I actually think the comparison to kinder eggs is apt. It’s the context that matters though. There’s only so many kinder eggs a parent is going to buy their kids, and each toy occupies kids for a while, whereas loot boxes are an easily replenished resource providing a benefit in a game ie. there’s always an immediate desire for more.
The people reading their stories about addiction is just soul crushing.
Agreed. Fantastic video, though.
The video would have been better without the rant against AAA. It’s not as if the video game industry created it. His character, I tolerate, but he’s got some fine points.
Valid point; they adopted and at times refined existing mechanisms.
Were lootboxes created by some A or AA game company I don’t know about?
We have armed students as well. (And sometimes people who are not or are no longer students who just wander into schools off the street and are heavily armed.)
While I obviously can’t speak for Nesrie, I took it to mean the general concepts of gambling and taking advantage of addicts; those have both been around since before 2K was a twinkle in somebody’s eye.
It’s only in gaming where the loot (sometimes) makes you more able at doing something/being competitive. I can’t think of anything else. (Okay, maybe beer makes it easier to loosen up a bit and socialize at a party. But I still think that’s not the same thing.)
Maybe I am confusing “lootboxes” with “pay-to-win”.
Anyway, it feels weird and offensive that it’s happening in games.
Oh, it absolutely is offensive. But all that marketing stuff Jim had in his videos? Not new, not specific to video games. Companies have been pulling stuff like that for ages. As for taking advantage of addicts, consider that it had to be made illegal to advertise cigarettes on tv and radio. Think about the huge issues with doctors getting paid to prescribe opioids. Look at the ridiculous, over the top ads we still have for alcohol.
I was never allowed to use “someone else is also behaving badly” as an excuse for my own behavior.
Um … yeah. Am I coming across as excusing them? I don’t think anyone here is. Rather, I’m damning even more industries.
I’m not excusing it either, but the way they show that guy on the stage and the general way he rants about even the concept of an AAA game… you’d think this industry created it, but they didn’t. They didn’t come up with the idea of taking advantage of addicts, and gaming did not create the idea of the AAA label either. Every time we wind up with addictive products like this, we usually have to do the same thing… regulate it with laws. And it seems to always occur after too much devastation to even get people to look at it seriously. It’s heartbreaking and wrong but the ideas are not new.
Apologies then. Yes, it did come across that way as I read it.
They guy spends the first few minutes talking about all sorts of different addictions, as well as his own personal history with addiction. Do you think doing this somehow just implicates AAA video game developers?
At the end of the video he goes on a rant specifically about AAA developers/publishers, like he is offended by even the concept of them.
Well, it is kind of his schtick. Also, AAA companies are less likely to attract people’s ire. (Jim Sterling not included.)
Pretty sure EA, Epic Games, Valve, Sony, Microsoft… do we even go a month without a group or three getting really, really mad at a AAA company? I mean… it’s not like they don’t often deserve it, but it’s the McDonald’s affect all over again. Even though we have Burger King, Carl’s Jr., and a host of other fastfood companies doing the same thing, the ire is usually directed at the biggest player, not the smaller ones. So again, it’s not exactly a unique to gaming thing… just how people tend to react. Loot boxes, the whole gambling mechanic… seemed really heavy in Mobile long before they started targeting PC and Consoles for doing the same thing.
I think it sucks and is definitely tragic just like gambling and other addictions are.
EA literally won “The Worst Company in America” from the Consumerist two years in a row, voted on by readers. EA have been hauled in front of government committees Their CEO has given interviews where he has acknowledged their awful perception with “gamers” (which he obviously thinks is all just a big misunderstanding).
Ubisoft basically became a meme around the time of AC Unity, both for the apocalyptic brokenness of that game, and also because it was the nadir of their excessive attempts to monetize and pad out their games.
And how about Microsoft, and the furor that surrounded the original plans for the Xbox One?
For a more current contender, how about Epic? Or Bethesda?