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Would You Pay Pennies For Game Features?
Friday at GDC Austin saw the day starting with a keynote that may seem unusual to players unfamiliar with the Asian online gaming market. Nexon is a major player from the country of South Korea, boasting a handful of titles that see more users in a month than many well-known online games made here in the US. All of the company's titles, regardless of genre, have one thing in common: they're free to play, sort of. Microtransactions, the practice of paying a very small amount of money for an object or service, is what provides Nexon its revenue ... and plenty of revenue it is. Nexon America's director Min Kim gave a discussion on the realities of rolling Microtransaction-based titles out in the states, with a case study of the success of Maple Story's launch in our country.
NO and NO. Once I "buy" a game it had better damn well come with all the features the main game needs to be played. The war horse amour from Oblivion is one example of some that was not necessary but cool that I did buy. If I have to buy a games cores features to play on top of buying the game in the first place, well, that game company can go fuck themselves.