EA Games, Challenge Everything *OT*

So when they're not busy releasing incomplete and broken games to the public (leaving the public to Beta test them post-launch and then releasing multiple fixes as time goes on), they're busy micro-transactioning all future products. Ah. I've done a fairly decent job for years avoiding anything from EA because of how they do business (with very few exceptions, BioWare being one), but I think I'm just about done with them all together now.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/27/electronic-arts-building-microtransactions-into-all-future-games

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I played Dead Space 3. LOVED it. At no point did I feel bullied or pushed into making a micro transaction. I ignored them and went about my day. Same thing with the micro transactions in ME3. Just ignore them. Let the people who want them have them and the people who don't just keep on going.

It does nothing to harm your experience of the game at all.

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Absolutely incorrect assessment based on impact within a game's campaign, completely overlooking said impact in multiplayer.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player. As for Mass Effect it is not a competitive multiplayer, so it doesn't matter. The day that it becomes REQUIRED to purchased additional materials to either complete the single player or get extra guns in COMPETITIVE multiplayer (Halo, Battlefield, CoD etc.) is the day that I will damn micro transactions to hell.

Until that day, you anti micro transaction people are making mountains out of mole hills.

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Who's talking about Mass Effect? Go play Battlefield 3 on PC. I can't wait to see how BF4 works. I wonder what this will do with something like Madden. It's not required, correct. But if the guns and attachments and whatever else are already there on the disc in a game like Battlefield, and you generally unlock them by playing the game and getting better at it, why is it that someone else can drop some money and get every single one and immediately jump ahead from day one? Why should I have to even play the game to unlock them to begin with? Oh, well I have the choice to buy them and level the playing field. Why aren't they just unlocked from the start then? Is this game supposed to actually be a competitive shooter, or is it just a money grab? Do they want you to put in the time and effort to get better?

None of these questions matter, though. Mountains and molehills and such. Spend your moneys or don't, it's clearly black and white and there's nothing to be questioned here. My bad for thinking too critically about this.

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Does it give you microtransaction options in BF3 MP on PC? It doesn't on 360 (The only version that I have played.)

If there are multiplayer microtransactions on PC then I retract what I said.

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Does it give you microtransaction options in BF3 MP on PC? It doesn't on 360 (The only version that I have played.)

If there are multiplayer microtransactions on PC then I retract what I said.

From what I found, there are things on marketplace that lets you batch "unlock" items in a certain class without having to invest 30+ hours (approximation) of multiplayer.

At this point, these microtransaction unlocks in my opinion are pretty much required since if you still have a lot of locked items, you will be pretty much destroyed each and every time you spawn.

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Does it give you microtransaction options in BF3 MP on PC? It doesn't on 360 (The only version that I have played.)

If there are multiplayer microtransactions on PC then I retract what I said.

It gives you the same option on the 360 to buy packs that unlock the weapons and attachments instead of unlocking them through gameplay. It annoys me because if I have a weapon that I want to use a particular optic on, I either have to play for a while with optics or iron sights that I don't like, or I have to pony up more money for them to let me use the optics from the start. It's stupid.

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I concede defeat here. EA is in the wrong in this situation with Battlefield.

I do not remember ANY of the microtransactions for multiplayer being available at launch (I haven't played the game since the weekend it came out. Was that there from the beginning and I missed it, or it was added post launch.

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I think it was added around the time they added the Premium stuff.

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I'll take it.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player. As for Mass Effect it is not a competitive multiplayer, so it doesn't matter. The day that it becomes REQUIRED to purchased additional materials to either complete the single player or get extra guns in COMPETITIVE multiplayer (Halo, Battlefield, CoD etc.) is the day that I will damn micro transactions to hell.

Lol. So if it takes 200 years to unlock the content, it's okay because you don't technically have to pay to get it?

Of course not. This clearly becomes problematic at some point. But it probably isn't a single point; it would be bizarre if it was totally okay until a certain point, after which it was suddenly totally not okay. It's got to be something more continuous; that is, it becomes more problematic as you push back the points of item acquisition.

The binary line of "as long as it's not technically required to spend money" seems like a strange and very impractical standard.

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DS3 really seems to have pushed the anti micro transaction fervor.

I played the game, beat it (Took about 10 hours or so.) never once did I consider using actual money in a micro transaction. In fact the game gives you in game materials that you can use instead of MS points. You get these things called ration seals (Your item robots find them quite frequently). I think that 20 ration seals equals $1 that you can use in the store instead of actual microsoft points (The equivalent being 80 MS points).

Saying that it takes "200 years" or what ever gross exaggeration that you use is silly. As long as it is unlock able via in game means, I am totally fine with it. In fact for single player games I think that is a great idea. Some people's time is more valuable than others (I work full time at one job, run my own small business, 15 credit hours per semester at school etc.) So I have less time to play dedicated games than say a high school kid. The idea of having a faster way to approach things is nice to have at times. In competitive multiplayer however that is horseshit. Everybody should be on an even entry level in MP.

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Saying that it takes "200 years" or what ever gross exaggeration that you use is silly.

Obviously. That was the point; if it did take "200 years," the black-and-white statement you made falls apart, which implies that there is some point at which even being able to unlock things through gameplay becomes problematic. Combine that with the suggestion that it's unlikely to be a single point but rather a more continuous progression toward being a problem, and you have the argument that your argument trivializes a more complex problem worth discussing.

The idea of having a faster way to approach things is nice to have at times. In competitive multiplayer however that is horseshit. Everybody should be on an even entry level in MP.

While I don't agree that it makes any more sense in SP than MP, I read your earlier post as suggesting that you had a very different view here:

"The day that it becomes REQUIRED to purchased additional materials to either complete the single player or get extra guns in COMPETITIVE multiplayer (Halo, Battlefield, CoD etc.) is the day that I will damn micro transactions to hell."

The way you worded this makes it sound as though, as long as you can grind for those competitive MP weapons, it's okay to have them be on a microtransactions system. Which I would personally really strongly disagree with, and it's one of the reasons that I've been so slow in throwing together a new PC and engaging in the PC competitive shooter space; everything I'd want to play at least starts out with such a microtransactions/grinding system.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player.

This means that by buying the content, you are paying to not play the game. The only reason to pay not to play a game is if playing it is more unpleasant than paying not to. That means, portions of the game have been intentionally designed to be unpleasant.

You are buying a game designed to be bad.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player.

This means that by buying the content, you are paying to not play the game. The only reason to pay not to play a game is if playing it is more unpleasant than paying not to. That means, portions of the game have been intentionally designed to be unpleasant.

You are buying a game designed to be bad.

I never had that feeling playing any of the Mass Effect games, a game that they used as an example. Also, what you are saying does not make sound business sense. Logically if you don't enjoy the game you stop playing, you don't pay to make it better.

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Also, what you are saying does not make sound business sense. Logically if you don't enjoy the game you stop playing, you don't pay to make it better.

Not necessarily. There are aspects of addictive design that go way outside the bounds of what would be considered consistently fun, and even ignoring that, you could easily have a fun game that's intentionally damaged to be mildly less fun, or an unfun game that's intentionally damaged to not be fun but which becomes fun once it's complete.

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Not necessarily. There are aspects of addictive design that go way outside the bounds of what would be considered consistently fun, and even ignoring that, you could easily have a fun game that's intentionally damaged to be mildly less fun, or an unfun game that's intentionally damaged to not be fun but which becomes fun once it's complete.

Skinner boxes work really well, but I'm not sure I'd call them entertainment.

I'm willing to go well outside the bounds of what one can call a "game" or even what we normally call "fun" but there is a line somewhere-- I can't say where it is, but I know when I've crossed it-- where it feels less like my basic drives are being manipulated for my entertainment, and more like they're being exploited.

Again, it's really hard to say, because that analysis could apply to ANY successful product. It's very subjective.

Games like WoW and Eve Online, for some, are over that line, and for others, not so much.

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Also, what you are saying does not make sound business sense. Logically if you don't enjoy the game you stop playing, you don't pay to make it better.

It's the only thing that makes sense. If everything that's available for purchase is available by playing the game, and playing the game is FUN, then they would make no money because nobody in their right mind would pay money to not have fun; they'd just play the game, have a good time, and obtain the items.

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Oversimplification. If the ratio of time played to content unlocked isn't balanced in the right way, then the convenience of purchasing an unlock might not have anything to do with how fun a game is or isn't. You get tired of even the best game; if it takes a few hours a day more than you feel like playing in order to unlock your gear, then the option of purchasing it becomes more appealing.

I don't like microtransactions in the least bit - but your argument is flawed.

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Oversimplification. If the ratio of time played to content unlocked isn't balanced in the right way, then the convenience of purchasing an unlock might not have anything to do with how fun a game is or isn't. You get tired of even the best game; if it takes a few hours a day more than you feel like playing in order to unlock your gear, then the option of purchasing it becomes more appealing.

I don't like microtransactions in the least bit - but your argument is flawed.

What you say supports my argument and is common for games with this business model. Grinding for rewards. And it's unpleasant. So what do you do? You pay to avoid the grind.

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Ideally, if we're going to have rewards based on gameplay, they're distributed at a rate which matches the amount you want to play. That's not grinding; that's the equivalent of playing through the main quest in, say, Final Fantasy and leveling at a rate appropriate to the challenge of the enemies you're fighting.

Grinding is common but not required for a game which uses player investment. I have trouble imagining grinding in a first-person shooter, but then again, I don't play Call of Duty, so what can I say?

I've been sitting here trying to work out what I want to say, and I'm still not completely sure, but I do know that I still don't agree with you. :p To go back to League, which you mentioned earlier: you earn currency at a decent rate which allows you to purchase characters in about the time it takes to get familiar with them, and that rate is tied to your success, which means that when you perform better, you unlock at about double the rate. I play regularly, and I only purchase champions with currency I've earned through playing; but Riot has a good idea with the cosmetic options: since you can only access those by spending money, and since they have no influence on gameplay, they are more than optional. Riot found something that people are willing to purchase which does not affect the quality of the game itself in any way, which allows them to make everything which does affect the players available as a reward for playing while still earning enough to continue to produce new content. Win-win.

Now if only they could fix player attitude, we'd have a game that's just all around good.

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Also, what you are saying does not make sound business sense. Logically if you don't enjoy the game you stop playing, you don't pay to make it better.

It's the only thing that makes sense. If everything that's available for purchase is available by playing the game, and playing the game is FUN, then they would make no money because nobody in their right mind would pay money to not have fun; they'd just play the game, have a good time, and obtain the items.

You underestimate how powerful some people's impatience can be.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player.

This means that by buying the content, you are paying to not play the game. The only reason to pay not to play a game is if playing it is more unpleasant than paying not to. That means, portions of the game have been intentionally designed to be unpleasant.

You are buying a game designed to be bad.

On this point, we agree.

I'm not a big fan of this model and I generally avoid games that use it. A game that costs you more to play the more you play it, (the more I play, the more I'll want the extra items that are on sale) but that simultaneously allows you to pay for the privilege of not playing, has not created its structure of incentives correctly-- not for the player, and not for the designer.

It's not even really a question of whether the transactions are mandatory, de facto or de jure, or if they confer a gameplay advantage, it's that a franchise designed around that dynamic probably can't help but decrease in quality over time because ot the trend you identify-- parts of the game have to be bad enough that you'll pay to avoid them. It's sort of like the game is an abusive spouse. EA knows something about abuse from spouses.

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It's not even really a question of whether the transactions are mandatory, de facto or de jure, or if they confer a gameplay advantage, it's that a franchise designed around that dynamic probably can't help but decrease in quality over time because ot the trend you identify-- parts of the game have to be bad enough that you'll pay to avoid them. It's sort of like the game is an abusive spouse. EA knows something about abuse from spouses.

Yes! This is why even though particular micro transactions may not be 'game breaking', there mere act of setting your game up to include micro transactions is going to negatively affect the design of the game.

Even in games where the content is not available by playing the game (as in, paying is the only way to get it), then the developers are essentially letting you play an inferior version of their game when you buy it. If all this stuff you can buy makes the game better, why is it not there in the first place? If I was making a game, I'd want my players to play the best game possible. This shows a lack of artistic integrity.

Of course if the content doesn't actually make the game better, then it's just crap content that you shouldn't pay for anyway.

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But what if the game is well worth its $60 and the extras are just there to further enhance it? Sure, the game could be better, but if it is already worth its $60, how am I losing in the first place?

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But what if the game is well worth its $60 and the extras are just there to further enhance it? Sure, the game could be better, but if it is already worth its $60, how am I losing in the first place?

Meaningless. What does it mean to be worth 60 dollars? If you make 10 million a year, don't you think you'd value 60 dollars relatively little? Conversely if you make 20K a year, 60 dollars can be a major expenditure after bills.

Whether a game is worth the price or not is an entirely individual assessment, and so this shouldn't be a factor when you try to think of game design.

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But what if the game is well worth its $60 and the extras are just there to further enhance it? Sure, the game could be better, but if it is already worth its $60, how am I losing in the first place?

Meaningless. What does it mean to be worth 60 dollars? If you make 10 million a year, don't you think you'd value 60 dollars relatively little? Conversely if you make 20K a year, 60 dollars can be a major expenditure after bills.

Whether a game is worth the price or not is an entirely individual assessment, and so this shouldn't be a factor when you try to think of game design.

o_O

But you're assigning "value" to the $60 game by saying it's universally "bad design" to have microtransactions. Value is entirely subjective. And the point is, there are plenty of people who will value a game at $60, yet still happily go about taking advantage of microtransactions to enhance their experience. "Bad design" to you is perfectly fine and enjoyable design to someone else.

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But you're assigning "value" to the $60 game by saying it's universally "bad design" to have microtransactions. Value is entirely subjective. And the point is, there are plenty of people who will value a game at $60, yet still happily go about taking advantage of microtransactions to enhance their experience. "Bad design" to you is perfectly fine and enjoyable design to someone else.

Cody's very ~~Aristotelian~~ Platonic on game design; as far as I can tell he really thinks there is an Ideal Form for games and that a game's merit depends upon how closely it approaches that Ideal Form. Subjective things like personal taste don't matter from that POV. That Cody's concept for that Ideal Form is extremely narrow and apparently based on a small time window in the history of the games industry only makes the discussion even more headdesky for the many who disagree.

-- Steve does not think that microtransactions are inherently detrimental to game design, but rather are one possible choice in design that can be implemented well or poorly in a game.

PS: With all the studio failures we've been seeing over the past few months, as well as some epically shitty games being released just to get them off the books and realise some revenue from the debacle (cough A:CM cough), I'm thinking that studios looking for alternate revenue streams may actually help the gaming ecosystem maintain some diversity in titles. Otherwise we're looking at a raft of browser games decorated with a few "World of Hacknslash" and "Shaven-headed Shooter" knockoffs.

edited to fix a philosophical reference; yes, on some things I can be a bit OCD

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Whether a game is worth the price or not is an entirely individual assessment, and so this shouldn't be a factor when you try to think of game design.

Exactly. As is the assessment of how much fun a part of a game can be, which is a argument for excusing some players of skipping parts of the game, while other don't.

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Exactly. As is the assessment of how much fun a part of a game can be, which is a argument for excusing some players of skipping parts of the game, while other don't.

Again, player tastes don't factor into this. The inclusion of microtransactions for stuff obtainable by playing the game tells you that the developer is not only counting on, but knows that there are parts you'd want to skip. Instead of taking that knowledge and fixing those parts the best they can, they make you pay extra.

Players can prefer or dislike whatever they want, because that is taste. What is not okay is the developer intentionally crippling an aspect of their game in order to use this particular microtransaction model.

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Again, player tastes don't factor into this.

Player tastes absolutely factor in to this. Player tastes are why micro transactions were invented in the first place.

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Again, player tastes don't factor into this.

Player tastes absolutely factor in to this. Player tastes are why micro transactions were invented in the first place.

Are you high? Micro transactions were invented to make more money and to discourage used game sales.

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Are you high? Micro transactions were invented to make more money and to discourage used game sales.

So bitter, so intractable. You sound older and more crotchety than me, and that's saying something.

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Exactly. As is the assessment of how much fun a part of a game can be, which is a argument for excusing some players of skipping parts of the game, while other don't.

Again, player tastes don't factor into this. The inclusion of microtransactions for stuff obtainable by playing the game tells you that the developer is not only counting on, but knows that there are parts you'd want to skip. Instead of taking that knowledge and fixing those parts the best they can, they make you pay extra.

Players can prefer or dislike whatever they want, because that is taste. What is not okay is the developer intentionally crippling an aspect of their game in order to use this particular microtransaction model.

The problem is you're equating intentionally crippling with any and all forms of microtransactions. That is simply wrong.

In the rare case of a developer intentionally crippling a game and pushing the fix to microtransactions, then yes, I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that's a Good Idea.

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The problem is you're equating intentionally crippling with any and all forms of microtransactions. That is simply wrong.

In the rare case of a developer intentionally crippling a game and pushing the fix to microtransactions, then yes, I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that's a Good Idea.

Every instance of microtransaction use intentionally cripples the game.

1- Items only available through purchase. Intentionally crippled by not including them in the base game. Ask yourself if it would be better with everything available without having to purchase it. The answer is always yes. Intentionally crippled.

2- Items available through purchase and play. Players paying for items are paying not to play, and this means that aspects of the game are unpleasant enough to pay to avoid. Irrespective of player tastes, when a developer creates something under this type of micro transaction, they are admitting that a non trivial amount of players would want to or be tempted to avoid playing the respective part of the game. If they did not think this, it would be pointless to spend the time to implement the microtransaction. They know lots of players will find the part of the game unpleasant. They are counting on it because that is the only reason someone would pay to not play. Therefore, they are intentionally crippling the game.

I am both disappointed and angry when something that by its very nature ruins games is not only not criticized, but EMBRACED. Gaming stockholm syndrome. Dammit people.

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The problem is you're equating intentionally crippling with any and all forms of microtransactions. That is simply wrong.

In the rare case of a developer intentionally crippling a game and pushing the fix to microtransactions, then yes, I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that's a Good Idea.

Every instance of microtransaction use intentionally cripples the game.

1- Items only available through purchase. Intentionally crippled by not including them in the base game. Ask yourself if it would be better with everything available without having to purchase it. The answer is always yes. Intentionally crippled.

lol - "The answer is always yes" - Cody, you're amazing. At least finish the sentence:

Ask yourself if it would be better with everything available without having to purchase it, if the purchase price were $10 higher at the start.

If you could buy ALL the content added via microtransactions in the original package, from the start, but at a cost that is $10 higher than the base price of most games (to account for the added work/time of the devs), would you accept it as 'not crippled'? (I'm not asking if you would BUY it for $10 over the base price - I don't really care if you buy it or not. I'm asking you to look honestly at the view you've put forth, and explain whether or not this model passes your moral muster - and if not, why not.)

2- Items available through purchase and play. Players paying for items are paying not to play, and this means that aspects of the game are unpleasant enough to pay to avoid.

Again - it means nothing of the sort. There are times I will go to a restaurant and order something I am perfectly capable of preparing for myself. I will pay much, much, MUCH more for the restaurant dish than I would pay for the version I built at home - and yet, I will not be unhappy with the situation. I am not choosing to go to a restaurant because preparing the meal personally is unpleasant enough to pay to avoid - there are a myriad of reasons I might be doing this, and many of them don't even take into account the comparison!

We do not all think the way you think, and we do not all have identical motivations for similar actions. You really, really, REALLY need to start considering that there are people not like you in the world when you are developing your universal guidelines.

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Again - it means nothing of the sort. There are times I will go to a restaurant and order something I am perfectly capable of preparing for myself. I will pay much, much, MUCH more for the restaurant dish than I would pay for the version I built at home - and yet, I will not be unhappy with the situation. I am not choosing to go to a restaurant because preparing the meal personally is unpleasant enough to pay to avoid - there are a myriad of reasons I might be doing this, and many of them don't even take into account the comparison!

I can think of many reasons to pay for a meal at a restaurant:

1. The chef is excellent and the food is otherwise better than you can prepare.
2. You don't feel like cooking tonight
3. You wish to join friends in a place with some charm / atmosphere

2 would be like game microtransactions under the pay to avoid playing model, but 1 and 3 are added value that are worth paying for because you can't get them at home. I can think of no instances in which pay to avoid playing microtransactions in games add value in this way, and if you could come up with some examples I'd be curious.

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Again - it means nothing of the sort. There are times I will go to a restaurant and order something I am perfectly capable of preparing for myself. I will pay much, much, MUCH more for the restaurant dish than I would pay for the version I built at home - and yet, I will not be unhappy with the situation. I am not choosing to go to a restaurant because preparing the meal personally is unpleasant enough to pay to avoid - there are a myriad of reasons I might be doing this, and many of them don't even take into account the comparison!

I can think of many reasons to pay for a meal at a restaurant:

1. The chef is excellent and the food is otherwise better than you can prepare.
2. You don't feel like cooking tonight
3. You wish to join friends in a place with some charm / atmosphere

2 would be like game microtransactions under the pay to avoid playing model, but 1 and 3 are added value that are worth paying for because you can't get them at home. I can think of no instances in which pay to avoid playing microtransactions in games add value in this way, and if you could come up with some examples I'd be curious.

My friends are playing a game that requires content at a level above my own. I would eventually get there on my own - but if I want to play with them NOW, I have to buy the content. I choose to buy it because the chance to play with them now outweighs the cost of the content (for me).

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My friends are playing a game that requires content at a level above my own. I would eventually get there on my own - but if I want to play with them NOW, I have to buy the content. I choose to buy it because the chance to play with them now outweighs the cost of the content (for me).

That would be a good reason. However, would you not be a bit upset that the developer even put you in that position? Do I skip playing this game I like in order to play with my friends now? If you keep playing then you can't play with them, and if you you play with them you don't get the content you wanted to get on your own. You lose something either way.

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My friends are playing a game that requires content at a level above my own. I would eventually get there on my own - but if I want to play with them NOW, I have to buy the content. I choose to buy it because the chance to play with them now outweighs the cost of the content (for me).

That would be a good reason. However, would you not be a bit upset that the developer even put you in that position?

Nope.

Do I skip playing this game I like in order to play with my friends now?

Yep.

If you keep playing then you can't play with them, and if you you play with them you don't get the content you wanted to get on your own.

What makes you think I want to get the content on my own? My willingness to buy it inherently means that in my case, I didn't want to "get it on my own"; at least not as much as I wanted to play with my friends.*
You, again, assume that everyone wants every element of a game right at the start. That any element of a game that's not available to all users immediately, or at least without paying for it, is somehow "intentionally crippled" by the developer. You can't seem to understand that people have different desires when playing games.

You lose something either way.

YMMV.

* This is entirely in the context of the example provided above by Wu.

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The problem is you're equating intentionally crippling with any and all forms of microtransactions. That is simply wrong.

In the rare case of a developer intentionally crippling a game and pushing the fix to microtransactions, then yes, I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that's a Good Idea.

Every instance of microtransaction use intentionally cripples the game.

1- Items only available through purchase. Intentionally crippled by not including them in the base game. Ask yourself if it would be better with everything available without having to purchase it. The answer is always yes. Intentionally crippled.

2- Items available through purchase and play. Players paying for items are paying not to play, and this means that aspects of the game are unpleasant enough to pay to avoid. Irrespective of player tastes, when a developer creates something under this type of micro transaction, they are admitting that a non trivial amount of players would want to or be tempted to avoid playing the respective part of the game. If they did not think this, it would be pointless to spend the time to implement the microtransaction. They know lots of players will find the part of the game unpleasant. They are counting on it because that is the only reason someone would pay to not play. Therefore, they are intentionally crippling the game.

I am both disappointed and angry when something that by its very nature ruins games is not only not criticized, but EMBRACED. Gaming stockholm syndrome. Dammit people.

I guess one of the biggest issue of the micro transactions is the continued development post-release. Say EA is an evil corporation (yes yes, I know) and they define in the dev cycle that there should be an extra $10 of DLC / micro transactions to go on top of the game after release – fine, release a GOTY edition 9 months later with all the content included - everyone’s happy.

But what if they have an unexpected hit on their hands and the suits order another $20 worth of DLC to trickle out over the year and keep the minions playing. Is it better if it’s map packs / missions / fresh content? What if it’s just a pack of over powered guns? I know there’s a world of difference between a bag full of digital money and an extended player environment, but do people oppose any and all types of extra content? I think as many mention it’s more about how devs implement this rather than it being so black and white.

One would hope (and this is a foolishly optimistic view) that positive response to good games with well implemented extra content will trump cashing-in with gun packs and fun bucks, because players will vote with their wallets?

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Microtransactions tend to be small things such as weapons, items, or player classes. Actual playable content like additional campaign missions usually costs more than a dollar or two.

I guess if we want to look at Mass Effect, you could say that the Lair of the Shadow Broker, Arrival, and Overlord were more like traditional expansion packs: they cost between $5 and $10 and contained fairly lengthy self-contained chunks of story which were not necessary but added something worthwhile to the game, but then the various weapon packs or character costumes were more like what you'd think of as microtransactions: $2-$5, and they contained fairly minor items which didn't add anything to the game's story.

sooo I guess if they have a hit and decide to expand the story or whatever, cool. If they're just pawning off extra guns and shit, well, fuck that shit.

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You're assuming that every thing that can be included in the game has an absolute value with regards to making the game "better," but there is no such absolute value for all players. The 'exclusive content' might be NASCAR-style stickers to apply to your armor. You might think that is "crap content,' but there are very likely a whole lot of people who would think the opposite. So, microtransactions might be enabled to allow for individual players to augment the game in ways that make it more fun for them. Artistic integrity is preserved, in that the developer has provided all of the possible great things they can think of for their game, but provided some of those things in such a way that only the people who want them need to acquire them.

Even if the extra content is something more significant, like another weapon, the argument's the same. The core game has all the functionality that the developer feels is necessary, appropriate, and fun. They provide extra weapons, abilities, etc. for the kinds of folks who like having more options and better ability to maximize their skills. I know you think that everybody should want to maximize their skills and abilities, but that's just not the case.

I completely disagree that the mere act of allowing microtransactions (or exclusive content) is going to negatively affect the design of the game. They're making a game that (they hope) millions of people will want to play for ten+ years. I would think that, out of necessity, they would want to create as many paths as possible for players to take to have fun doing it.

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You're assuming that every thing that can be included in the game has an absolute value with regards to making the game "better," but there is no such absolute value for all players. The 'exclusive content' might be NASCAR-style stickers to apply to your armor. You might think that is "crap content,' but there are very likely a whole lot of people who would think the opposite. So, microtransactions might be enabled to allow for individual players to augment the game in ways that make it more fun for them. Artistic integrity is preserved, in that the developer has provided all of the possible great things they can think of for their game, but provided some of those things in such a way that only the people who want them need to acquire them.

Having options to customize would fall under making the game better. Even if you don't like all the options, the fact that they are there is a net positive.

Even if the extra content is something more significant, like another weapon, the argument's the same. The core game has all the functionality that the developer feels is necessary, appropriate, and fun. They provide extra weapons, abilities, etc. for the kinds of folks who like having more options and better ability to maximize their skills. I know you think that everybody should want to maximize their skills and abilities, but that's just not the case.

You're saying that extra weapons make the game deeper, but some people don't want to explore that depth, therefore it shouldn't be included in the game? Why would you want anybody to play the version of your game that is less deep (since nobody has the weapons at launch) ? Why would you want your game to be less deep? What if the person playing craves depth but is poor? Why are you endorsing a practice which makes games worse?

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You're saying that extra weapons make the game deeper, but some people don't want to explore that depth, therefore it shouldn't be included in the game?

I'm saying they can be added by those that want to add them. I don't like having a huge number of weapon choices. It doesn't make the game 'deeper' for me, it makes it feel needlessly complex.

Why would you want anybody to play the version of your game that is less deep (since nobody has the weapons at launch) ? Why would you want your game to be less deep?

Because I want to make a game, but I'm aware enough to know that lots of different people are going to play it, and many of them will want to play it in ways that are different than how I would play it. I also know that I've got only so much development time, so I'll schedule a series of add-ons after launch, and then work on them then. I also know that that extra development time is worth actual money and by charging for it my people aren't working for free.

Some games are best created as a single, stand-alone unit, completely fleshed out at launch. One price, lots of replay value for the customer, minimum maintenance cost to the developer. Others benefit from expansion, add-ons, and extended development.

What if the person playing craves depth but is poor?

I crave outrageously expensive cheese. I guess I better figure out how to pay for it, because it's a fact that nobody owes it to me.

Why are you endorsing a practice which makes games worse?

As far as just you and I are concerned, it only makes games worse for you. I'm happy with it.

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You can still acquire all of the content by IN GAME MEANS in single player. As for Mass Effect it is not a competitive multiplayer, so it doesn't matter. The day that it becomes REQUIRED to purchased additional materials to either complete the single player or get extra guns in COMPETITIVE multiplayer (Halo, Battlefield, CoD etc.) is the day that I will damn micro transactions to hell.

Until that day, you anti micro transaction people are making mountains out of mole hills.

My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium. But imagine some lovely future when you play though the game and beat the boss only to then realise you need to pay $2 to buy the actual last mission on a game you just spent $50 on.

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My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium. But imagine some lovely future when you play though the game and beat the boss only to then realise you need to pay $2 to buy the actual last mission on a game you just spent $50 on.

And that is when it becomes bad, until that day however I really don't give a damn. Let those who want to pay to skip ahead do so.

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Aww shucks and I was thinking to pick that up - i'm a sucker for playing the SAME Aliens game (with or without Predators) over and over and over again...

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I was pretty disappointed with it. Fortunately, I didn't purchase it, I got to borrow it from a buddy who did. But as I understand it, the game doesn't actually end; you have to wait for and purchase the next round of DLC in order to resolve the story, such as it is.

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I was pretty disappointed with it. Fortunately, I didn't purchase it, I got to borrow it from a buddy who did. But as I understand it, the game doesn't actually end; you have to wait for and purchase the next round of DLC in order to resolve the story, such as it is.

Wow, what a load of crap!

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My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium.

I always thought that people playing games was because they wanted to PLAY games. If you have a low attention span or don't have the time to commit to a game, wouldn't the better, and free option be just to not play that game in the first place? If you have a desire to skip content, something tells me you aren't really enjoying yourself, and if the game encourages content skipping, then it seems like it's not designed to be engaging.

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My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium.

I always thought that people playing games was because they wanted to PLAY games. If you have a low attention span or don't have the time to commit to a game, wouldn't the better, and free option be just to not play that game in the first place? If you have a desire to skip content, something tells me you aren't really enjoying yourself, and if the game encourages content skipping, then it seems like it's not designed to be engaging.

Against my better judgement, I'm going to ask you, Cody - why do you believe that everyone thinks as you do? What's wrong with people who want to play a game and buy content to circumvent pieces of the game they don't feel like playing? (The fact that they don't want to play those parts do not make those parts bad - and there are plenty of others who are THRILLED to play those parts. It just means THEY don't want to play them, but they DO want to play the rest of the game, and they don't have a problem paying cash to bypass the stuff that they want to bypass.)

How is their opinion less valid than yours?

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My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium.

I always thought that people playing games was because they wanted to PLAY games. If you have a low attention span or don't have the time to commit to a game, wouldn't the better, and free option be just to not play that game in the first place? If you have a desire to skip content, something tells me you aren't really enjoying yourself, and if the game encourages content skipping, then it seems like it's not designed to be engaging.

Against my better judgement, I'm going to ask you, Cody - why do you believe that everyone thinks as you do? What's wrong with people who want to play a game and buy content to circumvent pieces of the game they don't feel like playing? (The fact that they don't want to play those parts do not make those parts bad - and there are plenty of others who are THRILLED to play those parts. It just means THEY don't want to play them, but they DO want to play the rest of the game, and they don't have a problem paying cash to bypass the stuff that they want to bypass.)

How is their opinion less valid than yours?

At risk of look like a kiss-up I have to agree with Lou... Claude about this. A lot of people play games just for the story, if this is the case they want to make the rest of the game (which I happen to love in most games) as short and easy as possible. Microtransactions make that possible for them.

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A lot of people play games just for the story, if this is the case they want to make the rest of the game (which I happen to love in most games) as short and easy as possible. Microtransactions make that possible for them.

Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

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A lot of people play games just for the story, if this is the case they want to make the rest of the game (which I happen to love in most games) as short and easy as possible. Microtransactions make that possible for them.

Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

I see your point now. You are of mind that casualizing (it's a word now, Google Spell-Check!) gaming is destroying the hobby. I agree that it is negatively influencing most of what I enjoy and I do find it disheartening and I am somewhat angry at this.

However, I still think you are over-generalizing. Majority of games go the way you describe? Absolutely. All of them? No. Will Destiny? Dunno. But I'm not folding just yet.

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A lot of people play games just for the story, if this is the case they want to make the rest of the game (which I happen to love in most games) as short and easy as possible. Microtransactions make that possible for them.

Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

It's a bit late for that. Games that have more story than interactivity have been around for some time. If games like that ruin the hobby then the hobby must have already been ruined.

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It's a bit late for that. Games that have more story than interactivity have been around for some time. If games like that ruin the hobby then the hobby must have already been ruined.

Exactly, I mean we have entire sections of Bungie.org dedicated to the stories of all their games, obviously the story is paramount to many many people. To say they are less important because they don't enjoy aspects you enjoy as much (like the people who play only on easy or normal) is unfair and elitist. One thing I appreciate about this community is how accepting everyone is, something I want to see continue.

In fact saying that people who enjoy story more than action are less important is similar to saying that people who enjoy speedruns are less important because they ignore the story.

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Man, Cody riles you guys up so much you'll say absolutely anything to disagree with him.

Designing a game a certain way and then adding pay options to get through it faster isn't the only option. Used to be, you got those options as part of a $60 retail title - they didn't sell easy difficulties or the weapons to make it easier as a separate charge. Contra is hard as hell but it shipped with the Konami code, if you were so inclined. Microtransactions don't "make it possible," they monetize it.

Think for a second: Cody isn't alone in his position. Narcogen and I both agree with Cody. Pete_the_duck has expressed significant concerns about it. Several other people in the thread have the same "fuck those players who want it" attitude when you apply microtransactions to multiplayer.

Option 2 is really a decent option here - liking games and hating the business practices that go with them. Game designers aren't the ones saying "man, this game would be so much better if I could build in more ways to charge people." That's the business guys (and if a game designer is doing it, they're wearing a business hat when they do). They don't need your defense. Their models are going to churn along without your support because the vast majority of players right now are willing to buy in. (As an aside, that's why the "LOL it's capitalism, don't buy it if you don't like it and stop posting" is a rubbish argument, because minority votes in a market place are disregarded.)

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Designing a game a certain way and then adding pay options to get through it faster isn't the only option. Used to be, you got those options as part of a $60 retail title - they didn't sell easy difficulties or the weapons to make it easier as a separate charge. Contra is hard as hell but it shipped with the Konami code, if you were so inclined. Microtransactions don't "make it possible," they monetize it.

Used to be, you could crank out a game in a year with a couple-dozen staff (or less) like Contra. Today, though, expectations on graphics and performance and networking make that impossible for $60/AAA games. If you want to go the Contra route you have to go indy/browser/phone, and you'll get a lot less than $60; these days, something like Contra would be treated as an Angry Birds. (I'm pretty sure I saw a Contra port or knockoff selling for $0.99 somewhere.)

Think for a second: Cody isn't alone in his position. Narcogen and I both agree with Cody. Pete_the_duck has expressed significant concerns about it.

Some, me included, have concerns about how microtransactions could be implemented but don't dismiss them out-of-hand. To repeat, they can be done well or be done poorly like any other aspect of game design.

Option 2 is really a decent option here - liking games and hating the business practices that go with them. Game designers aren't the ones saying "man, this game would be so much better if I could build in more ways to charge people."

Yeah they are, at least the ones from studios that went bust or that can't raise the capital to make their next game anyway.

-- Steve tries to take into account that game designers have to eat and pay the mortgage too.

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"Game designers gotta eat" works great for companies privately held by the developers making the games. It has a less easy fit with public companies looking for quarter to quarter margin improvement.

That public companies will slit the throats of their employees unless we shell out more money is not, in and of itself, the best reason to shell out more money.

It's not a zero sum game, of course - making a basic game and adding options later that people can pay for may very well be a positive. PC expansion packs were a good marketplace option.

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"Game designers gotta eat" works great for companies privately held by the developers making the games. It has a less easy fit with public companies looking for quarter to quarter margin improvement.

That public companies will slit the throats of their employees unless we shell out more money is not, in and of itself, the best reason to shell out more money.

The "ebil corporations" gambit doesn't work so well when indies are up against the wall too. EA and ActiBliz are notorious, for good reason given past practices, but they're not the only game corporations out there nor are they the only AAA producers out there.

I'll also point out that console AAA games have been fixed at $60 since the 360/PS3 came out, so call it 7 years to be Bungie-friendly. Since 2006 inflation has reduced that $60 (2006 USD) price to the purchasing power of ~$51 (2006 USD).* In comparison, on release the NES version of Contra retailed for $25 in 1988; in 2013 USD that'd be the equivalent ~$48.* Something to consider, particularly when you look at how many man-hours went into Contra versus what will likely go into Destiny.

(Would you be comfortable with Destiny as an $80 up-front fixed-price title?)

It's not a zero sum game, of course - making a basic game and adding options later that people can pay for may very well be a positive. PC expansion packs were a good marketplace option.

I agree that it's not a zero sum game; I just think that's part of what Cody's argument misses, and why blanket resistance to microtransactions is as misguided as blanket approval.

-- Steve's defintely sensitive to the cash flow aspects of the games industry; bad cash flow is the main reason he's no longer part of it.

* calculated using http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

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Man. "ebil corporations" is something you say when you think you're talking to a rebel without a clue. :/

Anyway, inflation may mean that $60 today isn't $60 in 2007, but that's a dangerous road to tread, too - because median household incomes are (or were, last time I checked) still down compared to 2007.

But I will agree that the economic defense is the only reasonable one to be mounted, while the ones attempting to defend it on a systems level (the "microtransactions make this possible" that provoked my original response) are spurious. I don't know what the future is for $100M+ AAA games. I'm not sure that it's a future that involves me as a player, though.

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But I will agree that the economic defense is the only reasonable one to be mounted, while the ones attempting to defend it on a systems level (the "microtransactions make this possible" that provoked my original response) are spurious. I don't know what the future is for $100M+ AAA games. I'm not sure that it's a future that involves me as a player, though.

I don't really have a horse in this race - I'm perfectly fine with microtransactions, because there's rarely a part of the game I feel like I'm missing and need to augment with cash. (Downloadable maps are an exception, but I'm not sure $10 qualifies for the 'microtransaction' moniker anyway.)

Gun skins, armor, a mount, whatever - I can live without it, or I can earn it incidentally as I play. For me, the model's irrelevant. (I wore default armor - even in the default brown - in Reach until I had about 3 million credits. At first it was because I didn't give a damn. Later it was because the reaction that default armor got was more interesting to me than the other armor choices.)

What gets me to post in threads like this are arguments that are so short-sighted (or so single-minded) that they basically relegate the majority of players to the 'stupid' or 'blind' or 'just plain clueless' category - that really bothers me. Cody's got his vision of how games should be played - and I have to say, I don't LIKE playing games his way. (I've tried it.) And yet he comes back over and over again and presents his case as "this is the right way, and all other ways are not right." And while I understand that there's the implicit 'in my opinion' tacked onto the end, the fact that he considers other opinions WRONG instead of simply NOT HIS is something I will probably never stop trying to point out to him. ;)

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What gets me to post in threads like this are arguments that are so short-sighted (or so single-minded) that they basically relegate the majority of players to the 'stupid' or 'blind' or 'just plain clueless' category - that really bothers me. Cody's got his vision of how games should be played - and I have to say, I don't LIKE playing games his way. (I've tried it.) And yet he comes back over and over again and presents his case as "this is the right way, and all other ways are not right." And while I understand that there's the implicit 'in my opinion' tacked onto the end, the fact that he considers other opinions WRONG instead of simply NOT HIS is something I will probably never stop trying to point out to him. ;)

I'm not telling you how to play a game! I'm telling you to GTFO if you don't want to play a game. Play it however you want, and for whatever reasons you want. But if you're not interested in the interactivity, in whatever fashion that suits you, then you have business with this interactive medium.

I am a huge Adventure game fan, a genre which has little to do with mastering mechanics and developing skill. Most of what's fun is exploration, interaction with the world, and puzzle solving. The way you think I play games is wrong, since there's tons of games I play in a totally different way.

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I don't completely disagree with hardly any post you make, Cody, but I find your style offensive. Funny how you skipped right over Claude's most important criticism.

Generally, you never try to persuade, but only mock, belittle, and curse those with whom you disagree.

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I don't completely disagree with hardly any post you make, Cody, but I find your style offensive. Funny how you skipped right over Claude's most important criticism.

Generally, you never try to persuade, but only mock, belittle, and curse those with whom you disagree.

As far as his way of expressing his opinion, I don't get the feeling that he intends to mock, belittle, and curse others, as you say. I just think that he is vehemently passionate about his opinions, and because of that passion, I personally enjoy reading the discussions he is involved in (sometimes to the point of mirthful laughter), even when I disagree with what he has to say. Then again, you guys are more familiar with him than I, so...

As for the microtransaction issue (not including DLC) I won't argue what has already been said; I'll just put forth my own feelings on the issue. Overall, it just doesn't sit well with me. If the content being paid for is merely cosmetic and has no effect on gameplay, I could care less. But when the content being paid for does affect gameplay, e.g., makes a person level up faster, gives them more powerful weapons that would otherwise be difficult to obtain, helps them pass over difficult gameplay sections, it feels a lot like cheating. This especially applies to a multiplayer/socially focused game like Destiny. It really sucks when players around you are better/higher level/have better weapons than you because they paid for it and not because they earned it. Sure, I get the pleasure of playing the game in it's entirety and earning everything, but it would still leave me feeling frustrated and very unhappy. It would devalue the game in my eyes.

Think of it like this. How would you feel if your best friend, who you've spent years earning his/her respect and love and gaining his/her trust, suddenly started treating another person with the same amount of respect and love because they paid for it? Your friendship suddenly would feel worthless and the time spent getting to know eachother pointless. Not to mention you would probably lose your best friend. That's the only comparison I can make to how I feel about the issue.

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See the issue I have with all these arguments is that there are two groups of people, the people who develop the game and the people that want to make as much money as humanly possible. Sure the developers want to make money, that's why they get paid to make games. BUT they also (for the most part) want to make great games. Bungie is one of these companies. I know as much as I can know before we actually play the game that if Bungie puts microtransactions in their game it will not hurt the core experience because that's not the game they themselves want to play, just like I don't want to play it. Activision in their contract doesn't have enough power to force them to do it as far as I can tell. In some relationships, IE EA and any of their in pocket developers EA has almost all the power, so the developers put it in. Now for games like ME3 it didn't break it because it's STILL the people that are developing the game that make the call of what to put in. If that changes, then yes I think we'll be in for some craptacular games, but with companies like Bungie still around to make awesome games, I tend to hold out hope.

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A lot of people play games just for the story, if this is the case they want to make the rest of the game (which I happen to love in most games) as short and easy as possible. Microtransactions make that possible for them.

Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

I'm with Cody on this one. What Xenos seems to be saying is silly.

Read books or watch movies. It'll be way better. Hate the bit with Tom Bombadil in LoTR? TURN THE PAGES. Hate the crap with the monkeys in 2001: Space Odyssey? FAST FORWARD.

Best of all, these actions don't cost you anything!

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Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

You ain't screwing me, sweetheart.

Ahhh, Cody. Just when you're beginning to sound sane in your arguments, boom! Out with the weird shit.

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Screw people like that. Seriously. If they have no serious desire to engage in interaction, then they should watch a damn movie and stop ruining the hobby.

You ain't screwing me, sweetheart.

I recant my earlier post.

lololololololololololololol

But seriously, when I think of what Cody is saying here I think of all the people that still lament ME3's co-op because they play games 'for the story' and hate how ME3 co-op panders to the CoD crowd (lol wut) and obviously led to their favorite goat getting murdered or whatever. I've wondered myself why some people even bother with video games when the actual game part of games they actively detest.

I mean, having finished one playthrough of Vanquish, if someone admonishes that game to my face for having a terrible story and not worth playing I'd just about bitch slap them to the moon. :P

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Provocative language makes points ;)

Let's think of another hobby. I've recently taken up photography. I'm just starting out so I'm pretty crappy. I'm trying to master a whole new skillset. I find photographs of nature seem to be the easiest to get, but what I really want to be doing is portraits and candids, particularly of wildlife and animals. There are parts of photography I don't enjoy. I have no patience for editing in post, I don't want to be sitting over my laptop fixing something I feel like I should have got right first time. But I will if I think the final shot is good enough.

Cody has a very strict equation for 'fun'. My time is an investment to me and I will not always prioritise some aspects of gaming - such as multiplayer.

However, I do agree that there is an issue with microtransactions existing so you "pay not to play" I am not sure that it immediately follows that such microtransactions immediately makes the game bad, regardless of how much Cody yells. Not all games are made for everybody. The kind of game I enjoy isn't the kind of game Cody enjoys, but that doesn't make me any less of a gamer and I resent being told I'm ruining the hobby!

I'm no less a photographer because I like taking of photos of cute bunnies rather than warzones.

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Cody has a very strict equation for 'fun'. My time is an investment to me and I will not always prioritise some aspects of gaming - such as multiplayer.

In games, the fun must come from the interaction. I don't care how you choose to interact. Wander and explore the world. Try to master the mechanics. Piece together your own story. Do whatever you want. But when someone says they only care about the story, then they have no business spending their time in an interactive medium. There are games I play pretty much exclusively for the story (Snatcher, Policenauts, Final Fantasy games, etc). But 1. They are all terrible as games - Snatcher and policenauts have the barest of bare options for interaction (whihc consequently makes their story better, while the Final Fantasies would make better books so I don't have to pointlessly battle enemies with no skill or strategy involved), and 2. The story would be better told in a different medium. Deus Ex's story would NOT be better told in another medium, because when playing, I have a high degree of control over how it progresses because Deus Ex is highly interactive.

Is this making sense?

However, I do agree that there is an issue with microtransactions existing so you "pay not to play" I am not sure that it immediately follows that such microtransactions immediately makes the game bad, regardless of how much Cody yells.

It doesn't immediately make the game bad. It immediately makes the game worse. This distinction is very important.

Not all games are made for everybody. The kind of game I enjoy isn't the kind of game Cody enjoys, but that doesn't make me any less of a gamer and I resent being told I'm ruining the hobby!

You are only ruining the hobby if you have no interest in the medium's Raison d'être - Interactivity. I couldn't care less if you don't like the types of games I do. That's wonderful actually, since there are tons of genres and there is something for lots of different people.

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In games, the fun must come from the interaction. I don't care how you choose to interact. Wander and explore the world. Try to master the mechanics. Piece together your own story. Do whatever you want. But when someone says they only care about the story, then they have no business spending their time in an interactive medium. There are games I play pretty much exclusively for the story (Snatcher, Policenauts, Final Fantasy games, etc). But 1. They are all terrible as games - Snatcher and policenauts have the barest of bare options for interaction (whihc consequently makes their story better, while the Final Fantasies would make better books so I don't have to pointlessly battle enemies with no skill or strategy involved), and 2. The story would be better told in a different medium. Deus Ex's story would NOT be better told in another medium, because when playing, I have a high degree of control over how it progresses because Deus Ex is highly interactive.

Is this making sense?

In a logical fallacy sort of a way. Why do you get to be arbiter of when someone is wasting their time? Nobody watches a film 'purely' for the story or reads a book 'purely' for the story. Any art form has techniques it uses to tell it's story and appreciating those techniques is unavoidable. You cannot focus simply on the story, even in it simplest form. That's why we have Bookers and Oranges and Oscars.

Now, crap films, books, shows and video games all exist, I'm not arguing that, and probably because they have failed to appreciate their techniques, but they're not bad because the person participating in them has no interest in the medium.

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In a logical fallacy sort of a way. Why do you get to be arbiter of when someone is wasting their time? Nobody watches a film 'purely' for the story or reads a book 'purely' for the story.

This is correct. This is an uncontroversial statement, and I never implied that the only reason to watch a movie or read a book is because of the story. What does this have to do with what I am saying?

Read this. It's akin to what I'm talking about. In fact, what happened to animation is so incredibly similar to what is happening to games now. Animation is about movement. That's the reason you animate instead of shoot live action or draw single images or paint. Animation offers the opportunity for very unique movements. But people watching and creating animation now do not care about that, and so the art has suffered greatly.

What makes your medium unique? Whatever it is, you need to embrace it.

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Somewhat unfortunate position to be in some might say ;)

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In games, the fun must come from the interaction. I don't care how you choose to interact. Wander and explore the world. Try to master the mechanics. Piece together your own story. Do whatever you want. But when someone says they only care about the story, then they have no business spending their time in an interactive medium.

This is so, so unreasonable.

I know someone who plays games because books that talk with him don't exist. He loves stories - but his imagination isn't enough to take written words and turn them into the universe he yearns to participate in. Who the hell are you to tell him he's doing it wrong?

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This is so, so unreasonable.

I know someone who plays games because books that talk with him don't exist. He loves stories - but his imagination isn't enough to take written words and turn them into the universe he yearns to participate in. Who the hell are you to tell him he's doing it wrong?

Then he's not doing it wrong. You just said he cares about participating i.e. interaction with the world. That's fine.

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I don't know why I continually get dragged into your arguments. It seems like such fun at first but then I realise I'm just chasing my own tail.

Your arguments are so cyclical and . . . frustrating

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Against my better judgement, I'm going to ask you, Cody - why do you believe that everyone thinks as you do? What's wrong with people who want to play a game and buy content to circumvent pieces of the game they don't feel like playing? (The fact that they don't want to play those parts do not make those parts bad - and there are plenty of others who are THRILLED to play those parts. It just means THEY don't want to play them, but they DO want to play the rest of the game, and they don't have a problem paying cash to bypass the stuff that they want to bypass.)

How is their opinion less valid than yours?

This.
You put that much more eloquently than I could have...

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Against my better judgement, I'm going to ask you, Cody - why do you believe that everyone thinks as you do? What's wrong with people who want to play a game and buy content to circumvent pieces of the game they don't feel like playing?

Nothing, except for the fact that they are required to in the first place. If the game designers did their jobs to make the game as fun as possible, nobody would need to do this. The options are there because they expect people to use them, and they expect people to use them because they know lots of people will find certain portions of the game undesirable, because they designed it that way.

I want a developer to look at his game and at every part say "Pay to skip that? WHAT?! Why would anybody want to skip that? That part is awesome!" That is what we should strive for.

How is their opinion less valid than yours?

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about how tons of people don't like the Library. Bungie did their best to make that level as good as they could. They tried. When you expect players to pay for stuff obtainable by playing the game, you did not try your hardest to make the game good, because the expectation that a number of people will pay to not play is an admission that aspects of your game are not desirable to play, and that this is a purposeful decision.

There is a vast difference between running into a level of a game you personally find boring, and running into something intentionally designed to be unpleasant to temp you to pay to skip it.

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If the game designers did their jobs to make the game as fun as possible, nobody would need to do this.

This, right here, is where you're going wrong. You're talking about 'fun' as an absolute.

It's not an absolute. There's no such thing as universal fun.

There is a vast difference between running into a level of a game you personally find boring, and running into something intentionally designed to be unpleasant to temp you to pay to skip it.

I highly doubt the large majority of skippable content was designed to be unpleasant.

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If the game designers did their jobs to make the game as fun as possible, nobody would need to do this.

This, right here, is where you're going wrong. You're talking about 'fun' as an absolute.

It's not an absolute. There's no such thing as universal fun.

If I edited my post to say "as fun as they know how", then the point still stands. The point is that developers have an idea of what they know lots of people won't find fun, yet put it in the game anyway.

If you don't think this stuff is designed to be unpleasant, then that is naive. The only way it gets sold is if enough people find getting whatever it is in game unappealing.

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This, right here, is where you're going wrong. You're talking about 'fun' as an absolute.

"There is only one fun, and Cody is its prophet."

-- Steve's going to Hell for that one.

PS: I very much agree with the following statement.

I highly doubt the large majority of skippable content was designed to be unpleasant.

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It's not an absolute. There's no such thing as universal fun.

I can think of a few things . . .

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It's not an absolute. There's no such thing as universal fun.

I can think of a few things . . .

And while you clearly meant this as a joke, I'm serious when I tell you that I can find people who will find those things un-fun.

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I know

But more seriously, it depends on your definition of 'fun'. If it's the endorphin rush, you can get that with a drug hit. I'm not recommending it, but certain drugs could elicit 'fun' in most humans with normal brain chemistry.

The original comment was, however, a joke.

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It reminded me of playing the Great Library level in Myth II. I figured libraries overrun by the undead was another Bungie trope. Never bothered me much. I enjoyed the tension. Still don't understand why everyone hates it so much.

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My thoughts exactly, micro transitions are fine if they are the "unlock everything / this item early type things. if you don’t have time to commit to a game, or if you simply have a low attention span then fine, unlock early and pay the premium.

I always thought that people playing games was because they wanted to PLAY games. If you have a low attention span or don't have the time to commit to a game, wouldn't the better, and free option be just to not play that game in the first place? If you have a desire to skip content, something tells me you aren't really enjoying yourself, and if the game encourages content skipping, then it seems like it's not designed to be engaging.

Then you'd have to do something else though. A lot of people play games to kill time, and they are one of the best types of things in existence for that. Of course then the question of "why pay to not play?" comes back with a vengeance, but maybe what they want isn't your kind of playing, it's more like a ride. Maybe they want an experience, maybe one TV, books, etc. can't provide, but they don't care for the challenge side of it or the investment of time doing the same thing or similar things. Before you say that's grinding, people have been known to also spend time doing the same thing over and over because they can't do it successfully, and some of them would rather just skip it instead of getting better (if in fact they can, none of this seems to address people with certain disorders or injuries that make playing video games a lot harder).

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If you are a "Core" gamer, the type of person who expends a significant portion of energy and time playing, thinking (like those who might post on a developer focussed fan site that ends in .org...) about games, a microtransaction fueled market actually benefits you.

Look at it this way, last generations model of selling games encourage a certain model. You need to sell as many copies as possible of your game. Since games sales decline rapidly after launch, and prices drop immediately afterwards, that results in developers needing to release more games. In that way, supporting an existing game is a bad decision. The devs who do take that on (Valve, Bungie, CDProject) see it as a marketing oportunity, but not everyone has the resources to do that. A great example of this done well was Mass Effect 3, that had microtransactions up the wazoo for MP, but also dropped in a metric ton of free content.

In a model driven primarily by micro-transactions, where you develop fewer titles, but ones that are better supported. You can't just sell a game on hype, you need to have players actually keep playing your game to make it work. For something like an online multiplayer game, or strategy game with lots of replayability, that's a great thing. There are issues to work through, you can slip into Pay 2 Win, or the game can become grindy and slow, but fundamentally, the economics reward developers for caring for their customers.

It's not right for every experience, but reflexively recoiling from it doesn't help anyone.

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In a model driven primarily by micro-transactions, where you develop fewer titles, but ones that are better supported. You can't just sell a game on hype, you need to have players actually keep playing your game to make it work. For something like an online multiplayer game, or strategy game with lots of replayability, that's a great thing. There are issues to work through, you can slip into Pay 2 Win, or the game can become grindy and slow, but fundamentally, the economics reward developers for caring for their customers.

First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

Second of all, how would you keep players playing? Certainly not by making a good game off the bat, since then people would just be playing your game and have reason to buy more shit. So, you either put in bullshit player investment systems, which I've already explained elsewhere why they always make a game worse, or you do what LoL does and keep releasing new heros and rebalancing shit so that you have to keep buying stuff to compete. Why bother learning the game deeply when Riot issues major balance patches what seems like every day?

Free to Play and Micro Transactions ruin games. Period.

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First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

But that's precisely what's happening in the ‘freemium’ marketplace, with a small number of extremely extravagant ‘whales’ contributing a disproportionate amount to the bottom line.

Free to Play and Micro Transactions ruin games. Period.

Team Fortress 2 has been ruined, huh? Better tell everyone who plays it.

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Team Fortress 2 has been ruined, huh? Better tell everyone who plays it.

Every rule has its rare exceptions.

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Every rule has its rare exceptions.

Really? I'd say it proves that it's not a rule at all.

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I'd say you need to play more F2P games or games with microtransactions (or both). If anything this proves that if Cody says "all" then he'd be wrong, but if he says "majority" he's more or less fairly right (granted it's not like I have any statistics or anything to back up that claim, either, but it appears to be a fairly accurate assessment).

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I'd say you need to play more F2P games or games with microtransactions (or both).

Why? Would it somehow change the logic of saying that one can make a successful, fun game based on micro-transactions?

In point of fact I've played a few games that make use of them; a good example would be Phoenix HD on iOS. It certainly isn't a broken game simply by virtue of using a micro-transaction model.

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I agree with the point about micro-transactions affecting different games differently. Particularly, I would say they work best for non-progression-types of games.

For example, in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, you can choose not to buy additional characters or costumes but still have the same advantage to succeed as other players who purchase everything. Everyone remains on a level playing field (partly because the additional characters aren't that great).

On the other hand, for progression-type games, such as MMO's and such(where micro-transactions are probably more popular), they have a tendency to ruin the gameplay because progression is such a fundamental aspect of the game.

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Team Fortress 2 has been ruined, huh? Better tell everyone who plays it.

Perhaps more reasonable way of looking at it that doesn't force things to become strictly bad or strictly good on account of systems with certain qualitative properties which may or may not have a sufficiently extreme effect on the quality of the product: Is TF2 better or worse on account of its microtransactions?

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First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

But that's precisely what's happening in the ‘freemium’ marketplace, with a small number of extremely extravagant ‘whales’ contributing a disproportionate amount to the bottom line.

Free to Play and Micro Transactions ruin games. Period.

Team Fortress 2 has been ruined, huh? Better tell everyone who plays it.

I'd probably argue more for Tribes Ascend than TF2. TF2 is unique in that it harkens from a lineage of older FPS game design as opposed to Tribes Ascend which was designed by a F2P designer to be F2P, and is IMO the best at it.

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I'd probably argue more for Tribes Ascend than TF2. TF2 is unique in that it harkens from a lineage of older FPS game design as opposed to Tribes Ascend which was designed by a F2P designer to be F2P, and is IMO the best at it.

By "best at it," do you mean "it now has a full game purchase option"?

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First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

Not sure why that actually matters. I mean, these aren't taxes, no one is required to pay them. Like you say, this is a luxury, not a flat tax morality play.

Second of all, how would you keep players playing? Certainly not by making a good game off the bat, since then people would just be playing your game and have reason to buy more shit. So, you either put in bullshit player investment systems, which I've already explained elsewhere why they always make a game worse, or you do what LoL does and keep releasing new heros and rebalancing shit so that you have to keep buying stuff to compete. Why bother learning the game deeply when Riot issues major balance patches what seems like every day?

Free to Play and Micro Transactions ruin games. Period.

Not sure why you'd need to start with a bad game and move it into being a good one. You need to hook players at the start, and bad games don't exactly do that. Furthermore, people will pay for advancement, even if they are enjoying what they are doing.

You bring up LOL, well, people might pay to unlock that cool hero they want to try, and they will proceed to keep playing the game another 20 hours, doing the exact same thing they would have been doing had they not paid.

And as for re balancing stuff, obviously, that's really terrible! Riot produces tons of content for players and continuously improves their game. In return, players are giving them money. That sounds horrible and broken, I can see why LoL hasn't become popular at all.

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First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

I only made one "microtransaction" in a year of playing Mass Effect 3's online multiplayer*; the big spenders were those coming in later and wanting to unlock new classes of player without "grinding" the game's credit system. So there are ways that this would be completely the reverse of your model; core players playing without cost to keep player populations high enough to draw in casuals willing to pay.

Second of all, how would you keep players playing?

Arcades found a way. MMOs found a different way. ME3 found yet another. There are probably many more.

-- Steve thinks studios are getting more imaginative about this, and that can be good.

* I had some free MS points left over from their Rewards program and bought a kit pack with it on a whim because I wanted to unlock a particular character (I think it was the Geth Infiltrator) and hadn't had much luck. The extra chance paid off... but I doubt I'd do that sort of thing much in games. I'm too cheap for that.

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The RNG in ME3 hates me. whenever I think "oh I'll just spend a few MS points" I never get what I want. Success has increased with the reserves pack and my ability to grind silver matches continuously. Now I wouldn't pay.

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Q: It's New Year's Eve. Everybody wants to have fun. Bars are great places to hang out with your friends. Let's go to a bar.

Would you like to hang out at the swank bar; the one that's great for all the right reasons, but has kind of a steep cover? You can drink all you want from 6-10, and then you have to pay the cover again, but it's only a third of the price if you already have your hand stamped. They come around again at 2am and 6am, same deal.

Or, you can hang out at the bar that has no cover; serves free soda, juice, and coffee, but only sells liquor and keeps reminding you every five minutes that there are other people waiting so could you please either hurry up and leave or buy more liquor. But the prices are pretty great.

A: It depends on what kind of experience you want to have.

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Q: It's New Year's Eve. Everybody wants to have fun. Bars are great places to hang out with your friends. Let's go to a bar.

Would you like to hang out at the swank bar; the one that's great for all the right reasons, but has kind of a steep cover? You can drink all you want from 6-10, and then you have to pay the cover again, but it's only a third of the price if you already have your hand stamped. They come around again at 2am and 6am, same deal.

Or, you can hang out at the bar that has no cover; serves free soda, juice, and coffee, but only sells liquor and keeps reminding you every five minutes that there are other people waiting so could you please either hurry up and leave or buy more liquor. But the prices are pretty great.

A: It depends on what kind of experience you want to have.

Impossible! There cannot be many types of things for many types of people!

LOGIC tells us this.

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We don't take kindly to calm demeanor and reasonableness around here video game forums.

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Get the brooms!

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Q: It's New Year's Eve. Everybody wants to have fun. Bars are great places to hang out with your friends. Let's go to a bar.

Would you like to hang out at the swank bar; the one that's great for all the right reasons, but has kind of a steep cover? You can drink all you want from 6-10, and then you have to pay the cover again, but it's only a third of the price if you already have your hand stamped. They come around again at 2am and 6am, same deal.

Or, you can hang out at the bar that has no cover; serves free soda, juice, and coffee, but only sells liquor and keeps reminding you every five minutes that there are other people waiting so could you please either hurry up and leave or buy more liquor. But the prices are pretty great.

A: It depends on what kind of experience you want to have.

Yes, because bars and video games are the same thing. Really dude? What a bad analogy. Seriously.

A more apt analogy is an art gallery that lets you in for free and shows you part of the paintings, but if you pay you get to see all of the painting.

How can you really enjoy the painting when you can only see a little bit of it? How could the artist not be furious that people are only seeing half the work? Game developers doing this are doing just this, and they don't care because, well, they don't care.

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I think it's apt enough. I think the concept of initial SKU followed by expansions versus F2P/microtransactions is represented with an appropriate analogue. You don't have to drink alcohol in a bar if you choose not to. I think microtransactions aren't very classy and I'd rather they didn't exist, as they serve as a constant reminder that I'm using a product, rather than enjoying losing myself in another world. They always feel like a money grab no matter what.

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Q: It's New Year's Eve. Everybody wants to have fun. Bars are great places to hang out with your friends. Let's go to a bar.

Would you like to hang out at the swank bar; the one that's great for all the right reasons, but has kind of a steep cover? You can drink all you want from 6-10, and then you have to pay the cover again, but it's only a third of the price if you already have your hand stamped. They come around again at 2am and 6am, same deal.

Or, you can hang out at the bar that has no cover; serves free soda, juice, and coffee, but only sells liquor and keeps reminding you every five minutes that there are other people waiting so could you please either hurry up and leave or buy more liquor. But the prices are pretty great.

A: It depends on what kind of experience you want to have.

Yes, because bars and video games are the same thing. Really dude? What a bad analogy. Seriously.

A more apt analogy is an art gallery that lets you in for free and shows you part of the paintings, but if you pay you get to see all of the painting.

How can you really enjoy the painting when you can only see a little bit of it? How could the artist not be furious that people are only seeing half the work? Game developers doing this are doing just this, and they don't care because, well, they don't care.

I think you missed the point of the analogy. Your analogy you countered with is only one example. From what I see the OP was trying to say that there are many different types of games and you choose the type(s) you want to play.

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How can you really enjoy the painting when you can only see a little bit of it? How could the artist not be furious that people are only seeing half the work?

So why is that motivation (wanting you to see their work) all right for having stuff you need to pay extra to see or play with but not all right for not having hidden stuff that most players will never see? I agree that having skill as a barrier is better than having money as a barrier but your reasoning seems inconsistent.

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I was going to make a short reply to this thread. Then this happened.

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- No text -

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Not kidding. Paymium is the word - microtransaction laden games that require you to buy the game as well.

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Figured it'd come down the road after the whole Project 10 Dollar thing. Casual games make SO much money from them, I wouldn't expect EA to to pass up on it. We'll see how long it takes Capcom to jump on the money train too.

I'm curious to see how they backpedal next time they build up too much bad attention. When they were vote worst company in the country, they clearly rushed out some multiplayer DLC for ME for free that wasn't intended to be, announced the extended ending for ME3, and tried to play up the progressiveness of their studios (which in reality was only Bioware with their fanfic-tier romances).

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There are obviously a few hear who don't want any microtransactions of any kind in their games, which is fine, we all have a right to our opinions. I think the only conclusion that I've drawn from this and similar threads is: some games have microtransactions that don't break the game and some do. I think the main problem I have with the whole situation is the overgeneralization.

For example:

Saying that microtransactions result in a crappier game because they want you to buy the extra content. WAY overgeneralization. The oldest form of what some people on here call microtransactions is an expansion pack, and the one that most games have now is a map pack or additional mission. Now unless these were being developed simultaneously with the game and they are holding onto them just to make money then this is not making the original game worse. As far as the smaller DLC packs like weapons: if you can unlock it normally that doesn't mean you have to "grind" to unlock the weapons. The reason it is known as grinding is because in RPG's the combat gets boring. If it's an FPS or similar action game and you enjoy the gameplay and would play it even if you wouldn't unlock something that is NOT grinding. I do not consider Halo Reach or ME3 to involve grinding because if I wasn't enjoying the actual gameplay I would stop.

Another example the other way:

Saying that microtransactions has improved the gaming industry is not just an overgeneralization but also impossible to verify. Sure if you are going by game sales and profits it has "improved" the gaming industry, but saying that it improves game quality is too overgeneralized. There are plenty of games (mobile games especially) that are absolute crap mostly because the developer decided they wanted to make a lot of money by selling you every single piece of content.

Sorry if my thoughts are a little random, I kind of wrote this stream-of-consciousness style.

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Ya, we are an astute bunch and have probably covered just about every angle of this topic (either in this thread or past threads on HBO), but I don't think it is pointless. If this is the direction the industry is heading, I see nothing wrong with discussing it. Someone is bound to take notice.

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There are obviously a few hear who don't want any microtransactions of any kind in their games, which is fine, we all have a right to our opinions. I think the only conclusion that I've drawn from this and similar threads is: some games have microtransactions that don't break the game and some do. I think the main problem I have with the whole situation is the overgeneralization.

For example:

Saying that microtransactions result in a crappier game because they want you to buy the extra content. WAY overgeneralization.

One I never personally stated, though it still holds true in many instances. I also like how nearly all of this thread has focused on microtransactions as it appears within a game's campaign, not even taking competitive multiplayer into account at all (or even non-competitive). This thread also does a great job of overlooking the fact that the designers who institute microtransactions are usually trying to get you to buy things that are already on the disc that might take actual skill or might be really difficult to achieve. If they're already on the disc and you have to grind or get great at the game to unlock certain things, but said things are already on the disc, why would they ever be a pay option? Why have to earn them at all if that's the case? Make them available to all at the start, especially when looking at multiplayer. But why do that when we can make money off of what people already paid for when they bought the disc itself, especially when looking at many who don't have the time (or don't want to put in the time and effort to get better, even if they have the time)?

The oldest form of what some people on here call microtransactions is an expansion pack, and the one that most games have now is a map pack or additional mission. Now unless these were being developed simultaneously with the game and they are holding onto them just to make money then this is not making the original game worse.

I think you're reaching, though I'm not denying that some people have called microtransactions are your above examples.

As far as the smaller DLC packs like weapons: if you can unlock it normally that doesn't mean you have to "grind" to unlock the weapons. The reason it is known as grinding is because in RPG's the combat gets boring. If it's an FPS or similar action game and you enjoy the gameplay and would play it even if you wouldn't unlock something that is NOT grinding. I do not consider Halo Reach or ME3 to involve grinding because if I wasn't enjoying the actual gameplay I would stop.

Highly subjective, and I completely disagree. Then again, a lot of this is subjective, my opinions included. At the same time, in games like BF3 where you can purchase a pack that unlocks all sorts of nifty attachments and abilities for vehicles that otherwise would take not just constant play but actual skill with said vehicles to obtain certain things, people are put at an automatic disadvantage if they can neither afford the pack themselves or if they're actually putting in the time and effort and skill to get to somewhere that someone just got on day one with little to no input. And unfortunately, even the more skilled player may end up losing to someone with the totally decked out heat-seeker missile jet while they're just trying to get past flares. This also calls into question the game's balance as a whole, especially if undesirable to play or giving advantages to those who play longer vs. those who are new, and thus the microtransaction bit lends support to attempting to get people to pay for a game that has been purposely made mundane/not fun/broken.

Another example the other way:

Saying that microtransactions has improved the gaming industry is not just an overgeneralization but also impossible to verify. Sure if you are going by game sales and profits it has "improved" the gaming industry, but saying that it improves game quality is too overgeneralized. There are plenty of games (mobile games especially) that are absolute crap mostly because the developer decided they wanted to make a lot of money by selling you every single piece of content.

Agreed. Correlation is not necessarily causation. Sometimes I forget this myself. :P

Sorry if my thoughts are a little random, I kind of wrote this stream-of-consciousness style.

Not at all! A lot of the posts in this thread have been great. I've wanted to reply to a few, but I've mostly been catching up. I still need to read pete's. Honestly I felt your post was best for me to reply to because it seems to provide an opening for areas a lot of people haven't discussed.

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Highly subjective, and I completely disagree. Then again, a lot of this is subjective, my opinions included. At the same time, in games like BF3 where you can purchase a pack that unlocks all sorts of nifty attachments and abilities for vehicles that otherwise would take not just constant play but actual skill with said vehicles to obtain certain things, people are put at an automatic disadvantage if they can neither afford the pack themselves or if they're actually putting in the time and effort and skill to get to somewhere that someone just got on day one with little to no input.

I actually completely agree with these sentiments, I was just responding to a couple of people calling Reach's armor unlocks "grinding" since if you don't enjoy the gameplay why are you playing to unlock a blue visor that you can only see in gameplay? I realize looking at my original post I should have put armor or cosmetic items instead of guns.

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So when they're not busy releasing incomplete and broken games to the public (leaving the public to Beta test them post-launch and then releasing multiple fixes as time goes on), they're busy micro-transactioning all future products. Ah. I've done a fairly decent job for years avoiding anything from EA because of how they do business (with very few exceptions, BioWare being one), but I think I'm just about done with them all together now.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/27/electronic-arts-building-microtransactions-into-all-future-games

That's all well and good, but they still rank several levels higher than Activision in my book. EA is no angel, but Activision is straight up scum.

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Well, not me on a personal level, but when it comes to microtransactions:

http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/44243746261/nickels-dimes-and-quarters

And you know, I agree with him on some of it. I may personally disagree with microtransactions and its overall effects on gaming, but I absolutely see the business perspective of it and I do know that, unfortunately, many, many people have no problem with it (or don't notice or don't care). The thing I most agree with him about is that it really is my money, and I absolutely see no need for me to continue buying video games from EA (or anyone else with a gameplay or design philosophy I disagree with, be it in the form of microtransactions or whatever else I might not like all that much). There were already a rare select few games from EA that I had continued to buy, and that's going to be changing.

All in all it was a great read, even if I mostly disagree with what he said. I agreed with some things, but only from a purely and strictly business standpoint that completely disregards the impact on gameplay and consumers as a whole. Still, it's worth checking out!

Also, Penny-Arcade provided some thoughts on the matter (more or less) along with a comic:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/03/01 <- Thoughts

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/03/01 <- Comic

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I think I agree with Cliff.

I was home sick one day this week. While lying in bed I watched Bungie's Brave New World vidoc again. I was struck by Marcus Lehto calling Reach the ultimate Halo. This week I played a few levels, and my gosh, I think he's right. In so many ways it is. It does so many things well.

What are the financial conditions that allowed for that game to be made? You had to have the audience that was willing to buy a Halo game on day one. You had to have a studio with the experience necessary to make such a game. You had to have the hardware and systems to support such a game. If Halo games had not made the money that they did, Reach would not have been possible.

I like when ambitious games also have commercial success. (Fingers crossed that Destiny fits that bill.) The landscape is always changing, though, and that affects what is made. It used to be that movies stayed in theaters for six months at a time, and triple-A games used to have a longer "tray-life." I fear that model is changing in a way where games like Reach can't afford to be made, yet, if film is any indication, regardless of what the new normal is financially, somebody sooner or later makes a truly excellent movie. On occasion that movie makes enough money to justify itself financially, and on rarer occasions it might be wildly popular. The landscape might have changed, but excellence finds a way.

People complaining about how this trend or that is ruining their gaming hobby remind me of people who complained that STAR WARS ruined filmmaking or serious science fiction or what have you. First of all, the world doesn't owe you a hobby. Second, despite STAR WARS turning Hollywood into a whizbang special effects showcase (or whatever the argument is), you still have films like BLADE RUNNER or more recently MOON. (The former probably would not have been made without the success of STAR WARS.)

If you care about great games, buy only great ones. Better yet, if you really care, work your way into the business so that you can make the games that you want to play. You might get lucky and have your faith rewarded.

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I think I agree with Cliff.

After having read your whole post, I don't think I understand how. You just sort of state that you agree with him, but then you don't really talk about anything he does.

I was home sick one day this week. While lying in bed I watched Bungie's Brave New World vidoc again. I was struck by Marcus Lehto calling Reach the ultimate Halo. This week I played a few levels, and my gosh, I think he's right. In so many ways it is. It does so many things well.

It does many things well, and while I disagree about it being the ultimate Halo, I'd just like to point out that it doesn't need microtransactions to do the things it does well or to fail at the things it falls short on.

What are the financial conditions that allowed for that game to be made? You had to have the audience that was willing to buy a Halo game on day one. You had to have a studio with the experience necessary to make such a game. You had to have the hardware and systems to support such a game. If Halo games had not made the money that they did, Reach would not have been possible.

Microtransactions being wholly absent from said games is a fairly good indication that these games were fun to play and well made because Bungie as a studio went into them attempting to make great and gun games. The whole bit of them making games they want to play is the important part here. And why do people keep playing these games? Because they're great fun and very well made on their own.

I like when ambitious games also have commercial success. (Fingers crossed that Destiny fits that bill.) The landscape is always changing, though, and that affects what is made. It used to be that movies stayed in theaters for six months at a time, and triple-A games used to have a longer "tray-life." I fear that model is changing in a way where games like Reach can't afford to be made, yet, if film is any indication, regardless of what the new normal is financially, somebody sooner or later makes a truly excellent movie. On occasion that movie makes enough money to justify itself financially, and on rarer occasions it might be wildly popular. The landscape might have changed, but excellence finds a way.

With EA effectively stating that every game going forward will be required to have microtransactions, it doesn't matter if the studio can afford to make the hundred million dollar game or the two million dollar game. Is the focus going to be on creating a great gaming experience, or is it going to be on trying to get as much money as humanly possible to the detriment of the consumer and to the gameplay itself? Microtransactions already usually damage multiplayer (moreso competitive) depending upon how it's implemented.

Will the focus turn into trying to make games with the most polygons so that it looks great, but with the most tedious sections of gameplay or locked content to try and get the consumer to want to bypass it by purchasing what they already purchasd by purchasing the content that came on the disc that they purchased when they bought the game? Is the game purposely unbalanced to try to get players to spend more money to catch up with others who have more free time or who already purchased whatever let them unlock every single weapon or attachment or upgrade that gives them an extreme edge without putting in the skill or time necessary to obtain said items? Even if the game is amazing and fun, this can still have a negative impact on the industry, that particular game itself, and the players who are both playing the game right this second or who may buy the game for the first time a year from now.

People complaining about how this trend or that is ruining their gaming hobby remind me of people who complained that STAR WARS ruined filmmaking or serious science fiction or what have you. First of all, the world doesn't owe you a hobby. Second, despite STAR WARS turning Hollywood into a whizbang special effects showcase (or whatever the argument is), you still have films like BLADE RUNNER or more recently MOON. (The former probably would not have been made without the success of STAR WARS.)

Some of the best movies made this year didn't have anywhere near the budgets of movies like The Avengers or even the sales of movies like The Avengers, but were some of the best films in a while, some original screenplays and other works as adaptations, and they were absolutely masterful. I've never personally liked the video games vs. movies comparison, because it never seems to work. I was going somewhere with this, but I think it goes into a different topic entirely than one having to do with video games or microtransactions.

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If you care about great games, buy only great ones. Better yet, if you really care, work your way into the business so that you can make the games that you want to play. You might get lucky and have your faith rewarded.

It's not about great or not great, it's about a negative path the industry appears to be taking, harm to the consumer, and diminished gameplay quality. As microtransactions continue, it appears gaming is going to want to head down the alley to grinding. Unpleasant grinding. Grinding that makes you want to purchase your way past said grinding. Games intentionally made not to be fun. Or, from what Cliffy B essentially wrote, games that are games strictly to be a money making tool, not a means of interaction, fun, or delight. Just money. And while the business model is absolutely important, and obviously these studios should want to profit and profit as much as possible, there are clearly many ways to do it and the video game industry has gotten larger and been able to make games that cost so much and are so ambitious because of the industry's previous successes.

I view microtransactions as a step backwards in the industry. A lot of posts in this thread like to focus on microtransactions and their effects on campaign. Many of these points are valid. For the most part they seem to have negative effects on multiplayer, especially in competitive environments, and this also hurts people who are less competitive depending on their own ability to purchase, put in time and effort, or purchase a game at a later date as someone else.

So back to where I started, I guess I don't see how you agree with Cliffy B since you didn't really touch on what he said (which seemed to be nothing but "I want money and I want that money by any means necessary, especially when it works" without actually looking at anything else critically). Your thoughts as a whole, though, were great to read!

(Also, it seems I broke the word count :P)

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So back to where I started, I guess I don't see how you agree with Cliffy B since you didn't really touch on what he said (which seemed to be nothing but "I want money and I want that money by any means necessary, especially when it works" without actually looking at anything else critically). Your thoughts as a whole, though, were great to read!

(Also, it seems I broke the word count :P)

My reply kind of rambled. Sorry. I'm a capitalist, so there's that. Cliff seems to be one, too. That said, I don't think you're quite characterizing Cliff accurately--did you miss this part?

"I’ve been transparent with most folks I’ve worked with in my career as to why I got into this business. First, to make amazing products – because I love the medium more than any. "

Cliff is uncertain about what the future will look like, but he doesn't seem pessimistic. I believe that there is always a market for something new and different and better. New trends wear themselves out and old trends come back, reinvented. So I guess my attitude is that this, too, shall pass. Periods of turmoil end. Someone creative is going to do something no one expects, people will love playing it, it will make money, then that model will be the trendsetter.

You might say it's destined to happen. ;-)

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My reply kind of rambled. Sorry. I'm a capitalist, so there's that. Cliff seems to be one, too. That said, I don't think you're quite characterizing Cliff accurately--did you miss this part?

Well as I said, I pretty much completely agree with it from a 100% strictly business perspective. It makes perfect sense. But we're talking about entertainment and fun, and a lot of the time strict economic sense can have a very, very nasty and negative impact on a consumer or on the ability for a product to be well made (or in a video game sense, even well balanced).

"I’ve been transparent with most folks I’ve worked with in my career as to why I got into this business. First, to make amazing products – because I love the medium more than any. "

I did see that, and I found it interesting that his entire thought process revolved around his third point, which was profit. There was almost zero balance to what he wrote. I believe he did actually get into the business to make amazing products because of how much he loved the medium. I believe there might even be a way to balance microtransactions or other forms of leveling in general with or without said transactions in a way that works really well in games. Some games (few and far between) pull it off to some extent. He makes no case for this.

It's almost like he threw this part in to say something to the effect of, "Look, you know me! I'm Cliffy B! I love the medium! I do this and did this because I want to make amazing things that people enjoy and find amazing! Trust me! Now give me all of your money because my real aim is to make all the profit in all the ways ever."

And again, I don't believe that his intent is to just make all the moneys ever, and I do truly believe him about his motivation for getting into making games. It's just interesting to me that his approach in what he wrote was from a strictly economic side, consumers, fun, gameplay (balance, grinding, whatever) be damned.

Cliff is uncertain about what the future will look like, but he doesn't seem pessimistic. I believe that there is always a market for something new and different and better. New trends wear themselves out and old trends come back, reinvented. So I guess my attitude is that this, too, shall pass. Periods of turmoil end. Someone creative is going to do something no one expects, people will love playing it, it will make money, then that model will be the trendsetter.

I'm hoping that will be Bungie. Bungie does a great job of setting trends. Unfortunately, EA could be a negative trendsetter with this "all games going forward" that may put the industry as a whole down that path. I'm not a big fan of Halo 4's multiplayer. I especially can't stand how something as mundane as emblems are locked to me. This model of gameplay design is already unfortunate. What happens in Halo 5 if 343 Industries decides to charge you $5 to unlock all of the emblems early? I'm not saying this would ever happen, but that'd basically be an admission that it's not worth the trouble of getting them, and people do want their emblems and feel an attachment to them, so hey, milk it. This can unfortunately be applied to many games right now, and I get the feeling many more to come. I just used Halo 4 as an example because I'm closest to it currently in finding all of their "locked content" fairly ridiculous.

Also, so don't buy it, right? I wouldn't. I'd never buy into that. No harm no foul there, especially over something that doesn't impact gameplay, right? On principal alone, I'd really love to just have my #9 emblem right from the start. Identity. I've had it since November 9, 2004. Well, until they removed it from H4, but you know what I mean. It's unfortunate that I need to play 90 hours and get 8023975628 EXP to unlock it. Or I can just spend $5 and get it right away. Or I can just be disgusted by it and not spend money on it. It does make perfect business sense. It also alienates me as a consumer that they wouldn't just give me my little emblem from the start, offering up a ton of grinding to get it or a pay option for something that I really already purchased once I purchased the game itself (and thus, as mundane as it is, why not just make it available?).

You might say it's destined to happen. ;-)

I actually started replying to your last paragraph before I even saw this. Haha. :D

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Well as I said, I pretty much completely agree with it from a 100% strictly business perspective. It makes perfect sense. But we're talking about entertainment and fun, and a lot of the time strict economic sense can have a very, very nasty and negative impact on a consumer or on the ability for a product to be well made (or in a video game sense, even well balanced).

It's impossible to talk about only entertainment and fun. Games have to be funded somehow. My opinion is that nasty impacts tend to convert consumers into non-consumers, and well-made products can find a market.

"I’ve been transparent with most folks I’ve worked with in my career as to why I got into this business. First, to make amazing products – because I love the medium more than any. "

I did see that, and I found it interesting that his entire thought process revolved around his third point, which was profit. There was almost zero balance to what he wrote. I believe he did actually get into the business to make amazing products because of how much he loved the medium. ...

Huh? Maybe the justification of seeking profit was the subject of this post, and that had something to do with it being the focus of his thought process.

It's almost like he threw this part in to say something to the effect of, "Look, you know me! I'm Cliffy B! I love the medium! I do this and did this because I want to make amazing things that people enjoy and find amazing! Trust me! Now give me all of your money because my real aim is to make all the profit in all the ways ever."

Well, now you sound like you don't believe him. Do you believe him or not? You know, I used to think of Cliffy B as an obnoxious kid who might be how you characterize him. A number of things, including the New Yorker profile a few years back, changed my mind. But my perception of him started to change when he openly stated, the year the first Gears came out, that Bioshock was the best game of the year. The fact that he would say that impressed me. It's not the comment of guy just out for self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement.

And again, I don't believe that his intent is to just make all the moneys ever, and I do truly believe him about his motivation for getting into making games. It's just interesting to me that his approach in what he wrote was from a strictly economic side, consumers, fun, gameplay (balance, grinding, whatever) be damned.

Okay, so you do believe him, sort of, but maybe not since he didn't explicitly take up the issues you mention.

....

I'm hoping that will be Bungie. Bungie does a great job of setting trends. Unfortunately, EA could be a negative trendsetter with this "all games going forward" that may put the industry as a whole down that path. I'm not a big fan of Halo 4's multiplayer. I especially can't stand how something as mundane as emblems are locked to me. This model of gameplay design is already unfortunate. What happens in Halo 5 if 343 Industries decides to charge you $5 to unlock all of the emblems early? I'm not saying this would ever happen, but that'd basically be an admission that it's not worth the trouble of getting them, and people do want their emblems and feel an attachment to them, so hey, milk it. This can unfortunately be applied to many games right now, and I get the feeling many more to come. I just used Halo 4 as an example because I'm closest to it currently in finding all of their "locked content" fairly ridiculous.

Also, so don't buy it, right? I wouldn't. I'd never buy into that. No harm no foul there, especially over something that doesn't impact gameplay, right? On principal alone, I'd really love to just have my #9 emblem right from the start. Identity. I've had it since November 9, 2004. Well, until they removed it from H4, but you know what I mean. It's unfortunate that I need to play 90 hours and get 8023975628 EXP to unlock it. Or I can just spend $5 and get it right away. Or I can just be disgusted by it and not spend money on it. It does make perfect business sense. It also alienates me as a consumer that they wouldn't just give me my little emblem from the start, offering up a ton of grinding to get it or a pay option for something that I really already purchased once I purchased the game itself (and thus, as mundane as it is, why not just make it available?).

If I wanted an emblem, and didn't have the time or desire to play 90 hours, I'd buy it. Would you rather they monetize something less mundane? Monetizing brings revenue, which helps to fund more games. This is what Cliffy B was saying: people gotta eat. I hope they get to do more than that. I wouldn't be bothered if Jason Jones and Cliffy each had an swimming pool full of gold coins to swim in because money is an exchange of value, and the fun I got out of Gears and Halo was worth way more than what I've spent on either franchise. Money also helps people focus on what they're good at. Cliffy and Jason can spend their energy on creating something great, and the money they have saves them from spending that energy fixing their cars or whatever.

We tend to balk at the cost of everything, and we expect to be able to buy used games, we're offended when even cosmetic items are monetized, and if an industry leader dares to speak bluntly about the hard calculus involved in creating games these days, we suspect he's Scrooge McDuck.

I'm not trying to simplify your viewpoint. I know that you and I care mainly about fun, but a bit more realism about how that fun got to us and how it can continue to get to us might be in order here. We're entitled to nothing. Neither are developers. They risk alienating us if they make games that aren't fun. That's part of the calculus, too.

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It's impossible to talk about only entertainment and fun. Games have to be funded somehow. My opinion is that nasty impacts tend to convert consumers into non-consumers, and well-made products can find a market.

Agreed on all counts. I just found it interesting that he avoided talking about anything but the money.

Huh? Maybe the justification of seeking profit was the subject of this post, and that had something to do with it being the focus of his thought process.

Well, now you sound like you don't believe him. Do you believe him or not? You know, I used to think of Cliffy B as an obnoxious kid who might be how you characterize him. A number of things, including the New Yorker profile a few years back, changed my mind. But my perception of him started to change when he openly stated, the year the first Gears came out, that Bioshock was the best game of the year. The fact that he would say that impressed me. It's not the comment of guy just out for self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement.

Okay, so you do believe him, sort of, but maybe not since he didn't explicitly take up the issues you mention.

Haha, sorry. I do believe him. It came out weird. What I was saying is that, just like how you said the subject of the post is about the justification of seeking profit, his little bullet point list of why he got into the industry is so out of place. He had absolutely no intention of discussing fun, love of the creation, genre, nothing. Just business, just money. And that's completely perfectly fine! So why throw the rest in there? It was almost as if he was trying to say something like, "C'mon, I'm your homie etc" and get you trust him. It's like he lacked confidence in his own thoughts on the matter and had to throw it in. I felt it detracted and missed out on a good opportunity for him to discuss how to make the business work with a fun and great model for consumers and actual gameplay.

If I wanted an emblem, and didn't have the time or desire to play 90 hours, I'd buy it. Would you rather they monetize something less mundane? Monetizing brings revenue, which helps to fund more games. This is what Cliffy B was saying: people gotta eat. I hope they get to do more than that. I wouldn't be bothered if Jason Jones and Cliffy each had an swimming pool full of gold coins to swim in because money is an exchange of value, and the fun I got out of Gears and Halo was worth way more than what I've spent on either franchise. Money also helps people focus on what they're good at. Cliffy and Jason can spend their energy on creating something great, and the money they have saves them from spending that energy fixing their cars or whatever.

But you already bought the emblem when you bought the game! Why pay twice? It's an emblem. It could have been available from the start, but apparently it was a better idea to make them a pain to unlock to try and get you to spend money on them (hypothetically).

The argument of "people gotta eat" is pretty much a joke. If you think microtransactions are enough to help them eat or pay the bills, you're mistaken. Maybe not if we're talking apps and cell phone games, but if we're talking AAA game makers, c'mon. It's a cash grab, nothing more. When EA says that every one of their games going forward will require microtransactions, that is not a decision made by a collective group of developers who think they need it to help pay their bills. They're being told by their publisher to do it or tough cookies, primarily so that EA can benefit and get more money from it, not the devs themselves. Now, I'm not implying that the devs come out with nothing or that there is no benefit for them, but it's pretty clear who wants this, what it's for, and why it happened, and it wasn't the devs. EA Sports, It's In The Game! Not anymore. You need to purchase the other portions or grind away, sucker.

We tend to balk at the cost of everything, and we expect to be able to buy used games, we're offended when even cosmetic items are monetized, and if an industry leader dares to speak bluntly about the hard calculus involved in creating games these days, we suspect he's Scrooge McDuck.

I'm not trying to simplify your viewpoint. I know that you and I care mainly about fun, but a bit more realism about how that fun got to us and how it can continue to get to us might be in order here. We're entitled to nothing. Neither are developers. They risk alienating us if they make games that aren't fun. That's part of the calculus, too.

I think I have the realism down fine, and I think I'm pretty open to understanding and even agreeing with a lot of the justifications behind these business decisions. But when a company goes out and declares that all games going forward will be required to do it, it's pretty clear that it's only a matter of time before these games will be affected negatively, watered down, and made worse for it. That isn't to say that really great games won't still be made and released under EA, but the potential for them to be worse than they would have been otherwise is there. Game designers may begin actually releasing games with portions that are purposely broken or terrible to try and get you to pay to bypass them. Hell, it looks like plenty do that right now with microtransactions. I just see a really bad and negative trend coming and, as a consumer, I don't plan on supporting EA's plans.

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If I wanted an emblem, and didn't have the time or desire to play 90 hours, I'd buy it. Would you rather they monetize something less mundane?

yes
way, way less mundane, please

We tend to balk at the cost of everything, and we expect to be able to buy used games,

um, what? why shouldn't we expect to be able to buy used games? we can buy used... everything else; it's a common enough and supported enough expectation that there have been multiple lawsuits based on not being able to

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If I wanted an emblem, and didn't have the time or desire to play 90 hours, I'd buy it. Would you rather they monetize something less mundane?

yes
way, way less mundane, please

So you're saying you want to monetize things that could actually affect gameplay. I'd rather they not have microtransactions, but cosmetic stuff would bother me less.

We tend to balk at the cost of everything, and we expect to be able to buy used games,

um, what? why shouldn't we expect to be able to buy used games? we can buy used... everything else; it's a common enough and supported enough expectation that there have been multiple lawsuits based on not being able to

I expect that right. It's my property. But Cliffy has a point, which is this does affect game companies' ability to make a profit and fund future games.

My larger point is that there is a cost to everything, and something has to give somewhere. Microsoft and Sony together lost $8 billion on hardware this generation. There is no free lunch, and there are no free games.

I'm hopeful, though, that things will work out. Assuming Cody's right, and microtransactions ruin gaming for a time, some creative people will invent a different model.

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I expect that right. It's my property. But Cliffy has a point, which is this does affect game companies' ability to make a profit and fund future games.

Exactly. Cliff's point wasn't that you shouldn't expect to be able to buy and sell used games. It was precisely the opposite - that people DO expect it. And that consequently, developers/publishers can lose out on potential sales. So he's saying they're bound to try to come up with other ways to make money. Which is not only true, but obvious.

The argument about which specific "other ways" are appropriate is an entirely separate conversation from this point, of course.

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I expect that right. It's my property. But Cliffy has a point, which is this does affect game companies' ability to make a profit and fund future games.

The industry has brainwashed you into thinking this so you feel okay about micro transaction models. You don't need to concern yourself with how games are paid for. Just demand excellent games, and if the way they pay for them makes the game worse, make them figure out a different way that doesn't compromise quality. They are big boys; I'm sure they can think of something else.

There are literally so many excellent games that are already out and exist, that I literally could not play them all in the rest of my life. If I never bought a new release from this point on, I'd still have more than enough excellent games to keep me busy till the day I die.

When you release a new game, that's what you are competing with. Utilize current technology in interesting or better ways, make your games better than old ones because of that, and you should have no problem making money. But taint your games with this bullshit, and I head straight for the used game store or ebay to get something released in 1996.

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I expect that right. It's my property. But Cliffy has a point, which is this does affect game companies' ability to make a profit and fund future games.

The industry has brainwashed you into thinking this so you feel okay about micro transaction models. You don't need to concern yourself with how games are paid for. Just demand excellent games, and if the way they pay for them makes the game worse, make them figure out a different way that doesn't compromise quality. They are big boys; I'm sure they can think of something else.

There are literally so many excellent games that are already out and exist, that I literally could not play them all in the rest of my life. If I never bought a new release from this point on, I'd still have more than enough excellent games to keep me busy till the day I die.

When you release a new game, that's what you are competing with. Utilize current technology in interesting or better ways, make your games better than old ones because of that, and you should have no problem making money. But taint your games with this bullshit, and I head straight for the used game store or ebay to get something released in 1996.

As is your right. Understanding how the market for used games affects the bottom line does not make me feel that microtransaction models are perfectly fine, but it does help me understand the scope of the problem that the microtransaction model is trying to address, which is, how do you make money? I like your answer and completely agree with everything else you said.

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If I wanted an emblem, and didn't have the time or desire to play 90 hours, I'd buy it. Would you rather they monetize something less mundane?

yes
way, way less mundane, please

So you're saying you want to monetize things that could actually affect gameplay.

No, I didn't say that and I don't want that, I mean it could at least be something like a weapon skin, preferably more like a set of armor, and really I'd prefer for it to still be possible to earn it in-game.

We tend to balk at the cost of everything, and we expect to be able to buy used games,

um, what? why shouldn't we expect to be able to buy used games? we can buy used... everything else; it's a common enough and supported enough expectation that there have been multiple lawsuits based on not being able to

I expect that right. It's my property. But Cliffy has a point, which is this does affect game companies' ability to make a profit and fund future games.

I really doubt used game sales are making a bigger dent than people just downloading whatever games they want, and regardless I don't intend to let any company take away more of my rights with products than they already have.

My larger point is that there is a cost to everything, and something has to give somewhere.

That's pretty vague, what do you mean by "something has to give somewhere"?

Microsoft and Sony together lost $8 billion on hardware this generation. There is no free lunch, and there are no free games.

You of all people should know they generally don't make their money on hardware, they make it on games, and as I said, people are in fact getting them for free. I believe some parts of the industry are suffering for various reasons. I don't think EA, Activision, or Microsoft are in any of those parts. Sony might be, but mostly for other reasons.

I'm hopeful, though, that things will work out. Assuming Cody's right, and microtransactions ruin gaming for a time, some creative people will invent a different model.

I think a new model is extremely unlikely-- people have been figuring out different ways to charge for things for thousands of years. I think a different model is fairly unlikely, mostly just because of momentum. The most dramatic thing I can see happening in the near future is a paradigm shift in pricing.

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It does many things well, and while I disagree about it being the ultimate Halo, I'd just like to point out that it doesn't need microtransactions to do the things it does well or to fail at the things it falls short on.

Well, at least if we go by Cody's definition of 'micro-transaction' as 'anything that's not a full-game release or bumper-sized expansion pack.'

Let me remind you:

DLC Map Packs: Noble, Defiant, Anniversary. $10, $10, $20 - $40.
Bungie Pro - $10 per year (until it ended)
Render minutes bundles - $variable

Were you blinded by their majesty?

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Well, at least if we go by Cody's definition of 'micro-transaction' as 'anything that's not a full-game release or bumper-sized expansion pack.'

Does anybody else, though?

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They weren't dealbreakers or dealmakers, but the digital goodies included with the legendary edition added to its value for me.

Was paying for that a microtransaction?

Edit: they were NOT dealbreakers or dealmakers!

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They were dealbreakers or dealmakers, but the digital goodies included with the legendary edition added to its value for me.

Was paying for that a microtransaction?

That sounds like a plain old transaction to me.

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It does many things well, and while I disagree about it being the ultimate Halo, I'd just like to point out that it doesn't need microtransactions to do the things it does well or to fail at the things it falls short on.

Well, at least if we go by Cody's definition of 'micro-transaction' as 'anything that's not a full-game release or bumper-sized expansion pack.'

Let me remind you:

DLC Map Packs: Noble, Defiant, Anniversary. $10, $10, $20 - $40.

Bungie Pro - $10 per year (until it ended)

Render minutes bundles - $variable
Were you blinded by their majesty?

I don't use Cody's definition. I've never considered map packs as something that fell under microtransactions. Bungie Pro is also a service that one pays for. I don't have a capture card, and Bungie Pro made it so I could render films. And there were free render minutes that I could use without purchasing bundles. Bundles just gave me a ton of minutes for a ton of videos if I ever needed it. I don't include a separate and optional service that allows me to convert video into a format that I can put onto a computer or take me with me anywhere well outside of the game as a microtransaction. A microtransaction would be something like, hey, you saved that film, but to watch it again or show it to anyone in the game's theater mode, shell out the cash. No thanks.

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Were you blinded by their majesty?

To be honest, no. I played a lot of Halo 2 and 3 multiplayer. I stopped playing 3 when I didn't want to buy the mythic map pack. Then the playlists I liked were no longer available since I didn't have mythic, essentially driving me away. I played the hell out of the Reach beta and loved it, but come retail I played for a while, then lost interest when a map pack became available.

And I never liked ODST.

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It's too bad you never played the Noble map pack, I loved those maps. Once 343 and Certain Infinity took over I thought the new maps were meh, but Noble was fantastic.

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If you care about great games, buy only great ones. Better yet, if you really care, work your way into the business so that you can make the games that you want to play. You might get lucky and have your faith rewarded.

This is my mantra as of now. Love it.

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If you care about great games, buy only great ones. Better yet, if you really care, work your way into the business so that you can make the games that you want to play. You might get lucky and have your faith rewarded.

This doesn't work. I've been doing this for a long time now. It doesn't matter. Not enough people care for this to make an impact, and it just gets harder and harder to find great games.

It's interesting, because right now adventure gaming is probably as good as it was in the Sierra / Lucasarts heyday. But adventure games don't really sell all that well. So why would people be making them? Because the people making adventure games now are really passionate about adventure games. That makes all the difference.

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This doesn't work. I've been doing this for a long time now. It doesn't matter. Not enough people care for this to make an impact, and it just gets harder and harder to find great games.

Perhaps this is true for somebody with unlimited time to invest in playing games who simultaneously also happens to have a very highly-refined taste for the kind of games they like to play. But I think to say the least, this kind of person is an outlier. Maybe that's how you'd describe yourself, but either way I don't think you should be kidding yourself that you are representative of the average gamer.

About 8-9 years ago I bought every major ‘must play’ game on every console. I found I just about had enough time to play them all, and whilst I didn't get the most out of every one of them, and I sometimes found I was left wanting more from some of them, I was on the whole left more than satisfied. I certainly didn't feel like the well was drying up. Nowadays my other responsibilities prevent me from playing games to this degree, and I know for a fact I've missed out on a large number of excellent games.

I bought Skyrim, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Modern Warfare 3, Halo CE: Anniversary and some others in 2011 — I didn't even play HCEA until about 3 months ago. I've still not finished Skyward Sword or MW3. Skyrim I appreciate is a game I'll never ‘finish’ but I probably only put a few hours into it. Since then there've been a whole number of titles I really wanted to play but know I'll not get time to. Metal Gear Rising sounds fantastic. I bought Forza Horizon and played it for a few hours, enjoying all of it but knowing I'll never get maximum value from the title.

So I say to you: if you struggle to find ‘great games’ you are either far, far too picky about what constitutes a ‘great game’, or you have a disproportionately large amount of time in which to play games (as compared to most gamers). Or maybe both. In either case, I wouldn't draw market-relevant conclusions from your personal situation.

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It's interesting, because right now adventure gaming is probably as good as it was in the Sierra / Lucasarts heyday. But adventure games don't really sell all that well.

Then go help...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2112639455/mages-initiation-a-classic-sierra-style-adventure

So why would people be making them? Because the people making adventure games now are really passionate about adventure games. That makes all the difference.

Indeed.

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If you care about great games, buy only great ones. Better yet, if you really care, work your way into the business so that you can make the games that you want to play. You might get lucky and have your faith rewarded.

This doesn't work. I've been doing this for a long time now. It doesn't matter. Not enough people care for this to make an impact, and it just gets harder and harder to find great games.

I'm assuming that "this" refers to buying great games. What else is there to do? (Well, there are other things, but I'll get to that.) I feel your pain, because you remind me of myself with music. Even the good stuff now sounds derivative of someone else I was into years ago. I don't know if it's me or the music, but I'm just having the trouble mustering the enthusiasm I used to for new music. But even that seems cyclical. I'll read more, watch more movies. Then one day on a whim I'll record a few hours of KCRW, and I'll get excited about some band I hadn't heard of.

It's interesting, because right now adventure gaming is probably as good as it was in the Sierra / Lucasarts heyday. But adventure games don't really sell all that well. So why would people be making them? Because the people making adventure games now are really passionate about adventure games. That makes all the difference.

I think there are periods we like to categorize as golden ages (for most people it's whatever was popular whenever they got into their hobby), and no one really knows if we're on the cusp of another golden age, but I like believing the best is yet to come, especially with something as technologically driven as video games. I'm not the gamer you are, but I'm glad to hear someone with your perspective thinks that some genre of gaming is going well. I agree with the idea that passion is the key, but that brings me to what else can be done. I know you work with scripts, and you've joked about working at Bungie before, so why not go for it? It's the people with the strongest opinions about what things should be that end up making what they want to see. A certain amount of ego is necessary. Heaven knows you've got that. ;)

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Saying a game has microtransactions is a giant generalization, really, it is an open ended comment. What can you buy? Can you buy a cosmetic hat? Or can I spend a buck to go to the top of the leaderboard? Can I buy a bigger gun?

This.

That said…

’m tired of EA being seen as “the bad guy.” I think it’s bullshit that EA has the “scumbag EA” memes on Reddit and that Good Guy Valve can Do No Wrong.

The debate on microtransactions is orthogonal here. EA is Scumbag EA and Valve is Good Guy Valve for all the other shitty things that EA has done over the years whilst Valve has been a proactive pro-consumer force. They are too many to list here, but things like unaccountable account-wide bans, terrible customer service, upselling adverts in-game, announcing PvZ 2 then firing the entire PvZ team a week later etc. etc. I agree they have an image issue, but that image is reflective of a pretty shitty and at times consumer-hostile corporation.

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Is that even though they are small, is how quickly they can add up!

I have only one thing to say on the topic of micro transactions and it is this: I do not envy parents of young children who are trying to teach them about the value of money, and how this kind of transaction can... "run away" with itself in a sense.

How do you teach an 8 year old the value of a dollar, if they never see it or have it go through their hand?

I can name a couple of people personally who let their children play with their ipads innocently enough, but had no idea their kids had purchased a bunch of extra levels, items, and other in-game content while doing it.

To be fair, the kids didn't know either and in their defense, the parents shouldn't have neglected to setup their accounts with their kids in mind (you know, purchase protection and not having a credit card saved into the device, etc).

It was just amusing to watch them explain that what they did cost real money even though they didn't physically buy anything.

Lesson learned on my friends part now of course, but still I was dumbfounded by how fast the cost ballooned. (Apple was kind enough to refund them their purchases, with a warning)

IDK. You or I may be an adult and know how they work in relation to our bank accounts, but man, that's gotta be a fun one to teach your kids lol. And yes, I know that there are parental controls for most of that stuff, assuming the adult remembers to set them up! :D

For me, this is usually how I feel after

[image]

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http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/6/4070584/ea-wont-have-micro-transactions-in-all-future-games-exec-clarifies

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"You could play this game for the next three years and never pay a penny on it," he said, "or you could play and immediately upgrade and get more excited about the game. Consumers love that."

I like getting excited enough about the game to want to own it, and I want the game to be good enough and fun enough for me to keep playing it without feeling a need to buy more things to actually feel said fun and excitement.

"We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level,"

I'll just cut it off right there, shake my head, and laugh.

"It allows someone to take a game that maybe they played for 1,000 hours and play it for 2,000 hours," he said. "We are very conscious that we don't want to make consumers feel like they're not getting value. We want to make sure consumers are getting value."

Considering how Battlefield Premium works, this statement is pretty hilarious.

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It sounded fishy that EA could decide that regardless. Typically journalistic excess.

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Now, I'm not saying that there wasn't a quote that was totally warped or disregarded to create a firestorm and lead to many hits on some "video game news" webpages, but I wouldn't go so far as to pretend like this was a dream or something made up. If anything it's EA walking it back and clarifying to try and calm the flames (and doing a bad job, considering those quotes). Remember everything with the free Crimson Map Pack and all of the blunders that went with it and specializations, but then Microsoft came out and said it was all part of the plan and a one week thing? It was all nonsense and trash.

Considering EA's history, I'm more inclined to believe the "journalists" than the guy from EA. If the journalists did warp or misquote, that's also pretty unforgivable and there should be a correction regardless. Either way, what the EA person just came out and said is still pretty pathetic in regards to microtransactions.

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I'm going to be a typical fanboy and say I never believed Bungie was going to transform into Zynga because of what the original article implied. If I know anything about the Bungie culture, when they joined up with EA, they negotiated themselves a lot of freedom.

The article seemed calculated to cause freak outs.

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I'm going to be a typical fanboy and say I never believed Bungie was going to transform into Zynga because of what the original article implied. If I know anything about the Bungie culture, when they joined up with EA, they negotiated themselves a lot of freedom.

Wait, what?

Bungie never joined up with EA. They're currently in cahoots with Activision, a completely different company. ;)

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I'm going to be a typical fanboy and say I never believed Bungie was going to transform into Zynga because of what the original article implied. If I know anything about the Bungie culture, when they joined up with EA, they negotiated themselves a lot of freedom.

Wait, what?

Bungie never joined up with EA. They're currently in cahoots with Activision, a completely different company. ;)

See what happens when you take dramamine? Just say no to drugs, kids.

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EA Games, Challenge Everything *OT*

Who cares?

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Yeah.

Obviously me, and many, many others

Was this a feature at launch?

Was this a feature at launch?

So I was half right about BF3.

Obviously me, and many, many others

I will use Dead Space 3 as my example.

I will use Dead Space 3 as my example.

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

That game is called Aliens: Colonial Marines.

That game is called Aliens: Colonial Marines.

That game is called Aliens: Colonial Marines.

That game is called Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

Wow. That's all I have to say, just wow.

Yep. You just lost me.

Obviously me, and many, many others

Obviously me, and many, many others

+1

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

+1

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

"Microtransactions make that possible"? Was that sarcasm?

Not defending the business people, defending the developers

Obviously me, and many, many others

Dude!

Dude!

Dude!

Dude!

Dude!

EA Games, Challenge Everything OT