Loot Boxes & Microtransactions: Necessary Evil Or Just Wrong?

The nominations for the first ever edition of The Game Awards were unveiled this morning and include the standard set of genre-based categories, a fan category for most anticipated title of 2015 (which mostly includes delayed games) and as a bonus, some love for famous YouTube celebs and eSports teams to help spread the word and bring in the "hardcore" crowd for appro

What To Expect: 343 Industries will focus on how they are taking all aspects of Halo 2 (single player and multiplayer) and upgrading them for The Master Chief Collection . They will also share a few extra details about the collection as a whole and should reveal at least one more revamped Halo 2 multiplayer m

One form of microtransaction is called a loot box. This isn't the same as finding a chest in The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy ; while those are literally boxes filled with loot, a loot box in this sense is an item, purchased with real money, though they can sometimes be earned without paying real dollars. Sometimes they're called Crates, War Chests, Lockboxes, or something else, but the principle is always the same. This loot box is then opened, adorning the player with semi-random items. It's akin to buying a pack for collectable card games like Pokèmon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Magic: The Gathering . The consumer isn't buying an item, but the possibility of an item they want, while incurring the risk that they'll be stuck with something worthless to t

For the first time in the series' history, Battlefield V included a chapter that follows the story of a female soldier , Solveig. Solveig is affiliated with the indigenous resistance movement opposing the German occupying forces in Norway, and despite being young, she is a well-trained and effective soldier during the war. Solveig survives the Norwegian cold and avoids Nazis patrolling the woods during the campaign, as she is in search of her mother. We have not seen many playable female soldiers in the past, and Solveig definitely sets a high standard for female soldiers in future ga

It's been said that DLC and microtransactions are a necessary evil. The price of a video game in 2017 is the same as it was in 2005, and the secondhand market continues to eat into profits. DLC and loot boxes allow some money to ultimately find its way into the hands of publishers and developers, even if that player purchased their copy of Shadow of War from GameStop or a local used game st

Even though it is a Nintendo game from The Legend of Zelda franchise, you might be surprised how many elements in Breath of Wild feel familiar. Even if you haven't played a Zelda game before , you will get invested in this game and you don't need to be familiar with other games in the ser

In the game, you can stick to and climb any surface. Also, if you land on a building at the correct angle, you can even sprint up it. As the game takes place in New York City, there are all sorts of tall buildings for you to sc

We have no idea what's going on with the Spike VGX this year or even if there will be one. The annual celebrity-fueled, ad-hungry video games event was consistently chock full of controversy and disdain from the gamer community which is why last year host and producer Geoff Keighley helped re-brand the Spike Video Game Awards into the Spike VGX. It was a ratings success but still begged the question of whether it should contin

If you're looking for a game that's mechanically similar to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey but with an even more fantasy-based setting then Immortals Fenix Rising has you covered. Created by the same team that worked on Odyssey, Immortals features all manner of mythological beasts to fight like the Cyclops, Gorgons, and m

What To Expect: The Ubisoft developers will show a demo for Assassin's Creed Shadows weapons|https://creedshadowgame.Com/ Creed Unity - potentially the longer demo we saw at E3 2014 - focused on the main character Arno and will answer fan questions in a Q&A session. The panel will also include the debut of an animated short inspired by AC Unity and created by Rob Zombie and Tony Mo

With the nominations coming before the year's end, we're faced with the usual issue of not all of 2014's titles being included (like Ubisoft's The Crew ) but at least they got in the most recent two-three weeks which includes the largest batch of high profile releases. The deadline for eligible entrants was games released by November 25th. On the Canadian Videogame Awards front, the date of nomination eligibility was much earlier and meant that some of the year's biggest titles ( Assassin's Creed Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Far Cry 4, etc. ) didn't make the

The biggest games of the year have the potential to sell tens of millions of units, raking in literally billions of dollars in revenue. At the same time, development teams have grown larger, game creation itself takes longer, and budgets have become greater than ever. After all, it takes a lot of effort to make today's games look and feel so amazing. Through it all, however, the price of a retail game has not chan