Microtransactions

What makes a video game good? Is it its ability to evoke emotion? Is it the beauty and graphics? Or how about the feeling of being rewarded while going through the journey you’ve embarked on in a game? I suppose it depends who you ask, but for many publishers out there the key factor on whether or not a game is good lies in how much money it made. Whether you like it or not, the video game industry is a business, and people making games need to pay their bills somehow. Microtansactions and monetization of games is a hot button issue around the gaming community; many games are now exploring different options, and people always seem to be up in arms about anybody doing something other than what they are used to. From “free-to-play” with loot crates, or downloadable content, publishers are testing the waters to try to make the most money they can rather than stick to the old way of just selling a game and having that be the end of it… And that’s OK. Like I said, these people need to pay the bills, and if they don’t make money on games, then guess what? They won’t keep making them.

How many times have you heard people complaining about how you have to spend so much money to get all the unlockables in Star Wars Battlefront 2? Or that people are buying their team in an EA Sports game’s ultimate team mode? Or that developers are creating half a game and selling the other half as DLC? Well I’ve heard all of them many of times, and I truly don’t understand. Maybe it’s my background as a business student, but these people aren’t forcing you to do anything, and if you’ve got a problem with how a game is being monetized, simply don’t buy it. I’m not the first to use this phrase but it’s one that has stuck with me: vote with your wallet. If you aren’t happy that there is DLC in a game then don’t give them your money, and if enough people speak out and tell them why they aren’t buying their game then maybe they’ll fix it. If their goal is to make money, they’ll need people to buy their games – and if everyone is mad at them and not giving them money, they’ll change. This being said however, be careful what you wish for. Games today cost less than ever when you take inflation into account, and with this diminishing return for developers, they would not be able to continue creating games at the quality they are now without finding a new stream of revenue. So, what are the options on the table? They can increase the prices of video games, they can charge for extra content, or they can go out of business… And if you’re taking the time to read about this than I assume, like me, that last one isn’t really an option. Let’s look at both others as viable options.

The price of video games in Canada is currently $79.99 and don’t get me wrong, I used to complain about this being too high as well, until I stopped to realize what I was getting for it. I had no problem going to a movie theatre and spending 10 dollars on a ticket, 20 on concession, and maybe getting 20 bucks worth of food before or after. This is 50 dollars for a one night, 2 to 3 hour activity, compared to buying Call of Duty for 80 dollars and spending 10 hours playing the campaign, and hundreds of hours online playing with friends. To me I get way more bang for my buck on a video game, so why is it still so cheap? My opinion is that if they increased the price of games even more, then they would take a serious hit from people who would get scared by the prices and wouldn’t see gaming as an option anymore. In an ideal world, I think that increasing the price of games, or at least leaving room to move up and down the price scale based on how much was put into a game or how strongly they believe in it would work out perfectly. As I’m sure you know though, this isn’t an ideal and perfect world. Price increases and decreases would lead to price wars from company to company, would lead to consumer outrage, and could crash the video game market altogether. It’s an extreme of what could happen, but based on the conversations I’ve heard and had about the situation, it’s far more likely than it working out for the best.

So if price increases aren’t going to work, and we still want to play games at the quality that they are today, then microtransactions and DLC is the only way for everyone to win. For as much hate as EA gets for its microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2, or in its EA Sports video games, the bottom line speaks for itself. Tons of people love these games and are willing to spend extra money in them. If EA was putting out bad games and trying to sell extra content people simply wouldn’t be paying for them. Now, before cementing myself as a corporate apologist, I will give an example of a time when a game has done microtransactions in a way that I am completely against and honestly can’t believe. When a game promises something, and then takes that promise away after you’ve bought it, forcing you to may more to get it back, that’s wrong. Destiny is a game that I’m quite fond of, but they are guilty all the same to this. When the game launched, everyone was able to finish the campaign, do the strikes, nightfall strikes, raid, and compete in the crucible. When the first bunch of DLC came out, however, they took nightfall strikes and put it behind the pay wall. While it seems small, end game content isn’t exactly too broad, and so nightfall strikes were one of the few rewarding challenges you could face week to week. To promise people and give them content, and then remove it from them after they thought they paid for it is deceitful and corrupt in my book.

I know not everyone will agree with me in saying that microtransactions are good for the gaming industry. I just hope that you can look at them with an open mind, and realize what reality would look like without them. Sure there’s no hard proof that they are keeping the gaming industry alive on their own, but from everything I can see, I’m not sure how it would survive without them.