>How is this different from buying baseball cards, pokemon cards, etc.?
There are at least two obvious differences.
First, you can't divorce the problem from reality and expect to win an argument based upon the fact that loot boxes are analogous to e.g. baseball cards. They are similar in concept, sure, but the scale is completely different. Video games are played by hundreds of millions (more?) of people around the world.
If some drug came out that was extremely dangerous, but accounted for a handful of deaths each year, no one would much care. Up that number to a few hundred thousand and you'll hear about it nearly every night on the news. Obviously, scale and relevance matter.
Secondly, video games are able to hit your serotonin and dopamine producing brain centers much more effectively than does a pack of baseball cards. Companies are pouring vast resources into finding ways to trick people into craving that next button click.
>It doesn't make any games I play worse, it makes the playerbase bigger which is better.
Yes, they do, and I'd like to see some basis for that last claim. It certainly spawns new forms of crappy, content-lite games, but it doesn't in any way increase quality. MTX's have led to a shift away from providing quality gameplay and toward maximizing roulette wheel spins. I'd be interested in hearing some specific examples of how they have made games "better".
The scale isn't all that different though: Pokemon, Digimon, Yugioh, Silly Bandz were all insanely popular and operated under the same principal.
If you're willing to allow the skinner box to in in-game then we have to include arcade games and pinball machines which all optimized for quarters.
Another precursor was WoW in which the rewards are entirely in-game but aggressively designed with random rewards and growth to keep players paying their subscription. I lost years of my life to WoW and everyone I know who used to play it talks about like they're in recovery.
Look, I think the trend of lootboxes is terrible and has made a lot of games worse but I think your argument falls flat since cash for serotonin is basically the definition of the entertainment and gaming. "High replay-ability" is basically code for how addictive a game is and people actively seek out these types of games.
The thing that feels different is that in modern games you can waste money instead of just time with your addition.
There are at least two obvious differences.
First, you can't divorce the problem from reality and expect to win an argument based upon the fact that loot boxes are analogous to e.g. baseball cards. They are similar in concept, sure, but the scale is completely different. Video games are played by hundreds of millions (more?) of people around the world.
If some drug came out that was extremely dangerous, but accounted for a handful of deaths each year, no one would much care. Up that number to a few hundred thousand and you'll hear about it nearly every night on the news. Obviously, scale and relevance matter.
Secondly, video games are able to hit your serotonin and dopamine producing brain centers much more effectively than does a pack of baseball cards. Companies are pouring vast resources into finding ways to trick people into craving that next button click.
>It doesn't make any games I play worse, it makes the playerbase bigger which is better.
Yes, they do, and I'd like to see some basis for that last claim. It certainly spawns new forms of crappy, content-lite games, but it doesn't in any way increase quality. MTX's have led to a shift away from providing quality gameplay and toward maximizing roulette wheel spins. I'd be interested in hearing some specific examples of how they have made games "better".
BTW, game of the year 2018: GoW. No MTX's.