Allow me to translate (Gaming)

by MacAddictXIV , Seattle WA, Tuesday, July 07, 2020, 06:22 (1388 days ago) @ Cody Miller

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.

But it's not easy. Because the nature of random rewards isn't inherently frustrating. The reason I say this and Claude has mentioned it also is that people are different than you. I personally have played a TON of games, and only a handful of mobile games that's revenue stream were built on the foundation you are describing have really frustrated me.

There are other games like Dota 2 and Apex Legends that have MTs. They are both free to play games and Dota 2 has random rewards after playing a game and Apex does not. I have spent money in both games before but not for the reasons of frustrations or bypassing the game. I pay money because it's a way I can support a really fun game. It's my choice what I pay and I also get things I enjoy out of it, which is making my character look awesome while playing the game.

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'.

I understand this concept. But what you are describing is honestly about 90% of mobile game MTs and maybe 20% of PC and console game MTs. We talk about PC and console games here generally.

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.

Ahhh, you finally bring it up. Time vs money. Classic case of unlocking something you with money vs time. I honestly, depending on the game and how it's implement believe this is actually a boon. I understand your premise that it's up to the developer to decide where the difficulty of said item to achieve, so they could be make it harder to create said friction to entice people to buy it instead of playing for it. I don't think this is inherently evil.

What if you have a game that is 80% fighting and 20% exploring, and you can only get those cosmetics by exploring? Just so you know, I'm using any sort of percentage, it doesn't matter. Generally speaking not everyone loves a game 100% and thus, as Claude said, we are all different people. So if I hate the percentage of a game that I need to play to get that thing I wanted, that would indeed be a grind. Is that bad development? No, because you might be a small percentage of the community how hates that part of the game, but absolutely love the rest.

Okay, there is also MTs that are just sold. Both Dota and Apex have these. I generally don't buy them. I believe have bought them once but that was because I wanted to support the game because it was awesome. Now that I think about this, this is very similar to tipping people. I get to choose if I valued the experience and it's up to me to give, or not give, the amount I deem they deserve. If I go to a place that auto tips, I feel like I'm deprived the ability to choose how I felt the service went. Same would go for paying $60 (or $70) for a game that I really thought was worth $30.