In light of another E3 passing and the fact that I want something on this blog other than slowly paced Mass Effect fan fiction before the Fourth of July weekend, I decided to bring up a piece I wrote for OmniGamer last year. It was an opinion piece I had about microtransactions and how complacency in their application in modern gaming would lead to major problems.
The sad thing is how ubiquitous the practice has now become, this article feels like a snapshot of a slightly more innocent time when it was possible for enough outrage to cause studios to backpedal.
Well at least Nintendo haven't caved to the practice just yet.
So once again, enjoy this piece from 2016 last year:
The Complacency of Microtransactions (Originally Posted on OmniGamer.com)
Another E3 has come
and gone and with it came the promise of new experiences from the AAA
industry. God of War has returned, Crash
Bandicoot is coming out of mothballs, the new Legend of
Zelda looks amazing and at least two high-profile experiences,
Gears of War 4 and Battlefield 1, tried to mask the
fact that on top of being sold at retail they were going to include
microtransactions. They weren't mentioned directly during the EA
or Microsoft conference, but they have been confirmed to exist.
In fact, the
terminology used in EA's fourth-quarter earnings report paints a very
dire picture. A direct
quote from CEO Andrew Wilson contains this unsettling bit of
information:
"In Battlefield
1 you will see both macro-monetization opportunities from us, like
maps and large scale content, as well as micro-monetization in
smaller increments of gameplay," Wilson said. "The former
is fairly standard, while the latter could refer to anything from
Battlefield 4’s cosmetic-focused Battlepacks, to new guns and
classes should they see fit."
That is the head of
a major videogame publisher convincing his investors that
microtransactions and downloadable map packs are just two sides of
the same coin and since DLC has been around for so long, it means to
them that microtransactions have always been around in some capacity
and that they are just a harmless option for the consumer. Except
it's not, and that complacency is dangerous.
All of these
practices have been justified of course. The revenue is needed to
support servers. The money made will go towards future map packs.
There are no direct benefits. The purchases are purely cosmetic. You
can just ignore them.
That last excuse is
especially offensive because the very psychological manipulation that
such a system implements makes it the exact opposite of a choice you
can easily ignore. You want a thorough look into what goes into how
harmful such a thing can be, ask
the Huffington Post.
The damage of what
these microtransactions can do has already affected a major high
profile game: Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch. First, let
the record show that Overwatch is a fantastic team-based
online first-person shooter that I have put more time into than any
online experience in recent years and will gladly continue to play.
However, how it rewards player investment and progression feels way
too much like a gambling machine. The game has a leveling system like
any modern shooter, except when you hit a new level you are given a
loot box full of cosmetic items like skins and emotes for the various
different characters distributed at random. There is no way to
actively get something for a character you particularly enjoy, as
actual in-game currency is itself something you randomly get from the
box, and the only way to get items you specifically want is to keep
playing and get more lootboxes, or conveniently pay a few more
dollars for some extra loot boxes.
That's not a sense
of progression, that's a free-to-play slot machine, and every time it
is used I can feel my enthusiasm and sense of accomplishment
noticeably hindered.
It's a design choice
that has lead to a lot of debate amongst critics. Jim Sterling, host
of the game criticism video series The Jimquisition on YouTube and
head of his own blog of the same name recently stated that due to the
inclusion of in-game purchases he would exempt the game from
consideration for a Game of the Year award. He said that while the
cosmetic skins and emotes don't have a tangible in-game advantage, a
guy shooting you is still the same as a guy wearing a different color
shirt shooting you after all, the practice still feeds into a
community driven haves and have-nots atmosphere that can be
alleviated by coughing up some dough and rolling the dice a few
times.
This is no surprise
considering Sterling's passionate and well-founded thoughts on
fee-to-pay elements creeping into more recent productions and his
venomous contempt for them as a whole. While there have been a few
notable rebuttals to his argument, the sheer knee-jerk reaction from
average viewers as a whole seemed to boil down to “get over it,
it's not a big deal,” as if the overall quality of Overwatch, which
once again is phenomenal, magically gives it immunity to any and all
criticism of its progression system.
Then there is the
matter of Battleborn imitating
this model. Granted its premium currency approach where you can
buy any specific item you want is more accessible than Overwatch's
random chance, there is still an air of desperation and justification
in their inclusion.
"We know what
you’re thinking," the website said. "Don’t worry! When
we expand the Battleborn Marketplace on June 16, we’ll be
offering premium taunts and skins that will not affect gameplay at
all (warning: may make your teammates and opponents incredibly
jealous). This optional, cosmetic content we’ve created comes in
addition to all the skins and taunts we’ve already put in the game.
On top of that, the first five Battleborn DLC Packs will have
even more skins and taunts that are only unlockable by playing the
story operations and will not be sold individually in the
marketplace"
Even taking the
casual tone into consideration, this reads like someone trying to
bury the lede rather than explain a substantial change in direction.
For a game that justified a season pass by saying it would help fund
future content, what's all this premium currency going towards?
While
microtransactions have muddied Overwatch's sense of
progression and have been slipped into Battleborn in what can
only be assumed as an attempt to keep the lights on, there is still
the biggest problem: these games are now made more disposable. The
Dead Space games still hold up as entertaining action-horror
experiences, yet every single time I return to Dead Space 3,
the most notable for being one of the first AAA games to bolt
freemium elements into a retail experience, everything about it is
tainted by the system. The fresh new game smell is gone but the
stench of a system that is all about holding you down and getting you
to pay more money is still there and overpowers everything else. By
that same token, the last two Assassin's Creed games have only
suffered by adding such a system. I can't remember anything about the
characters or the story or the gameplay of either, but I do recall
Ubisoft thinking I wanted to waste thirty dollars on a fancy digital
hood for my forgettable protagonist.
Yet, because we say
nothing and have gotten accustomed to these actions with the same
excuses publishers have been using for years, we are actively
crippling our very medium. Stop asking how we can pay more money for
cosmetics and wonder why things have become progressively tedious to
unlock them in-game. Stop writing things off as an option when it's
clear the design is pressuring you to fork over extra dollars for an
experience you bought for in full. Don't let this become the norm
unless you want every single big project to go the way of Evolve
and Call of Duty.
No comments:
Post a Comment