I find the current trend in video game monetization frustrating and upsetting. Where once you bought a game and that was the end we have migrated to a games as “service” model. Games as “service” only goal seems to be to milk the players for as much money and little effort as possible to appease big game companies real customer the investors
Progression or Profit?
Constantly in the gaming newsophere we are told that games must use shady monetization strategies because the price of games hasn’t changed in years. However, there are lies on both fronts of that statement. Putting in cosmetics for money is distasteful but doesn’t harm the mechanics of the game. Putting in systems to quickly level up or earn new unlockables (characters, weapons, powers etc) puts the monetization at odds with the progression of the game. When presented with that dichotomy the choice comes down to whether you make normal progression so slow players feel forced to spend more money or keep appropriate levels of progression for normal play and risk no one buying the unlockables. Guess which option is the preferred choice for big game publishers? You guessed it, the first one.
60 dollars worth of lies
The second lie, the lie of the sixty dollar price tag is slightly more duplicitous. Yes at face value games are sixty dollars. However that’s not the full game, it’s the “base” game. New releases don’t just offer the “base” game they also offer collectors, gold, platinum, or any other amount or combination of value buzz word. Each of those copies come with either cheepo real-world items (plastic statue, coins, better game case) or unique in game items/cosmetics). The value of these items is very low compared to the price tag they carry, an extra fifteen to sixty dollars depending on the company. That brings the price of the full version of the game up to as much as one hundred and twenty dollars. Of course, we cannot forget the season passes for each game that offers minor updates to existing content or minimal new content and range from twenty dollars to sixty dollars. For those not familiar with season passes it would be like the equivalent of buying a deck of cards and then having the option to purchase a set of new cards for each suite called the emperor or even an entirely new suite. Yes, it adds to the content of the deck but it is it really worth the same price as the deck itself? You might be saying at this point “well just don’t buy those then” which is an option in single player games. In multiplayer games, if you don’t keep up to date with expansions and seasons you normally lose the ability to play with other people or it fractures the community making it harder to play with others.
The final nail in the coffin to these lies for me was when I learned that Blizzard was paying one of their CFO’s ten million dollars a year, then to add salt to the wound the next guy they hired got a fifteen million dollars as a signing bonus. Now I know that not everyone in the company and certainly not the programmers and other staff are making that kind of dosh but when you can pay people in the top end of management that much money you don’t get the right to complain that games don’t make enough money. When you make enough money in a year to live off of for the rest of your life you can afford to sell games without diminishing the quality and artistic integrity of your game.
