Games have evolved to an incredible degree, even timeless board games can be ported to electronic means. You can play in many ways: on your phone, computer or dedicated console and there are more people involved with the development and execution of games than ever and this leads to an interesting dillema. How do you recoup the costs to make a game and be able to convince a shareholder to sponsor you again? The answer used to be sheer volume of games sold.
For now, let's focus on the electronic video games section of games we play and how great games become reality. A person or team has an idea for a game but no money to make it, so, they partner with a sponsor who will pay for them to make the game before it can be sold to recoup costs. The game is sold, the customer now has the game, the original person or team must come up with a completely new idea for there to be any more income. This is the way video games have worked for most of the time they've been a thing.
As games got more and more visually appealing with longer play times and hours worth of complicated coding, the need to simply make more money was real. The manpower needed to make a game at the top of its class was growing and with it the number of paychecks that needed to be filled. The gamers demanded more games and better games without stopping to consider that it might raise the standard price for a game.
Enter the downloadable content. For many gamers who had seen the fall of the Atari and the rise of the Sony Playstation it sounded a warning bell. A sense that something wasn't right. Games needed to stay under a certain price to be accessible to the widest range of players. This was a constant the industry couldn't get around and it was their biggest obstacle to overcoming the rising costs of development. Now, with downloadable content, a game could be released sooner and the team could have more time to refine work, a process that could take up to a year or more. Not only that, they could fill player's needs for more content from the same game and charge extra for it, a strategy netting them an additional source of income. A relatively complete game would be released, satisfying players for new releases and a few months later, a new part of the same game would come out that players could buy at a fraction of the price of a new game. Players who were strapped for cash may lean towards spending money for extended play of a favourite game in favor of spending full price for a new release.
This was a win/win situation for everyone involved until foreseeable problems would inevitably arrive. Developers released more and more extra content and the new releases got shorter and shorter. Some games got pay downloads that released on schedule with activities restricted behind paywalls. Players who had spent the full price for a title suddenly found themselves realising they'd now spent hundreds of dollars for very similar experiences over and over in downloads and missed out on trying something new.
The era of downloadable content(DLC) had begun and was unstoppable. Players felt that they didn't want to miss out on extra content nor did they want to keep paying for the same content that many felt should have been included in the original release. Enough players kept the system supported and left others feeling as though they weren't considered.
The next phase of earning more revenue was born from DLC in the form of the microtransaction. Now, Microtransactions got their start exclusively in the mobile gaming market. Games that were free to download and had just enough content to get a player interested, would put nearly necessary content behind a paywall. A farm game might have a crop worth a lot of in-game money but it takes so much real time to grow it that it's not worth it and you end up just harvesting turnips over and over which, studies show, isn't fun. This same game would put in a speed booster to make the crop viable to make in-game money but a player would have to spend their real life money to get it.
Microtransactions worked very well in the mobile market because mobile games were never meant to compete with console and PC games. They were supposed to be games you played for a few minutes while you were bored or waiting. They were completely separate and weren't even developed by major companies like Activision or Square-Enix. Then, they did notice.
With the popularity of smartphones increasing, the market of mobile gamers grew larger and larger and so did the amount of people with disposable income. Microtransactions became synonymous with purchasing a game in many small parts and the only way to make a whole product. People would download what was a glorified trial masquerading as a complete game and then be forced to purchase all the parts they actually wanted separately. Now, a "free" game cost nearly 15-20 dollars when a player wasn't expecting to spend any money. The purchases were made intentionally small so it wouldn't be so bad, a dollar here, two dollars there.
Big games finally noticed. They started making mobile add-ons for games that were supposed to compliment the main game or make playing it easier. A good example is Grand Theft Auto V and it's mobile extention, iFruit. A player didn't necessarily have to play the mobile compliment but it made it possible to train an in-game pet to make finding items easier. It was free to download but came with cosmetic upgrades for the pet at the tune of real cash money. This was different than mobile games because premium console and PC titles already skirt the limit of what money a gamer or their parents will pay.
Microtransactions work in large titles by unlocking. This means the content is already in the game but unable to be used before meeting certain requirements. This is not a new concept for most players. Older players will regale us with stories of having to play a game a certain way before gaining access to this content. Today, that same system is not put behind a play wall but a pay wall. Where you once unlocked a character or outfit by playing the game, now, you simply put in a credit card number and you can have all the new bandannas you can stomach.
At first, the paid content was purely cosmetic and didn't have much influence on playability. Sure, you could buy a new shirt but it wouldn't make you jump higher. Gamers quickly realized they were paying for worthless items and they were skeptical of the market. Companies responded. Items began having an impact in other ways. Purchased items would be used to gain in game advantages. A game which require you to grind for a certain currency could be circumvented by purchasing the extra items and then selling them for that currency and some games just offered packs of currency at an exchange rate. Players who had the extra money could make themselves tougher faster and had advantages over players who didn't have disposable income. The battle was split down two sides with players with money who didn't have an issue with the system on one side and gamers who could only afford a few titles a year on the other.
Which leads to the real problem with microtransactions. Who needs a war between gamers in the real world when we have hundreds of thousands of pretend worlds to fight each other in? Developers need to be paid. Sponsors need to have the reassurance that developers will make a game people want to play. I get that. The higher the cost of making the titles, the higher the starting costs. A better situation was when players could look at how much they would have to work in-game for an item and weigh the pay costs against that time to make a decision. More and more, lately, the time needed to work for a cosmetic upgrade is so large that players get disheartened. 35 weeks of estimated play time for flaming wolf armor? It was too much!
The only way to tell companies that we don't want Microtransactions is to demand complete transparency in the industry about where that money goes. There are enough people buying extra content that the practice will never truly go away. We gamers have the power to infiuence how the money is used. If Destiny charges $5 dollars for a little dance I'd like to know where that money is going. I want to receive an email an hour after making a purchase that says "Thank you for supporting Destiny! $5 has been added to funds necessary for development of new texture shading with our 15-person team!"
We could also vote with our wallets and just not purchase but miss out on anything more than a bare-bones experience. The point is, is that Microtransactions worked so well that we will never be rid of them, a few people making purchases of hundreds of dollars makes up for a lot of players who can't spend the extra dollar and once a source of income has been identified, it's truly idiotic to give it up.
So the next time you're playing Candy Crush and you see a boost for .99¢, think about where all that money is going and how is it truly helping you? In this age of instant gratification, we might need to step back and remind ourselves that games are supposed to be fun, engaging and help pass the time. When you have to put in more hours at work to play your game at home on your own time, it defeats all of those good things.
Consider this, as we come to a close, that if you work a job that pays $10 an hour and microtransactions cost you $20 a month, then, you are working two hours every month to pay for it. That's comparable to paying a monthly bill such as water or trash pickup. When a company reports record high earnings in a quarter then sticks flashy gun skins in your face for a dollar, you have to ask yourself: What good is my money really doing?
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