FOMO, Loot Boxes And My Hunt For The Palindrome
Recently I was playing Bungie’s massively-popular FPS, Destiny 2, and heard in the most recent community update (This Week At Bungie) that a weapon I’ve been trying to get my loot-goblin grips on, the Palindrome, is being taken out of the game at the end of the current season, to make way for a new weapon to take its place as the pinnacle of rewards in the grind for endgame loot. Naturally, this caused me some stress.
Not only did I now have a timer to get this weapon, but I must wait for it to be the featured reward in the Nightfall too, AND THEN I must pray to the RNG gods that the stars align, and I get the perks I want. With this internal crisis aside, it got me thinking – Why am I stressing out over a weapon in a video game I am playing to relax?
GIVE IT TOO ME…
The short answer – it's the Fear of Missing Out. This is a concept I’m sure most of you are aware of. A very effective strategy in business is to artificially manipulate the value of an item, by making a set amount of that item or giving people a time limit to buy it, because (as far as you know) once it’s gone, it’s gone. Across all industries, this strategy forces the customer to buy now and think about it later. You don’t have time to consider the purchase, because it’ll be gone by the time you decide. But what is FOMO, really?
Gamification pioneer, Yu-kai Chou explains this process, during his TedX talk from February 2014, in a key framework of the phenomena, called Octalysis. In this, he explains some of the core tenants of Octalysis, some of them being development & accomplishment, social influence & relatedness, and the previously mentioned scarcity & impatience. But how do these relate to FOMO and my Destiny loot problem?
Starting off with Development & Accomplishment, Yu-kai explains this as ‘“you’re motivated because you’re improving”. So, by doing this Nightfall activity over and over, getting better and better, you’ll eventually get that Palindrome you want. You feel proud. Accomplished.
Next is Social Influence & Relatedness. Yu-kai explained this as “what you do based on what others do, think, or say”. If everyone is talking about this weapon, people on YouTube are singing its praise, your friends all want one too, naturally, you’ll feel more inclined to want it too. You want to feel like you can relate to the hype.
Lastly, we have Scarcity & Impatience. Yu-kai explains this as “you want something, but you can’t have it”. Because you’re being told you can’t have it, because you have this timer, you just have to have it now.
Each of these three core tenants of Octalysis all explain different parts of FOMO. In this case, by getting my Palindrome, I feel accomplished. I also feel like I can now relate to my friends who have it. Finally I no longer have the pressure of others caring about the voices telling me “GO GET THIS GUN NOW”. I don’t have to worry about the scarcity of the weapon, or any sort of timer, because I already have that fleeting prize - the real reward was avoiding that looming dread of missing out.
Wait your turn, we’ll get back to you Coldheart!
However, if someone who starts playing Destiny after it has been removed from the loot table, they’ll see this weapon in their fellow Guardian's loadouts and, be told by social influences that “you should want this because it’s the best gun in the game”, only to find out it’s gone for good. And while yes, this sucks for that person. I would argue that in this case, it’s not that bad because there’s no monetary value assigned to guns in Destiny. These people spend their time differently and one has a status item to show for it and one doesn't. However, in other games where money is involved, that’s where this line between rewarding long time players and creating an elitist ecosystem begins to blur. The issues with FOMO really show their ugly colours when companies decide to monetise it.
I’m sure most of you remember the lawsuits against Electronic Arts over allegedly encouraging gambling through ‘lootbox mechanics’ in Star Wars: Battlefront 2. This system attracted a massive public backlash because players who spent money could get their characters to a much stronger position than players who opted not to spend. What made this pay-to-win system worse, was that it would take players over six months of playtime, or 4528 hours, to unlock everything in the game, which could simply be avoided by spending an estimated $2100 to buy the 3000+ crates to get everything (assuming luck was in your favour). While incredibly predatory, at least the items in those lootboxes were permanent and obtainable forever, they were also technically obtainable through gameplay, even if it would have taken thousands of hours.
Ok, but like these anime kids are prettyyyy cool looking.
A more insidious example of FOMO would be the Breath of the Wild-like ‘Gacha’ game, Genshin Impact. In miHoYo’s smash-hit mobile and console game, you can earn a currency called Primogems which you can spend on Wishes, to then try to get characters in an RNG, luck-based roulette called Banners. Confusing, right? Don’t worry, it gets worse… the concept of a ‘Gacha’ game comes from Japanese Gachapon capsule machines and involves the game offering you something cool, but forcing you to rely on luck to get what you want. You will get a prize but the odds of it being the thing you want are slim. Making things more stressful in Genshin, is that it leans into the time-limited aspect of FOMO. Yes, you can earn the currency in-game over the course of hours and hours of in-game time, OR you can spend real money to get what essentially boils down to pulls of the handle at a slot machine.
Genshin Impact is abusing two of the core drives I mentioned. Heavily.
You get the short-term gratification from the serotonin released when you win, and because of how nice that feels, you want that feeling again and again, so you keep spending for more and more rewards from a virtual slot machine. You also have a limited time, creating a sense of scarcity and urgency in acquiring the item on the banner. What makes Genshin particularly gross feeling, is that the characters or weapons you get from these banners aren't even particularly strong. If you want them to be as good as they look in their banner art, you need to draw them MULTIPLE TIMES. For characters, you need to get the character itself, and then get them another six times to get all their effects and bonuses. SIX!
When you look at videos of players spending upwards of $500, $600, even $1000+ on a single character, it’s hard to view it as anything other than disgustingly exploitative. In Destiny 2 one can argue that FOMO is used to create feelings of accomplishment within the player, but here? Here you are just asked to pull an Ace from a deck of cards six times and charged money for every attempt.
Can Link do this?
What makes things worse in Genshin’s case, is that you never know when a new character will come around to make the one you just invested in irrelevant and start the cycle all over again. The closer you examine these systems, the more impossible it becomes to claim they aren’t gambling. But how did we get here?
As games became more expensive to produce in the HD era, publishers sought ways to convince players to pay more for their games without feeling like the cost of games was going up. There were several years of attempting different ways to do this, including the dark days of the online pass, but eventually, most publishers settled on pre-order bonuses. oftentimes, these would involve offers like XP boosts, weapon skins, which would give the player a slight edge, or some limited-edition cosmetics. But the issues began to come when more tangible and important pieces of content became locked behind this wall. For example, with the original release of Destiny 2 in September 2017, if you weren’t an early adopter and pre-ordered, you were locked out of being able to get the Exotic Trace Rifle, Coldheart, until the next expansion in December later that year. To add insult to injury, it was (at the time) one of the best weapons for the endgame Raid. Suddenly you had social classes of haves and have-nots cropping up, and Destiny players began to gatekeep those who don’t have the right gear to join their fireteam.
You know, I was on the fence about buying Sonic: Lost World but if you are going to give me 25 extra lives…
This was an issue present in the community during the first game when players would look for raid groups online with qualifiers like “must have Gjallarhorn”. However this divide got worse during the early days of Destiny 2, you were left at a significant disadvantage not if you hadn't gotten a lucky drop but instead if you hadn't paid extra for a pre-ordered version of the game. Companies are now locking access to the game itself to pre-order bonuses, and in some cases, to special edition pre-order bonuses. Ubisoft has been doing this POEA (Pre-Order Early Access) system with the Assassin's Creed franchise since Odyssey, while Microsoft sold a $100 edition of Forza Horizon 5 that let you play a few days early.
Players now have to look at a chart or Excel spreadsheet just to figure out which pre-order is worth their money. It’s ridiculous. Scott Adams coined the term “Confusopoly'' to describe a group of companies with similar products who intentionally bamboozle the consumer until they give up and just buy the most expensive version in order to make sure they don't miss out on any content. This can most recently be seen with the pre-order infographic Sega felt it necessary to produce alongside Sonic Origins.
This image is funnier then any caption we could put here.
Richard Cordray of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau explained “if they can confuse the customer enough, then the customers won’t necessarily know what choice they’re making, and they can be talked into just about anything”.
Another issue in this whole thing though, (as if there aren’t enough already) is that simply buying the most expensive edition of a game doesn’t give you all the content, or pre-order bonuses. That spreadsheet joke I made? Not a joke. Ubisoft fans actually made a spreadsheet to explain what versions of the original Watchdogs would give you what rewards.
So, after all this, after all these problems on top of problems, predatory practices on top of predatory practices, what now? I’ve explained the issues, but not offered a solution or alternative. In all honesty? I don’t think there is one. It’s not as simple as saying “just stop these practices” because the free-game market needs a source of income and AAA games are only getting more expensive to make and these practices do bring in a solid flow of cash. With games-as-a-service on the rise, developers need ways to keep the lights on in between major releases and initial sales. So, what do we do?
At least you will know what you are buying here.
I think these practices need to be regulated. Perhaps opt for a different monetisation method, like small DLCs, as Overkill did with Payday 2, where every few months they would release a small DLC pack with a few cosmetics like masks, suits, etc. in between the bigger releases which involved new maps, playable characters, or major Quality-of-Life improvements, such as Infamy 3.0. I say this is less predatory because all of these DLCs are completely optional, and the bigger DLCs, like new missions, only require the host to own for the party to play, meaning you can enjoy the new content without spending money.
There are less predatory ways to keep cash coming in, and not exploit the players in the process. We have ample proof of these methods working too. So, maybe it’s time we let FOMO die out and try something a bit more pro-consumer. But what are the odds of a billion-dollar megacorp doing what’s in the best interest of consumers?
