We all love to spend a couple of hours on solo gaming on our smartphones or go through a few rounds of Call of Duty with friends. The gaming world has evolved from single player 16-bit games on Nintendo to triple-A titles like GTA VI that millions of people are willing to spend their spare budget on. But graphics and controllers aren’t the only thing that changed. We now see a dramatic shift in the cost of game development costs that push game publishers to seek other ways of monetization to keep the wheel spinning.
Rising costs of game development and higher price for stocks are key reasons why we see the growing adoption for loot boxes, paid skins and selling season passes to unlock hidden content. But is it fair and how do modern gamers react to such tactics when you have to pay for something in the game that you already bought for a full price? Let’s try to understand how these modern money squeezing techniques are affecting the game development industry and whether they are for good or break the entire experience from the games.
What Are Microtransactions and Why Game Developers Use Them
The answer here is quite simple. Game development companies now have thousands of employees and developing a game is way different compared to how it was before back in the 90s. The costs are rising with each year and developers are forced to add additional ways of monetization that don’t harm the gameplay process and don’t give any advantage for those willing to pay extra. Microtransactions and loot boxes are made to keep the prices stable and don’t go through another round of rising prices for a full game each 2 or 3 years. At least that’s what they say.
But if you ask any gamer about lootboxes and all the other microtransactions, it is highly likely that they will tell you it has a very negative impact on the game image and gameplay. Lootboxes, aside from bringing a stream of money to game developers, can often turn a masterpiece into a casino-like game with a boring plot. Many say that it’s better to play 777 games rather than being pushed to spend on in-game assets 3 times an hour.
What Are Loot Boxes, Skins and Season Passes
If you don’t know what each of these are, let’s try to break each one down.
Loot boxes are probably the most controversial and hated feature of the three. These “boxes” can be bought for real money while promising you have a chance to receive a random reward. You don’t know what’s inside the loot box until you open it, which turns it to more like gambling where people always expect to get higher value for their bets. But in most of the cases what you get is a “common” card of weapon. Some games rarely offer “common” loot boxes for free through gameplay but those boxes with chances for rare or epic items are always paid. This technique makes players spend more and more money just to get something valuable on the first stage, and just to get something at all on later stages.
Skins are cosmetic items that change how your character or weapon looks. They don’t usually affect the in-game balance and are intended to make your character look cooler and more personalized. Skins are especially popular in Fortnite and CS:GO where they are a big deal. Modern players spend hundreds (some – thousands) of dollars a year for such improvements ensuring a steady revenue flow for game developers for literally doing nothing but introducing a new color for your knife or AK47.
Season passes are a bit different and used to unlock some new regions on map or new PvP modes. Most season passes last from one week to three months and cost from $10 to $30 with rare exceptions. And this is another pain in the gamers’ world when you have to constantly invest in a game that you paid a full price for.
Why Microtransactions are so Controversial
Microtransactions spark a lot of debate and not just among players and parents. Even government regulators started to notice this growing trend and try to regulate it before it’s too late. The key problem here is that microtransactions, especially loot boxes, have similar nature to the game of change widely used in casinos. That’s why many activists say that this addiction can become a trampoline to even worse addictions which, in turn, will have a dramatic effect on youth when they become a financially active part of the population.
The problem is that these systems can be addictive. Some players, especially kids, end up spending more and more money trying to get a rare item, without realizing how much they’ve actually paid. In Belgium and the Netherlands governments have stepped in and made loot boxes considered as a form of gambling. This made certain game developers remove loot boxes entirely in those countries if they wanted to sell their games there. Germany, the UK, and Australia still haven’t banned the loot boxes yet but they made developers show the actual chance of winning the rare or epic prize hoping this will decrease the number of players willing to spend their money when they see a 0.1% chance of “winning” the desired weapon or skill. The United States are still behind the trend for some reason and haven’t introduced any form of national laws regarding microtransactions. Some say that this is because of the huge lobby of the game industry doing everything to keep this loophole around and don’t lose their profits.
Loot boxes, skins, and season passes work in different ways, but they all share one thing in common: they offer extra in-game content for real money. Some are more about style, some involve chance, and others focus on ongoing rewards. The key thing here is to treat the game as just a game and don’t invest too much of your time and money into it.
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