Episode 39: When/how can microtransactions be exploitative? with Ellie Cohen

Ethics and Video Games Podcast

Video game transactions are a highly unusual, perhaps unique, business model.  Our guest Elie Cohen essentially calls it an exploitative scheme where “the house never loses”.  It’s not that they’re always bad, but they easily can be exploitative, wrong, or simply “uncool”.  What can or does make a microtransaction exploitative and what can be done about it?

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Our guest, Ellie Cohen, is a PhD candidate at Princeton University and an Assistant Professor in the Entertainment Arts and Engineering Program and Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah.

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Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft

Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell

Music and graphics by Daniel Sher

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