When I read the headline “FIFA and EA have decided to split up after three long decades,” I wasn’t surprised. I knew it was coming. One of my beloved franchises, which I grew up on, was about to be killed off. While I acknowledge the fact nothing lasts forever, I do want to say that I hate things to have ended this way. But more importantly, this split-up won’t affect one devil, who has completely ruined the way I’d look at FIFA titles in the last 5-6 years. Loot boxes. While I understand that companies need to make money, I don’t get how underhanded they can be. And let me get this straight, FIFA isn’t the only title deploying this strategy. Every game from CS: GO on PC to BGMI on Mobile Devices is busy using this strategy to get that money out of our pockets. Loot Boxes and the entire technology is nothing but affiliated with digital gambling and quite literally have our upcoming generation hooked on it. Not only is it ruining their minds, but it also gives the masses a lousy impression of video games.
Now, if you still haven’t figured out what I am talking about, Let me explain what “Loot boxes” are. In simple terms, loot boxes are items that contain unrevealed characters/costumes/ guns, etc. The raffle results are given out after you buy these in-game using real money. It’s basically like an in-game lottery if we were to compare; fundamentally, they work in the same manner. But the catch here is that lotteries are age-restricted in the offline world. Loot boxes aren’t, and the video games they feature target young audiences. Kids aged 11-12 can easily access these video games and indulge in soft-core digital gambling. It is as easy as that. In their defense, the companies do enlist at a video game’s start screen that the following title features in-game currency and loot boxes. Yet, they deliberately lock effective playing content or “cool” weapons/skins behind it. There is no escape from it either way; kids are forced to beg their parents or, in worse cases, steal them.
But where did all of this begin? You will be pretty surprised to know. Loot boxes aren’t inherently a western concept; loot boxes, or at least a version, were first seen in the 2004 MMORPG Japanese side-scrolling title “Maple Story”. That system was derived from Gashapon (ガシャポン), which uses a vending machine to, give out capsule toys at random. The word “Gacha”, as in the one from “Gashapon”, was carried forward and is now synonymous with the primary lottery-based mobile games in the east. We have seen plenty of gacha games originating from countries like Japan and China, and the vicious cycle they entrap their players in is something of grave concern. Let’s talk about the most popular gacha title, launched a year ago. “Genshin Impact” might have made huge waves with its free-to-play selling point and the enormous, wide world it allows the player to explore. But do not forget the consequences; earlier this year, an 18-year-old used his dad’s credit card to get gems in the game. Suffice to say, he isn’t the only one out there. Genshin Impact’s sales are ever-increasing, and most of its target audience is, well, you guessed it right; Kids.
Loot boxes directly aren’t the cause of the growing gambling addiction. There are many gacha titles wherein you needn’t pay for the gems or to have a go at the lottery; they are entirely free. It’s how the companies running these services choose to deploy them. They deliberately lock the best characters behind the gacha and state the odds of pulling that particular character, skin, weapon, etc. The general thinking of the player after seeing the odds is that it’s doable in a few amounts of gems. Still, then later on, after a couple of unsuccessful pulls, they are tempted psychologically to dish out the bucks and get the desired item. Gambling addiction is much more severe and has catastrophic results among teens. They get irrational and depressed, which affects their health. Companies know this and prefer to exploit it because it’s easy money.
Loot boxes have come under heavy scrutiny from the authorities in countries such as Belgium and The Netherlands. They decided to ban them outright. The EU has also joined in the fight against loot boxes. Somewhere down the line, other governments are bound to notice this and hopefully join to curb this dirty practice. As previously stated, gambling addiction is also creating a toxic environment. Kids cannot focus on their daily lives, indirectly impacting their academics and social well-being. Amidst all this, we forgot something else. Loot boxes also impact the video gaming industry, with an already poor image of video games among authorities; this whole fiasco serves yet another target on its back. If this continues to get traction, don’t be surprised when you discover major rules and laws in place to distribute video games and video game development.
Recently the UK Government asked the gaming companies to protect children from loot boxes and stopped short of legislation. The department of Culture, Media & Sport said that loot box customers are more likely to suffer gambling-related harms. The matter is of Video Games Research Framework, a new initiative prepared to find the impact of gaming, for good and for ill.
All of us(gamers, developers, and people in general) including the governments need to understand the positives and negatives of playing games. The industry and academics must be brought together to look at monetization practices in an attempt to find the problem areas. The developers can avoid or reduce the negatives accordingly for the users.
With the pandemic in place, the popularity and acceptance of video game worlds have increased rapidly. Regulating aggressive monetization may become necessary to protect the audiences at some point. The points to research are how and why games are designed the way they are, the effectiveness of the rules & regulations that are already present for everyone, and most importantly, ensuring that the video games can be created for a positive impact.
The games industry needs to get itself in order and take its responsibility seriously before end-users suffer before the governments across the globe start announcing legislation and some strong restrictions on the monetization strategies followed in general by the gaming companies. Using the 3rd party game testing agencies may play an important role even to identify the red areas in this matter and move towards more compliant grounds.
This might not affect the big corporations of the gaming world at all. But what will happen to indie developers? They’ll simply have to suffer because of this. It is not fair, no matter how you see it, not for the kids who purchase these loot boxes or the parents who end up losing a lot of money in the process. If you are a video game developer reading this, please do read through this and make your call. I hope your conscience helps you in making a better choice. I hope all the people who have read this article understand what we are dealing with and further work on alternate and healthy solutions to empower the video game industry in the right direction. Thank you for reading.
