Hearthstone is known to manipulate in the player’s favor so you get a guaranteed Legendary every X packs (I think 10, but that might be wrong or out of date) so it wouldn’t be any surprise if some games manipulated in the other direction to make sure players don’t get “too” lucky. AFAIK no one has been caught doing so, but it’d be pretty hard to prove without buying and recording a huge number of boxes.
What do you think is the purpose of hiring psychologists and anthropologist for marketing departments, not to mention all the data gathering and data mining? To be consumer friendly? Ha.
This is probably the closest we’ve gotten to factual evidence of what I was saying.
Activision has a patent for a technique to match lower-level freeloader players with higher-level players that buy more stuff. The idea being that if the freeloader sees more cool cosmetics, maybe they’ll be encouraged to buy in.
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.
“In a particular example, the junior player may wish to become an expert sniper in a game (e.g., as determined from the player profile),” according to the patent. “The microtransaction engine may match the junior player with a player that is a highly skilled sniper in the game. In this manner, the junior player may be encouraged to make game-related purchases such as a rifle or other item used by the marquee player.”
No word on whether or not Activision uses this matchmaking scheme.
I’m curious if this sometimes happens IRL too.
I don’t see why you’d need or get a patent for “match make taking into account variables x,y and z”. That some of those variables are “player bling” instead of “player skill” or “player ping” or whatever seems insufficient to merit a patent, IMO (IANAL).
But it isn’t gambling. It isn’t even all that bad IMO, I see it as a variation on the product placement techniques supermarkets use.
I don’t know where you’re getting this from. Valve has talked openly about how it changes the odds of loot boxes in Dota, most dramatically to avoid dupes of common items until you have all of them.
Adjusting odds of dupes isn’t what I was accusing them of doing. Most people would say that’s a good thing. I’m talking about purposefully manipulating loot crate odds in a manner that’s specifically designed to keep the carrot out of reach for as long as possible based on psychology.
Getting an official response as to why these systems are becoming more prevalent is nigh on impossible - GamesIndustry.biz received a polite ‘no comment’ from Activision, Warner Bros, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and several other publishers we asked to weigh in on the subject - but those who do point the finger of blame squarely in one direction: the rising costs of both development and marketing.
But according to one studio director - who wished to remain anonymous - it’s not just that costs are increasing, but that the disparity between how much publishers are charging and what consumers are spending is also growing.
“Development costs of AAA titles are five to ten times the price they were in the '90s,” the person told us. "As technology moves forward, costs go up and teams get larger. Salaries also go up in that time both for starters and people employed for those periods of time.
“But sales and prices have remained pretty static - especially given the ‘sale culture’ nowadays.”
Pobst suggests that the source of the anger is not, in fact, the transactions themselves. Instead, it stems from the changing perception of the game: initially purchased as a piece of entertainment, but starkly highlighted as a commercial product by the immersion-breaking call to spend real-world money.
Sadly, you can’t put a price on the soul of a game, but it must be pretty high since AAA can’t seem to have one very often.
Yes, the shiny (which I don’t really care about) is much more expensive, but so has the market expanded, since people in poorer countries can actually afford to a buy games now and then, from Portugal to Russia to China.
Not that sales are anywhere near close to what they were 5 years ago. Honestly, they spend too much for the same thing over and over, and the sooner they crash, the better.
EDIT: And there’s no more used sales, “rentals”, a lot more customers over 30, many who pre-order and buy season passes that provide them a nice, guaranteed cashflow for a product that is usually buggy for months.
I’m sorry, if 4 million sales isn’t enough to make a great profit, the issue is not with your customers.
what bothered me most about the esrb’s definition of why loot boxes aren’t gambling implies that if a slot machine gave you back ANYTHING for every spin it wouldn’t be gambling. Put in $100, it gives you at least $1 back so it’s not gambling, you didn’t want what you got but you got something. So crazy.
Not quite – you put in money, you get out money is a very different thing. That is clearly gambling.
With loot boxes, you put in money, you get digital items. Not money.
that wasn’t their definition though, that’s yours. their example on why it can’t be gambling simply had to do with getting something for what you spend.
Yes but getting money back is a very different thing than “a product you paid for”. Money for money, is the essence of gambling.
Not exactly. They said it was not gambling because you always got something and it was always digital, which means it had no inherent value.
Imagine paying $10 for a ticket that either gets you a loaf of bread worth $1 or a car worth $100,000. If you are cheated out of the car, you can argue that you are owed $99,999.
Or imagine paying $10 for a ticket that gets you either 500 virtual gems or nothing. If you are cheated and get nothing, then you are clearly owed a refund of the ticket that was destined to be worthless.
But now imaging paying $10 for a ticket that gets you either a Star Citizen cruiser or an orcslaying sword on WoW. You get the sword, and then realize the game was fixed. Are you owed anything? Hard to prove, because you can’t compare the inherent values of two different digital goods. And it doesn’t really matter if you would have preferred the cruiser.
I’m pretty sure I can prove the monetary value of the Star Citizen cruiser and the orcsaying sword in WoW. Both items would have like objects that have been sold or traded for real money.
Good point on your part. Bad example on my part.
But the biggest prizes offered in loot boxes are not offered for real money, and owners cannot sell them for real money without breaking terms of service. And this is why.
[shitpost]Words on a forum aren’t real words, because they’re digital and have no inherent value.[/shitpost]
LOL, well if you paid for a digital box that displayed a randomly selected quote from a forum, that would not be gambling! No matter how many likes the post received… And that’s probably a better analogy than my original one.
Sometimes posting on Stack Exchange feels like gambling, because you never know if you will get actual help, or snarky derisive comments, and closed threads/questions.