The communicative power of the term "Pay to Win" 2

Interesting

Version 1 was too old, got locked: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/345273/The-communicative-power-of-the-term-PAY-TO-WIN.html

Pay to Win

is just a SIMPLE, OBJECTIVE, STRONG AND PEJORATIVE TERM.

 

Its the new Fail, its like it.

FAIL (Ive written a similar article analysing the term Fail on this forum, when a similar topic came,  Im sure its under one of my posts history). Fail has lost part of its power due to it requiring a pre-existing context or else its strenght is severely weakened. Its too generic. Pay to Win, on the other hand, finds complement within each individual past experiences of RMT and their own evaluation of what is ok and not ok. Except that one does not tries to find the discrepancies of their own concept and the posters own concept each time they read it. They are tricked into just assuming their own concept. So the term itself is auto-applicable within any RMT discussion or context.

Anyway, "Pay to Win":

It communicate a wide range of negative ideas in a stample way. One does not waste time with the subject, it just labels something and move on, because its not worth it. One does not waste words explaining, neither gives the chance to counter against. Its stronger than a prejudice. One comes, posts it and move on, without caring about if the next person who reads it cares or not. It is very easy to use.

Within the wide range of possible meanings and interpretations of what constitutes pay to win, from the most sensitive to the most insensitive person, everyone can find a subset of RMT rulesets that they are not ok with and then label it pay to win. Its like a snowball that grows into an avalanche, there is no stopping, there is no counter. In the end, everyone derives the meaning of pay to win based on their own standards and the beauty of it is that you cannot deconstruct it to empty its cognitive destructive power.

To the reader, a repply with "pay to win" only has the most bang to the writers time and effort. It instantly communicates the worse possible message. "THIS IS BAD". Its like insects using chemicals to communicate one of the dozen simple messages, like the one that means "enemy nearby, seek and destroy". That the power of the expression "Pay to Win".

It is a masterpiece of modern linguistics, I embraced it since the first time I saw it and since then started to use it a thousand times, over and over, propagating it to others, and now it is with great pleasure to see its power being used ONLY AGAINST THE RMT.

Its a cultural work of the mmorpg gamers community. A sign of our evolution, something that even the newborn baby gamers and the most primitive persons and low IQ  players can understand right away. "SKIP THIS PIECE OF SHIT", "NOT WORTH YOUR TIME", "THIS IS BAD", "THIS IS CORRUPTED".

The expression is a weapon, its only used in a belicist way, to damage whatever the subject/game/company/rmt model is being pushed. Its our way to combat what we subjectivelly believe to be unethical or bad practices or anything that breaks the integrity of a game.

The beauty of it is that it causes the intended effect. We dont need a due process of law of judge and execute something by just labeling it "PAY TO WIN". We shift all the time and effort to the developers in interviews to convince us that their new game is not "Pay to Win". The hot potato is on the developers hands.

Not only that, but we have seen in the last 2 to 3 years an active effort of developers to design a game alongside with the monetization model in a way that steems away from the bad labeling.

"Vote with your wallets" some said, but one can simply repply "this is pay to win" and there is their vote, not one of absence or silence. "Dont like it dont play it", "Dont like it, quit", "... but shut the fuck up about it". We often hear as a common defense strategy against any and all criticism. You see, "pay to win" bypasses that. It is the current epitome of criticism of a game with RMT, not only you dont play it, but YOU CAUSE EFFECT INTO OTHERS IN A NEGATIVE WAY, INFLUENCING MANY INTO SKIPPING SAID GAME. To those that recomended "votes" and "behaviours" in a way to defend/clear out the criticism, the rise of the term "Pay to Win" is the sweetest irony. "How do you like my vote now?"

In case someone didnt read the above...  It explains why Its a futile attempt to determine the limits of the term, just so it can be denied or invalidated in any discussion. If it worked for MMORPGs in a way that the genre standard could be lowered, it cannot be used on Pay to Win in a way to create requisites for its use to be validated/verifiable. Work both ways.

While you are at it, read my other article named

"Time-saving Convenience items" and "Time Skippers". The new PAY TO WIN.

anemo

Pay to Win is a boring and emotional arguement.   Especially when you can consider cosmetic items pay to win, since the entire point of an MMO to a lot of players is distinction.

Disdena

If I could boil it down to just one statement, your rant seems to be saying that it's super-duper good that Pay To Win is an insult? I don't know why that needs the 5,000 word treatment. And it's not even accurate.

First off, there are clearly some people who like playing (and paying for) P2W games. There might not be a lot of them but they exist, and in large enough numbers to make that payment model viable. Also, there are people like me who like playing—and not paying for—P2W games. I couldn't care less if the cash shop lets me buy more power or faster progression; I'm not tempted by the prospect of paying money to make a game easier. To either of these groups, P2W means nothing bad, and could even be a positive characteristic.

And finally, there are quite a lot of people who do care about the distinction of varying levels of P2W, and will tolerate some but not others. For example, there are plenty of people who would play a game that has an EXP bonus scroll in the cash shop, but not one where you can buy equippable items. Or perhaps they tolerate games where you can buy equippable items, as long as those same items can be acquired in the game without spending money. Get it?

So the more you shout "IT'S P2W!!!" at every game where it's even a little bit applicable, the less the term means to that third group of people. To them, P2W is a pejorative term that can be safely ignored, because people use it to describe any and every F2P game no matter what the cash shop looks like.

Anyone who thinks the term P2W sends potential players scattering must have a serious problem with selective reading; we have threads all the time where people say that P2W is being misapplied to normal F2P games that have cash shops. These forums have seen the term abused enough that it has already lost its power.

VengeSunsoar

"Its the new Fail, its like it."

I agree.  It's just as full of emotional bile and completely meaningless to most people now.  Anyone using it just reinforcing it's meaninglessness, as Disdena pointed out.