A lot of people really hate lootboxes. This mechanic has players spending money to get a random assortment of digital items similar to packs of baseball cards. But this business model has drawn the ire of players who hate the idea of spending money without knowing what they’re going to get. And yet, someone must like these things because why else would publisher 2K Games make a trailer for its upcoming NBA 2K20 basketball sim that highlights just how much fun it is to get random items from lootboxes in a video game?
The trailer even shows NBA 2K streamer CashNastyGaming bobbing back and forth between anguish and excitement while watching it unfold. And, of course, there’s a literal slot machine you can pull to.
Earlier this week, 2K published a video that shows off many of the new features in NBA 2K20’s MyTeam. In this mode, players build dream teams by collecting cards. And you collect cards by opening up randomized card packs. This mode type first came to prominence in FIFA Ultimate Team from EA Sports. But this deck-building mode has proliferated throughout the entire sports genre. Today, it’s even in management-style sports sims like Out of the Park Baseball.
But while modes like MyTeam are all about getting those rare cards featuring legendary players, publishers like EA have focused on how this mode enables fans to “build their own teams.” 2K Games, however, is focused on something else: How much fun slot machines are!
As Twitter user BrianPickett pointed out in a tweet, the new trailer for NBA 2K20 almost seems like someone satirizing the idea of microtransactions. And yet, the publisher is absolutely serious.
NBA 2K20: Who got their basketball in my lootbox game?
This NBA 2K My Team trailer is a grim nightmare of loot box stuff and almost seems like a parody at some points https://t.co/WJ4tsCAXXK
— Brian Pickett (@BrianPickett) August 28, 2019
The MyTeam trailer has very little actual gameplay in which someone is playing basketball. Instead, the video jumps from one way to earn digital items to another and another. Here’s each “surprise mechanic” that gets some attention in the video:
- Opening randomized card packs
- Jackpot prizes you can earn by spinning a wheel after winning matches in the three-on-three Triple Threat mode.
- Pachinko machines … really
- Slot machines … no, really!
- A Wheel of Fortune-style wheel.
- Something called “Huge reward cards!”
And it’s not just that the game includes all of these ways to get new cards or even that 2K is highlighting them in a trailer. It’s the brazen way that the publisher is presenting the lootbox mechanics as core to the appeal of the franchise that is so surprising.
I usually try to resist jumping all over games that have lootboxes. If you don’t like them, don’t play them. But to me, 2K almost seems like it wants to get caught. Like it wants a regulator to step in and stop it from behaving this way.
Regulation could be coming. Congress has put lootboxes on its agenda, and the FTC held a workshop about the business model earlier this month.
And maybe it’s overdue. Because when the MyTeam trailer ends with one of the actors screaming in ecstasy as he unlocks a top-tier Lebron James card, I found myself looking for the legal disclaimer. If 2K is going to market the experience of unlocking a Lebron James card, shouldn’t it have to say that this result isn’t typical. Or at least tell us the odds or the average amount of money a person would have to spend to get that experience?
It doesn’t, though. The advertisement doesn’t have anything like that. And in 2019, that seems weird.
Two years ago, the president of the publishing company over the NBA 2K series said they don’t view the card packs and loot boxes it offers as gambling. You wouldn’t know it after watching this remarkably tone-deaf trailer for NBA 2K20that 2K Sports put out on Monday.
Touting the feature set for MyTeam, the basketball behemoth’s version of Ultimate Team, 2K Sports put out a video that literally depicts pachinko and slot machines. NBA 2K streamers CashNasty and Kris “LSK” London excitedly open packs of virtual cards, pull slot machine levers and, in Cash’s case, deploy obscene amounts of body english to guide a ball drop into a big-paying bucket. If that’s not enough, there’s a good old-fashioned prize-wheel spin, too.
Some of this stuff isn’t new; the special card packs shown being opened have been the basis of MyTeam since it was introduced in NBA 2K13. The prize wheel has been around in various forms before, including in the associated MyPark/MyCareer mode.
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Some of what’s in this trailer is sort of new. The ball drop was added to the game last year. The slot machine belongs to the Triple Threat game type that also debuted with NBA 2K19.
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Anti-loot box bill poses a real threat to sports video games
So, there’s some built-in tolerance for the way MyTeam and MyCareer have doled out rewards over the years. If you want to know why fan reaction is now negative — side-eyed at best — here’s the MyTeam promotional trailer from NBA 2K19. It features more gameplay and basketball action, and fewer YouTube influencers cheering like they’re at a Caesar’s Palace craps table.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9PCHjuqEuUc%3Frel%3D0
NBA 2K20’s new trailer is, basically, just more in-your-face about it, and definitely portrays three-in-a-row on a slot machine as this mode’s idea of excitement and fun. That may land it in some kind of congressional hearing next year, if Sen. Josh Hawley can move a bill banning exactly these kinds of things.
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NBA 2K20’s free demo went live (for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch) one week ago. MyTeam isn’t a part of it’s offerings; players get six games to explore the MyCareer mode and the new MyPlayer Builder, but that progress will not carry into the main game, which launches on Sept. 6 on those three consoles plus Windows PC.
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