Shifting Meanings of Lootboxes in Western Culture - BC. ONDŘEJ KLÍMA Master Thesis - IS MUNI
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FACULTY OF SOCIAL STUDIES
Shifting Meanings of
Lootboxes in Western
Culture
Master Thesis
BC. ONDŘEJ KLÍMA
Supervisor: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
Programme Sociologie
Brno 2021
SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE
Bibliografický záznam
Autor: Bc. Ondřej Klíma
Fakulta sociálních studií
Masarykova univerzita
Chyba! Nenalezen zdroj odkazů.
Název práce: Shifting Meanings of Lootboxes in Western
Culture
Studijní program: N-SOC Sociologie
Studijní obor: Sociologie
Vedoucí práce: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
Rok: 2021
Počet stran: 92
Klíčová slova: gaming theory, lootbox, loot box, societalization,
civil sphere, gaming sphere, cultural sociology,
thick description, surprise mechanics, social
crisis
2
SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE
Bibliographic record
Author: Bc. Ondřej Klíma
Faculty of Social Studies
Masaryk University
Department of Sociology
Title of Thesis: Shifting Meanings of Lootboxes in Western
Culture
Degree Programme: N-SOC Sociologie
Field of Study: Sociologie
Supervisor: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
Year: 2021
Number of Pages: 92
Keywords: gaming theory, lootbox, loot box, societalization,
civil sphere, gaming sphere, cultural sociology,
thick description, surprise mechanics, social
crisis
3
SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE Abstrakt V této práci se zabývám kulturní analýzou lootboxů skrze lootboxovou kontroverzi z roku 2017 a její vývoj až do konce roku 2020. V první části se zabývám rešerší literatury ohledně teorie gamingu a teorie lootboxů. Poté vysvětlím model societalizace a teorie civilní sféry od Jeffreyho Ale- xandra. Následně představím můj dataset online článků a také metodo- logii hustého popisu a interpretativní analýzy. Poté provedu analýzu lo- otboxové kontroverze za pomocí modelu societalizace. Na závěr zhodno- tím, že lootboxová kontroverze byla sociální krizí. Počet znaků práce: 148 110 4
SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE
Abstract
I deal with the cultural analysis of the lootbox by looking at the lootbox
controversy from 2017 and how it continued until the end of 2020. First,
I provide a comprehensive summary of the literature on the gaming the-
ory and theory of lootboxes. Second, I explain in-depth the model of so-
cietalization by Jeffrey Alexander and his theory of the civil sphere. Third,
I present my dataset of articles and the methodology of thick description
and interpretative analysis. Fourth, I analyze the lootbox crisis using the
model of societalization. Lastly, I conclude that lootbox controversy was
a social crisis.
5SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE
Declaration of Honor
I declare that I have independently prepared the presented master the-
sis: Shifting Meanings of Lootboxes in Western Culture and that I did
not use any literature or resources other than those indicated. Verbatim
or non-verbatim citations are all marked, and their origin is specified.
Brno, January 10, 2021 .......................................
Bc. Ondřej Klíma
Šablona DP 3.0.6-FSS (2019-11-29) © 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 Masarykova univerzita 7SHIFTING MEANINGS OF LOOTBOXES IN W ESTERN CULTURE
Acknowledgement
I would first like to thank my thesis advisor doc. Bernadette Nadya Ja-
worsky, Ph.D. She consistently allowed this thesis to be my own work,
but gently steered me in the right direction whenever I needed it. She
always found the time to offer helpful advice while also being critical to
help me improve my thesis towards my vision. Thank you.
I also must express my gratitude to my parents for providing me
with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my
years of study and through the process of researching and writing this
thesis. I also want to thank all my friends who helped me proofread and
who suggested even the small changes. This accomplishment would not
have been possible without them. Thank you.
8TABLE OF CONTENT
Table of Content
List of Images 11
Glossary and abbreviations 12
1 Introduction 13
2 Theoretical Framework 17
2.1 The Gaming, Gamers and Lootbox Research................................... 17
2.2 The Civil Sphere and Non-Civil Institutions .................................... 22
2.3 The Societalization of Social Problems.............................................. 23
2.4 The Gaming Sphere ................................................................................... 27
3 Methodology 32
3.1 Data Selection and Data Collection ..................................................... 32
3.2 Thick Description and Interpretative Analysis .............................. 34
4 The Societalization of Lootboxes 37
4.1 T1 – The Stable State ................................................................................ 39
4.2 T2 – The Beginning of Societalization ............................................... 43
4.3 T3 – The Regulatory Interventions ..................................................... 47
4.4 T4 – The Backlash from the Non-Civil Institutions ...................... 52
4.5 T5 – Social Repair or Stand-off ............................................................. 58
5 Conclusion 64
Sources 69
Appendix A Partial transcript HC 1846 78
Appendix B Guiding Timeline 80
Appendix C Lootbox GIF interpretation 81
Index 89
9LIST OF IMAGES
List of Images
Image 1 A poster campaign on Reddit.com in the protest against
lootboxes. ....................................................................................................................... 42
11GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS
Glossary and abbreviations
ME:SoW – Abbreviation for the videogame: Middle-Earth:
Shadow of War
EA – Electronic Arts; videogame publisher
IFPI – International Federation of the Phonographic In-
dustry
CET – Central European Time
UK – The United Kingdom
US – The United States of America
BGA – Dutch Betting and Gaming Act
NHS – United Kingdom National Health Service
Covid-19 – Coronavirus disease that started in 2019
ESRB – The Entertainment Software Rating Board
12INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction
Gaming is no longer just a pastime activity of a few. The gaming industry
grew over the past decades into a giant, providing not only entertain-
ment for billions of people but also created new job opportunities as
gaming became a profession. According to the IFPI, Motion Pictures As-
sociation, Digital Entertainment Group, and New Zoo (Malim, 2018), the
gaming industry will (even more) overshadow the film and music indus-
try by $258,3 billion by 2023, and it was already in the lead with $101
billion over both film ($49 billion) and music ($16 billion) industries in
2016. Furthermore, like other big entertainment industries, the gaming
industry is shifting from a buy-own model towards a “live service” model.
Subscription systems and microtransactions are providing a constant
stream of revenue as opposed to just buying a game once and playing it
for free. This focus on live-services subscription systems and microtrans-
actions also created a massive spike in revenue in the gaming industry.
NetEase (Knives Out), Activision Blizzard (Candy Crush, Call of Duty,
Overwatch, and World of Warcraft), EA (Apex Legends, FIFA1, Madden),
Nexon (Dungeon Fighter Online), and Epic Games (Fortnite) earned over
$16 billion from microtransactions alone in 2019, and they are just the
top 5 gaming companies that have a public earning record (Strickland,
2020).
There is a big difference, though. You probably have a subscription,
such as Netflix, Spotify, or even Microsoft Office. These subscriptions
cost dozens of dollars per month and give you access to digital libraries
full of music, films, and serials. We can see similar subscription systems
in the gaming industry that let you access digital libraries full of video-
games. Where the gaming industry deviates is the use of microtransac-
tions. Imagine that you would have to buy a “Tyrion Lannister character
pack,” which would include this popular character from Game of Thrones
into your serial, and without it, he would not appear. Or maybe you were
not satisfied with the ending of Season 8 and would like to buy a different
conclusion for just $9,99. What if you purchased the “resistance to poi-
soning bundle” so Joffrey Baratheon would survive? These are examples
1 FIFA refers here and throughout the thesis to the game FIFA not the Fédération In-
ternationale de Football Association
13INTRODUCTION
of microtransactions. They might seem absurd in the context of serials,
but they are common practice in the gaming industry. Microtransactions
allow gaming companies to cut and resell content but also may offer gam-
ers the possibility to buy advantages over others. This created a cultural
tension in what I call the “gaming sphere” regarding fairness and other
norms, but also tensions between the gaming and the civil sphere. These
tensions surrounding microtransactions, which I will now briefly illus-
trate, are at the center of the thesis.
The first microtransaction (a fancy armor for a horse) was intro-
duced into the critically very well acclaimed and trendy game The Elder
Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006 (Ransom-Wiley, 2006). Since then, we saw a
rise of microtransactions in videogames, generating a considerable part
of the revenue for gaming publishers but also concerns for “fair play,”
“buying power,” and “compensation for the lack of skill with real-world
money” (Williams, 2017). But these concerns were mainly what Alexan-
der (2006) would call the intra-sphere problems – meaning that they
were contained within the boundaries of a gaming sphere. Everything
changed in 2017 when the question: “Are microtransactions gambling?”
was added to the concerns over microtransactions.
Research into microtransactions is rising in popularity since the
public outrage over the monetization in the Star Wars: Battlefront II
(competitive videogame) in 2017. The main question contemporary re-
searchers from informatics, psychology, and economic studies try to an-
swer is: “Are microtransactions in videogames gambling?” As a cultural
sociologist, I will be approaching the topic by asking a different question:
“Why did the Battlefront II lootbox controversy become a social crisis?”
I want to bring the cultural perspective to this (so far) primarily quanti-
tative field of study and explore the shifting meanings of microtransac-
tions in videogames and how the tension between “Gaming” and civil
spheres is being resolved.
14INTRODUCTION
To do so, I will first introduce contemporary gaming and lootbox2
theories alongside my main framework theory of societalization from
Jeffrey Alexander (2018) and his theory of the civil sphere (Alexander,
2006). I will then describe what I call the “Gaming sphere” and all the
entities and agents it consists of – to help the reader to ease more into
the gaming jargon and to clarify inconsistent labels that are used
throughout the gaming discourse. In the third chapter, I will explain the
methodology behind the collection of my dataset of articles and how did
I select them. I will also explain the methodology behind thick descrip-
tion and how did I do the interpretative analysis in the following chap-
ters. I would like to recommend to the reader to quickly glance at the
glossary and abbreviation chapter as well as the Appendix B timeline as
both will help them to follow my thoughts throughout my analysis in
chapter four. After explaining the theory and methodology in chapters
two and three, I proceed with the analysis of the lootbox controversy us-
ing the model of societalization (Alexander, 2018) and the “gaming
sphere.” The analysis will unfold in accordance with the model time
states (T1 to T5), which means that there will be chronological discrep-
ancies as I will analyze four countries simultaneously: Belgium, Nether-
lands, the United States3, and the United Kingdom. My analysis thus fol-
lows the time states (Alexander, 2018) of the societalization process,
which have different time frames for each country. Part of the analysis
will also be a thick description and interpretation of the “Oral evidence:
Immersive and addictive technologies, HC 1846” – UK congress hearing
that was ordered by the House of Commons. I will finish with the conclu-
sion that the lootbox controversy from 2017 was a social crisis in Bel-
gium, the Netherlands, and the UK but failed to start the process of soci-
etalization in Hawaii. I also elaborate on the importance of the “gaming
2 I will not describe what a lootbox is in a great detail as my focus is on the lootbox
controversy itself, but I invite the reader to refer to the appendix C for an iconograph-
ical analysis of the lootbox as a material symbol full of meanings with focus on the
gaming sphere.
3 I will be talking only about Hawaii as it was the only state from the US, I was able to
find any news articles covering any reaction to the lootbox controversy. Thus, the US
may not be fully represented and could be considered a country that remained in T1
since the lootbox controversy remained intra-sphere social drama in the rest of the
states apart from Hawaii.
15INTRODUCTION
sphere” as a concept for analyzing gaming via the lens of the strong pro-
gram in cultural sociology.
But before we delve into the lootbox controversy in question, I want
to acknowledge some things first. I am a gamer, although not a profes-
sional anymore, and I still have ties and active connections to the gaming
sphere. But I am a researcher also, and I hereby acknowledge my possi-
ble personal bias that could be reflected in my research, and I have taken
all the necessary steps to prevent it. Thus, please consider the choice of
a possible protagonist and antagonist in this sociological interpretation
as pure literary (there must be the good and bad guy) and empirical
choice (as news outlets took the side of the Public and only minority of
them defended the game publishers), not my personal one. Now, without
further ado, let us explore the lootbox controversy in detail through the
analysis of the lootbox controversy that happened in 2017.
16THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2 Theoretical Framework
I will now introduce the research on the gaming culture and the lootbox,
followed by a brief look at the research in the fields of psychology, poli-
tics, and ethics. I will start with a quick introduction to the history of vid-
eogames and how they evolved into the videogames of the 21st century.
After that, I will introduce contemporary gaming research and how it ap-
proaches the study of gaming culture. Next, I will introduce the theory of
societalization by Jeffrey Alexander (2018), and I will also briefly intro-
duce Alexander’s (2006) civil sphere theory. Lastly, I will describe what
the “gaming sphere” is based on the civil sphere theory (ibid.), gaming
culture theory, and my conclusions from the analysis chapter 4 are, and
my own observations as a gamer and actor from this “gaming sphere.”
2.1 The Gaming, Gamers and Lootbox Research
I have selected the scientific papers and books for my theory review
based on two separate searches on Google Scholar. Both searches were
done on studies from the year 2000 and onwards so I could capture the
contemporary research as I am focusing on the developments of video-
games in the 21st century. The first one used the keywords: “gaming the-
ory,” “gaming culture,” “videogame theory,” “videogame culture,” “gam-
ing sphere,” “videogames,” and “games.” The second search used the key-
words: “lootbox,” “lootboxes,” “loot box,” “loot boxes,” “gaming,” and
“gambling.” I have then selected the first ten studies from each search
based on the relevance and citation score Google Scholar uses for ranking
the search results. Since November 2017, there was an increase in inter-
est concerning lootboxes and gambling mechanics in video games from a
whole set of different perspectives covering the fields of political and
psychological studies. These fields were prominently present in the sec-
ond search, and I have trimmed the second ten initial studies to just four
because their conclusion about lootboxes being gambling or unethical
were similar and since I was not able to find more sociological papers on
the subject of lootboxes. Thus, I decided to focus mainly on the gaming
culture in my review and describe what was researched by other fields
on lootboxes only briefly – as a baseline of what a lootbox is from a polit-
ical and psychological perspective. I have also discarded economic stud-
ies as they focused on the macroeconomic effect of lootboxes, which is
17THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
not my field of interest as I deal with the meanings of lootboxes and how
they are experienced rather than just evaluate their monetary potentials.
Let us start with what gaming culture is, but first, let me quickly ad-
dress why I will focus on the research from the 21st century while video
games already emerged as a form of entertainment for kids and adults
alike in the 1970 (Whalen and Taylor, 2008). The accessibility of video-
games on a variety of devices such as smartphones and tablets allowed
the spread of videogames from PC’s and gaming consoles (ibid.) as they
grew more powerful to handle more advanced graphical processing. This
spread meant that, for example, in the US, more than 150 million people
(Entertainment Software Association, 2015) are “gamers” - people en-
gaging in the act of playing a videogame. When looking at the US house-
holds through this gaming lens – four out of five households have at least
one gaming device (ibid.) – be it a gaming capable PC or a console or a
smartphone or a tablet. So, while videogames emerged in 1970, the ac-
cessibility to them was poor compared to the 21st century (Whalen and
Taylor, 2008), and that is the time where research into the gaming cul-
ture saw the rise (Cade and Gates, 2016). Dini (2012) even argues that
videogames are now a pervasive part of the (broad) culture and that
gamers have a culture of their own. Apart from the rise in popularity
thanks to the greater accessibility of gaming-capable devices, there was
also an emergence of a new type of videogames that helped propel them
to the massive numbers they are at now. This evolution from single-
player games to gaming experiences of living in self-contained worlds
and virtual societies (Young, 2009) started in late 1990. These self-con-
tained worlds brought a social factor into the mix – allowing “gamers” to
experience living in a virtual world of their choosing. As is apparent from
Taylor’s (2006) ethnography of EverQuest in his book Play Between
Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture or in Jakobsson’s (2007) study of
the Smash Brothers console clubs – these virtual worlds appear in expe-
riences and meaning as real-world does to the gamers that are involved
within them. Hand and Moore (2006) concluded in their paper “Commu-
nity, identity and digital games” that videogames are unlike any other
digital media in the sense that videogames combine communication and
entertainment into a mix that influences individual identities and their
formation in social interaction.
18THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
To bring this theory closer to my work, one of the games in the anal-
ysis chapter is FIFA. FIFA is a football simulator that supplies this virtual
world of football management of your virtual teams – allowing you to “be
like a real” manager in charge of your own team, buying players, and win-
ning championships. Thus, the engagement (living the experience of a
virtual world that is similar to the experiences we have in the real world)
that videogames provide now is a very important aspect if one wants to
understand the gaming culture. This brings us to the question of under-
standing the gaming culture. Elmezeny and Wimmer (2018) argue that
gaming cultures are neither totally national nor totally global – meaning
that the gaming culture of FIFA “gamers” in Germany shares some char-
acteristics with FIFA “gamers” in the UK (ibid.) They criticize Shaw
(2010) when she investigated the definition of game culture and pro-
vided several based on who plays what and how (Elmezeny and Wim-
mer, 2018). I would argue that Shaw (2010) provided a comprehensive
literature review that puts culture in the spotlight as she looks on video-
games culturally, not (as all the previous studies mentioned) as video-
games as a culture. Elmezeny and Wimmer (2018) build up the argument
that we can look at videogames as a culture through micro, meso, and
macro level analysis, and we should do so comparatively and abandon
the one-level (micro or meso, or macro) approach. These approaches are
prominent in the few studies I will introduce last as they deal more with
the effects of lootboxes on individuals rather than culture. What I will do
now is to argue that although I do agree with Elmezeny and Wimmer that
we should focus on a broader understanding of gaming cultures – we
should also do so culturally.
Šisler, Švelch, and Šlerka (2017) argue that the experience that is
generated in the local context is connected to the transnational gaming
system. I agree, and as Shaw (2010) said:
“Game studies have largely focused on validating video
game consumption, video game texts, and video game
players. Video game studies, however, should be reflex-
ive, not reactive. The legacy of cultural studies on which
video game studies should draw is not to study culture
in games, though that is useful as well, but to investi-
gate how video game culture is constructed. This is a
critical, not descriptive practice.”
19THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
I will thus follow in the footsteps of the strong program in cultural soci-
ology that can bring the cultural insight gaming studies to need. Through
theories of Alexander (2006, 2018), Durkheim (1995), and Geertz
(1973), I will describe and define the “gaming sphere” as a highly ab-
stract concept that can encompass all the gamers from the US and Europe
(as adding Asia, Africa, and Australia is beyond the scope of this thesis).
This concept of the “gaming sphere” can thus be used by others to engage
with the gaming worlds or gaming cultures as they were described be-
fore. Following the work of Alexander (2006) on the civil sphere, I will
also describe the actors and their interaction not only within the “gaming
sphere” but also outside. This means describing the interactions between
the “gaming sphere” and the civil sphere as well as the role the agents
(ibid.) play in resolving problems between these spheres. But we must
first look at a few other works that will help me understand a particular
concept of a lootbox that is the centerpiece of my analysis.
I will now briefly introduce the early perspectives of ethics, politics,
and psychology. “Two Queens and a Pawn, Please” (Karhulahti and
Kimppa, 2018) and “First dose is always freemium” (Kimppa ibid., 2016)
provides a new perspective on e-sports as a gamified play with a focus
on purchasable customization in games based on their effect (cosmetic,
functional, out-game). Karhulahti and Kimppa have also situated the pur-
chasable customizations within five demands: money, time, skill, luck,
and occasion, upon which they show that some effect and demand com-
binations may result in ethical conflict when perceived through the
sport-philosophical frame of athletic superiority (Karhulahti and
Kimppa, 2018). Griffiths, in his paper: “Is the buying of loot boxes in vid-
eogames a form of gambling or gaming?” covers the especially important
question of lootboxes being gambling or not. He approaches this ques-
tion from both psychological and political perspective arriving at the
conclusion that even though lootboxes display symptoms remarkably
similar to the gambling addiction, ultimately, it is up to the regulatory
entities, such as gambling commissions and game information services,
to define what is and what is not gambling and how the law should ap-
proach it, especially when kids are concerned (Griffiths, 2018). For a sim-
ilar analysis, see Drummond and Sauer (2018), Brooks and Clark (2019),
Li, Mills, and Nower (2019), Kristiansen and Severin (2020), and Drum-
mond, Sauer, Ferguson, and Hall (2020). In “Loot Boxes and Gambling,”
20THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Sztainert outlines the history of lootboxes as a form of gacha games (Jap-
anese term for lootbox based game) and its iterations through types of
game design and psychological impact upon the player in the form of
risk-reward play with the illusion of control and positive reinforcement
from the game (Sztainert, 2018). He also, same as Griffiths, stresses the
importance of regulatory entities in this process of defining gacha (loot-
boxes). Same as Sztainert and Griffiths, Zendle and Cairns (2018) con-
cluded that there is enough evidence to suggest regulation of lootboxes,
but they also concluded that there is not enough evidence to link loot-
boxes to the most problematic forms of gambling. This opposed the con-
clusions of Drummond and Sauer (2018), Brooks and Clark (2019), Li,
Mills, and Nower (2019), Kristiansen and Severin (2020), and Drum-
mond, Sauer, Ferguson, and Hall (2020).
While Karhulahti, Kimppa, Griffiths, and Sztainert provided us with
a solid definition of what a lootbox is, Erica L. Neely’s comprehensive eth-
ical analysis of microtransactions (lootboxes included) in video and mo-
bile games provides insight into the psychological play of the possibility
of buying advantages in-game. She outlines the important concept of
freemium games, which appear to be free to play, but expect a player to
invest enormous amounts of money (compared to the standard of
€59,99 for a AAA title) and what methods they use to achieve this (Neely,
2018). Neely’s main concern is, however, the ethics of putting micro-
transactions into all types of games and, most importantly for my thesis,
the difference of ethical perspective between single-player and multi-
player games. These works provide solid ground and framework for the
concepts of fair-play, e-sport ethics, addiction problems, and differentia-
tion between cosmetic and functional in-game purchases. Helpful for es-
tablishing the conceptual background for the lootbox and the psycholog-
ical play, these studies tend to take the lootbox phenomenon as a fact that
happened and does not need to be explained or indeed researched fur-
ther.
My goal is thus to fill the gap in the research by bringing a cultural-
sociological perspective from the strong program and explain these
events by answering the question: Why did the Battlefront II lootbox con-
troversy become a social crisis? To do so, I will define a concept of the
“gaming sphere” – a highly abstract concept that will encompass all the
gamers from the US and Europe. Through this concept and Alexander’s
21THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK (2018) model of societalization, I will analyze the lootbox crisis as well as demonstrate the interactions of the agents from the “gaming sphere” and the civil sphere (Alexander, 2006). This concept of the “gaming sphere” will provide a comprehensive toolkit for further analysis of the gaming world and the problems that arrive within it and need to be re- solved either within or outside its boundaries – in the civil sphere. Gam- ing has become more prevalent than ever in everyday lives, and the gam- ing industry grew exponentially since the 1970s. We need a toolbox that would help us understand all that is gaming, and the “gaming sphere” is that toolbox. Although I will focus solely on the lootbox crisis of 2017 in my analysis here, this toolbox I provide can be used to analyze and un- derstand other problems that are already present or that will arise in the future and that deal with the world of gaming – the “gaming sphere.” Ex- amples of such problems could be the question of videogames and vio- lence (American Psychological Association, 2015), virtual social words (Taylor, 2006, Jakobsson, 2007) and their interaction with the real world, and the current hot topic of games as enablers of gambling (Columb, Griffiths, and O’Gara, 2019). I believe that the “gaming sphere” will help us to understand the meaning and values that play a role in the discourses surrounding these problems and how they are dealt with in the civil sphere. 2.2 The Civil Sphere and Non-Civil Institutions To answer this question, I will first briefly explain Alexander’s (2006) concept of the civil sphere and the non-civil institutions (and spheres). What is the civil sphere? The civil sphere is a kind of “solidarity” sphere in which people share feelings and symbolic commitments to what and how people speak about things and democratic social life (Alexander, 2006). It is a sphere in which community comes to be culturally defined, and to some degree, this cultural definition is institutionally enforced (ibid.). The production of this culture grows from binary cultural codes that are deeply rooted in social life – civil society is regulated by an inter- nally complex discourse that allows us to understand how universalistic ideals have been institutionalized (ibid.). Alexander (2006) identifies two major discourses when it comes to civil society: (1) discourse of lib- erty and (2) discourse of repression. These discourses carry binary cul- tural codes are that govern the motives, relationships, institutions, and 22
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
actions (ibid.). Each member or institution then strives to be on the sa-
cred-liberty side of the binary oppositions (ibid.), and they engage in di-
alogs and performances (Alexander, 2018) to remain sacred (Durkheim,
1995). The main agents of the civil sphere are thus the communicative
institutions (ibid.) – the journalists from mass media, large associations,
and public opinion influencers. In summary, the civil sphere is a sphere
of solidarity that is shared across the nation(s) and in which the battle
for civil repair – the process of re-evaluating a re-establishing sacred
ideal – is fought. This performative battle is engaged in a social drama
that is about to become a social crisis (Alexander, 2018), and it is a clash
between the civil sphere and the non-civil sphere and/or institutions. So,
what are the non-civil institutions, and how do they interact with the civil
sphere?
Non-civil institutions are institutions outside the civil society (Alex-
ander, 2006); they may belong to other spheres, such as economic, sport,
or gaming. An example of such an institution can be Facebook, which, for
the purpose of this example, I say Facebook belongs to its own sphere –
the “social-media sphere” and not to the civil sphere. As such, it could be
called out when doing something that threatens the sacred ideals of the
civil society, and when that happens, the process of societalization (Alex-
ander, 2018) begins. Non-civil spheres usually sustain reciprocity be-
tween other non-civil spheres and the civil sphere, and the performative
battle, what Alexander (2018) calls the “process of societalization,” is
fought only on occasions which he identifies as a social crisis (ibid.). Let
us now focus on the actual process of societalization of social problems
and how does social drama become a social crisis.
2.3 The Societalization of Social Problems
I have to start with Durkheim’s (1995) theory on sacred and profane as
it is integral to Alexander’s mode of societalization. Durkheim (1995) po-
sitioned this sacred-profane binary as the central characteristics of reli-
gion – a unified system of beliefs that relates to sacred things. The sacred
represents the interests of the group that is embodied into sacred sym-
bols or totems (ibid.). These interests could be, for example, family, unity,
or justice. The profane represents the mundane interests of the individ-
23THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
ual (ibid.). Alexander (2018) builds on this binary and to answer the pre-
vious question: “Why did the Battlefront II lootbox controversy become
a social crisis?” I heavily leaned on his theory of societalization. Alexan-
der (2018) created this model to explain a phenomenon he calls societal-
ization of social problems. According to him, societalization is a process
through which social dramas are transformed into a social crisis that en-
gages civil society and leads to some resolution to the crisis. Let me first
distinguish between social drama and social crisis. A social drama is a
usually short-term event that may have created some outrage or hit
some news outlets, but in the end, this drama did not have a reformative
impact on civil society. In short, the drama came and went, and nothing
major changed – meaning policies or behaviors and attitudes towards
something. Social crisis, on the other hand, is a long-term drama that has
evolved into a crisis by the process of societalization, and thus it has long-
lasting effects such as changes in policies or changes in attitudes towards
something. This process of societalization can be analyzed using Alexan-
der’s (2018) model with chronological time states (T).
First, we have a stable state (T1). Alexander (2018) defines the sta-
ble state as a state in which there is a reciprocity between civil and non-
civil spheres. No threat is being felt by either sphere. Any problem that
arises remains inside the respective sphere. This state can be compared
to the calm sea before the storm, just waiting for some strong incentive
to start societalization. This state also encompasses all the social dramas
– as they were unable to break through to the next time state (T2) and
remain intra-sphere problems. But when the social drama triggers semi-
otic codes (Alexander, 2018), it moves to the T2, and societalization be-
gins.
(T2) can be called the beginning of societalization. Semiotic codes
were triggered – meaning the public (civil) attention moves from the in-
tra-sphere-institutional to the whole context of the civil sphere (Alexan-
der, 2018). This time state employs what Alexander (2018) calls the “civil
sphere agents.” These agents are journalists, juries, or senators that ex-
ercise their civil power (Alexander 2018) and mobilize resources to un-
cover the truth behind the social drama that triggered the semiotic codes.
These resources are mainly generated from alarm and fear that comes
from the breach the social drama brought. To better understand this con-
cept, let me follow up with a hypothetical social crisis example that will
24THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
take us through time states (T2) to (T5): the “big Facebook data leak”
from 2018 (Isaac and Frenkel, 2018). When Facebook leaked user data,
it generated outrage at the Facebook institution of what we may call the
“social media sphere.” This outrage would then have to trigger the semi-
otic codes (Alexander, 2018) – the sense of security and privacy people
may associate with their data (posts, pictures, messages) they share on
Facebook or in private groups and chats on Facebook. This sense of se-
curity and privacy was thus threatened by Facebook, leaking the data to
whatever entity breached their servers. Thus, journalists will pick up on
this report not just that the data leak happened, but also bring attention
to the rights of online security and privacy. These concepts of security
and privacy could be considered sacred (Alexander, 2018) – meaning
that they are powerful enough to trigger the semiotic codes as these sa-
cred values are threatened. The fear and alarm from this revelation in the
civil sphere will generate resources for the journalists to cover the inves-
tigations thoroughly and policymakers to make regulatory interventions
(T3).
Let us call time state (T3) the regulatory interventions time state.
Here the civil sphere regulators – policymakers and those who hold
power (Alexander, 2018) – prepare actions against the non-civil sphere
institution (Facebook in our hypothetical example). These interventions
are meant to protect the sacred values of security and privacy and to pre-
vent their further pollution. In our hypothetical example, Facebook could
be monetarily sanctioned, or policies can be proposed that would pre-
vent Facebook from handling such data the way it did in the first place.
These changes would be all made in the name of protection of the privacy
and security of the common people. This is a small blank spot in Alexan-
der’s theory (2018) as he presumes that in the civil sphere, there are
these sacred universal values that we all share, i.e., freedom, privacy,
family, etc. This makes his theory a bit problematic when used in the
cross-state analysis as these values may be shared among American pop-
ulations in Alexander’s case but may not be shared within other states. I
would argue that maybe not all, but there are still some sacred values
that are universal even when comparing different states, as I will show
in my own analysis of the lootbox crisis in the US and European states.
Thus, I hope my work will help with making this theory more generally
applicable and as an even more useful toolbox to study the social crisis
and social drama. But back to the model. When these interventions are
25THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
being put into place, the non-civil institution will try to intervene, and
thus the social drama moves to the next time state (T4).
(T4) can be called the backlash time state. Alexander (2018) de-
scribes T4 as the separation of spheres, where the civil and non-civil in-
stitutions engage in a performative battle. In our example, Facebook
would try to argue that it has the best intentions and did everything to
protect the (sacred) privacy and security of its users. This battle will take
place not just in media but may also be taken to congress hearings. The
goal is always the same for Facebook, show performatively that Face-
book is to be associated with security and privacy and not the opposite.
Meanwhile, the civil sphere institutions have to investigate and purify
(Alexander, 2018) the sacred values of privacy and security. This per-
formative battle will then lead to one of two outcomes (T5). Either there
will be a stand-off and no civil repair (Alexander, 2018) will occur, or
there will be civil repair, and we return to the stable state (T1).
I will call (T5) the resolution time state. Here, the resolution to the
now possible social crisis will be made. The first option is the stand-off
(Alexander, 2018) position. The performative battle was not (yet) won
by either side, and thus there is no civil repair – no new policies or
changes in behavior and attitudes. This could mean that the social drama
will be forgotten with time, and no resolution will come, meaning the
process of societalization has failed, and the social drama did not become
a social crisis. The second option is the civil repair and the return to the
stable state (T1). This could mean, in our example, that there were poli-
cies put into place that forced Facebook to allow users to permanently
delete their accounts or be able to remove any private information they
desire. After these kinds of reparations are successful, the societalization
succeeded, and the social drama have become a social crisis with long-
lasting effects on the civil and non-civil spheres. The state of both
spheres returns to (T1), and reciprocity is restored (Alexander, 2018).
Before I describe the “Gaming sphere,” let me first quickly talk about the
limit conditions of Alexander’s model.
Alexander (2018) presents two limit conditions that could hinder
the process of societalization: (1) marginalization and (2) polarization of
the civil society. The marginalization in civil society could lead to prob-
lems with the resources that civil sphere agents need to act. If something,
26THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
for example, happened to the Roma in the Czech Republic, there is a pos-
sibility that it would not get much coverage in the mainstream media as
Roma are a marginalized group as opposed if the same thing happened
to the “Little4” Czech. Thus, it may not be just about triggering the right
semiotic codes but also about the resources needed for the coverage. The
polarization of the civil society means that when during the (T2), there
is no one clear “sacred vs. profane side” binary – it becomes extremely
difficult for societalization to happen. As Alexander (2018, pp. 23) de-
scribes it:
“If societies are sharply divided against themselves,
however, this growing recognition of anti-civil abuse is
not enough. Social indignation can become refracted in
a manner that fails to engage the full horizon of com-
mon concern.”
This paradoxically results in societalization, deepening division in the so-
ciety, and sometimes even destroying the civil sphere instead of repair-
ing it (Alexander, 2018).
2.4 The Gaming Sphere
After presenting what research has been done on gaming, I will now de-
fine my concept of the gaming sphere. The gaming sphere is a non-civil
sphere that encompasses the (1) world of gaming – the act of playing vid-
eogames of any kind, the (2) world of videogame production and (3) dis-
tribution, and the (4) world of videogame-related content consumption
and (5) production. I will extensively describe the gaming sphere based
on my reviewed research (see subchapter 2.1) while also acknowledging
the fact that I am a gamer myself and have been for almost two decades.
I will thus draw not only from my research but also from my personal
4 The paradox of the Great Czech Nations that sees itself as the king of the world and
other nations as flawed, especially Roma while simultaneously Czech describing
other Czechs as flawed when referring to specific individuals. See The Little Czech
and The Great Czech Nation from Ladislav Holy (1996) for more extensive explana-
tion about the little Czech and the Great Czech nation.
27THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
experience and observations to help the reader better grasp what the
gaming sphere is and who are its agents, entities, and institutions, similar
to how Alexander (2018) builds up the non-civil spheres in the process
of societalization. While Elmezeny and Wimmer (2018) and Šisler,
Švelch, and Šlerka (2017) both acknowledged the importance of experi-
ences that are generated locally (in videogaming cultures) are connected
to the transnational gaming system – they both do so in the paradigm of
the sociology of culture. I argue that “gaming culture” deserves its auton-
omy and, as such, can be an actor – the gaming sphere. I argue that the
gaming sphere is transnational, not local, and similar to Shaw (2010), I
think that the cultural approach will help us understand gaming as a
world phenomenon better than focusing on videogaming cultures.
The understanding of the gaming sphere is crucial for my analysis
in the fourth chapter as the lootbox controversy happens in the gaming
sphere, and readers unfamiliar with the world of videogames can thus
use this concept to better understand the gaming discourse. Alexander
(2006) argued that people in the civil sphere shared a set of common
moral values that are considered to be sacred. Likewise, I argue that we
can find a set of such common values in the gaming sphere that transcend
the gaming cultures described by Taylor (2006) and Jakobsson (2007) as
well as Elmezeny and Wimmer (2018).
Before I start defining the agents and entities in the gaming sphere,
I must address the literature so far and how it dealt with specifically the
“gamer.” So, let us start with the definition of my concept of gamers. You
may have noticed that I have been inconsistent with the use of quotation
marks when it comes to the word gamer or gamers. I have used the quo-
tation marks to differentiate the use of the label gamer as a descriptor
and as a concept. When I wrote “gamer,” it was used as a descriptor in
the paper without a further definition or was substituted with a different
label – the player. As these labels mean the same thing when referring to
the people that are playing (players) video games (gamers) – I chose to
use just the label “gamers” in quotation marks. The only exception is
when I was talking about Shaw (2012) as she uses gamers as a concept,
although not clearly defined as I discussed in the previous chapters.
From now on, I will be referring to gamers as a concept, thus without
quotation marks. The other entities and agents I describe were not de-
fined by the previous literature (Whalen and Taylor, 2008, Cade and
28THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Gates, 2016, Hand and Moore, 2006, Elmezeny and Wimmer, 2018) I re-
viewed and were used only as labels for actual professions with “gaming”
attached to them.
I define gamers as people who play videogames on a somewhat reg-
ular or recurring basis. This quite general definition is necessary to de-
scribe all the people that actually interact with the gaming sphere as the
ones performing the act of playing videogames. I will not be dividing
gamers into groups that may be heard throughout the gaming discourse
as “casual” or “hardcore” gamers, or even by platform as “mobile,” “pc,”
or “console” gamers (Shaw, 2010). This extensive labeling system is in-
consistent in its definition for each and one subcategory of the gamer and
thus ineffective as a describer for an entity from the gaming sphere. Thus,
gamer for me is everyone, regardless of the platform they play on or the
time they invest per week or per month. What is important is that they
do engage in the act of playing videogames and do so somewhat regularly
as opposed to people who played videogames once and are no longer ac-
tive players. This definition also includes people we may call the “watch-
ers” – gamers that primarily watch others play videogames (Gros, Wan-
ner, Hackenholt, Zawadzki, and Knautz, 2017), but they do still occasion-
ally play videogames themselves. This act of watching while also playing
is similar to football fans who sometimes go out with a friend and play
their own football matches. Gamers are thus part of the (1) world of gam-
ing and (4) world of videogame-related content consumption. Video-
games must be produced somehow, and this is where the second entity
of the gaming sphere comes in – the game developers.
Game developers can be individual persons or institutions which
are engaging in the act of creating videogames. They share the same re-
lations with gamers as artisans selling their goods on the market and
dealing directly with gamers themselves or, more commonly, by using a
digital marketplace such as Steam5. Similar to other creators and crafts-
men, game developers are called out when their products are of insuffi-
cient or lower than expected quality. This may result from three main
5 One of the biggest videogame stores that can be accessed on the address:
https://store.steampowered.com/ and users can proceed with shopping as they
would in any other e-shop. Other similar marketplaces are GOG, Epic Games Store,
and Origin.
29THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
reasons: (1) the game was published without promised content, (2) the
game was published sooner than ready and has stability issues, and (3)
the game was overzealously monetized or even allows buying advantage
against other gamers with real money. To lift some of the blame from
game developers, we have to also talk about game publishers. Game pub-
lishers are institutions with significant economic capital that distribute
games of their own or other smaller game developers. This causes a
problem in the gaming discourse as the line between game publisher and
game developer begins to blur, especially when there is blame to take. A
great example is the game publisher Activision Blizzard, a parent com-
pany of a game developer Blizzard Entertainment, formerly known as
Blizzard North. While Activision Blizzard mainly publishes games cre-
ated by Blizzard Entertainment, it is also a game developer for other
games, such as Call of Duty. Blizzard Entertainment is also cited as a pub-
lisher and developer on many of the games they created. Thus, for the
purposes of my analysis, I will still distinguish between game developers
and game publishers based on the context in the discourse – if I am talk-
ing about the act of videogame making, I will refer to the entities as game
developers, and if I am talking about the act of videogame publishing, I
will refer to the entities as game publishers. There is also a disclaimer to
be made that, to my knowledge, there is no virtual videogame market-
place owned by an entity that is not a game publisher; thus, I will not
categorize the gaming marketplaces as a separate entity as they are re-
ferred to through their owners who are game publishers. Now let us fo-
cus on the gaming sphere agents.
Gaming sphere agents are gaming journalists and content creators.
Gaming journalist is a self-explanatory term; they are journalists who fo-
cus on the gaming sphere. Content creators are people who create con-
tent related to videogames (videos, comedy-shorts, stories, live stream-
ing on a platform). Examples of content can be a walkthrough on a game
on YouTube, offering one’s thoughts on a social drama in the gaming
sphere, streaming gaming on Twitch (Gros, Wanner, Hackenholt,
Zawadzki, & Knautz, 2017), and producing news on game-related topics
such as updates or changes in the gaming industry. These content crea-
tors can be very influential, depending on their viewer/reader base. They
can be viewed as Instagram influencers of the gaming sphere – they are
offered sponsorships from game developers or publishers as well as
30THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
other product placement that is usually gaming-related. Similar to Alex-
ander’s (2018) civil sphere agents, these gaming sphere agents are the
moving force when it comes to moving social dramas to social crisis.
They are the communicative institutions (ibid.) of the gaming sphere.
When semiotic codes are triggered (ibid.), the gaming sphere agents ex-
ercise their power (influence) to investigate and expose practices used
by game developers or game publishers that threaten the sacred values
of civil society. These practices are then scrutinized as profane and re-
quire civil repair (ibid.). I will present two such cases of societalization
(ibid.), one successful and one not, in the fourth chapter.
31METHODOLOGY
3 Methodology
Having formulated a research question: “Why did the Battlefront II loot-
box controversy become a social crisis?” and chose a guiding theory, I
will now focus on the process of selection and creation of my dataset that
I have used for the analysis of the 2017 lootbox controversy. I will also
shortly describe the method of thick description and interpretative anal-
ysis I used during the creation of my lootbox societalization model and
interpretation of articles and hearings that I present in the following
chapter four, the societalization of lootboxes.
3.1 Data Selection and Data Collection
I have collected my analytical dataset in three ways. First, I have searched
the indexed internet using Google and Yahoo using the search words:
“lootbox controversy,” “lootbox crisis,” “ea battlefront lootboxes,” “loot-
boxes laws,” “gaming is gambling,” “are lootboxes gambling,” “lootboxes
gambling law,” etc. I will not list all the search word combinations as that
would over bloat this paragraph, and since I am not going for a truly ran-
dom search as I have to select one of the dozens of the same articles that
have been reposted on different sites. So, I have searched each of these
search words on both Google and Yahoo as separate search terms and
then selected the first twenty hits based on the relevance sorting algo-
rithm applied by these search engines. If one of these twenty articles was
a duplicate (the same article posted on multiple websites), I have used
the Crowd Tangle link checker6 – a chrome extension that searches all the
interactions (sharing, liking, commenting with hashtags) to social media
sites of a specific article (CrowdTangle, 2016). Using this extension, I was
able to determine the most shared article of all the duplicates, and that
article was added to my dataset. The second source of the online news
articles was the Twitter feed of Jason Schreier (and consequently, due to
the Twitter reactionary nature also Twitter feed from other journalists –
notably Jim Sterling and Michael Bell). I have chosen Schreier as he is
6 Widely spread tool for investigative journalists and other social scientists that are
working with the big data from social networks. Available for free on the Google
Chrome Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/crowdtangle-link-
checker/klakndphagmmfkpelfkgjbkimjihpmkh
32METHODOLOGY
covering the gaming industry since 2010. He is the author of Blood,
Sweat, and Pixels – book about game development using insider infor-
mation (Schreier, 2017c), and a reporter at Bloomberg News. Previously,
he spent eight years at Kotaku (Park, 2020). He has also covered games
for Wired and has contributed to outlets such as The New York Times or
The Onion News Network. He thus brings the perspective from the inside
of the companies (Schreier, 2017c) that were part of the lootbox contro-
versy as well as his commentary on the matter. I have selected all articles
that were posted there and covered the lootbox controversy, again deal-
ing with duplicates using the Chrome extension. Third, I will be sparsely
using the comments from the comment section under the selected online
news articles, mostly to illustrate certain attitudes or as a piece of anec-
dotal evidence. My final data set thus consists of sixty-seven online or
video articles and part of the full transcript from the “Oral evidence: Im-
mersive and addictive technologies, HC 1846” (see appendix A). I had se-
lected this oral evidence specifically as it was discussed in most of the
articles when it came out and referenced (specifically the part about
“surprise mechanics”) long after its initial release. There is also the ques-
tion of time as I did not do all the searches and collection in one month. I
have been working on this topic since 2017, and since that, I have been
collecting online news articles as I described at the beginning of this
chapter. This sadly hinders the replicability of the searches as the rele-
vance changes over time and the algorithm Google or Yahoo uses is not
public, but I believe that it helped me find the most relevant news articles
in the time when the events were actually happening rather than in ret-
rospective.
Having established the final dataset, I have ordered the articles
chronologically and created a timeline (see appendix B) with major
events that I have identified and that occurred during the process of so-
cietalization of the lootboxes. This timeline should also serve as a guide
while reading through chapter four. Based on this timeline, Alexander’s
(2018) theory of societalization, and my concept of the gaming sphere, I
have constructed the model of societalization of lootboxes that helps us
interpret the meanings of lootboxes and monetization in videogames and
how the civil sphere reacts to these meanings being shifted inside the
gaming sphere. Let me now briefly introduce the methods I used when
constructing my societalization model and interpreting the meanings of
lootboxes.
33METHODOLOGY
3.2 Thick Description and Interpretative Analysis
Let me first answer the question: Why cultural sociology? Following the
strong program (Alexander, 2004), I also treat culture as relatively au-
tonomous, and through this paradigm, I can look at the “gaming cultures”
and see gaming as an autonomous entity that shapes the cultural mean-
ings (in my case, the meanings of lootboxes). I have established in the
theory chapter that the predominant paradigm when researching gam-
ing is the sociology of culture, with the exception of the work of Shaw
(2010) or more quantitative approaches when it comes to politics and
psychology outlooks. I have chosen the cultural-sociological approach so
I can explore the inner meanings, ideas, and symbolic processes that
have an independent effect on social institutions as well as politics (Al-
exander 2004). This approach is underutilized when it comes to the re-
search of gaming, and one of my main goals is thus to bring this cultural
perspective of the strong program together with Shaw (2010) and to
help strengthen the cultural-sociological paradigm when it comes to re-
searching gaming. I believe, together with Alexander (2004) and Shaw
(2010), that cultural sociology can help us produce new social
knowledge (in the forms of meanings) that would elude us if we would
stick to the reductionist sociology of culture – treating culture as a de-
pendent variable. When talking about the strong program in cultural so-
ciology, I must also address one of the pillars of the strong program (Al-
exander 2004) – the thick description.
Thick Description was first introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his chapter
The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing in 1949 (Ryle,
2009). Ryle (2009) defines thick description as the description that adds
the context to behavior as opposed to the thin description, which in-
cludes only the surface-level observation of said behavior. Ryle’s (2009)
example with twitching and winking an eye clearly distinguishes thick
and thin description: Thin description describes the eye as contracting
eyelids. The thick description explains the gesture as either winking,
fake-winking, parody, or involuntary action. The thick description pro-
vides the context and meanings we need to distinguish these different
types of “twitching eyelids,” same as I need the thick description to dis-
tinguish different meanings of lootboxes – which are not as thin as just a
box full of loot. Following Ryle’s work, Clifford Geertz (1973) re-popular-
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