Let's talk about Loot Boxes

[footle]

29 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

 

Not following the maths then...

 

Unless I've misunderstood your point - their figures suggest they do need MTX to support their development costs so apologies if thats what your trying to say - I agree

 

That’s my point. They’re not one of the publishers who don’t need to do it...

(obviously, no publisher needs to do it, if they’ve got a better idea, but none of them currently seem to)

[mushashi]

They were making more money years before they bought King and before MTX took off, so it doesn't follow that including King would mean they suddenly fell to a loss if you looked at just Activision and Blizzard without King, you forget King itself has running costs which are now included in the results. King Digital previously did over $2 Billion in revenue and had a net profit of ~$500 Million so that would be the rough figure to subtract if you want to exclude King from Activision-Blizzard. They'll likely post a profit well in excess of ~$1 Billion next year as the tax stuff is a one-time hit, that is certainly their forward forecast.

 

ATVI have been consistently profitable for years now, due to them being the gaming equivalent of Disney, they have their equivalent of Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar, unlike the other publishers who don't have multiple big earners. The rest actually do have some valid reasons to lean on MTX.

[Harsin]

Hawaii pushing forward with loot box legislation.

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-02-13-hawaii-introduces-landmark-legislation-against-loot-boxes

 

Quote

Hawaiian state representative Sean Quinlan has affirmed support of his colleague's efforts to "curb the proliferation of gambling mechanics in games that are marketed to children", saying he expects other states to follow Hawaii's lead in the "absence of strong signals from the industry that they will deal with the issue internally". 

In December last year, Quinlan said that regulation would be a "slippery slope" and that the industry should self-regulate. 

"When I was a teenager, a senator by the name of Joseph Lieberman tried to regulate the content of violent video games," Quinlan told GamesIndustry.biz. "His attempts to conflate video game violence with real world violence did lasting damage to the image of video games and certain publishers. 

"I want to make it clear that we are only regulating a mechanism, not the content of the game itself. I would hope that any further legislation dealing with video games would similarly only look at particular mechanisms and not content itself.

"We live in an age where behavioral psychologists have discovered certain triggers and strategies that are extremely efficient at separating people from their money at a frightening pace. If even mature and intelligent adults are falling victim to these mechanisms, how are kids expected to respond?"

 

 

[keptbybees]

Chris Lee the Hawaiian representative has been questioning the ESA about loot boxes in a televised session. They don’t have much to say but it is interesting how unprepared they are. The video is below, the questioning starts at around 4.20.

 

 

[Harsin]

You only have to look at the lengths that Activision/Blizzard have gone through in China to try and get around the (perfectly reasonable) law they introduced that you have to publish the actual odds on loot boxes to see how scummy these publishers are.

 

Even the representative of the industry's self-regulatory (lol) body in that session can't bring himself to say it’s not gambling and keeps going 'technically not'.

[robdood]

ESRB take an almost meaningless step towards addressing the issue. 

 

 

[Harsin]

Quote

“I’m sure you’re all asking why aren’t we doing something more specific to loot boxes,” she [ESRB president Patricia Vance]  said. “We’ve done a lot of research over the past several weeks and months, particularly among parents. What we’ve learned is that a large majority of parents don’t know what a loot box is. Even those who claim they do, don’t really understand what a loot box is. So it’s very important for us to not harp on loot boxes per se, to make sure that we’re capturing loot boxes, but also other in-game transactions.”

 

 

So pretty much every single boxed game will have this label then. Parents may not understand the terminology 'loot boxes', but it wouldn’t be that hard to put some descriptor on there they would understand.

 

Think of this way, under this system there wouldn’t be any differentiation between Breath of the Wild and Battlefront 2.

 

In other news IGDA (remember them, Dr Tim Langdell, PHD in Copyright Trolling, used to a be a board member) are hosting the following session at this year's GDC.

 

Quote

Global gains against game censorship are suddenly at risk from a combination of actions against our industry. With the World Health Organization classifying ‘gaming disorder’ a mental health condition and burgeoning legislation around the world against loot boxes, a handful of government officials again wield outsized power over our creative and business decisions. What are developers to do?

 

 

[JohnC]

Thinking it's important not to talk about loot boxes to people who don't know what they are seems rather futile. Won't it just make actual legislation more likely? With an increasing number of countries looking at that.

[Mr Ben]

Bit more info in this video about that session at the GDC. Poor devs....

 

[TehStu]

I'm glad it's in quotes, because that's not what censorship means. Just wait until yank devs start quoting the 1st amendment.

[Flub]

The developers of Warframe on how they removed a microtransaction because it was being used to much

 

https://kotaku.com/warframe-removed-a-microtransaction-because-a-player-us-1824002323

 

“And we saw, you know, a guy pull the lever like 200 times,” Carter said. “And it’s just like, ‘oh my dear god, what have we done? We’ve created a slot machine.’ And so you know, it was a couple days I think it took us to take it out—a day, day and a half. That one is a big regret.” He added that while the feature turned out to be extremely lucrative for the studio in this particular case, it completely went against what the intent of the Kubrows, and Warframe itself, was supposed to be.

While paying platinum to randomly scramble your pet’s appearance until you got something you liked was controversial among the more dedicated parts of the game’s fan base, it’s interesting to know that it was specifically whale behavior (a few players spending a lot of money on a game) that drove studio Digital Extremes to quickly rethink the feature and patch it out with Hotfix 14.0.5 in the summer of 2014, a year after the game’s official launch.

[Harsin]

Somewhere Andrew Wilson is reading that story, shaking his head and going 'Heh, chumps'.

[Gorf King]

Quote

In the most recent episode of Danny O’Dwyer’s Noclip documentary series on 2013’s third-person shooter Warframe, studio manager Sheldon Carter talks about designing the game’s economy. “The guiding tenant is

try not to push them so that they’re going to grind their face off to get something but also give them enough variance so that getting those resources is interesting,

 

el oh el. DE are really clever in the way they manage the PR around their whale hunting activities, but my word, this statement is absolute nonsense. The whole basis of the game is to give you enough relatively easy to grind for gear to make the game perfectly playable (which they do), but then to make the stuff you want when you get properly into it either impossible to gain through in-game rewards (most cosmetics), or so incredibly difficult and long-winded to grind for that the alternative - buying with platinum - is something that's an attractive prospect. Especially when they bundle said item(s) with other stuff (exclusive cosmetics) you can't get just by grinding in game.

 

It's like the warning DE put up on the screen after you've played for an hour, advising you to maybe take a break. Reminds me of the advisory that tobacco companies used to put on fag packets to leave a longer stub. 

[TehStu]

Quote

With recent controversy over the use of microtransactions and loot boxes in Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Söderlund knows EA made mistakes, and it’s the management’s responsibility to correct them.

“I’d be lying to you if I said that what’s happened with Battlefront and what’s happened with everything surrounding loot boxes and these things haven’t had an effect on EA as a company and an effect on us as management,” he told The Verge.

The company’s management is, as a result, looking not to repeat these mistakes, and this starts with what monetisation practises it approves for its upcoming games.

“We have taken significant steps as a company to review and understand the mechanics around monetisation, loot boxes, and other things in our games before they go to market,” he said.

“For games that come next, for Battlefield or for Anthem, [players have] made it very clear that we can’t afford to make similar mistakes. And we won’t.”

 

https://www.vg247.com/2018/04/16/its-clear-to-us-that-players-see-the-company-differently-than-we-do-says-ea/amp/

 

A victory for boycotting? I haven't looked up BF2 sales, although I didn't buy it myself and I'm absolutely the core market.

[BeeJay]

54 minutes ago, TehStu said:

 

https://www.vg247.com/2018/04/16/its-clear-to-us-that-players-see-the-company-differently-than-we-do-says-ea/amp/

 

A victory for boycotting? I haven't looked up BF2 sales, although I didn't buy it myself and I'm absolutely the core market.

I don't think it means anything significant. I think the only thing that will change is that they will work harder to conceal their loot boxes and hide them in different mechanics. Using loot boxes (directly paid for or not) are fundamental to modern game mechanics and aren't going anywhere.

 

Edit: To clarify, they aren't going anywhere unless legislation is brought in.

[TehStu]

Yeah, that seems likely. I just can't be doing with pay to win though, that properly spoils it for part timers like myself (unless you, too, get the cheque book out). 

[Mr Cochese]

Re-brand them as tool boxes.

[Harsin]

Belgium has declared that some lootboxes are in violation of its gambling laws. In particular FIFA 18, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: GO.

 

Battlefront dodged the bullet, despite being the impetus for all this, because they’d patched out lootboxes at the time of the investigation.

 

The rest of the industry must absolutely love EA right now.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-declares-loot-boxes-gambling-and-therefore-illegal

[Nespresso]

How does online gambling work then? Is it age gated? If so, wouldn't this also be an easy fix for games?

[Down by Law]

18 rated Star Wars?

[TehStu]

Age gates aren't terribly well implemented, are they. And would that mean it would need something more official than PEGI?

[Harsin]

Regardless, no matter how little age ratings matter in reality to stop kids from playing games, there's no way on earth Disney would allow any publisher to put out a Star Wars game with an 18 sticker on it.

[MW_Jimmy]

https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/08/ea-ceo-were-pushing-forward-with-loot-boxes-in-face-of-regulation/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

“We’re going to continue pushing forward [with FIFA Ultimate Team],” EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson said during a conference call with industry analysts. “We’re always thinking about our players. We’re always thinking about how to deliver these types of experiences in a transparent, fun, fair, and balanced way for our players — and we’ll continue to work with regulators on that.”

 

No change at EA.

[Harsin]

Quote

“We’re always thinking about our players."

 

 

In the same way a fox is always thinking about a henhouse.

[deerokus]

On 25/04/2018 at 18:32, VN1X said:

How does online gambling work then? Is it age gated? If so, wouldn't this also be an easy fix for games?

It's totally illegal in the US as far as I know. 

[Girth Certificate]

wow, for almost a year I thought this topic was about those boxes full of funko pops and other tat that come in the post and Ashens opens up on youtube. 

[Nespresso]

1 hour ago, deerokus said:

It's totally illegal in the US as far as I know. 

But don't they have online casinos (you know, the ones where they point a camera at some casino person/dealer)? Is that all in Europe then?

[deerokus]

1 hour ago, VN1X said:

But don't they have online casinos (you know, the ones where they point a camera at some casino person/dealer)? Is that all in Europe then?

I believe so. They clamped down on it a few years ago by arresting operators of sites that were legal and mainstream over here.

 

That's why you get these weird fantasy sports sites that try to get around the ban via loopholes. Guns of course are legal, as are adverts for prescription medicines.

 

America is weird. 

[TehStu]

9 hours ago, MW_Jimmy said:

https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/08/ea-ceo-were-pushing-forward-with-loot-boxes-in-face-of-regulation/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

 

 

No change at EA.

 

Think that's fine. We'll see how many major titles underperform before they get the message. I still haven't bought it, and I'm literally their target market.

[Digfox]

Might be a while before they get that message; EA celebrates a record year, forecasts another.

 

I did see noted somewhere else but it's interesting that whilst 'live services' revenue increases, as a percentage of EA's income, actual revenue for full game downloads declines. Some of this might be skewed by mobile (as this isn't clear in the final paragraph to me) or a growing pattern towards subscriptions. But I wonder if there is a future risk of a decline in YOY growth given how the majority of their PC and console revenue is dependent on full, premium price, game downloads before they can even enjoy MTX and lootbox profits. Like Jim Sterling has theorised, there must be a saturation point for all these 'live services'. Even if we haven't appeared to have hit it, yet.