For the past decade the major game developers have been held hostage by a standard they created. Inside sleek steel towers, the richest, most prolific figures in the industry conspired openly to form a cartel. Together they used their combined influence to manipulate and intimidate their way throughout the publishing and distributing sectors, strangling their competition until nothing remained but the twisted fingers of their machinations, swiftly coiling around all that remained; their own necks.
Entombed by the uniform cost structure which they had standardized, the triple A (AAA) industry began to suffocate as pressure built from the rising cost of technology, an explosion of competition from independent developers, and inflated expectations being placed upon their products. They finally they choked. The proliferation of the internet became lodged in their throats as multiplayer and other online features became so standard that the president of EA even boasted that he had gone a year without giving the green-light to a single project that didn’t have an online component.
However, their empire was struggling to survive as the earth quaked beneath it. The AAA developers would need to find a new source of stability in this changing landscape. Their crude old methods of drilling an intellectual property with sequel after sequel and fracking the franchise until barren had been made obsolete. Gamers now saw ‘Expansions’ & ‘Downloadable Content’ (DLC) become staple features of their pastime. These bypassed the overhead associated with servers which are needed for sequels, and the long term costs of development came to be financed with increments of content being delivered at cost to players of the game.
This was not without resistance. Consumers wailed upon deaf ears. The companies who embraced and invented incremental content were accused of releasing incomplete products while still expecting to charge the standard $60 price at launch. They were arraigned on charges of fraud and deception in the people’s court, but were never indicted. In a flurry of affronting new practices, only pre-order schemes have seen regular defeat. Capitalism in its divinity deafens itself to post-purchase prayers.
Still pressured in an over-saturated market, even the most prominent developers were struggling to meet the growing budgets demanded by modern incarnations of their games. Several companies faced the risk that they would be phased out of their own industry; when they were saved by the introduction of the newest, smallest, and most disruptive form of payment ever featured in the medium.
The Microtransaction burst on to the scene transforming the way in which we, the consumers, pay to play. However, the cabal still sat in a ruin of its former self and in dire dissatisfaction conjured the demon of the denominator. No longer unified, some of the remaining cabalists, often desperate, un-leveled the playing field inside their games, casting players in to classes, tiered in the only terms they understand, giving birth to ‘pay2win’ which in greed not wisdom, would become the newest form of gambling. This torrent of new methodologies brought forth real innovation and opportunity for developers, polishing what are now jewels within the industry; while simultaneously paving the way for tyranny to be a trademark within the art form.
“Microtransaction” became the umbrella term for small digital purchases, and brought with it the introduction of a new concept for digital media: repeatable transactions. The sale and pricing of digital goods, had long been justified much like brand-name pharmaceuticals. The value of a product being correlated to the research, development and general efforts of the inventor(s); including some expectation that the price will fall with time as the investment is recovered. Microtransactions disrupted this paradigm, redefining goods as services and shifting the valuation to be based on what the consumer receives rather than the production costs. Star Citizen, for example, offers the repeatable purchase of in-game space-ships ranging in price from $20 to the in no way ‘micro’ $400(and up) section of their shop, going so far as to include packages as egregious as $15,000; flaunting the abstraction which money has become.
Elements of this abstract valuation can be leveraged to create wonders of the modern market place. Valve(Steam) is a pioneer in the field, and they idealize how they can make the marketplace for digital games work for everyone, often succeeding. However, the principle itself creates inherent market inequalities as developers have exclusive production rights within their respective games; often taxing and filtering any second or third party content present in their microtransaction shops and even in after-markets. Valve in particular has created DotA 2 and revitalized Team Fortress 2 using microtransactions with the good intentions to create interesting and non-intrusive mechanics. Sadly, not all companies are so well intentioned, and even those who are often find themselves embroiled in both financial and ethical dilemmas.
The shifting view of digital products towards that of a service has a long history in the broader software industry. Subscription products have slowly become more prevalent since the internet and online shopping made it a possibility, with recent examples being made of Microsoft Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud. Gaming saw this early on in some genres, and recently it has been adopted by more in the form of subscriber-specific content and updates. Different adaptations of these concepts have been executed with various levels of efficacy and acceptance, many becoming norms in spite of their bad reputations.
At this point the use of small repeatable transactions is so widely embraced that the major developer Activision-Blizzard acquired the smaller Digital King Studio for $5.9 Billion. After all, Digital King had flooded their bank accounts with $1.98 Billion in 2013 alone with a single “free-to-play” game Candy Crush. Paying for powers, and boosts to win in situations where one would otherwise fail, digital gaming had created their own Vegas strip, building digital slot machines that never pay out anything but the words “you
win.” At this point, the price to play had become the game itself. Even the most banal examples of microtransactions often employ randomized rewards which force players to gamble for their contents. Additionally these games often target very young demographics, seemingly designed to exploit children for their parents money.
This revolution in gaming has been marred by tragedy but is not without its merits. Microtransactions have enabled free-to-play games, which at best democratize their costs, allowing players to make informed purchases in games they are confident they enjoy; at its worst however, it is a stochastic beast which preys on addiction and the thrill at winning in a game of chance the house rigged so they never lose. I understand that this gamble can be attractive in itself, but when the stakes weight cash versus a digital good; the game becomes tipped beyond the break, in favor of the developers.
In conclusion, a relatively short and muddled history has led to the invention of the microtransaction; which has enabled innovation and encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit in developers. However, it has brought with it an abstraction of gambling which
now courses through the blood of the industry like a virus; polluting the plasma with psychological ploys, aiming to create a system where wealth equates opportunity. A virus which if left unchecked could doom the medium, until we only play to pay.
The Life Programmable 