[NSFW/Language] Nerd³'s Poop Games of 2013 Awards - Microtransactions.

the p2w system is a virus that is vital to no one. it's only natural to want it's eradication.

please, if you think there's some good in it, elaborate.

Good video agreed with that.

is it me or everytime I hear P2W the 1st thing that comes in my mind is Nexon ?

Eh... What part of any business model is vital to the customers and not the devs? Ideally, every game would be free because we'd live in lala land and there'd be no bills for devs to pay.

It's not like I really want to go out of my way to convert your opinion. If that's what you believe, then fair enough. You're going to have do do more than point out two well known offenders to convince me though.

I consider paywalls to be bad. I don't think it's ever a wise idea to divide the playerbase into haves and have-nots.

Not a huge fan of grinding(read:RPG elements) in games because it disproportionately rewards those who have more time on their hands. However, you can moderate that by throw us a few dollars and your next 10 hours of grinding counts as 20 hours of grinding. Naturally, those with time and money do have the biggest advantage there.

I've seen a number of F2P games follow that system, and any flaws (cough MWO cough) those games have come from others aspects of the game.

couldnt watch the video. somehow it doesnt work, nvm

one game which i want to mention on the side of "pro" microtransactions is planetside2.
if one hasnt heard of it, its a mmo-fps in a persistent world, where a player plays a character on one of three factions waging war against each other and all that other stuff...

the microtransaction part of that game is like this:
you have starting gear, its allround good or godlike like some weapons, now you can either buy "sidegrade" guns, which perform different than your starting weapons, like a higher rate of fire but more difficult to aim with, or you can get another type of weapon, like shotguns. or like another type of cannon for your tank, like an AA gun.

you can buy them for real money, for like 2.5-7.5$ ... or you can just play the game for fun, earn the ingame funds called certifications and buy a new weapon for your character/vehicle with these. if you decide to grind those certs, it takes a few hours/days of pure gametime.

so theres always the thought in the back of someones head:" am i going to spend the next few hours grinding those 1000certs for that gun or do i just whip out my credit card and pay the 7.5$ ?"

anything cosmetical like camo-sets and additional stuff like horns or ornamentals for some vehicles are only purchasable through real money, anything else can be bought with both currencies.

then there is the subscription thing... membership, you pay a fixed amount of money for a set period of time, the longer the more rewards you will get, including a monthly 500 ingame currency called station cash. roughly iirc 5$
you also will get priority if there is a waiting line for your server and all that fancy stuff like sometimes free camo-sets and all these "baits" for me to throw money at the screen and so on.

i think this system work well, camoflage colours are "mostly" cosmetics which arent really needed.
and anything else gameplay relevant can be "purchased" in a mere hours of playing the game.

I am so very thankful for Kickstarter and the guts of our Indy industry.

I want my games to have powerful souls because they were born from powerful souls. <3

Every micro-transaction that is not purely cosmetic is EVIL.
(and even cosmetic micro is evil in a certain way, see the rest of the post)

If it changes gameplay, in any way, then it's bad, because it will encourage people to get them, thus not good.

The example of Planetside 2 is an interesting example, but still flawed : "normal" players will farm the credits, others will say "screw it, i will not spend 2 days to get this".
The design of the game is created around this mechanic. To make every action of the player a real pain, to "motivate" him to buy his stuff. Of course, the more persistent players will get the weapon "normally", and will even defend the real money shop saying "but it's completly optionnal !", but they just don't see the complete ugliness that is present behind this concept.

And regarding additional content, like gamemods or stuff.
Problem is the value you give to this work.
It's why i'm a great opponent to all kind of DLC (bring back the old mechanism : buy the game, buy the expansions for the price of the original game or less, have fun !).
Let's take Fallout 3 example (A pretty good example for me. And to make it more obvious, on console)(i will not use any F2P games like "Candy Crush" or any other garbage for this, are the ratios are just becoming insanely too crazy for my sanity) : you buy the main game, at day one, for 60€. You got in your hand a massive world, tons of fun and game play. Estimated duration to 100% : 150h.
=> you pay your enjoyment 0,4€ an hour.
(and there is some good re-playability, because of the different ways you can finish the quests)

Then come a DLC. "Operation Anchorage". 2 hours of gameplay, new stuff, new perks. Price : 10€
=> price per hour of gameplay : 5€. A real scandal. You multiply by more than 10 the price regarding the original game !
Then an other DLC, the Pit. Duration : 3-4h, price : 10€, re-playability : 0,1 (a save at the good moment will allow you to see all the outcomes).
=> price per hour of gameplay : 2,5€. Better, but still awfully expensive !
Tada, an other one. Mothership Zeta. Duration : 3-4h, price : 10€, re-playability : 0.
=> price per hour of gameplay : 2,5€. Also, come on.
We continue, because we like it, Broken Steel. Duration 5-6h, price : 10€, re-playability : not much.
=> price per hour of gameplay : 1,66€. Now it's getting better. Lot more stuff added, longer, more interesting. But still 4 time the price of the original game !
And then we finish with Point Lookout. Duration : 5-6h, price : 10€, re-playability : a little.
=> price per hour of gameplay : 1,66€. Again.

If we sum up all the DLCs, it gives us around 22h of gameplay (optimistic) at the price of 50€, so 2,27€/h.
This COMPLETLY devaluate the value of the original game.
You pay the same price for 6 times less content !
Okay, it's optional, but it's still a rip off regarding the "mother" product !

So, to answer to Cola_colin, what about a $10 total conversion mod ?
I payed PA $20, but was a "special" occasion. Let's take the "normal" price (before the anticipated access change) : $40.
With that money, i pay all the devs from Uber, countless hours of work, the tech, an official support and a lot of other things.
Now, a person create a total conversion mod.
Tech work : nada to little (all or almost all as already been done by Uber).
Time : Countless (but if you compare this to the sum of all time Uber's staff spent on the game, it's a "risible" countless)
Support : will vary from nada to good, depending on the creator.
Price : $10.

4 times less than the original price (yeah, cheap !), but for a insanely LOWER global value.
It's a complete devaluation of the work of the original developers !

Not forgetting to mention that the money you give to the devs is used by them to live, feed their family (can someone play violin and cry while reading this ? ;-) ), while most of the modders will do they stuff on their spare time, in parallel of their normal work so will just use the money to buy booze and get drunk with friends (<= well, probably false, but i had to find a shocking thing to illustrate what i want to say ).

$10 total conversion mod ? Hell no.
$1 ? If it is really amazing, why not. But it would still be expensive.
(yes, i'm a total a**, but it's not because something is "cheap" that you should buy it. It must be cheap regarding equivalent work to be worth it !).

Haaa, what a nice day...

A problem with digital goods is that they basically only have a development cost while the individual copy of the product is basically free to produce. A game or an ingame hat requires a set amount of time to make and you might sell 10 copies of it or thousands of copies of it while it will still have the same development costs.
That is a problem for small game developers if you compare them to large game developers. A large game developer can spend much more time and money on a product and deliver more content and/or higher graphical quality, market the game aggressively and then sell it to lots of people to justify their high development costs.
A small game developer can't do that.
If you go on the amount of content or graphical fidelity, a larger game developer will always have the advantage over the smaller game developer because they can simply add more stuff by throwing more money at the game giving the player more content for their money.
Microtransactions doesn't really give a small developer any advantage in that regard but I do think it gives a small developer a new way of funding and finding a way into the market.
Now new game developers can develop games, put their games for sell on appStore and once a game have found its' niche they add microtransactions to provide a steady stream of revenue from their products while they develop new products.
Although for the consumer it might still look the same regardless if a small game developer does it or a big developer does it.

Paying for digital goods online becomes more and more acceptable day by day and even paying for digital goods inside the game becomes more and more acceptable.

Would you be ready to pay 0,4€ for every ingame hour of PA?
I don't think that the gaming market is ready for such things yet but I can imagine a future where this is the case.
It is already being pushed by games like World of Tanks and War Thunder who pushes for subscription to their games and sort of exists in subscription based games such as World of Warcraft.
An alternative is that you pay for the time spent playing up the point where you actually have payed for the whole price of the game.

Even if I wanted to i can't jump on the "hate all micro transaction" bandwagon as I have probably spent over $500 on microtransaction over the last two years, all on planetside and mechwarrior online (and about $30 on Dota ).

I hate pay to win, but pay to unlock something that would require 100+ hours of grinding to unlock is not a bad idea imo. Though it probably only would have taken 10hours to unlock at most if there were no microtransaction as the grinding required is increased so much that the cost of using 100+ hours to grind is more expensive than just throwing in $20.

I.e if Uber decides to implement a commander store where you could purchase different commanders or team colors for real currency then why the hell not? It does not effect balance and gives more revenue to Uber and I get my commander with a cowboy hat. win-win.

Bingo. The only fact that something "cost" 100 (or even 10) hours of grinding is abnormal

Completly agree on that.
Nonetheless, a 5 person game developed in 1 year will always cost way less to produce than a 100 person game developed in 3 years...
The breakeven is radically different.
The costs are not the same, nor should the goal of the developers on their products, nor the behavior of the customer regarding this product (a indie game can not be compared to GTA V).

Incredibly EVIL. You pay for a game, then pay to continue to play it.
This is what create things like Candy Crush Saga (i think this is one of the Anti-Christ of gaming).
Just look at the numbers : these guys are making millions of dollars with this software (no, i will not call this a game). MILLIONS. With a "s", to say "more than one". Way more than one.
While PA (a ground breaking RTS that will, if everything goes well, change the face of RTS gaming) as an "official" budget of 2 millions (Uber is probably throwing more than that, but that's not the topic).

Argl ! Let's fight against this ! I don't want to be paying my medi-kits in the next games i'll play !

Never
Paying a subscription "enslave" you to the game (Ho gosh, i pay a few $ every month for this game, so i have to play it otherwise it's money throw out the window !)(has you can not buy back time...).
And "Pay 4 play" (if i understood correctly what you wanted to say) is something a little more acceptable in my mind, but still bad, making you less prone to enjoyment a game should provide (quick, quick, i have to play, the counter is rolling and i can't just wait here for a good party or for friends to show up !)...

P.S. : well, this is my point of view on the subject. I may look rather closed on this topic, but i'm not. Feel free to comment !

I am definitely against pay to win and subscriptions, but pay to pretty has a time and place. It's not for all games, but for games like SMNC I think it works well.

im playing Planetside 2

and I think the microtransraction in that game is pretty good
and its also easy to unlock stuff.

I play Runescape. They took it too far later on, but a straight up subscription isn't so bad, especially when done with taste, and pay to pretty isn't bad either. Runescape did both for a while and was reasonable with it. Keys being micro as in very cheap (xbox live cheap), the free version not being "incomplete", the free game not spamming constantly with reminders to upgrade, and such.

Oh I have nothing against a subscription. But often it's not advertised as a subscription, it's advertised as a free game. sorry that post was REALLY unclear.

But yeah. When the free version is "incomplete" and you require the paid version for playability..

Wrong, there is no pay to win in LoL at all that's why the community is so faithful, yes you can buy new champions who are pretty OP when released but you can also get them with points earned from playing (IP or Influence Points) you don't even have to play that much to get some of the really good ones, Garen for example currently costs 450 IP who I can tell you from personal experience is definitely OP, and then there is the free rotating roster which every champion ends up going through

but more importantly the only thing that actually effect's gameplay (Runes) can't be bought with anything other then IP so in the the end the only thing you "have to" spend money on is skin's or "Pay2Pretty" not "Pay2Win"



some more info on IP : http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Influence_Points
and Runes: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Rune

Having said that games like Rome II (don't get me wrong I love total war) have really given me the ****'s recently. I payed $79.99 here in Aus for that, it was and is nowhere near done (hopeless AI, graphics looked nothing like promised just to name a few of the problems) and now they have $37.96 worth of DLC one of which is pretty much a visual upgrade and should really have been part of an update not a payed DLC ...its just crazy!!!!

I don't play LoL, but I believe @heyiisrandom is correct, LoL is very, very not pay-to-win.
All the feedback I hear from players and viewers alike is that it is extremely balanced.
LoL is reportedly one of the best implementations of the free-to-play models around today.


Free-to-play is actually a rather effective business model for the dev and it's actually rather friendly to your casual player who can have fun with minimal cost.
It just shifts the revenue source to the hardcore players who want a little extra bit of little bit of customization and bling.
The problem is when it destroys in-balance.
When full boxed copy games adopt this level of monetization, we have a problem, o
or when it turns a free-to-play into a total grind.


A base-building-RTS could be easily be a free-to-play and stay balanced.

I'd would love to buy different colored skins in Starcraft if only they were for a minimal cost.
Consider the SC2 and the stock model Thor


vs the Collector's Edition Thor.


I'd happily throw Blizzard and extra $5 for that.
I don't even play SC2 anymore, but they would have my money.


Or the Angelic Wings from Diablo 3.


Remember, PA did something similar with its collectors editions as well.
We have different commanders, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Theta, Raptor and Spider commanders.
Those who paid more will have more choices of skins.
I will make a wild assumption and guess that all the commander abilities will still be accessible to everyone for the sake of balance? (I hope?)


However, PA was marketed to the community as modder friendly.
I'm interpreting this as client and server unlocked to all of us, some mod support.
PA can still monetize in a way that doesn't mess with the core game.

I want to see how things unfold.
But since it's an RTS, I'm really glad in-game assets will not be subject to a nasty grind.

What if out of that 10$ 5$ go to Uber?

Also I dont see how the game is devalued by the additional content sold at a "higher" price.
When you buy the game for 20$ and you play 100 hours you got 100 hours for 20$ no matter what happens after that.

Gooood morning.

That's definitively true for "Endless" games (read games that do not have a storyline to follow and that is over when you reach the end)...
(the "Total Conversion" could be considered as a new game and not an add-on and...)
(I have to think about that ;-) )(the price would still be high regarding the original product trough)

About half the money going to Uber, i'm not really for. Or not in this form.
Okay, Uber created the base, but it's the modder than made all the rest of the work, from his own decision, without the help from Uber.
They shouldn't receive a percentage from the sale (best bad example : All apps from App Store or TF2. Valve made more money by getting some $% on each hat sold than by selling the game by itself. Seriously. INFAMY !).
What i would accept more is a kind of fix amount reversed to Uber (the modder choose his price, then Uber add a few cents on top of that)(yes, cents. The modder already payed the game, thus the service. Uber should only get something for the "hosting")
The modder get the full reap of his hard work, while Uber get a fee for the providing of resources and hosting.

But well, this would be in a perfect world ! And we know this will never happen

And i'm not opposed to P2B (Pay to Bling)(mouhaha, like the term...), on the opposite, it create diversity/personalization for the players (as long as it is still readable).
The only problem is the pricing.

Culverin, you say you are ready to toss $5 for a skin on a game that you payed $50.
The game took ages to build by an army of devs, the skin was probably created by a trainee in a few weeks (again probably not completely true but must be shocking).
This is insane (see again the article about Valve, or google the words "Mount" and "World of Warcraft" (can't find the precise article i want, sorry, but the point is : they make MILLIONS by selling an artificially limited number of mount, that are often just a re-skin of an existing mount)).
You reward less work for higher money, which i consider an error, because it kill initiative and creation, and encourage everybody to do the same (why spend time and sweat on hard things when you can earn enormous amounts with way less work ?)

Argl, it's already that time ?
I really have to get back to work, spend too much time on this forum

In your earlier post you said that the work the modder puts in is very small in comparision to the developer, which I agree on. Now you suddenly state that the the modder has a full reap of work and Uber would profit from free?

Also note that the numbers were made up. The more general question is: What if the game developer makes money from the modders selling their mods so that the game developer can support the game for a longer amount of time?
Isn't that something everyone profits from?