Non-Assortative User Matching For Profit And Anti-Fun

From the "Patents That Make Your Skin Crawl" file...

It's been a tough decade for gamers, even if you ignore "Gamergate." The fact is, though manufacturers like to claim otherwise, games continue to increase in price. The base game may still be $60, but season passes and downloadable content packs have made the average full-experience game priced closer to $120.

That's before you throw in the endless attempts to hook users on loot-boxes (gambling). These are truly a travesty that have normalized gambling for children that are only a year or two removed from being correctly referred to as toddlers.

For those unfamiliar with the lootbox phenomenon, many game companies have taken to selling treasure boxes with "random" items in them which require unlocking with the use of a key you must pay real money for. Technically, they have not been regulated as gambling, but they damn well should be. They are just as much gambling as a casino would be if they changed to a $1000 cover charge where you "might win some money" on the inside.

However, at least an argument can be made that those products are filling a free-market demand, even if that demand is often a bunch of 8 year-olds with access to a parent's credit card desperately trying to get that one cool sword with a 1/128 chance.

Because, fuck that guy, right? Anyone? Too obscure?

Unfortunately, Activision's newest ploy threatens to lower the bar even further, which is truly saying a lot for the company responsible for World of Warcraft and turning Diablo 3 into minimum wage employment with a real-money auction house.

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I have some experience in this matter, as I used to sell WoW accounts on Ebay while playing poker. I was a bit of a multi-tasker...

Activision's new scheme is a matchmaking plan designed to specifically pair players who have bought all the optional extra content for real money (which makes you much more powerful) with players who have bought as little of it as possible. In other words, their goal is to create the poorest game experience possible by eliminating anything resembling competition.

The idea being, that after the players that have bought advantages and are more experienced finish utterly destroying their competition, that the defeated and demoralized competition will immediately run to the "cash shop" and buy that same extra content. They totally won't quit or play something that does not suck.

Don't be fooled by its innocuous appearance...all patents look this boring.

Gee, that sounds like a great entertainment product alright. Only a company who treats their customers like nothing more than a cash dispensing machine would consider such an audaciously offensive idea.

Imagine if the UFC was promoted by a producer of steroids who specifically matched up the Schwarzeneggers with the Gumbys, based on the hope that after Gumby gets his ass kicked, he'll pay more to shoot up. Also, imagine that somehow, the fighters rather than the viewers are the customer, too. That should put you in the ballpark.

Perhaps even more sinister is the likelihood that this will be used to simply funnel users back to the same random lootbox system, hoping to hook anyone with addictive tendencies to their little unlicensed gambling scheme. They even use the same terms we do on Steemit..."minnow, dolphin, and whales."

The "prince of temptation" is well-qualified to explain this plot concisely.

Though filed in 2015, this patent was only approved in late October of 2017. Activision claims they haven't used it, but we would not know if they had, and the patent was only just granted.

Now might be a great time to cancel your World of Warcraft subscription or limit your Overwatch budget to...$0.

I'll still recommend Doom II, despite Activision's 49% stake in id software.

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