Microtransactions in 2013: The design dilemma Microtransactions in the Xbox One title Forza Motorsport 5 show up in the form of both time-based boosters to aid the earning of in-game currency and the ability to purchase currency bundles outright. You see, by tacking extra costs onto a $60 product when players have also already spent $500 or more on hardware - and then an additional $60 for the annual service that lets them play that game online - microtransactions in console games are being seen not as the industry adapting to the times in a measured manner, but rather as an unwanted gesture driven by the pursuit of profit. Not aiding publishers is the fact that mixing the terms "microtransactions" and "console gaming" is considered tantamount to heresy among hardcore gamers. Think of the model as downloadable content (DLC) goes mobile, or "fee to play" as The Escapist's Jim Sterling puts it. Now that microtransactions in console titles are the next big push from game publishers, they're also quickly becoming an emerging nucleus of player hate. It's a strategy that is amplifying the already adversarial relationship between consumers and microtransaction pioneers like publisher Electronic Arts, named worst company in America two years in a row. "You're offering the player, 'OK, well I'm going to make this more tortuous and boring that you'll pay me not to experience it.'"Īnd in 2013, the behemoth console sector of the gaming industry is grappling with changing up its business models while trying to defend the bottom line. "It feels like you're intentionally making a bad game," said Frank Lantz, a game design veteran and director of New York University's Game Center. It's no secret that gamers don't particularly like change, not when it's sloppily handled and looks on the surface antithetical to earlier days of cheaper, simpler gaming - on discs and cartridges - that involved no further transactions. The move toward microtransactions brings to mind some of the more malignant issues lying beneath flashy next-gen launches and the war for the living room.
Depending on your outlook on that gaming bastion, this could be another reason to hold off on an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, or it could be the beginning of the end. After some experimentation, the business model has made its way to full-priced console games, from Forza Motorsport 5 to Grand Theft Auto.
With microtransactions, portions of a video game's content are walled behind a system of low-cost purchases or in-game currency, and this is a reality that has long been the lucrative core of Facebook, mobile, and free-to-play PC titles. It's not the most fearsome name for an ominous, lurking force in video games, but it still has many console gamers up in arms and on the defensive: microtransactions.