It's this time of the year again. The time to untangle your Christmas lights, dust off the boxes full of ornaments, and to make list upon list of things that have to be bought, be it presents or food. The Holiday Spirit sweeping half the world doesn't avoid video games, either.

Holiday-themes by now are an integral part of gaming, whether we like it or not and all your MMOs and MOBAs are probably going to observe it in some way.

But the question is: what is at the core of games doing winter events? Let's take a look at some of the possible Clauses causes. Of course the specifics may be very different from game to game, so we aren't even going to try and cover them all.

Following the tradition

For the Ho-Ho-Horde!
Source: wowhead.com

It's not very easy to put a finger on when exactly the holiday events started, but even if it was just ten years ago it's easily enough time to accustom players that it's a given.

And as People Can Fly discovered in their Bulletstorm closed beta, players are creatures of habit, and it isn't a good idea to attempt changing it. And in this case, who could blame them? Winter events are often even more fun than the equally obligatory Halloween specials. From the role-player's standpoint it's entertaining to see how a given universe handles non-denominational Winter holidays.
The WoWHearthstone Winter Veil gives us Greatfather Winter and Great-father Winter (don't mistake the two, one is a jolly dwarf, the other a jolly orc).

In Final Fantasy XIV you have a Starlight Celebration, which is a good excuse for turning the CoolCute knob to its "Christmas" setting. Even the hardly jolly Secret World found a way to have a Winter event, in a suitably... devilish way with their Krampusnacht. For those who don't know: Krampus is essentially Santa if he turned to the Dark Side.

And that's just counting some of the more recent and still active  MMOs, while Christmas-related specials for years have appeared in single player games as well, for instance in Peter Molyneux's 2002 game Black & White.

The point is, a generation of gamers got used to having SOMETHING special come to their favorite online (or otherwise, as mentioned above) game. And we will not be denied our sweet, sweet Christmas loot. Which brings us to another point, sort of.

Boosting player activity

2015 Edition of
Marvel Heroes winter event
Source: marvelheroes.com

If there's loot, there're drop rates, as the old saying goes. A little less known saying is "When there're drop rates, there's grind". Either way, having some season-exclusive loot is a great way to draw players in, even those who play only occasionally. Well, now you know the specific "occasion".

Take a game like Marvel Heroes (currently with a 2016 subtitle). On top of their pretty regular event rotation (Cosmic Chaos, Operation OMEGA etc.) they do their best to do something Special for Halloween and Christmas. Special buffs giving loot explosion, increased drop rates for in-game currency, festive visual effects etc.

The crowned king of MMORPGs, World of Warcraft does this as well, with even more panache. Grindable loot and achievements during the "Winter Veil" and jolly quests from a bearded orc and an extra-bearded dwarf are designed to drag lazy players back in to work hard for those presents, as intended!

Winter microtransaction wonderland

Now that's the stuff, the favorite topic for the more cynical players. Likely not without merit, either, depending on the game. Especially the Free-to-Play games tend to be guilty of this, giving users an option to get boosted drop rates, better experience gain or exclusive festive skins for a small price. And it's fair, F2P games still need to earn money somehow, as long as it doesn't upset the balance too hard.

Winter-season events are a treasure trove of new potential items to put in the in-game store, or at least a great chance to make some carefully-planned discounts. Because who doesn't get swept up in a Christmas shopping craze?

Feeling festive

To offset the harsh reality that games are supposed to make money, let's get idealistic for a second. It isn't very unlikely that the special winter events around this season are created to bring some of the good cheer into the games as well. If an unforgiving shooter like Operation Flashpoint could have Christmas trees to show up in-game, why can't WoW? Or any other game? Sure, the increased profits and activity stats don't hurt, but these games are usually made by people. People who love their work, usually, who have their own reasons to get festive in December. If it means snow in the main game hub and candy cane loot, there's nothing wrong with that.

Christmas comes to Champions Online Source: arcgames.com

Especially since there are enough holidays to celebrate. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, for one reason or another, the time of the year we know as December has holidays for more than just one culture. The more the merrier!

Better watch out, winter events are coming to town

If you play online, you better get your warm jacket, scarf and a warm cocoa mug ready, because it's very likely there will be some festivity present in your game of choice. Blizzard's WoW, HotS and Hearthstone for instance are celebrating the Winter Veil between December 14 and January 4. Overwatch isn't resting on the laurels either. If you need some festivity in your gaming life you can always treat yourself and buy some new games, a good gaming Christmas Sale isn't hard to come by, G2A Christmas Sale is but one of many that come to mind.

So what is it going to be? Are you going to be a Grinch and try to rip the Christmas cheer from online gaming, or do you have your Santa hat already on?