de Andrade Wiliam Machado
Department of Media, The University of Adelaide, 903/259 North Terrace, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia.
J Gambl Stud. 2024 Sep;40(3):1517-1537. doi: 10.1007/s10899-023-10273-4. Epub 2023 Dec 26.
Games for mobiles present strategies to monetize not only from selling a title but from financial exchanges that take place in the game. Those microtransactions motivate players to purchase random or surprise items (known as loot boxes) to customize game features or to overcome narrative obstacles necessary to progress to new levels. Researchers associate the practice with gambling if completing the transaction does not mean the acquisition of an item but the chance to receive it. This research quantified gambling-like features in games available for free, classified by Apple's marketplace as suitable for children from 4 to 8 years old, and from the top-downloaded list. The findings reveal normalization traces of chance-based mechanisms in most of the games. According to the research literature, early exposure to such features may result in problem gambling in adult life. This paper concluded that legal changes and more information provided by the marketplaces are needed to raise awareness of gambling-like practices in mobile games.
手机游戏不仅通过出售游戏来盈利，还通过游戏中的金融交易来实现盈利。这些微交易促使玩家购买随机或惊喜物品（称为开箱），以定制游戏功能或克服进入新关卡所需的叙事障碍。如果完成交易并不意味着获得物品，而是获得获得物品的机会，研究人员就会将这种行为与赌博联系起来。这项研究对苹果应用商店分类为适合4至8岁儿童的免费下载量最高的游戏中的类似赌博特征进行了量化。研究结果揭示了大多数游戏中基于机会的机制的常态化痕迹。根据研究文献，早期接触这些特征可能会导致成年后出现问题赌博行为。本文得出结论，需要进行法律变革并由应用商店提供更多信息，以提高对手机游戏中类似赌博行为的认识。
