10 Video Games That Had A Bigger Impact Than You Realise
1. Team Fortress 2 Opened Up Pandora's Loot Box
Valve's legendary multiplayer FPS Team Fortress 2 was released in 2007 to major acclaim, but it made its true mark on the gaming industry when it went free-to-play in 2010.
At this point the game became supported by microtransactions, with players able to shell out real-world cash to unlock Mann Co. Supply Crates. That is to say, Team Fortress 2 popularised the modern loot box system as we know it.
Though it wasn't the first game to include randomised monetisation mechanics, Team Fortress 2 is the one that popularised it on a mammoth scale by proving its huge commercial viability.
The game's revenues grew twelve-fold after it went free-to-play, and at the time there was little pushback against the presence of loot boxes: the items were cosmetic, didn't affect gameplay, and could be grinded out in-game.
But Team Fortress 2 did nevertheless open Pandora's box, with loot boxes becoming increasingly ubiquitous in games of all genres in the years that followed, in many cases deployed in nefarious ways intended to exploit players' compulsions in order to part them with their money.
Most infamously Star Wars Battlefront II was ripped to shreds upon release for EA's planned predatory loot box mechanics, enough that numerous governments around the world even began investigating the legality of such practises.
Despite this, loot boxes and similar monetisation systems remain massively profitable for publishers, and so it's highly unlikely they'll ever go away. And in terms of mainstream western gaming, it all began with Team Fortress 2.