The Online Newspaper of Lakewood High School

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

    Loot boxes are killing gaming

    Loot+boxes+are+killing+gaming

    The year was 1983 and the crash of a generation had just occurred.

    The future of video games was unknown and it was due to issues that could have been prevented years before. The issue was an oversaturated market and a lying market. Companies were making cheap games and only cared about money. This is similar to the gaming market we live in today.

    The age of loot boxes is going stronger than ever and it’s because we didn’t stop them when they were still small. Similar to the crash of 1983 the loot box system found commonly in many AAA games was built on a foundation of greed. Companies like Activision and Electronic Arts (EA) are two of the biggest companies in the loot box war of today. EA, however, crossed the line of truly too far.

    With the release of Battlefront 2 in November of 2017 gamers efforts for getting loot boxes in the spotlight finally happened. EA released battlefront 2 and it was quickly realized that you had to spend absurd amounts of tie to eve get a chance to unlock something.

    An Elite Trooper crate takes on average over two hours to unlock a hero it takes on average 40 hours. The game followed this up by heavy encouraging players to buy loot boxes with real money. With this practice being brought to the spotlight Electronic Arts sound its way to the worst companies lists.

    We as gamers thought this would truly make a cage till  Vance at ESRB says their position against the issue hasn’t changed. “We think [loot boxes are] a fun way to acquire virtual items for use within the game, to personalize your experience.” As of now the only thing happening with ESRB in the war against loot boxes are labeled.

    Games that have microtransactions including loot boxes are in the near future being labeled as such. Loot boxes and many other forms of microtransactions are getting worse with the release of Metal Gear Survive by Konomi the latest entry in the Metal Gear franchise that a true abomination of a game requires its players to pay for extra save slots, revives, inventory storage, the list goes on. With many AAA game makers milking their fans a second video game crash might not be that far off in a different form of course.

    The only thing we can hope for that is not unrealistic is the loot box fad going away on its own. This could happen for a multitude of reasons but one we may have to accept is games getting more expensive.

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