[Agentlien]

Mandatory disclosure: I am a programmer working for EA and the following are my personal opinions. I do not represent EA in any official capacity.

It's my strong opinion that the whole loot box phenomenon makes games as a whole worse.

For me, it's not the gambling aspects of it, per se. I am an avid Magic: the Gathering player and never decried the way its loot boxes (boosters) work. It's the fact that, the way these boxes have been handled by many games noticeably warps the design goals of the game from "make an engaging experience" to "motivate the player to buy more loot boxes".

What I mean is that many modern games have loot boxes or microtransactions permeating its design to such a degree that most features seem planned around how they motivate players to spend more money in-game.

This has been at its worst in mobile games, but there are plenty of console and PC titles with this issue as well. It's even gotten so far that big titles with no microtransactions include a heavy focus on loot boxes which can only be gained as quest rewards or bought using in-game currency (Horizon Zero Dawn comes to mind).

I really don't like it. I get no joy from wading through mountains of useless items in the hope of finding that one rare gem I actually want. This applies to ordinary loot in RPGs as well. So, seeing that the global trend has been for games to evolve in this direction has been very frustrating for me. As such, this recent pushback - both these legal actions as well as the player backlash of recent loot box controversies - have been very interesting developments which I hope will lead to market-wide improvements in overall game design.

To elaborate: I do not mind microtransactions in general. There are a few games which have plenty of ways to spend real money in-game but which do not bother me (Fortnite, Elder Scrolls Online). The key difference, here, is that those are games in which the core game loop does not heavily incentivize you to spend money and where in-game transactions will mainly get you cosmetic content or additional story campaigns.

[pharrington]

Here's my anecdote.

I tried playing Quake Champions, because I remember enjoying Quake 3 as a mid-to-late teenager, and on paper, that type of game should be incredibly up my alley. I found the experience of the initial load screen dumping you directly into the daily loot box screen so offputting that I actually couldn't even enjoy playing the game proper. The very act of just opening the game was so nakedly manipulative and felt so unfun that I simply uninstalled it; I just cannot be assed to expend the energy trying to ignore the loot box mechanics to play the game on it's own merits.

[AlwaysRock]

This. When I launch a game I want to play the game. I don't want to crawl through screens of advertising for loot boxes and daily deals. I understand if it's a MMO or something but why does firing up a basketball game now force me to navigate through loads of ad screens before I can ever play the game?

[georgeecollins]

I WONT BUY YOUR GAME!

- I wont buy your game unless you let me try a demo. (PC-CDROM days)

- I won't buy your game if the demo is too short.

- I won't buy your game if I played your demo for hours and now I am bored of it.

- I won't buy your game unless it has online multiplayer.

- I won't buy your game unless it has twenty hours of single player content.

- I won't buy your game if it has licensed content.

- I won't buy your game unless I can get it used. (Console days)

- I won't buy your game unless it has split screen mode (OK only dumb marketing people ever told me this)

- I won't buy your game if it has online content that can't be unlocked for free used.

- I won't buy your game if it doesn't have X players in multiplayer.

- I won't buy your game if it has paid dlc.

- I won't buy your game if it is free to play (so true).

I won't buy your game!

[al_chemist]

Those are valid reasons to not to buy a game. You sound offended by customers voicing their opinions what they want.

[georgeecollins]

I didn't mean to sound offended if I did. I was joking.

But I guess if I were trying to be more serious I would point out that people who develop games are extremely aware of the pain points of gamers.

[cevn]

Hope you can get past it. Quake Champions is a lot of fun. All the games have dumb loot boxes nowadays. At least Quake's are all aesthetic. More annoying is their gating of the champions behind huge amounts of "Favor", but that's f2p.

[dandersh]

"For me, it's not the gambling aspects of it, per se. I am an avid Magic: the Gathering player and never decried the way its loot boxes (boosters) work. It's the fact that, the way these boxes have been handled by many games noticeably warps the design goals of the game from "make an engaging experience" to "motivate the player to buy more loot boxes".

What I mean is that many modern games have loot boxes or microtransactions permeating its design to such a degree that most features seem planned around how they motivate players to spend more money in-game."

Star Wars Battlefront 2 at release was a perfect example of this. The entire experience was built for someone to either grind incessantly and/or spend real money to acquire currency to unlock items as only weapon mods were acquired via accumulated experience and not loot crates. Even the awarding of credits were loosely tied to performance. The "level" of a hero/trooper/ship was the number and rarity of star cards you had, not how much you had used them. There was no shared marketplace so the only way to get a certain emote, or pose, or star card was getting lucky and pulling one. It was often the case that you would pull items for troopers/heroes/ships that you would barely (or never) use.

As a result of all of this you ended up with things like "rubber banding" where players would use a rubber band on their joystick to prevent themselves from being booted from game modes. This had a particularly harmful effect on the Heroes vs. Villains game mode, as its small number of participants (4v4) and scoring via target system meant having one or more "rubber banders" on your team put you at a severe disadvantage and wrecked the experience.

[_ea1k]

Yes, I have been thinking this for a while as well. The issue isn't the microtransactions themselves, but the natural incentives associated with them.

If you are old enough to remember coin operated arcades, they operated on the same principle. Just one more coin and you can beat this boss! It really hurt the game mechanic in a lot of cases, but I'm sure it improved profitability.

I really hate seeing this trend come to games that I presumably own.

[ThrowawayR2]

> If you are old enough to remember coin operated arcades, they operated on the same principle. Just one more coin and you can beat this boss! It really hurt the game mechanic in a lot of cases, but I'm sure it improved profitability.

I beg to differ. Most of the arcade games of yore were gated on skill; you could avoid having to pop in another quarter if you played well enough, and that was where the fun came from.

Where is the skill and gameplay involved in spinning a virtual roulette wheel until a powerful enough unit or item pops out to let you advance to the next level of gameplay? And, of course, the answer is that there is none; it's merely taking advantage of those prone to gambling addiction.

[_ea1k]

They were based on skill, but you could also note that the skill requirements varied in ways that were designed to encourage even unskilled players to feel like they could advance with "just one more".

I get your point about the addition of randomness, though. Its an interesting element and it does change things relative to the arcade scenario. Personally, I think that it is largely there to make the system not feel as much like pay-to-win as it actually is.

[Reedx]

> I beg to differ. Most of the arcade games of yore were gated on skill; you could avoid having to pop in another quarter if you played well enough, and that was where the fun came from.

Sure, but that's a rather charitable way to describe it. What you're talking about is basically breaking or mastering the system by sheer force of will. And there is fun in that. But how much did it cost you to get to the point where you were able to play longer than a few minutes?

Arcade games were specifically designed to extract as many quarters as possible from players. That was the stated goal. If a game wasn't able to extract N quarters per hour, it didn't last long.

[ThrowawayR2]

> What you're talking about is basically breaking or mastering the system by sheer force of will. And there is fun in that. But how much did it cost you to get to the point where you were able to play longer than a few minutes?

Ah, but how is that different from, say, swimming, golf, tennis, or racing where one must rent a course or court in order to practice their skill? Yes, arcade games weren't called quarter munchers for nothing but, for the most part, they offered a reasonably fair deal.

In contrast, there's no analogy to be made between those sports and loot-box based game. One doesn't toss money into a sports equipment store until one randomly gets a drastically better golf club.

[dwighttk]

While there were arcade games gated on skill, I think there were plenty that weren't.

I'll admit that it may just be that I don't have the proficiency required, but after playing it again recently it seems that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was simply designed to quickly drain your health as soon as you got to a boss.

[Justsignedup]

I was playing Nioh. The game doesn't have loot boxes, but it has hordes of items that I have to shift through tons of items just to find the maybe 1 that I care about. It is a lot of work with zero joy or benefit.

Loot boxes are the same, except now you also have to gamble.

I feel you my friend.

Also why would you work for EA? I genuinely want to know. After everything I heard / read about them I wouldn't touch that company with a 10ft pole. I even avoid anything they sell intentionally because of it.

[Agentlien]

Because EA is not as bad as they are portrayed and everything is not black or white. I really dislike the way we are viewed in the public eye and I feel much of it is exaggerated and undeserved. Seriously, EA is full of very talented and passionate people doing their best to deliver awesome games. There have been some controversies, but it's still a company which produces a lot of games I really love. To list a few EA IPs I really like:

  - Mass Effect
  - Dragon Age
  - Mirror's Edge
  - Titanfall
  - Dead Space
  - The Sims

Beyond that, working as a full-time programmer for EA in Sweden means

  - job security
  - good salary
  - working on AAA games as a full-time job
  - working together with other passionate gamers and nerds who share my interests in a way I wouldn't have thought possible before moving to this industry
  - Getting a lot of information from contacts in the industry before it becomes public news.
  - Learning incredibly much about the behind-the-scenes stuff. Both from EA in general but also from other parts of the industry

Working outside of the game industry wouldn't get me the last four points. Working at a smaller studio wouldn't get me the first three points. Also, I have a house that I love in an area which I adore and I'm raising a child for whom I wish a childhood filled with stability and security. For these and other reasons I really don't want to relocate. This also limits the short list of viable employers.