{"id":50394,"date":"2020-07-21T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50394"},"modified":"2020-07-21T04:14:28","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T08:14:28","slug":"the-lootbox-problem-part-2-why-is-this-so-dang-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50394","title":{"rendered":"The Lootbox Problem Part 2: Why is This so Dang Complicated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So last time<\/a> I talked about why I hate lootboxes so much. Now the next most obvious question is, “If Shamus hates lootboxes so much, why is he so shy about calling for regulation?” Or perhaps, “Why is he always talking about how ‘people’ will want to regulate them, without naming himself as one of those people?”<\/p>\n

The first and most obvious reason is that doing so is an explicit political position and would violate the no politics rule<\/a>. It would be really obnoxious for me to prohibit public policy debates and then spend my time advocating for specific public policies. That would turn the No Politics Rules into a “You’re not allowed to disagree with me” rule, and that’s a fantastic way to frustrate and alienate people.<\/p>\n

But Shamus, 99.9% of us agree on this topic. It ought to be safe to talk about.<\/b><\/p>\n

Maybe? I don’t know. Magic: the Gathering<\/i> and Hearthstone<\/i> are games built around “lootboxes” in the sense of paying money for a chance to win desired items that are impossible or impractical to obtain through gameplay. I’m not a player and I don’t particularly care about the games, but it’s still a game that healthy, consenting adults are able to enjoy<\/a>. Moreover, there are plenty of people who enjoy the occasional lootbox. “Hey, I like this free game and I want to support the creator, so I’ll buy a couple of lootboxes and maybe I’ll get something cool.”<\/p>\n

I don’t want to see those people lose access to the things they enjoy. I don’t want their games turned into collateral damage in a war against Battlefront II<\/i> style lootboxes. Again, if I get up on my soapbox and advocate for banning your<\/b> thing because doing so might make my<\/b> thing better, then suddenly I’ve made myself your enemy. I don’t want to take anything away from those people. Moreover, I don’t want any of those people to think<\/b> I want to take anything away from them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We should be able to have reasonable discussions about complex topics. In fact, those are my favorite kinds of debates. We can talk about Procedural vs. Object-Oriented programming<\/a>. We can argue about esoteric rules<\/a>, or different ways of presenting challenges<\/a>, or different kinds of storytelling<\/a>. It’s all good. We can all have our say and leave, or we can stick around and see if we can untangle the different words we’re using to talk about tangentially related ideas as they relate to our individually-tuned value systems. I might not be able to enjoy Dark Souls like you do<\/a>, but with a little patience we can understand why this discrepancy exists and discuss our shared love of this hobby.<\/p>\n

It’s fun, because the stakes are low. We don’t need to worry that whoever wins the debate will get to erase the games that the loser favors. But this all changes when we start talking about public policy. Suddenly everyone has skin in the game. Suddenly nobody can just agree to disagree and move on.<\/p>\n

Be Careful What You Wish For<\/h3>\n

EA CEO Andrew Wilson. He didn't devise the lootbox, but he ran with it, expanded on it, and brought it from sports titles to the rest of the company.<\/div>
EA CEO Andrew Wilson. He didn't devise the lootbox, but he ran with it, expanded on it, and brought it from sports titles to the rest of the company.<\/div><\/p>\n

The final reason I don’t go around cheerleading for lootbox legislation is that I’m not convinced such a thing is feasible.<\/p>\n

We frequently look at the moves made by Andrew Wilson and Bobby Kotick and marvel at how much treasure they waste<\/a>, how many billions they squander<\/a> on ill-informed knee-jerk acquisitions, how bad they are<\/a> at using the resources they acquire, and how much they misunderstand their own IP and customers<\/a>. These golf-playing executives are not gamers<\/a> and frequently make blunders that are obvious to millions of us peasants.<\/p>\n

And yet – for all of their ignorance – these executives know far more about games than the average septuagenarian lawmaker. The difference between Battlefront II<\/i> and Hearthstone<\/i> is very obvious to us right now, but it’s a subtle one.<\/p>\n

Legalese – that awkward, seemingly stilted language that legislation is written in – is a fairly formal language. It’s not as formal as a programming language, but it’s a lot more formal than the casual, imprecise, you-know-what-I’m-talking-about language we use to discuss video games. Informally, you can have a sign that says, “No tall people allowed.”I’m not sure why you’re doing this or if it would count as descrimination, but let’s just assume you’re doing it for some unspecified Very Good Reason.<\/span> That’s good enough for conversation, but if you’re writing a law then you’d need to define exactly what height qualifies as “tall”, how it will be measured, who will do the measuring, what the penalties will be if people fraudulently misrepresent their height, and who is going to be in charge of oversight and enforcement.<\/p>\n

In a purely mechanical sense, the difference between Hearthstone card packs and Battlefield II lootboxes is very subtle and depends on a lot of outside knowledge regarding how these games work and how people engage with the material. Can you describe this difference formally, so that it can’t be misunderstood by non-gaming judges, misinterpreted or mis-applied by overzealous enforcement agencies, or sidestepped by clever lawyers?<\/p>\n

It’s harder than you think!<\/i><\/p>\n

What are the odds that your average bitterly divided, technologically illiterate government body can set aside their ongoing debates on life-and-death topics and author a law that can tease out the incredibly subtle difference between the harmful video game thing we hate and the harmless video game thing we’re okay with?<\/p>\n

Hitting a Moving Target<\/h3>\n

I actually think that slot machines are a great sink for excess in-game cash.<\/div>
I actually think that slot machines are a great sink for excess in-game cash.<\/div><\/p>\n

Even if we somehow get legislation that lands in the magical Goldilocks zone, it would be trivial for EA to shift their design a little to remain technically compliant.<\/p>\n

Let’s say we outlaw (or regulate) the sale of “Digital bundles that contain randomized items” for real-world money. That seems pretty sensible, right? I mean, Magic: the Gathering<\/i> fans are kind of screwed, but let’s pretend everyone has decided we don’t care about them.<\/p>\n

So the next week a designer at EA takes all of the drop tables and rewards that used to be given by lootboxes, and gives those items to an in-game boss. To fight the boss, you need a ticket. To get a ticket, you need to pay money. Lootboxes become lootboss<\/b>es, which is the exact same problem except for these semantic differences that route around the wording of this hypothetical law.<\/p>\n

Mechanically, this is identical to the lootbox problem: Pay money, get random stuff<\/i>. The boss can be a trivial pushover to allow the player to do the fight over and over again very quickly, and the fight can end in colorful fireworks and a vaguely slot-machine style reveal of your winnings to make the whole thing “stream-friendly”.<\/p>\n

The publishers can also dodge the regulations from the other side: You don’t buy lootboxes for real money. You can only buy lootboxes for some in-game currency. That currency is dropped in tiny, tiny amounts by mooks in the game. The amounts are so tiny that it would take a whole week of grinding to save up for a single lootbox. But! For real-world cash you can buy a single-use ticket to a dungeon where the mooks drop tons of this currency. A single fifteen-minute run of this dungeon can yield enough to buy (say) three lootboxes.<\/p>\n

So maybe you think you’ll regulate the conversion of real-world currency to in-game currency? So next EA comes up with a system where the game dumps tons of in-game currency on you, the slot machine only accepts in-game currency, and you can’t buy in-game currency for money. BUT! You can’t get to the slot machineOr whatever visual thing they’re using to dispense random rewards.<\/span> without paying money.<\/p>\n

We can continue to add arbitrary steps in the chain to obfuscate the issue: Pay money to meet with an NPC who grants you entry to a place where you can fight a boss that drops a key that opens the door to… etc<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sure, go ahead and speculate on how you would word the law that would outlaw this convoluted mess and somehow not<\/b> outlaw (say) Diablo Expansions. After all, if I buy an expansion it gives me access to a new end-boss that drops loot when defeated.<\/p>\n

Shamus, you’re over-thinking this. The key to fight the boss is a one-time use item. So just outlaw that.<\/b><\/p>\n

Okay, now you buy a ticket that can be used five times.<\/i><\/p>\n

Outlaw consumables then!<\/b><\/p>\n

Nice. You just outlawed the <\/i>pilot’s license<\/i><\/a>, which is foundational to the in-game economy of EVE Online.<\/i><\/p>\n

Okay then, just outlaw paying for anything that creates random drops.<\/b><\/p>\n

You just outlawed all Borderlands DLC.<\/i><\/p>\n

Then just outlaw games of chance that exist within a larger game, regardless of how the player accesses them.<\/b><\/p>\n

Say goodbye to Gwent. You absolute monster.<\/i><\/p>\n

Gwent isn’t COMPLETELY random! A lot of skill goes into that game!<\/b><\/p>\n

Do you think EA is incapable of adding some small fig-leaf skill component to their loot boxes?<\/i><\/p>\n

Stop being so obtuse! You know exactly what I’m talking about when I say “lootbox”!\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes I do. I really do! But that’s not a definition we can use in court in The People vs. Battlefront III: Lootbox Jubilee.<\/i><\/p>\n

You’re going out of your way to make this difficult.<\/b><\/p>\n

I’m not MAKING it difficult. It IS difficult.<\/i><\/p>\n

On one hand there’s the risk of outlawing harmless stuff that people like, and on the other hand is the army of highly-motivated corporate lawyers looking for the next exploit. Somehow this law must be worded in such a way as to thread a path between these two nebulous and ever-changing forces.<\/p>\n

Sure, maybe lawmakers can solve this. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Back in my Dot-Com days<\/a>, I got a tiny peek behind the veil that hides the laws that drive the SEC<\/a>. I took a few points of sanity damage in the process, but I otherwise escaped unscathed. If that terrifyingly complex bundle of regulatory arcana can exist, then I suppose anything is possible. But I’m pretty cynical about the whole thing. I’m cynical enough that I can’t seriously go around with the attitude that “Legislation will save us!” You’re free to think that if you like and I’m not interested in trying to change your mind, it’s just not an attitude I can personally embrace.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying you should give up and let Andrew Wilson build a casino for children. I’m not a lawyer or a polysci major. I could be wrong about everything I said about lawmaking above. Maybe you disagree and you think an American lawmaker born in 1940 will have the ability to sort out something this complex and esoteric, and that the law will get passed, it will be properly enforced, and that the publishers will quietly give up on all this gambling money and not spend years creating a game of semantic whack-a-mole.<\/p>\n

That’s fine. I’m not saying you’re wrong. All I’m saying is I’m incredibly cynical about the process.<\/p>\n

On top of that, I’m extremely against using my blog as a bully pulpit to advocate for public policy – even if it’s a policy that a majority of people would agree with. Slippery slopes, and all that. And I realize that it probably sounds like I’m arguing against<\/i> legislation. But I’m trying not to. I’m just explaining why I have this non-committal stance on the issue. Go ahead and lobby for change if you think it’s a good idea. Make a petition. Put a little ribbon on your car. Make a hashtag. Call your representative. Whatever you feel you need to do, go right ahead. I’m not telling you to stop. I’m just explaining why I’m not cheering you on. I don’t know what the right answer is here, so I’m sticking to what I do<\/b> know.<\/p>\n

There are some additional confounding factors here that make everything really… interesting<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Confounding Factor #1<\/h3>\n

There’s currently an unexpressed rift in the pro-legislation rhetoric.<\/p>\n