cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Everyone saying loot box toys should be illegal should ask themselves if Magic: The Gathering should be illegal too. Or baseball cards. “Blind box”/“blind packs” have existed for decades. It’s only a problem now because they’re toys instead of cards? Or were they always a problem? Please clarify.
I personally think Labubus are fucking ugly as hell. But we have blind bags in the anime fandom, pretty much any big franchise gets them. SPYxFAMILY, My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man… probably Dandadan and Demon Slayer, though I haven’t seen those yet. Anyway, you buy a bag and there’s a figure inside. The one you probably want is rare. It’s nice with SPYxFAMILY because Yor (the mother) is the rare one, not Anya (sort of the mascot of the show, the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old telepath with the pink hair and horns who is just so friggin’ cute). If they made Anya rare, the fans might be in trouble, but it’s just the ones horny for Yor that end up wading through a pile of Loid (the dad), Anya, and Becky (the friend) to get to the one hot chick they want. And that’s what it seems to be, the hot chick the horny young guys are after is the rare one. If you like the cute character or one of the guys, you’ll probably get your figure or you can trade for it, or buy it off someone who doesn’t want it. Then again, if you’re horny and not dumb, you can spend the money you’re spending on blind bags on a figure that has more detail.
But again: baseball cards have existed for decades. Where was the outrage then? And baseball is just as dumb to a lot of Labubu fans as Labubu is to jocks. What’s the diff?
idk, I’d say it’s more of a problem now because people have easier ways to liquidate their wallets for those sorts of trash purchases, without realising it on a physical / rational level at the time. Like when you had to go in to a store to buy those blind-box card games, it took effort to be an addict, so much that it was more a hobby.
Now, someone’s kid can accidentally wrack up thousands on a credit card online buying lootbox shit.
Labubus make as much sense as crypto currency.
To me, it is a false equivalence. Sport cards are based on people. Though I’d give you, they could just be bound by team and year instead of being random. But like, when Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card came out, no one could have guessed what would happen there.
And MTG is a game that’s constantly evolving. Here, I think the randomness was a planned mechanic that helps keep the game balanced and interesting (or it did like 30 years ago when I played). Might be a different story now, but doing a broken meta deck just was far less likely. Getting an assortment of colors encourages, especially new players, to try different approaches since each color (again, at least in my day) plays very differently.
But these blind box things are largely made to just be a fad. They’re created, hoping they’ll catch on with a demographic, to generate money… and landfill waste. You can go into a card shop and buy/trade/sell sports cards, or game cards (MTG/Pokemon). After the hype for these blind box toys, there’s no more demand. They create scarcity for the sake of driving sales. They employ psychologists for this type of stuff. These aren’t like the coin machines back in the day, where you could actually see the toys. They know that if you could see what was there, sales would tank.
Sports cards are a piece of history, a physical note of what was for a given player at a specific time. MTG/Pokemon are games. In both cases, you could just collect, but there’s more to them. But with the blind box toys, they’re just physical loot boxes. They exist only to be collected. Much like Beanie Babies back in the day. Or literally anything that’s ever called it’s a collector’s item or an investment… It’s just garbage. But now, they add in a known addiction mechanic to it, and target kids and AGGRESSIVELY advertise. You can call them all dumb, sure, that’s fine, I haven’t collected MTG or baseball cards in 30 years because I share a similar sentiment. And I’m not ignoring the tactics, the card games, or sports cards also employ… I do think they could change, and should change, but they won’t. But I believe they are less predatory, but not above criticism or review themselves.
In 5 years, is anyone going to care about a Lububu? No. Does anyone care about the crap my mom collected in her youth, no. But the things she liked to collect, when she walked into a shop, she could see what they had and buy exactly what she wanted. No tactics, just dumb things she liked. Same when I collected Amiibo. I could see what I was buying.
I’m hoping I’m making sense. Just because one thing is kinda sketchy, doesn’t mean it’s fine for another thing to be completely sketchy because “people are just having fun”. It’s not fun when someone goes into financial ruin and you pivot to “well, that was your choice,” because that’s now how addiction works.
I’m with you, let people have fun. Just like with anything else it’s all about moderation and self control.
I bought way too man Pokemon cards, Crazy Bones, and Pogs back in my day to talk shit now, and I had fun doing it too.
While most of your post is spot-on, I don’t think Magic: The Gathering belongs here. Magic is a (fun, to us) game that I’ve played with my friends for decades. The cards also have nice art on them most of the time. People can and do totally spend as much on Magic as the other fandoms listed, but what game are Labubus for, or baseball cards? Thus, I feel M:TG is the odd one out in this list.
I said Magic: The Gathering but I was thinking of Weiss Schwarz, a less popular card battle game that uses anime characters. Sometimes called Waifu Wars because, well, waifus. Part of the gamble there was that the game would last, whereas Magic was a more established property.
I didn’t mean to shit on Magic. I got plenty to not like about it. When it came out, Wizards of the Coast was competing with TSR (who made D&D). Wizards ended up buying TSR out entirely. But, I think they’ve been good to the franchise, so I’ve cooled off on Magic. Even tried it. Got a starter set five, six years ago, tried playing, I was running forest or whatever you call it (all my lands were trees/forest, so I ran the related cards). Never really went anywhere. But I’ll tell ya what I love about Magic… the troll cards. So I was playing Weiss one day, guy comes up and asks for a high five. I bet you know where this is going — He Who Is Left Hanging or something like that. Had I denied him, he would have gotten some bonus in combat? And the card that forces you to set the whole game aside and run a sub-game out of your discards? Love it. So aside from the nice artwork, there are some really interesting game mechanics. I kinda wanted to get into Commander, but didn’t really have the patience/drive at that point. I know a guy with like a dozen Commander decks and we played a game, it was fun.
Magic can be fun but buying and opening packs is 100% a form of legalized gambling
Apparently a lot of people are reading my comment as defensive which wasn’t intended at all, so don’t worry, I wasn’t taking it badly 😊 Like I said, I strongly agree with you generally!
The similarity is the mystery box nature of them, not what’s intended to be done with them.
Are D&D rulebooks mysteries when you buy them, or do you know it’s the player’s handbook before purchase?
And btw you’re not better than other collectors simply because you play a little game with your collection, you’re the same as any philatelist.
Who said anything about being “better” than anyone else? Jesus Christ, is that what people took from “this one is not like the others”? I see the mystery box nature of the packs, of course, but the existence of the game around Magic means there’s a literal difference between that and all the other examples, for fuck’s sake.
To the point about D&D rulebooks, do you not know you’re buying a pack of Magic cards? No, you just don’t know what’s in the pack. If you already knew exactly what was in the D&D rulebook, why would you need to buy the book? That said, I’ll concede the point that they’re not really equivalent despite the fact that they’re both games played with printed pieces of paper, because that mystery aspect to a pack of Magic cards makes them different. Just like the presence of a game makes Magic different than the other examples.
It doesn’t make people who collect Magic cards any better. It just means their collection has a practical use in addition to display.
So then all books are now mystery boxes, and so are movies, tv shows, music, etc? Unless you’ve memorized every word? That’s not ridiculous at all lol.
No, to fit your analogy you’d need to buy “DnD Book” sight unseen, and then open a wrapper find out if it’s the PH, DMG, Tasha’s, whatever. “Aww man player’s handbook again? Why can’t I get the Monster Manual?!”
But yes it does kind of seem like you’re putting down those who collect “useless” things and your distinction of collecting to display vs collecting to play a game is tenuous at best. It’s like saying that collecting guitars is better than magic because at least you can gain a real skill instead of playing with sweaty dudes in the card shop every Friday, like, sure but also guitar is no more worthy a pursuit than magic which is no more worthy a pursuit than collecting action figures or [insert any “useless” item that brings someone joy.] Sometimes people like things that you don’t, it just be like that.
Yeah, Japanese media really goes hard into this blind box merch. Be it these Figurines, Gachapon machines or the new years tradition of Fukubukuro.
It’s all unregulated gambling as far as I care, ban it all. Be it from there or homegrown, preying on the gambling addicts is just scummy.
Alright so because my only-fans revolves around jerking off on a figurine of an innocent assassin-milf suddenly I deserve to be economically exploited? Try not to yuck any more yums on your way out.
I think this every time with gaming lootbox regulations as well. Like honestly, yes regulate it but where’s the age check for buying pokemon cards?
There isn’t one. Certainly never has been with baseball cards. It’s all the same though. Except you can’t win anything with collectible cards. Maybe you get one that’s worth something down the road… IF you took care of it.
F_State@midwest.social 5 months ago
Buying a pack of Magic the Gathering isn’t arguably different from buying a scratch ticket. Most packs are worth less once you open them and sometimes are worth nothing once the contents are revealed.
voracitude@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What about people who buy the cards to play the game?
F_State@midwest.social 5 months ago
Buying singles makes the most financial sense. The prices can still be subject to change but there’s no immediate drop in value that you’re hoping to offset by getting lucky enough to pull a chase card.