Various videogame blogs and media outlets have been talking about loot boxes for weeks, as the increasingly omnipresent (and increasingly manipulative/abusive) "feature" not only finds its way into every AAA videogame release, but results in games being cancelled, and their studios closed, when they the projects can't be easily reworked to include them. Up until now, the tempest has been entirely confined to the games-media teacup, but that may be starting to change.
Loot boxes aren't strictly new. Similar micro-transaction systems are
a regular feature of smartphone games that are initially
free-to-play. But unlike free-to-play games, where players might chip in
a few dollars for a game they enjoy, loot boxes are being introduced
in games that already sell at a retail price of $80 Cdn.
Gamers have become increasingly critical of highly anticipated new releases — such as Forza Motorsport 7, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and Star Wars Battlefront II — locking items and features that in previous instalments were free.
Many players have likened it to gambling — and some are even calling for government regulation on the matter.
The piece goes through both sides of the argument pretty thoroughly, and reaches no obvious conclusions, although I personally find the AAA publishers' position (i.e. that they need unrestricted access to casino-business game mechanics because their "business model doesn't allow for growth") to be a very weaksauce rationale for letting them get away with exactly the same shit that we regulate at casinos, but that's not nearly as important, I think, as the fact that the piece exists at all. The outcry against AAA videogame publishers naked greed, and total lack of anything that resembles self-control or scruples, has reached a level of intensity where the non-videogaming world is starting to notice... and wonder if it isn't time to do something.
The EAs and Activisions of the world may yet come to regret having pushed the envelope so hard.
As if Activision's recently-patented process of weaponizing online multiplayer game match-making weren't bad enough, it turns out that there's an even worse level of emotionally abusive bullshit lurking beneath the scummy surface of the videogaming industry, and unlike Activision's, this one has definitely already been deployed against unwitting and willing consumers. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Scientific Revenue!
Jim Sterling gets credit for the scoop on this story, and his video piece on the subject is an absolute must-watch for anyone who's ever despaired of finding a decent game in the wasteland of shit that is the mobile gaming market.
In a nutshell, though, what Scientific Revenue does is use "best practice" techniques from other industries (specifically, the "big data" and casino businesses) to build data profiles of consumers, without their knowledge or informed consent, the better to target those with demonstrated propensities for in-game purchases and then extract as much money from each tier of punter with a variable pricing scheme.
Basically, the more addictive your personality, the more likely a "SciRev" (nice one, Jim!) is to target addiction-prone players with microtransactions that are priced higher than the exact same MT offerings as presented to players with less-addictive personalities... the idea being that players who are less likely to buy expensive MTs might pop for cheap ones, while the "whales" that are already well and truly hooked will continue to bankrupt themselves by spending money they can't afford on useless digital tat that they don't actually need, and which they probably wouldn't want if it weren't being presented to them in such an emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative manner.
SciRev's defense of this slimy bullshit is that they're just applying other industries' "best practices" to mobile games. This is rather interesting since one of the industries involved is obviously the gambling industry (they even use the casino industry's terminology for high-revenue victims customers, i.e. "whales"), a heavily-regulated industry to which the AAA video game business, anxious to avoid having their casino-business bullshit slapped with legislated regulations, has been trying very hard to avoid comparisons.
SciRev's other defenses include comparisons to auctions and surge pricing, comparisons which fail for two obvious reasons:
consumers engaged in an auction do so knowingly (something which SciRev's victims cannot say), and place their bids deliberately and openly, which doesn't happen under SciRev's invisible, black-box process;
surge pricing is applied all consumers equally depending on demand fluctuations, while SciRev's model varies prices invisibly to unfairly target individual purchasers.
Bullshit excuses aside, the most important things to know about Scientific Revenue are a) that it's already in use, and b) that is clearly shows up the most common defense of AAA microtransactions (that they're "optional," and somehow about player choice) as the lie that it has always been. This kind of abusive microtransaction-based business model is not intended to be optional; it's intended to be unavoidable, it deliberately targets the most vulnerable consumers, and it desperately needs to be regulated. There really ought to be a law. Seriously, this microtransaction bullshit needs a legislative remedy.
Incidentally, for those that are keen to see the Nintendo Switch succeed, I'd say that the existence of operations like Scientific Revenue in the smartphone gaming space go a long way to improving Nintendo's chances. Whether you're on Google Play or the iOS App Store, mobile gaming has become a wasteland of shit; Nintendo's actively-curated experience might be full of ports of games that made their mark on other platform, but those are all excellent games, and Nintendo seems to be alone among AAA videogame companies in having absolutely no appetite for this kind of abusive bullshit. Nintendo sees their customers as customers, and not as "whales" waiting to happen, and that could be a powerful selling point for their (superior) mobile gaming platform.
One of the main arguments that people often advance for the inclusion of paid, free-to-play-style microtransactions in full-price, AAA videogames is that they're just cosmetic, and therefore harmless. This is an argument that the AAA videogame industry has pushed themselves on multiple occasions, arguing that MTs were entirely optional, and weren't in any way intended to manipulate players, or the games themselves, to squeeze more money out of customers who've already paid for the games themselves.
There's just one problem with that line of defence: it's bullshit. AAA videogame companies absolutely intend for their MT systems to be as manipulative and exploitative as possible, and at least one of them is actively working on ways to make them even more so, as reported by
Brian Crecente at Rolling Stone:
Activision was granted a patent this month for a system it uses to convince people in multiplayer games to purchase items for a game through microtransactions.
[...]
The patent details how multiplayer matches are configured,
specifically how players are selected to play with one another. That
process used by Activision involves a computer looking at a wide variety
of factors including skill level, Internet latency, availability of
friends and other things. It then goes through a system to first
soft-reserve a slot in a game for a player and then assign the players
to the same match.
This patent, though, specifically discusses how
that system for pairing up players can also be used to entice a player
to purchase in-game items.
"For example, in one implementation,
the system may include a microtransaction engine that arranges matches
to influence game-related purchases," according to the patent. "For
instance, the microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee
player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make
game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A
junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining
weapons or other items used by the marquee player."
The patent goes on to note that the same information could be
used to identify which sorts of in-game purchasable items should be
promoted.
Activision, naturally, claim that they haven't put this patented technique to use in any games.... yet. Specifically, they haven't added this special bullshit sauce to Destiny 2, in spite of that game clearly having been designed around its microtransaction system. This was just some R&D people "working independently from [the] game studios," and doesn't represent any intention at all (😉) on Activision's part to basically turn all their online-only multiplayer games' match-making systems into the shittiest experience possible, and their players into helpless victims of this cynical exploitation.
Activision's newly-patented match-making system describes exactly the opposite of an enjoyable player experience. It literally sets the player up to fail in the least fair way possible, matching them against players who have out-geared them, and then advertising that gear to losing players in that emotionally charged and vulnerable moment, pushing paid content that will let them victimize other lower-ranking players in exactly the same way... and then going on to reward them with exactly that kind of griefing experience if they cave to the pressure and drop the cash. It's not so much a match-making system as a grief-making system, encouraging toxic behaviour that more-reputable developers are trying to eradicate from their games' online communities.
But Activision aren't planning to ever use it, of course. Heaven forfend!
BULLSHIT.
It is time to stop rewarding these assholes with your money. It is time to stop paying full-price for games are come deliberately broken in order to push free-to-play monetization mechanics at you. Do not spend money on any game that also tries to milk you after purchase for paid microtransactions. I don't care how "optional" or "cosmetic" they're supposed to be. These systems are not intended or designed to feel in any way optional, and they are not harmless.
At least lawmakers in the UK are starting to take an interest in this issue; hopefully more lawmakers in other countries follow suit, so that regulators can impose some controls here, since it's painfully obvious that AAA publishers either can't or won't do so on their own.
Jim Sterling, who's been covering this issue since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, has a pretty good video out on the subject, as do Pretty Good Gaming, who have been covering this issue pretty intensively for months now.