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Why microtransactions, IAPs and LootBoxes are here to stay thread

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    Shame, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is now definitely off my list of games to buy once they're on sale. I didn't think the beta was too bad, but it's clear now that the changed systems have been purely done so that they can be monetised. Wildlands sold well as it was a fairly decent and enjoyable game, but this is just a step too far.

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      I read that this game is currently selling the following stuff in game:

      Bundles that contain guns

      Bundles that contain blueprints to make guns

      Bundles for attachments for guns

      Individual attachments and guns

      Cosmetic shirts, armor, backpacks, tattoos, emotes

      Melee weapons

      Gear camo and paint

      Just...wow

      EDIT: Apologies the Reddit link above highlights it better...
      but still...
      Last edited by Cassius_Smoke; 03-10-2019, 10:17.

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        I think Ubisoft has had less criticism than their peers even though their monitisation has been on the line for a while. I appreciate that they have made some good games this generation but I do agree with Skillup that this is probably their 'Fallout 76' moment. Where they Ubified a game too much, made a GaaS where people wanted something else, it isn't particularly good and they have crossed a line with the absurdly aggressive monitisation.

        They are in danger of making me not care about the next Assassin's Creed or their future games if they continue down this path.

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          "The children’s commissioner for England has called for tighter legislation to protect young online gamers, some of whom are spending hundreds of pounds on “loot boxes” to keep up with friends and advance in games."

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            You can't beat the old days. £1.99 for a budget game, a bag of sweets and away you go. The sheer thirst for money from devs with these loot boxes is disgraceful. Robbing kids who don't know any better.

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              Originally posted by vanpeebles View Post
              You can't beat the old days. £1.99 for a budget game, a bag of sweets and away you go. The sheer thirst for money from devs with these loot boxes is disgraceful. Robbing kids who don't know any better.
              I dunno; I can totally understand why kids fall prey to this - back in the 80s we were obsessed with collecting for sticker albums.

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                Originally posted by Asura View Post
                I dunno; I can totally understand why kids fall prey to this - back in the 80s we were obsessed with collecting for sticker albums.
                Yeah, but you could do swapsies, unless you had wealthy parents and they ordered all the missing numbers from the back page.

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                  I was listening to the Raiders of the Lost Spark podcast and they talked about the new mobile Mario Kart and Call of Duty games:
                  CALL OF DUTY MOBILE SMASHES RECORD TO BECOME MOST DOWNLOADED PHONE GAME IN HISTORY

                  Call of Duty: Mobile's Microtransactions Analyzed

                  Mario Kart Tour update includes atrocious £39 pack that unlocks Diddy Kong

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                    Originally posted by vanpeebles View Post
                    You can't beat the old days. £1.99 for a budget game, a bag of sweets and away you go. The sheer thirst for money from devs with these loot boxes is disgraceful. Robbing kids who don't know any better.
                    I've only got a single game on my phone (Neo Turf Masters) because I hate all this free-to-play loot box crap. I just want to buy a game and I've got it. It's actually quite hard to find things that aren't like that on phones, but now it's spreading to consoles. Horrible.

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                      Originally posted by Asura View Post
                      I dunno; I can totally understand why kids fall prey to this - back in the 80s we were obsessed with collecting for sticker albums.
                      Difference is you had to go to the shop, with actual money and buy a physical thing.

                      Loot boxes are infinite and bought with clicks and are purposely abstracted away from real money.

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                        Originally posted by MartyG View Post
                        Difference is you had to go to the shop, with actual money and buy a physical thing.

                        Loot boxes are infinite and bought with clicks and are purposely abstracted away from real money.
                        Just to say, I think I was maybe a bit terse. What I was saying was that I'm not surprised kids are so susceptible to it, because even with the basic equivalent we had as children, we were totally enraptured by things like sticker books. I didn't mean it like "we had sticker books and we were fine".

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                          Listening to the Lost Spark podcast made me think about the strange relationship these things have.
                          I mean, there are dozens of CoD-a-like games on the various mobile marketplaces, but it took the actual CoD to break the download record.

                          I completely understand why games companies move into the mobile market:
                          Call of Duty: Mobile earned $17.7 million in player spending during its first week, making an average revenue per download of about $0.17, Mario Kart Tour took $12.7 million .


                          However, you've got to have the the original IP to give it its momentum.
                          You can't have a Lord of the Rings fruit machine without, at some point, having Lord of the Rings.
                          you can't have a Fist of the North Star Pachinko machine without Fist of the North Star.

                          Otherwise the brand loses its value and instead, you get The Munch Bunch being remembered as yoghurt, and only a few remember it as a quaint children's show.

                          At some point, will the games be a secondary concern as merely a way to sell the mobile version like cartoons made purely as marketing vehicles to sell the toys they feature?

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                            Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
                            Otherwise the brand loses its value and instead, you get The Munch Bunch being remembered as yoghurt, and only a few remember it as a quaint children's show.
                            Whoa, whoa... What?

                            Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
                            At some point, will the games be a secondary concern as merely a way to sell the mobile version like cartoons made purely as marketing vehicles to sell the toys they feature?
                            This is a bit tangential, but as the years have gone by, I've grown a bit cynical about this view. People express it a lot, and it's certainly true that shows like Transformers were commissioned to sell toys, but then money drives everything. For every Transformers or The X-Men, there's a Biker Mice from Mars or Mummies Alive.

                            People have a tendency to think "kids will watch any old rubbish" but I think kids are surprisingly discerning. I'm not talking about young children here, but older children. Some of those shows clearly were a cynical ploy to sell toys, and served practically no other purpose, and even as kids, I feel we saw through a lot of them. We knew what entertained us and what didn't.

                            I'm not saying this makes it okay to advertise to kids, far from it. Just I think some people look at those cartoons as being entirely without value, and I'm not sure they were.

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                              I think we could see more companies going the way of Konami and just using their established IPs to plaster on one-arm-bandits. EA and Activision seem more interested in the gambling mechanics then the games themselves these days, its not a big leap to just leave the games behind.

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                                Originally posted by vanpeebles View Post
                                Yeah, but you could do swapsies, unless you had wealthy parents and they ordered all the missing numbers from the back page.
                                But then you had kids running up huge telephone bills on the sex chat lines in the back of the Sunday sport My partner kids are both grown up , but in the Digital age its easy to keep track of spending.

                                I get how in one day kids can rack up a huge bill my Nephew did just that on his mobile and got grounded for month after my brother had a bank text alert the day LOL

                                But for months ?

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