Microtransactions: the Future of Games? (LootBoxes and Gambling)

Shifty Geezer said:
Designing for in-game consumables has, in all I've seen on the subject, accepted that only a small part of your audience will buy notably into ongoing purchases and you capitalise on the Whales, not the minnows. I guess EA have their own experiences with their sports games, but it'd be quite the stretch to think they could push IGCs onto most of their audience. I could believe the balance was very different, with IGCs a lot less aggressive, before some management choice decided to turn them up to 11. eg. What if originally it was ~5 hours play with 100% saving to unlock a major character, so maybe 10 hours with realistic spend? The complaints wouldn't be anything as high. Then maybe some schmuck said, "hang on, why's that 5,000 credits to buy? Can't we make that anything? Whack it up much higher - then we'll get more people buying the thing. We're not bloody giving this stuff away!"
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It would be interesting to see a recurring revenue breakdown and how the financial structure works out.
I am not convinced it is just whales though because of the size of the revenue is insane when it is over 50% relative to traditional games sold revenue structure.
Case in point for behaviour being beyond just whales is the mobile industry gaming where they target various consumers and with success; our family knows of women in their 50s paying for whatever in those games (you can tell I do not play them lol) and they are not what one would deem gamers or whales.

I agree there will be examples of single consumers spending a lot of money, but that is like saying gambling is designed around whales and high stakes when in reality they focus it on all.
 
Today's report on Battlefront 2's Disaster Watch:


Retail sales for Battlefront 2 in the UK are 60% lower than Battlefront 1.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...appointing-debut-for-star-wars-battlefront-ii

IMO this is huge because there are about 50-60% more 8th-gen consoles in the market today than there were in late 2015. This means there are about 75% less gamers-with-consoles purchasing the game than there were back in 2015
(0,4 lower sales on a 1.5x population, meaning adoption rate compared to the first game would be 0.4/1.5 = 0. 2666).

And for those thinking that most sales are digital, they're really not. According to TechRaptor, EA reported that digital sales this year made up 36% of a game's revenue and that's a 6% increase over last year. Since this includes microtransactions and digital-only DLCs, so it's possible the number of digital sales of AAA games might be quite a bit less than those 36%.
 
Don't think that's because of MT fallout. Most shoppers won't be aware or care. I think it's more a case of competition and the game not being all that great. We had plenty of chance to try the free open Beta and the game wasn't great by any stretch. It's a generic shooter with a SW skin. Meh.
 
The bad PR around Battlefront 2 has hit general news publications, here in the UK it was also on the BBC and that has a large viewing figure, let alone the major newspapers.
So unlike the past this has a very high visibility to shoppers.
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Don't think that's because of MT fallout.
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Isn't it time to concede even just a little more credit to the power of the larger communities in the Internet, for once?


The r/gaming subreddit has over 17 million subscribers who were mass-upvoting everything related to the game's fiasco with pay2win gambling. From Tuesday to Friday the first page of reddit was filled with warnings not to buy the game and to cancel pre-orders.
Among these, there were threads with hundreds of thousands of upvotes (lots of visibility during many hours in the first page) with instructions on how to contact major news outlets about the issue, others with instructions on how to cancel pre-orders, and other with instructions on how to call their senators to bring up the issue of gambling on congress.
This is why the mainstream media got involved everywhere, and that's why Disney and the Star Wars brand ended up getting attached to gambling for kids. Not to mention the Twitter trendings that were associating Disney and Star Wars to gambling.


It's not because the game's beta didn't go so well. Up until last week, EA's predictions for the game's sales were to outsell the 2015 Battlefront, and that was most probably related to data analysis done during/after the Beta (which also existed for the 2015 title, BTW).
And now the game is being given away as an extra offer in £199.9 bundles with the XBone S + (other) game. And retail sales are down 60% from the first title despite a considerable increase in userbase.
Plus, the insider kravguy said everything was happening due to the community outrage: not due to initial reviews (which were putting the game at >80% Metacritic BTW), not due to Beta reception. It was the massive effort of the community to bring the matter to light as much as they could.
 
We view the negative reaction to Star Wars Battlefront II (and industry trading sympathy) as an opportunity to add to Electronic Arts, Take-Two, and Activision Blizzard positions. The handling of the SWBFII launch by EA has been poor; despite this, we view the suspension of MTX [micro-transactions] in the near term as a transitory risk. Gamers aren’t overcharged, they’re undercharged (and we’re gamers) … This saga has been a perfect storm for overreaction as it involves EA, Star Wars, reddit, and certain purist gaming journalists/outlets who dislike MTX.
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https://wccftech.com/battlefront-ii-controversy-overreaction/

actual source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/gam...star-wars-game-firms-should-raise-prices.html
 
Stupid article that doesn't understand (or ignores) the issues and focuses solely on the microtransaction tag and the need to generate more income, which is not what the majority of the controversy is about.
 
iroboto said:
https://wccftech.com/battlefront-ii-controversy-overreaction/

actual source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/gam...star-wars-game-firms-should-raise-prices.html
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This sounds a lot like corporate paid journalism trying to make the outrage appear silly and replaced with an excuse that sounds rational so that people will start accepting any kind of overcharging as "helping the industry".
Pretty much like "destroying Saddam for democracy and counter terrorism".

I am disgusted. Next they will be charging us by the hour because "its one of the cheapest forms of entertainment if you calculate money by hour"

Well f*ck you.
 
Nesh said:
This sounds a lot like corporate paid journalism trying to make the outrage appear silly and replaced with an excuse that sounds rational so that people will start accepting any kind of overcharging as "helping the industry".
Pretty much like "destroying Saddam for democracy and counter terrorism".

I am disgusted. Next they will be charging us by the hour because "its one of the cheapest forms of entertainment if you calculate money by hour"

Well f*ck you.
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The largest publishers and their investors have been pushing "games as a service" for a while.
That's their end game: for people to pay games by-the-hour as if they were a movie in a cinema, with the added bonus of demanding extra pay every time they want to reload and you're out of ammo.

What they don't get is that this will eventually result in people just ceasing to play games, except if they're Sony/Microsoft single-player first-parties and indies.
And then their beloved whales will also leave their games because all they have is other whales to play with.

And then they'll blame gamers when most major 3rd-party dev studios need to be closed down, claiming gamers are ungrateful.
 
People won't stop playing games. Big pubs can't force pay to win down our throats unless the vast majority of the gaming market is perfectly willing to accept such a transaction method. Even so, I'm am pretty sure there will be smaller devs/pubs who will happily service those who refuse to accept such models.

Look at cable TV. Cost of subscription continues to rise year after year but created an opportunity for companies like Netflix and Hulu to step in and become major players.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
The largest publishers and their investors have been pushing "games as a service" for a while.
That's their end game: for people to pay games by-the-hour as if they were a movie in a cinema, with the added bonus of demanding extra pay every time they want to reload and you're out of ammo.

What they don't get is that this will eventually result in people just ceasing to play games, except if they're Sony/Microsoft single-player first-parties and indies.
And then their beloved whales will also leave their games because all they have is other whales to play with.

And then they'll blame gamers when most major 3rd-party dev studios need to be closed down, claiming gamers are ungrateful.
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Well, I hope people WILL cease playing games if they do it. Because like so many other things in this delusionally "free" market is that the suppliers of goods and services define the "norms" and/or limit options so that the market continues to consume the unacceptable.
We already consume products/services or overpay for a lot of things for which in a truly rational market, they would have been considered absurd and hence abandoned because of reasons such as the conditions required to use, the reduced utility, negative externalities, overpricing etc. It is no different from having economies ruled by cartels. Thats what the "free" market forms because all the requirements for it to work, is based on a huge amount of ideal assumptions that are often oblivious of speculation, unethical practices and the social and psychological aspect of human nature which is disrespected in favor of profit maximisation.
Currently the market leaders are betting on the newer waves of game consumers which are being conditioned from very young age to view microtransactions and pay by the hour as normal. Their first experience in gaming is through smartphone games and apps from social media which are infested with microtransactions and paying services
 
If the market leaders go in directions the market doesn't want, other players will come in and replace them. See Blockbuster versus Netflix. If the big pubs go subscription and gamers hate that, they'll buy the other games from the indie tiers until, potentially, a number of big indies get together to form their own publisher, etc. The only way the market can become a subscription based service is if consumers are 'happy' with it. This is exactly what happened with IGCs and mobile - mobile gamers were happy being fleeced so that market became a fleecing market.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
If the market leaders go in directions the market doesn't want, other players will come in and replace them. See Blockbuster versus Netflix. If the big pubs go subscription and gamers hate that, they'll buy the other games from the indie tiers until, potentially, a number of big indies get together to form their own publisher, etc. The only way the market can become a subscription based service is if consumers are 'happy' with it. This is exactly what happened with IGCs and mobile - mobile gamers were happy being fleeced so that market became a fleecing market.
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Agreed the market will correct itself as do many markets do.

But I disagree with the other sentiments (not yours) that just because he is an analyst he is a paid corporate shill trying to sway the masses. We've had a great deal of many climate scientists back in the 50s indicating the effect of green house gases, and I'm sure many business folks were just yelling at them thinking they were trying to screw over their business. As consumers we don't need to heed his warning, but most certainly the industry is.

Something will give, either games will take longer and longer to release (ie smaller teams), less fidelity, less content, less titles, less big budget risks etc. or you will see new pricing and content models. When games hit 100+ CAD per title for a regular version, you're going to see a lot of people start eyeing subscription based services, hell it's entirely possible that no game will ever release at that price point. Be prepared to see a steady increase in price however before that point. There will be a breaking point, high price entry bars the chance for viral growth.

In any event, if this is more desirable to people then MTX, then that is what will likely happen.
 
Technically I'm already part of a games subscription service since I'm a paying EA Access subscriber. Even at double the monthly price I'm not sure it would be financially viable for EA to extend it to latest titles though, maybe with enough subs+MT's?
 
Malo said:
Technically I'm already part of a games subscription service since I'm a paying EA Access subscriber. Even at double the monthly price I'm not sure it would be financially viable for EA to extend it to latest titles though, maybe with enough subs+MT's?
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Heavier discounts with the more expensive subscription?
 
Malo said:
Technically I'm already part of a games subscription service since I'm a paying EA Access subscriber. Even at double the monthly price I'm not sure it would be financially viable for EA to extend it to latest titles though, maybe with enough subs+MT's?
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I'm sure they can work out the finances. They also have the option of just releasing directly onto EA Access only, which requires you to pay to play and remove ownership from the equation entirely.
 
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