The Hidden Evil Of The Microtransaction

Uh oh, I know you guys are going to have an opinion on this one. I like what this guy is saying, it's just too bad the powers that be will never listen.

Many, not all, business and marketing characters I've met are so focused on the bottom line they cannot see the product. Now in some cases, this is just greed but more often they are not gamers, they do not partake in the craft nor enjoy its fruits.

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CCP games, maker of Eve Online, seems to be deep in the trenches on this one with a large core of their steady player base up in arms over proposed micro-transactions being implemented. The article is right on in regards to MTX being a good thing if used carefully, appropriately, and in moderation. However, it seems companies for the most part just cant rap their heads around the idea that nickle and dimming the hell out of their player base at the cost of content/game play is a bad thing. Should be interesting to see if Eve Online actually sees the potentially impending mass exodus (provided empty threats were not made and CCP doesn't drop the ball).

I interviewed with a game company last year whose flagship product is a free-to-play MMORPG, supported by - you guessed it - microtransactions. The nominal game balance is horribly disrupted by the presence of super-powerful items that can only be purchased in the cash shop, leading to the pejorative moniker of "free-to-play, but pay-to-win."

The company is fairly small, and my interview lasted all day, so I got to meet just about everyone - CEO, COO, CFO, Director of Marketing, Director of Product Development, Director of Customer Service, etc etc.

The TLR version? Never before have I heard the word "monetize" uttered so many times in a single day by so many different people.

I asked a few of the folks interviewing me if they played the games that they made, if they enjoyed them. Most gave me non-committal deflection answers about being busy, etc. The Director of Marketing did give me a sheepish grin and admitted that he'd tried playing, but found the whole experience terribly repetitive and unfun. I give major props to this particular fellow for his honesty, at least.

Microtransactions might have no latent moral value of "good" or "bad," but the way that they're implemented in the game industry, they're all bad. They're designed to extract money from people who have no impulse control. I refuse to play games that utilize microtransactions, which sadly means that my options dwindle with each passing year. No biggie though, I still have my lovely SNES emulator.

And by the way, the author of the post is a woman - "Claire Blackshaw."

Though I have met plenty of folks in MMOs whose avatars are of the opposite sex. Don't know what it is about MMORPGs that makes middle-aged male professionals want their in-game characters to resemble 21-year old elf girls, .

r00t61 said:

Microtransactions might have no latent moral value of "good" or "bad," but the way that they're implemented in the game industry, they're all bad. They're designed to extract money from people who have no impulse control.

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This really is what it is about. You know, I don't care how much shit is offered out there, I don't have to buy it. I'm in one of those games right now, and I haven't bought anything in the more than year plus I've been playing it.

I never thought the offering was bad. If they make it a requirement then you can quit. This is exactly why I've never played WoW. It's not that it doesn't have value or that they don't update it or anything like that. It's that I choose to not support a subscription model. I don't care how OMGMFA it is.

I've recently got into APB: Reloaded which is a free-to-play, MTX game. When I first started off I would get smoked by people with weapons with a gold icon (purchased) so I instantly thought "Fucking, pay to win players". Few months later, I find that it's not those who pay to win, I just really sucked. The weapons you can buy don't really give you that much of a lead over those who don't pay. The people who don't pay can achieve almost the same weapons but you have to work to unlock them. Paying to win really is just paying so I don't have to work towards this same gun.

On the other side of this, I'm baffled by people paying upwards to $60 to permanently unlock a weapon because sooner or later you'll reach a point where you'll have the same weapon unlocked in the game from raising in rank making your purchase pretty much worthless.

Lotro and DDO pull it off well I feel. Too many games use the 'pay-to-win' model mentioned earlier and this is not something I can tolerate.

Tell me something I don't already know. Micro-transactions are pure evil.

So far League of Legends has been doing it pretty decently. You can pay for champions by purchasing RP points or unlock them with IP points gained from playing games. Skins are the only thing you have to buy with RP (money) only, aside from a name change.Everything that effects gameplay can be purchase by playing.

r00t61 said:

Microtransactions might have no latent moral value of "good" or "bad," but the way that they're implemented in the game industry, they're all bad. They're designed to extract money from people who have no impulse control.

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What products are not designed to extract mone from people with no impluse control?

rudy said:

What products are not designed to extract mone from people with no impluse control?

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School lunches. Electricity. Gasoline.
Things that are of a neccesity.

BTW: What kid of cell phone plan do YOU have? (I feel like those bastards are more greedy than ANY game company executive).

Samson4EiT said:

So far League of Legends has been doing it pretty decently. You can pay for champions by purchasing RP points or unlock them with IP points gained from playing games. Skins are the only thing you have to buy with RP (money) only, aside from a name change.Everything that effects gameplay can be purchase by playing.

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This.

I play League of Legends a lot, but lately it seems to be going downhill, Riot isn't exactly the best company out there when it comes to patches and server stability, and lately they seem more interested in "monetizing" LoL than ever before.

They rushed out one of the latest champions, Yorick, before he was even really playtested and that resulted in him being horribly underpowered, released with gamebreaking bugs (one bug would be that when he died, he ressurected and could be killed, then res, then killed over and over).

Free-to-play DEFINITELY comes at a price.

Once Dota 2 comes out, LoL will probably go down really fast because of all this crap Riot games is putting out. They have promised us cheaper champions and new maps, and they haven't delivered on either. So, once Valve puts out Dota 2, that's the death knell for LoL, it seems like lately all they are interested in is the biggest cash grab they can get before then, otherwise that ship will have sailed.

Well exactly almost nothing except the bare necessities. I have an EVO 3D. And yes cell phone companies are crazy but once again just as with gaming it is only because people put up with it. Verizon charges more than anyone yet they are the largest carrier. At the end of the day you decide if something is worth paying for or not. Me personally I wont put up with verizon. I don't pay for microtransactions but I will play F2P games so long as people do not have too much of an advantage over me. In all honestly I will play any game with any price structure so long as I like the game enough. I realize companies need money in order to operate. No consoles for me either.

I personally do not like the F2P or heavily subsidized business models but I have come to accept that most Americans fall for that scam and if I want to interact with most Americans I will need play along with the scam as well. Look around you almost everything you buy that gets popular is setup such that the company takes a loss or gives something away or maybe just does not make hardly any money on the initial product. Then they get you into the system and milk you for lots of money. Consoles are all like this with games and accessories heavily over priced and eventually the console is useless out dated hardware being sold for massive profit, cell phones on contracts, printers with ink, cable, dsl with low intro prices and deals and later price hikes. Even automobiles are like this now with much of the money being made on warranty and service at the dealer. Shit even the gas station runs like this they make almost no money on gas but they jack you if you buy a pop. It seems like Americans just do not care to calculate the out the door price they are just looking at flash sale in front of them or low barrier to entry.

r00t61 said:

I interviewed with a game company last year whose flagship product is a free-to-play MMORPG

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Wasn't something called "Perfect World" was it? Some guy from them contacted me looking for modders to recruit into their project's payroll, for which I told him I wasn't interested since I already have too much stuff to do... plus I have no interest in working on an MMORPG anyway, among other things. I was wondering how their "free to play" model could work. Pay to win... God I hate that.

Seems to eventually always affect the games I decide to play. Start out and everything seems fine, then eventually you get to where it's incredibly slow gain without paying. Or you have to play an incredible amount of time to get what you need to move on.

Forsaken Worlds - few levels in and you start feeling like you need to buy stuff, I refuse to do so.
Vindictus - Incredibly slow leveling and repeating the same levels way too often to move on.
EQ2 - Annoying popups mostly, I played about two days until I started reading what those popups gave you and saw that I had 10 levels left then I would be "stuck" ...at least the way I understood it.
Global Agenda - I paid for this game, but they were annoying about it when I went back after they were F2P.

Im sure there's plenty more, not one of them has struck me as a good way to keep me playing. I'd rather buy a box outright or pay a monthly fee than be berated to buy more things all the time.

It's hidden?

I think team fortress 2 has been doing a good job with moving to a free to play model. I have no desire to purchase items in the game, but the option exists for those with cash to spare. I think this is what developers need to strive for. Maybe I just love TF2 too much. I play LOL too, but I think the game is lacking some good development, like more maps...

Microtransactions are awesome if implemented sensibly. Most adults don't have the time to play a game for 40 hours a week to grind for gear or status or whatever. Most adults are also willing to pay for entertainment.

Microtransactions address a very real customer demand. All that needs to be done is implement them in such a way that MT skips time rather than give an overpowering advantage.

Why did I feel like I was doing my taxes while reading that article?

There is something special about a solid single player release without needing to go and buy something else to complete the game.

Obviously I have no problem with MTX for non game play items, hats, pants etc (aka no stats, stat'ed items should be considered "gameplay"

For gameplay items, I think its ok if they cover up to %75 of endgame... meaning if a game has 100 char levels... you can buy average level 75 weapons. Hopefully there would be some other mechanic that would limit level 1s from using level 75 weapons...

I wouldn't even have a problem with MTX that reduces time to endgame, like buying experience to gain levels or other "grinding" type mechanics.

The only catch is, imho the game should be designed for a non-paying char to reasonably level and proceed without MTX.

Sometimes its takes WAAAAAY to long to level a char, cause everyone knows the real fun doesn't start until you are maxxed out. In this I think devs can focus on endgame content more.

I play rift. Like it so far. The only MTX'ing happening in that game is from chinese plat farm spammers. If Trion instituted pay-to-play, pay-to-win MTX'ing, I'd leave. Game balance would be disrupted and it's no different then cheating in a game. The whole point is to interact with these environments on the merits of the content you choose to interact with, not get nickel-and-dimed to get the goodies to advance.

Why not just pay a little extra and the screen prints out "You win!" Then, instead of grinding out levels, you can go watch TV.

I'd rather buy a game, then compete with the game AI and other players skill than their wallets.

One more reason I do not care about micro transactions that much is that in practice it does not matter. Most games with them also have people farming items and selling them so to me I would rather that the company whom makes the game gets that money then some random person in China who can add nothing to the game. At least if the company gets it they have a chance of putting something back into th game. Not saying they will actually do that but they might lol.

I like the old model better when they'd make a game and release part as shareware. The rest of the game is retail, and then they'd put together an expansion pack with extra enemies, weapons, environments, etc. I'd rather pay $20 for that than have worthless crates of crap dropped into my inventory over and over.