Eggs tick a lot of boxes for being lootboxes, but they miss the (in my opinion) largest factor to match: you can't buy them. If you can't buy the lootbox, you can't just tickle that gambling center of the brain to the business's benefit. Now, you can buy incubators, which are needed to hatch multiple eggs, but the 'best' eggs still need the most distance walked to hatch. I won't call their monetization completely scum-free, nor will I defend actual loot boxes, or especially Kotaku, but I think they fall short of being loot boxes.
The article says that the incubators are limited use items rather than permanent upgrades to your account, so if people are inundated with more eggs than they could ever hatch it could reasonably be described as a loot box system - the same way that TF2 gave everyone free crates but sold keys for real money.
Indeed, but you still have to walk with them, and can only have a certain number of eggs at a time anyway: an aggressively low 9. The gambling section of the brain can't really get tickled, unless someone enjoys marathons.
Eggs tick a lot of boxes for being lootboxes, but they miss the (in my opinion) largest factor to match: you can't buy them. If you can't buy the lootbox, you can't just tickle that gambling center of the brain to the business's benefit. Now, you can buy incubators, which are needed to hatch multiple eggs, but the 'best' eggs still need the most distance walked to hatch. I won't call their monetization completely scum-free, nor will I defend actual loot boxes, or especially Kotaku, but I think they fall short of being loot boxes.
The article says that the incubators are limited use items rather than permanent upgrades to your account, so if people are inundated with more eggs than they could ever hatch it could reasonably be described as a loot box system - the same way that TF2 gave everyone free crates but sold keys for real money.
Indeed, but you still have to walk with them, and can only have a certain number of eggs at a time anyway: an aggressively low 9. The gambling section of the brain can't really get tickled, unless someone enjoys marathons.
I spent thousands of hours clearing the same dungeons in MMOs to get good drops. It's hooking into the same thing gambling does, intermittent reward.
If you're constantly walking 10km in order to hatch the eggs, though, arguably you're not paying a gambling addiction, you're paying a gym membership.