D&D General Interview with D&D VP Jess Lanzillo on Comicbook.com

[Oofta]

no, all I did was say that they can exist even without pay to win


that is all I said…


they can do a lot more than that… hairstyles, tattoos, jewelry, clothes, …


at no point did I tell anyone what to buy or not but, apart from saying I would limit what they can target at 14 year olds. Whether anything they do falls into that category remains to be seen too

That same 14 year old could go out tomorrow and spend over a thousand dollars on a dwarven forge terrain set. It's nothing new, it's a parental control issue.

 

[mamba]

That same 14 year old could go out tomorrow and spend over a thousand dollars on a dwarven forge terrain set. It's nothing new, it's a parental control issue.

as I said before, it is more than parental control. I do not see DwarvenForge enticing that kid with shiny new stuff that each is just a click and a few bucks away… until then the two cases are not the same

 

[TiQuinn]

The argument was about loot boxes would be a bad thing for D&D and the VTT. I said there weren't going to be loot boxes because I assumed that it meant the possibility of gaining some advantage for your PC.

If we include loot boxes to include cosmetic only changes, I don't see an issue. I don't play MMOs or much care about them, I didn't realize some people have issues with loot boxes that only hand out cosmetic upgrades. As long as the standard avatars are decent, I don't see the issue. Worst case it's not a new issue. It's no different to me than someone paying for cool looking dice, custom painted minis, fancy terrain or any number of things we already do.

I have no problem with them selling digital assets. They've been doing that. They sell virtual dice on DDB - I don't have an issue. Special effect around your character token? Sure. Not my thing, but if it's for you, buy away. Zero complaints.

While I think that selling digital assets that allow players to gain actual advantages in game is unlikely to happen, I would say that would be pretty bad course of events for the overall game. I don't think they're likely to do that within D&D itself, though I could see them releasing a different adjacent video game that does something like it. Either way, I'd think that was a garbage move and I wouldn't buy that game at all.

Personally, and even for cosmetic products, I don't like digital products where you buy something for the random chance that you might get something desirable or valuable. I don't think it's cool to not know what you are buying and to me that is at the heart of any loot crate, and yes, I put collectible card and mini games in that same category, though as pointed out by Aldarc, at least you have a product in your hands when you buy those.

 

[Oofta]

as I said before, it is more than parental control. I do not see DwarvenForge enticing that kid with shiny new stuff that each is just a click and a few bucks away… until then the two cases are not the same

We also don't see that happening yet with the VTT. Even if it did, if Bobby Jr is spending more than their allowance on this kind of stuff it's an issue for the parents.

Video games is a completely different risk/reward system. In video games you are typically buying more lives and/or chances to play and getting immediate gratification. With D&D that gratification is going to be delayed until the next gameday. Spending a few bucks on the chance to get something cool for your avatar is no different from spending a few bucks to get cool dice or ordering a custom mini from heroforge.

Companies aren't evil for selling things people want, and it's not on them to police the age of the person buying them (and there's not a good way to do it) for products like this. It's up to parents to teach kids responsibility.

 

[mamba]

We also don't see that happening yet with the VTT. Even if it did, if Bobby Jr is spending more than their allowance on this kind of stuff it's an issue for the parents.

I am just not limiting it to the parents, just like we are not doing that with eg cigarettes or alcohol

Video games is a completely different risk/reward system. In video games you are typically buying more lives and/or chances to play and getting immediate gratification.

there are free to play games that rake in fortunes just from cosmetics, so no, it is not different

 

[Micah Sweet]

Doubtful.

I believe that the reason they quit a la carte purchasing is because they have opened Beyond up to 3PP and there may be complications in how that would work with paying 3PP. Either that or corpo thought that the a la carte purchasing was eating into complete package purchasing.

Too bad. It's the only thing I ever bought from it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is very much correct. The only difference is MTG cards can be traded, but if it was digital only? Yes. Its essentially loot crates.

You mean like Arena?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, yes, that kinda goes without saying for any business. But, the point is, the idea that random packs are somehow gouging the consumer is simply not true. Randomized packs are not necessarily a bad thing.

I was always under the impression that loot boxes were a problem because MMO's and various other games used the Pay to Win model, forcing users to continuously buy random boxes in order to get that "whatever" that lets you move on to the next level of the game. That's where it becomes predatory..

Simply having random packages isn't predatory.

That's not the case re lootboxes. Almost none are or ever have been P2W in any Western game. So your impression is largely incorrect. P2W has been an issue in Asian games more but was long before lootboxes.

The issues with lootboxes are two-fold, and they're why countries in Europe and Asia are increasingly regulating them or making them outright illegal. Also why even before that a lot of games were moving away from them as customers don't actually like them, and in the case of two similar games, the one with direct purchases will potentially outperform the one with lootboxes (Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes, for example - they discontinued them in 2019 and this apparently did hurt their bottom line - they just sold the things that used to be in them directly for a fixed price).

1) Lootboxes are essentially gambling. They don't quite meet the technical definition (solely because you can't "cash out") in a lot of countries so flew under the radar, but you're teaching people to keep throwing money at them to potentially get a thing. And often those people are children. This is bad and demonstrably addictive, which is obviously not great in a child aimed product. This is exacerbated by lootbox opening animations and sounds clearly designed to maximise excitement in kids, which like, ugh.

2) Lootboxes, unlike typical gambling, don't usually show the odds of any given item, meaning that people can't even assess how much the average cost of obtaining something might be, or assess the value at all really. Asian countries in particular have legislated to force companies to show odds on these. And it's notable that as soon as you do show odds, people do start spending less on them. People aren't as irrational as we might fear with numbers in front of them.

This is rather different from random minis or even TCG cards (despite some similarities) not only because those are physical and you have to go get them, which reduces addiction and overspending issues in all but the most dedicated, but also because those tend to contain stuff that's more or less useful, and that you can at least trade/re-sell, whereas lootboxes typically have contents that cannot be transferred and are next to worthless if they don't have the 1-2 things you're after (especially if they contain consumables or the like).

 

[Malmuria]

It feels like you're telling people how they're allowed to enjoy a product. If I did decide to pay for something like this, that's my call not yours.

Companies aren't evil for selling things people want, and it's not on them to police the age of the person buying them (and there's not a good way to do it) for products like this. It's up to parents to teach kids responsibility.

You're really downplaying the fact that for some people gambling is an addiction, and that there are these currently existing digital products that exploit that addiction. It's not an open and shut case that loot boxes = gambling but research point to a very plausible connection. Courts in Europe have already ruled that they are gambling.

Now, if WOTC wants to get into the gambling sector, that's up to them. It's legal in many places. But even in those instances, it will absolutely be up to them and to various regulatory agencies as to what sort of products they can sell and who they can sell them to. We live in a society!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If my memory doesn't fail there are some laws about banning spending money for random loots in an online for underage gamers, or something like this.

If Hasbro wanted to sell cosmetic content, my bet would be for licences, for example characters and creatures from videogames and movies. This could be the main adventage by Hasbro over the rival VTTs.

Maybe in a future the software could allow space for a "game creator system" style "Little Big Planet", "Roblox", Core (by Manticore Games) or Fortnite: Creative Mode.