The Loot Box Lab Mapping Policy vs Practice - Leon Xiao | grokludo 8

Leon Xiao is an Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. After doing his PhD in loot boxes, he's released papers charting the loot box regulation landscape, and measuring compliance.

Coverage of his work has been picked up by mainstream media such as the BBC and the Guardian, and GamesIndustry.biz publishes his yearly loot box state of play report.

Today, Leon gives us a zoomed out view of loot box research.

Make sure to watch till the end if you want a comical example of compliance when it comes to disclosing loot box odds.

In the intro I mention Leon's thesis, which comprehensively covers loot box regulation and compliance. You can find that here.

The last Loot Box State of Play can be found here.

Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
00:48 - Leon Xiao's program
03:47 - Gaming Disorder and older adults
07:30 - What do we know for sure about loot boxes?
11:30 - Loot box movements to be aware of in 2025
18:10 - Low compliance to industry self-regulation
32:43 - Gambling aesthetics vs gambling mechanics
50:26 - "The science isn't in yet"
56:20 - What could researchers do with industry data?
1:04:42 - Comically obtuse disclosure of loot box odds
1:08:32 - Should we all complain to regulators?

There are plenty of other things Leon and I could talk about, so we'll have to get him back again sometime.

Thank you all for supporting grokludo! Up next we've got some more interviews with academics studying loot boxes, as well as a chat with industry legend Raph Koster, whose new game Stars Reach is making interesting use of 3D cellular automata.

Stay tuned!