I was arguing with someone the other day about how the video gaming industry needs to be really careful because they might overreach and face a backlash with their consumer base.
I see more and more predatory practices being employed by some of the big box studios, meant to extract copious amounts of money from their consumers who have already paid for the game. Examples being:
Black Ops 4-
Conclusion: They literally try to charge you twice for the same content you already pay for - unless you no life the video game and play it every single day during the content pass.
- Pay for $60 Game
- Pay for $50 DLC Pass
- Daily grind to unlock content already paid for in DLC pass. ~2 month window to complete or rewards are gone forever.
- Tier "buy out" system using USD$ to unlock tiers that you didn't have time to unlock
PUBG-
Conclusion: Same as Black Ops 4 except instead of just having to "play the game how you want" on a daily basis to unlock things, they force a very difficult/tedious set of missions on you that forces you to play the game in a non-typical manner. This increased difficulty is probably to give people incentive to pay additional $ to unlock levels.
- Pay for $30 game
- Pay for $15 DLC pass
- Daily/weekly "mission" grinds to unlock tiers, 2 month time limit. Missions are very ridiculous and tedious to complete.
- Paid option to skip tiers to unlock content
WOW-
Conclusion: Blizzard is trying to monetize further on expensive character boosts. Leveling was too easy before, but now since it's much harder people are more likely to buy the boost.
- Implements $60 character boost
- Nerfs leveling to max level significantly
Don't even get me started on loot crates in other games...
I could go on and on, such as Mobile Games that intentionally time-gate the living crap out of their game and make it difficult to the point of trying to get people to pay-for-progression via micro transactions.
It seems like Mobile Gamers are more tolerant of pay-to-win than PC/Console gamers, and it's something that Blizzard has only been flirting with - with the WoW token / Char Boost.
They do seem very keen to get into the Mobile Gaming Market with Diablo Immortal though.
I really miss the days where you would just buy a game and it was COMPLETE. You didn't have them trying to get you to pay for "additional content" that wasn't included in the price of the full game. I remember buying Diablo 2 (and the expansion a year later), and after buying each box that was all the money I had to spend.
I just feel like the greedy capitilization of video games is a real plague on our community and we end up getting less quality content due to it.
Thoughts everyone?