Everything moves in cycles. We are, sadly, stuck in the "microtransactions are a really good idea" cycle. At some point, it will play out when the companies become so greedy that it turns off their primary customer base. We haven't hit that yet, so it should get worse in the short term.
You'll know the tide has turned when games start getting advertised as microtransaction-free, meaning that it will be an actual selling point that their game does not nickle-and-dime you. But we're not there yet.
Take a look at games like Mass Effect 3. Despite the price-gouging displayed by EA on that game, from it's day-one DLC to the high price of small bits of content, the game sold like hotcakes and made them a bundle of cash. Companies like EA will keep upping the payments until that breaking point is reached and the customers finally push back enough to make them pause.
The oddest thing to me is that microtransactions absolutely kill the essence of a game in my mind - an open, fair, balanced system where players are rewarded for time and/or skill playing. Once you can pay real cash to get a leg up on others playing the game, it no longer meets my definition of a game because it immediately imbalances the environment. I guess I'm an old fogey in that regard, because the game industry has shifted to this and the kids don't seem to care. To me though, that's why Diablo III was a complete disaster of a game; playing it felt useless and cheapened by the fact that anyone could just spend real life money to get the equivalent of anything I did in the game, whether it was long grinding or heavily-skilled play in the early days when Inferno difficulty was absolutely evil in difficulty.
World of Warcraft is now slowly going this route, too. Blizzard is opening the purchase of level 90 characters, and the slippery slope the purists were worried about just becomes more slippery. Everyone will have a point that they feel is "too far," and Blizzard is simply finding out where that point may be.
You'll know the tide has turned when games start getting advertised as microtransaction-free, meaning that it will be an actual selling point that their game does not nickle-and-dime you. But we're not there yet.
Take a look at games like Mass Effect 3. Despite the price-gouging displayed by EA on that game, from it's day-one DLC to the high price of small bits of content, the game sold like hotcakes and made them a bundle of cash. Companies like EA will keep upping the payments until that breaking point is reached and the customers finally push back enough to make them pause.
The oddest thing to me is that microtransactions absolutely kill the essence of a game in my mind - an open, fair, balanced system where players are rewarded for time and/or skill playing. Once you can pay real cash to get a leg up on others playing the game, it no longer meets my definition of a game because it immediately imbalances the environment. I guess I'm an old fogey in that regard, because the game industry has shifted to this and the kids don't seem to care. To me though, that's why Diablo III was a complete disaster of a game; playing it felt useless and cheapened by the fact that anyone could just spend real life money to get the equivalent of anything I did in the game, whether it was long grinding or heavily-skilled play in the early days when Inferno difficulty was absolutely evil in difficulty.
World of Warcraft is now slowly going this route, too. Blizzard is opening the purchase of level 90 characters, and the slippery slope the purists were worried about just becomes more slippery. Everyone will have a point that they feel is "too far," and Blizzard is simply finding out where that point may be.
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.