Sony and Microsoft have delivered their next-gen visions, but with this
caveat: more microtransactions. Cash grab or survival strategy, it will
surely generate controversy as 2014 rolls along.
It's not the most fearsome name for an ominous, lurking force in
video games, but it still has many console gamers up in arms and on the
defensive: microtransactions.
With microtransactions, portions of a video game's content are walled
behind a system of low-cost purchases or in-game currency, and this is a
reality that has long been the lucrative core of Facebook, mobile, and
free-to-play PC titles. After some experimentation, the business model
has made its way to
full-priced console games,
from Forza Motorsport 5 to Grand Theft Auto. Depending on your outlook
on that gaming bastion, this could be another reason to hold off on an
Xbox One or
PlayStation 4, or it could be the beginning of the end.
The move toward microtransactions brings to mind some of the more
malignant issues lying beneath flashy next-gen launches and the war for
the living room. It's no secret that gamers don't particularly like
change, not when it's sloppily handled and looks on the surface
antithetical to earlier days of cheaper, simpler gaming -- on discs and
cartridges -- that involved no further transactions.
"It feels like you're intentionally making a bad game," said Frank
Lantz, a game design veteran and director of New York University's Game
Center. "You're offering the player, 'OK, well I'm going to make this
more tortuous and boring that you'll pay me not to experience it.'"
And in 2013, the behemoth console sector of the gaming industry is
grappling with changing up its business models while trying to defend
the bottom line. It's a strategy that is amplifying the already
adversarial relationship between consumers and
microtransaction pioneers like publisher Electronic Arts, named
worst company in America two years in a row.
Now that microtransactions in console titles are the next big push from game publishers, they're also
quickly becoming an emerging nucleus of player hate. Think of the model as downloadable content (DLC) goes mobile, or
"fee to play" as The Escapist's Jim Sterling puts it.
Not aiding publishers is the fact that mixing the terms
"microtransactions" and "console gaming" is considered tantamount to
heresy among hardcore gamers.
You see, by tacking extra costs
onto a $60 product when players have also already spent $500 or more on
hardware -- and then an additional $60 for the annual service that lets
them play that game online -- microtransactions in console games are
being seen not as the industry adapting to the times in a measured
manner, but rather as an unwanted gesture driven by the pursuit of
profit.
Microtransactions in 2013: The design dilemma
Microtransactions
in the Xbox One title Forza Motorsport 5 show up in the form of both
time-based boosters to aid the earning of in-game currency and the
ability to purchase currency bundles outright.
(Credit:
GameSpot)
Microtransactions in full-priced console games have been experimented with before -- in
Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 3, to heated backlash
-- and have had their fair share of controversies even in PC titles.
For instance, Diablo 3 received so much pushback for its purported "pay
to win" auction house that
developer Blizzard decided to ax both real and in-game money systems entirely from the game.
But it hadn't quite reached a boiling point until this fall, when a
handful of games -- many for the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One just released
in November -- were designed with intrinsic microtransaction models
that many gamers feared fundamentally tampered with design processes and
a game's core experience.
Xbox One exclusive Forza Motorsport 5 from Turn 10 Studios has become
the poster child for this debate, implementing an in-game currency model
that players could use to access what some considered to be an
inordinate amount of in-game content. Furthermore, the prices for that
content were so high -- and the game's progression system for earning
credits without paying so slow -- as to slyly entice people to rely on
real money instead, the criticism went. Contributing to the outcry was
the fact that the game also had a system that allowed players to
purchase a booster that would speed up the amount of currency you earned
for a brief period of time.
"I just get an uneasy feeling that monetization was firmly in Turn 10's mind when it devised its progression mechanic," wrote
Dave Cook at gaming site VG24/7.
Forza's microtransactions became such a pressing issue that developer Turn 10 Studios had to make
changes to the game's economy to allow faster earning, as well as offer a brief 50 percent discount on all
car purchases and dole out a number of appeasing bonus vehicles.
Neither Turn 10 nor Microsoft, which owns the studio and oversees the
Forza series, would comment on the matter of microtransactions. Though
Microsoft Studios chief Phil Spencer told Kotaku
that the company is "still learning" about microtransactions and
looking to adjust their implementation based on player feedback.
"It feels like you're intentionally making a bad game"
--Frank Lantz, game design veteran and director of New York University's Game Center
Given the PR nightmare Microsoft waded through after unveiling the Xbox
One in May and subsequently walking back many of its riskier features,
many gamers were placing their hopes in Sony to be the pro-consumer
alternative to that caricatured version of Microsoft. But Sony, too, has
cozied up to microtransactions, slipping them into the recently
released Gran Turismo 6 for the PS3. Though Sony, which owns Gran
Turismo developer Polyphony Digital, is adamant in its defense that the
microtransactions in no way impose themselves onto players.
"I do want to clarify that microtransactions are not something that is a
focus in Gran Turismo 6," said Farm Saechou, a Sony representative. "It
is not required -- we do not penalize players for not making
transactions (they still have access to everything) and it is completely
optional and not prompted in the in-game experience at all."
In Gran Turismo 6, the microtransactions do allow players to purchase
in-game currency as a way to bypass the unlocking of content one would
have to otherwise earn through game play. For instance, buying the most
expensive car in the game -- the Jaguar XJ13 -- would
cost an astounding $140,
if you were so inclined to access it that way. "We do not require
players to purchase or use purchased in-game currency to experience or
progress through the complete game," Saechou added.
To purchase Grand Turismo 6's most expensive car -- the Jaguar XJ13 -- solely with real money, one would have to spend $140.
(Credit:
Geek.com)
That distinction is important because "just offering an alternative path
to busy people," as Sony President Shuhei Yoshida wrote on Twitter,
instead of a system that appears to incentivize the use of real currency
is a dividing line between doing microtransactions right and doing them
in a way that tarnishes the experience. It's that distinction that
players feel Turn 10 Studios did not take into account with Forza,
letting the game's progression system and overall design tip into the
realm most console players associate with the worst aspects of mobile
and free-to-play games.
Still, many gamers abhor the idea of microtransactions in console games
at all, seeing it -- no matter how they're implemented -- as a red flag
signifying both the decay of the off-the-shelf product that has its
upfront costs and nothing else as well as a compromise on good design.
"There's a way in which they [microtransactions] are a kind of intrusion
of an unpleasant reminder that you're engaged in a business
relationship," Lantz said. "We used to push off all this unpleasant
tension...onto another department," he said of traditional clashes
between design and marketing departments in game making.
But now, given the rise of new business models, these conversations are
being baked right into the design process. "You can't externalize all
the negative aspects of making a product because it's right there in the
game," Lantz said.
Lantz, whose studio Area/Code -- makers of the popular Drop7 mobile game
-- was acquired by Zynga in 2011, is well aware of the ways in which
social and mobile monetization strategies intertwined with game design
can be detrimental to the creative process. "There was a real imbalance
between creative voice and the business person who thought of games as a
commodity," he said. "I think we all recognize that plasticity of a
social game that doesn't have the feel of something crafted by someone
who's passionate about games. There might be someone like that in the
process, but there voices do not carry loudly."
It's not all doom and gloom at the moment, as this is just the beginning
of a likely protracted conversation the console industry will have with
consumers as it maneuvers microtransactions. "I believe that while
these companies are providing options for consumers, they must also be
executed with care," said Liam Callahan, a game industry analyst at NPD.
"Meaning, the way a game offers paid transactions is important as
gamers cannot feel that they are being forced into buying things to
progress and gamers also despise 'pay-to-win' types of monetization."
But Lantz points out that games like Forza do illustrate that the tide
is turning with the onset of the next-gen. "AAA titles still feel like
they're made by people who are passionate about games. They still have
that culture. They still come out of the culture where the voice of the
enthusiast rings loud," Lantz said. "But we're starting to hear this
other sound," he added with a pause, "the sound of the cash register."
The stakes for console gaming
(Credit:
AFP/Getty Images)
DLC, online passes, and now microtransactions are all attempts from the
AAA industry to further monetize the smaller slice of the gaming market
consoles command. Sony and Microsoft had blockbuster launches of their
new consoles after a seven-year lull. However, that doesn't save the
space from being bogged down by expensive, controversy-prone hardware
and highly priced software that still struggles to make money off
multimillion-dollar games that are not designed around an annual release
schedule solely because it maximizes profit.
Christofer Sundberg, founder of Sweden-based Avalanche Studios, which is developing the upcoming Mad Max reboot,
wrote in a widely circulated tweet,
"Micro-Transactions, subscriptions and other biz models will be the
next generation of games. It is that simple." He's not alone in
expressing that change in the console industry is coming, for better and
for worse.
"Why are publishers so eager to implement solutions like that? They're
living in a world where the total growth of the install base of the
market is of grave concern," said Greg Richardson, CEO and founder of
free-to-play developer Rumble Entertainment. Before venturing into the
development space, Richardson held stints at EA and Elevation Partners
that saw him oversee the publisher's acquisition of BioWare, which would
later develop the popular Mass Effect console series that EA would use
as one of its
primary trial runs for microtransactions in console gaming.
"The cost of building and marketing this product is tremendous," he
added. "So they're saying that instead of changing the model, we are
going to go even deeper in the wallets of the people who are already
passionate about those games."
As for the total growth of the install base Richardson refers to, it's
important to note that by the time the PlayStation 2 was retired in
early 2013,
it had sold 155 million units.
Total unit sales of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 combined were
barely able to crest that figure by November of this year, and industry
analysts expect the
new consoles to fare only slightly better at best.
"So they're saying that instead of changing the model, we are going to
go even deeper in the wallets of the people who are already passionate
about those games."
--Greg Richardson, CEO, Rumble Entertainment
The unpleasant side effect of this stagnation is that publishers have
become heavily reliant on innovation-stifling development strategies to
make more money per game. The biggest game makers -- not just EA but
Ubisoft, Activision, and the slew of studios Microsoft and Sony oversee
-- now repeatedly return to proven successes like Call of Duty and its
first-person shooter brethren and double down on a
commitment to try to annualize every new series.
This monetization model of milking a franchise rehash for $60 to $100,
and now much more with microtransactions, each year is unproven as a
long-term model in the face of the ever-rising number of alternatives to
hardcore, price-heavy gaming. The approach is also one that is stuck
between gaming of the past and newer business models that treat video
games not as expensive things you own, but as cheap services you pay for
as you see fit.
"It's the erosion of the boxed product," said Lantz. "All the stuff we
complain about -- 'sequel-itis,' the fact that every game looks like
every other game -- that is partially a result of the influence of a
business model."
Now publishers and game makers are experimenting with taking that boxed
product down a path toward a fundamentally different business model, all
while keeping the initial price tags high. Microtransactions are now
present not just in Forza and Gran Turismo, but also in next-gen titles
like Ryse: Son of Rome and wildly popular games like Grand Theft Auto V.
The experimentation will undoubtedly sprout up in a number of next-gen
titles in 2014 as well, though many developers like Destiny-creator
Bungie are
tight-lipped on the existence of such pay systems.
Respawn Entertainment's unique decision to exclude them from upcoming
Xbox One exclusive Titanfall was warmly welcomed by fans. "We want to
make sure people understand we're not going to nickel-and-dime you with
microtransactions," producer
Drew McCoy told GameSpot.
"What you get on the disc is what you bought, and that's how we're
going to do it." That's an increasingly rare position to take, and one
that openly lays out those pay systems in console games as potentially
anti-consumer.
But contrary to what many console devotees will tell you,
microtransactions are not always the embodiment of money-grabbing suits
rotting gaming to the core. The model does function properly, in a
multitude of genres and platforms, and is blazing a bright future for
games outside the bubble of AAA development, one that may even be warmly
welcomed on consoles if microtransactions are done right. Killer
Instinct, a free game for Xbox One,
walks the line of various microtransactions in an experimental display of what more console games may look like down the line.
Most importantly though is that these new business models can bring down
initial cost, sometimes to zero, and foster risky and rewarding moves
by allowing game makers more leeway to change a formula weeks, even
months, after a game's launch thanks to the lower barrier to play.
League of Legends and Dota 2, both free-to-play titles that subsist
wholly on microtransactions, are
now the most played PC games in the world.
A path to microtransactions done right, and hopefully innovation too
One point of agreement is that mixing and mashing fundamentally
different business models was never supposed to be easy, and that
actively hoping that console game makers and publishers figure it out
sooner is better than admonishing them for trying at all.
"I don't think there are any simple solutions. We're better off to try
these different things, and when they're not working, complain loudly,"
Lantz said. "But don't complain in a way that is naive. Recognize good
ways of doing this and bad ways of doing this." Lantz also is quick to
point out that all consumers, not just gamers, tend to dislike anything
that involves spending more money, making microtransactions an easy
target for accusations of greed regardless of how they're used.
"I think it's hard when you say, 'Hey, I'm going to go into this
contract where I buy a shiny disc that I get to own and keep' -- the old
contract -- and now one that has this second, new microtransactions
model graphed on to it," Richardson said.
But where microtransactions have a future are in the ways in which they
can help transform colossal console gaming ventures into more nimble
operations. Ideally, that would allow them to employ the innovative
approaches of the larger-than-ever indie game community and the now
tried-and-true free-to-play approach of PC titles.
Sundberg of Avalanche Studios conceded to the difficulty in a follow-up
tweet to his blunt admission of the future of microtransactions:
Building the game with the community is ultimately the player-first
future underneath the bad reputation of mishandled micotransactions.
With that model done right, costs can go down and riskier strategies
become more viable. Players will be less reluctant to try out original
titles knowing they're not spending $60 or more and less reliant on the
guaranteed experience of worn-out franchises. And, in turn, game makers
may become less inclined to serve up those Call of Duty's and the same
round of sequels every year with little more than incremental changes.
"Maybe as annoying as it is now, this new world, new business model,
will have some downsides and some crappy games that feel like slot
machines, and also good games with a little too much slot machine in
them," Lantz said. "But then maybe it will also lead to an environment
where there's more experimentation, more innovation."
Lantz points to an often overlooked aspect of the first-person shooter
Doom, released by Id Software in December of 1993 and widely recognized
as one of the most influential video games of all time. Many can recall
its ground-breaking graphics and perhaps most vividly its level of
then-unprecedented violence.
But beyond boundary-pushing gore lies a lesson in experimentation: Even
20 years ago, the developers had employed a unique monetization
strategy, shareware, that let players experience a healthy chunk of the
beginning of the game before prompting them to buy the full version.
"People forget that they were tampering with business models," he said.
"Those guys weren't evil. They were trying to make a buck and make a
great game at the same time."
