EA: Consumers 'enjoying and embracing' microtransactions

[Saucycarpdog]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/ea-consumers-enjoying-and-embracing-microtransactions-6404525

Da fudge did I just read? I don't know about everyone else but I personally hate microtransactions with a passion.

 

[OpticalJunction]

What he meant to say is "EA stockholders are enjoying and embracing the huge amounts of revenue microtransactions bring in" because no doubt they're making a fortune. The sad thing is, a lot of people have conceded defeat and allowed this practice to continue... few gamers are doing anything to stop the tide.

 

[Dendio]

ive bought most mass effect 3 dlc and loved em. Im very happy to see it continue to get support 1 year later

 

[Vault101]

ive bought most mass effect 3 dlc and loved em. Im very happy to see it continue to get support 1 year later

not the same thing as micro transactions it would be like having to pay for asthetic changes to shepards armour

 

[Zhukov]

Exactly which microtransactions are we talking about?

Because I have nothing against the practise if it's implemented well.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

When you are given no choice in the matter but want to continue playing competitively, you'll "enjoy" and "embrace" it.

It's something I hate about these micro DLCs or map packs. If you want to continue to play without getting locked out, you need to buy shit. It happens with Call of Duty, it happens with Halo, it happens with Battlefield. I can't stand it.

The only developer I've seen do stuff properly is Relic with their Dawn of War games. Not having a certain DLC does not lock you out from playing with a player who does. If you only have Chaos Rising and not the base game, you can still play all the maps against any other player who does. The only thing you are locked out of are the other races. It does not put up a wall that you need to pay money for to tear down.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Keep in mind, people like us who complain about microtransactions on message boards aren't the average gamer. We're a very passionate and vocal minority.

The average consumer, the ones who don't really care about the industry or how the industry is treating them, probably do embrace microtransactions since it allows them to skip anything they find as tedious and get straight to the stuff they find fun for just a few extra dollars.

Back when I used to play World of WarCraft I knew a guy who paid another person to level up all of his characters, then bought Gold and gear with real-life currency. I asked him why he did it, since I couldn't fathom why you'd buy a game only to pay someone else to play it. He told me it was because he worked long hours and didn't want to deal with all of that stuff he found uninteresting during his limited free time. All he really wanted to do was play PvP, so to him the extra real-life cost was worth it to get straight into PvP.

 

[Dryk]

Yeah EA, people absolutely love paying for things they used to get for free... just keep telling yourself that

 

[TheCommanders]

You know what really made me sad? I got the Sims 3 a few weeks back (having enjoyed 2), and was insanely annoyed to discover I'd only bought about half the game. I'm not making this up, more than half of the items are locked, only available via real money purchase in game. EA sold me a game, then held the fun parts to ransom. Seriously? I'm supposed to embrace the fact that the same money is buying me less and less with every game they make? Well fuck that shit. Fuck. That. Shit.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

ive bought most mass effect 3 dlc and loved em. Im very happy to see it continue to get support 1 year later

Well that's just DLC, which has been going on since previous generations. The micro-transaction part would be those "mystery packs" that you could buy in the multiplayer portion of the game, which I am yet to see gamers "enjoy and embrace".

 

[AVeryClassyCat]

Found this just now and thought maybe you all would find it interesting, it's a market research firm that apparently SEGA, EA, Microsoft, WotC, Blizzard, Konami, Nintendo, and others (some from the US "can't be disclosed" according to this) get their consumer data from. This is a report released for 2012 about game time, percentage of gaming populations that are paying customers, most popular "platforms", and more. It also makes the recommendation that businesses begin using the model of games as a service among other things.

View it here: http://www.newzoo.com/wp-content/uploads/us_summary_deck_new2.pdf

 

[Smooth Operator]

You might not like them but the general public adores this shit, they will pay $5 or more on each individual model just because it's there and who gives a fuck about value for money, just got to have the latest and greatest whatever they sell.
Gabe himself said some people who make TF2 hats earn more with that nonsense then actual industry jobs, go figure when those singular models cost the same as a fully fledged game with thousands of assets and mechanics.

Sadly with each new market people take time to wear out on buyers frenzy and actually consider what they buy, and we haven't even gotten to a solid mass of people waiting for reviews on games.

 

[KissmahArceus]

I personally have no issue with the micro transactions in either Mass Effect 3 or Dead Space 3, both are optional ways to get extra gear or resources and both can be bought with in game currency so there is no issue as far as I am concerned.
I have spent some microsoft points on these sort of purchases and as long as I don't "need" to buy them, I think they are ok.

It's easy to bash this payment model as "Death by a thousand cuts" but if it is an OPTION then what is the issue?

In Battlefield 3, the smaller packs unlock weapons, vehicle upgrades etc and allow you to catch up with say, friends who have been playing for the last year, if you don't want to use the scavenger bots in DS3 (why you wouldn't I dunno, they are cool as shit) then you can just get resources NOW

Rambling a bit but as long as they are an option not a necessity I can handle them being there.

 

[Auron]

EA doesn't even have decent f2p titles(except I hope the new C&C), what the hell they're talking about? Are people really really buying the "cheat code" unlock packs for bf3 and ds3? -_-

snip

I now need a bottle of Whisky, thank you very much.

 

[loa]

Consumers enjoying the possibility of business directly interfering with the game balance and pacing in a potentially abusive way and embracing paying for one time use cheat codes?
Pecunia non olet I guess. Welcome to the new evolution of on-disk "DLC", it is here to stay.

Frankly, I can't wait until this industry crashes and burns.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

We are building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way; to get to a higher level, to buy a new characters; to buy a truck or gun or whatever it might be," Jorgensen said. "And consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of business.

This is what the next gen is going to offer us?
Consumers are embracing microtransactions in free-to-play games you fuckin' sap. They're not embracing microtransactions for a game they payed $60 for.

And you can forget about this being optional like in Dead Space 3. There's no way EA will make this into something optional. No, when they say ability to pay for a character or a gun etc. that's what they mean. That content won't be unlockable until you pay for it.

Great. We'll see even more content butchered from games in the name of microtransactions.

 

[Lilani]

Yeah, EA's got this weird thing where they assume their stockholders are the same as their customers and that as long as they're making money everything is hunky-dory. They appear to be totally incapable of listening to any sort of customer complaints or desires unless they come in the form of a sticky-note tacked onto their dividend checks.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Yeah, EA's got this weird thing where they assume their stockholders are the same as their customers and that as long as they're making money everything is hunky-dory. They appear to be totally incapable of listening to any sort of customer complaints or desires unless they come in the form of a sticky-note tacked onto their dividend checks.

Remember what they did with Mass Effect 3 ending controversy? They used it to promote ME3 as one of the most controversial games ever. They don't give a crap about what consumers think. So until people stop buying their shit, this is what they'll keep doing.