The Hidden Evil of the Microtransaction

An anonymous reader tips an opinion piece at #AltDevBlogADay written by Claire Blackshaw, lead designer at Jagex Games Studio, about where companies go wrong with microtransactions. While microtransactions aren't inherently evil, she says, they're often misused by marketing folks to the detriment of everyone. She encourages game developers to fight back. Quoting: "The problem with all this is this it is an ambiguous, grey area. The real kicker is that grey areas are always green-lit by greed. In the interest of a 'little more,' so much wrong has been done. So many ideas ruined, communities broken, and teams overstretched by wanting that little bit more. The old sustainable farming arguments come into play here. The massive problem is that you as the Games Designer or other development members do not always have the final say, but you can still fight your corner. You can build your arguments and try to provide some strong research and data to help your money people see the long term view."

Comments

My only problem...

[c0mpliant]

With micro transations is that sometimes they don't seem micro at all. My idea of micro transations are less than €1. I came across a game there recently (Burnout Paradise for anyone who cares) where all the micro transations that were available combined cost more the original game did.

Re:My only problem...

[Mad Merlin]

I think the bigger problem with microtransactions is that games that utilize them have a strong tendency of virtually everything revolving around microtransactions to the point where it's completely impossible to play without buying something every 5 seconds. I hate the concept of buying your way through a game, I mean, what's the point? Sure, I could actually try and enjoy this game, or I could dump $100 into it stretched over a few weeks so I can spend less time playing it. But aren't games supposed to be enjoyable? Spending less time playing them seems to defeat the purpose.

Personally, I think if a game offers something something in exchange for real money (aside from possibly the game itself), it should not affect gameplay itself. Maybe someone really wants a slightly different looking avatar, and if they want to pay a few dollars for it, so be it, it doesn't hinder anyone else's enjoyment of the game. Regardless, that's why you won't find any microtransactions (or macrotransactions, for that matter) in Game!, as it focuses on being fun to play, apparently a novel concept these days.

Re:My only problem...

[wvmarle]

The core problem with these micro-transactions is that in such games there tend to be A LOT of transactions. Time and again you have to make a payment. Even if that payment is only 1 or 2 cents (notwithstanding the fact that there is still the issue of processing such payments), time and again the user is asked to make a payment decision. Do you pay or not? Is it worth it, or not?

Or imagine the news paper requiring micro payments. And is asking every article you want to view "this article costs you $0.02, accept?" - that's irritating at best. Having a pre-paid credit that is then automatically debited when you view an article is already better, but you still know you have this payment to make, and you (unconsciously) still have to make the decision if it's worth the extra cost or not.

And that's where it usually goes wrong. However with telephone calls (this is actually a working micro payment: small amounts for each call) people don't seem to have this issue; you pick up the phone and place the call, without thinking too much of the costs. But then a phone call is not as lightheartedly and easily made as clicking on a link to read an article, or to get a new level for a game.

There is much more to micro-payments than the payment amount or the method of payment. It's the psychology that blocks it, and in the end makes it infeasible. And no-one yet has found a way to fix that, really.

Re:My only problem...

[GrumblyStuff]

You're looking at it the wrong way. It's a microtransaction in that you get very little for that $5, $10, or $20.

Re:My only problem...

[jo_ham]

"4 x 2 = 6" might be your WTF problem. Unless you're saying that steam sells them as a pack of 4 for €6 but individually at €2 each. It's ambiguous from your comment, but 4 x 2 does not equal 6.

Re:My only problem...

[daid303]

I suggest you get an update on the full story. Because they never had plans to sell "game breaking" equipment. They had in internal news letter that was made to start discussion about it, which leaked, and caused people to draw conclusions. And with those conclusions they where the noisy protesters, that gained followers. The end result was even more spam in local, a lot of lasers being fired on monuments, and me being even more happy to fly in nul-sec.

Have you read the leaked document? Because I have, and it looks nothing like "this is our plan!", it reads like, "these are views we can take on the subject"

Re:My only problem...

[sootman]

This was covered in detail over a decade ago.

[M]icropayments create a double-standard. One cannot tell users that they need to place a monetary value on something while also suggesting that the fee charged is functionally zero... users will be persistently puzzled over the conflicting messages of "This is worth so much you have to decide whether to buy it or not" and "This is worth so little that it has virtually no cost to you."

There are many reasons why micropayments haven't caught on in the decade+ that we've been hearing about them and they're all covered very nicely in that article. His talk about the mental effort involved in transactions may sound like psychobabble BS but this part sums it up nicely:

Imagine you are moving and need to buy cardboard boxes. Now you could go and measure the height, width, and depth of every object in your house - every book, every fork, every shoe - and then create 3D models of how these objects could be most densely packed into cardboard boxes, and only then buy the actual boxes. This would allow you to use the minimum number of boxes.

But you don't care about cardboard boxes, you care about moving, so spending time and effort to calculate the exact number of boxes conserves boxes but wastes time. Furthermore, you know that having one box too many is not nearly as bad as having one box too few, so you will be willing to guess how many boxes you will need, and then pad the number.

For low-cost items, in other words, you are willing to overpay for cheap resources, in order to have a system that maximizes other, more important, preferences. Micropayment systems, by contrast, typically treat cheap resources (content, cycles, disk) as precious commodities, while treating the user's time as if were so abundant as to be free.

I'm not saying that small payments can't exist anywhere, in any form, but it's pretty obvious that the more small payments you ask for, the worse a game gets.

Deevaluation seems to be the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

As I see the problem, it's the old fashioned wrongfull assumption that pretty much everyone makes at one time or another: Your actions affect price.

It's like when someone writes "Since yesterday, Stock A's price went up 100 dollars, If only I'd bought a million of them and sold today". This is only true if the act of purchasing a million of them would not have no effect on the price, which is highly unlikely when you purchase large volumes.

With microtransactions is the case of putting in products. They want to generate objects which have som intrinsic value, so people will buy them. But when ever they see that 10% of the people bought black sunglasses for 10 Dollars they go "hmm, lets get them out to the remaining 90%, lets drop the price to 1 dollar" Suddenly they are screwing over the original costumers by devaluating the objects they purchased and eventually they completely ruin the value of the object, becase who wan'ts a pair of sunglasses everyone has?

At the root of the problem is the fact that microtransactions are god from the machines in these small virtual worlds. They have complete power to put in content at any price or volume they want, and they simply do not understand the caution which must be taken exactly because of that level of control. And ofcause you have no free market at all, because production price of the objects are virtually zero, they simply cannot allow competition as the prices would be undercut to the point of there being no profit.

Wrong M-word.

[jthill]

they're often misused by marketing folks to the detriment of everyone

Bill Hicks, God rest your soul.

You mean the entirety of the concept?

[rebelwarlock]

I would argue that microtransactions are completely and utterly evil by their very definition. There is no "gone wrong" or "abuse" when it comes to microtransactions, because the sole purpose, the driving force behind them, is to deceitfully make large amounts of money. People are inherently bad at understanding how much money they're spending, particularly if it is done in small amounts. In fact, people will treat a five dollar bill differently than five one dollar bills. You buy an energy refill here and a potion there and all of a sudden you've spent $100 on that facebook game and have no idea what happened. That's exactly what they want.

Re:You mean the entirety of the concept?

[YutakaFrog]

I disagree with your black-and-white view of microtransactions, and cite my experience in League of Legends as an example. The game is free to play. There are no ads on their website, annoying or otherwise, or in the game. About the smallest useful "microtransaction" would be around $2, which you could use to unlock a very cheap champion or skin for a champion. Other skins cost what would be close to $10. However, the skins have no bearing on the gameplay whatsoever, and nothing that does impact gameplay cannot be purchased with the currency you earn for playing and (at a faster rate) winning games.

I think $10 is a little much for a single champion skin, but that's me. I did buy one skin so far for ~$5. So far, I've probably enjoyed 200-300 hours worth of gameplay. That's a WAAAAY better ratio of dollars spent to hours of fun than almost any other game I've ever played. If they were to stop their system of microtransactions tomorrow, then ... Riot Games would cease earning any money at all, development would cease, servers would go down, and the game would be dead. In the interest of keeping them alive and well, I feel no compunction whatsoever about choosing to support Riot by buying the various boosts and vanity items they offer that appeal to me. It's an absolutely *fantastic* implementation of microtransactions.

So yes, I believe there is a "non-evil" way to do microtransactions, and I'm grateful that at least one company has found it.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to try it out, you can sign up for your own free account and help me out in the process by going to http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4ceace9718e1b841855707

Re:You mean the entirety of the concept?

[mcvos]

I don't think microtransactions are inherently evil. They're often badly used, but in the end, it's just a tool. Like cash. Are cash transactions evil, because when you go out and spend the occasional $2 for a beer, at the end of the night it turns out you wasted $100 on stuff that just goes down the toilet?

Yes, people are foolish with money. Does that mean that more granular control over your expenses is a bad thing? It opens new opportunities. Some bad, some good.

And the Gaming Gods saith...

[lexsird]

Let not thine bean-counters have party to the "fun", for surely upon that day that thou let thine bean-counters soil the "fun", the Lord, thine customers shall smite thee in thine wallet and it shall sting, And there shall be weeping and gashing of teeth in the outer darkness of the unemployment lines by the wicked unfaithful devs, so saith the Gods of Gaming. Amen.

My opinion has changed on these

[Fractal Dice]

I've noticed that microtransactions fundementally change the developer-player relationship. In a subscription-based game, a developer and a player are on the same side: the player wants to buy an entertaining game to stick with, the developer wants to make an entertaining game people stick with. In a microtransaction-based game, it's an adversarial relationship: the player wants to minimize their spending to find entertainment while the developer wants to maximize the emotional impulse to spend. This creates a qualitative difference in the entire atmophere of a game. So although I used to be ok with microtransactions, their presence is now an automatic "no sale" for me.

Re:My opinion has changed on these

[ZosoZ]

I really don't think it's that simple; regardless of payment model the majority of developers want to produce a good, fun, entertaining game, and regardless of payment model the publishers/accountants/whoever can put the screws on for cash.

Buy the box for a one-off cost: who cares about the long-term as long as you make the sale? Cut the content down as much as possible, charge more for DLC or sequels (DLC might seem light a modern phenomena in its ubiquity, but we've always had data disks, expansions, "deluxe editions", sequels using practically identical game engines etc)

If it's a subscription you keep your hooks in the player, if that's through a fun experience then lovely, but it's not like there aren't a barrage of other psychological techniques (as per Nick Yee's seminal Virtual Skinner Box piece from 2003 for a start). Subs are also one size fits all, in most cases a good deal for someone with a load of time to sink in, terrible for someone who wants to dabble in a few different games.

As TFA says, "MTX is a valid business model". No doubt it *can* be used for "evil", quite possibly in more and different ways than one-off costs or subscriptions, but if done well and transparently (ha!) I have no issue with it.

Re:My opinion has changed on these

[ledow]

Sorry, but I don't really see the distinction between the two. The developer in a subscription model is there to make you continue to spend (because why would you continue to subscribe to a non-evolving world once everyone hit a certain level?), and the only difference is that the player is committed to spend only X amount per month for as long as it is worthwhile.

But then, I'm just a long-term gamer that has never played subscription games, never purchased anything in a microtransaction, and either buys games without any DLC (because they justify the purchase without it) or waits until they are stupidly cheap on special deals that include all the DLC in one hit (usually with all the "unique" DLC that pre-orderers got as well) - DLC that doesn't add longevity to a game is considered worthless.

I don't see the point in "renting" any game over an extended period of time (it's the most incredibly stupid idea I've ever heard but apparently quite popular now - would you *really* rent Office? Then why games?) or "having to" bump the value of a game you already have a perpetual right to. My gaming budget is limited, and such long-term, regular transactions would suck the life out of it in place of permanently owning a certain number of brand new games each month and being able to play however I want with them for life.

Note to software developers:

- I will not rent your OS.
- I will not rent your applications.
- I will not rent your games.
- Hell, I wouldn't even rent a PC/laptop/gadget.
- I don't rent movies (nor do I subscribe to movie channels, which is the same thing)
- I don't rent audio.

Of *COURSE* you want me to, because it's an ever-renewing income to yourself for zero extra work, but I won't do it and if you try to make me, or devalue my games pushing it, then I'll not buy anything at all from you.

Don't tell me you can't make money. PopCap sell tetris-like games under that premise and makes more money than most of the big software houses, the entire Wii catalogue is like that, and the whole "serious" gaming industry up until about 5 years ago was entirely pay-for-permanent-licence. If you can't make money, it's because you're churning out regurgitated shite (e.g. DNF) rather than giving people something they actually want to play (e.g. Half-life Ep 3).

Renting is for things that you need but can't afford to immediately own outright (e.g. houses, possibly cars for some people) and generates substantial profit for the owner of the thing being rented, which is why they do it. For everything else, I'll buy a permanent right or not at all.

The more you try to make me rent your game, the more you'll end up in the "not at all" category. Are you listening OnLive?

I measure my gaming value in hours enjoyed per money spent. Quite a few of the games I have are literally in the region of 400+ (a couple over 1000+) in that ratio (using UK pounds), and it grows every time I play them. Even the crappiest I've bought are in 1-2 at minimum.

Online games? The longer I pay a monthly subscription, the lower your ratio goes and the second I stop paying, that ratio stays still forever. After, say, a year the cost has already surpassed more than I've *ever* paid for a game in my life, so I'd expect the experience and hours of enjoyment to do the same, which is an *EXTREMELY* tough target for an online grind-fest.

If you really want me to pay a regular subscription you have to be able to convince me that I'll be guaranteed that I will be voluntarily drawn to enjoy hundreds of hours a month, every month, in order to come close to competing. If you want me to do microtransactions, the base games has to be so cheap, or so entertaining that it's worth it and every transaction has to add hours of replay value with the same ratio. Anything else, and I'm literally just pissing my money away.

Go look at TV subscriptions, etc. The fanatics get their money's worth in terms of hours / cost. Everyone else sees it as a bit of a con and ends up on f

Re:My opinion has changed on these

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

- I don't rent movies (nor do I subscribe to movie channels, which is the same thing)

Please tell me you don't watch movies, or you see your movies at the cinema or buy them on DVD. Anything, except that selfish and destructive habit known as piracy. In the age of the TSA and the patriot act, the last thing we need is any more legitimacy lent to the **AA in their march over our liberties and privacy. Plus it has other effects, such as making it more difficult for new artists to survive, making it more difficult for publishers to sign on artistically interesting and less financially certain talent, as well as simply inflating the cost of entertainment for those responsible enough to pay for what we use.

If you don't pirate significantly, I apologise. I really feel passionately about it. There's this carefully crafted perception that people have adopted that any of its ill effects are somehow everyone else's fault, and that they only apply to people we don't like, so it's OK. I have heard not one argument of any worth that piracy is OK. Not one. And it's not from a lack of listening.

While I accept that, like most selfish and destructive habits, it is acceptable in moderation, using it persistently as your major source of entertainment is simply not OK. Renting is really not a bad option. I pay $5 for three weeklies down at my local video store, which is a very reasonable price for 4.5 to 9 hours of entertainment. It's an especially small price, given the alternatives either cost $10 and up per movie, or nothing except a slow erosion our culture and freedoms.

If you do indeed pirate movies (or whatever else), I want to assure you from personal experience, it is possible to wean yourself from the **AA's teat. I did it when I was younger, and had a lot less money to spend on entertainment. Renting videos is cheap. My local library has CDs that people can borrow. Youtube has some fine stuff, some of which are actually posted by the copyright holders themselves. You can also look at online music labels, such as jamendo, zunior, magnatune, etc, for free and legal music. Movies are harder to procure legally than music. For games, you can look at casual games on the internet, if that's your thing, or look for some of the many free games out there (e.g. Team Fortress 2 is now free, although there are still micro-transactions for cosmetic items). And, of course, you can usually save a bundle when looking for things second hand. Give it some thought.

Re:My opinion has changed on these

[ledow]

I skip the cinema part and wait for the DVD. If you don't know by the time the DVD comes out whether it's a steaming pile of crap, you never will know. And at least then you can have it in a DRM-free (pretty much) standardised format that you *can* backup and play just about anywhere.

I work in IT within a school, that means I spend a lot of my time doing licensing compliance. I also program for a living and a hobby, and am an open-source advocate (pushing LibreOffice into schools). Nobody who works with OS should be able to look people straight in the face and say they use/copy/distribute copyrighted content against its usage license.

Wait, what?

[quietwalker]

I like to think of myself as someone literate, but I couldn't parse everything in the linked article.

All I know is that it had nothing to do with microtransactions, appeared to contain PHB-style solutions to problems that are no help at all (note, heavy rephrasing to make it sensible):
          Problem: Someone wants the game to make money and it may impact core gameplay.
          Solution: innovate, engage mindshare, customer focus.

          Problem: Someone wants the the non-core gameplay elements to make money
          Solution: Long tail opportunity, self-leadership, consensus-building ... and so on.

(Buzzwords were chosen because their nebulous nature seems to exactly nail the writing style, as though the article may have been put together by an auto-generator.)

Those aren't answers. Those are just concepts, and not well defined or even directly relevant ones at that. It's like having a business plan that just says "succeed". How do you fix the evil of a game that's meant to make money? Have a CEO that will stand up for you. Oh, gee, that helps. I'll get right on that.

This article appears to be entirely without value.

If you as a developer want to influence anything in your product, you'll want to start by working on your communication skills, especially when targeting other developers. This wouldn't even pass muster with PHBs.

Battlefield Heroes or Play4Free

[KreAture]

Classic examples of microstransactions gone wrong.
The games are free, and you can buy clothing/apparal with "credits" you earn as a soldier. However, they need to make money too, so the ithems you buy are always time limited to only a day or 3. For longer periods or permanent purchases you need to spend real money which you have exchanged for battlefunds.
This is all fine, except that the more powerfull weapons are ONLY purchasable via battlefunds, making them inaccessible to those without a creditcard or not wanting to spend more any or money. The kids running around with dads creditcard now starts ruening the gameplay by buying the most insane weapons and prancing around like invincable nitwits. Using healing-items like they were tictacs and blasting everyone away on first shot with some insane cannon costing around $20 or more.
With such microtransactions in play there is always the temptation to alter gameplay, prices and items to try and make more money. This is almost always viewed by the players as unfair as the items they invest in suddently become low-ranking tinkertoys to the new silly stuff they add. Oh, and you may not sell em back/trade so you can't get any money back. (Heroes is actually the worst as the purchasable weapons are a lot more powerfull than free ones.)

You're wrong

[Charliemopps]

"While microtransactions aren't inherently evil..."

That's where you're wrong, right there. They ARE inherently evil. Their very premise is evil. They are nothing more than an attempt to trick users into spending more on your game than they intended to. You are trying to obfuscate the true cost of playing your game. In many games it's nothing more that a subtly veiled form of gambling that you're allowing 11year olds to participate in. It drives people, not only away from your game, but the gaming industry as a whole. Have no doubt, micro transactions will eventually be taken to an extreme we haven't even imagined yet and this subject will end up in front of congress who will hand down the first federal regulation of video games in American history... which will be to all our detriment and thanks entirely to the greed behind micro transactions.

World of Tanks actually does it right

[VAElynx]

I was playing that game since closed beta and it's perfectly well playable without spending a dime.
Sure, those who pay will be able to use slightly better premium ammo, but that's not a gamebreaker.
Sure, they'll be able to support higher tier tanks without having to use tier 5 as a money maker all the time due to premium (FYI, that's the real value of a premium account - the double money makes tanks self-sustained up to tier 7,at least for a not too skilled but not a n00b like i was in the beta (back then we'd get some free gold) )
Sure they can get crew skills to 100 % straight off
Sure, they can platoon up with friends (the only thing that pisses me off, but then, WoT staff said they are going to put in free platooning in an update soon).
But guess what. asides from the last bit, (and that'll get fixed) i feel none of that is crippling trouble as a person who plays for free. I don't mind playing my KV and KV-3 more often than higher tier tanks, and the other advantages aren't that huge. Better ammo? Hell, i've killed people who had a better *tank*. Sure, it is an edge, but looking at how tank tiers mix in every game, it's the least of your worries as a free player. And premium tanks themselves aren't that great compared to same tier tanks fully upgraded (in some cases, outright worse) - they are mainly money makers.
In this way you can go through every paid advantage and see that in the end it doesn't amount to all that much.

tl;dr version: WoT does it right because unlike MMORPGs it relies a lot more on player skill, unlike FPS, the playing field is nothing close to level even without paid items, and there's little you can't do with free access.