Toilet Paper Raincoats
I’ve played a lot of video games throughout my life. I also consider myself to be a bit picky when it comes to games. I have always found that I enjoy a game more if I can customise my character to make them look interesting and special to me. Whether that is changing their entire appearance down to the height of their cheekbones, or simply slapping some new pants and a shirt over their original clothing.
I have never been a huge fan of first person shooter games, or shooter games in general I suppose. However, an exception to this is the game Team Fortress 2 (TF2). But I mostly only play for the massive slew of cosmetics that are available. You only get one basic character that remains unchanged, but you can add special items like pants or a hat to make them feel new and fresh. The game also allows you to directly purchase the things that you want. Say you want new headgear or a shirt, you can buy it for a few cents no strings attached.
However, if you want to try your luck, you can pay a small sum of money (around $1.80-$2.50) to open a loot box, called a crate, in the game. These crates usually have a list of a few items that you have a chance of obtaining, usually divided into rarities. There are three main rarities in TF2: unique, strange, and unusual, with unique being the least valuable, and unusual being the most valuable. It’s basically a gamble every time you buy a loot box. You can either win big,
or lose,
and lose,
and lose some more.
But of course if you’re lucky, you could get an item potentially worth thousands of dollars. It’s like going to a casino in Vegas from the comfort of your own home.
There are plenty of videos showcasing people spending hundreds of dollars on loot boxes for and making basically no profit. They are about as reliable as a raincoat made of toilet paper. I myself have even fallen into the trap of buying loot boxes, but usually only around one or two at a time, usually getting significantly less than what I paid. These few attempts have sort of ruined the magic of crates and I try to avoid them whenever possible.
Are TF2 crates worth it? Not really, but I still think that they have been handled well enough. At least you can still play the game in its entirety without having to fork over your entire college fund and maybe a kidney to be able to have fun.
Shooter games usually reward people for taking the time to learn the mechanics of the game and improve via practice. Most of the time, someone who has just installed the game will have a natural disadvantage when fighting against someone who has played for a while and is familiar with the way the game works.
Then in strides “Star Wars Battlefront 2”, the kicker of puppies, crusher of dreams, (according to Reddit at least), and one of the poster children of loot box controversy. Like many other games, you have the ability to level up certain characters to increase their strength. This is where the problem arose.
In order to level up your character, you need to obtain “Star Cards” which increase the strength of a character’s abilities and can grant characters new abilities. They come in four rarities: common, uncommon, rare, and epic. The cards are a fundamental aspect of the game, and pretty much any and all progression is tied to them.
However in order to get them, you had to spend real money and/or try your luck with loot boxes. You could know absolutely nothing about the game, but because you spent money you could be just as powerful as someone with hundreds of hours who hasn’t spent money. This kind of defeats the whole idea of having a learning curve and actually needing time and effort to get good at the game.
This is where I draw the line. It’s one thing to have gambling mechanics via lootboxes in a game, but it’s another thing entirely to have them directly affect gameplay and give people with money an advantage over those who don’t. At least in Team Fortress 2 you can avoid spending money and buying loot boxes.
A few countries have even banned or put heavy restrictions on loot boxes because of the controversy. Places like Belgium and the Netherlands have outright banned loot boxes, and other places like China and Australia have put more regulations in place.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, loot boxes CAN be a decent thing if they are done correctly. However, if a game is completely saturated with them they can make the experience unpleasant and make a game break down…
just like a toilet paper raincoat.
Joshua Coffey, Marketplace.tf, Scrap.tf LLC (2013), https://marketplace.tf/
Marketplace.tf is an online Team Fortress 2 marketplace that provides up to date prices of almost every item in the game. It is an excellent resource for finding prices and the purchase histories of various in-game items. I used Marketplace.tf to view the prices of various unusual quality items to give myself a better idea of their price ranges.
TheVirtualEconomist, [TF2] Is Unboxing Worth It? I Did the Math to Find Out, Youtube (2019), https://youtu.be/YrMfcGN5FaA
TheVirtualEconomist is a Youtuber that specialises in the economy of Team Fortress 2. In his video “[TF2] Is Unboxing Worth It? I Did the Math to Find Out”, he discusses the profitability of crates in TF2 and goes into detail about which crates are profitable and which aren’t. The graphs that were used in the video were extremely informative and allowed me to get a better understanding of TF2 crates in general.
“Star Wars Battlefront 2’s Loot Box Controversy Explained”, Gamespot (2017), https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2s-loot-box-controversy-expl/1100-6455155/
Gamespot is a video game news site. The article “Star Wars Battlefront 2’s Loot Box Controversy Explained” explains what went wrong with Star Wars Battlefront 2 and most of the controversy surrounding the game. I used this article to learn about the loot box system in the game and what exactly caused the massive controversy around them.
I went into this essay writing about gambling addiction in relation to loot boxes, but my focus gradually shifted more towards a practice that I dislike. I realized that I was not as passionate about the gambling aspect of them and more so about the effect they can have on someone’s experience in a game. I should mention that I am not fully opposed to having loot boxes in games with older audiences if they do not directly impact gameplay. I tried to show this through my writing by not being too critical of loot boxes at first and then speaking more harshly later. I really enjoyed the freedom I had while making this essay because I feel like I was able to make it very personal. All of the stylistic choices were used to make my writing sound like my own. I tried to use analogies and avoided using super formal language to make the work seem more like my own. I tried to make my piece sound almost conversational while still being somewhat academic. I avoided using direct quotes from my sources and focused on using paraphrasing to help the conversational tone of the writing. I also tried to add some minimal white space in between certain paragraphs or sentences to both give the reader more time to process what they read and to put emphasis on a phrase. The footnotes that I added were all extra commentary that I didn’t think fit within my main article or were too space consuming to be put in my main essay. I added the most white space around “lose, and lose, and lose some more” to force the reader to slow down. I wanted to emulate the feeling of monotony that one might feel while going on a “losing streak” when opening loot boxes.