Category: News

Belgian Gaming Commission general director Peter Naessens has told local media outlet VTM that the organization is investigating whether the loot crate systems in Battlefront II and Overwatch qualify as gambling.

While the state of the investigation is still murky (the news comes solely via VTM, which was read with the help of Google Translate), a decision to brand these sorts of monetization mechanics as gambling could have a significant impact on the game industry.

Battlefront II and Overwatch both allow players to pay virtual currency (either earned in-game or paid for with real money) for a loot box/crate containing a (semi-)random assortment of in-game items, and many other games do so as well. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has already stated that it does not believe these types of monetization systems count as gambling, since a player typically always gets something for their investment. 

But if a government regulator classified a game like Battlefront II as gambling, that might push other gambling regulators and/or the ESRB to take a fresh look at the issue, potentially shifting the landscape of game development. As the game’s publisher, Electronic Arts might also have to pay the price of retooling the game and/or pay a fine to the Belgian authorities.

Blizzard has already faced a similar situation with Overwatch in China, where a new law went into effect in May requiring games with loot box systems to disclose A) what potential rewards a player can receive from a given box and B) what the odds are of them getting each of those rewards.

In response, Blizzard publicly disclosed that data for the Chinese version of Overwatch. Moreover, it reworked the game to adhere to another Chinese law banning the direct sale of loot boxes in games by instead “gifting” loot boxes to Chinese Overwatch players who spent real money to purchase specific amounts of in-game currency.

“I think crates can be a fun addition as long as you don’t feel forced to engage with them in order to progress. I feel that’s where the issue is with our game right now and that’s where we’ll look to solve as quickly as we can.”

– EA DICE’s Dennis Brannvall, answering a comment on Reddit that loot crates in Battlefront II should either be removed or limited to cosmetic items only.

Some of the devs working on Electronic Arts’ Star Wars Battlefront II hung out on Reddit today to take part in an “Ask Me Anything” session with the public, and the results make for interesting reading if you’re a dev who’s been following the kerfuffle surrounding the game’s virtual currency economy.

If nothing else, you may appreciate how relentlessly upbeat and conciliatory the Battlefront II devs’ responses are to pointed questions about why the game’s loot boxes contain gameplay-affecting items, or why the virtual currency cost to unlock characters in game was (until recently) very high.

But what’s especially interesting is that in the face of a lot of criticism, the devs publicly commit to the idea that a “loot box” system can be a good thing in game design; for Battlefront II, it’s the execution that fell short.

“I think crates can be a fun addition as long as you don’t feel forced to engage with them in order to progress. I feel that’s where the issue is with our game right now and that’s where we’ll look to solve as quickly as we can,” wrote EA DICE associate design director Dennis Brannvall in a response to a player complaint. “We’re looking to add additional ways to progress your favorite character or class, while allowing crates to be a fun thing for those who want to engage with them.”

It’s not surprising that the folks working on a game built around players progressing by unlocking rewards with earned (or purchased) virtual currency would stand by that system, but in a year that is seeing so many big-budget games catch criticism for including some sort of loot box analog, it’s notable that the Battlefront II devs are being upfront about the fact that grinding for unlocks is a key piece of their game.

“Everything is still grindable. It’s up to us to make sure that grind is fun and not overwhelming,” Brannvall wrote in another Reddit post. “I realize the popular opinion is to presume creating ‘boring, overwhelming grind’ is the way to get people to spend more money, but in reality it isn’t. Everything wins if players are having fun, that’s the main thing always.”

For more comments from Brannvall, as well as his compatriots Paul Keslin and John Wasilczyk (a producer and executive producer, respectively), check out the full Reddit AMA thread.

A few weeks ago, AER: Memories of Old launched on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One after a long, long development cyclethat effectively began as when the founders of Forgotten Key Games were finishing university. It’s a beautiful game with a really pleasant-feeling flight system, and after seeing it at PAX West earlier this year, we were eager to talk to its developers after its release. 

So today on the Gamasutra Twitch channel, we sat down with lead developer and designer Robin Hjelte to stream some of AER’s gameplay and ask how he and his team made the flying feel so good. We knew the answer would involve a lot of design and iteration, but we were surprised to learn how much of it had to do with rooting a game design process in aesthetic goals established in a university thesis. 

You can watch our full conversation with Hjelte up above, but if you’re soaring through the clouds as we speak, here are a few quick takeaways from Hjelte’s development experience. 

Papers please

Many games start with a specifc idea about play and interaction. Maybe it’s from a prototype, maybe it’s a mod from another game. But what’s interesting about the origins of AER is that its first seeds were planted in a university thesis that Hjelte and his colleagues worked on that focused on aesthetics and mood over playfulness. 

According to Hjelte, the papers that he and his coworkers worked with focused building game worlds about Cubism and Minimalism, as well as making a games focused around one core aesthetic. Once production on an AER protoytpe began, the team settled on a flying mechanic to anchor the experience. Even as development continued and changes were made to the project, Hjelte says these core design goals remained steady until it was time to ship. 

Don’t show all your best stuff too soon (or if you do, be prepared)

Like many indie games, AER has been in development for a long time (it was an Indiecade nominee in 2013). When looking back at Forgotten Key’s work marketing the game, Hjelte says there’s one key thing he wish he’d done differently. Early on, after making changes to the game’s direction, he and his colleagues cut a trailer envisioning the game they meant to build. That trailer was covered on Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun (which was [and still is] good press for indie developers). 

But in the interim years, as development trundled on, the team realized they’d sort of blown their big, flashy announcement years before they were ready to ship. Even with trips to PAX and a helpful marketing push on Imgur, they found that they didn’t have many new visuals that could attract audiences in a similarly big way. Hjelte went on to clarify that early marketing is still a good idea, and early buzz can be wrangled into a launch community, but advised other indies to maybe save some more powerful visuals in the run-up to shipping their game.

Flight is about feel as much as physics

Before we signed off, we asked Hjelte really quick about what he felt made for good flying in video games. Hjelte chose to emphasize the importance of building a specific feel for flying as opposed to trying to simulate specific physics simulations. Earlier in the stream, he discussed how earlier AER prototypes involved a hang glider that could only propel itself on wind gusts scattered throughout the world. This…wasn’t fun, and a lot of changes to the shapeshifting gameplay seen in AER now came from a decision to make sure players could propel themselves through large open spaces, not just hunt for gusts of wind. 

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.