Why microtransactions, IAPs and LootBoxes are here to stay thread

[eastyy]

Yay i bet someone it did

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-26-ea-denies-its-pushing-fifa-players-to-spend-on-loot-boxes-after-insider-leaks-marketing-documents

EA scrambles the PR Defence Jets after leaked marketing documents suggest how they aim to get players to pay for lootboxes

[Asura]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ting-documents

EA scrambles the PR Defence Jets after leaked marketing documents suggest how they aim to get players to pay for lootboxes

Zero surprise, really.

These products all use funnel analytics. Those are a set of visualisations which chart, at the top end, the total number of players who start playing the game, and at the bottom, those players spending money for the first time within the game. They also chart, chronologically, every unavoidable step between these two things.

So, a million people boot up FIFA.
99.98% see the first title screen.
99.1% complete a single match or game.
87% ever open the store screen.

All the way down, losing more and more people each time, until they have "x% buy a lootbox" as the final step.

The theory is that up there at the top of the funnel, where it drops from 99.1% to 87%, if you were to raise that 87 to 89, you would increase the number of x% at the bottom of the funnel.

It's like planing down a piece of wood. Every little bump could lose people, so they keep planing down and planing down to make sure as few people as possible quit. One week they see if they make the text on the title screen blue, does that make the numbers go up? One week they see if they make the text red, what does that do?

This is why all mobile games have really irritating "first time experiences" which guide you through steps as a very heavy-handed tutorial. If people can "do their own thing" and have different experiences, they can't compare them like-for-like and these numbers become meaningless.

When it comes down to it, EA put microtransactions in a game, on the whole, because they want people to buy them, and they're going to do everything they can to try and exploit every player.

People need to buy alternatives though and not just complain.

[MartyG]

Well moving on from the above, it looks like EA has found a kind of workaround for the lootbox being gambling issue by allowing the contents of their FUT lootboxes to be previewed before being purchased. As the video from Bellular News explains, this somewhat mitigates the gambling part (because if you know the content, the chance part kind of goes away) but then introduces FOMO - that very strong draw to purchase the bargain or limited time availability of a normally rare player.



It could well get the gambling commission (and similar investigations) to go away for EA, so is a clever move on their part.

EVIL.

[fishbowlhead]

Cleaver, im almost impressed at the weaselling to keep their golden goose going.

[wakka]

To be honest there is an evil genius to that scheme.

[briareos_kerensky]

Didn't really know where to put this, but Dr. Mario World is ending operations on November 1st this year.

[QualityChimp]

No Microtransactions Shouldn’t Be A Selling Point
Thanks for being normal? Or at least what normal used to be?

"I feel like I’m going nuts, or at the very least rapidly ageing so much that I turn more and more into the “old man yells at cloud” meme with every passing day. The fight against microtransactions and excessive monetisation in video games looks like it’s been lost and nobody seems to care. Nobody cares that games are releasing as piecemeal instead of complete, that there are ninety different versions of games with spreadsheets to explain how the Gold Ultimate Edition* is different from the Limited Deluxe, or that cosmetic microtransactions are a-OK in games when they just used to be unlockables anyway.


I guess we all just got tired of fighting the endless barrage of bollocks — how many different fires can you put out before you run out of water? Loot boxes were so emphatically terrible and despicable that they made every other money-grubbing initiative look less bad, almost agreeable in comparison, and now it’s all just normal. “At least it isn’t loot boxes,” we say, eating the meagre slices of the AAA pie that come with the entry price. The fork’s $10, plate $20. Give us $35 and you might get some cream to go with it in six months."

[Asura]

"I feel like I’m going nuts, or at the very least rapidly ageing so much that I turn more and more into the “old man yells at cloud” meme with every passing day. The fight against microtransactions and excessive monetisation in video games looks like it’s been lost and nobody seems to care.

(I know you were quoting the article, QC)

Fact of the matter is that this is death by a thousand cuts. I'm observed two things recently.

First is how everyone hates EA, they're the microtransaction devil, worst company in America (apparently), then the moment they dangle a new Dead Space game everyone seemingly forgets all that and starts tweeting about it.

Second is how the core gaming userbase generally hate microstransactions, but they love Genshin Impact. It doesn't matter if you have spent no money on it, or how "fair" it is; you're playing a free-to-play game, you're part of it being popular, you're part of making it "the conversation" online, and everything you do/say about Genshin form the foundations of the cultural "value" that its purchases have. Just by playing it, you make other people buy stuff in it (few people buy stuff in an f2p game that's dead).

And that's fine! I buy microtransactions in games (not gacha; I generally avoid that, but I do buy stuff). But you can't play a game like Genshin whilst also saying you're against microtransactions, even if you yourself haven't spent any money.

To respond again to the thread title, microtransaction-laden games are here to stay because people like them, even if they say they hate them. They spend money on them, or they play them and thus create a demand/pressure on others to spend money. Doesn't matter if it's players in FIFA or anime-tiddy-witches.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I think its a complex subject because its not legally right or wrong, it's socially right and wrong, and this is usually a sliding scale.
For me, if it's a FTP game, then I expect MTX. If you want to play and pay, fine. If its a £60/£70 full price game, then I don't want to see that ****, even cosmetic because that's a thin edge of a wedge.
Loot boxes can **** off completely.

[Asura]

I think its a complex subject because its not legally right or wrong, it's socially right and wrong, and this is usually a sliding scale.
For me, if it's a FTP game, then I expect MTX. If you want to play and pay, fine. If its a £60/£70 full price game, then I don't want to see that ****, even cosmetic because that's a thin edge of a wedge.
Loot boxes can **** off completely.

This is one of the reasons I rarely buy AAA games anymore, and never at full price. The moment I see a "season pass" or anything like that, I need to google what it's about. I've made exceptions, sometimes, where the base game might be cheaper and the season pass content might be inexpensive and huge; I mean, I used to buy "expansions" to PC games back in the 90s and sometimes season passes are the same thing.

But sports games take the absolute piss these days. The newest ones I have are from ~2011.

[Neon Ignition]

The introduction of season passes has been a cop out in most instances to charge regular dosed amounts for what ultimately amounts to less worthwhile DLC than used to be released.

I wouldn't spend money on Genshin but in theory I don't object to the idea of spending a certain amount if it felt worthwhile and I enjoyed it because the base game hasn't cost me anything, it's a free experience pitched in a way that I know what it is going in to it and there's an element of money spent going toward an experience someone has worked and I enjoy (assuming spending is kept balanced and I'd even played it)

It's why GTA Online crosses the pale a little because on paper the delivery is the same however GTA Online isn't free, it was a mode within a full priced game.

MTX within a paid title feels like a separate matter from DLC, it feels like it can be desirable but should never feel essential in the sense that players have a detrimental experience for not having paid for it. It's an individuals POV but still something it's very easy to fall on the wrong side of.

Plenty people have enjoyed SF5's Passes extending that games life, I've not been as enamoured by at least £100 worth of passes drip feeding less content than a KOF launches with. It's often a major thing, also often a perception thing but the very fact there's even any element of companies marketing games as not having MTX being a selling point says pretty much all that needs saying about whether they're ultimately a good thing or not.

[Neon Ignition]

When Activision Blizzard goes in on toxicity man, they go all in... meet the 'Cosby Suite' clan

[Brad]

What am I looking at there? ^^^^

[Cassius_Smoke]

I worked for a place that had a bad rep for how it treated staff. Nothing like blizzard of course but they very much treated you like a commodity. I was warned about working there.
I can tell you that over my 2 years there that reputation had a detrimental effect in them being able to get staff. The place was like a revolving door. They'd basically employed and fired all the trained and experienced staff in the city.

Blizzard and Ubisofts rep is even worse. I can only hope its enough to put everyone off. If they struggle to get good staff they'll find they struggle to get good products.