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Kotaku: (Cosmetic & Game-related) Loot Boxes Are Designed To Exploit Us

nynt9

Member

Gotchaye

Member
You think so? I've always heard people speculating about this kind of thing, but is there evidence it's happening? I'd love to see it.

Since all Mobile games do have very firm drop rates, I assumed that these game did as well. It seems easier than trying to design some algorithm based on how much loot you got before.
Blizzard says they do this with legendary cards in Hearthstone, and attempts at data collection seem to bear this out. Fire Emblem Heroes makes its rates public, including its system for increasing drop rates of rare heroes over time as you fail to get one.
 

kirblar

Member
To be clear, though, lots of people play these games without spending significant amounts of money on things like loot boxes and they seem pretty happy with them too.
Sure. The customers for the loot boxes and the customers for the overall game are two different pools. And that's absolutely ok! Not everything should be for everyone.
 

Afrodium

Banned
If someone spends $50 on lootboxes for a game they play all the time because they enjoy the output from the boxes, how is that different from them spending $60 to get a new game? Spending some money inside a game versus spending the same amount to purchase a game don’t seem too different if you enjoy the result as much.

You are making a very, very bad assumption.

Oh yeah, I know it's not a sound or logical opinion. Just a knee-jerk reaction I have when reading posts about people throwing money at loot boxes. People who buy lootboxes can absolutely be on top of their finances.

However I do think that spending $60 on the specific thing you want, be it a game or anything else, is a much more sound purchasing decision than spending $60 to maybe get a cosmetic skin you want.

"I assume anyone who buys stupid things in games is too stupid to be making enough money to spend on games."

Uh, okay...

Making money and having money are two different things. Someone who makes $100K a year but spends it all on luxury items or, say, lootboxes, would not be as financially stable as someone making half as much but saving their money.
 
My biggest worry is children.

We have seen with Fifa how easy it is to spend cash on the ultimate team side of things. It's a Lootbox before all of this started. Stories of kids (some who were old enough to to know what they were doing and others who didn't) spending hundreds on these things so easily as their parents cards were saved.

A kid at school as x costume? Another kid may be envious and may buy a load to get the same outfit.

Its gambling. It doesn't involve winning money but it should be investigated, I hope that one country in Europe cracks down on it to knock this whole sorry episode down.
 

HeroR

Member
I read articles like this and wonder, 'why should I care how people spend their money'.

If someone wants to waste all their money on loot boxes, that's on them. They're an addict? Then it's on them and their family to get help. Children becoming addict? That's on the parents and why are they're letting their child spend their credit card money without their supervision?

This entire thing reeks of a lack of personal responsibility. Companies want your money. That's all they want from you. It's on the consumer to say no.
 

Klotera

Member
I read articles like this and wonder, 'why should I care how people spend their money'.

If someone wants to waste all their money on loot boxes, that's on them. They're an addict? Then it's on them and their family to get help. Children becoming addict? That's on the parents and why are they're letting their child spend their credit card money without their supervision?

This entire thing reeks of a lack of personal responsibility. Companies want your money. That's all they want from you. It's on the consumer to say no.

While I disagree, let's say we go with this argument. Should they at least be required to publish your chances so the customers can make a fully informed decision while exercising their personal responsibility?
 

ghibli99

Member
While I disagree, let's say we go with this argument. Should they at least be required to publish your chances so the customers can make a fully informed decision while exercising their personal responsibility?
This would be great, and assuming they're honest with percentages, you can then weigh whether it is worth the monetary risk. I wonder though, if it would change behavior. Has it proven to do so with past titles that have published their odds?
 

Arion

Member
I read articles like this and wonder, 'why should I care how people spend their money'.

If someone wants to waste all their money on loot boxes, that's on them. They're an addict? Then it's on them and their family to get help. Children becoming addict? That's on the parents and why are they're letting their child spend their credit card money without their supervision?

This entire thing reeks of a lack of personal responsibility. Companies want your money. That's all they want from you. It's on the consumer to say no.

It should be society's responsibility to look after vulnerable individuals. That's why highly addictive substances are banned or heavily regulated. It's why the whole gambling industry is heavily regulated. I think it's time that loot boxes should also be regulated to some capacity.
 

Anne

Member
This would be great, and assuming they're honest with percentages, you can then weigh whether it is worth the monetary risk. I wonder though, if it would change behavior. Has it proven to do so with past titles that have published their odds?

I don't think anybody can really say if it changed a lot of behavior, but the large games that have published them don't show signs of stopping growth. I do support making publishing odds a requirement still, but it's not really a super effective way to stop people from doing gacha rolls at least.
 
I don't know, why would someone call a thing that is not gambling in games that are by age rating alone clearly not aimed at children "gambling for children"?
I'd like to think you know you're being dense when you have to fall back on ESRB ratings to make your point. I shouldn't have to say this but kids play COD, Battlefront, GTA, and other mature games. And, again I shouldn't have to point this out, but developers know that kids play their mature games. They know that little Billy is playing Overwatch and grabbing his parents' credit card for loot boxes. They not only know it, but they're counting on it.

And even beyond the age issue, these practices are predatory onadults with addictive personalities and/or financial issues. The article points this out, if you'd read it. They use the exact same psychological audio cues and animations that slot machines use to entrap people into gambling. Saying "it's not technically gambling" is pedantic; it's like saying Amway isn't a pyramid scheme because they sell a product. It's the same efffect.
 

redcrayon

Member
They are though.
Like I said, this is a standard practice in the webgames space, in the PC space and in the mobile space, and has been making EA big money in the console space with FIFA FUT for just shy of a decade now.

Its only now that "real" games are seeing it introduced that the "real gamer" vocal minority are deciding its a big deal because its now in "their" games.
I think it's more that they've appeared in several of the biggest console games of the year that have a £50 entry fee, all in one season, following their success in Overwatch. It feels like a very sudden industry-wide move in the biggest games in the console space, as opposed to the relatively gradual adoption of random paid microtransactions elsewhere.

Lootboxes have been around for ages but the reason it's a talking point now isnt only its appearance on consoles, it's that it's suddenly the business model of the most successful, huge and paid £50 AAA games that would be successful whether or not they had it, and so the defence of them as 'rising costs of games development!' becomes laughable in the face of the juggernaut franchises that are the console games to choose to deploy them.

You're also assuming that people objecting to them are 'console gamers' utterly oblivious to PC and mobile gaming, and that they haven't objected to various business models over the years either. I was objecting to predatory ftp mobile games years ago, I don't see how it's suddenly removing the blinkers, hypocrisy or a change of pace to object to the same crap in games that have a £50 starter fee just because they are on a different device, it feels like an evolution of the same argument to me. Not all 'console gamers' are oblivious to other sectors, there's been plenty of discussion about similar stuff in mobile games here over the years.
 
Whether or not we all acknowledge that they are exploitative and impact design there is no getting rid of them unless people actually stop buying them which doesn't look like it will be happening any time soon. It'll keep happening until one day people will actually get fed up enough to just not buy these games then they'll figure out some other way to pas their profit margins at the consumers expense.



Yes because making a horrible tragedy into a promotion for your software and potentially gaining monetarily under the guise of donations is a real stand up thing to do.

It's still being used as a way to promote their software and their microtramsaction system regardless of whether or not this specific req pack profits them directly. If they wanted to enable people to donate they could've just as easily made purchasable donations directly on the Microsoft store instead of through their game. They chose to do it through their game in an effort to stir up attention and garner positive coverage and PR in hopes of getting more future returns from potential in game microtransaction purchases.

It's extreme posts like this that will actually get me defending lootboxes, lol.
 

Nimby

Banned
Just don't monetize them. I find it kind of hard to believe that games like Overwatch have to use loot box funds to keep the player base unified/DLC expansions.

I suppose that's easier said than done, but this article made me look at the situation from a perspective I normally wouldn't.

It's totally opinion based but when your game is designed around loot drops it makes the game feel oppressive and un-fun, much like the end game of Destiny 2. Once you've experienced all of the game, you're left with the Crucible which I personally think is lackluster all around, especially solo queue. Overwatch probably doesn't get much of a bad rep because the loot boxes actually feel like rewards to playing a decent multiplayer game.
 
If they like the gameplay loop, why would they spend money to skip it? Or were you referring to buying the crates themselves as the "gameplay loop?"

Yea this, what the hell lol. When companies are forced to get rid of lootbox or show us how fucked they are, they can finally go back to, you know, making games instead of figuring out how to squeeze every last dollar out of their player base in the most predatory way possible.
 

kirblar

Member
Just don't monetize them. I find it kind of hard to believe that games like Overwatch have to use loot box funds to keep the player base unified/DLC expansions.

I suppose that's easier said than done, but this article made me look at the situation from a perspective I normally wouldn't.

It's totally opinion based but when your game is designed around loot drops it makes the game feel oppressive and un-fun, much like the end game of Destiny 2. Once you've experienced all of the game, you're left with the Crucible which I personally think is lackluster all around, especially solo queue. Overwatch probably doesn't get much of a bad rep because the loot boxes actually feel like rewards to playing a decent multiplayer game.
Why shouldn't someone be able to buy them?

As kids, people have way more time than they do money. As adults, the inverse is true for a lot of people.

Overwatch and other GAAS where all gameplay content is free updates rely on the loot boxes to provide a steady stream of content in order to pay for servers, the game staff, etc. Additional game content is not "free" to design and develop, and in order to produce it, you need to either charge players for it directly, or subsidize it indirectly.
Yea this, what the hell lol. When companies are forced to get rid of lootbox or show us how fucked they are, they can finally go back to, you know, making games instead of figuring out how to squeeze every last dollar out of their player base in the most predatory way possible.
They are using the money they get from those lootboxes in order to pay the people who make the games!
 

Seiniyta

Member
They do it in china.

Blizzard promptly found a workaround for the (poorly constructed) law in China to not show the odds anymore.

I can't talk specifics, but Blizzard is well aware of the current conversation about Lootboxes. It appears more changes are coming to it. Though I don't know what shape those will take, if they will go through with it.

the reason they don't like showing the odds is because they feel like most people are really terrible at interpreting those kind of numbers and math in general (sterns from Onyxia is deep breathing more...). When it was displaying the odds in china many people didn't believe that the odds were 'this good' and just complained that Blizzard was lying about them.

For Overwatch specifically I'd like it if every levelup is a guaranteed chance at a non-duplicate Rare/Epic/Legendary item (so sprays are excluded) on top of getting a free lootbox. Leveling up I feel feels too meaningless when a lootbox can contain stuff you completely don't want making it feel a bit sour. After a bad lootbox like that I tend to like just stop for the evening. It's something they'll have to address.
 
This would be great, and assuming they're honest with percentages, you can then weigh whether it is worth the monetary risk. I wonder though, if it would change behavior. Has it proven to do so with past titles that have published their odds?

IMO, it would encourage more spending because of gambler's fallacy.
 
Why shouldn't someone be able to buy them?

As kids, people have way more time than they do money. As adults, the inverse is true for a lot of people.

Overwatch and other GAAS where all gameplay content is free updates rely on the loot boxes to provide a steady stream of content in order to pay for servers, the game staff, etc. Additional game content is not "free" to design and develop, and in order to produce it, you need to either charge players for it directly, or subsidize it indirectly.

They are using the money they get from those lootboxes in order to pay the people who make the games!

You can use normal micro transactions like titanfall 2 does, you dont have to hide your paid content behind blind boxes.
 

LordRaptor

Member
the reason they don't like showing the odds is because they feel like most people are really terrible at interpreting those kind of numbers and math in general (sterns from Onyxia is deep breathing more...). When it was displaying the odds in china many people didn't believe that the odds were 'this good' and just complained that Blizzard was lying about them.

I fully believe this is true, and that if you say something like "You have a 1 in 100" chance of getting whatever they would get angry customer support tickets how they did a thing 100 times and still did not get that 1 in 100 chance occurring.
 
Blizzard promptly found a workaround for the (poorly constructed) law in China to not show the odds anymore.

I can't talk specifics, but Blizzard is well aware of the current conversation about Lootboxes. It appears more changes are coming to it. Though I don't know what shape those will take, if they will go through with it.

the reason they don't like showing the odds is because they feel like most people are really terrible at interpreting those kind of numbers and math in general (sterns from Onyxia is deep breathing more...). When it was displaying the odds in china many people didn't believe that the odds were 'this good' and just complained that Blizzard was lying about them.

For Overwatch specifically I'd like it if every levelup is a guaranteed chance at a non-duplicate Rare/Epic/Legendary item (so sprays are excluded) on top of getting a free lootbox. Leveling up I feel feels too meaningless when a lootbox can contain stuff you completely don't want making it feel a bit sour. After a bad lootbox like that I tend to like just stop for the evening. It's something they'll have to address.

The government is definitely not who you want regulating video games, but they had to do something because the industry is not properly regulating itself.

This is why im so frustrated, the ESRB response this week triggered me, it was ridiculous.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
The amount of intentional grind in games like Final Fantasy VII really ruined the experience
Huh? FFVII had no forced grinding.

Rarity. That cool looking skin or emote isn't as cool if everyone has it.
When you see everyone that has the Newest & Best shiny thing, and then you're stuck there wearing the old thing, you want to buy the Newest & Best too.
...Starting to think gamers deserve to get exploited. This is all so very ridiculous.

It's not even exclusive to gachas and lootboxes, really -- it's part of being human
lol.

They are using the money they get from those lootboxes in order to pay the people who make the games!
You mean they're funnelling this money into offshore tax havens, right?
 

RM8

Member
I'm lucky that not only I don't find these things addictive - I find them to be a huge turn off and I delete mobile games with them. And I have yet to buy a retail game with loot boxes, so yeah. This is not something that should have a defence force, seems like pure corporate greed.
 

nynt9

Member
Oh yeah, I know it's not a sound or logical opinion. Just a knee-jerk reaction I have when reading posts about people throwing money at loot boxes. People who buy lootboxes can absolutely be on top of their finances.

However I do think that spending $60 on the specific thing you want, be it a game or anything else, is a much more sound purchasing decision than spending $60 to maybe get a cosmetic skin you want.



Making money and having money are two different things. Someone who makes $100K a year but spends it all on luxury items or, say, lootboxes, would not be as financially stable as someone making half as much but saving their money.

When buying packs in hearthstone, I don’t think “I’ll spend $50 to get this one card I want”. I think “if I spend $X I will on average get Y dust from disenchanting cards I don’t need, so I can craft the card I want”. If I happen to open the card I want, that’s a bonus. But generally you want to think of the average case and the currency you’ll earn to craft what you want. Similar to opening MTG packs - you earn a certain amount of card value from opening a certain amount of packs, you can then trade those towards what you want.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Huge materia / enemy skill completion / ultima weapons / final limit breaks
Optional power-levelling stuff != forced grinding

In Shadow of War, you choose between grinding and paying to unlock the true ending. In FFVII, you choose between grinding and not grinding. Not even remotely comparable.

I'm lucky that not only I don't find these things addictive - I find them to be a huge turn off and I delete mobile games with them. And I have yet to buy a retail game with loot boxes, so yeah. This is not something that should have a defence force, seems like pure corporate greed.
It is.
 

oti

Banned
I’ve argued in other threads that I’m honestly sympathetic to concerns about whaling practices. If we want to deep dive into specific systems and outline actionable concerns, I’m all ears. When people call for transparency in the odds of drops or in how the pity mechanics work, I actually agree. If anyone has ideas on how to protect whales from spending obscene amounts of money, I’m willing to listen and can probably easily be brought on board in terms of advocating it.

I’m absolutely not a pro free market loon who thinks the unchecked invisible hand of the market is always right. I don’t own stock in a single video game company so it’s not like I care about stock prices needing to endlessly rise.

When the author of the piece writes about being addicted to spending money on gacha mobile crap, I’m sympathetic. Can we mitigate the chances of this happening? We should try!

But if the solution is “yeah, we can get rid of this shit entirely or make the ESRB slap an AO rating on it so that it’s effectively killed because I don’t like it anyway and want game design to go back to the way it was in the glorious PS2 era” then I fear we’ve become old people yelling at clouds.

Thank you for this post. After seeing people bringing up racism and the literal Holocaust into this debate, this post is everything.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
the reason they don't like showing the odds is because they feel like most people are really terrible at interpreting those kind of numbers and math in general (sterns from Onyxia is deep breathing more...). When it was displaying the odds in china many people didn't believe that the odds were 'this good' and just complained that Blizzard was lying about them.

Definitely corroborated by 'feel good' numbers massaging in gaming stuff not even related to monetization - everything from WoW quest drop and MOBA proc streak-breakers to XCOM chance-fudging.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
The way these kinds of business practices use human psychology to prey on people is really scummy.
That pretty much explains marketing and a lot of design choices. Both preu on people using psychology from the name, shape and colors used to the music, script, and who it's marketed too. I get how these are worse since people with gambling and addictive issues are vunerable. I do have a question though, where does personal accountability come in? At some point the people with issues need to stay away don't they?
 

PrimeBeef

Member
Definitely corroborated by 'feel good' numbers massaging in gaming stuff not even related to monetization - everything from WoW quest drop and MOBA proc streak-breakers to XCOM chance-fudging.
Don't get me started on X-com. I did keep track of my lootboxes and card packs in OW, HotS, and HS and the %s I saw was pretty damned close to what was published for China.
 

LordRaptor

Member
Optional power-levelling stuff != forced grinding

In Shadow of War, you choose between grinding and paying to unlock the true ending. In FFVII, you choose between grinding and not grinding. Not even remotely comparable.

I legitimately don't see much difference between a gamer declaring you haven't 'beaten' FF7 unless you've beaten all the sidequests and optional bosses, or not watching the 'epilogue' video ("Real Ending") is SOW unless you do grindy activities.

They're literally both grindy postgame activities to keep playtime high.
 

HeroR

Member
While I disagree, let's say we go with this argument. Should they at least be required to publish your chances so the customers can make a fully informed decision while exercising their personal responsibility?

I think that’s perfectly fair. I just take offense at people here trying to take responsibliy away from the consumer.

Loot boxes and the like exist because people buy them. If they’re being rip off, all you can do is spread the information. If they still buy the produce despite knowing they’re being rip off, that’s on them. You can’t save people from themselves if they don’t want to be save. Anyone who dealt with an addict knows this as a fact.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I mean, it's both, but you absolutely need a stream of income in order to justify investment of company resources!
No, it's not "both". Developers don't see a single cent of royalties from loot box revenue.


I legitimately don't see much difference between a gamer declaring you haven't 'beaten' FF7 unless you've beaten all the sidequests and optional bosses, or not watching the 'epilogue' video ("Real Ending") unless you do grindy activities.

They're literally both grindy postgame activities to keep playtime high.
...What are you talking about? No one ever says that, and moreover, one involves real money and the other doesn't so.... what the hell is even your point
 

HeroR

Member
It should be society's responsibility to look after vulnerable individuals. That's why highly addictive substances are banned or heavily regulated. It's why the whole gambling industry is heavily regulated. I think it's time that loot boxes should also be regulated to some capacity.

It isn’t society place to keep you from doing something stupid. It’s their money. They have the right to do whatever they want with it as long as they’re not causing harm to others.

And there’s an entire thread about why loot boxes isn’t the same as gambling.
 

Gotchaye

Member
That pretty much explains marketing and a lot of design choices. Both preu on people using psychology from the name, shape and colors used to the music, script, and who it's marketed too. I get how these are worse since people with gambling and addictive issues are vunerable. I do have a question though, where does personal accountability come in? At some point the people with issues need to stay away don't they?
I don't really see that personal accountability comes into it at all. Like, sure, everyone individually should try not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. You should teach your kids not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. But if any significant number of people are spending their life savings on loot boxes, we're not allowed to just throw up our hands and say "well they should have had some personal accountability". It would still be a very good thing if we could protect them from that terrible outcome.
 

HeroR

Member
I don't really see that personal accountability comes into it at all. Like, sure, everyone individually should try not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. You should teach your kids not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. But if any significant number of people are spending their life savings on loot boxes, we're not allowed to just throw up our hands and say "well they should have had some personal accountability". It would still be a very good thing if we could protect them from that terrible outcome.

Do you have a study that shows a lot of people spending their life savings on loot boxes or all this just ‘what ifs’?
 
Great article and really pleased so many outlets are voicing it. I will gladly support any games that rejects these practices and any news outlet that calls attention to them.

Edit:

Developers, you want more of my money reject these manipulative practices and offer direct sales for specific extra things I would want: cosmetic or new game expansions. I will pay for them. You deserve the cash for your constant support of the game.
 

Gotchaye

Member
Do you have a study that shows a lot of people spending their life savings on loot boxes or all this just ‘what ifs’?
No, as should be clear from my earlier posts in this thread, I'm unconvinced that loot boxes represent a serious issue. That's why I was speaking hypothetically.
 
Do you have a study that shows a lot of people spending their life savings on loot boxes or all this just ‘what ifs’?

Thats part of the issue, we dont have access to that data, all we know is that "whales" are out there.

I also believe people shouldnt have to be blowing their life savings for the esrb to put in some regulations.
 
But we need to acknowledge what loot boxes are. They’re slot machines in everything but name, meticulously crafted to encourage player spending and keep them on the hook.

Yep, it's amazing that people keeping bringing up different comparisons like trading cards when slot machines are the closest one there is. I even saw someone saying, "well how do you know that loot boxes are even having this effect on people? Hmm?!"

To which I would say, the casino gaming industry has spent decades and decades trying to perfect the slot machine, if a shiny and loud slot machine didn't have the effect of creating an experience that makes it more likely to get people spending money, then slot machines would probably be completely different.

Their digital interfaces, often with big curved screens, brand tie ins and obnoxiously cheery music, are designed to draw people in. But it’s the way they dish out rewards that really seals the deal, and slot machine makers learned these invisible design elements from basic psychology. B.F. Skinner’s famous study on reward is a major touchpoint here:

To keep players gambling, all slots rely on the same basic psychological principles discovered by B.F. Skinner in the 1960s. Skinner is famous for an experiment in which he put pigeons in a box that gave them a pellet of food when they pressed a lever. But when Skinner altered the box so that pellets came out on random presses — a system dubbed variable ratio enforcement — the pigeons pressed the lever more often. Thus was born the Skinner box, which Skinner himself likened to a slot machine.

The Skinner box works by blending tension and release — the absence of a pellet after the lever is pressed creates expectation that finds release via reward. Too little reward and the animal becomes frustrated and stops trying; too much and it won’t push the lever as often.

https://www.fastcodesign.com/304614...ive-psychology-of-slot-machines-to-app-design

Why does this all sound so familiar..

This is not something that should have a defence force, seems like pure corporate greed.

If it wasn't for corporate apologism/fanboyism, these loot box threads would be much, much different.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
I don't really see that personal accountability comes into it at all. Like, sure, everyone individually should try not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. You should teach your kids not to spend their life savings on loot boxes. But if any significant number of people are spending their life savings on loot boxes, we're not allowed to just throw up our hands and say "well they should have had some personal accountability". It would still be a very good thing if we could protect them from that terrible outcome.
Regardless of the amount of people doing it or how much each spend. Addictive personality or gambling addict, everyone has a choice to make. Like my parents used to say if everyone jumped off a bridge, it doesn't make it right.
 

Gotchaye

Member
Regardless of the amount of people doing it or how much each spend. Addictive personality or gambling addict, everyone has a choice to make. Like my parents used to say if everyone jumped off a bridge, it doesn't make it right.
Sure. But, like, if you're the mayor and 5 people are jumping off the bridge every day, you're kind of an asshole if you don't at least put up a guardrail.
 
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