Dear Daybreak

This is an important issue.

We are having a somewhat parched debate over "subliminal, predatory marketing schemes" when players can get screwed over the attributes of the chocolate coins themselves (account wide, heirloom, server restrictions).

Malcolm Gladwell??

Your response leaves me less than confident you understand what judgment bias is and how it works. Kahneman and Tversky are indeed a good place to start. Richard Thayler. Dan Ariely has done a ton of work on irrational judgment. All have produced books that are approachable, and well documented with a robust research bibliography if you want to dig deeper.

In terms of the mechanics of social influence, see anything by Robert Cialdini.

It's funny that Malcolm Gladwell elicits that response. (And I agree by the way).

Yes, I have read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahnemann which covers the breadth of the literature on behavioral economics.

I just want to see you cite the principle (preferably, the passage but a heuristic would suffice) and apply it to this debate (chocolate coins).

I mean you could have just read Michael Lewis' "The Undoing Project" to rattle off those names.

Understood. There is no single priciple to describe the process of predictable errors in judgment (bias). Kahneman and Tversky laid the foundation. Dick Thayler took what they did injected it into economics, creating the field if behavioral economics. Ariely has focused a great deal on behavioral economics applied to consumer behavior. Cialdini is an expert on the mechanics of social influence (the psychology of compliance).

To ask for a single or reduced set of principles to describe irrational judgment does a good job of illustrating the problem all by itself

LOL. I figured. Maybe you did just read Michael Lewis. It's like when a college student rattles off the name of some profound philosopher to "look cool to the class" or "make the professor look stupid" but the professor questions him on a specific concept and he gets destroyed.

It's not difficult. Pick any heuristic:

Anchoring and adjustment
Availability heuristic
Representativeness heuristic
Naive diversification
Escalation of commitment
Familiarity heuristic
Affect heuristic
Contagion heuristic
Effort heuristic
Fluency heuristic
Gaze heuristic
Peak-end rule
Recognition heuristic
Scarcity heuristic
Similarity heuristic
Simulation heuristic
Social proof
Take-the-best heuristic

The reason why I am testing you on the principle (heuristic) is that anyone who "pretends" to know the literature won't find help on Wikipedia. You would need to know the concepts beforehand.

There are actually probably around 50 more or so commonly recognized hueristics, and I'd be willing to bet, they are indeed on Wikipedia. Hueristics, however, are only part of the story. An important part of the process, but not the whole process.

You continue to speak in such general terms that I am convinced that your knowledge of the field of behavior economics to relegated to overviews. Perhaps a few hours on "The Great Courses."

It's actually quite simple to craft an argument. You brought behavioral economics to this debate. I see no mention of the plethora of concepts/theories that would specifically apply to chocolate coins.

You are providing nothing to the debate - simply being pontifical and a bit pretentious with names.

wh

at about thos of us who are paying subs hmm? we have to go through the same hoops and RNG is not the way to get folks to buy into the stuff give me a break spend 10 dollars and only get a chance at 10 coins rng could be rotten with you and you only get 1 is daybreak trying to kill this game?

if you get the 10 coins it says right in the add you can get from 1-10 coins so if RNG is not being your friend like it isn't for me it would be more quite a bit moer they are trying to get you to gamble here folks with Real money not cool.

which is why I don't do the merc or other crates. I refuse to use real money to gamble i'll get what I want. this is nothign but a money grab and not so subtle one.

No thank you-- I prefer to get the house for free which is what happened when I bought the server transfers I needed to get anyway. In fact, this deal was so good that I moved four characters instead of the original two I had planned on. Not only did I get four characters off IoR and onto two better servers, but I got that awesome snowglobe house for free on both Skyfire and AB!

Sorry, but this (admittedly oddly-packaged) holiday bundle sale worked out great for me, and it was even better that I got the four transfer tokens for 10% off for being subbed besides.

*grabs packs of teleport pads and jumps aboard her best flying mount to get around her new snowglobe homes*

You want me to boil behavioral economics down into a few a few priciples, which you seem to believe boil down judgment hueristics. You claim to have understood Kahneman, and yet, your own responses indicate the liklihood is otherwise.

Additionally, I offered to link references, and at your request, did so, noting and clarifying where they fit in, in terms of contribution.

So, before we go any further, what is the actual contribution that Kahneman and Tversky made that won them the Nobel prize, and why? If you can't answer that, then pm me when you can and I'll be happy to continue the debate, as this is probably not the right place for this

Hint: my response to you starts with this contribution.

No kidding.

You are misunderstanding how this works. Examine each bundle item and it has the exact number of coins you will receive if you purchase that item. There is no RNG with the number of coins you will receive.

No, I don't want you to summarize Behavioral Economics. I want to see you apply it to the chocolate coins. (Sure, go beyond heuristics). If I were a college professor, you'd get a poor grade for dodging the prompt and providing zero analysis.

Here's an example of an argument (and quite simple and quick really but based on a few changes of the facts):

The best principle that illustrates the how chocolate coins exploits player's buying behavior is anchoring and adjustment because Daybreak sets the higher price of 5000 DBC but offers a discount of 1 DBC to 4999 DBC thus preying on the price movement and increasing the odds that the player will make a purchase. (It's a very simple high-school level rendition and I'm sure a real scholar would include formulas, etc).

I really want to see how you can argue chocolate coins are exploitative based on the field of behavioral economics. Perhaps, you are having difficulty finding research on how bundling perversely affects purchasing behavior. (If you really have read Kahnemann's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", you would see how critical experiments and observations are to the field so it's not just overarching processes).

The problem with PMs, as I'm sure you are also versed in game theory, is that you maintain your "know-it-all" persona to the public, because, absent a public challenge, the audience is relies on a veneer that maintains the status quo. (Ohh ahhh, he knows BIG names). Therefore, a public challenge tests the merits of your case and actually edifies - positively contributes - to the debate.

It's actually a fair academic debate. Gillymann brought up a facet of the debate but has refused to craft an argument beyond synopsis and bios. I've repeatedly given him the floor for a concise answer. (He has the burden of proof as he has opened this front). I am, therefore, sorely disappointed.

Ok. Head over to the eq2 wire forums and start a thread - they won't lock the thread or delete posts See you there.

Great for you, but there will be a very small minority of people who were actually planning to buy any of those items within the given timeframe. For everybody else, the house is definitely NOT free.

If you paid for it, it isn't free. When you get your monthly stipend for paying a sub it is not free. The coins for buying a bundle are not free. When you go to the store and there's a buy 2 get one free offer, it isn't free. The word free or any other loose language doesn't make it actually free. If you had to open your wallet to get the thing, it. is. not. free. Claiming it is shows at least either a lack of sense or integrity depending on the motives behind the comment.

Based on the pricing of large and small bags of flour, sugar, cans of soup, etc. I've seen at the grocery store lately I'd say that's not an unreasonable assumption. Half the time, the "bulk" or "value" package is more expensive per unit than multiple smaller packages. Companies KNOW that most people can't or won't do math and price accordingly. Of course anyone who's ever tried handing cash to a retail employee who has already specified credit knows this. They can't make change without use of an external math brain (calculator).

If your response to these revelations is "well tough, that's capitalism", pure capitalism is just another word for sociopathy.