The war on Microtransactions and Loot Boxes

Channel:

Forge Labs

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5,930,000

Published on October 20, 2017 1:00:05 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUYkGLLcaIs

Game:

Overwatch 2 (2023)

Duration: 14:08

21,873 views

1,192

Star Wars Battlefront 2's Microtransactions are a big problem.

When you used to buy a video game, you would pay the upfront cost and that was it, there were no microtransactions. Over the past decade or so, other forms of transactions creeped in: map packs, story content, season passes and more. This in itself was already controversial as gamers raised the questions about content that was cut from a completed game, then sold at an additional cost to the consumer. But something else has caught everyones attention, Loot Boxes.

The concept of a Loot Boxes is straight forward. For a small fee, normally under $2 or so, you unlock a collection of a few random digital items. Sometimes there are different types of boxes you can buy, which give you some sort of indication as to what you might get, but won’t know until you open the box.

Recent titles such as Mordor: Shadow of War and EA’s Star Wars Battlefront 2 have gained a lot of negative attention for their implementation of this system.

A Loot Box is unequivocally a slot machine snuck into a video game. Thinking it’s anything else is naive. You insert money into a slot machine, pull the lever and hope for a reward - you’re essentially doing the exact same thing with a loot box. You’re giving the game additional money, opening the box (pulling the lever) and hoping for a reward. They are designed to encourage and tempt the player to open them. Most games like Overwatch - their entire reward system in game is based on them. At the end of a match, you earn XP. Once you have enough XP you level up and get to open a box, which gives you a randomly chosen reward. Don’t want to wait to open a box? Pay a small fee and open one up right away. It’s at the core of many games, so you can’t avoid it. You’re constantly reminded about how close you are to opening your next box, you’re given previews of what you might get. The idea is that you don’t spend money at first, they want you to resist buying them with real cash. Once you play a game for awhile and finally save up enough credits to buy a box - you get a sense of accomplishment and a rush as the box opens, hoping for a rare item. The rarity of the items is what makes the boxes so tantalizing. They dangle elusive but seemingly attainable rewards constantly in front of your head. After the box opens and you collect your reward, you want more - no matter what you get in the box. If you didn’t get anything worthwhile, you want to open another one because surely, the next box you open will contain a rare reward, and if it did contain something rare - well you’ll want more. They purposely get you to buy the first few boxes with in-game credits so you know how long it takes to earn a box, They want you to resist spending real money at first so you’ll get more satisfaction as you open a box because you waited for it. It’s all about creating an experience that stimulates you. They’re exploiting you in the same way a slot machine is designed to.

Everything in this experience is carefully crafted to be a pleasurable experience for the player.

What it comes down to is the simple fact that these are $60 games. Why has something like Loot Boxes that are synonymous with free to play games made it’s way into paid games. Why is this okay, why is this acceptable? It’s clearly greed and developers are being forced to design their games around this model, implementing them into the core mechanics of their game. They’re shitty, they’re un-consumer and they’re exploitive. Loot Boxes suck.

Thanks to:
https://twitter.com/BaileyJIII
https://twitter.com/ducain23

Sources:
https://kotaku.com/why-opening-loot-boxes-feels-like-christmas-according-1793446800

http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/how-activision-uses-matchmaking-tricks-to-sell-in-game-items-w509288

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioZsXk4wLqs&t=5s

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