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If you think loot boxes are so 2017, it seems that you’d be wrong as it looks like the practice isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. For the past three years, more than 4,500 developers who have attended the Game Developers Conference have expressed their intention of implementing “paid item crates,” with 11 percent of the survey respondents confirming that their work-in-progress will house the microtransaction system.
The reasoning has been floating around for as long as the loot box controversy itself, in that some developers deem the practice necessary for the continued survival of their title given the current stability of the industry. According to the GDC's State of the Industry survey update, this opinion is shared throughout the majority of the game industry.
Many developers believe that the problem lies with how the loot boxes and microtransactions are implemented, rather than the use of them in general. Whereas Eastern countries such as China have laws implemented to protect consumers from such harmful practices, the Western world is currently open to be exploited to a certain degree. The main highlighted problem, however, is the difference between the cultures, which is often circumvented through the use of a cosmetics only approach over in the West.
“Time is money,” wrote one respondent. “So long as A) the content is also accessible by playing the game; and B) this and all parts of the game are balanced for gameplay FIRST and monetization second; then I see no legitimate basis for complaints.”
While ideal to have non-intrusive microtransactions, this isn’t always the case as EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II and Activision’s Destiny 2 have gone on to prove. Another respondent notes that these titles “will have a lasting impact on the industry” which is worrying for “game creators’ jobs more than anything,” and might go on to affect titles which implement the practice in a more mindful way.
Still, “microtransactions have to be a part of your strategy in AAA gaming. So everyone will need to figure out what works for them.” It is necessary, not only to keep servers active and running, but to keep developers at work and creating.
The Game Developers Conference will run from March 19th 2018 until the 23rd over in San Francisco, California.
KitGuru Says: I’m left bitter about the practice after the many debacles that hit last year. The struggle is creating something that isn’t pay-to-win or mandatory to enjoy the game, while still housing microtransactions to sustain the game’s longevity. This is even more important for games as a service titles. How do you feel about loot crates and microtransactions? Is there any feasible way to include them?
vote with your wallet, the only way to address this issue as a consumer is to refuse to buy games that push these anti-consumer policies.
Vote with your wallet is sound advice indeed and it goes for anything in life, but I do feel that there might be a place for loot boxes if they are conducted in the right way. Avoiding pay-to-win scenarios is a must, and potentially keeping things cosmetic avoids that. But I do understand that players are often expecting developers to give more free content while maintaining server costs, all from the money made from the initial purchase and that is entirely unrealistic.
For me I will choose to not buy into the loot box stuff. If I pay for a game that is my 1 and only payment to the game company they will not get anything else from me. Well only when expansions come out like in GW2 I buy into those in that game mainly because it gives you a whole new story to play plus a lot of new in game toys and features. I also really never bought into this DLC stuff in other games mainly because I figure most of the time the added content should have been released with the actual game when it was released.
If they ever make loot boxes mandatory to actually be able to finish a game I will just get a trainer that will just by pass their loot crap and finish the game the way it should have been made in the first place.
By the way GW2 has a store and you can buy these keys to open these chests with real money to get good stuff but it is random stuff. I have a whole slew of these chests and have founds lots of keys while fighting so I have opened tons of them for free. Also all 5 of my toons are totally maxed out and have not spent a dime of real money. I also keep 1 toon my 6th toon at level 54 because he is the one that opens chests and the back packs to get stuff from drops. He is kept at the lower level because the he can get better stuff from the drops than my maxed out toons can.
hmm…thought loot boxes will be gone for good. guess i was wrong.Take a look at this for similar articles
FUCK!
I find people move on from these loot box titles rather quickly, out of all the games that came out in the last few years with loot crates, no one I know plays even a single one anymore bar Destiny 2. The only right way to handle loot crates is the way Naughty Dog went about it. Being completely and totally impossible to receive a duplicate from a crate (Unless you’re buying the booster crates) if you take out the possibility of earning a duplicate then it’s already worth a player opening their wallet, not only that, but if you spend the slightest bit of real cash, the amount of in-game currency you earn permanently increases by a substantial amount. What’s one dollar for something that’s of actual use to a consumer in Uncharted in comparison to Destiny, CoD or Battlefront 2 where you can grind a lot of cash and when you get a dup they give you next to nothing to make up for it
Well looking at the laucnh lineup of AAA games for 2018, I would say most devs have just given up.