Loot Box Lottery
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This is like the Tobacco companies hiring a media company saying smoking is good for you.
I've yet to hear a good argument from a truly independent party that says "no, it's not gambling". Because really, loot boxes are gambling.
It's kind of like if a drug company discovered they could get a lot of money by selling heroin and then they fired all of their chemists who were busy trying to create drugs that would actually be helpful to society.
Now that they're being called out on it, they're scrambling to try and find a way to avoid having to go back to working for a living.
A responsible adult would say something like, "You know, we thought that we were simply giving the market what it wanted, but really it does look a lot like gambling when you think about it. We're taking it all out."
And if they wanted to turn those lemons into lemonade, "Oh, by the way, we're releasing half life 3 and portal 3. It's the same game. Oh and we're releasing a Cave Johnson miniseries. J. K. Simmons is reprising his role."
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work. But it also sounds like it's providing real entertainment value to society instead of selling electronic heroin to kids.
It could just be rebadged Factorio PvP. Come on Valve, this is a hojillion-dollar idea!
Aside from getting people hooked, loot boxes tend to feed into a larger aspect of a kind of collection game. I don't see that stopping, and it'll likely continue to be a cheap way to keep people engaged in whatever platform is available.
Instead of a loot box, I'd expect to see more stuff like EA's Apex Battlepass or Blizzard's War Chest in Starcraft 2.
PS: I would happily throw money at any reasonable attempt to expand on Half-Life or Portal. C'mon Valve!
Yeah, I agree. Once you get used to the easy and cheap workflow of creating the loot boxes it's going to be a hard sell to go back to paying premium talent to create engaging an original content that takes longer to produce and has a lower chance of appealing to arbitrary markets.
Of course in the non-video game world there are companies that create sodas and cigarettes and slot machines. And there are companies that create high quality food, cancer battling drugs, and entertainment that stays relevant for centuries.
I think with a little regulation we'll get the same sorts of divisions in the video game industry.
When I stopped playing WoW, players could collect pets by redeeming tokens/codes from blizzcon or other real world fan or collector activities, but today there is an entire mini-game surrounding battle-pets which can be collected in-game and also purchased via earned gold or simply cash. Additionally, Raid or PvP gear sets can be supplemented with purchased "cosmetics" and "heirlooms" which again can be purchased through earned gold or through the store with cash. It seems like every side-game activity has some kind of purchase available to "speed up" the time it takes to "earn" the appropriate currency required to redeem the reward. I've been out of the gaming loop for far too long to really see how bad it's become, but it was absolutely shocking to see it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4225056/
Made me wonder what the physical machine equivalent of your idea would be.
Are Happy Meals gambling? Crackerjacks? Baseball cards?
You receive 1 out of n items, most undesirable but a few rare things that kids want.
In hindsight, I liked the way Everquest 1 did their loot. The jackpot almost always included something highly desirable to someone that had not farmed the encounter. Especially in contrast to some games that give all shit except you have a 0.02% chance of getting the good stuff.
This below, however, seems like very poor reasoning on ESRB's part.
Similarly, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), a self-regulatory organization responsible for flagging games for mature content and providing content descriptors, refuses to classify loot boxes as gambling.[15]An ESRB spokesperson recently stated, “While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player unfortunately receives something they don’t want).”
This argument differentiates loot boxes from slot machines and lotteries where the participant is not always guaranteed a prize. Additionally, some foreign governments, such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have declared that loot boxes are in fact not gambling.
The guarantee of 'any' prize really isn't substantive given the vast differences in rarity/value placed on on the range of reward
The irony is that when Gamefreak implemented this as a gameplay mechanic in the Pokemon games in the form of the Game Corner the games got a 12+ rating[0] from Pegi, the European equivalent to the American ESRB, as the games featured 'games of chance that are played as a traditional means of gambling'. The games in this region also renamed the machines to 'Game Machines' from 'Slot Machines' although I can't find out whether this was before or after the games originally released or whether it happened while the games were being rated. The ESRB rated the Pokemon games as E for Everybody but noted that some of the games contain 'simulated gambling'[1], although not all Pokemon games with the Game Corner got similar notices. Nintento decided to remove the Games Corner entirely from European releases because of the 12+ rating.
It's absolutely astounding then that games like NBA 2K20 can feature actual factual slot machines[2] and other de facto gambling machines on top of lootboxes and neither Pegi or the ESRB mention this at all[3][4] and happily gave the game a 3+ rating. Part of me has to wonder why this is, in the Pokemon games the gambling is entirely self contained within the game and there's absolutely no real world monetary value attached to it, while NBA and other games featuring loot boxes are sitting on absolute cash cows not only for the developers who can sell keys to boxes but also for the players who have the chance of opening rare skins that can be worth hundreds of dollars.
[0] https://pegi.info/search-pegi?q=pokemon%20blue - sorry, can't link directly to the game(s)
[1] https://www.esrb.org/ratings/35048/Pok%C3%A9mon+Silver+Versi...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MQ1ZMZ-l4
What is your point exactly?
There are at least two obvious differences.
First, you can't divorce the problem from reality and expect to win an argument based upon the fact that loot boxes are analogous to e.g. baseball cards. They are similar in concept, sure, but the scale is completely different. Video games are played by hundreds of millions (more?) of people around the world.
If some drug came out that was extremely dangerous, but accounted for a handful of deaths each year, no one would much care. Up that number to a few hundred thousand and you'll hear about it nearly every night on the news. Obviously, scale and relevance matter.
Secondly, video games are able to hit your serotonin and dopamine producing brain centers much more effectively than does a pack of baseball cards. Companies are pouring vast resources into finding ways to trick people into craving that next button click.
>It doesn't make any games I play worse, it makes the playerbase bigger which is better.
Yes, they do, and I'd like to see some basis for that last claim. It certainly spawns new forms of crappy, content-lite games, but it doesn't in any way increase quality. MTX's have led to a shift away from providing quality gameplay and toward maximizing roulette wheel spins. I'd be interested in hearing some specific examples of how they have made games "better".
BTW, game of the year 2018: GoW. No MTX's.
If you're willing to allow the skinner box to in in-game then we have to include arcade games and pinball machines which all optimized for quarters.
Another precursor was WoW in which the rewards are entirely in-game but aggressively designed with random rewards and growth to keep players paying their subscription. I lost years of my life to WoW and everyone I know who used to play it talks about like they're in recovery.
Look, I think the trend of lootboxes is terrible and has made a lot of games worse but I think your argument falls flat since cash for serotonin is basically the definition of the entertainment and gaming. "High replay-ability" is basically code for how addictive a game is and people actively seek out these types of games.
The thing that feels different is that in modern games you can waste money instead of just time with your addition.
How about a drug that's not dangerous at all and has never caused a direct death? Don't pretend that there's logic in creating all laws.
Everything is related to a seratonin and dopamine kick. This is such a general statement you shouldn't have bothered writing it.
GoW is a single player game. Comparing it to the MMF2P genre is silly, they're on opposite sides of the spectrum.
TF2 wouldn't have the longevity it has without the trickle of updates and items. PoE wouldn't even exist without this model.
You can trade your cards with other players, or buy/sell them with local vendors. This gives you the option to pay money to get the exact cards you want.
You can't do the same in most games with lootboxes. If I have an extra item that you want, tough luck. You need to continuously give money to The Man in hope that you'll get the item you need.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
> JOHNSON: This is Thomas Hansfield. He's a law student at the University of Minnesota who wrote the perfect article for our story today. And we didn't even ask him to. Maybe nobody asked him to.
> HANSFIELD: Pretty shocked that anyone had actually read this.
> JOHNSON: Tommy's blog post for the Minnesota Law Review is all about how Loot Box lawsuits may end up a lot like a bunch of lawsuits that happened way back - ancient history - in the '90s.
> HANSFIELD: The title of the article is "Loot Box Lottery: How The Backlash Against Video Game Loot Boxes Is Affecting Game Developers, Retailers, And Consumers In The Legal Sphere."
His summarized conclusion is that the class action lawsuits that failed against baseball card makers suggest that loot box-related lawsuits might be similarly defeated.
Or is this just a UX element that most people dislike or don't care about, but some people get badly addicted to?
There's so much argument about gambling, etc, but I'm yet to hear a compelling argument for why these should be allowed to exist, from a game design perspective, short of "we can make a lot of money from gamblers".
Because that's the default state, in our society at least. If you want something banned/made illegal/etc you need a compelling argument for why it shouldn't be allowed to exist.
* PoE is a Free-to-Play game. On paper, it's totally possible to play without giving them one cent.
* PoE offers 2 pay-only features: account modifiers (such as stash tabs to hold items that drop while playing, and your personal premium hideout if you want one); and character skins + vanity portraits + in-game pets that don't help you + ....
Only the skins are in lootboxes, and you may also get the one skin you want at a fixed price (a $3 lootbox can hold any items that are $3+ combined). Not sure about the odds though - I havent seen them published anywhere.
As a gamer, I enjoy playing a game where I'm not a cash cow: my items in-game have the same drop rate as that of my neighbor; and I don't mind paying for nice-to-have "optional" features (the game is quite fun BTW).
Personally, I don't understand the desire to want every single skin or item in a game even if you never use it, especially when you have to pay like $5000-$20000 to get that, but some people seem to have that urge. Whether that's unhealthy spending or just a hobby depends on the person, I guess.
I know some loot box systems work around this by giving the player something else when it rolls a duplicate like a minimal amount of the currency.
Regardless, rolling and opening loot boxes are usually designed to be addictive which is my main issue with them.
There's a hundred other popular games they could have picked on which would be more accurate: Counterstrike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Apex Legends, the list goes on.
(I appreciate that Kinder eggs are banned in the US, but not for that reason!)
It seems to me that the key thing about real gambling is that you win money. You put money in, and you might end up with more money than you started with, but probably won't. That's what generates the dynamic where once you lose some money, you keep playing to try and win it back.
With loot boxes, you put money in, and you get virtual goods out. The good vary, and there may be ways to sell the goods for money. But you're fundamentally just buying goods.
EDIT OF EDIT: This is the closest the article gets to touching on this:
> At least one case in the early 2000s had potential to resolve the issue of whether activity similar to loot boxes is considered gambling, but it was dismissed due to lack of standing. In Chaset v. Fleer/Skybox Int’l, LP, 300 F.3d 1083 (9th Cir. 2002), purchasers of baseball cards and Pokémon trading cards brought a RICO suit against, inter alia, the manufacturers and distributors of the trading cards. [...] The Court dismissed the suit for lack of standing based solely on plaintiff’s failure to satisfy this element.[26] It held that “at the time plaintiffs purchased the cards, . . . they received value . . . for what they paid,” and “[t]heir disappointment upon not finding [a rare] card in the package is not an injury to property.”[27]
There are also YouTube channels devoted to opening these products in bulk.
Pokemon cards, baseball cards, hell, even these subscription box services that are popular nowadays could be considered 'real life loot boxes'. The idea of a product that you purchase not knowing it's contents is not new idea, but it seems like we have decided that loot boxes in games are different from these products.
That's an interesting question! At first I thought they were pretty similar, but I had a think about this, and there are several key differences:
* With loot boxes, you can often trade the items that you won
* Loot boxes often show you the rarity (and sometimes the value) of an item that you've won.
* Loot boxes often show a spinning wheel or similar device that adds a level of excitement and a feeling of a "near miss" by showing the wheel "almost" land on an item.
* Some loot boxes allow you to "roll again" if you're not happy with the item you received.
* Loot boxes play sounds and show effects depending on the rarity of the item won.
* Loot boxes are given out for free, but you have to buy a "key" to open them.
* Games with loot boxes emphasize items that can be won from them, and encourage players to display these items for in-game prestige.
* Some loot box items give you an in-game advantage.
* Loot boxes are not edible.
Not to mention how stupidly easy games make it to buy these lootboxes, and how they usually make a pretty big point of obscuring their true cost (i.e. behind gems or other artificial currencies).
When Kinder eggs were introduced to the market in 90s in Poland, kids were exchanging the figurines to get complete sets. The DYI models of cars or small toys were what's in gaming nomenclature is considered as "trash loot".
> Loot boxes often show you the rarity (and sometimes the value) of an item that you've won.
Some ladies before buying eggs for their kids were checking the weight of these - the "heavier" ones had chance to contain a figurine. Shop assistants had no problem with that.
> Loot boxes play sounds and show effects depending on the rarity of the item won.
Again, back then, eggs were advertised in tv around afternoon cartoons or other kind of entertaining blocks for kids. Nowadays it's a well known product that it doesn't need any heavy campaign - the generation that grew up with it already has own children. And the addictive part of Kinder eggs would be the milk chocolate shell.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MTG-Repack-BLACK-LOTUS-Vintage-Old-...
With loot boxes you cannot cash out. That changes the dynamic completely, in my opinion.
When one gambles you put in a small amount of money in the hopes of getting out something of greater value. If that value is perma-locked in a video game, non-transferable, non-redeemable, then I don't buy that it is gambling.
At least with MTG you would pay for a pack, maybe get a rare card worth some money and you could sell it / trade it and get monetary value for your "gamble"
Just because it's non-transferable and non-redeemable doesn't mean it's value is nil.