A Long Time Ago, In a Lootbox Far, Far, Away…

It’s a time of turmoil with the gaming public… it’s the annual monetisation of one of our beloved childhood franchises.  Never mind that Disney are milking Star Wars for all it’s worth (and who can blame them?), EA have recently placed themselves atop the pointy lightsabre of gamer indignation by daring to make money out of a title they’ve funded.  However, have they gone about it in exactly the wrong way by using the lootbox mechanism to lure in unsuspecting gullible fans?  Or worse still, offered up the chance to shortcut a grind by paying them to randomly provide potentially powerful items?  Whatever the reason, the gaming community is up in arms about it and decided it’s time they acted as conscience and nanny to those who’d potentially fall foul to EA’s nefarious scheme.  Can Matt and Andy give us a new hope?

In this Battlefront II lootbox spectacular of the Codec Moments Podcast, Andy and Matt talk about:

• Lootboxes (there’s a surprise!)
• Is it a bad thing that EA have done?
• Development costs and the price rise of videogames
• Extending the lifecycle of a product
• How EA knew they’d recorded a podcast already and kept making announcements so that they needed to add to the already over-running content
• What EA will put in the game next