Loot Boxes, ESRB, and the government

Yeah. The former video, in which Chris Lee destroys the ESRB representative is just priceless:



These guys are just morons, can't even make a stand. The Rep wasn't even aware of half the thing Lee mentioned to him.
It's funny how they do have a rating for these type of games (Adult only), in which is stated things like gambling, but there's not a single game that has that rating because it involves loosing a huge portion of possible sales. So they higher rating is Mature.

Could very well be written by EA. After all, the ESRB is composed by members of the biggest game corporations, including EA. It's only natural they overlook at all the shitty practices so they can still keep them on their games.

Well since I have ZERO problem with lootboxes I of course do not want the government to get involved. The old saying goes, bottom up, top down, inside out. People just want to cry out for a savior and of course whenever there is any great controversey or bleeting on any issue the politician's ears instantly perk up and they start wringing their hands on 'how best to help the children.'





Both videos explain, much more eloquently then I can, both the pros and cons of the argument. I have my own feelings on the issue but I found them informative on either side of the equation.

Bottom line though is if you do not like lootboxes self regulate and don't buy them. They'll either go away or will not impact your life at all.

Agreed, for me personally.  I would never buy lootboxes, rarely even plunk down cash for DLC type stuff unless reviews are really good.  The problem is companies know they don't need everyone to buy in.  Much like mobile free-to-play type games they are counting on that small % of players with gambling tendencies to fork over huge amounts of cash.  I guess you can debate on whether or not that is predatory, immoral, or just good business.

The problem is, as you said, this is going to draw attention both gamers and developers don't want.  Which is why I really hope the game reps from devs/publishers and the ESRB start taking this seriously.  They clearly aren't as the above videos show.

Not really much we can do about it aside from keeping our fingers crossed I guess.

I don't care how many retards there are if they want to buy them they are more then free. As long as you can earn everything in the loot boxes through normal gameplay I don't see an issue.

Honestly it all boils down to what could be worse? So far, game companies seem to have three ways of recouping the losses (and making profits) from online play. Subscription services, nickel and diming people over silly map packs, and having a 'loot box' system usually where you can just pay real money for in game rewards 'faster' then you could in the actual game through normal gameplay, however, usually, you still can earn those things through normal GP.

In the former case subscriptions I do not like because paying something for the 'right' to pay software you probably already own, when there is no gurantee you will be able to play a game and make use of your subscription, does not work for me. It risks turning gameplay from a fun hobby to an actual chore.

Map packs never worked for me because its a way of literally cutting off content that is cheap and should have either been with the game, or free already.

Lootboxes give one the option to not buy them but if one wants to they are free to do so. It seems to be the best of both worlds. Granted I would change them if I was going to spend real money for something I would get to choose what I am paying for, like if I wanted a character skin (like in ME 3), but that's a small quibble.

I just think since gamers have obvious issues with the first two (game companies have kind of stopped doing them), and now the third one...what's next? What's going to be their next idea that could be a lot worse then loot boxes since they are pretty uninvasive in the long run.

Yes some people call them gambling buuut I do not think the government should regulate gambling either.

I remember one interview with Fernando Melo (one of the multiplayer designers for ME3MP and MEAMP) where he said they had one person who spent something like $15000 on microtransactions in ME3. That completely boggles my mind as the system wasn't particularly punishing towards people who didn't pay, nor would it take anywhere near that amount of money to unlock and max out every single piece of equipment in the game even after all the DLCs came out.

Except isn't the new Battlefront the straw that broke the camel's back specifically because it went too far and placed iconic characters behind the loot box wall? You give them this inch, they'll continue to take a mile and then some. That's the point. Also, what Laughing Man said.

Because they are clearly not of sound mind and I don't tend to sweat political correctness much?  Actual diagnosed mental disabilities are not in context here (though some victims of loot boxes may certainly possess such a disability, in which case it's even more tragic that this happens.)

I'll be honest, even as an adult, and one who hates this shit, I have given into the impulse buy of microtransactions, in more than one game. I draw the line at RNG boxes, but it's because I see how even that can slide in any given individual that compounds the sleaziness of this practice. Even if you're mostly soloing, the draw of "ooh look at this cool thing" can't be denied, and the greedy fucks know this. I'll agree the first line of defense is your own self-control but you shouldn't have to be a fucking zen master to play a goddamn video game. There needs to be a deterrent, some limit to the corporations at some point.

RNG is RNG. If he bought all the packs with RL money and had really shitty luck...

This is probably an extreme case. Maybe an actual gambling addict that was able to translate his condition to watching pictures of fake space guns come up. Still though...

Yes exactly, this practice is rampant in the mobile sphere already. The free methods of gaining items, coins, whatever, are often deliberately frustrating and time consuming to get. So much so that the paid option is just more attractive. It shifts the psychology of the player base to want to pay to avoid the hoops, waiting, grinding, etc. I definitely don't want to see that come to major game developers. 

I don't necessarily need the government to interfere on my behalf. I am lucky in that I am not at all drawn to gambling (rather the opposite really) and I don't really play MP games. I also don't buy games on day one anymore unless I have extensive information on them beforehand, so if I hear that there is a lottbox (or any monitizing) issue with a game, I just won't buy it in the first place. It's why I held back on LotR: Shadow of War for example, despite the fat that I liked the first game.
I still do have an issue with lootboxes though, especially when they are implemented aggressively: The fact that so many people seem to just not care enough or think about the issues enough and just buy that crap means that devs and publishers make a lot of money with these things. Therefore, the suits will ask the devs to make more of those games that make them insanely rich, instead of making cool SP story sriven games that make them just sanely rich.
What is the consequence of this: BioWare gets to make an open world coop shooter called Anthem. Visceral's Star Wars game gets scrapped and is supposed to be redesigned with more MP in mind. DA4's concept needs more "live features" to be considered passable.The much anticipated SP campaign of Battlefront 2 is only 3 hours long or something (haven't played it, it's what I hear).

I do hope that the market is self regulating there though. I hope that this is a fad, a cycle like the flood of MMORPGs in the wake of WoW that lasted until people ran out of money to pay all those subscriptions and 99% of them went to a niche existence as F2P titles in the end. I do hope we'll see the same phenomena with micro transactions and lootboxes. The cool thing is that SP titles are not designed to suck in the player forever, so you can always sell new ones. That's why they won't die, whereas once the MP market is divided up, there are no more pieces of cake to be had and publishers will need to move on to the next devious scheme.

The only aspect of this where some control should be exercised is in terms of protecting minors from gambling mechanisms (and I know, no protection there will ever be perfect, be it a rating system or anything else but all we can do there is try). And there, it seems like the correct rules are already in place, they just need to be implemented properly. This however is never going to happen as long as the people who make and sell the product are in charge of rating it. That really is ridiculous and that is the only thing that should be changed. Not necessarily because of toolboxes but in general.

It's worked before, when people targeted games for being violent with arguments similar to the ones being used now against loot systems. The Supreme Court ruled that video games fall under forms of expression and thus protected from interference under the 1st Amendment. 

There are restrictions to kids buying loot boxes as well. I even discuss it in my post. On every console, there are settings that prevent kids from being able to buy things with a credit card unless the owner of that credit card inserts a code. Any kid who is able to, the fault is not the games but the parents or guardians who gave them free reign with the credit card.