Wait, this is actually news to me: You unlock players in FIFA by buying randomized card packs? What?!?!
It's been the case for quite a while. In 2012 this system was at the center of a storm of Xbox Live hacks, where numerous accounts were hacked just to spend their money on FIFA packs to sell for real money.
Sports games have been spearheading predatory monetization for many years. They're lower profile and more niche targeted at fans who don't see them the same way a "mainstream" gamer would see card packs of Orcs or Star Wars dudes, so they've always been an ideal testing ground.
Wait, this is actually news to me: You unlock players in FIFA by buying randomized card packs? What?!?!
Yes. Its the reason for the hard randomization monetization structure in ME 3 and Andromeda. At the time FIFA card packs were making one billion dollars profit per year. I shudder to think what they do now
Wait, this is actually news to me: You unlock players in FIFA by buying randomized card packs? What?!?!
That innovation is what got Wilson his CEOship.
It's why FIFA is like almost half of EA's revenue. Not even joking there, it's stupidly profitable.
It's hard to find accurate numbers that aren't years out of date, but EA makes roughly $2 billion a year in microtransactions alone, the overwhelming majority of which is through their sports franchises. Selling actual videogames is a tiny fraction of their portfolio.
I think many of us who focus on "traditional" gaming underappreciate the scale of this problem globally and why it shapes publisher attitudes towards everything. This is a multi-billion dollar, completely unregulated, international gambling scheme that happens to be widely accessible to children. It's so wildly beyond "are RPGs too grindy" that I don't think it makes sense to talk about the two in the same context.
Wait, this is actually news to me: You unlock players in FIFA by buying randomized card packs? What?!?!
It's a secondary game mode, if that helps.
Yeah, I mean it's a full-featured game with multiple online and single-player modes to play entirely outside of Ultimate Team (the microtransaction-based mode). Including, as you'd expect, a mode where you can pick any club or international team that's licensed (which is most of them) and play them against friends or strangers locally or online. And a mode where you can create your own player or team and take them through a career progression offline. Or a mode where you can create your own player, and team up with ten other people who do the same, and play 11v11 games where everybody literally just controls one player. That's all part of the base game, doesn't cost a dime extra.
FIFA Ultimate Team is effectively just a CCG that's included with FIFA, where instead of building a deck and playing a card game you build a squad and play a soccer game. A squad includes 23 cards (11 on the field, 7 on the bench, 5 in reserve), along with some consumables and team items (like balls and stadiums), all of which you get by opening booster packs. Squad building involves choosing a formation, linking players together based on nation, club, and team, etc. It probably sounds remarkably silly, but it's actually pretty fun, which of course is why they make a hojillion dollars on it. Many people play that mode exclusively. But with thousands and thousands of players across leagues and continents to choose from, the idea of a pack-based CCG of sorts isn't entirely insane for a build-your-own-team mode like this.
Making the most popular players in the world so rare that you have to spend like $500 or more to get each of them...yeah, that's where it gets shitty. And that's not $500 in packs before you would receive one randomly; that's $500 in packs, selling all the contents, in order to get enough coins to buy them from one of the very, very few people lucky enough to actually get them from a pack. The actual odds of the top-end players are like 1:100,000 packs. And that is how they make billions (multiple) per year on microtransactions in these games (FIFA, Madden, etc.).
The thing is, if you frame it as 'collecting baseball cards, except the cards actually give you an ancillary benefit of getting to play with that player in a game', it doesn't seem as ridiculous compared to decades of collecting / selling / hunting for rare cards in that arena (and I may or may not have spent the equivalent of $500 in 2019 dollars in the early 90's as a kid on baseball cards).
So I think that's why you saw it in sports first - the existing mindset was already there, unlike something like ME3 or Battlefront (same reason why it's worked in CCG games in other contexts as well)
Baseball/CCG cards are actual, you know, cards.
I have a ton of Lord of the Rings ccg cards from the 90s, utterly useless because i have nobody to play with, but i have them.
They make for functional bookmarks atleast, hard to do same with a bunch of electrons on a server somewhere.
Baseball/CCG cards are actual, you know, cards.
I have a ton of Lord of the Rings ccg cards from the 90s, utterly useless because i have nobody to play with, but i have them.
They make for functional bookmarks atleast, hard to do same with a bunch of electrons on a server somewhere.
Everybody here understands this. However, I’m not sure that the fact you can at least burn CCG cards for warmth really makes them fundamentally better. Some CCGs have persisted, and the cards have maintained their value to some extent or another. Other defunct CCGs really aren’t worth the card stock they were printed on anymore. While those cards may have some theoretical utility, as you note, realistically they’re little better than bits on a server.
As amazing as bookmarks that Rage cards might be, given that they take up space in the attic (or in the trash) it’s even arguable that the bits on the server might be better...you can just forget them and they go away.
There are a lot of arguments why FIFA cards are evil compared to physical collectibles, but I’m not sure “may take up space in my house forever” is a particularly strong one.
I'm not arguing that CCG cards are, i dunno, not evil.
I'm just saying that any comparison gets from fifa cards, that i assume don't translate to next years fifa game, and CCG cards that are, you know, actual cards, will be of very limited use because one of them is an actual product you own, instead of bunch of electrons that basicly go poof in a year.
Also secondary market.
Like, there are actual businesses that buy random packs, open them, and sell the bloody cards one by one.
I'm not arguing that CCG cards are, i dunno, not evil.
I'm just saying that any comparison gets from fifa cards, that i assume don't translate to next years fifa game, and CCG cards that are, you know, actual cards, will be of very limited use because one of them is an actual product you own, instead of bunch of electrons that basicly go poof in a year.
Also secondary market.
Like, there are actual businesses that buy random packs, open them, and sell the bloody cards one by one.
Also, despite everything, CCG cards are a known quantity with an audience that already knows what they are getting into. Also, IMO, all videogames digital CCGs should be forbidden entirely from having a company-supported secondary market. If you want to dump your money on gatcha, can't stop you, but a secondary market just creates a large amount of perverse incentives for credit card cloning and money laundering, AND is less safe than physical goods.
I’m not sure how far “known quantity” goes as an argument. FIFA has been selling packs for a decade now. How long do they have to do it before the same applies to them? I’d argue they’re there already.
I'm not arguing that CCG cards are, i dunno, not evil.
I'm just saying that any comparison gets from fifa cards, that i assume don't translate to next years fifa game, and CCG cards that are, you know, actual cards, will be of very limited use because one of them is an actual product you own, instead of bunch of electrons that basicly go poof in a year.
Also secondary market.
Like, there are actual businesses that buy random packs, open them, and sell the bloody cards one by one.
Also, despite everything, CCG cards are a known quantity with an audience that already knows what they are getting into. Also, IMO, all videogames digital CCGs should be forbidden entirely from having a company-supported secondary market. If you want to dump your money on gatcha, can't stop you, but a secondary market just creates a large amount of perverse incentives for credit card cloning and money laundering, AND is less safe than physical goods.
If anything a secondary market ala Artifact is healthier because it makes it clear how much stuff costs and lets you bypass the gambling aspect to just buy what you want.
That so many people were angry when Artifact showed them the actual cost card games want people to put down for a set is an exceptional sign of just how well people are able to internalize time spent grinding for a pittance of packs in more traditional free to play models as enough of a band aid.
Baseball/CCG cards are actual, you know, cards.
I have a ton of Lord of the Rings ccg cards from the 90s, utterly useless because i have nobody to play with, but i have them.
They make for functional bookmarks atleast, hard to do same with a bunch of electrons on a server somewhere.
And you can actually, like, trade them with other players to get what you want. Or just outright buy something if you're missing it.
Cosmetic lootboxes would probably have been considered acceptable if a player-driven market for their contents was allowed to exist. TF2 and CS:GO essentially do this with their crate system, IIRC, and I don't remember the last time I heard someone complaining about those - aside from the absurd artificial scarcity and prices some items can reach.
Baseball/CCG cards are actual, you know, cards.
I have a ton of Lord of the Rings ccg cards from the 90s, utterly useless because i have nobody to play with, but i have them.
They make for functional bookmarks atleast, hard to do same with a bunch of electrons on a server somewhere.
And you can actually, like, trade them with other players to get what you want. Or just outright buy something if you're missing it.
Cosmetic lootboxes would probably have been considered acceptable if a player-driven market for their contents was allowed to exist. TF2 and CS:GO essentially do this with their crate system, IIRC, and I don't remember the last time I heard someone complaining about those - aside from the absurd artificial scarcity and prices some items can reach.
Skins Gambling (which I still don't understand how it works) is/was a massive problem for CS:GO, enough so that Steam added a delay between acquiring skins and trading them off to throw a wrench in the whole thing.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
If I buy a couple packs of the latest Magic set, I have actual cards in my hands that I can use to play, or if I desire, I can go trade or outright sell the cards for what they will bear for actual money. I outright own said cards. I can go and put together a deck for a friend to get them started. If I'm missing a card for a deck, I can go online to eBay or Troll and Toad and pick up a copy or three as I need, with actual money.
Can you say the same for an Overwatch skin? How's about one of those FIFA cards- can you go ahead and sell those for anything besides EA company scrip that you can just use to buy more of the same thing? Or can you get some actual money for them? Can you buy them with actual money, or do you have to convert it into company scrip first, at whatever depressingly low transition rate they set?
Also, what happens in the future when Blizzard decides to stop supporting Overwatch, or when someone turns off the servers at EA for FIFA? Whoops, guess you can't access them- did you ever really truly own them? Or did you just pay for the opportunity to have the chance to draw the privilege of using said skin or player?
Not to mention I know the rarity of the packs- each Magic pack contains eleven common cards, three uncommon cards, and one rare card. There's a one-in-thirty chance for a mythic card. I didn't know the chance of getting a legendary player in FIFA was somewhere about 1 in 100,000. If that's not exploitative, I dunno what is.
I don’t know, in the case of FIFA the “what if they shut the servers off someday” argument doesn’t go far. They absolutely shut off older versions of FUT after a few years, that’s a known quantity in the player base. And by then it doesn’t matter, because everybody has moved on.
That you are paying for meaningful access to your content for a year or two is the bargain going in. Nobody is expecting perpetual access when they pull the trigger.
The inability to “cash out” is still a glaring problem, obviously. But then no more so than MtG online. And it’s also a known quantity going in.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Or, basically, this.
As a kid who cut his teeth buying magic cards back in the 90’s, yeah it’s always been kinda sorta gambling. I think it’s much, much easier to argue that CCGs are *also* bad than it is to argue why they’re super ethical while FIFA packs are the literal devil.
Which they are. They are absolutely evil. To be clear. I just think we have to do some real contorting to try and argue that CCGs are better in anything but degree. Trading cards were very clearly the model for FUT,
the similarities aren’t a coincidence.
I don’t know, in the case of FIFA the “what if they shut the servers off someday” argument doesn’t go far. They absolutely shut off older versions of FUT after a few years, that’s a known quantity in the player base. And by then it doesn’t matter, because everybody has moved on.
That you are paying for meaningful access to your content for a year or two is the bargain going in. Nobody is expecting perpetual access when they pull the trigger.
The inability to “cash out” is still a glaring problem, obviously. But then no more so than MtG online. And it’s also a known quantity going in.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Or, basically, this.
As a kid who cut his teeth buying magic cards back in the 90’s, yeah it’s always been kinda sorta gambling. I think it’s much, much easier to argue that CCGs are *also* bad than it is to argue why they’re super ethical while FIFA packs are the literal devil.
Which they are. They are absolutely evil. To be clear. I just think we have to do some real contorting to try and argue that CCGs are better in anything but degree. Trading cards were very clearly the model for FUT,
the similarities aren’t a coincidence.
The big difference with CCG's and FUT is how the market works. With a CCG you can purchase packs or individual cards via the primary or secondary market with the same currency. In FUT you have to use real world money to purchase FIFA Points, but those FIFA points you cannot purchase individual players with, only packs. You can sell the players you get from the packs for FIFA Coins. Now FIFA coins are where you can purchase players and packs.
EA deliberately stonewalls the ability for a person to purchase the content they want, to enforce them to purchase these packs. Even if you had unlimited money to purchase the players you want, you could end up having to purchase countless packs to generate enough coins to get just 1 player outright.
Then just to add some extra fuckery, EA had a big issue with coin generators and the secondary market where third parties were using less than savoury methods to create coin farming and selling on the coins to people to basically bypass EA's Stonewall. It was a highly lucrative business, but also made a natural stock market for player values set by individuals. So EA's way of stopping this was to create a set value for each player for which someone couldn't sell on the market for any higher.
So now EA sets the individual value of each player, regardless of its rarity or desirability. So you have a market where the most desirable players are never readily available due to the value being fixed on the secondary market.
I don’t know, in the case of FIFA the “what if they shut the servers off someday” argument doesn’t go far. They absolutely shut off older versions of FUT after a few years, that’s a known quantity in the player base. And by then it doesn’t matter, because everybody has moved on.
That you are paying for meaningful access to your content for a year or two is the bargain going in. Nobody is expecting perpetual access when they pull the trigger.
The inability to “cash out” is still a glaring problem, obviously. But then no more so than MtG online. And it’s also a known quantity going in.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Or, basically, this.
As a kid who cut his teeth buying magic cards back in the 90’s, yeah it’s always been kinda sorta gambling. I think it’s much, much easier to argue that CCGs are *also* bad than it is to argue why they’re super ethical while FIFA packs are the literal devil.
Which they are. They are absolutely evil. To be clear. I just think we have to do some real contorting to try and argue that CCGs are better in anything but degree. Trading cards were very clearly the model for FUT,
the similarities aren’t a coincidence.
The big difference with CCG's and FUT is how the market works. With a CCG you can purchase packs or individual cards via the primary or secondary market with the same currency. In FUT you have to use real world money to purchase FIFA Points, but those FIFA points you cannot purchase individual players with, only packs. You can sell the players you get from the packs for FIFA Coins. Now FIFA coins are where you can purchase players and packs.
EA deliberately stonewalls the ability for a person to purchase the content they want, to enforce them to purchase these packs. Even if you had unlimited money to purchase the players you want, you could end up having to purchase countless packs to generate enough coins to get just 1 player outright.
Then just to add some extra fuckery, EA had a big issue with coin generators and the secondary market where third parties were using less than savoury methods to create coin farming and selling on the coins to people to basically bypass EA's Stonewall. It was a highly lucrative business, but also made a natural stock market for player values set by individuals. So EA's way of stopping this was to create a set value for each player for which someone couldn't sell on the market for any higher.
So now EA sets the individual value of each player, regardless of its rarity or desirability. So you have a market where the most desirable players are never readily available due to the value being fixed on the secondary market.
That’s not really how it works at all. At least the last part. It’s true that you cannot buy players (or coins) direct from EA at any fixed rate, you have to buy them via packs at a sort of exchange rate that is usually pretty stable over medium amounts but wildly variable over small amounts. And you can’t get cash back out, obviously.
But the player market actually does function to determine legitimate market value prices. The “price ranges” that the FIFA team allows for bids don’t set the market price, and arguably barely influence it. If a card’s market value in coins is higher than the price range allowed, they will go “extinct” (in the parlance used by the player base). A shortage occurs. Similarly, prices set too high render players unsellable. Which is why they routinely revise those price ranges to keep plenty of space above and below the current market values.
Before ranges, any glitch that allowed generation of coins led to hyperinflation through widespread buying and selling of coins, which was accomplished by selling players for way above their market value. You’d sell a 500 coin player to the coin warehouse for 5,000,000, after sending them the money.
Arguably the price ranges were almost entirely to the benefit of “free to play” players. Because anybody else back then could spend twenty bucks (to a shady third party) and buy anything they wanted. Meanwhile anybody earning coins and packs through legitimate play had no chance at all to afford even midrange players.
The FIFA team does a ton of shady shit, but ensuring players only get bought and sold for something resembling their fair value as determined by a player-run market isn’t one of them.
Do we know how much credit card fraud happens in the physical MtG card market?
Because often the reason for digital lootboxes not having a secondary market is that they're used to launder stolen money, so I have to wonder if it's the same for physical lootboxes as well.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Jim Sterling noted this as well, in response to the EA spokesperson comparing lootboxes to Kinder Eggs and CCGs. Basically, EA is as likely to drag CCGs down with them as they are to use them for support. EA messed up by bringing all of this into the spotlight with the worst version imaginable, and that's causing people to re-examine the whole industry.
My general guideline is to look for the harm, and I've heard far too many stories about kids spending more money than they could afford on CCGs, so some kind of regulation is probably appropriate.
I don’t know, in the case of FIFA the “what if they shut the servers off someday” argument doesn’t go far. They absolutely shut off older versions of FUT after a few years, that’s a known quantity in the player base. And by then it doesn’t matter, because everybody has moved on.
That you are paying for meaningful access to your content for a year or two is the bargain going in. Nobody is expecting perpetual access when they pull the trigger.
The inability to “cash out” is still a glaring problem, obviously. But then no more so than MtG online. And it’s also a known quantity going in.
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Or, basically, this.
As a kid who cut his teeth buying magic cards back in the 90’s, yeah it’s always been kinda sorta gambling. I think it’s much, much easier to argue that CCGs are *also* bad than it is to argue why they’re super ethical while FIFA packs are the literal devil.
Which they are. They are absolutely evil. To be clear. I just think we have to do some real contorting to try and argue that CCGs are better in anything but degree. Trading cards were very clearly the model for FUT,
the similarities aren’t a coincidence.
The big difference with CCG's and FUT is how the market works. With a CCG you can purchase packs or individual cards via the primary or secondary market with the same currency. In FUT you have to use real world money to purchase FIFA Points, but those FIFA points you cannot purchase individual players with, only packs. You can sell the players you get from the packs for FIFA Coins. Now FIFA coins are where you can purchase players and packs.
EA deliberately stonewalls the ability for a person to purchase the content they want, to enforce them to purchase these packs. Even if you had unlimited money to purchase the players you want, you could end up having to purchase countless packs to generate enough coins to get just 1 player outright.
Then just to add some extra fuckery, EA had a big issue with coin generators and the secondary market where third parties were using less than savoury methods to create coin farming and selling on the coins to people to basically bypass EA's Stonewall. It was a highly lucrative business, but also made a natural stock market for player values set by individuals. So EA's way of stopping this was to create a set value for each player for which someone couldn't sell on the market for any higher.
So now EA sets the individual value of each player, regardless of its rarity or desirability. So you have a market where the most desirable players are never readily available due to the value being fixed on the secondary market.
That’s not really how it works at all. At least the last part. It’s true that you cannot buy players (or coins) direct from EA at any fixed rate, you have to buy them via packs at a sort of exchange rate that is usually pretty stable over medium amounts but wildly variable over small amounts. And you can’t get cash back out, obviously.
But the player market actually does function to determine legitimate market value prices. The “price ranges” that the FIFA team allows for bids don’t set the market price, and arguably barely influence it. If a card’s market value in coins is higher than the price range allowed, they will go “extinct” (in the parlance used by the player base). A shortage occurs. Similarly, prices set too high render players unsellable. Which is why they routinely revise those price ranges to keep plenty of space above and below the current market values.
Before ranges, any glitch that allowed generation of coins led to hyperinflation through widespread buying and selling of coins, which was accomplished by selling players for way above their market value. You’d sell a 500 coin player to the coin warehouse for 5,000,000, after sending them the money.
Arguably the price ranges were almost entirely to the benefit of “free to play” players. Because anybody else back then could spend twenty bucks (to a shady third party) and buy anything they wanted. Meanwhile anybody earning coins and packs through legitimate play had no chance at all to afford even midrange players.
The FIFA team does a ton of shady shit, but ensuring players only get bought and sold for something resembling their fair value as determined by a player-run market isn’t one of them.
But it didn’t achieve that at all. In the end it ensured that players people desired never got put on the market and the market got flooded with trash that didn’t sell. I know they improved a load after it was first introduced half way through 2016 release which was utterly broken. The mechanic while great in stopping the shady third party business actually destroyed legitimate marketplace buying and selling.
In addition the very nature of creating two currencies and stonewalling players from generating one currency effectively even from using real world money is in its self a predatory practice that needs banning as it’s essentially a way of dodging the obvious nature of gambling but also ensuing that all players have to purchase packs using real world money if they want to go and buy a single player.
Not something I'm really proud to admit, but I am one of the people responsible for the creation of the digital lootbox, especially as it pertains to FIFA.
A little bit of background and personal history.
I've been working as an online game developer since 2001. I was an employee of Nexon in the early 2000s when they launched the first F2P online game (Quiz Quiz) utilizing micro-transactions which they later perfected in products such as 'BnB' and 'Kart Rider'. I transferred to a competing Korean company called Neowiz in 2005 to work on a brand new joint project with EA Burnaby that would become known as FIFA Online. I had the opportunity to work with many exceptional people from EA during that time and one of the senior producers for FIFA Online on EA's side was a brilliant and ambitious producer named Andrew Wilson.
FIFA Online was not expected to be a hit at that time. You have to remember that in 2006 the 800 pound gorilla in the football simulation market was Konami's Winning Eleven. We worked our asses off and FIFA Online was a huge success when we launched in Korea in the summer of 2006. We hit peaks of over 160,000 concurrent users within the first few month but our overall revenue was unusually low. The majority of our revenue was brought in through the sales of traditional micro-transaction items such as 'energy drinks' that removed typical time lock restrictions (similar to the hearts found in Candy Crush) or by grouping cosmetic items with in-game currency "bonus" since it was illegal to sell in-game currency directly for cash in Korea. The main reason our revenue was so low as because we had split the game into two modes, an 'Arcade Mode' (80% of the player base) and a 'League Mode' where you created and built up your own team. 'Arcade Mode' players would spend extremely little money compared to the 'League Mode' players.
In an effort to improve our revenue in September of 2006 I proposed a new meta-game system known as the 'Trophy Card' system based on my childhood experiences in the US collecting baseball/basketball cards and play MTG and 'Vampire' the card game. The system was slightly modified to meet regulations in Korea and became known as the 'Uniform Card' system and was launched in the winter of 2006. In March 2007 EA launched UEFA Champions League 2006-2007 which included the first The Ultimate Team system. I have no idea if that system was developed independently from us in Korea but I do know that we officially launched first. In the Fall of 2007 we launched FIFA Online 2 which heavily pushed the 'Custom Team' mode and an updated 'Uniform Card' system to become a huge commercial success. In 2010 Neowiz lost the rights to publish and develop FIFA Online and EA has been doing very well ever since in Asia developing FIFA Online 3 and FIFA Online 4 in-house.
I moved on from Neowiz in 2010 and have worked on numerous online projects with several large developers. My experience since leaving the FIFA team and seeing the proliferation of more and more exploitative micro-transaction systems, especially in Asian free to play games has been heart-wrenching. I naively believed that the creation of a paid loot box at that time was not just to increase our revenue, but was to truly increase the amount of joy to our players. These days I've discovered the only joy these lootboxes deliver are to the companies and executives of big game companies.
Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father prepare to die!
Looking for a Hardcore Fantasy Extraction Shooter? - Dark and Darker
+18
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
While there are probably some qualitative distinctions that set apart CCGs from current lootboxes, I think it's easier to argue (and previously-posted lawsuits have) that many CCGs engage in the same exploitative, gambling-adjecent practices than it is to say microtransactions must be fine because CCGs also exist.
Jim Sterling noted this as well, in response to the EA spokesperson comparing lootboxes to Kinder Eggs and CCGs. Basically, EA is as likely to drag CCGs down with them as they are to use them for support. EA messed up by bringing all of this into the spotlight with the worst version imaginable, and that's causing people to re-examine the whole industry.
My general guideline is to look for the harm, and I've heard far too many stories about kids spending more money than they could afford on CCGs, so some kind of regulation is probably appropriate.
Virtually everyone I've encountered that plays Magic ends up having some massive box somewhere filled with cards, and all I can think when I see it is "how many thousands of dollars of bullshit random chance is in that box?"
I think the CCG industry is absolutely a valid target for regulation. Yeah, there's plenty of folks for whom opening a pack is just a fun little reward thing and presents no danger, but there are also plenty of people who totally lose track of what they're spending in order to keep chasing that little bit of psychological reward.
It's just not as horrible and obvious an issue as lootboxing.
I don't really think it's a fair comparison at all, honestly- if I wanted a specific card, I could choose to go and buy a copy of said card from my local hobby shop instead of just wildly opening packs. If I want a specific skin, I would have to keep paying and opening boxes to get it because it's the only way to get skins.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
+1
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I don't really think it's a fair comparison at all, honestly- if I wanted a specific card, I could choose to go and buy a copy of said card from my local hobby shop instead of just wildly opening packs. If I want a specific skin, I would have to keep paying and opening boxes to get it because it's the only way to get skins.
As I've said before, this is part of the illusion.
The cost of that card at the hobby shop depends on how rare WotC decides to make it in packs. It's carefully disguised false scarcity to extract as much money into the MtG ecosystem as possible.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
+9
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Not something I'm really proud to admit, but I am one of the people responsible for the creation of the digital lootbox, especially as it pertains to FIFA.
A little bit of background and personal history.
I've been working as an online game developer since 2001. I was an employee of Nexon in the early 2000s when they launched the first F2P online game (Quiz Quiz) utilizing micro-transactions which they later perfected in products such as 'BnB' and 'Kart Rider'. I transferred to a competing Korean company called Neowiz in 2005 to work on a brand new joint project with EA Burnaby that would become known as FIFA Online. I had the opportunity to work with many exceptional people from EA during that time and one of the senior producers for FIFA Online on EA's side was a brilliant and ambitious producer named Andrew Wilson.
FIFA Online was not expected to be a hit at that time. You have to remember that in 2006 the 800 pound gorilla in the football simulation market was Konami's Winning Eleven. We worked our asses off and FIFA Online was a huge success when we launched in Korea in the summer of 2006. We hit peaks of over 160,000 concurrent users within the first few month but our overall revenue was unusually low. The majority of our revenue was brought in through the sales of traditional micro-transaction items such as 'energy drinks' that removed typical time lock restrictions (similar to the hearts found in Candy Crush) or by grouping cosmetic items with in-game currency "bonus" since it was illegal to sell in-game currency directly for cash in Korea. The main reason our revenue was so low as because we had split the game into two modes, an 'Arcade Mode' (80% of the player base) and a 'League Mode' where you created and built up your own team. 'Arcade Mode' players would spend extremely little money compared to the 'League Mode' players.
In an effort to improve our revenue in September of 2006 I proposed a new meta-game system known as the 'Trophy Card' system based on my childhood experiences in the US collecting baseball/basketball cards and play MTG and 'Vampire' the card game. The system was slightly modified to meet regulations in Korea and became known as the 'Uniform Card' system and was launched in the winter of 2006. In March 2007 EA launched UEFA Champions League 2006-2007 which included the first The Ultimate Team system. I have no idea if that system was developed independently from us in Korea but I do know that we officially launched first. In the Fall of 2007 we launched FIFA Online 2 which heavily pushed the 'Custom Team' mode and an updated 'Uniform Card' system to become a huge commercial success. In 2010 Neowiz lost the rights to publish and develop FIFA Online and EA has been doing very well ever since in Asia developing FIFA Online 3 and FIFA Online 4 in-house.
I moved on from Neowiz in 2010 and have worked on numerous online projects with several large developers. My experience since leaving the FIFA team and seeing the proliferation of more and more exploitative micro-transaction systems, especially in Asian free to play games has been heart-wrenching. I naively believed that the creation of a paid loot box at that time was not just to increase our revenue, but was to truly increase the amount of joy to our players. These days I've discovered the only joy these lootboxes deliver are to the companies and executives of big game companies.
Thanks for sharing this story! My takeaway from this is that a successful business model is not an end unto itself.
I don't really think it's a fair comparison at all, honestly- if I wanted a specific card, I could choose to go and buy a copy of said card from my local hobby shop instead of just wildly opening packs. If I want a specific skin, I would have to keep paying and opening boxes to get it because it's the only way to get skins.
As I've said before, this is part of the illusion.
The cost of that card at the hobby shop depends on how rare WotC decides to make it in packs. It's carefully disguised false scarcity to extract as much money into the MtG ecosystem as possible.
...but WotC isn't seeing a dime of that secondary money. And besides, even if I do have to pay extra for the card, I can still get that exact card I'm chasing without having to go through all the hoopla of buying packs- as opposed to a lootbox system with absolutely no secondary market where your only recourse for finding the gun/skin/materials you need is to keep feeding the machine and hoping RNGesus is feeling really, really kind- or, for those lootboxes with secondary markets, give my money to the company in exchange for company scrip to buy or bid on it- so the company gets paid even if you buy it off the secondary market.
You might have to spell your argument out for me- all I'm seeing is a bunch of technical stuff that just seems to say "but lootboxes aren't really bad! If they are bad then all random-chance CCGs are bad, too!"
You know what else you'd have to classify as bad under that argument? Lotteries of any kind. Scratch tickets, slot machines, capsule toys, pretty much anything that has an element of chance would end up getting hit by this.
Not gonna lie, killing off lotteries and slot machines and casinos would probably be a net improvement for society. Of course if they were illegal, you'd just see organized crime step back in to fill the void because there is a very real demand for these sort of things. I think it would be possible to setup appropriate regulations to limit the harm of gambling without opening space for organized crime to step in, just not under the current administration in the USA.
I play a few mobile games with gambling involved and I have fun with them, but I also have a strict rule that I am not going to spend money on these games. Far too many people spend money they can't really afford on this sort of thing, though, so I do think some form of regulation is necessary. Japan has regulations that help, but probably do not go far enough in addressing the issue.
I don't really think it's a fair comparison at all, honestly- if I wanted a specific card, I could choose to go and buy a copy of said card from my local hobby shop instead of just wildly opening packs. If I want a specific skin, I would have to keep paying and opening boxes to get it because it's the only way to get skins.
While the financially optimal move is to determine which cards you need for your deck then directly purchase those cards, card packs still sell really well.
Yes, being able to have a secondary market for trading can be helpful for keeping away from lootboxes, but the gambling mechanics still exist. Also, I wonder how much of the secondary CCG market exists because it's desired, and how much exists because these are physical objects that are no longer under the control of the company, and so they don't have much choice in the matter.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
At least in New Zealand, Lotteries and Scratch cards are gambling and have to follow the regulations regarding them.
As are Raffle tickets (obvious in hindsight, but I didn't think of them that way) and "Housies" which I don't know what that is.
I don't really think it's a fair comparison at all, honestly- if I wanted a specific card, I could choose to go and buy a copy of said card from my local hobby shop instead of just wildly opening packs. If I want a specific skin, I would have to keep paying and opening boxes to get it because it's the only way to get skins.
If the current situation was totally okay, then that's the system CCG companies would use to get cards to people. It would be simpler than this random pack situations, and with zero chance of exploiting people vulnerable to gambling addictions.
However, the fact that CCG companies continue to insist on having random packs and having official things like random pack tournament is a solid example of why it's still exploitation, and the only thing varying is the scope of the exploitation. They do it because it increases their profits without having to actually make new material because it's gambling, and there are people who enjoy it without issue and people who develop serious issues.
It may not be as egregious as the likes of what EA does, but it's absolutely in the same boat. The actual gameplay has absolutely no reliance on the random chance of card packs. Collecting random cards is a construct of artificial scarcity to lean on people to get them to spend a lot more getting a card than they would realistically spend, if they realized how much they were spending. The fact that there's a physical element doesn't change the fact that MtG is a business model constructed on convincing people to spend a LOT more for the random chance of getting a card than the card is worth if bought directly.
Virtually everyone I've encountered that plays Magic ends up having some massive box somewhere filled with cards, and all I can think when I see it is "how many thousands of dollars of bullshit random chance is in that box?"
I think the CCG industry is absolutely a valid target for regulation. Yeah, there's plenty of folks for whom opening a pack is just a fun little reward thing and presents no danger, but there are also plenty of people who totally lose track of what they're spending in order to keep chasing that little bit of psychological reward.
It's just not as horrible and obvious an issue as lootboxing.
Funny thing is, I am one of those people. Easily 10,000+ cards between 4 big card holding boxes. I've been pricing them out and selling them, and while entirely anecdotal, I am making waaaay more than I spent on them. Yes, yes, there needs to be accounting for inflation, what that money might have made in a proper investment vehicle, the lack of available resources due to having them tied up in cardboard that I can't pay rent or my credit card bill with, but finding cards I used to buy for $1 and having them now sell for $30+ is pretty great! And then a bunch of them are '1000 for $3' bulk/chaff, but as someone who never bought thousands of dollars worth of cards per set, I'm pretty happy with the turnaround I'm seeing.
I haven't played for ~7+ years, and in that time frame we've seen the leaps and bounds in smartphone technology, I now have an app on my phone that will let me use the camera to scan cards, import them into a database that references back to one of the common card selling sites, notes their price, and updates daily with the new info.
I can tell you to the penny what a fair value would be for the portion of my collection that is currently entered into said app.
But as I said, I almost never paid more than say $20 for a single card (my collection of 'dual lands' are the only exception I can think of), and rarely more than $5.
I'm sure this isn't going to be everyone's experience. Like gambling or investing (in some ways), it's going to have winners and losers. I was lucky enough to win out, and once I've moved the big ticket items, I may just pitch the rest of it at closer to bulk prices.
Aside from my DotA2 items and TF2 items, which I can put up on the Steam Marketplace, that's something I can't say for many other lootboxes and microtransaction style business models. My Galaxy of Heroes account (meager spending) is shut, the money paid into a single Anthem skin will likely be lost beyond what enjoyment I gained playing while wearing it, and I accept that.
Again, this is purely anecdotal. It's not a refutation of what has been said about CCGs, and I'm entirely on board with needing to post odds, to regulate that, while also believing they are a lesser evil (note; lesser evil is still evil, let's not miss the forest for the trees, I am onboard).
But selling off a pack of cards I bought for $10 years ago for $80 a few months ago felt pretty damned good too.
YMMV
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
...but WotC isn't seeing a dime of that secondary money.
They already got the money, because people had to buy enough booster packs to get the rare card to begin with. Both the players who then sell on the cards to the hobby shops, and the hobby shops themselves, pay massively into pack openings to get the rare cards people need to buy to be competitive.
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It's been the case for quite a while. In 2012 this system was at the center of a storm of Xbox Live hacks, where numerous accounts were hacked just to spend their money on FIFA packs to sell for real money.
Sports games have been spearheading predatory monetization for many years. They're lower profile and more niche targeted at fans who don't see them the same way a "mainstream" gamer would see card packs of Orcs or Star Wars dudes, so they've always been an ideal testing ground.
It's a secondary game mode, if that helps.
That innovation is what got Wilson his CEOship.
It's why FIFA is like almost half of EA's revenue. Not even joking there, it's stupidly profitable.
Yes. Its the reason for the hard randomization monetization structure in ME 3 and Andromeda. At the time FIFA card packs were making one billion dollars profit per year. I shudder to think what they do now
It's hard to find accurate numbers that aren't years out of date, but EA makes roughly $2 billion a year in microtransactions alone, the overwhelming majority of which is through their sports franchises. Selling actual videogames is a tiny fraction of their portfolio.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/57475/ea-earns-1-68-billion-microtransactions-fy2017/index.html
I think many of us who focus on "traditional" gaming underappreciate the scale of this problem globally and why it shapes publisher attitudes towards everything. This is a multi-billion dollar, completely unregulated, international gambling scheme that happens to be widely accessible to children. It's so wildly beyond "are RPGs too grindy" that I don't think it makes sense to talk about the two in the same context.
Edit: Image won't imbed on mobile, I give up.
Yeah, I mean it's a full-featured game with multiple online and single-player modes to play entirely outside of Ultimate Team (the microtransaction-based mode). Including, as you'd expect, a mode where you can pick any club or international team that's licensed (which is most of them) and play them against friends or strangers locally or online. And a mode where you can create your own player or team and take them through a career progression offline. Or a mode where you can create your own player, and team up with ten other people who do the same, and play 11v11 games where everybody literally just controls one player. That's all part of the base game, doesn't cost a dime extra.
FIFA Ultimate Team is effectively just a CCG that's included with FIFA, where instead of building a deck and playing a card game you build a squad and play a soccer game. A squad includes 23 cards (11 on the field, 7 on the bench, 5 in reserve), along with some consumables and team items (like balls and stadiums), all of which you get by opening booster packs. Squad building involves choosing a formation, linking players together based on nation, club, and team, etc. It probably sounds remarkably silly, but it's actually pretty fun, which of course is why they make a hojillion dollars on it. Many people play that mode exclusively. But with thousands and thousands of players across leagues and continents to choose from, the idea of a pack-based CCG of sorts isn't entirely insane for a build-your-own-team mode like this.
Making the most popular players in the world so rare that you have to spend like $500 or more to get each of them...yeah, that's where it gets shitty. And that's not $500 in packs before you would receive one randomly; that's $500 in packs, selling all the contents, in order to get enough coins to buy them from one of the very, very few people lucky enough to actually get them from a pack. The actual odds of the top-end players are like 1:100,000 packs. And that is how they make billions (multiple) per year on microtransactions in these games (FIFA, Madden, etc.).
So I think that's why you saw it in sports first - the existing mindset was already there, unlike something like ME3 or Battlefront (same reason why it's worked in CCG games in other contexts as well)
I have a ton of Lord of the Rings ccg cards from the 90s, utterly useless because i have nobody to play with, but i have them.
They make for functional bookmarks atleast, hard to do same with a bunch of electrons on a server somewhere.
Everybody here understands this. However, I’m not sure that the fact you can at least burn CCG cards for warmth really makes them fundamentally better. Some CCGs have persisted, and the cards have maintained their value to some extent or another. Other defunct CCGs really aren’t worth the card stock they were printed on anymore. While those cards may have some theoretical utility, as you note, realistically they’re little better than bits on a server.
As amazing as bookmarks that Rage cards might be, given that they take up space in the attic (or in the trash) it’s even arguable that the bits on the server might be better...you can just forget them and they go away.
There are a lot of arguments why FIFA cards are evil compared to physical collectibles, but I’m not sure “may take up space in my house forever” is a particularly strong one.
I'm just saying that any comparison gets from fifa cards, that i assume don't translate to next years fifa game, and CCG cards that are, you know, actual cards, will be of very limited use because one of them is an actual product you own, instead of bunch of electrons that basicly go poof in a year.
Also secondary market.
Like, there are actual businesses that buy random packs, open them, and sell the bloody cards one by one.
Also, despite everything, CCG cards are a known quantity with an audience that already knows what they are getting into. Also, IMO, all videogames digital CCGs should be forbidden entirely from having a company-supported secondary market. If you want to dump your money on gatcha, can't stop you, but a secondary market just creates a large amount of perverse incentives for credit card cloning and money laundering, AND is less safe than physical goods.
If anything a secondary market ala Artifact is healthier because it makes it clear how much stuff costs and lets you bypass the gambling aspect to just buy what you want.
That so many people were angry when Artifact showed them the actual cost card games want people to put down for a set is an exceptional sign of just how well people are able to internalize time spent grinding for a pittance of packs in more traditional free to play models as enough of a band aid.
And you can actually, like, trade them with other players to get what you want. Or just outright buy something if you're missing it.
Cosmetic lootboxes would probably have been considered acceptable if a player-driven market for their contents was allowed to exist. TF2 and CS:GO essentially do this with their crate system, IIRC, and I don't remember the last time I heard someone complaining about those - aside from the absurd artificial scarcity and prices some items can reach.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Skins Gambling (which I still don't understand how it works) is/was a massive problem for CS:GO, enough so that Steam added a delay between acquiring skins and trading them off to throw a wrench in the whole thing.
"Gambling, uh, gambling, finds a way.", I guess.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
If I buy a couple packs of the latest Magic set, I have actual cards in my hands that I can use to play, or if I desire, I can go trade or outright sell the cards for what they will bear for actual money. I outright own said cards. I can go and put together a deck for a friend to get them started. If I'm missing a card for a deck, I can go online to eBay or Troll and Toad and pick up a copy or three as I need, with actual money.
Can you say the same for an Overwatch skin? How's about one of those FIFA cards- can you go ahead and sell those for anything besides EA company scrip that you can just use to buy more of the same thing? Or can you get some actual money for them? Can you buy them with actual money, or do you have to convert it into company scrip first, at whatever depressingly low transition rate they set?
Also, what happens in the future when Blizzard decides to stop supporting Overwatch, or when someone turns off the servers at EA for FIFA? Whoops, guess you can't access them- did you ever really truly own them? Or did you just pay for the opportunity to have the chance to draw the privilege of using said skin or player?
Not to mention I know the rarity of the packs- each Magic pack contains eleven common cards, three uncommon cards, and one rare card. There's a one-in-thirty chance for a mythic card. I didn't know the chance of getting a legendary player in FIFA was somewhere about 1 in 100,000. If that's not exploitative, I dunno what is.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
That you are paying for meaningful access to your content for a year or two is the bargain going in. Nobody is expecting perpetual access when they pull the trigger.
The inability to “cash out” is still a glaring problem, obviously. But then no more so than MtG online. And it’s also a known quantity going in.
Or, basically, this.
As a kid who cut his teeth buying magic cards back in the 90’s, yeah it’s always been kinda sorta gambling. I think it’s much, much easier to argue that CCGs are *also* bad than it is to argue why they’re super ethical while FIFA packs are the literal devil.
Which they are. They are absolutely evil. To be clear. I just think we have to do some real contorting to try and argue that CCGs are better in anything but degree. Trading cards were very clearly the model for FUT,
the similarities aren’t a coincidence.
The big difference with CCG's and FUT is how the market works. With a CCG you can purchase packs or individual cards via the primary or secondary market with the same currency. In FUT you have to use real world money to purchase FIFA Points, but those FIFA points you cannot purchase individual players with, only packs. You can sell the players you get from the packs for FIFA Coins. Now FIFA coins are where you can purchase players and packs.
EA deliberately stonewalls the ability for a person to purchase the content they want, to enforce them to purchase these packs. Even if you had unlimited money to purchase the players you want, you could end up having to purchase countless packs to generate enough coins to get just 1 player outright.
Then just to add some extra fuckery, EA had a big issue with coin generators and the secondary market where third parties were using less than savoury methods to create coin farming and selling on the coins to people to basically bypass EA's Stonewall. It was a highly lucrative business, but also made a natural stock market for player values set by individuals. So EA's way of stopping this was to create a set value for each player for which someone couldn't sell on the market for any higher.
So now EA sets the individual value of each player, regardless of its rarity or desirability. So you have a market where the most desirable players are never readily available due to the value being fixed on the secondary market.
That’s not really how it works at all. At least the last part. It’s true that you cannot buy players (or coins) direct from EA at any fixed rate, you have to buy them via packs at a sort of exchange rate that is usually pretty stable over medium amounts but wildly variable over small amounts. And you can’t get cash back out, obviously.
But the player market actually does function to determine legitimate market value prices. The “price ranges” that the FIFA team allows for bids don’t set the market price, and arguably barely influence it. If a card’s market value in coins is higher than the price range allowed, they will go “extinct” (in the parlance used by the player base). A shortage occurs. Similarly, prices set too high render players unsellable. Which is why they routinely revise those price ranges to keep plenty of space above and below the current market values.
Before ranges, any glitch that allowed generation of coins led to hyperinflation through widespread buying and selling of coins, which was accomplished by selling players for way above their market value. You’d sell a 500 coin player to the coin warehouse for 5,000,000, after sending them the money.
Arguably the price ranges were almost entirely to the benefit of “free to play” players. Because anybody else back then could spend twenty bucks (to a shady third party) and buy anything they wanted. Meanwhile anybody earning coins and packs through legitimate play had no chance at all to afford even midrange players.
The FIFA team does a ton of shady shit, but ensuring players only get bought and sold for something resembling their fair value as determined by a player-run market isn’t one of them.
Because often the reason for digital lootboxes not having a secondary market is that they're used to launder stolen money, so I have to wonder if it's the same for physical lootboxes as well.
Jim Sterling noted this as well, in response to the EA spokesperson comparing lootboxes to Kinder Eggs and CCGs. Basically, EA is as likely to drag CCGs down with them as they are to use them for support. EA messed up by bringing all of this into the spotlight with the worst version imaginable, and that's causing people to re-examine the whole industry.
My general guideline is to look for the harm, and I've heard far too many stories about kids spending more money than they could afford on CCGs, so some kind of regulation is probably appropriate.
But it didn’t achieve that at all. In the end it ensured that players people desired never got put on the market and the market got flooded with trash that didn’t sell. I know they improved a load after it was first introduced half way through 2016 release which was utterly broken. The mechanic while great in stopping the shady third party business actually destroyed legitimate marketplace buying and selling.
In addition the very nature of creating two currencies and stonewalling players from generating one currency effectively even from using real world money is in its self a predatory practice that needs banning as it’s essentially a way of dodging the obvious nature of gambling but also ensuing that all players have to purchase packs using real world money if they want to go and buy a single player.
A little bit of background and personal history.
I've been working as an online game developer since 2001. I was an employee of Nexon in the early 2000s when they launched the first F2P online game (Quiz Quiz) utilizing micro-transactions which they later perfected in products such as 'BnB' and 'Kart Rider'. I transferred to a competing Korean company called Neowiz in 2005 to work on a brand new joint project with EA Burnaby that would become known as FIFA Online. I had the opportunity to work with many exceptional people from EA during that time and one of the senior producers for FIFA Online on EA's side was a brilliant and ambitious producer named Andrew Wilson.
FIFA Online was not expected to be a hit at that time. You have to remember that in 2006 the 800 pound gorilla in the football simulation market was Konami's Winning Eleven. We worked our asses off and FIFA Online was a huge success when we launched in Korea in the summer of 2006. We hit peaks of over 160,000 concurrent users within the first few month but our overall revenue was unusually low. The majority of our revenue was brought in through the sales of traditional micro-transaction items such as 'energy drinks' that removed typical time lock restrictions (similar to the hearts found in Candy Crush) or by grouping cosmetic items with in-game currency "bonus" since it was illegal to sell in-game currency directly for cash in Korea. The main reason our revenue was so low as because we had split the game into two modes, an 'Arcade Mode' (80% of the player base) and a 'League Mode' where you created and built up your own team. 'Arcade Mode' players would spend extremely little money compared to the 'League Mode' players.
In an effort to improve our revenue in September of 2006 I proposed a new meta-game system known as the 'Trophy Card' system based on my childhood experiences in the US collecting baseball/basketball cards and play MTG and 'Vampire' the card game. The system was slightly modified to meet regulations in Korea and became known as the 'Uniform Card' system and was launched in the winter of 2006. In March 2007 EA launched UEFA Champions League 2006-2007 which included the first The Ultimate Team system. I have no idea if that system was developed independently from us in Korea but I do know that we officially launched first. In the Fall of 2007 we launched FIFA Online 2 which heavily pushed the 'Custom Team' mode and an updated 'Uniform Card' system to become a huge commercial success. In 2010 Neowiz lost the rights to publish and develop FIFA Online and EA has been doing very well ever since in Asia developing FIFA Online 3 and FIFA Online 4 in-house.
I moved on from Neowiz in 2010 and have worked on numerous online projects with several large developers. My experience since leaving the FIFA team and seeing the proliferation of more and more exploitative micro-transaction systems, especially in Asian free to play games has been heart-wrenching. I naively believed that the creation of a paid loot box at that time was not just to increase our revenue, but was to truly increase the amount of joy to our players. These days I've discovered the only joy these lootboxes deliver are to the companies and executives of big game companies.
Looking for a Hardcore Fantasy Extraction Shooter? - Dark and Darker
Virtually everyone I've encountered that plays Magic ends up having some massive box somewhere filled with cards, and all I can think when I see it is "how many thousands of dollars of bullshit random chance is in that box?"
I think the CCG industry is absolutely a valid target for regulation. Yeah, there's plenty of folks for whom opening a pack is just a fun little reward thing and presents no danger, but there are also plenty of people who totally lose track of what they're spending in order to keep chasing that little bit of psychological reward.
It's just not as horrible and obvious an issue as lootboxing.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
The cost of that card at the hobby shop depends on how rare WotC decides to make it in packs. It's carefully disguised false scarcity to extract as much money into the MtG ecosystem as possible.
Thanks for sharing this story! My takeaway from this is that a successful business model is not an end unto itself.
...but WotC isn't seeing a dime of that secondary money. And besides, even if I do have to pay extra for the card, I can still get that exact card I'm chasing without having to go through all the hoopla of buying packs- as opposed to a lootbox system with absolutely no secondary market where your only recourse for finding the gun/skin/materials you need is to keep feeding the machine and hoping RNGesus is feeling really, really kind- or, for those lootboxes with secondary markets, give my money to the company in exchange for company scrip to buy or bid on it- so the company gets paid even if you buy it off the secondary market.
You might have to spell your argument out for me- all I'm seeing is a bunch of technical stuff that just seems to say "but lootboxes aren't really bad! If they are bad then all random-chance CCGs are bad, too!"
You know what else you'd have to classify as bad under that argument? Lotteries of any kind. Scratch tickets, slot machines, capsule toys, pretty much anything that has an element of chance would end up getting hit by this.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
I play a few mobile games with gambling involved and I have fun with them, but I also have a strict rule that I am not going to spend money on these games. Far too many people spend money they can't really afford on this sort of thing, though, so I do think some form of regulation is necessary. Japan has regulations that help, but probably do not go far enough in addressing the issue.
While the financially optimal move is to determine which cards you need for your deck then directly purchase those cards, card packs still sell really well.
Yes, being able to have a secondary market for trading can be helpful for keeping away from lootboxes, but the gambling mechanics still exist. Also, I wonder how much of the secondary CCG market exists because it's desired, and how much exists because these are physical objects that are no longer under the control of the company, and so they don't have much choice in the matter.
As are Raffle tickets (obvious in hindsight, but I didn't think of them that way) and "Housies" which I don't know what that is.
edit: Apparently a Housie is Bingo.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Housie is also known as bingo:
https://www.dia.govt.nz/Services-Casino-and-Non-Casino-Gaming-The-Rules-for-Running-a-Gambling-Activity
If the current situation was totally okay, then that's the system CCG companies would use to get cards to people. It would be simpler than this random pack situations, and with zero chance of exploiting people vulnerable to gambling addictions.
However, the fact that CCG companies continue to insist on having random packs and having official things like random pack tournament is a solid example of why it's still exploitation, and the only thing varying is the scope of the exploitation. They do it because it increases their profits without having to actually make new material because it's gambling, and there are people who enjoy it without issue and people who develop serious issues.
It may not be as egregious as the likes of what EA does, but it's absolutely in the same boat. The actual gameplay has absolutely no reliance on the random chance of card packs. Collecting random cards is a construct of artificial scarcity to lean on people to get them to spend a lot more getting a card than they would realistically spend, if they realized how much they were spending. The fact that there's a physical element doesn't change the fact that MtG is a business model constructed on convincing people to spend a LOT more for the random chance of getting a card than the card is worth if bought directly.
Funny thing is, I am one of those people. Easily 10,000+ cards between 4 big card holding boxes. I've been pricing them out and selling them, and while entirely anecdotal, I am making waaaay more than I spent on them. Yes, yes, there needs to be accounting for inflation, what that money might have made in a proper investment vehicle, the lack of available resources due to having them tied up in cardboard that I can't pay rent or my credit card bill with, but finding cards I used to buy for $1 and having them now sell for $30+ is pretty great! And then a bunch of them are '1000 for $3' bulk/chaff, but as someone who never bought thousands of dollars worth of cards per set, I'm pretty happy with the turnaround I'm seeing.
I haven't played for ~7+ years, and in that time frame we've seen the leaps and bounds in smartphone technology, I now have an app on my phone that will let me use the camera to scan cards, import them into a database that references back to one of the common card selling sites, notes their price, and updates daily with the new info.
I can tell you to the penny what a fair value would be for the portion of my collection that is currently entered into said app.
But as I said, I almost never paid more than say $20 for a single card (my collection of 'dual lands' are the only exception I can think of), and rarely more than $5.
I'm sure this isn't going to be everyone's experience. Like gambling or investing (in some ways), it's going to have winners and losers. I was lucky enough to win out, and once I've moved the big ticket items, I may just pitch the rest of it at closer to bulk prices.
Aside from my DotA2 items and TF2 items, which I can put up on the Steam Marketplace, that's something I can't say for many other lootboxes and microtransaction style business models. My Galaxy of Heroes account (meager spending) is shut, the money paid into a single Anthem skin will likely be lost beyond what enjoyment I gained playing while wearing it, and I accept that.
Again, this is purely anecdotal. It's not a refutation of what has been said about CCGs, and I'm entirely on board with needing to post odds, to regulate that, while also believing they are a lesser evil (note; lesser evil is still evil, let's not miss the forest for the trees, I am onboard).
But selling off a pack of cards I bought for $10 years ago for $80 a few months ago felt pretty damned good too.
YMMV