“In behavioural psychology, that randomised system of reward is the one that creates the most addiction,” says Emil Hodzic, who runs the Video Game Addiction Treatment Clinic. “That’s the one that causes all the drama.”
This comment comes from an interview about microtransactions tied to random number generator (RNG) card packs, or what I call “pay-to-loot”. It’s a system that exists beyond genres and irrespective of the price of a game. It’s becoming more common, too. You can find it in Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Gears of War 4, Dirty Bomb and Hearthstone, to name a handful of names that constantly arose while researching this piece.
Publishers will tell you these RNG microtransactions are optional, and to an extent that’s true, but they’re baked into the games in question, and are offered via a number of access points. Sure, you can spend a few (or a lot of) real-world bucks, but you can also use artificial in-game currency… all to buy what amounts to uncertainty. That’s how RNG systems work. What may have been a shiny loot drop one time, isn’t likely to repeat again anytime soon because of predetermined loot drop rates. And, as I’ll explore in this article, that randomness and uncertainty seems to be the point of why they’re becoming more common.
What may have been a shiny loot drop one time, isn’t likely to repeat again anytime soon because of predetermined loot drop rates.
Pay-to-loot is a relatively new microtransaction system that’s been borrowed from smartphone and tablet apps. In what I can only imagine is a very separate psychological phenomenon, users happily spend many hundreds of dollars on a new smartphone, but balk when an app (game or otherwise) is deemed too expensive – i.e. isn’t free. The microtransaction systems inside these free-to-play or low-price-point apps have actually become the business model. That in itself is a topic for another day, but the point is that within that ecosystem players are incentivised to spend money, and some of these players spend thousands – or significantly more – on these kinds of systems and are dubbed “whales”. It makes sense, then, that console and PC publishers have seen that model and decided to pull it across into their titles, despite the large difference in initial investment from the player.
Online, you’ll find debate around whether some of these RNG systems – the ones tied to randomised unlocks that impact gameplay – constitute derided pay-to-win systems. While that debate is interesting to follow, I’d argue pay-to-loot isn’t the same as pay-to-win. Pay-to-loot is something subtler and, arguably, worse.
According to Hodzic, these systems are “certainly comparable to the card packs that you can purchase with Magic: The Gathering. It’s just the same thing in one way or another, so there is that randomness that goes there, and the poker machine-like experience that comes with it.”
This “poker machine-like experience” refers to the randomised nature of these loot drops, and ties into primitive parts of our brain, making them particularly effective because of how susceptible we are to them. If you’d like to read more about this topic as it relates to loot drops in regular games, you can read "The Science Behind Why We Love Loot" here.
Hodzic uses Overwatch’s Loot Boxes as an example to highlight the loot effect. “One thing that I’ve spoken to people about, whether it’s 12-year-olds or adults, is the loot boxes that you get within games,” says Hodzic. “If you’ve played Overwatch, basically, every time you hit a new level, you get a new Loot Box, and even though they’re not saying, ‘Hey, buy $20 worth of loot boxes,’ what they’re doing – by you being exposed to that reward system – you are, in a sense, getting reinforced to [be] expecting something and getting a reward.
“Then that dynamic of the gambling – the poker machine motivation system comes in – whereby, you get one really good skin or emote one time and it wants you to [get] more. Over time, the interest and the attachment and the drive for what you get from that loot drop can definitely increase, especially when they’ve got the seasons thing, like [a] Halloween [event].”
In a separate interview, Ph.D. psychologist Jamie Madigan, who runs The Psychology of Video Games website, theorised about why Blizzard, in the specific example of Overwatch, might have chosen a randomised loot-drop system associated with microtransactions.
“I imagine that the people at Blizzard and Activision and so forth have done their own internal testing and found out that this sort of system does keep people engaged longer,” says Madigan. “It gets them either playing the game longer or spending more money on in-game purchases if they have to rely on chance, and they have to pull the slot machine arm every time they want to get something, rather than just paying for it up-front.
“Even if they would end up paying a premium to get what they wanted. It’s still exciting to get one of those boxes [in Overwatch] and open it up and see what you get. I think that excitement persists, and it would go away if you could simply buy what you wanted. You wouldn’t have the drive to keep playing the game to work towards one of those loot chests that may give you something awesome, or it may give you a bunch of junk.
“And it’s going to be mostly a bunch of junk but, every once in a while, it’s going to be totally awesome. In a lot of ways, that’s the same psychological mechanisms that are going on with random loot drops in other games like your Diablos of the world: where you just kill a monster and something pops out. There’s a lot of the same psychological phenomenon going on.”
Part of that “psychological phenomenon” is how our brains work in relation to fixed rewards versus randomised booty.
“A lot of research shows that fixed rewards are not as effective for getting people to change behaviours, learn a new behaviour, or form a habit as random rewards are..." - Jamie Madigan
“A lot of research shows that fixed rewards are not as effective for getting people to change behaviours, learn a new behaviour, or form a habit as random rewards are," explains Madigan. “Our brains are wired to try to make sense of unexpected things. When you have a random number determining what loot you get, by definition, you’re going to get an unexpected result, or an unexpected predictable result every time.
“Whether you get that by playing the game for so many hours or winning so many matches, or whether you get a roll of that random number generator from spending five dollars to buy a pack of cards or a loot chest, it’s still the same rush, the same experience, the same hopeful anticipation to try and figure out, ‘Well, did I figure it out this time?’ Even though, in the front part of your brain – in the rational slow-moving part of your brain – you know that it’s completely random and, no, you haven’t cracked the code or figured it out. But those circuits are hardwired in our brain, and they’re very effective and very powerful.”
In fairness, our brains are responding to and being attracted to these randomised systems in a variety of places, and it’s certainly not exclusive to video games. According to Hodzic, the challenge, though, is when the contact with the same randomised systems happens repeatedly. “There are gambling mechanics in other things,” admits Hodzic. “Like, if you play card games, that’s not really cracked down on. You play 21 with your family, it doesn’t seem so bad.
“But the repetitive exposure, almost like a commercial – every time you sign in – you’re getting that over time, and it just works and works and works on you. Maybe it’s not that week or maybe it’s five months later, but I think at some stage, and this, I’m really putting myself out by saying that you’re going to end up spending some money, either great or small.”
Personally, the main issue I have is when RNG monetisation systems offer more than just cosmetic options. Where those previously mentioned pay-to-win systems offer certainty in exchange for currency, the random nature of a pay-to-loot drop impacts balance and creates an unfair playing field, where luck becomes a factor external to skill. As far as Hodzic is concerned, though, cosmetic loot drops such as skins can be just as appealing as gameplay-impacting ones.
“The skin will apply to the person who is really, really interested in novelty,” says Hodzic. “If that’s their currency, then it’s going to really stick for them, and then some people want to goof around and not really take it too seriously but they want to look good, strangely. Now, of course, for those who want to get better at their skills, getting that randomised weapon, that add-on, is going to really want you to keep going. There is an issue because the motivator is to drop money and keep going back to that system hoping you’re going to get it, as opposed to the game companies rewarding you for putting in the effort.”
For Madigan, there’s an additional level of consideration when pitting cosmetic against gameplay-impacting loot drops. “I think people do think of it differently,” says Madigan. “When you start to get into pay-to-win and you get items or powers or whatever that give you a competitive advantage, even if it’s a single-player or a cooperative game, then you start to invoke concepts around fairness and justice. Like, if you and I are doing the same thing, but because you were able to pay five dollars, you’re getting a greater reward for it, or it’s easier for you, or you’re succeeding more often. It’s an area that I think really needs to be studied more.”
It’s all well and good to identify the potential problems with pay-to-loot systems, but what would actually help solve the issues with pay-to-loot systems?
“It would be a lot safer, especially for minors, if the loot that you got, say, for levelling-up and putting your time in and playing well was actually expected: there was no randomised nature to it." - Emil Hodzic
“It would be a lot safer, especially for minors, if the loot that you got, say, for levelling-up and putting your time in and playing well was actually expected: there was no randomised nature to it,” argues Hodzic. “If, for example, when you play [Call of Duty], you get to Prestige One, you get a certain emblem. If they had a similar system in terms of whether you choose an emote or whether you choose this or you choose that for games, that would be a lot safer, and that way, the exposure to young minds to a kind of gambling mechanic would be a lot better.
“In a perfect world, the game developers have an age checker, and when kids [are playing] – the persons not of adult [gambling] age – the loot system becomes structured, expected, as opposed to randomised. That might suck out the fun for a lot of people, but I think that in terms of giving people a chance, it’s the decent thing to do.”
For Madigan, the pay-to-loot systems aren’t problematic until they start to impact on a person’s life, in the same way that gambling addiction would. “Even if you do have someone doing that a lot [engaging with pay-to-loot systems], it’s only problematic when it starts to interfere with the rest of their lives,” reasons Madigan. “When they’re spending money that probably should be spent elsewhere. If they’re just dropping a few dollars that leads to them enjoying the game more, then that is probably not problematic.”
Still, Madigan believes there’s room for a greater level of transparency from digital platforms and retailers. “A better solution would be to flag those games that are going to have in-game purchases, like, it’s done on the Apple App Store,” says Madigan. “Where if you go and shop for an app or a game, it’ll tell you whether it has in-game purchases and what the most common or most popular in-game purchases are.
“If it described that sort of stuff or if there was some standardisation – like, game offers purchase of in-game consumable items – that would go a long way towards cluing people in to, ‘I either want to stay away from this entirely,’ or, ‘I want to go online and find out a little bit more information,’ or, ‘Hey, I don’t care in the slightest, this sounds good to me. Let’s go!’ I would like to see some sort of consumer information and awareness built up there before people buy the game.”
The reality is these pay-to-loot systems are becoming more commonplace in video games, yet these features aren’t exactly listed in the bullet points on the back of a box. A greater level of transparency about these mechanics and greater awareness of how they impact players would, ultimately, better help to guide purchasing decisions and temper some of the drama surrounding these systems.
Nathan Lawrence is a freelance writer based in Sydney and shooter specialist. Track him down on Twitter.
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