Leslie Kwong

Dr. James Anderson

MCS 005

15 March 2019

“Gamers” who grew up in the 90s were often in their teens or early twenties and were shunned by adults for not conforming to traditional forms of entertainment like film or television. However, as the gaming industry grew so did its consumers. The adults who voiced their disapproval for video games were replaced by the 90s gamers. These gamers would begin to start families of their own and normalize the concept of video games as a source of entertainment. Their children now live in a world where buying and enjoying video games is considered normal. This would spark exponential growth in the industry starting from 2014 and for investors to start taking gaming seriously. Esports is the video game equivalent to professional sports, and games such as League of Legends has had its world championship viewed by over 200 million different viewers. In contrast, Super Bowl 53 had 92 million viewers. As investors see the numbers League of Legends is producing, they begin to commit resources into the video game industry’s development and put unreasonable expectations on its investees. They demand that the mid-2010s exponential growth be maintained through any means necessary. This puts pressure on developers and forces them to create exploit their consumers to meet investor demands; one such exploitation is called microtransactions. Microtransactions is a business model that allows consumers to spend additional money past the initial purchase in order to obtain digital content, the most common being digital currency. Although some may argue that any investment into video games is worthwhile for the industry as a whole, others may say that if the investors lack basic knowledge of video games, then the investors are changing the industry for the worse rather than merely investing in it.

The videogame industry has been growing exponentially since 2014 and is expected to gross over 163 billion dollars by the end of 2019. However, this 13% growth when compared to 2018 is not enough for investors. According to Activision, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 raked in over 700 million dollars in its first 5 days. This was not enough to keep investors happy as Activision Stock has fallen by over 50% since Black Ops 4’s release. Despite this being the company’s best year in recent memory, it had to lay off over 8% of its workforce, or 800 workers. Workers are cutting into the profits of the company and “since the beginning of 2018, as Kotaku has reported previously, the mandate at Blizzard had been to cut costs and produce more games” (Schreier). Ever since the industry has become known as part of mainstream media, it has struggled to sate the greed of their investors despite grossing more revenue than film and television. Companies are getting around this by hiring workers to create a game and immediately firing them after completing the game to avoid paying them bonuses. Videogames become less about the game themselves and more as a means of profit. Rather than striving to create a piece of art, developers are now focused on meeting the numbers set out by their shareholders. One of the ways developers try to meet quotas is through a form of microtransaction called loot boxes.

Loot boxes are digital slot machines that allow players the opportunity to sometimes roll 3 to 5 items from a pool of 100. The only thing that is certain about loot boxes is that nothing is guaranteed. Some have reported spending upwards of $2500 in order to obtain their desired digital content.  Many saw this as exploitative and predatory; some even went as far as to call loot boxes gambling. When opening a loot box, people exhibit the same mental phenomena seen when gambling at a casino. When we take into account that a majority of gamers are in their teenage years, one can safely say that loot boxes have the potential get our teenagers addicted to gambling. Game companies get away from this dilemma by arguing that videogames are works of art and that it is unethical for governments to remove them for it would be the same as defiling one’s art. However, Journalist Jim Sterling argues that any mass monetization methods present in a work exclude them from being art, but rather a dirty marketing technique. When the Belgian government demanded that loot boxes be removed from games within their territory, EA refused and adamantly kept them in their games, stating that they will not change their art to comply with a government’s demand. Belgium responded by investigating EA for criminal activities, which would ultimately persuade EA to remove loot boxes. However, “EA stated ‘The impact of this change to FIFA Ultimate Team in Belgium is not material to our financial performance.’ that’s almost exactly what they told shareholders”(Sterling). Rather than focus on the “destruction of their art,” EA instead prioritized their stockholders and money in their statement after the Belgian fiasco. This begs the question, are video games created by the artist or by the investor?

Video games in its simplest form are a way for people to connect and be entertained. However, as outside investors begin to pour into the industry, they bring with them exploitative methods that divert designers from what video games really are. They begin to build paywalls, locking behind them the promise of entertainment and demand that their consumers continuously pay to be entertained. If we want to stop this epidemic from spreading to other video games and to other industries, we need to voice our opinions. We need to band together not as people rebelling against an unfair business practice, but as a society that wants to uphold a way of art.