As long as whales keep buying stuff they'll keep putting microtransactions in games. Start making fun of people that buy skins and horse armor and maybe people will stop buying shit that has no value.
horse armor
OG gamers remember how this all started. We got what the whales deserve.
Honestly that horse armor implementation would be fine now. Purely cosmetic, wasn’t rammed in our face every time we opened the game, etc.
slippery slope... and here we are today
Honestly, I'm all for horse armor. Oblivion didn't do anything stupid like requiring an internet connection, and I could easily ignore the horse armor as horrendous value for my dollar. It's way worse when they're prioritizing "engagement" via battle passes or legalized gambling for children via loot boxes.
It gave your horse extra health actually, so not purely cosmetic. But I think in a single player game that also has extremely good modding tools, it doesn't really matter. If you want to pay to win your single player game, you do you.
Horse armour was mostly a landmark for showing companies that consumers were willing to pay for micro stuff like that. The potential return vs effort invested was crazy. Todd himself said that they try doing nice DLC that gives you good value for your money, but it's hard to justify business-wise when the horse armour is so cheap to make and sells so well.
It didn't start with horse armor. And even then, while clearly stupid, it wasn't egregious in the way modern mtx is. It was just a poorly priced optional cosmetic DLC. Modern mtx is a whole other beast, where companies use every psychological trick in the book to get people addicted to gambling.
Horse armor came out in 2006. Micro transactions started in 2002 with Maple Story. Plenty of other games had micro transactions by then. Horse armor was a peak when Microsoft drove too hard and consumers pushed back- it was far from the start.
wait, did microsoft own bethesda back then?
No, but they had a very close relationship. Morrowind was an Xbox exclusive. Oblivion was a timed Xbox exclusive that was supposed to be a 360 launch title that got delayed (the Horse Armor fiasco happened in 2006, while Oblivion didn't release on PS3 until 2007).
100 people see dumb ad.
40 people click on dumb ad.
10 people play game from dumb ad.
5 people stick it out and continue playing.
1 of those 5 spends money.
Games that are p2w exist in a symbiotic relationship with people who are willing to spend copious amounts of money. The people who don't spend money and still exist within these games help fill in the environment. ALL players of these games are the problem.
Mobile games are the most common example of this, though other games fall under similar banners. The truth is any free game with live service needs money to operate. Hell, even that fan-run DBZ MMO has costs associated with it that the community helps fund. This won't go away, it'll just disguise itself as something else.
I do believe, however, that for larger games the bloated cost of development needs to fuck right off. 100mil and 5 years or more? There is a logistical issue there that needs to be addressed. One of many, I'm afraid.
Start making fun of people that buy skins and horse armor and maybe people will stop buying shit that has no value.
The Team Fortress / CS:GO model of microtransactions was the least offensive and honestly not much different than the pastiche upgrades you could get before DLC, via "Special Edition" game releases and other gimmicks.
Even then, what's obnoxious about modern gaming is the endless injection of ads. Compare Diablo 4 and Baldur's Gate 3, and one of the first things that jump out at you is how much more BG3 is a game and D4 is just a grind that demands more and more of your money. Meanwhile, with the exception of an artbook and soundtrack, what you see with BG3 is what you get. They even tacked on incremental improvements after release that weren't bundled as nickle-and-dime add-ons.
And look who made more money? It was a tie!
I don't think you can strictly shame Microsoft/Blizzard/Activison at this point, because the current C-level staff can get caught in the middle of a serial sexual harassment scandal and still just shrug it off. I don't think you can influence them with your wallet, either, because their model appears to work well-enough (even Diablo Immortal brought in half a billion dollars, and that game sucked shit) relative to BG3 which brought in slightly over $650M.
I think, at some point, you just have to ignore these games at a personal level and satisfy yourself with the knowledge that a dozen or so high quality games get released every year, even if they're swimming in a sea of hundreds of crappy freemium over-promoted titles. Don't worry about the Whales. Just focus on what's good.
at some point you just have to ignore these games at a personal level and satisfy yourself with the knowledge that a dozen or so high quality games get released every year, even if they’re swimming in a sea of hundreds of crappy freemium over-promoted titles. Don’t worry about the Whales. Just focus on what’s good.
agreed. I focus on my personal happiness rather than thinking i can change the industry somehow through my purchases. I just focus on my own pride as a gamer and human being and not paying companies who don't respect me or my time. Then instead of being frustrated by the fact 20 years of 'voting with my wallet' didn't work, i am filled with calm satisfaction at not being taken for yet another ride. and shit, its not like i'm denying myself here... there are so many games.
Unfortunately, the success of Grand Theft Auto Online will cause corporate execs to forever ignore all your good points.
GTA's been downhill since it stopped being a top-down sprite game.
Retvrn 2 Tradition
There are too many people who have way too much money and don't care. Games with aggressive monetization aren't going anywhere but the same is true for games made by passionate devs who care about making a good game. Anyone complaining all games are soulless cash grabs isn't giving smaller indie devs a chance.
Whales are largely a myth created by game companies to create a false class war amongst us rather than holding the truly responsible parties at fault. No different than pitting the middle class against the poor.
Do whales exist? Absolutely. However, the vast majority of mtx money comes from people with addiction problems, mental health issues that make fiscal responsibility difficult, and kids who don't know any better. Many of whom who are spending money that they can't afford to spend but can't help themselves from spending.
These companies quite literally hire psychologists to tell them exactly how to exploit people's own brain chemistry against them to most effectively extract money from their wallets. Epic Games got in trouble because it was believed that they were trying to create a culture in Fornite that shamed kids for having default skins. Everything from daily login bonuses to seasons and battle passes to rotating stores are designed to keep you logging in and playing and therefore paying. They turn logging in into a habit and then hit you with the FOMO and completing your collection needs.
You're not going to fix this by shaming people any more than you can cure drug, alcohol, and gambling addiction by shaming people.
The term "whale" just implies a big spender, it doesn't exlude gambling addicts, dumb children or the fiscally irresponsable.
Been making fun of them since TF2. It doesn't work when they have no shame and plenty of money to waste.
Star Citizen has a $48,000 package BECAUSE PEOPLE ASKED FOR IT!
They didn't just decide to do that. There are actually people that said "I want to buy everything you have but I don't want to have to add one item at a time..." You can only access that package if you've already spent over 1k I believe.
There were even content creators that didn't want to reveal the identity of their viewers, but said they've played with people that have spent $100k... I don't know how true that is, but I've watched one of them enough to get a feel for their personality and they don't seem like to type to make that up.
the 10% that said they do? The CEOs
10% of game developers are actually CEOs? That doesn't make any sense.
if you asked a ceo of a game company wouldnt he tell you he works in game development? also, it was a joke :)
Or management
But the CEO's third luxury yacht? What about that?
The first one got confiscated.
He cheaped out on the second.
Now he has to jack up the prices and fire a few workers so he can save up for a proper one in a few years. Third time's the charm!
Think about the economy! The 10 fired gamedevs are gonna find new employment easily while the chef, 4 security guards, captain and 10 crew are much less in demand!
The obvious
/s
I never really thought devs misunderstood that. They aren’t the problem. Do the same survey with the publishers.
"...The price point, at the time, was the issue. We felt, it's probably worth this," he said. "I won't say who at Microsoft said, 'Well, that's less than we sell a theme for; a wallpaper is more than that. You should charge this; you can always lower it'"
Even the horse armor, allegedly, was heavily influenced by Microsoft.
90% of developers surveyed have no say in the matter
I'd hope 100% of customers don't want micro transactions.
It always bothered me that Ubisoft sells micro transactions to level up characters in a single player game. Like wtf who is buying this stuff? And why?
Why pay to avoid playing a game?
"Exploration is one of the central pillars of our gameplay. That's why we're offering this handy little DLC to instantly fill out your map!"
I've seen that kind of DLC a few times for open world games and it's always jarring.
To be fair, the levelling mechanics in some ubisoft games (looking at you, AC origins) are complete garbage that do nothing but arbitrarily restrict your movement.
Still unsure why people would pay to skip them though.
Ban the entire business model. It's neither a product nor a service - it's a scam. Games make you value arbitrary worthless nonsense. That's what makes them games. There is no ethical form of attaching real-world prices to that charade.
'Oh, but if it's only cosmetic...' Y'mean proof that people can be made to want stuff, even if it doesn't do anything? Entire games exist to funnel people toward emotional response, and some of them make billions. Saying 'it's just hats' is the opposite of a defense.
According to the 100 developers asked out of the 300 speakers at the event, 89% said that they believe that premium AAA games can be “financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play.”
Moving on to challenges facing the industry as a whole, 55% believe it’s caused by market saturation while another 46% point towards the rising development costs of games. Regarding layoffs, 57% said that layoffs will continue either at the same pace or a higher pace over the next 12 months.
All due respect to Gamescom speakers, but I may have some follow-up questions for at least 35 of them.
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