Talk:Loot box

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 20 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): TylerHines.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:15, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Who invented loot boxes?
The article currently states that Valve first came up with the idea in 2010, but we don't have a citation for that. I'm confident that TF2 was the first AAA game to feature them but I've no idea about what may have happened before then in the mobile market. --Tom Edwards (talk) 12:57, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't think of any game that did loot boxes (the way one would think of them) before TF2. We'd need a reliable source (in fact, multiple, since this is an extraordinary claim) for this. I'm sure there's a mobile game or two that did sort of similar stuff, like "buy a mystery box" IAP or something. But, again, doesn't really matter if there's a reliable source to say that TF2 did it. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:13, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

There is an earlier loot box mechanic presented in 2007's UEFA game made by EA in form of Ultimate Team card packs or booster packs. In that particular case card packs can not be obtained by real world money purchase, which is probably the reason it went under the radar. The mechanic was later reused in 2009 FIFA with packs purchasable via micro-transactions .OkbVinyl (talk) 12:28, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The first game that had loot boxes as a core part of the game was PoxNora   released in 2006. There are lots of articles and press releases that talk about the game coming out, and that you could buy packs for the game, rarity, in-game currencies, all the things we talk about in terms of what loot boxes are. The website Penny Arcade likened the approach to physical collectable card games at the time.


 * Note -- I'm new to editing Wikipedia, so apologies for not writing this here first! I cant tell if im supposed to pull the text I want to include here, or get a consensus and then update the page. Geddenator (talk) 19:29, 7 February 2022 (UTC)


 * None of those sources "say" loot boxes though. Paxnora may have been one of the first digital CCGs (it was not the first) and those definitely had booster pack mechanics, but loot boxes are not considered the same. You are making original research claims that it is loot boxes here that we need reliable third party sources to express instead. --M asem (t) 20:11, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Pretty much what Masem said. We can't retroactively describe things with contemporary terms and meanings without sources. These sources clearly call these purchases "booster packs" and we cannot say these were loot boxes per WP:SYNTH. — HELL KNOWZ ∣ TALK 20:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "Loot Box" vs "Booster Pack" vs "Gachapon Ticket" vs "Treasure Box" -- that seems like a distinction without a difference? esp. in the context of history. ZT called their content "Treasure Boxes". Hearthstone also calls them 'booster packs'. The are mechanically identical. -- That said that specific distinction could be made in the summary -- I think indexing how they were referenced over time has value. Also, PoxNora was specifically not a CCG, its more like a digital tabletop game (like warhammer). Geddenator (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That's synthesis. We require at least ONE source that explicitly discusses PoxNora as an early example of loot boxes. WP:VG/S's custom search has exactly ONE result of the search PoxNora "lootbox", and it's a user's comment not part of the article in question. So there's zero reliable sourcing for this. -- ferret (talk) 23:56, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * And its not like PaxNora was some unknown game that we're only now digging up in the discussion of loot boxes. The game comes up frequently in searches by itself, but not about loot boxes. The reason I think its not being lumped into loot boxes is that you are collecting "cards" (not explicitly cards, but fundamental part of what you arrange and set up between games) rather than cosmetics. And while there many similarities of booster packs and loot boxes, for some reason the discussions on loot boxes tend to ignore booster pack mechanics as an essential part of the game. Why, I dont' know. --M asem (t) 02:00, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I see, so even tho its a "natural conclusion", it has to explicitly stated as such in that literal term. Even tho ZT never called their content a "loot box", someone else did, even if it was a decade later. So if/when an RS puts together the exact same information here and writes about it, and uses the literal phrase 'loot box', then it would be valid to cite. Understood. Also thanks for being patient, im new to this. Its frustrating not being able to add the information, but I understand the reasoning. Geddenator (talk) 05:36, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "So if/when an RS puts together the exact same information here and writes about it, and uses the literal phrase 'loot box', then it would be valid to cite."
 * Pretty much, yeah. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:19, 8 February 2022 (UTC)