industry & research
campusreview.com.au
Image: Legendary: Game of Heroes
Gaming or gambling?
The line between playing
video games and gambling is
becoming increasingly blurred.
By Loren Smith
L
egendary: Game of Heroes is a
free “intense and strategic puzzle
role-playing game”, says its developer,
N3twork.
“Build a team of legendary heroes, go
on quests and defeat monsters. Your
Legendary adventure begins today!”
Although aimed at players aged 12 and
up, it includes gambling elements, often by
way of ‘in app’ purchases. Known in gaming
as ‘loot boxes’, they are essentially virtual
lucky dips. In Legendary, these can contain
collectible heroes, gems (virtual currency),
as well as useless items.
Loot boxes are ubiquitous in games: in the
last two years, more games were released
with them than in the last 20 years.
The element of chance renders them akin
to real-world gambling games like roulette.
In psychology, this reward structure
is termed a variable ratio reinforcement
schedule, says Dr Jim Sauer, a senior
lecturer in psychology at the University
of Tasmania.
After conducting research into 22 video
games containing loot boxes released
between 2016 and 2017, he and colleague
Dr Aaron Drummond, from Massey
University in New Zealand, deduced that
“these games appear to meet both the
psychological and legal definitions of
gambling”.
Sauer explains how a variable ratio
reinforcement schedule works: “It offers
rewards on a random schedule. On average,
you might get one every five or 10 times.
Because it’s seemingly random, it keeps
people playing, as every time you don’t get
14
a reward, you feel you’re one step closer to
getting it. You feel like the next time might
be the next big win.
“It’s the same mechanism used in poker
machine gambling.”
To establish whether loot boxes were
psychologically similar to gambling, the
researchers rated the games using British
psychologist Professor Mark Griffiths’
gambling criteria:
• The exchange of money or valuable
goods
• An unknown future event determines
the exchange
• Chance at least partly determines
the outcome
• Non-participation can avoid
incurring losses
• Winners gain at the sole expense of losers.
They found that nearly half of the games
fulfilled these criteria, adding that loot box
prizes that could be converted into real
currency were particularly concerning, as
they upped the gambling stakes, and were
therefore more enticing.
Like with compulsive use of social media,
adolescents are particularly at risk of
uncontrollably buying loot boxes, as they
possess poorer impulse management than
adults, they said.
This view is borne out in online forums.
“The developers said previously that they
think the loot box model is fun for people. I
personally don’t think so, but when I raised
this point on the forum, some people gave
their view that opening loot boxes is more
fun than, say, having a fixed price tag for
each hero, e.g. $100 for the Even Hero,
$200 for the Ultra Rare,” wrote Legendary:
Game of Heroes player ‘altqyl’ in May.
LEGAL BATTLEFRONTS
Gamers themselves, Sauer and Drummond
became interested in comparing gaming
to gambling after the global outcry last
year over the aggressive use of loot boxes
in EA Sports’ Star Wars Battlefront II and
governments’ responses to it.
Hawaii was first to crack down,
introducing laws that prohibit the sale of
games with loot boxes to under-21s, and
that require game companies to make the
inclusion of loot boxes and their features
clear to players.
Then came Belgium and the Netherlands,
which classified loot boxes as gambling.
Recently, China also cracked down on loot
boxes, compelling developers to declare the
odds of players receiving items.
Australia, too, is aware of this issue.
Recently, the Senate unanimously voted to
inquire into the legality of loot boxes.
Significantly, the US, UK and France have
all ruled that the use of loot boxes does not
constitute gambling.
There’s also a prospect of the gaming
industry self-regulating in this respect.
Indeed, in response to player outrage, EA
Sports recently announced it won’t include
loot boxes in any forthcoming games.
Sauer and Drummond, whose research
has been published in Nature Human
Behaviour, think that classifying the use of
games with loot boxes as gambling goes
too far, but that extra-regulatory measures
should be applied, like changing the age
rating of games to 18+, and adding parental
advisory information about loot boxes to
video game packaging.
“I’ve got another colleague whose kids
wanted a game with loot boxes, and she
said, flat out, no. That’s one extreme. I think
the sensible approach is somewhere in the
middle,” Sauer says.
Supporters of loot boxes say that, in
addition to enjoying them, they serve
a purpose: in free games, they allow
developers to funnel profits from their sale
back into the game, extending its features
and shelf life. ■