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Allow me to translate (Gaming)

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, July 06, 2020, 19:43 (1361 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV
edited by Cody Miller, Monday, July 06, 2020, 19:52

This is what I was talking about. I disagree with you that MTs "poison the well". They can be abusive and make a game worse. But you are making the stand that it's guaranteed.


If they don't make the game worse, there is no incentive to pay to skip actually playing the game to get the things. The exception is of course for items ONLY available via microtransaction. Since they aren't obtainable in game, the game design does not necessarily have to nudge you towards buying (but it often does.)


Okay, MT are only evil and destroy the game if they allow you to bypass any part of the game. So what if cosmetics are random chance in the game, but you can also buy them via MT?

This is easy. The random nature of getting the cosmetic you want is frustrating, therefore you pay to bypass the randomness. Compare this with say, Mario Odyssey were the cosmetics are acquired buy buying the specific one you want with purple coins you find throughout the game. No randomness.

Now Mario Odyssey, which is a game about running jumping and exploring, is ostensibly fun when players do those things. So acquiring the cosmetics is likewise ostensibly fun because the running and jumping and exploring is how you find the coins to get them. There is no compromise to the game design, and the developer is incentivized to make the game as fun as possible. Also note that there are a set amount of purple coins in each level; there is no 'grinding'.

With your hypothetical game, the incentive is reversed. If the game was as fun as possible, nobody would want to pay money to avoid playing it to get the cosmetics. Why pay extra when you can get them by playing the game, and having fun doing it? So they add frictions, which by the way necessarily effect those who don't want to pay. That's the whole point of them. You are paying to avoid an inconvenience which is intentionally included, which makes the game worse.


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