Allow me to translate (Gaming)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Monday, July 06, 2020, 15:56 (1389 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Plus the games that don't have them can be better, since they will make more money due to the higher price point.

I still don't understand the concept that games that don't have MT automatically have a higher standard that they are capable of hitting. Like, some manager tells the developers they are going to add MTs in the game and some developer was like "well shucks, I was going to do this awesome feature but now I can't because we are going to sell ponchos."

There is nothing about MT that automatically make a game worse. You can believe it Cody, that is your right after all, but I whole heartily disagree with you. I'm not saying all MT are good either, I just don't believe that all MT sully a game with the mere existence of them.

Ehhhhhhh. I kinda agree with that part of it. Let's start by saying that whatever it is that you get from the MT is either good or not. I know this is subjective, but let's all agree that for any given person this will be true. That leaves us with two results:

1. A thing that is not good was put into the game just to make money off of a MT. This obviously makes the game worse because now the game has one more not good thing in it. There is also an opportunity cost, as rather than working on this not good thing, they could have possibly made something that is good and put that into the game (obviously that's a more speculative impact)
- or -
2. Some good thing in the game will be unavailable to a substantial section of the people playing the game. The whole point of a MT is to capture money from people who are willing to spend more than the people who will not pay more than the title price. If everyone was willing to pay the cost of the game and all the MT, they could just charge that amount for the game (and expansion packs if it is about spreading cost over time), so we know not all players will get the good thing if it is available only through MT. That makes the game worse because players who buy it will be missing out on a good thing.
- and -
Either way they have a good thing that is going to get into the game through MT, which is pretty likely not to work into the story or game mechanics smoothly as if it was not behind a paywall. And we can also add on transaction cost as they have to spend programming resources working out how to take this good or not good thing in the game and pull it out behind the paywall when they could be working on something else; cross-apply that to testing and localizations and all of the other things you need to do to all the parts of a game.
- finally -

Now, I do not think these things are always worth getting in a funk over, or that it is always equally bad. Nor that you would be unable to say all of these things about cheat codes and Easter eggs that were revealed through strategy guides and platform magazines. Companies gunna business. But I do think anyone would be very hard pressed to explain how MT wasn't a net detractor on a game — especially once you take away the argument for funding development which is what Cody has done.