Honestly, I'm very mixed about it.
I think games are actually quite underpriced now, and as a result, game makers (i'm talking rank and file employees, pay the cost). Loot boxes/gacha deliver stable income to companies and thus limits the harm of the layoff cycle, and provide constant updates to consumers as a result.
However, its definitely a system that can abuse people that is very akin to gambling, and praying on the same thrill of gambling. Japan and the West have to self regulate better (blizz fixing the rates is a good thing).
Yeah. It isn't like new monetization isn't something companies need to explore and the underlying issues causing that are also themselves feeding into the sort of issues I have with new monetization in games.
The thing is, I like content that is delivered through "normal" gameplay and I like games having the scope of older games. Rising production values both push at these things quite hard, but there is still a desire for them and new monetization is a way to monetize and parcel out what used to just be the excess of games.
With mobile and other FTP, this excess is just about the only place they make their money.
As to the first, i.e. "normal" gameplay:
I don't like real world money prompts. I also like unlocking and finding things through standard play. Gacha character collector games are about the worst in this regard, imo, because there is more similarity between a treasure chest or a random loot drop and a loot box than there is between a character written into the scenario and one that pops out of a loot crate.
I don't like where new monetization is taking content delivery on an ideological level, which is why it is interesting to read what Nirolak is talking about wrt mobile games becoming more traditional despite maintaining gacha.
(I also think it encourages trashy, attention grabbing art design--gacha depends on selling an individual character by art alone and making its money there more than a traditionally monetized game need to. Same thing with loot crates and cosmetics. The value and cool-ness of gear is less tied into soft appeal of setting, challenge of achieving, and growing artistic appeal, but rather tied into wanting something for either rarity or high initial (often id) appeal).
As to the second, i.e. scope:
It is hard to recreate, say, the sweeping scope of a SNES-PSX Final Fantasy with modern production values on consoles. Just look at Final Fantasy XV, where the game was stripped beyond bare essentials, leaving several characters, wrt narrative, naked and obviously more so than intended. Similarly, they clearly tried to have a FFVI-like empire on another continent abusing summons and magic to make machines, but they couldn't even have that other continent be explorable. Or look at FFVIIR, to keep with this comparison. It makes complete sense to us that they have to release it episodically.
I also think it is hard to (initially) release a game with such ambitions on mobile in any other form than piece-meal and with the story designed to encourage you to pay more money at various points. I think that business model thwarts my expectations for games, but so to does high-budget, high-production in most cases.
And again, Nirolak's mobile posts are interesting in this regard. They present a plausible wrinkle in the whole "things are going mobile; there is no mobile bottom; GaaS, as it is, is the future!" conventional (doomsday) wisdom. Mobile going "console." Mobile expansion reaching its maximum in territories like Japan. Mobile monetization evolving over time. The stuff is fascinating and suggest to me that the future is probably indeed not what anyone here exactly expects. How things change and how they remain the same and how those changes distort those consistencies and vice versa will be interesting stuff.
...
But yeah this is all before I get to the "gambling" concerns, personally
.
