[LorenzoDC]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sundown

As is, VC directly motivates 2K to design their game to impede player progress just enough to frustrate players into paying more to get the game they thought they were getting, and motivates them to resell the same basic items every year at increasing prices rather than create new content worthy of purchase. No one is excited about their VC purchase. Players begrudingly pay for VC or grind away knowing someone else will bypass that grind with a few bucks. There are few positive associations with VC and few see it as tainting every mode and driving the game away from true balance. Effort is spent on modes that VC can be shoehorned into (much of which I appreciate) but little is done on legacy game breaking issues underneath. In the end, VC doesn't feel immersive and seems like a motivation for the devs to make the game less rather than more fun.

And that's the big issue. VC/microtransactions, as instituted, actually are designed to reward the development team for irritating gamers by making the game itself less complete, less fluid, less robust. So the way it's currently done places an incentive on developers to make, not the best possible overall game experience out of the box, but one that is good enough to hook people in and then tease with toll booths to make the game complete.

VC to expand on the depth of an already complete, well executed product is fine. But setting up micro transactions to reward incomplete game design can get a short term cash bump for a season or two until the consumers get tired and annoyed. Investors will like the short term bump in quarterly cash flow and earnings reports but the marketplace will catch up.

People see enough of the haves getting more and the have nots getting screwed in real life: they don't need to see the same or be reminded of it in their forms of entertainment. It's not entertaining to realize that it might take you many hours of grinding gameplay to buy a virtual whatever or improve your game experience with player upgrades, when others with more cash to burn than you can get it immediately.

The market perception of a game can degrade when the core fan base manages to define the narrative of a game's quality. Take a look at Madden. The hard core gaming fan base has become so irritated over bad EA design and performance for so many year that now, finally, metactritic scores are coming out below the green level for the NG release. It's become established, uncontroversial market consensus that the Madden franchise is subpar. That's true even though this year's game, on CG or NG, is actually, probably, better than the game has been in a long time, though not remarkably so. I expect sales have rather disappointed as well, though we'll see as reports become public.

Consumers will catch up to a gouging microtransaction game design, year on year, and overall game sales will degrade. If that happens, it will take time to rebuild the brand and establish a new, positive narrative again.