Why microtransaction and loot boxes are destroying games

The Epic Games Inc. Fortnite: Battle Royale video game is displayed for a photograph on an Apple Inc. iPhone in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, May 10, 2018. Fortnite, the hit game that's denting the stock prices of video-game makers after signing up 45 million players, didn't really take off until it became free and a free-for-all. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

LOS ANGELES: Currency has no inherent value. It’s the things we can get with that currency that matter, that put meaning into the paper in your hand, the silver in your game or that little gem counter on the top of your mobile device’s screen. 

What’s insidious about currency, digital or not, is the distance it creates between person and product where we are asked to conjure up value. Within that middle ground, we can be manipulated, blinded, and marketed to in as many ways as one can imagine. Nowhere else is that made more obvious than when a videogame asks you to buy fake money with real money before allowing you to buy the actual thing you want.