Sometimes video games teach the young men and women out there life lessons.

When you grind your ass off in a game to complete objectives or missions, you traditionally get rewarded. Level-ups, new gear for your character, some kind of in-game currency. It may not seem like it, but this structure is valuable for our growth as individuals through things like attaining a high work rate, ability to complete set goals, prioritizing tasks or spending, and so on.

Some games, however, adopt a new method: “Give us your real money and we will give you cool shit in the game.”

Nobody knows this more than the satanic e-sports conglomerate EA Sports.

fifa

“It’s in the game” my ass, it’s in your mom’s credit card…

Everyone is familiar with EA’s tree of insanely popular games. FIFA, Madden, NHL, NBA Live before people realized that 2k was superior. Practically any legitimate sports video game you could imagine was made by EA. They also make other nerd games but we’re not interested in that right now.

For the sake of my argument, I’ll start with FIFA because that’s what I am most familiar with.

FIFA‘s most populated game mode by far is called Ultimate Team (FUT.) FUT is an online game-mode that places a young and naive Pani as general manager of a soccer team, where I select my players, monitor the transfer market for new players, and play other opponents to rank up or down from divisions. Everything in the game is bought with coins: players, training items, jerseys, what have you.

When you win games or complete season objectives, you do receive coins, but a minimal amount. So little that you would never be able to get your favorite players even if you played a million games, the Messi’s, Ronaldo’s, etc. There are also player packs, which are extremely unethical random mechanisms that you open and get what you get. These are often refered to as “loot boxes” and their place in the game is not without controversy..

check out this from goal.com (Full Article)

“…The governments of a number of countries across the world have been alerted to complaints regarding the nature of FUT (among other games), with its ‘loot box’ offering – whereby players can pay real or virtual money for a random selection of items in a ‘pack’ – identified as a particular problem.

Essentially, the more money you spend, the better players you are likely to get, but, as one parent discovered earlier this year when his children unwittingly spent nearly £550 ($680) on packs, there is no guarantee that you will get the highest-rated players like, say, Lionel Messi…..”

Most of the time there are shit players in there, every once in awhile you’ll get something good. Good on EA for introducing legitimate gambling to young kids out there.

There is another way to get good players other than coins: FIFA Points. These are literally nothing, there’s no reason for them, there’s no place in the game in which you can earn them, they literally just translate real-world currency into game money to spend on packs.

On the surface, you may see nothing wrong about this. Tons of games have in-game purchases. Fortnite perhaps is the most notorious in this sense, an initially free game that makes billions of dollars off of kids who get bullied in school for being a “no-skin.” That is different however, because those are simply cosmetics. They may make your character appear better, but they wont actually adjust your skill rating or your chances of winning. I’m speaking of something called “pay to win”-it’s a common phrase among me and a handful of other pathetic EA truthers used to describe the nature of the game that encourages extra spending beyond initial purchase in order to win more games.

Not to mention that FIFA costs about $70. At least once the next edition of the game comes out in September, the team that you spent all of your time and money on will be there waiting for you in the new game right? Wrong. You have to start over again. It’s an endless cycle of money and Pani getting shit on in the game. It’s not right. The idea of video games is to have fun. That’s why we all fell in love with games like FIFA so that we play our friends on an equal playing field and get to talk shit. It’s like when you play your buddy and he decides to be a hero by playing against the Warriors as the Kings. What’s the point? Let’s run Sixers vs. Celtics or Eagles vs. Texans and have a go.

Gambling when you know you’re gambling is fine. It’s fun and it’s ethical. Take the fine man Leemon here.

image0 (4)

Guy loves to throw his shackles around for some adrenaline and for the love Korean Baseball.

It’s not as cool when it’s a massive corporation that’s inciting kids to gamble so that they can be better at a meaningless game. Just my two cents. Sorry I’m on my high horse right now, I’m a college graduate.

Latest posts by panithekid (see all)