While video games might be the home of the loot box, they’re far from the only industry where they’re present. So let's look at some dark patterns in the luxury fashion industry.

Are loot boxes a dark pattern?

Dark patterns are an element of design which attempts to make a user take actions against their own interest but in the interests of the designer. A classic example is small text for terms and conditions, disincentivizing users from reading terms which they might not agree to if they were aware of them.

Loot boxes are a dark pattern as they’re an attempt to make users spend more for items than they otherwise would. Users want to spend as little as possible, designers want users to spend as much as possible. While further dark patterns are employed to make loot boxes more effective, the core of their function is obfuscating value through a gamble.

Hermès wishlists

For those not familiar, Hermès is a luxury fashion brand most famous for selling Birkin Bags. These bags are so expensive that straps cost hundreds of pounds on their own, with around £25,000 pounds being an expected price. But the system for actually buying a bag is what's of interest to us here.

You can’t just go and buy a new bag from Hermès, so how do you get one? 

(keep track of the dark patterns you notice as we go)

Step 1. Create your “wishlist”, basically tell Hermès which of this season’s bags you’d like to buy.

Step 2. Wait.

Step 3. You may be offered the opportunity to buy a specific bag, this bag is not guaranteed to be a bag from your wishlist. If you turn down the bag you may never be offered the opportunity to buy a bag again.

This is kind of a loot box, right? Like sure, you get to see the contents before buying, but if you’ve waited months and may never be offered a bag again if you turn this one down, you’re probably buying that bag right? Getting a bag you don’t want also incentivises you to stay signed up, hoping you might be offered your wishlist bag in future (and probably buying more bags along the way)

Selkie Surprise bags 

For an even more direct example of a loot box, there are the Selkie surprise bags. 

Surprise bags exist at a number of different price points and contain a different number of items based on price (which ranges from about $75 to $250).About once per year, a limited number of these will go on sale at a specific time, again creating a FOMO environment.

The website proudly proclaims “Non-returnable, Non-refundable, No exceptions”, but does at least allow buyers some measure of repeat protection (although even this is not guaranteed). 

Notable design features

Variable pricing

When you sign-up to buy either the Hermès or the Selkie, you don’t actually know how much the final item will cost. In Selkie’s case this ranges based on the type of items a person gets, in Hermès’s case due to differences between bag prices. 

This probably leads to people spending more, in Hermès case due to the huge range in bag prices, in Selkie’s case because people will likely expect the lowest price for a surprise bag but still pay the higher price due to sunk cost.

Seasons and FOMO

A double whammy of FOMO (fear of missing out) is created by seasons. Items are only available for a limited time, and only “in” for less. These seasons are also of unknown length, you can’t just wait if you’re not sure, because the collection might be gone tomorrow. This creates a pressure to buy and make snap decisions, afterall you don’t want to miss out.

Primark used to be the king of this in the UK, randomly cycling stock with no ability for online ordering.

“Investments”

Luxury fashion is also increasingly framed as investments, the idea that you might be able to sell a bag in future (or immediately) for profit. With Hermès bags sometimes reselling for tens of thousands of pounds on the secondary market. This creates the ability to “cash-out” which those who have followed CS:GO skin gambling will be familiar with.

Hermès is in part responsible for this, afterall a finding a bag being resold may be your only chance to get the exact bag you want, and certainly benefits by the inflated valuations allowing them to charge more themselves and attract more customers who are interested purely in investment. It also paradoxically makes the bags seem more affordable: afterall you’re not spending £25,000 on a bag, once you’ve sold it on you might have only really spent a few £100 or even made some money. 

What's the problem?

So this is a bit manipulative, but is this actually a problem?

Much of the current concern around loot boxes focuses on them as a gateway to potential problem gambling, and while this makes sense as a tactic for regulation (convincing law makers that something is bad because it leads to something which is already understood to be bad is an easier hill to climb), I don’t think there's that kind of risk in this case.

To me the harm here is that a group with power (companies) are expanding control over a group without power (people), as part of a wider trend of manipulation of value by companies, from adaptive pricing to subscription models.  

At the moment Hermès and Selkie are only not exploitative because they are slow, you might wait years to be offered a wishlist bag and Selkie drops happen only every few months, and this certainly does remove some of the viciousness seen in the instant purchase loops of games. But there's no guarantee they’ll stay that way (or that some fast fashion brand won’t just copy the tactic)

(There's also a social performance aspect, which I’ve not touched on here, on platforms like Tiktok of unboxing and live reacting which mirrors performances seen around loot box opening on Twitch.)

(This also might be used to resist external regulation by both fashion and the games industry, each pointing to the other and saying “They do it too, so it's fine and normal”, just like the comparison we saw EA make between loot boxes and Kinder Eggs)

(Fashion brands are also more than happy to jump on board with crypto and NFTs, which are themselves a gambling pyramid scheme)

Further reading:

Dark Patterns in the Design of Games

José P Zagal, Staffan Björk, Chris Lewis.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1043332&dswid=8519

Resale price tracking for Birkin bags:

https://baguseek.com/designers/hermes/model/birkin/report

(and some excellently presented graphs)

Paying for loot boxes is linked to problem gambling, regardless of specific features like cash-out and pay-to-win

By David Zendle, Paul Cairns, Herbie Barnett, Cade McCall

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219302468

(Contains a useful breakdown of features which are sometimes surround loot boxes, such as the ability to cash out or near misses)

Loot Boxes: Virtual Kinder Eggs or Casinos for Kids?

By Dylan Gaffney

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/announcement/view/545

The Case for Uniform Loot Box Regulation: A New Classification Typology and Reform Agenda 

By Stephanie Derrington Shaun Star, Sarah J. Kelly

https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/17/

Opening Pandora’s Loot Box: Weak Links Between Gambling and Loot Box Expenditure in China, and Player Opinions on Probability Disclosures and Pity-Timers

By Leon Y. Xiao, Tullia C. Fraser &, Philip W. S. Newall 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-022-10148-0

(A look at the relationship between loot box expenditure and problem gambling which drives current regulatory efforts)

Why microtransactions may not necessarily be bad: a criticism of the consequentialist evaluation of video game monetisation

By Elena Petrovskaya

https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/1361/1361

(Collates a number of ethical lenses on loot box creation, and particularly explores a consequentialist approach. This approach is somewhat embedded in the idea of dark patterns themselves)