Loot Boxes in Star Wars Battlefront II
Yesterday I looked into Star Wars Battlefront II’s progression system, I wanted to flesh that out and explain how Loot Boxes played a part. Currently, in-game purchases have been disabled.
Loot Boxes is a game-industry term for purchasable boxes, containing randomized items. Imagine when you buy a pack of baseball cards. You aren’t sure what’s in it, but you know what might be in it, so you buy the pack in a bit of a gamble. This is the same concept with loot boxes. The player can spend real-life currency to unlock exclusive in-game items.
The gaming community is enflamed w/ Battlefront II, not necessarily because EA Dice included loot boxes in their game, but because the progression system heavily encourages players to purchase these loot boxes to avoid how exclusive the progression system is. You could put in 2,000 hours to unlock everything, or you could buy an additional $200 of loot boxes and get everything instead. The practice of loot boxes is highly contested, opponents compare it to gambling, and some games have implemented them without pushback (see Rocket League & others).
The most down-voted comment in history + Reddit AMA
An EA DICE developer, who worked on SW Battlefront II, commented on a reddit post and explained the progression system as wanting to give the players a sense of pride. It became the most down-voted comment in reddit history. Currently, it sits with -694,000 “karma”, which means, regardless of the people who hit the up arrow, there are at least 694,000 people who clicked the down arrow. For context, the second most down-voted comment is ~-24,000. The community was on fire, making posts everyday about how bad the progression system is. In a save-face PR move, DICE EA hosted an AMA on reddit. AMA stands for ask me anything, where reddit users ask questions a bunch of questions (the best getting voted to the top) and hopefully answered by verified developers. Some redditors gave solid advice and offered hope for what the game could be, while others just wanted to flame them regarding their inclusion of loot boxes that contribute to progression.
The Issue of Disney Canon w/ loot-boxes As I mentioned, loot-boxes are a contested issue. Most games now implement some sort of loot-box systems, and of those, most games include a way to earn them via playing the game. The games that have included them without pushback focus entirely on cosmetic skins for items. The skins don’t change the behavior of a skill, or the quality of an item, just the way those appear to yourself and other players. Disney will not allow anything in the game that isn’t canon. Why EA Dice didn’t include various canonical outfits as the prize of loot boxes, i’m not sure, I think it is because they would run out of skins fairly quickly depending on the character.
EA Dice has released a content update to the game (for free) which updates the progression system and changes how players earn credits at the end of each match (the credits are used to unlock the game’s items) to mixed reviews. Players are still concerned that, as soon as the commotion blows over, they’ll just turn the in-game purchases back on.
Don’t forget EA exclusively holds Disney’s Star Wars game license for another 10 years. They aren’t going to give that up anytime soon, especially to now cash in on trend, so depending on the outcome of the fight over Battlefront II, the future of Star Wars games could be in jeopardy.
