Krigwin wrote...
...Are you by chance a sociopath, or just 12 years old? "Wow guys I got totally ripped off but at least I got what I wanted, thus I don't care if other people get ripped off too!" seriously wat
I'm seeing a lot of the same, tired, shortsighted arguments again, so it's time for another lesson with Professor Krigwin:
1. "But Professor, it's only $2! That's so cheap, it's like the price of one [insert product here]! Clearly, it's insignificant!"
Me: Ah well students, it just so happens I'm a multi-billionaire. $2000 is cheap for me, that's like the price of a cheap suit, and I go through five suits a week. I think video games should be sold for $2000 each, what do you think?
The point is, the price does not matter, it's the principle behind it. Microtransactions is a sleazy, underhanded business practice that is fast replacing the old model of actual quality, full-length expansive content. The pricing seems low, but this is until you grow up and realize you're not the center of the universe, and thus realize there are other people on Earth besides you, and some of them also happen to purchase video games.
In fact, the entire purpose behind microtransactions is to deliberately price each item low, to fool the consumers into thinking that it is good value and not an enormous waste of money. This works so well because a lot of video game consumers apparently have the IQ of chimpanzees and don't realize value is a relative concept. If I try to sell you a cup of my urine, it doesn't matter if I'm asking for 20 thousand dollars or 20 cents, it's still not worth the price.
There's actually a psychological effect behind this called the money illusion (http://www.pnas.org/...06/13/5025.full) that basically states your brain is stupid and has a hard time understanding that six $1 bills is more money than one $5 bill. This is why strippers accept tips in singles and why most slot machines take nickels or quarters instead of singles now. By making the price arbitrarily low, your brain is fooled into thinking its not spending a lot of money, when in fact once the purchases ramp up, you've spent more money than you probably would have if it came at a high cost to begin with, because then you would've rationalized it was too much money and not worth the value.
It should come to no surprise that the pioneer of this deceptive and exploitative practice is EA, the benefactors of Bioware now. So basically, when you buy low-priced DLC, you're basically telling EA, "Yes I'm too dumb to see what you're doing, please keep doing it to me, here let me help you by unzipping my pants and bending over."
2. "But Professor! It's okay if I don't do it! After all, why does it matter to me if other people do it?"
Me: Contrary to what you may believe and what your parents and the whole of American elementary-grade education told you, children, you're not actually better or worth more than any other person. In fact, in great numbers, other people are worth a whole lot more than you, especially when it comes to economics.
Why does it matter what other people do? Well, because, if you care about consumers' rights and the state of the industry, these other people are deciding the future of the industry for you. Let me use another analogy: let's say you live in a village where the farmers sell you milk, either in one gallon for $5, or a half-gallon for $4. Clearly, it's more value to buy the whole gallons. Unfortunately, every customer is only limited to buying a single whole gallon per period of time, and unlimited half-gallons.
Now, you're fine with just buying just the whole gallon everytime, but other villagers happen to want or need more milk than you. Some of them realize it's a bad value to buy the half-gallons but don't care, others are so rich it doesn't matter to them that the half-gallons are overpriced. Gradually, the number of people buying half-gallons increase. Eventually, the farmers realize they can make much more money per amount of milk off the half-gallons than the whole-gallons, and stop selling the whole-gallons altogether. Now, you, the original villager, are basically forced to buy the overpriced half-gallons even though you never supported the practice to begin with, simply because of what the other villagers did.
To say that it "doesn't matter what other people do" shows a level of myopia and lack of critical thinking that is frankly, quite disturbing. It doesn't matter if any one individual consumer sees this DLC as a deceptive practice and refuses to support it, it only matters if all the consumers refuses to support it. Otherwise, the message is still being sent to the industry that this practice works and is profitable, and they will continue, and eventually the old models that were better for the consumers to begin with (like, actual expansion packs) will disappear.
I really like this post, the only thing it is lacking is lesson no.3 which explains people that actually trying to fight this practice is a waste of time, because people fight it all the time and there are way to many people who either never read the boards or simply don't care what they do to stop buying this Crap. I am not saying you should give up, but i am saying its fighting windmills.
We can **** and moan all we want... the work hours for decals like a new helmet aren't that massive. I know people who create 3d Models over the course of a saturday afternoon. They work with that kind of stuff, so throwing them out isn't that much a problem. Even if i assume the workload is much higher, because of .. dunno details involved and such. I would assume it doesn't mean more than 20 work hours? For a professional? So if the DLC costs 2$... and a person gets... dunno... 50$ per hour (i assume i am overboard a little) so what is that? 1000$ in Work costs? So if 500 people buy it... out of dunno.. what? 1 Million sold Copies? The DLC will have already reached a profit as soon as person 501 buys it.
There is no way stopping DLCs, the only thing you really can do is voice your discontent with the whole DLC deals. But that only leads to other people telling you they don't understand your issue with it.
Much like Steam. You can tell people all the downsides and you will always hear that they don't care about it, because it doesn't bother them.
Fighting DLCs is a fight that can't be won, because from a buisness Perspective.. you will always find 0,01% Idiots who will pay for the stuff. And 1 Million sold copies... 0,01% is still 10000 People buying it. And thats 20k they make on the DLC alone. It never ever costs 20k to produce the DLC. Its just a Win Situation for the Buisness. Even if only one out of 3 Decal DLCs are sold... it would still make up for the production cost and would not be a loss.
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