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Currency has no inherent value. That's what we can get with this motto, what matters, the paper in your hands, the money in your game, or that little gemstone over the screen of your mobile device.
What is insidious about money, digital or not, is the distance it creates between the person and the product and where we are asked to create value. Within this common ground, we can be manipulated, blinded and marketed in any way we can. Nowhere is it more obvious than when a video game asks you to buy fake money with real money before you can buy what you want. It is there that the consumer is unceremoniously deprived of the only power that he has on a market: to assign a total value to the game itself. The power of a single purchase tells game designers the simplest thing: I like this game better than the other. But going from a single purchase to the overwhelming temptation of minimal in-game purchases, for both developers and consumers, is a destruction of this honest transaction and the inherent trust inherent in it.
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In short: the existence of microtransactions and the counterfeit money that conceals their real cost do not hurt a single game or a single genre. Microtransactions have hurt the entire industry by striving to break what every market needs: honest and comparative judgment between products.
Make comparisons between "PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds" (PUBG) and "Fortnite Battle Royale", supported by the AAA studio. Although the discussion raises a number of issues related to game design, a spectrum of microtransactions also floats on both. Battle Royale mode in Fortnite Epic Games has a structure almost identical to that of PUBG. Epic Games has challenged the old debate of inspiration with respect to the scam and has for the most part cleared its relatively unscathed side. People appreciate the game, and Bluehole, developer of PUBG, offered only complaints and an apparent ignorance of the nature of free market competition. That all this is damned, however, because it is the economic angle of their comparison that will undoubtedly create their most essential means of survival. Bluehole has PUBG took off from the ground by selling early-access versions of the $ 30 game, and confirmed the social contract with first-time buyers, allowing him to continue to develop the game as he was in full-time development. Until recently, PUBG did not have microtransactions and was successful anyway.
Fortnite, on the other hand, was inspired by a problematic initial launch, based on microtransaction, and published a much more accessible Battle Royale mode in free mode, without microtransactions at the moment. Although I suspect they will be implemented, the game is more successful.
These two games are, for the sole quality of their game, in direct competition. But Epic, in a much more comfortable financial position as a massive, revenue-generating publisher, can afford to suffer a loss on "Fortnite" with only a hint of microtransactions as a future source of revenue. For the player, "Fortnite Battle Royale" seems to be the most valuable game. It is currently free and, for the purposes of this argument, it is the same game as "PUBG". What has been perverted is the player's ability to create an appropriate comparison between the two titles, as this new "Fortnite" may not require "PUBG". premium price.
What the expenditure of money on a fair market allows the consumer to do, is to indicate what is valuable and what is not. Assuming that these two titles have not even reached the point where microtransactions constitute an active revenue stream, the potential for their future implementation in the publisher and the consumer creates a critical imbalance in the comparison of two things as close to reality. the same as you can get in the industry. We can not spend money to allow for proper market comparisons. Even in the time when each game was available for purchase at a higher price, the possibility for a publisher to spend a day on microtransaction as a primary source of revenue validly rationalizes perceived failure. of a game compared to its competitor. This fluidity of the profitability of a game seems beneficial – fast-access games such as "Fortnite" and "PUBG" maintain flexibility in the market throughout development and monetization – but, at least once in a while, there is no need for games. Like the currency at stake, the vague statutes of the game produce a prejudicial obfuscation. market comparison.
The question then becomes: how do we really compare games?
I draw this answer from my personal experience: I enjoy the digital trading card game Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes. Like one of the many Hearthstone–inspired and popular franchise spin-offs, and supported by EA, Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes follows the well-worn economic model of its impending competitor. It's free, with a good mix of gems at startup, followed by a sharp slowdown in the release of digital currency to encourage buyers to buy gem packs and random card packs. This mixture of games of chance and microtransactions does a lot for the developer and the publisher, justifying a genre in digital format that was struggling to survive before the model appeared. And, as a so-called free player, which means I do not buy real money but prefer to grind my cards, I certainly take advantage of the setup. I probably would never have played the game if he had asked for money right off the bat. Yet, I play it almost every day. I clearly appreciate the time I spend playing it. But how much is this game really worth to me? This question is the basis for the winner and losers of any market, including games. And if I ask, how much does it cost Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes is worth for me compared to its main competitor, homeI do what competitive games are supposed to do to me: choose a winner.
If we assume that real money determines the value of each game, they are invaluable to the player and can not be compared because they are both free. It also means that the games have no value for the publisher because they are free, but of course that's not true. We can not do it because I still have to make a decision. If I am allowed to assume that the money I spend in the game, as the extra money allows me to put in the real world, allows me to give real value to the game, I can then start to decide which game is really worth it at the end of the day. But here we see the first step towards widening the gap between the purchase of a player and the value that this purchase suggests. You can not compare the currency of the game home in the slogan of the game «Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes, at least not when they change and fluctuate in real time. Even if a gemstone in one game equals the amount of a gemstone in another game, what this gemstone gives you is undoubtedly slightly different over titles. You can not evaluate the value of one game to another, because they do everything in their power to convince you that they are autonomous economies, despite the fact that they ask for your real money, any way. So, I lose the ability to really compare the relative value of games.
The motto of the game really only determines how quickly I can succeed in this game, regardless of how that success is defined. Quickly, that's the key word. It comes back to time. Rather than real money or gambling money, we are presented with the principle that our time spent progressing in a given game is its true value, and we need to decide where it is going to be. It is a waste of time to lose. in our favorite game, or just buy that piece of lost time and go to the right thing. A free game does not sell its currency or its objects in play; in fact, he does not sell anything. It holds as a hostage the only thing that obviously has more value than money. They hold your passage in this world hostage and depend on the cruel insiduity of competition in a capitalist culture to get people to climb the endless ladder, just to see their next one at the bottom. I have the best cards, the prettiest character, the best gaming experience. I have done it further. A dollar more, a quarter more, a dime more.
You always lose at the end because you have traded money for time. You have not bought any game. You have not encouraged quality by spreading your money, which is the only real power that an individual holds on a free market. You have been selling time in your life to do something, no matter what, otherwise. All the confusion created by the multiple currencies of the game, the infinitely adjusted salary scales for the articles, the artificial fluctuations of the autonomous market of a game, etc., is an endless loop intended to divide your expenses from the true proposition value of the game: time, or, your real life away from the game. As the only governing body with a responsibility to the players in these digital markets, and the only seller in these markets, game publishers are the definition of compromise. In such a dynamic, the first thing to do is quality. A game should no longer be good for your attention. All you have to do is give yourself more of your personal time. The next time a game will offer you a deal on a microtransaction, remember that they're not selling you anything. They do what is right for you.
Is that really how you want to enjoy your games?
A strong counterpoint to all this is that the free microtransaction model allows the industry to create a low barrier to the entry of new ideas, new genres and for young publishers trying to find a solution. And we & # 39; We have certainly seen this being played in a variety of cases, illustrated by the emergence of the entire genre MOBA through free games like "League of Legends" and "DOTA 2". But maybe it's time to back off a bit bit. Perhaps the honeymoon phase of microtransactions, where the good overcomes the evil, is over, and the best of what we can draw from the model finally yields to the worst.
MyCareer mode in NBA 2K18 is objectively degraded and slowed down by microtransactions. A version of this game released before the advent of microtransactions would have simply included the mode as it would exist for the person who must now buy the progression. In other words, microtransactions make games easier for the rich and more difficult for the rational. 2K Games knows it. Kotaku's Luke Plunkett's NBA 2K18 MyCareer Fashion Critic, in his screaming attack on the microtransaction infestation of the game, mentions the fact that "my copy of criticism came loaded with VC [virtual currency]. It would take a person who does not buy more than 200 additional VC games to reach that level. The best version of this game is the one that 2K Games offered to reviewers and to no one else.
Do you remember "Evolve?" Whatever that $ 60 game was, the tidal wave of microtransactions on launch day decapitated its future prospects and served consumers with the brainless remnants picked up by the company. Greed of a publisher. The developer of this title, Turtle Rock Studios, who innovated this type of asymmetrical game with the original Left for dead, have abandoned their game after an equally unfortunate attempt to revive it as a free title. I'm sure the publisher 2K Games has made a good return on its investment on launch day.
Fortunately, the success of "PUBG" has proven that the low barrier to entry offered by the open access microtransaction model is not needed to fuel new ideas in the industry. Instead of a plethora of options, the slow creation of quality through the thriving genre of Battle Royale has provided us with fierce competition and really great experiences. It was only after Epic decided to exploit the free model of play that the temptation of microtransaction reminded us of its influence. Again, our ability, as a consumer, to provide the only feedback that matters to any competitive business, by giving it money, is destroyed by the threat of micro-transactions. Even "PUBG", despite its huge financial success, recently announced its intention to set up a surprise box and key system for in-game cosmetics displaying all the obvious signs of obfuscation of microtransaction and cognitive dissonance. What is an excellent example of the high price model is, for the economic temptation alone, along this destructive path.
However, when microtransactions go from bad to worse, it is too easy to rewrite in our mind that it has gone from OK to bad, that there is an acceptable version. There are more, at least now.
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