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Gamers Share the 'Blame' for Microtransaction Angst According to SuperData - MMORPG.com News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Gamers Share the 'Blame' for Microtransaction Angst According to SuperData - MMORPG.com News
According to information compiled through SuperData Research, gamer spending has gone through the roof in recent years when it comes to microtransaction purchases and service-based monetization. Sales of add-on content far outpace the more traditional "box purchase" and, at least according to SuperData's research, "the trend shows no signs of slowing".
Comments
In my opinion, the lion's share of the blame fall into the gaming companies and their introduction of predatory psychological techniques that take advantage and fully utilize the gambling weaknesses of some people.
The good news is that most good titles this year lacked micro-transactions and gamble boxes, despite the few big names and the news surrounding them making it as if gaming is drowning in gambling.
What they are saying is that normal and gambling microtransactions have worked, players are falling for a greedy revenue model. I for one would be quite happy with a higher "box" price and no gambling/random transactions. You get what you pay for.
It is allready known that F2P nets much more money than b2p ... maybe even sub.
The problem here is that they want to sell F2P games together with full 60$ premiun B2P price tag.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The supply isn't as important as the demand. This stuff dates back to RMT which has pretty much been around since online gaming at the very least. 'Players' were always selling external advantages even when the companies weren't and would buy them. RMT could extend to anything though, such as bot clients, hacks, leveling services, etc. I even remember people doing this during my time playing Diablo II/Ragnarok Online (my youngest memories of engaging with other players by online means). Products are created all the time (and yes micro-transactions are just another product) but if they don't have a market then they tend to die out. In part its true that people have always been the blame for corporate greed because there have always been people that fall for it. But one could blame governments by allowing loopholes and delaying regulations on such practices until they garner enough attention. Then again, as we have seen recently in the news, a lot of government officials have been linked to such practices. I'm not trying to make this political, but it does show why these things aren't always hastily dealt with.
The problem is that these RND items are effectively gambling and foisted on more and more of the underage population. It does not make a difference that ignorant parents are creating this issue by unknowingly purchasing such for their kids.
This whole article is about how microtransactions are the future for the games market. That's their theory. They base this theory on:
1) The limited amount of data they collect that shows gamers spend more on expansions, DLC and microtransactions than they do on box sales
2) Their own prediction that this trend will continue
However, they completely ignore the following:
a) That their data only covers a small fraction of the games market (less than 1%)
b) That they are consistently wrong in their predictions
c) Any discussion about supply and demand. dlc/mtx spend will of course be going up if it is being increasingly offered at the expense of base-game content
d) Any discussion about ethics and the current backlash against mtx
e) Any discussion about quality of games or stagnation in the AAA market, which could dramatically shift the games landscape.
I really do wish people would stop taking SuperData seriously. Yes, they are the industry leaders at collecting data. But they only collect data on roughly 500 games. 500 games across all platforms. Hell, there are now nearly 20,000 games on Steam alone. Start including xbox, playstation, nintendo, plus all the mobile games....
I recently posted about my nephew spending most of his money on lootboxes in Overwatch and how he thought this was such a great thing. I had that just got hit in the gut feeling when he started talking. My sister doesnt care what he spends his money on and I didn't think I should start lecturing him. People will spend in ways I find and many on here find ridiculous and there is nothing we can do about it.
Giving someone information and then letting them make a choice is better than not saying anything and letting them make a choice.
Specially when you speak up after the fact and they say "why didn't you say something".
Just run a few google searches and you'll get hundreds of articles saying that 50-70% of the playerbase are responsible for 70%+ of the revenue, which means that "gamers" aren't to blame, but instead only a very small amount of whales are at fault.
One of the biggest issues with microtransactions is that no matter how many gamers vote with their wallet, just a few rich whales' bigger fatter wallets outvotes them easily.
There is no need for blame but it is damn convenient.
The companies realize that. They just don't care. At that point they would have gotten more money faster than if they had just let the game live longer in less-whale-ish conditions. They've actually held business presentations to investors where they've stated as such.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An
And as the need for physical boxes have dwindled, so have distribution costs.
The only portion of these games' costs that have outpaced the industry growth is marketing. Which, for those keeping score at home, is magnitudes greater than the increase in actual development costs and does fuck all to increase the quality of the gameplay experience.
If you compare their data with the public financial reports of the big companies, you would find that they match pretty well. They have not been predicting any changes that are not also being reported in public docs.