The Pestilence of Microtransactions

Well, hello there! Today I wish to write about a really prevalent element which drags down recent video games. As you may have read in the title, I will give my two cents on microtransactions.

Let us begin by stating the obvious: microtransactions are insidious elements present in games, specifically engineered to force the player to fork out cash while trying to enjoy the product they have already acquired. They fall into multiple categories, like time savers, loot boxes, cosmetic items and in-game equipment among many other small things that will nibble at the wallets of people with small enough amounts of self control. My critical lens will peer into the practices of time savers and loot boxes, cosmetic items being only vanity items and in-game items not being very prevalent, at least from what I have recently played.

The time savers tie into the balance of the video game you are playing. You might have noticed that games which feature crafting systems for equipment upgrades feature this kind of thing. Let's take a look at Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: the game has you upgrading the Jackdaw, your ship, and in order to do so you need to engage in ship combat. So far so good, yeah? Now add into the mix the fact that you need to engage in ship combat to gather those resources, and you will need to grind quite a bit to get it to its best form. Or, alternatively, you could buy the time saver DLC prominently featured on the main menu screen (advertising inside a game is a sin in its own right and should be punishable by prison in my books, but, oh well). There is also the Dead Space 3 debacle from a few years back, with its crafting parts DLC. The fact that the game was supposed to be a survival horror should have tipped off the publisher, EA Games (to be read as Satan) not to tamper with the frail balance of the experience.

Now, let's dismantle the concept of loot boxes. Games which feature them make sure that your progression is intertwined with you relying on their random contents. In order to do that, early in the game you gain them at a steady pace but that pace slowly turns into a crawl, the game progression hits a brick wall and you are either required to either grind for hours on end or buy the shiny little box featured in the menus. The fact that the loot is random is another nail in the proverbial coffin of this concept. Let us take a small gander at a game which is all about gambling, one of your associates even being affectionately called The Gambler. Yes, indeed, I am going to talk about Need For Speed Payback. [to get access to the rest of the article, please insert your credit card details]

On a more serious note, the gambling theme of the game is quite a nice idea, not gonna lie, but that makes the presence of loot boxes even more outraging than it usually is, because they act like it is justifiable. Of course this is not the case, but Electronic Arts is, at best, morally bankrupt. The game calls its crates "shipments", and you unlock them by beating open world challenges, like speed traps, jumps and drifts. As stated above, near the beginning of the game, you are drip fed a pretty constant amount of them, to lull you into a false sense of security, but eventually they starve you out. Literally a bait and hook. They, seemingly, give you an alternative to this system, by giving you the to outright buy randomised parts at upgrade shops, but those are usually rubbish. There is also a literal slots machine at these stores which uses Part Tokens to give you a chance at exceptionally maybe do not count on it parts. How do you get this tokens? By scrapping parts, joining online Speedlists (with a cooldown, of course), from shipments or by outright buying them with your delicious credit card.

All in all, the moral of the story is know your interest, do not break down and encourage this nickel and dime situation that gaming struggles through today. If you feel a game is wasting your time on purpose just to get your money, let it die.

Sources: cover, 1, 2, 3