The last few months of 2017 has one of the easiest PLEASE STOP! trends in videogames that I can remember. It is becoming clearer and clearer that loot boxes are a problem. Their permutations are excessive and have infiltrated games regardless of their genre, whether they impact single player or multiplayer, or the game's upfront cost. The worst part about the rise of loot boxes is arguably how this trend is likely to continue. After all, there is money to be made. Perhaps the uproar will prevent some developers from implementing them, but the sad truth is more games will likely have them in 2018 and beyond. While we can talk about this until everyone passes out, I actually want to talk about something else today. I have a confession to make. I'm part of the problem. I buy (a lot of) loot boxes. Specifically for one of my all-time favorite games, Overwatch.

I don't want to say how much exactly I've spent on Overwatch over the course of its lifetime. What I will say is Overwatch is easily the most money I have spent on any videogame in my entire life, including some games like Persona 5, which I own three copies of (as for why that is, well, that's for another time). For starters, I bought the standard edition for the PC and later got a copy of it for the PS4 shortly after the game launched in 2016. Since then, there have been a total of eight seasonal events, each containing their own loot boxes with unique costumes, voice lines, victory poses, and so on. Out of those eight events, I have bought loot boxes, on the PC, for all eight of them.

Before I go too deep on these loot boxes, it is worth saying that these are entirely optional. If you buy Overwatch, you get all of the heroes, maps, modes, and updates for free. If you were to pick up the game during a sale for $20, you can play Overwatch's online multiplayer for free, forever. There's no stamina, XP bonuses, coin doublers, or what have you. When you open up a loot box, the only things that will pop out are cosmetic items which have no affect on the game itself. With that in mind, it does raise the question, why would anybody spend money on something they don't need? Well, that's because some of those cosmetics are really great.

I mean, look at this!

In addition to Overwatch being an incredibly fun game to play, it is oozing with personality and style. Having a character's aesthetic change over time builds on that foundation. In some ways, customizing a hero's skin, voice lines, and emotes can feel like a game of dress up. Having Doomfist say, "Go and sit down", and watch the other players sit down is a goofy thing that I haven't really experienced in a game before. Having Mercy say "You're welcome" after Genji says "Thanks" for a resurrection is a fun throwaway bit of roleplaying. Whenever I encounter a waiting room that has an arcade cabinet, I go up to it, use D.Va's Game On emote, which makes her sit down and start playing a shoot em up, to make it seem like she is actually playing that arcade game. Having a game where you can mess around and show off in front of thousands of other players who are also doing the same thing back at you helps make Overwatch feel like a more lively experience.

But there's no denying there is a price for this sort of play. If you play Overwatch everyday, you will rack up gold to buy the things you want or you may get lucky and open a random crate that has that one skin you have to have. Or, you can spend real money, roll the dice, and hope you get the stuff you want through brute force. This year, I could have easily bought multiple games on my Steam wishlist if I didn't spend any money on Overwatch. With the seasonal event that just ended--Overwatch's second Halloween event--I bought a couple of last minute loot boxes, after I already bought plenty of loot boxes on the first day of the event, to see if I could get Symmetra's Dragon skin without using my gold. Of course the Dragon skin didn't drop from any of those paid loot boxes either, and I ended up using my gold anyways.

About half of the time, I get lucky. I opened up Mercy's Witch skin fairly early on last year and didn't have to sweat bullets about that. During Overwatch's first anniversary event, I ended up with all of the dance emotes I cared about. As for the other half, there's that one thing that got away. One of my early favorite characters in Overwatch was Lúcio. Despite how he was my most played character, I didn't really care for any of his skins. The hockey skins were pretty decent, but the deadmau5-esque DJ outfit didn't do anything for me. That's why I was itching to have his Summer Games skin, which dressed him up as a soccer player. Despite how Overwatch was more or less the only game I was playing at the time and how I went back multiple times to buy loot boxes to try and earn that skin, I was unable to get it. This moment particularly stung for me, because at the time there wasn't a lot of skins we had to work with to express ourselves.

At this point, I have probably done every dumb loot box purchase there is. Buying loot boxes specifically to try and find one item. Buying back-to-back loot boxes, when I didn't get anything good out of the first set. Buying just a couple of loot boxes (which isn't really worth it, because you can just spend an afternoon playing the game and get the same number of boxes). Buying way too many loot boxes (which isn't really worth it either, because they're just cosmetics and I could have easily put that money towards something more tangible). And still, I bought those loot boxes. Every single one of those poor purchasing decisions is based on a combination of wanting something, having the ability to try and get that item again and again, and not knowing when to say enough.

Reflecting on my past decisions to buy those loot boxes, the thing that sticks out to me the most is how easy it is to forget about some of those purchases. Somewhere out there, there is someone who has spent thousands of dollars opening Overwatch loot crates. Thankfully I have not gone that far. There are some seasonal events where I buy one set of loot boxes and I'm done. Sometimes I buy a few smaller sized quantities. However far down the rabbit hole I go or however I spread out those loot boxes, my purchases have been within my means and not outrageously high. I knew I spent money on Overwatch's loot boxes, but it's not that much, right? Well, a few weeks ago when I decided to total up how much money I have spent on Overwatch, I was still shocked by how much I spent.

I think the source of my surprise is based on how I primarily look back at the past two or three events, and nothing that came beforehand. I can recall how I bought a couple of loot boxes for the 2017 Summer Games event and was done fairly early. What's more difficult is remembering how much I spent last year during the 2016 Summer Games. These purchases are infrequent enough that they don't tally up in my head. Likewise, I know I throw a few dollars at certain mobile free-to-play games, but I can't tell you off the top of my head how much or how often I do so. On the other hand, I know exactly how much I spend for Hulu each month, since that is one of my bills that also remains more or less consistent. With expenses like loot boxes, the only way I and a bunch of other people will ever find out how much money they're wasting is if they open up a calculator and start going through their old invoices.

In terms of what playing over 300 hours of Overwatch and buying X number of loot boxes looks like, it looks something like this:

At this point, I have a majority of the items in the game. There's no doubt buying loot boxes helped round out my collection. Despite how I obtained plenty of skins and emotes from them, looking at my overall collection makes me think I have reached the height of my loot box buying days. I'm not going to lie, when the next Overwatch seasonal event launches, I will probably buy some more loot boxes. However, the volume and frequency that I do so will start to decrease simply because I have enough at this point.

While there is an appeal to get the new thing and dress up for a particular event (i.e. putting on your Halloween costume for the Halloween event), I am still primarily interested in having stuff to express myself. For over a year now, Mercy has only worn her Witch costume, because that is still my favorite Mercy skin. Despite obtaining the two latest Mei skins, she is still wearing her Chinese New Year outfit, Chang'e, because I like that one more. Likewise, everybody has their highlight intro, everybody has at least a couple of emotes, and they are all equipped with my favorite voice lines. In some regard, Blizzard has done their job too well. Out of the current roster of 25 characters, everybody accentuated just right for me. Sure, at some point there will be a new Mercy's Witch or Symmetra's Dragon skin equivalent for me, but having unlocked so many things for these characters already, it will only become harder and harder to win me over like that.

In this past--on this very website even--I have stated that the solution to the loot box problem was to stop buying them. If you don't support the idea of them, just don't buy them. If you feel like it will spoil a game's single player or turn its multiplayer into a pay-to-win game, don't waste your time and money on that. A part of this is how we live in an age where there is no shortage of great games coming out in 2017 and we have seemingly limitless access to different types of games, both old and new. Sure, more games are adopting loot boxes, but there are countless others that don't rely on them.

On paper, this is still my answer to loot boxes. However, lately I have been thinking about people who have to make these decisions. It is easy to say "Don't play games that have loot boxes" as a statement, but there's also that Star Wars fan who just wants to play the new Star Wars game. Yeah, there are countless games people can play instead, but sometimes people just want to play the new basketball game or the new great looking racing game. I've also been thinking more about what people like Heather Alexandra write with regards to how loot boxes exploit emotionally vulnerable people and there is a much larger human issue that goes beyond how a game's multiplayer may be unbalanced. While I had the money to buy those Overwatch loot boxes, there are plenty of people out there who spent money on those items who have less disposable income or are in debt or are having trouble making ends meet.

There's no doubt loot boxes are becoming more of a problem for videogames and I know I am a part of the problem. Looking back on the past 18 months, I don't want to say I regret purchasing those loot boxes. The main reason is because it is easy to say so. Yes, you shouldn't buy loot boxes. Yeah, if I could just spend $5 on each individual skin I wanted, that would be a better. And of course this is all for a bunch of cosmetic items I absolutely don't need. But the fact remains I enjoy Overwatch more than a lot of videogames. Despite how historic 2017 has been for videogames, I still spend a decent amount of my time playing Overwatch instead of the dozen other great games that came out this year. And I still like playing dress up with my action figures. I wish I spent less money on loot boxes for Overwatch, but I'm not going to lie; I still like having those skins.