In the vast world of gaming a couple things are always true. First of these are games are for fun, yes with the rise of ESports some people view gaming as a job, but it all stems from a joy of blowing up the bad guy or saving the princess or beating Mavis Beacon at her own typing game(yes im dating myself a little but whatever). The second truth is that gaming was built on an industry of "how can we suck as many quarters out of our players?" an these arcade cabinets were mostly aimed at children. Video gaming was originaly viewed as a childrens hobby until they came into the home in a big way with the release of the home console. Suddenly they became a hobby for all ages. Heck my 70 year old grandma plays video poker on her Nintendo Game Cube. Today video games are everywhere and not much has changed. Video game developers are still trying to get your quarters just in different ways. The large game developers have moved away from unlocking cool things in the games such as costumes or extra levels by completing various challenges in the game. With the advent of digital gaming developers have moved away from in game unlockables to downloadable content(DLC), season passes, or freemium battle passes. these allow you to unlock things of a bundle of those sweet, sweet quarters they have always wanted. The most predatory of these new practices are loot boxes or variations there of. Lets take the game Apex Legends made by the developer Respawn Entertainment they released a special item for one of the playable characters in the game and you can get it as 0.1% drop from a loot box you earn or spend an estimated $112 to buy loot boxes for a chance to get a digital axe that a character can use.....WHAT!!! Yea. You heard that right, these loot boxes sound a whole lot like something else that children are barred from....oh what was it.....oh yea GAMBLING! Now im a father of a wonderful young boy, who at the time of writing just turned 6 recently, who greatly enjoys video games which is not that big an issue as I also greatly enjoy gaming, but i tend to not let him play games that require loot boxes. Now a lot of these games that have loot boxes tend to be "Free" to play but in actuality they are free to start, you can download and play the game with initially dropping any money but you get stuck at some point where you are missing out on cool costumes, special weapons, abilities, or even early access to new levels because you decicded you are responsible and dont want to drop a lot of cash on silly intangible things but you will always wonder and thats where these companies place their bets. The developers who make these loot boxes just wait because there is always holdouts who eventually give in via enticements or peer pressure. Another good example of these loot boxes encroaching on the goodwill of the consumer are publishers like activision, when they release Call of Duty: Black ops 4 there were no hints at loot boxes or predatory practices. Fast forward to a few months after release they added in loot boxes locking new weapons, weapons skins, and new characters that are only accessible behind the pay wall that is loot boxes leaving some younger players or those without a well to do credit card high and dry making them grind through hours of gameplay to get one box whereas those with deeper pockets just click a few buttons to get multiple boxes in seconds. Now i dont agree with game altering items, abilities, weapons,E.T.C. in loot boxes but im alright if things like costumes are there because they are not super relevant to the rest of the game. A couple examples of this are the ever fabled Fortnite nad Overwatch, released by Epic Games and Blizzard software respectively, have used loot boxes in a good way yes they make millions of dollars off of Fortnite's battle pass and Overwatch's loot boxes but neither locks off any game or puts non paying players at a disadvantage. The payed content in these games is purely cosmetic in nature, they do not alter game play in anyway and some can be earned without paying any money at all. So at the end of the day these practices, with a few exceptions, are in my opinion predatory in nature and feed off of their player base's need to keep up with the joneses.
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