The Looting Culture in Online Video Games

Doing three independent studies, I have to say, doesn’t really leave one with enough time to come up with creative ideas for a blog post. But few days ago in the office, thankfully, some of the interns were discussing the culture of gaming and spending real money in video games – and this very idea of spending real currency in the virtual gaming world intrigues me. What is it about spending real currency in online video games that is appealing?

When I was introduced to my first multiplayer online game, there was something fun about creating a medieval character – either a warrior or a magician – and working together to slay magical beasts in the fantastical world. But more than just the adventuristic elements, there was something else. While differing from one another in their content, many online games share on a deep level a similar form of economy – a trade system of virtual goods. Players, in simpler words, generate goods as they play and they do so often by killing creatures for their treasures and trading them with other players – and basically, the longer one plays, the wealthier one gets. In a sense, when players are killing monsters or skinning animals (I know this sounds really horrible) to sell their items, they are, in essence, creating a form of wealth.

Things get even more interesting when gaming companies introduced a new “looting” system. This new looting system isn’t quite the same as taking other players’ items. By the new “looting” system, I am referring to “loot boxes” and these loot boxes usually take the form of packs or chests. One notable feature of these loot boxes is that they can either be free to open or paid with real money – and often times, these loot boxes require real currency. These loot boxes are, often times, filled with random items – and in certain occasions, these boxes allow players to unlock some super-duper-ultra-fancy-limited-rare equipments that aren’t usually available in the game itself. Based on the online conversations surrounding these loot boxes, the appeal is very strong. In addition to the surprise elements, there seems to be a sense of anticipation and a feeling of rush when opening these loot boxes, for players could be, in a sense, acquiring an item that requires long hours of searching by opening just one loot box – that is, if he or she is lucky.

The psychology behind these loot boxes reminds me of a behavioral mechanism psychologist B. F. Skinner proposes in one of his experiments. Skinner, in his experiment, conditioned animals to respond to certain stimuli in closed boxes and showed that even after the rewards were removed, the subjects continue responding to the stimuli with the hope to replicate the same circumstances and the same reward the subject acquired before. The “loot boxes” system, in a sense, builds on this type of conditioning psychology by keeping players between the edge of feeling “hungry” and feeling “rewarded,” for players are working for rewards by making a series of responses and the rewards are often delivered unpredictably – and perhaps that’s one of the possibilities why players may have a hard time resisting the spending of real currency in video games.

The looting system may also seem to tap into another aspect of psychology – one that is at the fundamental level of human behavior: collection. The compulsion to collect, in some cases, parallels the idea of extending one self, obtaining knowledge, demonstrating control over one’s collection, and creating a sense of continuity. This is significant in that the looting system seems to suggests two forms of collection – one that is free and the other structured. Collecting trading card games, for instance, parallels a free form of collection as one can gather them indefinitely. Online games, on the other hand, presents a more structured form of collection by building on a fundamental principle in that players are working toward achieving a particular goal, such as obtaining the rarest item – and along the way, these players share a form of kinship with other players who are equally immersed in achieving that goal and collecting that same item.

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts. I am neither suggesting that one type of collection is more favorable over the other nor am I suggesting that the new looting system is inherently bad, for one could make an argument that the new looting system parallels the idea of gambling in some respect, as they both can be somewhat addicting. The purpose of this post is simply to show that exploring and looking at the gaming culture – in this case, the habit of spending – can offer a deeper understanding of the behavioral psychology of consumers and the psychology used by gaming companies.

— Jason