Jimquisition: Fee to Pay

[Waddles]

The whinging about having to pay 60 whole dollars for a game in some of your videos recently is getting annoying. Aussies pay more than 80 in USD for new releases. You're not ripped off anywhere nearly as badly as you seem to think.

That is completely and utterly missing the point. He mentions $60 because that's the cost in the country he lives in. What he is really saying is "We shouldn't be charged full recommended retail price for a game and still have these micro-transactions". How much specifically that is, $60 or $80, the point is still the same, he is complaining about the principle, not the price tag itself.

I think you misunderstood my post. He has quoted that number ad infinitum in several of his recent episodes not just this one. Generally something along the lines of "we already pay 60 fucking dollars." I don't dismiss the main topic of this video in the slightest.

 

[BabySinclair]

Sadly, I can believe all to well that the developers don't want any part in this. I used to work for a high street chain who shall remain nameless. Said chain mandates from head office that every customer must be asked whether they want "Any of our special offers" from the till. Needless to say, the customers usually say no. Some are more vitriolic in their dismissal. But when a member of the board was being interview on the radio or TV or something (I forget which), someone phoned in the question on why they insist all cashiers ask that question every time. Their response? "On no, our cashiers LIKE asking you that. They ENJOY it."

I doubt developers want to be involved with underhanded practices that publishers mandate, because the developers put in the work, take a lot if not all the bad PR for including it, and receive none of the money gained. Developers are usually paid a flat amount for the game and all sales and micro-transactions go to the publisher. And it's not like they can say no, developers have been tricked into a system that makes them dependent on publishers to fund games that prevents them from avoiding these bad deals.

Your store example is an example of this. Your store has to ask the question even though they probably don't because of corporate. The store itself gets paid and sends its profits to corporate who mandated the question. When asked, they say you wanted to ask. It's the same as the publisher/developer relationship.

 

[DataSnake]

I think you misunderstood my post. He has quoted that number ad infinitum in several of his recent episodes not just this one. Generally something along the lines of "we already pay 60 fucking dollars." I don't dismiss the main topic of this video in the slightest.

The other thing to remember is that $60 US is worth more than $60 Australian, at least currently.

 

[viranimus]

Spoiler: ME3's role

I found it interesting that Mass effect was mentioned on this for having such microtrans BS, but it really didnt hit on just how manipulative it was built into ME3. Personally I am a soloist, Even in MMOs. In FPS I stick with non team death match game types. Sure On occasion I might engage in multiplayer if I have a reason. But I found it downright loathsome that EA would have the brass ones to force you to make a choice of either "go for a half ass ending" or "do a bunch of multiplayer matches to boost war asset prep" that was there for absolutely NO other reason than to try to get you to micro trans to cut your multi player nonsense. I dont generally like but dont mind multiplayer. Its existence in a game does not upset me. But when I am playing a game that has always been about first and foremost you playing a role in a universe and developing your "character" through your various choices, the last thing I want is to for all intents be forced to endure a bunch of tedious crap I do not want to do that exists only to try to get me to waste money on intangible garbage in order to get the full effect out of what I purchased. That is beyond wrong.

Spoiler: Source

Ive been preaching this for years here. To the chorus of "constantly negative" "slippery slopes" "what I do with my money is none of your concern" and other top 40 greatest hits. However I see the perspective the video presents as a defeatist one because it not only offers no solution, it almost acts as if it is beyond a solution. I have been preaching this as well. The solution is painfully simple.

Stop buying into these games.

Most people who frequent forums like this are the type who are proactively looking for advanced info on games they will likely be interested in. Sometimes we track development of games multiple years before their release, frothing over every new little tidbit. We are for all intends some of the most informed customers in this industry. Yet we see these organizations keep pushing this milking envelope further specifically because we as consumers are failing in our responsibility in free market / capitalist centric societies to dictate to the producers of the product by not allowing them to develop these "assumptions of profit".

Ive said it before Ill say it again I am sure. When gamers heard Sim City 5 would have always on requirements and no true single player. We as consumers collectively should have said... "NO! Even if it doesn't effect me personally, it effects many others just like me and it is wrong to force unreasonable conditions upon players. If we let them get by with this, they will only do it again and next time it wont be so polite" When gamers saw Diablo 3 was going with always on, Real money trading, Cash auction houses, again consumers should have said NO!" and in fact a major reason WHY EA tried this with Sim City is BECAUSE Bliz/Acti for all intents got away with it. Even with the Xbone's controversy and somewhat unified outrage. When MS caved it was like practically everyone upset started patting each other on the back as if everything had been set right. Yet there are still an abundance of dirty little nuggets floating around like MS "punishing" their customers by withholding the "sharing" tech that was supposed to make used obsolete despite there being no good or even logical reason why.

As the saying goes, Freedom isn't free. We exist in a "free market" And in that economic system much of the price of such freedom is constant never ending vigilance as these people are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, which is part as many fools from their money as is possible with the least expenditure of resources to do so. As long as we accept the rules of this game, we cannot be upset because one team plays exactly as they are supposed to because we lack the resolve to play in the way we are intended. You can hate the game AND the player, but if you are going to do so, then you need to either change the game or change who you are playing against.

Spoiler: Devs and Death star politics

This brings up a point. I think its mostly goes without saying that devs do not want the industry that the publishers are manufacturing any more than we do. However In this day with how much digital distribution is lauded as gamings savior, devs technically have their own ability to control this industry just as much as the Pubs do. Self publication is becoming not only viable but commonplace. While it is terrifying jumping away from the security of a definitive paycheck, and it is very true that we as consumer fans are absolutely abusive to indie developers that make some not want to suffer through it there is the capacity for power redistribution. Just like we as consumers have the monetary clout and power to control the industry, these devs have the power of production and while it certainly is a risk, with things like kickstarter its a lot less risky today than it was in the past and these individuals and teams have the means to break out on their own.

It is one thing to be vocally against something. It is quite another to be proactive and doing something to fix the problem. Its simple "Death Star Politics"

If you hate how the big evil empire is crushing everything you love about your hobby, you dont go work for them trying to change the entire machine from within. You do not give them access to your talents and skills so they lack the fuel to do further damage. Its a harsh reality but it is what it is and has been a part of our system almost as long as the system has existed.

Its a nice thought, but where is the blame to be placed? The company putting in free to play elements to bilk players out of money? Or the players who in the past have made similar transactions elsewhere that gave them the idea to put it in their product? Its still a supply and demand market and if there is no demand for games with such features because they are not profitable, then the supply of games that cater to that demographic will wilt away until they are back at sustainable levels.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

How dare you Jim... HOW DARE YOU(!?)... call All the Bravest a "game"

 

[Madman123456]

Fee to Pay

It's time to talk about why "optional" microtransactions in games aren't really optional, and why they're especially gruesome in games we already paid for at retail.

Watch Video

When team fortress 2 rolled around with their optional pay to get hats model i kinda liked it. The Fans liked it more then Valvle could've imagined and buried them alive under mountains of money...

I kinda liked the optional micro transactions in games; until my flimsy brain managed to string a very pessimistic and dark thought together:
"What if companies where to make the games harder and/or more tedious in order to convince more people to cough up money to be able to beat the game?"
Surely i was being way too pessimistic, right?
Well, about a million companies said "Nope!".
I downloaded exactly two games from the google playstore this year. "Army of Darkness defense" in which you play Ash defending the necronomicon in the castle from the undead Hordes.
And another game i quickly uninstalled and forgot about.

"Army of Darkness" can be beaten with not a single penny paid, no problem. You can pay money to get extra points for extra upgrades but you can pretty much upgrade everything to maximum without paying.

The other game gets immensely hard and i'm virtually certain that you can't beat it without paying money.

And now i have about enough games on my phone. I wont be searching for more games because i don't want to drag myself halfway through the game only to find out that this game isn't hard because the developer wants to present me with a challenge but because he wants more of my money.


Free to play is no longer a nice distraction financed by one in a thousand paying a buck or so, you will find some hook in which you will be all but forced to either pay money or stop playing in many games and i can not be bothered to hunt down the free to play games in which i pay when i want to pay.

 

[yayforgiveaway]

TA well designed?... wait, what?

 

[Erttheking]

The whinging about having to pay 60 whole dollars for a game in some of your videos recently is getting annoying. Aussies pay more than 80 in USD for new releases. You're not ripped off anywhere nearly as badly as you seem to think.

That is completely and utterly missing the point. He mentions $60 because that's the cost in the country he lives in. What he is really saying is "We shouldn't be charged full recommended retail price for a game and still have these micro-transactions". How much specifically that is, $60 or $80, the point is still the same, he is complaining about the principle, not the price tag itself.

I think you misunderstood my post. He has quoted that number ad infinitum in several of his recent episodes not just this one. Generally something along the lines of "we already pay 60 fucking dollars." I don't dismiss the main topic of this video in the slightest.

I'm kind of reminded of his "Better does not equal good" video. Does he have it better then people in Australia? Yeah, games are more expensive in Australia than in America. Games are still really expensive in America though, going down from $80 to $60 makes the price better, but it doesn't make it good.

 

[wizzy555]

This is not necessarily the doom and gloom Jim is portraying, selling games pieces separately could be beneficial by making the entry level cheaper. For instance there are plenty of games where I never play the multi-player, if they wanted to charge that separately I just wouldn't buy it.

I went easy on ME3 and their day one DLC for the reason I thought that the mass effect games were so good that they actually deserved to be more expensive than the rivals, so I was happy to pay more for the "complete" experience while the people who perhaps didn't want the edition character didn't have to pay for it. Granted the unfortunate people who wanted the complete package but couldn't afford it missed out, but that as they say is capitalism.

Alternatively the publishers could just increase the asking price. Both are free market solutions, we are just arguing about the most elegant/preferable.

 

[Reyold]

This is why I am getting into the indi scene rather then even attempt to hop aboard one of the sinking ships that are the current giants of the industry. Not only will I not get to make the games I want to make, the way I want to make them, but all of this has the stench of death. Nothing could be so obviously desperate and indicative of a coming crash then the ridiculous things the industry is currently doing just to try and stay afloat.

I want to make games one day, but I don't want any part of this "house of cards" that makes up the industry of today.

Same here. I'd rather invest my creative talents in a game I make myself, or at least one I want to get behind, instead of taking orders from a corporate overlord who hasn't a single clue about good games. Creativity and corporate idiocy don't mix.

Also, I don't normally ask this, but... where does that magnificent avatar of yours come from?

 

[A3sir]

And then there's EVE. Pay once for the game, free expansions, buy game time with in game currency, have a premium currency, which can also be acquired with in game items.

 

[Mike Fang]

M'kay, I've heard similar arguments made regarding microtransactions and "free to play" elements and the one thing I've consistently been left thinking when I hear a lot of these arguments is this:

What. the FUCK. are people blathering about?!?!

Okay, now to explain what I mean. I get that people think it's stupid to pay for a single or co-op game and then be required to pay more money for special content Sometimes it's not even special content; it's -required- content to get the full experience of the game. And I agree, that's a colossal dick move by the games industry when it comes to games that don't have continual replay value and are instead a self-contained experience that will come to a definite conclusion, only to be replayed for the same reason one re-reads a book or watches a movie more than once.

But the area microtransactions tend to show up the most are in MMORPG's or online multiplayer games. These are game intended to have extended staying power and an ongoing storyline or changing game environments. But the general impression I've been left with is people lump these games in with the Dead Space 3's and condemn their microtransactions all under the same premises with the same arguments.

But this is fucking STUPID. People need to differentiate between the growing practice of encouraging gamers to pay to make a single player or co-op game easier and paying to add cosmetic or convenience features to a persistent game. Take Guild Wars 2. You do have to buy the game, but I think that for a professional-quality game, there does need to be some minimum return made to ensure it at least lasts some time past launch. It also has microtransactions for things like armor skins, special items to gather crafting materials that won't break to replace having to buy new gathering tools when the old ones wear out, and so on. Yet there are people who still ***** because a company is trying to encourage them to buy things from them. News Flash people: THAT'S WHAT COMPANIES DO. If they didn't try to encourage people to buy products they create, they'd go out of fucking business! Even in single player games, I'd call this practice "greedily catering to the lazy players" rather than "forcing you to pay more money under the illusion you have a choice." Unless the items being purchase are the sole viable way to progress in the game, nobody's got a gun to your empty skulls.

There are also people who claim that if you buy frequently enough from a game's cash shop, it negates any savings from not having a subscription fee. Yes, waste enough money and it will be more of it gone out the window. But if a player can be patient, do without a few luxuries or enjoy a game without having to have every trendy cosmetic or gimmicky feature out there, there's money to be saved with this model. Also, even if you do wind up spending as much as you would have if you'd been bled for $15 a month, at least you're spending it on features YOU WANT rather than being tossed a grab bag. With a subscription, the company takes the money from you like clockwork and whether or not you get the bang for your buck you expected each month is no concern of theirs.

In conclusion, I think microtransactions are a method of sustaining an online game that's still got some bugs to work out, but is proving viable and of potential benefit to both the company and the player. But it's a method that has no place in single or co-op games.

 

[Something Amyss]

This reminds me of a recent trend I've noticed in some 3DS RPGs that sell "grind" DLC. I suppose that's sort of the same principle. If you're not familiar with it it's not much of a departure from what you discussed in this episode. Basically you drop an extra $3 and are transported to the land of super fast grinding (such was the case for FE: Awakening and SMT IV). I'm kind of on the fence about it as these kinds of shortcuts never existed in JRPGs before (that I am aware of) and the game doesn't seem balanced around their existence. Then again, I kind of feel that it sullies the spirit of the game a bit.

Would you say it qualifies as a dirty money-grubbing tactic, or can it be justified?

I don't know about JRPGs, but Knights of Pen and Paper pissed me off when I saw their deluxe edition had a special farming map. Then again, this is a game I think fits Jim's definition: it charges you (admittedly, a much smaller amount than 60 bucks), then makes itself grindy and tries to sell you power through microtransactions.

And the updates before and to the +1 edition made it worse.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Snip

I have found one Free to Play game that actually feels like spending real world cash is just an option. Spartacus Legends. Although not a great game, it is servicable enough for an F2P. What they get right though is the money system. Without exception, F2P games are built on a dual currency mechanic. One currency that you get as a reward in game, and another currency that can only be obtained with real money (after the obligatory first small lump they give you to show you how great it is to have that currency.)

However, Spartacus Legends GIVES you that secondary currency everytime you level up, and the gear that was available for the paid currency eventually becomes purchasable through the standard in-game currency.

This method should be recognized more for it's consumer-friendly approach. Too bad it's just attached to such a sub-par fighting game.

 

[GAunderrated]

Great Episode Jim!

On a side note I feel horrible that I am actually going to say this but SE needs to die as a business. They have become nothing more than a zombie. An undead nightmare that has the only desire to chase you down and rip the flesh from your bone until you are dead.

FF: ATB is one of the most offensive and disgusting games ever made with the support of a AAA publisher and if SE is considering more games like it then they need to go out of business and fast.

 

[Aggieknight]

Mass Effect 3 I must admit I did buy the occasional Multi-player pack. Mass Effect though was kind of insulated from it in that the purchased packs were an optional part of an optional mode. Playing the main game all the way through it wouldn't even come up, it was just for the hard core multi-player crowd. Given where these elements were and how it was done it never bothered me. It was just something to spend left over points on.

Personally, my problem with ME3 was how the point packs were implemented.

The MP was actually very fun (much to my surprise) but since couldn't buy specific upgrades, it was painful. For the 8 people that didn't play ME3, in Multiplayer, you purchased a "baseball card pack" that contained random upgrades. The baseball card packs could either be bought with real money or in game currency (which was ssslllloooowww to accumulate). Each weapon had 10 different upgrades to itself (so a "Big Daddy Shotgun lvl 1" was just slightly weaker than a "Big Daddy Shotgun lvl 2" and multiple customization options (which all had their own levels). If you found a weapon that you really liked, you couldn't necessarily keep using it because a "Crappy Shotgun lvl 8" was significantly better than your preferred "Big Daddy Shotgun lvl 2". Ergo...it was really annoying. On the harder difficulties you were required to use better weapons to compete as the difficulty ramped up very quickly.

The entire system was designed to convince you to spend money. I bought a number of the packs before saying "f' this" and quit altogether.

Frustrating. Very. Hate you EA.

 

[Jenny Jones]

I was saying something similar to a friend earlier today, weird how that goes. Anyway I think you're right about it, I bought the game, now let me play it without needing to spend anything more on it. If you add more content (an interesting story/angle that compliments the game) then I might be persuaded to part with cash but I don't want it to feel like you're paying for something that feels like it should or was part of the game that they snipped out for various reasons.

It really saddens me to learn about the not triangle publisher thinking of doing that, I really liked a lot of it's games which I will have to not buy lest they think we love micro transactions.

 

[Ukomba]

Is it wrong that at this point I think we're going to have a have a full scale video game crash to get any of this sorted out?

Never played the Dead Space series, not my thing really, but I had Mass Effect 3 and saw how this affected the multiplayer portion. The difficulty curve was stacked so that you'd start thinking about buying the weapon/equipment packs to be able to keep up (or you'd be hoping to be in teams that had one member who'd been splurging on them to even the odds a little). Or worse, you'd be the one "free" member of a "paid" squad, which meant you spent a lot of time as dead weight because the game was basing it's attacks on their level - not yours.

What are you talking about? There was no difficulty scaling with N7 number with mass effect. Difficulty was constant and only depended on what difficulty you chose.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The really sad irony of Dead Space 3 is that if I'm fed up with the game's slow vanilla speed of resource collection, I don't have to pony up cash for a resource pack. I can - but if I'm a PC gamer, I can simply use a trainer and supercharge my resource values. Ergo, absolutely no need to pay for more than the initial sixtyburger.

On the flipside of things, there's Blacklight, DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2. Blacklight and TF2 each start you out with an adequate arsenal, and the game isn't so woefully unbalanced as to more or less demand that you hork up more cash. I've never purchased a single thing for TF2, working exclusively with my item drops and my rare crafted items, and I'm doing just fine. I know newcomers who work with the vanilla loadout for each character and who do quite well, actually.

DOTA 2 does things even better, as purchasing items is purely cosmetic in nature. You aren't paying to get a leg-up, you're essentially paying to show your appreciation to both Valve and the custom content creators that end up featured as part of the game's store of purchasable items. That's the kind of price I'm willing to consider, as it's more a donation or thanks being given than you trying to pay your way past the metaphorical gatekeeper of the Land of Decent Kill/Death Statistics.

For those that suck... Planetside 2 is a horrid case of that. You absolutely can play the game in its barest form without paying a dime, but two thirds of the essential features are locked out, and the complete loadout remains something that's just *there*, teasing you with upgraded stats.

Then there's World of Warcraft. I really don't know that the core game's expansions warrant additional charges of twenty bucks per purchase, on top of my fifteen bucks per month. Most other studios release huge content patches or updates for free, so why doesn't Blizzard do that, other than to have an excuse to suck at our wallets a tad more?

In any case, if I ever get into WoW, don't expect me to buy the whole kit and kaboodle in one fell swoop. I'm more liable to stick with 'nilla WoW and work my way through that, and *then* buy the expansions, one after the other.

 

[___________________]

All we have to do is not buy the games to make a point. The problem is a lot of people keep buying them anyway.