Loot boxes have reached a new low with Forza 7’s “pay to earn” option
At this point, it would take something monumentally stupid to reverse the "loot box" trend in video games. The practice, which combines real money, virtual items, and random chance, has been found in various free-to-play games for years (and has been showing up more in fully priced retail games recently). The sales pitch, in short: by paying a little more real cash, a player will more quickly unlock a random item in the game (and see a flashy animation of a box opening—that part is apparently crucial).
This racket often skates by because game makers say that they're hiding "non-essential" and "cosmetic" items in these boxes. Game makers also point out that these "random item" boxes can almost always be earned simply by playing the game. Who's losing out?
The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is the poison these random-prize systems inject into their games' design. I've been biding my time, waiting for a loot box system so stupid and unnecessary that I can finally name and deconstruct the demonic practice in no uncertain terms. For that reason, I wholeheartedly thank Turn 10 and Microsoft Studios for the loot-box disaster that they've cooked into this week's release of Forza Motorsport 7.
Defining “pay to earn”
Before breaking down the greater problem with loot boxes, let's start with the Forza series' brand-new take.
Previous Forza Motorsport games have let fans trade real money for virtual "CR" coins, which are also easily earned in races. Those coins can be spent to purchase new virtual cars for your garage. Should you no longer want a specific car, you can auction it off to other, real players, and they'll send you some of their own CR coins in exchange.
Forza 7 adds the new option to spend CR coins on loot boxes, which Turn 10 has renamed "prize crates." Forza's boxes come in a variety of names and CR costs. At the low end of the spectrum, the "basic mods crate" costs 20,000 CR—an amount that can be earned by completing two standard Forza 7 races. On the higher end of the spectrum, you can buy an "elite mixed crate" for 150,000 CR or pony up as much as 300,000 for a limited-time "lucky car crate."
Let me be clear: As of press time, Forza Motorsport 7 does not let you pay real money for its CR coins or for its loot boxes. But that will almost certainly change. Turn 10 confirmed its plans in a statement to Ars Technica: "Once we confirm that the game economy is balanced and fun for our players out in the wild, we plan to offer Tokens [a real-money currency that works like CR] as a matter of player choice. Some players appreciate using Tokens as a way of gaining immediate access to content that may take many hours to acquire in the normal course of play. There will also be an option within the in-game menu to turn off Tokens entirely." That being said, the following criticisms apply to Forza 7's loot boxes even without them being attached to a real-world economy.
Much like other in-game loot boxes, those in Forza 7 unlock random in-game cars and cosmetic items (and I'll get to those). But Forza 7 adds a peculiar and arguably non-essential twist to the loot boxes' random contents through a new item called a "mod." That might sound like an item that will modify a car to enhance its performance, but it actually modifies the circumstances of the next race—and, consequently, the amount of CR you can earn in that race.
Apply a "night race" mod to your car before a race, for example, and you'll turn your next race from day to night—and earn 30 percent more CR on that race. An "instability" mod turns off one of the game's "driver assist" perks in exchange for a 30-percent CR boost. Some mods don't count unless you complete an objective, like pulling off two "perfect turns" in a race. Other mods simply grant a flat CR reward boost in your next race without additional requirements.
Changing the difficulty or terms of a single race in exchange for a higher CR payout will sound familiar to Forza fans, because this used to simply be a standard thing you could do whenever you wanted. Players could manually add or remove certain assists—like "driving line" marks of where you should accelerate and brake—and get more CR per race for having fewer assists. That's no longer the case. You can still adjust the assists as you see fit, but you won't be rewarded for doing so... unless you have the right mod in your inventory.
Turn 10 has taken away a solid "play how you want for more CR" system in order to have a new, more marketable loot-box gimmick. But Forza 7's mods, which can only be earned in loot boxes, are primarily just another way for players to shuffle their CR coins around. The loot box system encourages players to dump their stacks of CR into the loot box economy in order to earn more CR. Spend CR to make CR! That's just good business.
In some ways, this reminds me of deck-building board games like Dominion, which are at their worst when players obsess over the math of a perfect deck of cards instead of interacting with other friends at the table. In other ways, this reminds me of slot machines, which randomly dole out bonuses and percentage boosts at just the right time to give players little endorphin rushes right before they might otherwise quit. Either way, this kind of play effectively takes you out of the driver's seat—or even the pit—to become a bean counter.
Does the clown smile behind tinted glass?
Turn 10 also painted itself into a "cosmetic item" corner by making previous Forza games so open to liveries and paint customizations. The series' developers did right by the sim-driving community in letting players freely and openly paint their favorite cars with in-game editors and share those designs with other players at no charge. That hasn't changed in Forza 7: sexy new car designs are not hidden in loot crates, and that's great news. So, then, how can Turn 10 sneak a cosmetic option into its loot boxes?
The answer is hilarious: driver outfits.
That's right. You can now dress up an in-game character, whom you pretty much never see during the course of a race, thanks to realistically dark windshields and camera angles that in no way emphasize what color or design of outfit your race car driver is wearing. To combat this inherent limitation, Turn 10 shoves your driver into your face by having him or her stand around menus all of the time. They stand alone, constantly pantomiming a high level of excitement in spite of almost always standing in an empty garage next to a single car. Everything they do, particularly clapping hands, looks robotic and weird. In spite of these limits and awkward animations, you still have the opportunity to dress your driver as a doctor, a cheerleader, a mime, a clown, or more, complete with zany helmet designs to match.
Even here, there are a few catches. First, the game at launch includes a whopping 361 costumes, but they must all be individually unlocked (with the exception of outfits unlocked by either owning prior games or by paying for the game's "deluxe" version). More than 100 of those are color-differentiation clones of the game's more generic designs, which dilutes the unlocking pool. Worst of all, you cannot individually unlock outfits with in-game currency. If you're eyeing a specific outfit, you have to hope that you open the right prize crate or find it as a random reward for leveling up via the game's "experience points" system (which can take as many as eight races to do per XP level).
You can also unlock cars via prize crates, but only a few of the more expensive crates offer this option. It's unclear at this early point in the game's existence whether their high cost—at least 150,000 CR and as many as 300,000—pans out as a value for the "legendary" cars they unlock. Even if you pay the dear price, though, you're not even guaranteed some of the pricey crates. You're more likely to unlock mods, driver outfits, and "banners" to assign to your driver's profile page.
Old-school games tainted by new-school loot
The list of "games with loot boxes" is painfully long—and gets longer if we get into the history of the practice, which would have to include Team Fortress 2, huge Eastern MMOs, and Japan's wave of "Gacha" smartphone games. Forza 7 follows the remarkable trend of retail-priced games, including Microsoft's own Gears of War 4 and Halo Wars 2, implementing their own takes on loot boxes in the past year. In Gears 4's case, loot boxes can unlock either cosmetic outfits or perk cards for the game's Horde mode (and the latter more or less destroyed that mode's fun factor).
But there are two other loot-box stories from just this year that show the practice at its worst.
The first is in a "to be continued" state, because it involves a game that isn't out yet. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War will ask players to enlist the help of various orcs and trolls to fight on your side. While this can be done in the normal course of gameplay, Shadow of War will let players spend both virtual and paid currencies on random-character unlocks.
This appears to be the game industry's most brazen example of "pay for a random thing that actually impacts gameplay" yet, but until we play the final version, the total effect remains a question mark. I sure hope the final product is better than it sounds. Teasing consumers with paid, gameplay-boosting add-ons in a fully priced retail game is the nightmare we've all feared since Elder Scrolls' horse armor brought microtransactions to the masses. (In very good news, Warner Bros. recently backed off on a plan to charge players for a character unlock whose proceeds would go to the family of one of the game's late artists. Instead, WB will donate a flat amount to that family.)
The second recent loot-box story is easier to break down, at least. This summer, a whopping three "old-school first-person shooters" launched on PC, all saddled with loot-box economies: id Software's Quake Champions, Cliff Bleszinski's Lawbreakers, and a strange shooter called PWND from a team of ex-Treyarch devs. In all three cases, the games have an up-front retail cost with loot-box costs built on top. Two caveats: first, Quake Champions is currently in "paid early access," and it will eventually become free-to-play with rotating "free hero" options like in League of Legends. Second, PWND only has, er, five characters right now, so its publisher, Skydance Interactive, has opted to freeze paid loot box purchases until more characters debut.
Even so: in all three games, loot box progression drives every single thing that players do. Win a match, beat a challenge, or accomplish something special, and the game will add a few more points to your "next level" meter, which will eventually drop a cosmetic-loaded loot box at your feet. The perks include new colors and designs for your weapons, armor, characters, and tertiary aesthetic things like "graffiti tags." (All three games also remind you in no uncertain terms that you can snag a loot box much faster if you use your credit card.)
That should all sound painfully familiar to anyone who has played Overwatch, the modern lord and master of the loot box. But I group these three shooters' loot boxes together because those games just don't work in the same way as Blizzard's hit. Overwatch blew up as a "hero shooter," in part because each of its characters shines best in a specific, limited fashion. It's not just as simple as breaking down their classes of "tank," "healer," "defender," and so on; even Lucio and Symmetra work quite differently as support characters, let alone the differences between Tracer and Torbjorn. While I abhor loot boxes in general, games like Overwatch and Dota 2 revolve around individual character mastery—and random unlocks both reinforce your love for a particular character and keep you bouncing between cast members to master their wildly different play styles.
The same cannot be said for the aforementioned old-school shooters. Every Lawbreakers character, in spite of different weapons and maneuvers, is nigh identical in terms of high-speed, Unreal Tournament-esque combat. The other two games' characters are even more similar to each other mechanically. As a result, these games' loot boxes feel far more divorced from their gameplay when they trap you in menus in order to convince you to claim credits, trigger flashy animations, and cycle through new character outfits and accessories. I find there's less joy or discovery in getting a new outfit or "victory pose" for "muscular dude who pretty much plays just like skinny dude."
Slice them off like a cyst
But I don't dare forgive the loot box practice, even when it's "sensibly" added to a game. Loot boxes prey upon game fans the same way slot machines prey on gamblers. They tease players with flashes, sounds, and animations, all designed to prime our mental pumps for whatever aesthetic surprise might pop out. Those games also make sure to shove those aesthetic bonuses into our face whenever possible, whether in the form of an avatar popping up in menus or your opponents' unlocked perks flashing and dancing around during their victories and/or your defeats.
(They have to do this, in part, because a lot of their perks, like character outfits, aren't even visible during the course of traditional play. You're not walking up to a mirror in the middle of a first-person Overwatch match to see your Halloween-themed vest.)
This is why you should play our game, they figuratively shout. This is the point.
Screw that. It's bad for game design. It's poisonous to a game or developer's reputation. And it's irresponsible manipulation of player psychology, especially for an industry that knows all too well how young its audience can be, ESRB ratings be damned. I am generally reluctant to cry about "thinking of the children," but decades of study have revealed consequences for young people who have been normalized to the idea of compulsive gambling. (Here is one study on the topic from 1994.)
I really like the idea and feel of Lawbreakers. I would almost rather the game slice its various classes and outfits off like a cyst—and let the game shine as a high-speed, low-gravity, shoot-backwards game whose greatest reward is its frantic back-and-forth battling. And I wish games like Overwatch and Forza 7 didn't tell me how much closer I was to their next seemingly unnecessary loot-box unlocking. I paid full price for these games. I tried voting with my wallet to play a game that was done charging me money.
Loot boxes should offer an alternative type of wallet vote to let interested players dip their toes in and play with an obvious handicap. Instead, they're spreading across more games' halls and entryways like weeds—and after we've already paid for entry into their country clubs. It's no longer enough to shrug these practices off and say that the "market will decide" on whether people pay for these optional loot-box unlocks. Developers won't stop planting these bad ideas into the hearts of their games until more people cry out.
And I agree, this game is such an amazing piece of car porn, it is a sin to pass up just because of the Windows store.
