comment><USER39> It's illegal, but legal if licensed (quantum physics has nothing on legal systems) or on a temporary basis and small scale (town fairs, hobby club raffles, etc.). The main issue is that the games allow (and target) minors to play, which is never allowed, and that they do not provide any measures to protect players against themselves (such as maximum gambling limits).</comment></comment></comment>


The Thatcher years in statistics - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22070491

<comment><USER2> I didn't realize showing a graph was "statistics". I just see reporting on facts that include numbers.

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics>:

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data.[1][2] It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. [....] Scope

Much of statistics is non-mathematical: ensuring that data collection is undertaken in a way that produces valid conclusions; coding and archiving data so that information is retained and made useful for international comparisons of official statistics; reporting of results and summarised data (tables and graphs) in ways comprehensible to those who must use them;</comment></comment>


Launch48 hackathon in Sydney - <AUTHOR> http://sydney.launch48.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it common for hackathons to charge $120 for participants? I always thought the costs were covered by sponsors.</comment>


What Is the Chinese Economic Model? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/what-is-china/

<comment><USER2> After working (in tech, not as an english teacher) and living in China for several years this is pretty much on the mark.

The deck is stacked against foreign companies. If they get large enough their business will be manipulated to fail in the favour of a home grown competitor. There is no effective rule of law and most foreign companies are seen as resources to strip and discard when their utility has ended.

(I had posted a more detailed comment along these lines in the Google thread here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1050829> )

China also has a looming demographic timebomb that will tear the country apart. This year was the peak of the working age percent of the workforce. From now on the ratio of working age adults will only decline (thanks to the single child policy). China isn't wealthy enough to support all those non- working people.

The world needs to start being more forceful with China. We don't want their model to succeed. Trust me, you don't want to live in that world.

<comment><USER3> Western IT and Internet companies find themselves being marginalized and having their intellectual property copied. There exists quite a bit of local innovation in applying tech to China as much applied tech requires different workflow models, so not everything that is copied can be applied directly with success.

Many consumer product companies: Coke, P&G, Nike, etc.. have done well. How their revenue breaks down to sharing with local partners and how much gets back to the international public entity is unknown to me.

The article makes some good points, but still tries to label the gov as "Communist China". The author makes a good case for educating Westerners that China isn't what you think it is. We need more of this kind of talk. But reusing the old label of "Communist China" misses the mark. I don't know what a better label would be.

I agree with much of what you have said. The deck is stacked against many types of foreign companies. It is well past time for these entities to start publicly acknowledging this.

All that said, I cannot agree with everything the author has said. His 9 points listed under "What is the Chinese Economic Model" are well identified (the bold bullet text itself). But his rational in each of the associated paragraphs is one-sided. He seems to fully support Western economic models without acknowledging their flaws and culpability in our engagements with China. Stolen IP? Slave labor? Western government and business knew this full well when we got started and we did it anyway because we reaped short-term value from doing so. We helped fuel this fire. We allowed the Yuan to be a fixed/manipulated currency and knew full well why China was doing it and what would happen after they amassed enough wealth. These "playbooks" have always been completely open. We may not be able to directly influence China, but we can directly influence the Western leaders we elect and the Western companies we buy goods and services from.

If you need to understand the mindset of the typical Chinese government official, I will offer this: Many of them are living a "good life" and those that support their governance are living good lives. They do not want economic growth to collapse and do not see communist-era economic methods as appropriate tools. They kept the structure of governance but replaced the tools. But even though the structure of governance has remained very similar, the number and variety of participants has changed considerably. Unlike most U.S. leaders and citizens, most Chinese have experienced great suffering. There is support by mainstream Chinese for much of the current heavy handed behavior and as such the government will continue to use such tools they feel are useful in hedging against various forms of collapse. Its critical to understand much of this is not big gov oppressing its people as the majority of Chinese approve of hedging against extreme failure at most all cost. Will this approach even out over a reasonable period of time? Will it avoid more severe outcomes? I have no idea. I do know if things get bad enough that it effects the security of Western countries, then its already extremely bad for the Chinese.

<comment><USER4> The label "Communist China" is exactly the right label though. The Government of china is unashamedly communist and have no intention of ever changing. Maybe the reason you can't come up with a better label is because there isn't one.

<comment><USER3> Then enlighten us.

What is the structure of the Chinese government? National, Provencal, City? How are their leaders elected? Are there term limits? Does no one get to vote? If not, who determines the leadership?

How do laws get made in China (National, Provencal, City)? What are the rights of those accused of a crime? How does Judicial Process work? In general, are laws "common" or "codified"?

Is the military in control? Is the military allowed to take action within the country to keep order? Or is this the domain of local and/or National Guard as it is in the U.S.? Is China a police state? How so? Do the police not answer to anyone?

Does China have a "constitution"? What if any basic rights does it guarantee its people?

How does China's government (through answering the above) differ from Cuba? Russia?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Chinese model is not new. It's called mercantilism, and this was the predominant economic development model before Adam Smith's free trading capitalist critique of mercantilism. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism>

This is how the United States developed in the past. Alexander Hamilton's economic strategy for the United States followed a similar script. See his _Report on Manufactures_ : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactures>

This report was read by Friedrich List, who then wrote a similar development strategy for the 19th C. German economy. It was this strategy that made the German industrialization so rapid and effective. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List>

There are a number of spectators who have correctly characterized China's model as modern-day mercantilism (even though they disagree on specifics and the appropriate response):

Krugman: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/macroeconomic- ef...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/macroeconomic-effects-of- chinese-mercantilism/)

NRO: [http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett20031105...](http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200311050823.asp)

See also: [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1764172/china_merca...](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1764172/china_mercantilism_and_new_global_economic.html) and [http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/2006/06/mercantilism-w...](http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/2006/06/mercantilism- with-chinese_23.html)

<comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out that some US economic policies count as mercantilism, and many Americans would prefer that the US adopt more mercantilist policies.

The US is far from a proponent of free trade!

<comment><USER5> The U.S. most certainly is a _proponent_ of free trade, even if we aren't the best _practitioner_ of free trade.

As far as I know, only one country ever practiced fully free trade, and that was Great Britain for about thirty years starting in 1846 (after the repeal of the Corn Laws, a feat accomplished in part by David Ricardo, who you might remember came up with the theory of comparative advantage). This time period was more or less the height of the British Empire's power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The list under the subheading "What Is the Chinese Economic Model?" is worth reading. He is overly harsh on some points ("there is perhaps a 30-year supply of poverty-level wage earners happy to make export goods at below global cost") but he is right on the money for others (currency manipulation, stolen IP, etc.)

Note that this came out more than a week before Google made its announcement that it was considering pulling out of China. I think other startups or established companies considering an expansion into China should read this first. There are certainly opportunities, but lots of asterisks too.

<comment><USER8> > at below global cost

The funny thing about cost is that it defines itself.

<comment><USER9> Not when you manipulate your currency and throw aside human rights and environmental restrictions.

The playing field isn't level.

<comment><USER3> The currency manipulation was agreed to by many foreign countries. China could not have done this without WTO and U.S. approval.

There are many human rights problems in China, but it is unfair to say they throw _all_ these issues aside. I known many Han Chinese that openly support Tibetan culture and wish to see it preserved.

Environment damage has been a calculated cost and there are many in China that push against it trying to say its time to pull back. A few years ago, I was walking up to a subway station in the Shanghai suburbs. There was a group of local college students with a huge banner urging people to protect the environment. They were asking people to sign the banner. I stopped and said hello and signed. The students were thrilled to have a foreigner sign, but the banner already had hundreds of local Chinese signatures on it. There were no police harassing them and the students seemed at ease in their public protest.

Sure, the playing field is not level. This is by design and China is fairly transparent about the mechanisms they will use to protect or lock in economic growth.

Look at a different trading partner with the U.S.; take a look at Mexico. NAFTA was promoted as a "trade highway" to U.S. voters. Most would take that to imply the highway goes in both directions. But if you have done business in Mexico or travelled there outside the confines of a resort, you'd notice that U.S. goods do not move into Mexico as freely as Mexican goods move out. In English, we always distinguish something that is "one-way" by being sure to say so. But, I never heard a U.S. politician talk about the one-directional nature of NAFTA. I think much of our problem with China is that most simply don't know what the real deal is and some of us are just starting to figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "At a time when the world thinks the communist model has been proved obsolete, China remains a communist country. In fact, under the current leader, Hu Jintao, human rights in China have recently suffered and are now in serious decline, according to Amnesty International-USA, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, and others."

I take two related issues with this statement:

1) He says "in fact... human rights have recently suffered" as if it demonstrates that China remains a communist country. Certainly attempts at communist societies and human rights violations are correlated in recent history, but human rights violations are not evidence of communism.

2) China is not communist, it is Communist - that is, run by a political party which has the name Communist in it. People use the phrase "communist China" as slur. I believe this perpetuates the notion that China is actually communist among a non-trivial portion of the American population. It would be better to call attention to China's authoritarianism, which I think is what he's taking issue with.

<comment><USER2> While China is certainly not communist in the literal sense do not underestimate the extent that the Communist party and its ideals pervade society.

However I do agree that China is better referred to as an Authoritarian government with communist and capitalist influences.

Also, we should all not underestimate how revolutionary the Chinese can be. They have a short fuse and do not in general enjoy the authoritarian regime. They put up with it for strictly pragmatic reasons, if given a path of _their own choosing_ that they perceive as better they quite possibly will take it.

<comment><USER11> Imagine saying "Capitalist America". How accurate is that? Not very :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        When one of Australia's top mining firms, Rio Tinto,
        refused to allow China's Chinalco to double its ownership
        interest last year (to 18%), China arrested local CEO
        (and Australian citizen) Stern Hu and three managers,
        who  remain in jail today, under espionage charges.
        China denies any connection. ... In politics, thought,
        and business, China remains a police state.

No. I'd support the conclusion, but the evidence presentation here is shabby.

The event that immediately preceded the Rio executive being arrested was the closing of contract negotiations for a yearly contract on iron ore shipments [1]. The rejected Chinalco acquisition mentioned in the quoted section was only a month before, but evidence for link of causality between that and the arrests is weaker than between the price negotiations and the arrests.

Other motivations need to be weighed up as well:

* At the time the arrest happened there were internal riots in China's western provinces (causing their leader to abort one of those G meetings and fly back to China). There's nothing like stirring up trouble against foreign devils as a mechanism to distract your people away from internal strife.

* The snubbing given to the Australian foreign office also suggests a political aspect. Did the Rudd government imply that it could cause things to happen that it could not deliver? Or did it hamper the process? Or are China just being big-girl's-blouse because they can? [2]

In weighing up iron ore issues you need to be aware that China is easily the largest producer [3]. It tends towards bilateral deals on 'strategic' commodities rather than working through global markets like the other major consumers (e.g. oil). This pushes the dynamic of areas affected by those commodities from flexible markets into a zero-sum game.

[1] See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_Group#Arrests_in_Chin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_Group#Arrests_in_China.2C_2009)

[2] "The Chinese seem determined to continue to humiliate Canberra.", [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/beijing-ramps-up-the- hu...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/beijing-ramps-up-the- humiliation/story-0-1225748894393)

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore>

</comment><comment><USER13> While not a prototypical example, "fascist" describes China's economic system from the 70s forward better than "communist". Fascist systems seem to tolerate private enterprise better than communist ones, though the government tends to pick winners and losers (and shamelessly back the winners with force, as in the Chinalco example).

Of course, in such a system, the government is _still_ mucking about in the economy, substituting cronyism for market decisions, and trying to dictate profits and define their rate of economic growth just like that state legislature tried to redefine pi. Even Europe and the post-bailout US look like libertarian fantasies of free enterprise and transparency in comparison.

We have nothing to fear from the Chinese Model. Their explosive economic growth has almost certainly been exaggerated, and even if taken at face value, this fascist system still leaves China, aside from a few rich spots, closer to the third world than the first. Companies dealing with China should be aware of what they're getting into - but to put it coldly, they should do so at their own risk, without tariffs or rattled sabers on their behalf when things go wrong.

Tangentially, I'm a little amused that "locovorism" has a better cachet than open "anti-globalism".

</comment><comment><USER14> The degree to which East Asian economies are built to exploit Western liberalism is almost as astonishing as the amount of abuse Western nations will tolerate in pursuit of another quarter's profit.

The Chinese may participate in free trade, but it's a mistake to assume they've become liberals in any sense. When the Chinese learn about free trade, it's in the context of gunboats shelling their cities to protect drug runners, not John Stuart Mill.

</comment><comment><USER15> For those looking for actual economic policy history and statistics, I suggest Barry Naughton's excellent "The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth" [http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Economy-Transitions- Growth/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Economy-Transitions- Growth/dp/0262640643)

It's a textbook, but extremely readable and full of interesting history, as well as modern stats and tables.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm shocked by the amount of anti-China bias on HN.

Consider a few points:

\- The conditions inside US prisons (daily, predictable rape, etc.) rival those in any labor camp anywhere in the world.

\- Many US prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders.

\- Don't forget the human rights abuses in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and the hundreds of thousands of innocents killed in our oil wars.

\- China's main social issue is rich coastal cities and extremely poor inland areas. This geographical accident is behind many economic policies. The US is lucky to have rivers that tend to lead to a far more even distribution of wealth across geographical areas.

\- In its early days the US embraced mercantilism. It has particular political causes and over all countries who practice it lose more than they gain from it, but the tradeof is considered worthwhile for political reasons in spite of its foolishness. In China's case, it represents a way to grow the Chinese economy while not risking social stability (which is considered highly important considering the above bullet).

\- The US was also formerly a thief of intellectual property. Notably, many writers and publishing houses in England were irate that presses in the colonies paid no royalties, etc., a situation made worse after the American revolution.

\- Massive sectors of the US economy are under significant government control, even before the bailouts. It's splitting hairs to bemoan China's "communism".

\- The average person in China does not care about all the political nonsense that we are being propagandized to stew over. Most people all over the world just want to be able to lead a reasonably happy life, etc. China surely has some "backward" aspects, but consider that we did not have women's suffrage in the US until quite recently, and that we had a draft until VERY recently. Suppose China is 100 years behind, is that the end of the world? Do we really deserve to feel such righteous indignation?

<comment><USER2> I would like to clarify that at least personally I'm anti Chinese government and not anti China or the Chinese people. I love the country for many reasons and don't fundamentally wish it harm.

When someone points out something bad about a country it's silly to say they can't say that because there's bad things about their own country. There's bad things about every country, it doesn't make them beyond criticism.

And that sir is why you get my downvote.

<comment><USER16> You make a good distinction, I agree (between government and country).

Also, I think he doesn't deserve that downvote. He contributed his own thoughts, which were in no way rude or trollish, and seemed more or less educated. They also sparked a bit of interesting discussion. Anyway, my upvote balanced it out. ;)

<comment><USER6> Upvote appreciated. I find it sad how readily so many in the US jump on board criticizing foreign governments... it's as if we're all reading some sort of George W. Bush Patriotism manual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One seeming inconsistency that stuck out at me is how he criticizes China's lack of free market behavior - he uses the pegging of the RMB to demonstrate this, which is definitely valid support for his argument - and simultaneously decries the "slave wages" paid to workers.

Claiming the workers are underpaid relative to the USD because of the RMB peg is one thing, but saying that they underpaid relative to their own economy (which is how I interpret "slave wages") is a very different thing. He suggests that the government is the source of these "slave wages". In what way is the government responsible for low wages for uneducated workers when those workers are in competition with many other uneducated workers in a country with a population of ~1.3 billion?

Is it so unreasonable that an "auntie" who cleans houses and does laundry for a living is paid about 1.25 USD / hour (approximately the rate here in Beijing) when a low-level analyst at McKinsey here makes 15,000 USD a year? In relative terms, the manual laborer doesn't seem like she's making slave wages to me.

<comment><USER17> He meant it literally - he said you don't have to pay construction workers for the first 6-12 months of a job, and you could fire them before that time without consequences.

"If you are building a downtown tower in Shanghai (and there are a lot of them, many empty), you may not have to pay some of your workers for six months to a year. Or you fire them just before that: free labor!"

<comment><USER18> Yes, this kind of payment withholding happens to immigrant workers almost always, and to native Chinese workers often.

That's not to mention the children and mentally handicapped that are literally sold into slavery. [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1635144,00.htm...](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1635144,00.html)

<comment><USER2> Almost always? That's a bit of an exaggeration though I don't doubt it does happen. Most Chinese workers do get paid, even the migrant workers. Indeed the laws protecting them are way better than laws in the US, though of course endemic corruption means laws are often ignored. You'd hear about the odd riot here and there where the builders didn't pay in a failed construction project but they'd have a tough time completing a project and not paying anyone. Certainly in any urban area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well that's the scariest thing I've read in a long time. Turns out the image of China as a worthy, powerful opponent destined to greatness is a carefully crafted ruse. There's no doubt about it's power but some of the stuff in the article would make a young Bill Gates blush.

I wonder what would have to happen for America and Europe to stand up and deal with this? What would be worth the conflict and political outcry due to temporarily lowered standard of living?

<comment><USER2> It suits those in power in western governments to paint China as an existential threat to their respective countries. The reality is somewhat more complicated but it will be impressive if China manages to hold itself together over the next 20 years, never mind becoming a superpower which is laughable on examination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> While traveling in China, I realized that nearly everything about the way they do business, produce goods, etc. is far less efficient than in the US. Many activities that would be automated in the US require the interaction of many people; ever bought a train ticket online and had to pay a bike courier in cash to receive it?

If the Chinese let their currency float on the open market, my bet is that China would go from being extremely cheap for Westerners to fairly expensive. They're effectively using currency manipulation to compensate for an uncompetitive internal economic structure. (Hopefully in the long run they will be able to use what is in effect a huge foreign subsidy to fix their problems, but who knows).

<comment><USER2> This in many ways is quite desirable. China has so much excess labour that automation would cause severe problems.

I once worked with a North American automated parking meter company that was ambitious at entering the untapped Chinese market for parking meters. This was doomed since parking is almost always done by a parking attendant, even on the street. Parking is also often controlled by the owner of the block. The attendant is usually someones uncle or whatever that needs a subsistence job.

Another example are elevator attendants who sit on stools (often in private apartment buildings) and press the button for you. They often come with the building and are relatives of the manager or property developer. Absurd, but there you go.

Chinese work gangs always take at least 3 times more people to do the same job that you'd do in the west. Most of the peoples jobs in such a gang is to sit around watch and offer advice as far as I could tell.

<comment><USER19> It might be desirable in the short-term, but as an expanding middle class and the one-child policy begin to shrink the population (and that is a _very_ good thing, the world can't support a billion Chinese forever), then China's going to have to learn how to solve its problems with methods that don't involve throwing people at them. Not to mention that the West is probably going to end up paying for this, when the currency floats and suddenly all those factories in China are making $600 iPods instead of $300 ones.

Also, let's take your parking example. Putting aside the Chinese disregard for all road signs and instructions, let's imagine that they install coin-op parking meters. (Yes, I know, with the coin shortage in China this isn't realistic, etc. etc.). Your uncle now has the much easier job of cleaning out the meters, rather than running around all day. And maybe someone gets a skilled-labor job as a parking meter repairman?

<comment><USER20> >Your uncle now has the much easier job of cleaning out the meters, rather than running around all day. And maybe someone gets a skilled-labor job as a parking meter repairman?

But there are _fewer_ jobs available in this situation in aggregate. This is a problem with several criticisms of automation that I have seen in liberal and libertarian circles - they claim that automation does not decrease the number of workers since workers are needed to deal with the automation. Apparently they are totally innumerate, since while new jobs are created servicing the automation, the total number of jobs is significantly reduced.

<comment><USER19> True. I suppose that I would consider it a good thing, taking as a given that 1) a smaller global population is important in the long run, and 2) eventually we will find a way to allow most people to live without having to work 40 hours a week.

<comment><USER20> The benefit is that the people freed up can do _other things_ , can contribute to the economy in other ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the article and agree in the increasing threat of this nation. What it isn't mentioned, but I think it adds to the main points, is the relationship of China with Africa. You can read about this situation in this excelent report [2008 fast company]: [http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/special- report-china...](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/special-report-china- in-africa.html)

In short, the complete report tells how china is extracting and securing its future flow of raw materials. China is extracting all that is possible from the continent by every mean available to them.

</comment><comment><USER22> "But reusing the old label of "Communist China" misses the mark. I don't know what a better label would be."

They've created something new, and it seems to be very powerful. By allowing some small-scale free-market enterprise at the local level, but keeping iron- fisted control at the top, they seem to be maximizing their competitiveness wrt the rest of the world, in a no-holds-barred fashion.

Our Western system is in some ways inherently too fair to compete effectively with this new scenario. Not sure what that means but I suspect it isn't great if you're a big fan of western ideals, most particularly the idea that the rights of individuals should be paramount.

I sometimes wonder if Asian cultures simply don't believe that the way we do. They seem to have a bit more of a 'hive mind' thing going on. Europe and USA have had to deal with a crazy mix of cultures and ethnicities; not so much in Asia.

</comment><comment><USER23> An excellent article; my only caveat was at the beginning, where he basically said "China is not capitalist, it's communist because it lacks human rights". My initial thought was "it's possible for a country to be both capitalist and authoritarian." However, the rest of the article states his case more clearly.

<comment><USER6> The article was full of poorly reasoned points. See my more elaborate rebuttal:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056013>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _(One good answer: five evil traders on the 7th floor at Goldman Sachs.)_

What did they mean by this?

<comment><USER25> > What could possibly be more dangerous to the world than a command economic > system run on a global scale? > (One good answer: five evil traders on the > 7th floor at Goldman Sachs.)

I didn't get that either. My reading of it was simply to answer the question of what could possibly be more dangerous? I don't think it's referencing any actual event, only pointing out that the western model is vulnerable to top- down destruction as well.

I think it's a bad point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> its like taking the greediest best out of communism and capitalism. china implements a wonderful new beast - "commu-talism"

</comment><comment><USER27> Strike a strategic deal with the International Banking Cabal (HQ: Basel, Switzerland), whereby they move production capacity from the West to China and China agrees to continue the Ponzi scheme affectionately known as the "International Monetary System" by buying the bonds of the consumers of their products.

The cartel hope that in the process the Communist China will transform and become integrated in the political control system before the scheme comes crashing down.

The Chinese hope to acquire sufficient technological and industrial base to mount a credible defense/attack which will inevitably occur when the scheme crashes.</comment>


Very last chance to get a lifetime Salon.io membership for just 12€ - <AUTHOR> http://salon.io/last-chance

<comment><USER2> a lifetime membership for 12EUR, not only the easiest but also cheapest way to build portfolios, ever..</comment>


Procedural City Generation in Python - <AUTHOR> https://josauder.github.io/procedural_city_generation/ <comment><USER2> Awesome to see people excited about nontrivial proceduralism and willing to explain/open-source their code, but it's unfortunate they don't give any credit for their technique. It's a nearly direct implementation of the 2001 Siggraph paper "Procedural Modeling of Cities" by Parish and Müller. ([http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=383292](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=383292) pdf easily available via google)

<comment><USER3> it did look familiar :)

<comment><USER2> I recognized it quickly because I implemented a version of the paper as a project 10 years ago during college. (And made a very similar webpage as my final report.) Your username makes me suspect you might also have more than a passing familiarity with the paper - is that so?? :)

<comment><USER3> it's been a while, but, yes :) (parts of the paper - the texture generation part - were prototyped in python, but machines were sloooow)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This comment is unrelated to the subject matter and that's why i've made it separate from the parent comment [0] that triggered it.

I couldn't help but notice the '.cfm' extension in the acm.org link submitted by @mockery [1] so I thought i'd google a bit to see what tech infrastructure acm.org was running because i found it interesting they'd be using coldfusion. The search led me to a project on github [2] who's file appeared in the results [3] and made me aware of 'citeulike.org'. I did a quick search with algolia to check if citeulike.org hadn't been submitted on hn already. This made me aware of user @sharpshoot and led me to research him a bit and bookmark his site so I can read about how he 'made it' (i'm an aspiring entrepreneur you see…).

Anyway all this made me wonder if there is a software that automatically does what I had to do manually, how efficient it would have to be and all the ethical issues surrounding it's existence. Thin line between useful and scary…

      [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10288365

      [1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=383292

      [2] https://github.com/mikexstudios/citeulike-parser

      [3] https://github.com/mikexstudios/citeulike-parser/blob/fe31d0ba6c8203364676a83911942dd4fb09e494/python/acm.py#L93

</comment><comment><USER5> Now try and implement a structure such that the traffic is optimal for Cities: Skyline[1].

[1] [http://www.skylineswiki.com/Traffic#Avoiding_traffic_problem...](http://www.skylineswiki.com/Traffic#Avoiding_traffic_problems)

<comment> ju-st My first thought: importing these roadmaps into Cities:Skylines

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Link to source: [https://github.com/josauder/procedural_city_generation](https://github.com/josauder/procedural_city_generation)

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds of Introversions city-generator: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI5YOFR1Wus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI5YOFR1Wus)

I believe the source was released somewhere, but I don't seem to be able to find it right now.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about the source (would be interested to know if anyone has more information) but the app was releases as part of a humble bundle along with other games and a voxel tech demo: [http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/13163342831/introducing- th...](http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/13163342831/introducing-the-humble- introversion-bundle)

I love the stuff Introversion does.

<comment><USER9> From what i know , they released the source for Defcon , Darwinia/Multiwinia and Uplink with the bundle but the demos came without the source and only windows binaries unless they have released it in other place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've got to try hooking a minimal version of this up to Minecraft. I've just started getting my son into Python through Minecraft the Mcpipy library and Bukkit server on OSX. This would definitely take it to another level ;o)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, I'm glad that there is an updated city generator for Blender :)

Now you just need to add city zoning in (like I did for my dissertation) - [http://www.blendernation.com/2010/04/26/city-zoning- modifica...](http://www.blendernation.com/2010/04/26/city-zoning-modification- for-blended-cities-script/#prettyPhoto)

</comment><comment><USER3> nice one!

</comment><comment><USER12> Strange that it still depends on Blender 2.69.

<comment><USER13> I do believe that Blender 2.7+ are backwards compatible but the entire package was tested only on my machine and I run Linux with Blender 2.69 - If you have a higher Blender version/different OS and it works let me know (here or on Github), that would be great!</comment></comment>


Inside Match.com: It's All About the Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2300430/ <comment><USER3> Excellent PR work by Match.com. Anyone who has actually used Match.com knows that it is, from an engineering and design standpoint, utter crap. The algorithm being pumped here is probably nothing special, but hey, getting PR by hyping your "proprietary algorithm" is a time-tested tactic.

<http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

Similar article from 2008: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/science/29tier.html>

Similar article from 2003: [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2003/08/01/346313/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Two interesting things the articles blows right past:

\- That they compare their algo to the ones used by Amazon and Netflix to recommend products, while ignoring that products have much better defined boundaries than people do. (And ignoring how both Amazon and Netflix suffered through some horribly bad recommendations in both their systems, early on).

\- That they think Facebook (or any big social network) complements them, instead of rendering them irrelevant.

A dating service built on a matching you to real world friends-of-friends-of- friends has a much better chance at success than Match.com's "People who dated Alice also dated Mary, Jill, and Bertha. Sign up now for 1-Click Dating!"

<comment><USER5> It's not like people haven't tried to build the later, but none of them have succeeded, which suggests that you're mistaken...

I'm guessing because people actually meet their real life friends-of-friends at parties, etc. anyway and haven't met anyone from that pool of people who they want to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For bonus points, throw on a copy of Kraftwerk's /Computer Love/ (1981!) while reading the article.

<comment><USER7> I prefer Daft Punk's Digital Love personally : ))

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bravo! Fantastic illustration of how dating sites are broken.

<comment><USER9> Let's fix them?

Competitive. Yes. But, their may be a model for a small annual subscription instead of the quite high current monthly subscription model.

How about $20 per year? £10 I'm thinking - I live in the UK.

okcupid/pof are great, but well... not that great. Paid means you just have the people taking it seriously, and you can validate who people are. But no need to take all there money that could be spent on going out on dates ...

My 2p.

Any other rails coders fancy helping out?

<comment><USER10> Monthly is better than annual for one reason: People over-estimate that they'll get a date so they'll avoid annual unless you offer something very compelling beyond trying to get a relationship on the website. eg person will hang around to chat to friends or do quizes.

If you really want to create a dating website, you have these classic problems:

1) Abundant men. eg spam 100 women a day over several accounts until they get a response.

2) High turnover. Got a date? Great, they're not coming back. Your email gets quickly marked as spam. Among other issues.

3) Over-estimation. People don't say their true height, weight or even show the correct pictures.

4) Chicken and egg problem. The biggest hurdle to overcome first. How you overcome it will affect the above three.

Have fun!

<comment><USER9> 1) Ok, so let's say, you get ratio the number of men to no more than 20% of the women (overall/in certain geographic areas), and remove inactive profiles _from search_

2) That's fine - let's go for the low cost end. A fee that's half to 1/3 of the major sites, but for a whole year. No hassle of remembering to stop the billing, or checking your bills. Yes, this will mean after a year, you're likely to loose a high % due to not rebilling...but hey maybe this is a great product?

3) Fuzzy matching? i.e. I would like to meet someone <around> my height, or meet someone <slightly shorter> than my height. Perhaps we could have a feedback mechanism for those that actually meet. Perhaps we could just remove those people that never meet up with anyone? (Shocking approach I know - <USER2> the quality of the user experience would drastically improve!!)

4) Build it and they will come. (errm word play. bad)

But no seriously, whilst it's a competitive market, if you match up someone, and don't rip them off in the mean time, why on earth wouldn't they tell their single mates about the site? It's all about good user experience, which is sadly lacking in the majorly exploitative dating site game.

<comment><USER10> 1) Men are very aggressive, I would assume it needs to be something like 1:1.5 men:women ratio. But I do not have statistics.

2) Try it out with some market research!

3) Any sort of matching is going to fail if the data is not reliable. If I truthfully put 1.8m. Someone puts 1.9m when they're 1.7m. How do you determine that my input is true? Especially that since due to OkCupid, everyone is now automatically assuming the person is actually ~0.2m shorter. So if you put me and the other person together. The 1.9m person wins?

4) I can't tell if you have a plan for this. But a website that depends on a feedback loop seriously needs to overcome it somehow. Even PlentyOfFish for all the errors when I registered, I still tried to use it.

<comment><USER9> 4) Start in a small geographical area. A city. On the basis that most people are looking for a date close to them. Saw within 20 miles? Get it right there, then move to the next few closest cities. Use geographically targetted advertising for this - facebook perhaps, for online. Local papers could work for offline....or even maybe LoveFilm subscription drop-in-fliers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> interesting because it models the likelihood someone is going to reject a suggested person after the first few didn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is recycled spam.

If you want the reality of online dating, look for the OKCupid blog post about how you're statistically more likely to find a partner and get married by _not_ using online dating. Takeaway: men outnumber women, women are overwhelmed, men get no responses and become increasingly desperate. Of course, after Match.com bought OKCupid, the blog post was removed.

<comment><USER13> Is this the one? [http://web.archive.org/web/20101006104124/http://blog.okcupi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101006104124/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why- you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/)

<comment><USER12> Yes, exactly!</comment></comment></comment>


What's Wrong with Jeremy Seifert's OMG GMO - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/whats-wrong-with-jeremy-seiferts-omg-gmo.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. The documentary comes off as a well-intentioned piece of shit. The claims are pretty damning as to how poorly researched this pitiful excuse for a documentary is.

Sadly, this package of pathos appeals (ie kid in a hazard suit) obviously lack logos and ethos, yet more than a few ignorant people may still lap this up because it reinforces their pre-existing biases.

Exposing real problems of the world to the collective psyche seems like a better use of time.</comment>