263 réponses à ce sujet

[metatheurgist]

DinoSteve wrote...
I don't think it should be made illegal but thereshould be laws to say how they should be used for instance in a F2p game I agree with them as the initial game is free or very cheap, but when you fork out 50-65 Euro for a game, the game should be complete, there should be no microtransactions. If you want to make a MP game with microtransactions, then give the game to people for free or make its purchase price cheap.

Sadly, that's not how it works. As long as a transaction is legal, I can sell what I want. There's an $1000 app that puts a glowing gem on your display. It's sole purpose is to tell other people that you can afford a $1000 app. It has sales. People are morons.

[Fast Jimmy]

Dean, as a point of advice - if you fall behind in a discussion, don't come back and requote dozens of comments over the course of tons of different posts. If you want someone to seriously respond to you, be concise and address what is important.

To answer your overall question, it's simple. We live in a world where a person who is overweight can sue the restaurants they bought their deep fried food in and then sue an airline for discrimination when they can't fit in a seat any longer. We live in a world where we often regulate how people spend their money, by such things as states outright banning casinos or acts such as prostitution, despite there being no chemical addiction directyl tied to either one. We live in a world where even when a lawsuit is thrown out of court with a host of laughter, the companies involved are drug through the mud on 24 hour news circuits, talking about how the case has merit because conpanies aren't doing enough.

If you can't envision a scenario where a game that, to paraphrase John Riticello, waits until a player is hours into a session and is heavily emotionally invested (read: heavily illogical) in a game and will pay for money virtual bullets, wouldn't result in either a civil suit or a law being passed, then you are incredibly short sighted.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 30 novembre 2013 - 12:38 .

[Il Divo]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

There are regulations, industry guidelines and flat out laws that control how a company like Amazon can advertise to you to sell thier product. But there are no such restrictions on how a video game can entice you to buy microtransactions. 

This is why your argument blows. Regulation is not the end all worse possible scenario for any company.

Amazon faces regulation. You know what Amazon doesn't do? Close up shop completely, despite any consumer having the ability to file a lawsuit. And if I were to blow my life savings on Amazon.com, regulated or not, is a big time lawyer going to come and take up my case for what are ultimately my decisions?

Amazon can't make it so cold outside that you feel that sweaters are your only venue of clothing that is effective against the cold. Yet a game maker can make the player feel they will lose (or at least lose lots of their time struggling) without the use of a microtransactions. "Grind for ten hours... or buy the XP bonus, or the uber-gear, or the secret character and breeze through the game, instead."

You're doing it again. Stop trying ascribe logical behavior to illogical behaviors, which is the ultimate cause of irresponsible consumerism. Whether I have a need for said number of sweaters (hell, maybe I impulse buy discount items), does not preclude me from having the ability to burn through my credit card in minutes, which was your original point in how you have the ability to make rash monetary decisions.

There is nearly a limitless number of ways a game maker can design a game to coerce gamers to pay extra money for transactions. Because the game maker controls the environment of the game and, essentially, can engineer their market's own need, that sets them up very easily in an unethical situation.

Ah, yes "coercion". If coercion can be defined as creating content that a consumer might want, then every industry is screwed, period. Ending micro transactions will not be the solution, since a desire for any product can be looked on as coercion.

With every passing year, we've seen a larger presence of online game content and microtransactions for AAA video games. Developers and publishers are looking at these methods as very large, untapped revenue streams and push the boundary of what the industry has seen to date on a regular basis. How long until a developer goes too far? How long until a game is so popular, that people throw money at it not to take shortcuts, but, instead, to avoid insane amounts of tedium or difficulty? 

Another example of presenting a problem not inherently related to videogames. I purchase a car, a fairly hefty investment because it avoids insane amounts of tedium and difficulty in that I can get around faster. Am I going to start suing the automotive industry for coercion, as you put it?

Gaming is a luxury item, not a necessity.

It's a game of Russian roulette developers are playing, where they are seeing just how much gamers will put up with and still buy their game. But it's not just consumer resilience they should worry about... they should worry about consumers getting TOO resilient and accoustomed to the practice, such that they don't even notice that they've thrown more money than they could ever hope to afford into a system and are now trying to blame the company who "made" them.

Assuming we give in to your paranoia, then that's the point where companies either decide to continue in spite of regulation or discontinue the practice. You seem to have an absurd fear of regulation, despite many other industries still managing to survive and thrive in its presence.

[Il Divo]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Or, you know, cut back or even scrap microtransactions in games that already cost $60. The entire industry has lasted for decades without the revenue stream of digital transactions... it can do so again. Saying "the cat's out of the bag" after just a few short years of it is silly, especially when many developers have yet to EVER include DLC or microtransactions or other products in their games.

...you do realize that inflation has occured, right? That 60 decades ago was considerably more than now?

The industry hasn't survived as a single model during that time. If we ignore the crash that almost destroyed it, the industry also evolved new revune sources in franchising and, well, post-release content.

I also thought this point was a bit odd. I could have sworn that I've seen Jimmy in the past argue that, in lieu of dlc, he'd prefer to see the base price of games increased to reflect the complete package. So assuming I'm not remembering this incorrectly, it's surprising to see him hold up the $60 figure as more than justified.

[Giga Drill BREAKER]

Games weren't always 60 quid its only last gen that it became 60 and this gen is getting a price increase too, we do not need microtransactions on top of that. Honestly we are soon going to have 100 euro games with microtransactions on top of it. srsly one day we will be charged a euro a bullet.

Modifié par DinoSteve, 30 novembre 2013 - 02:44 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Dean, as a point of advice - if you fall behind in a discussion, don't come back and requote dozens of comments over the course of tons of different posts. If you want someone to seriously respond to you, be concise and address what is important.

Coming from the person who did a 3000 word non-sequiter rant that didn't answer a direct two-point question, I'll keep it in mind. I suspect you're also an advocate of not ignoring questions and switching topics mid-argument?


For example, I'll note that you have numerous times refused to describe a scenario that leads to any specific regulation, despite multiple direct requests for you to. Clearly that's not important. Neither is answering the question of how ME3's ME packs aren't honest and clear in what they offer.

To answer your overall question, it's simple. We live in a world where a person who is overweight can sue the restaurants they bought their deep fried food in and then sue an airline for discrimination when they can't fit in a seat any longer. We live in a world where we often regulate how people spend their money, by such things as states outright banning casinos or acts such as prostitution, despite there being no chemical addiction directyl tied to either one. We live in a world where even when a lawsuit is thrown out of court with a host of laughter, the companies involved are drug through the mud on 24 hour news circuits, talking about how the case has merit because conpanies aren't doing enough.

We also live in a world where none of these have turned 'not selling a legal product for fear of asinine lawsuit' into a winning business strategy. Despite your previous claims of sound business practices, you're quite fond of citing products that are business success despite frivilous lawsuits.

If you can't envision a scenario where a game that, to paraphrase John Riticello, waits until a player is hours into a session and is heavily emotionally invested (read: heavily illogical) in a game and will pay for money virtual bullets, wouldn't result in either a civil suit or a law being passed, then you are incredibly short sighted.

I can see a wide variety of stupid lawsuits. What I don't see here is you actually making any coherent link between stupid lawsuit to meaningful or counterproductive regulation. In fact, you've either ignorred or outright dismissed the only proposed limiting laws as unrealistic and unfeasible. This puts the argument in a rather biased position as you can dismiss other people's proposals as unrealistic and thus ignorrable while insisting your own are indisputably correct.

Whereas you've simply resorted to accusing people who don't agree with your vague, undefined concerns, the real charge to brought up is that you can't articulate your position. You are, after all, the person who hasn't actually given a single example of what sort of DLC-regulation as a result to current DLC practices would be bad for the companies. You've repeatedly cited regulation as the thing to be feared, but have yet to actually give any proposal that would harm their interests in selling DLC.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 01 décembre 2013 - 06:08 .

[Dean_the_Young]

DinoSteve wrote...

Games weren't always 60 quid its only last gen that it became 60 and this gen is getting a price increase too, we do not need microtransactions on top of that. Honestly we are soon going to have 100 euro games with microtransactions on top of it. srsly one day we will be charged a euro a bullet.

I don't know what it's like in Europe, but new games have been selling for 60 in the US at least since the PS2 and N64 era.

Before you get a euro a bullet system we'll probably see (another) market crash. Or, rather, the point at which some companies try that will likely mark the crash, as more and more consumers don't get value for their money and leave.


Video games have been in a sort of golden age for the last several years, but it's not hard to see dark times ahead- major developers and cornerstones of the industry aren't doing so well and haven't been for awhile even though development costs rise, and a crash (on its own or for a world downturn) isn't hard to see.

Going through a dark age of gaming, in which costs have to be drastically cut and AAA standards are gone, is going to be interesting.

[Maria Caliban]

I'd actually say the video game market is rebounding right now. Microtransactions and DLC are likely a large part of that from a financial standpoint.

For example, a week after DA:O came out, BioWare said they'd made a million in DLC sales.

[Dean_the_Young]

Maria Caliban wrote...

I'd actually say the video game market is rebounding right now. Microtransactions and DLC are likely a large part of that from a financial standpoint.

For example, a week after DA:O came out, BioWare said they'd made a million in DLC sales.

True, and it's possible... and if it does rebound, it will probably be in large part because DLCs will subsidize the costs of the main game development. The entire free-to-play market bases their strategy on the loss-leading model, in which they undercharge for the initial product and make it up by selling other parts.

Of course, that's the model consoles are doing as well, but a lot of the big console makers are having a harder time making returns (from what I hear).

[MstrJedi Kyle]

I'm ok with microtransactions as long as they are just that, micro. A dollar or two here or there is fine, Forza 5 charging, what is it like 30 bucks for one car? That's criminal.

[13Dannyboy13]

Myself, I'd rather play around with the save itself, I used the gff editor for origins and made some pretty cool hybrid characters, customized weapons etc. Ended up doing another two playthroughs just for fun with the new and unavailable spells/skills. I don't mind a few cheap dlc to freshen up the game a bit, $1-2 dollars here and there is fine for a few new interesting things to play with, though sadly that seems to be most of the dlc you see these days instead of longer, story-based dlc that really adds to the game. What bothers me the most, is the day one dlc, and the dlc that comes out a week after the game is released, things you can tell were are already integrated into the story so you know they were left out on purpose just to nickle and dime you after buying the game.

[Rusty Sandusky]

Of course there's going to be microtransactions, this is EA we're talking about here.

[Vortex13]

As long as a player that does not spend real world money can still get everything that a paying customer can get; albeit slower and not all at once; then I have absolutely no problem with micro-transactions. In fact, if it meant that we would get free DLC for for the lifecycle of the game then I would welcome micro-transactions.

ME 3's MP is a prime example of a good micro-transaction system, Dead Space 3's (the resources, not the 're-skin packs') is another. I know that some players have aversion to micro-transactions appearing in their games (especially SP games), but in both examples a non paying customer could get everything a paying customer could, they just had to play the game a little longer, and it wasn't all at once.

[Sanunes]

Vortex13 wrote...

As long as a player that does not spend real world money can still get everything that a paying customer can get; albeit slower and not all at once; then I have absolutely no problem with micro-transactions. In fact, if it meant that we would get free DLC for for the lifecycle of the game then I would welcome micro-transactions.

ME 3's MP is a prime example of a good micro-transaction system, Dead Space 3's (the resources, not the 're-skin packs') is another. I know that some players have aversion to micro-transactions appearing in their games (especially SP games), but in both examples a non paying customer could get everything a paying customer could, they just had to play the game a little longer, and it wasn't all at once.

I agree, I never used money to buy anything in either game and I didn't feel like I lost anything by not buying anything either.