CliffyB: Microtransaction is Not a Dirty Word, EA is Not The Bad Guy

[bastardofmelbourne]

Just because something can be marketed so that the people supported a move to it doesn't make it inherently not evil. Look at fascism.

0 to Godwin's in .25 posts! Incredible!

 

[purifico]

Cliffy B acts like an ass in a successful attempt to defend his Douchebag of the Year title. In other news - the sky is blue, the grass is green.

 

[Rachmaninov]

It's a sad fact, but for the industry to grow into the one we want instead of the one we put up with, we have to start voting with our wallets

Even if we did that, all the developers we love (like BioWare) who are owned by EA because of unrelated greed (by BioWare's owners) will sink, too.

Either, we give EA our money, or those studios and the IPs they have created all die.

It's a bit like a hostage situation actually. I guess that explains why people seem to have Stockholm Syndrome for EA.

If you're going to get mad at EA for doing it simply because they charge you for the game THEN charged for small things, find a new reason. It seems that a good portion of F2P games started off with the exact same model that EA uses for their game.

I'm not saying don't be mad at EA for doing microtransactions, but don't be mad at them because they charge you the game first. Chances are one of your favourite F2P games started off with the same model.

It's not just that EA release games and then implement MTs (microtransactions). The problem is that EA's every step is to offer us less content for the same amount of money, and then demand more money for the rest.

Dead Space 3, for example, is a full priced game. But it has what... 11 pieces of Day One, on-the-disk DLC? And MTs? And they'll be releasing full priced DLC packs, too?

When does it stop? How long until buying an EA game means getting the prologue, and you then have to buy 12 DLC packs for all the chapters, while being prodded at every turn by adverts for "optional content"?

EA, at every step, tries to make more money for less product. Between them and Activision, you're lucky to get a whole, complete game when you buy it at retail anymore. Most of it is cut up, and split off so they can sell it to you over and over.

Valve, despite their failings, aren't attempting such obvious daylight robbery.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

but the fact is I really don't think the balance of criticism is quite fair or equal.

For Origin and Steam, yeah it's not fair. But for everything else why should it be equal?

You see Valve releasing content for free.
You see EA Figureheads talk about charging players for in-game bullets.

Valve is not perfect, and I hate microtransactions. But if a publisher is going to do microtransactions, they might as well try to make it seem like I'm not getting ripped off.

 

[afroebob]

Videogames can cost upwards of $100 million to make and market, says Bleszinski

And whose fault is that? Well actually probably equal parts the gamer's fault and the industry's fault. All I know is I didn't ask for the excessive focus on graphics technology that led to that.

Lol ya we did. We asked for it all the damn time no more than 4 years ago. People craved great graphics and companies started spending money on it cause that's what we begged for at the time.

Yes hence why I said it's partially the gamers fault too. However I didn't.

Ooops my bad, I misread :\

 

[Something Amyss]

Either, we give EA our money, or those studios and the IPs they have created all die.

In the short run perhaps, but by making the continued acquisition by EA untenable, there is a third option.

 

[Xarathox]

An unemployed hack of a game designer soapbox defending EA, the worst goddamn publisher on the planet... This guy is a fucking idiot.

 

[cheetahguy]

I love it how he patronizes valve with only two examples and the second example and i quote,

"People love to beat up on Origin, but they forget that, for a good amount of time, Steam sucked. No one took it seriously for the first while. When Gabe pitched it at GDC to my former co-workers years ago they came back with eye rolls." Steam took years to become the undisputed king of digital distribution, and Bleszinski asks us to remember this before dismissing Origin."

actually proves that valve worked hard to be where they want to be and they did it because of the consumer, and you know what. Valve knows this so they give great prices, deals, sales, and games because they want people to be satisfied. Yet with this stupid argument "If you don't like EA, don't buy their games," is pretty crap especially because EA locks companies in and wont allow them to publish games outside EA so if you like a game but not EA, too bad EA published the game and now that company is in a 10 year hidden contract.

Also these "microtransactions" that cost $3 or $5 isn't the BIG problem, the problem is why do you deserve $60 if your going to charge me $30 in (usually mandatory) microtransactions & DLC, you don't deserve $60 and that's the difference between them, Team Fortress 2 is free to play and how do you become premium? $40? $50? $60? try less than one dollar, yeah the full game less than a dollar, the game is so cheap that no one has problems buying hats because they didn't pay $60 up front valve let the consumer decide the games worth. Funny because valve is starting to make me think of another video game thing, The Humble Indie Bundle.

I'm also sensing that Cliffy B got a big check from this interview *cough* EA *cough* probably paid him to say this *cough*

 

[Rachmaninov]

Either, we give EA our money, or those studios and the IPs they have created all die.

In the short run perhaps, but by making the continued acquisition by EA untenable, there is a third option.

That's the benefit of the second option, not a third.

Taking that option still means that all the currently acquired, beloved studios and their properties die.

It is the better of the options, in the long run, I admit. But it is a very, very hard line to follow. To refer back to my hostage situation comparison; while not negotiating for hostages prevents people from taking hostages in the first place, you've still got to willfully doom any hostages taken between now and when the lesson is learned.

Okay, I'm going to say one thing. Do NOT fucking call what I'm saying a rant. This bullshit that people pull about labelling someone's argument a rant or some other diminutive term is fucking childish and pathetic. It's the same as people labelling me a troll. It's disrespectful and demeaning, and if you pull that shit again this discussion over. Clear?

You really need to calm down.

I'm not your underling, and I'm not indebted to you for this discussion, so your threat holds absolutely no weight.

That being said, I apologise for any offence caused by using the term "rant", it wasn't intended to cause offence.

Now what you're implying is that EA has creative control and is setting unreasonable deadlines?

No. I'm saying EA are setting unreasonable deadlines. You're making the other part up.

In past posts, your or someone else has claimed that I should not give credit for EA publishing a few games because they're just a publisher, not a developer

That was me.

Let's assume something, EA is setting a publishing deadline, and the company itself has creative leeway. In that case it's up to the company to know what they can do in that allotted amount of time. Now if EA is demanding more than they can do, then the company should just say no. We can't do that. We need more people, and more money to pay those people. You know, it's about having a backbone?

It'd be great if it was that simple, but it's not. Do you think authors predict the number of pages their books will be before they write them, or do you think they write them and find out how many pages it is afterwards? When creating art, you can't just choose a stopping point, because then you'd have to deliberately skip over inspiration when it came to you. When they were writing Mass Effect 3, if they had a really good idea that they'd not had when the deadlines were set, should that idea just be cast to the wind just so the truly arbitrary deadline can remain on one day, instead of moving back a week to an equally good day?

I've worked on a fair bit of art myself. Inspiration comes and goes and no amount of trying will ever bring it to you otherwise. Prioritize deadlines and you grossly limit art. Someone has one idea, and you make it, ignoring all of the inspiration along the way which would have improved upon it and accepting all the flaws you discover, without fixing them. Sounds great, right? Much more important that you release it in March instead of April, but make it totally uninspired, yeah?

As for switching companies, I'm happy for you that your local business seems to be so good that you can fall from one job into another without trying. But please don't try to pretend the whole world is like that. The video game industry is hard to get into, because its a dream job for a lot of people. That means there are a lot of unemployed game designers. That means you join a long line when you lose a job.

Perhaps my goal is not to support EA but to support a balanced understanding?

I'd buy that if you weren't trying to deflect absolutely 100% of the blame away from EA. That's not level-headedness, that's fanboyism.

You told me I wasn't showing a balanced perspective, so I showed you some of the things EA does right and some of the things Valve does wrong... I even divided the blame for ME3's ending equally between BioWare and EA.

But as far as you're concerned, EA's spotless and Valve's awful. Exactly the same black-and-white nonsense I thought you were railing against?

I mean Gabe Newell is valued at 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS. DO you get that? 1.5 BILLION. What the fuck's he doing with that money? HD Counterstrike. HD Dota2? More hats for TF2? It's pathetic. 1.5 Billion by the way, is more than Zenimax (Bethesda)

So yeah, actually I'll go back on what I just said and say that yes, Valve is a failure. And until they quit doing sequels to third party mod updates, I'll continue to hold that point of view.

I've already told you that they're making the Steam Box, but you selectively ignored that, apparently. So I'll tell you again; They're making the Steam Box. Maybe making a console is taking a lot of their attention?

Plus, what Gabe Newell is also doing, is offering more games for much, much cheaper than anyone else. And maybe developing HL3? When that comes out, it's sure to set the bar once again. If I asked you to wake me up when EA made a revolutionary new console, offered massive sales across hundreds of products like Steam, or defined a new generation of games, I'd be sleeping eternally.

Steam Greenlight? So you're giving them credit, for other people's games? Riiiiight.
If FTL is a great game, it's because of the people who made FTL, not because FTL is put on steam.

Great strawman. Now onto what I was actually saying;

Steam Greenlight is great because it gives indie games a chance to be advertised on Steam's front page. Exposure can make or break a game.

XBLA is good for Indie games, but Greenlight is better. Firstly, it's much easier and cheaper to make indie games for PC (which is why they out number XBLA games hundreds-to-one) and secondly, because XBLA requires Microsoft to find and approve those games, whereas Greenlight works on votes by users, eliminating Valve's potential blind spots from the equation.

You would not believe how much more difficult it is to make games for a console than it is to make them for PC. If making a game could be equated to cooking; PC games would be an omelette and console games would be a roast dinner with all the trimmings.

What law? You can't copyright game mechanics.
And if your new game is simply portal under a different name then you shouldn't be making it in the first place.

I don't even know why you're asking that question, when you already know the answer, evidenced by your own words a sentence later.

You can copyright enough of a game so that it'd be breaking the law, if you were making Portal, got the sack, got a new job and made Portal again.

So, like I already said, if you're working on your magnus opus, you simply could not afford to have it taken from you. Imagine your favourite art form, your favourite artist... say perhaps a musician... suddenly being legally unable to play whatever their main, signature instrument is. It's not as simple as just shrugging and saying "Welp, onto the next instrument." like you seem to think it is. So if that musician, through no fault of their own, became the apparently disposable slave of EA (through whatever witchcraft you might like to imagine, play along) and EA could take their instrument away if the musician didn't do as they say... you damn well better believe that most, even those with this fabled "backbone" you talk about, would do as EA say. At least for a little while.

 

[UberNoodle]

Aw, Cliffy thinks that people who love Valve are being irrational.

 

[pearcinator]

TF2 used to cost money until the microtransactions proved to be much more profitable...im not defending EA or Valve but I got to admit, it makes sense.

I think the best system is how ME3 multiplayer works...all the multiplayer DLC's are free and everything can be unlocked in-game by playing it long enough. However, you can also buy packs for MS points and because the system is a RNG, luck-based system it works well. You can spend $1000 or 1000 hours playing the game and probably achieve the same results. If you don't want to spend the money then just play the game and you will eventually get what you want.

 

[I.Muir]

I disagree
EA will be guilty in my eyes of satanic business practices until they start giving out stuff for free, stop buying up, killing smaller studios and stop introducing the worst of the most gimmicky game mechanics into their games.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

EA's profits are not my concern. EA's shareholders are also not my concern. I don't want to see micro-transactions in $60 games.

 

[Harbinger_]

1: Valve can and has done wrong but the good they do versus the wrong they do far outweighs the negative.

2: Microtransactions in a $60 dollar game is ludicrous.

3: EA has a lot of smart people working for them, true but those smart people don't seem to have any decision making power.

4: I have no interest in Origin considering their previous issues with TOS, their attitudes towards opinions on forums and the limited library of games they apparently have.

5: I haven't liked EA for quite a while and I haven't bought a single one of their games for that same amount of time. I own Mass Effect 1 and 2 and I'm a completion-ist. I will never buy Mass Effect 3. I own Dragon Age 1 but I don't own Dragon Age 2 and never will. I don't touch any of their games.

6: Their stance in the past and the rumors of anti-used games is also a huge point of contention with me.

 

[Griffolion]

Difference being, Valve didn't charge me 40 quid for TF2.

Microtransactions are fine in F2P models, but when you charge full price for the game, it gets a little sketchy...

Indeed.

Also, the "Valve can do no wrong mentality" is there because Valve has done very little wrong in its operation. EA has its "scumbag" status, because they have been scumbags for almost the entirety of their existence. We don't assign labels arbitrarily, they come from plain observations.

 

[RoBi3.0]

I agree with Cliffy here on most points. I will never understand while people act like DLC and micro-transaction are a kin to the developer trying to steal money from you. If you don't want to spend the money don't. It is not like as soon as you load an EA game up a hired thug storms your house and steals your money.

That being said EA hasn't put anything out in almost a year that appeals to me and Origin the last time I checked was garbage. I really don't care if that is how Steam started. I didn't give shitty Steam the time of day either. Maybe when Origin gets its shit together I would reconsider, but they would have to give me a hell of a deal on a game I could get else where or offer me a must have game I can only get off Origin. Neither of those things are likely to happen.