EPTThe pitfalls of micro transactions:
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See here for the suggestion in the Legacy of the Void thread and Destiny's promotion of that comment.
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/2ir69e/lotv_suggestion_thread/cl4pajj?context=1
I don't completely disagree with it, but I'm a bit tired of the mindless optimism regarding micro transactions, so here's a polemic arguing against it.
There are a lot of ways to do micro transactions badly, but there exists a well received industry standard that people are calling for Blizzard to emulate. I'm quoting this list I found that sets out the marks of a successful in-game store based on League of Legends.
The in-game store is the core of League's freemium model which allows the game to be free to play. The game actually becomes a vehicle to promote and create a necessity for in-game purchases rather than a stand-alone product. Note that you can easily avoid spending real money by categorizing all the purchases as luxury items. By the rules of the list above this by definition can hardly affect the gameplay experience as the in-game store can only uniquely have novelty items of ephemeral value.
In the end most players won't spend a penny. The Pareto principle applies here: the rule that says that 80% of the effects tend to come from 20% of the causes. In League of Legends it means 80% of purchases will be made by 20% of the player base. And if you apply it recursively you can infer that the majority of the funding will come from a very small group of people. The references I found online seem to confirm this reading.
One model I'm familiar with is the funding for political blogs (wikipedia is another known example) which depend on donations. Something is offered to you for free but there is an appeal to the readers to support the cause. There are obvious similarities with League's freemium model but the difference is that Riot is a private company that seeks to maximize profit and comes by funding not by appealing to its userbase but by selling useless items of no value. There is no obligation whatsoever as a League player to contribute, there is no moral hazard in playing for free knowing that costs will be covered by the tiny minority of people that obsessively pay for skins.
I think a subscription model is fair enough: pay to play and meanwhile the servers stay up and new content is developed. The boxed copy model is also fair: you pay to get complete access to a game and it's up to you how you want to exploit this access.
But when someone argues for the freemium model they work towards a situation where "they" (i.e. the vast majority of players) no longer have to pay for the game, consenting to let others cover the cost while they play for free. And of course if you've already bought the game then you're arguing for Blizzard to cut you off from all sorts of minor perks you should already have access to unless you spend money on top of the initial purchase. And they create the need for Blizzard to aggressively market those options to people who are vulnerable to this. You don't have any real need for the perks and therefore some degree of deception or manipulative psychology is required in order to encourage acquisitions. Teenagers, elderly people, people that are bad at planning, people with mental illnesses etc. all fall under this.
Instead of the perfectly fair business model we currently have we want one that is unfair, complex and forces a more deceptive, predatory attitude of Blizzard towards its customers.
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/2ir69e/lotv_suggestion_thread/cl4pajj?context=1
I don't completely disagree with it, but I'm a bit tired of the mindless optimism regarding micro transactions, so here's a polemic arguing against it.
There are a lot of ways to do micro transactions badly, but there exists a well received industry standard that people are calling for Blizzard to emulate. I'm quoting this list I found that sets out the marks of a successful in-game store based on League of Legends.
- The title is free - profit is made through micro-transactions.
- These transactions are not overly expensive in nature. They're small, reasonable purchases. Price gouging doesn't occur.
- As a corollary to the above; the items that can be purchased are things the players actually want to buy.
- All of the items which can be bought are luxury items. They're either completely aesthetic in nature, or they make the player's life more convenient. They are not required for regular game-play, nor do they give one player an unfair advantage over the others. "Pay to Win" does not apply.
- There are no content walls - players are not forced to pay just to play.
The in-game store is the core of League's freemium model which allows the game to be free to play. The game actually becomes a vehicle to promote and create a necessity for in-game purchases rather than a stand-alone product. Note that you can easily avoid spending real money by categorizing all the purchases as luxury items. By the rules of the list above this by definition can hardly affect the gameplay experience as the in-game store can only uniquely have novelty items of ephemeral value.
In the end most players won't spend a penny. The Pareto principle applies here: the rule that says that 80% of the effects tend to come from 20% of the causes. In League of Legends it means 80% of purchases will be made by 20% of the player base. And if you apply it recursively you can infer that the majority of the funding will come from a very small group of people. The references I found online seem to confirm this reading.
One model I'm familiar with is the funding for political blogs (wikipedia is another known example) which depend on donations. Something is offered to you for free but there is an appeal to the readers to support the cause. There are obvious similarities with League's freemium model but the difference is that Riot is a private company that seeks to maximize profit and comes by funding not by appealing to its userbase but by selling useless items of no value. There is no obligation whatsoever as a League player to contribute, there is no moral hazard in playing for free knowing that costs will be covered by the tiny minority of people that obsessively pay for skins.
I think a subscription model is fair enough: pay to play and meanwhile the servers stay up and new content is developed. The boxed copy model is also fair: you pay to get complete access to a game and it's up to you how you want to exploit this access.
But when someone argues for the freemium model they work towards a situation where "they" (i.e. the vast majority of players) no longer have to pay for the game, consenting to let others cover the cost while they play for free. And of course if you've already bought the game then you're arguing for Blizzard to cut you off from all sorts of minor perks you should already have access to unless you spend money on top of the initial purchase. And they create the need for Blizzard to aggressively market those options to people who are vulnerable to this. You don't have any real need for the perks and therefore some degree of deception or manipulative psychology is required in order to encourage acquisitions. Teenagers, elderly people, people that are bad at planning, people with mental illnesses etc. all fall under this.
Instead of the perfectly fair business model we currently have we want one that is unfair, complex and forces a more deceptive, predatory attitude of Blizzard towards its customers.
Please be nice.
