The gaming industry has moved away primarily because legislation has been getting passed in countries like Japan and China forbidding lootboxes in games. It's been a hot topic off and on in Congress and Parliaments around the world for a few years now and I assume game developers are (of course) skittish about it.

To your point about cosmetic-only though, that still exists. Rocket League, which I play regularly, gives out boxes you open and get a random cosmetic with varying degrees of rarity. You can get a net larger amount of these cosmetic boxes by paying for the Rocket Pass premium (something like $10 a season). But the loot boxes only ever contain skins, wheels, etc.

There's still no law for lootboxes in Japan (but have some regulation by industry) so many gacha games still being released. Discussion at congress is minor AFAIK. I suspect that China also haven't completely forbid lootboxes at least, since they also still operate such games. (But anyway China strictly manages releasing games)

Netherlands is perhaps the furthest in the process. I think at least lost ark is not available in steam for dutch users.

You know you went too far when the dutch are looking at you thinking 'hmm that's too much gambling' from their boat casino

And they're correct lmao

Correct. Diablo Immortal was not even launched here because of this.

The Overwatch lootboxes were purely cosmetic too. The Call of Duty ones weren't. The new CoD battle pass isn't entirely cosmetic either, but the worst it does is give you faster access to weapons that you could have unlocked through regular gameplay for free.

Why isn't it, and the atrocious conduct of pat to win games a bigger deal here? Chest china has more sense and integrity than our government

Well, there's the online-CCG industry. Magic and Hearthstone and the others are all lootbox, with varying allowances of being able to grind it in the free tier.

I can only speak for MTG Arena. Been playing it 100% for free since a bit before DMU came out. I play pretty much the number of games that give me stuff, often 4 wins/day because I don't have time to play more.

Mythic in Standard is possible (played cheap monoblue last season to diamond 1, mono black now almost mythic) and having some fun drafting. 0% need to invest any money. Obvioulsy I won't have all the stuff but that's fine. I'm ok with identifying one deck I like to play for standard and then just drafting until coins/gems run out (ideally never because the winrate is good enough). I also don't care at all about cosmetics and was happy to see there's even an option to turn them sort of off (hide alternate card styles). I still got quite a lot of free cosmetics as well.

It is however interesting that they do have a pretty good value "first buy" option. I was always curious if it is priced so cheaply to get people from a "I'm a free player mindset" to...well payed once, might as well buy more now (+the friction of setting up payment is gone).

I'm an avid board gamer and I can say very confidently that I would never get into any paper based CCG because the pricing/collection is just ridiculous to me. If it wasn't for the free to play online veryion, I wouldn't play magic (I did buy some of the stuff back in the college days but quickly realized what a money sink this would be). I do/did collected some LCGs and still rank Android Netrunner as one of the best gaming experiences in my life.

I have a problem with the cosmetic stuff also as it's especially sticky for younger players. My son plays Fortnite and I think a lot about the variety of games I played while growing up, while a huge share of his gaming is the story-lite and constantly restyling Fortnite.

I admire the strategy and the creativity that goes into reinventing it, but I also wonder if this will mean he misses both the diversity and also story-heavy classics from my childhood and onwards. All while chasing gold guns and dance moves.

The addiction to things like Fortnite is stronger than any addiction I've ever seen - and I mean this as a casino owner who watched and often banned people struggling with gambling addiction. It's of a different quality and on another level. Your blackjack addict is essentially a fully grown human who has transmuted his sense of rejection into a wish to lose on cards and thus gain a sense of release, or absolution, having been rejected one more time by the gods of fate. A Fortnite addict is on the make and believes in some ephemeral salvation that might be experienced by temporary success. The former knows when to quit, or at least is encouraged to do so. The latter has hope. The nastiest thing about gambling marketing is selling hope... it should be banned. Yet somehow when you can't win anything at all, it's fine to sell it.

This is inane bullshit. It's a video game. Kids have always fucking loved video games. I and most of my friends used to spend most of our free time playing video games when I was in highschool because they're fun. We now all have stable relationships and 6 figure salaries, and most of us still play a decent amount of video games.

Kids play a lot of Fortnite because it's a fun game with a compelling "just one more round" hook (you should try it, or PUBG or Warzone if you want something a bit less wacky, it's fun!). It's not that insidious. When I was younger my peers were just as obsessed with (pick one of WoW, DOTA, Counterstrike).

My friends and I played a lot of Marathon over LAN and played a lot of poker, and honestly if I were the lord in charge of the network to monetize either, I'd say poker is the less immoral thing to run moderation on and profit for your efforts. That's what I'm trying to say.

To be fair, WoW caused a couple of people I knew to really suffer in college, and one failed out as a result of a WoW addiction. DOTA addiction caused at least one other to fail out.

> This is inane bullshit. It's a video game.

I think you may be unaware of the extent to which players, including children, are engaging in real-money gambling at the periphery of video games. Here's some recent reporting on the topic.

https://youtu.be/eMmNy11Mn7g

Tl;Dw there's a thriving, multibillion dollar gray market for gambling with cosmetic items in games, as well as a market for trading these items for real money. Together this creates stealth real money casinos.

When you were a teenager and played CS skins were free. Now the game is aimed at the same age group but entices* kids to spend $2.50 for very low odds of winning at a slot machine and getting a skin worth thousands of dollars.

* Valve banned servers from "Allowing players to claim temporary ownership of CS:GO items that are not in their inventory (Weapon skins, knives, etc.)"

Maybe it's just me, but I'd think it's hard for kids to spend $2.50 if parents don't give them $2.50 to spend. I don't expect kids to make good decisions about money, or gambling, or games. I put that responsibility on the parents.

I don't give my son the means to buy things within Fortnite, but he talks about it frequently, and about peers that are buying things. It can build a bit of resentment that needlessly complicates already-challenging parenting.

I agree with everything you just said, but I'm still in a place where I won't let my kids have the funds without me.

One thing that doesn't help is that Fortnite is 'juiced' beyond almost anything ever before it. So if you try to pitch your kids trying a different game (say, with a clever mechanic or thought-provoking story), it is harder for that game to compete.

Eh, I don't think arguing that really good animation/sound/art design being a bad thing somehow is a line of reasoning that results in sensible outcomes.

Be wary of predatory monetization techniques yes, but a bunch of people playing Fortnite because it's a fun, well designed game is not a bad thing.

(I deleted a comment where I worded the same thing much less eloquently. I'll keep the incredulous hostility to the one comment in this thread)

You mentioned playing multiple games across your childhood. I did too, and I have fond memories of dozens of them and various styles (platformers, puzzles, FPS, RPG, etc). My son, left to choose, will just play Fortnite. It feels a bit like an adult only watching Marvel movies and ignoring brilliant movies made in other genres, with other pacing, from other cultures. Or eating fries and drinking Coke while ignoring every other cuisine. Bit of a monoculture.

I've played a fair bit of Fortnite Duos with him (or Squads), and don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the design and so on. It's a fun, clever game. The juicing I'm talking about is the chests, and the skins, and rolling in the latest movie co-marketing. And the way it is all stimulus and barely story.

I had periods of time where I played nothing but a single game, though those were never more than a few months. Definitely seems like it would be good for your son to broaden his gaming horizons somewhat.

Re: "Juicing" - I saw the word and immediately assumed you were using the definition from this classic gamedev talk, well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

Yes, I also focused on single games at times, but like you it was for a month or two. He's played almost nothing but Fortnite for two years. He only plays Minecraft or Goat Simulator because I don't let his younger siblings play/watch Fortnite, and he only played a Star Wars flightsim game because I occasionally say he's allowed to play games but only if it's not Fortnite.

Meanwhile, I can recall dozens of really memorable games I played while growing up. And into adulthood, there have been fantastic games with storylines comparable to all-time classic movies. Imagine missing GTA V, Last of Us, Red Dead, HZD and so on because you only ever played multiplayer CoD for years on end; huge shame, IMO.

And yes, I know that video - we tried to use that thinking with a game we developed. I was thinking of juicing beyond visual gameplay. Chests that act like gambling scratchies, etc.

I think the major draw to games like Fortnite that was not around when I (or possibly you) were a kid is the social element. Playing an awesome, gripping story single player game gets them zero social points. Joining a friend and bragging you have the latest movie co-marketing thing in Fortnite gets social points.

I think this is what it was for me. I played a huge variety of games growing up, and it was multiplayer, specifically multiplayer that built stronger ties to socialize that became the biggest draw. Warcraft 3 was a blast online with friends, but Starcraft I could join a clan and always have friends online to play with.

Yeah, the slot-machine-like reward tricks have gone way too far.

doesn't fit the AAA definition, but counterstrike is very popular and has a f2p + cosmetic-only items for purchase.

I can see how the mechanics around lootboxes specifically can be problematic, but overall, f2p + paid skins seems like a pretty good business model for a game. no one is priced out of the base game, which is a) just nice in general, and b) leads to a healthy playerbase size. the people that care the most end up funding the ongoing support, and the developer is incentivized to make the base game enjoyable enough to be worth purchasing skins for.

CS:GO is a bad example with the Valve-ignored gambling that exists for it, due to the skins having real world monetary tradable value.