As far as loot boxes go. I think you can blame your gaming press for them too.
When Kotaku, polygon, gamasutra and neoGAF bitched about expansion packs and how much they cost, we stopped making them.
When we tried to come up with a way to fund expanding the games without charging you guys so much, each new idea was shit on. Put advertisements on billboards in city zones? Loading screens? Nope! Lambasted by the gaming press! Offering in game tie-ins like being able to order pizza with a chat command? ((/pizza in everquest 1))
Lambasted again!
Collectors editions? Nope! Those are for "Wailing hyper-consumers!"
Posters? "Wailing hyper-consumers!" again.
The barest minimum of a swag-edition? "Wailing hyper-consumers"
Okay, well, let's try to address the cost issue of expansions. Let's break it down into smaller chunks so you can buy only the ones that interest you. Oh, nope, sorry. Gaming press hates that. Giving consumers flexibility makes us assholes.
The subscription model? Nope! Everything must be free-to-play. "Blizzard is a dinosaur" for having a subscription based game in CURRENT YEAR. Yeah okay, thanks polygon. Thanks Kotaku. Now all our games have to be lootbox supported.
We have lootboxes today because the gaming press never let us, as developers, work out a goddamn model of supporting our games and being able to support our families at the same time by methodically crapping on every single avenue we've tried.
I'd much rather we were back in the day where we could offer a full-blown expansion for 40$ the size of Tribunal, but nah, that was elitist and gatekeeping the hobby to only those who could afford expansion packs, or some other fluffy game journalist bullshit.
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