Diablo Immortal and the Paternalistic Futility of Video Game Loot-Box Bans
If you have any remote connection to the world of video games, you’ve probably heard of the Diablo franchise of games.
The Diablo franchise has been going in various forms since the late 1990s, and it is among the more popular and well-known brands in gaming. Naturally, it has been stretched across multiple sequels and spinoffs, including, most recently, Diablo Immortal, a game that recently became available in a not-yet-finalized Beta mode.
But players who reside in Belgium or the Netherlands won’t be able to play the game, at least not in its current form, apparently because its gameplay mechanics rely on so-called “loot boxes,” which both countries have banned.
To understand the loot box debate, it’s useful to understand a little bit about the way games in the Diablo series play.
The franchise combines top-down action-fantasy role-playing-game mechanics with a wealth of randomly generated, discoverable in-game items that players can find and use during gameplay—weapons, armor, clothing, magical artifacts or effects, and so forth. Some of these items can make the game easier or more interesting to play by granting the player new or more powerful abilities, while in other cases they are merely cosmetic, changing the look of a player’s character without granting any new or improved abilities. In video game jargon, these items are known as “loot.”
Progression in the Diablo games, as well as scores of other games that use similar loot-based gameplay mechanics, is as much about obtaining better loot as about achieving specific in-game goals. These games dole out upgrades on a randomized basis, often with odds that are opaque to players, so there are incentives to keep playing, to keep hacking away at monsters and discovering new areas.
The specifics vary from game to game, but generally speaking these games allow players to find new and better loot by exploring in-game territory or defeating enemies. But in some cases, there are alternative metho
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