Isn't this true with collectable toys? My adult friends sure seem to be addicted to purchasing Pokemon cards. They talk about thousands of dollars spent when I am curious about numbers.

Yes, and?

ETA: Exploiting adult whales is bad too, if that's the angle you were going.

Is it exploiting if they participate under their own volition?

Is Auto Zone exploiting people who like working on their cars?

I've said this before and I'll say it a hundred times more - choice isn't binary. There isn't no choice and then free choice. There's infinite levels of choice. Some things are very choosy. Like me cutting off my arm right now - very choosy, I get a lot of control in that. Some things are not very choosy. Like a heroine addict deciding to shoot up or not today.

I won't make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite in particular. However, we should all be aware it is certainly engineered in some ways to capture as much attention and time as possible, and this is intentional. Not unlike in nature to the engineering behind cigarettes, although again no claims on efficacy.

The point being, we really need to be doing analysis further than "well they chose to do it". It's not that simple, and it's really never been that simple. Companies are dedicating billions of dollars on solving this problem. We should, in response, at least try to analyze it deeper than that.

I agree. While I do think the skin issue is a parenting thing and a good time to teach a lesson about advertising and fomo*, there's more too it.

We protect people(arguably not enough) from gambling and alcohol which are basically banking on a portion of the population becoming addicted.(tho I also do not make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite or say, gacha games)

At what point is the level of manipulation from these companies messing with psychology too much? It's an open secret they are researching how to farm attention. Don't people that are susceptible to this stuff deserve some warnings like booze and slots? I'm all for personal responsibility but we've created lines with other things where people lose control. Idk why this should be treated different.

No idea if anything needs regulated or what exactly needs to change, but as you said, at least more analysis.

To be clear, the definition of "exploit" I'm using in this case is like: "use (a situation or person) in an unfair or selfish way." The point is game companies are exploiting people who can't control themselves.

You might be interested to read about whales as it relates to loot boxes (in particular sections 1.E-F): https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

I don't know what autozone has to do with this particular discussion, but I'm not familiar with their business practices, so I'm not going to venture a guess.

I heard they make whole cartoons to feature a specific toy character and put them in kids happy meals and have limited collectors editions. Will the manipulative horrors of marketing to children ever cease or will we all be coerced into a life time sentence at Disney land by a clever cereal tie in.

They do, and that is bad. Growing up surrounded by toy adverts that make kids despondent if they don't have the toys is not good.

I feel like people with tour stance aren’t considering that skins and emotes are fun to have without fomo or addiction.

Similarly, toys are fun to have for their own sake.

I was under the impression that we all knew this was bad and are actively disgusted by it.

That is also true of action figures, trading cards, comic books etc.

That’s the same for the Tomica Blackhawk X3 Transformable Robot. Unless you find it somewhere on ebay second hand, after it leaves store shelves you will never see it again.

They also charge like $20 just to play as whatever licensed character in their game.

If you wanna be able to play as Batman or Mr Meseeks or the dog from Adventure Time, that's $60 already.

They give a lot of characters/vbucks away for free. I have a whole list of skins (including the 3 you mentioned) and have never spent any actual money on fortnite.

I can't deny they've made a crazy amount of money from convincing teenage boys that it's cool to buy outfits and play virtual dress-up. But compared to the must-have items of my youth at least you aren't excluded if you have no money.