[Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service (Part 1)
-
I do hope on a longterm relation. I fell in love with this game and I dont want it to be over in a year. I am with you.
Again, we have the same goal we just have different ways of approaching it.
Respects to you!
-
@lllwormwoodlll said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
@kustho if you have issues with the ethics of the Developers.... don't play the game...
Did you change your text after me replying on it?
Anyway...PUBLISHER ! not DEVELOPER ! Rare is the hardworking team, Microsoft is the publisher. I have no problem what so ever with Rare, I am gratefull for a very funny and entertaining product.
What I have a problem with (a little) is people not understanding that its the Publisher and its Shareholders that cash in on games.
Arff...you know what..I got MS shares...just imagine every Dollar you put into it is a cent into my pocket. Why do I even complain and try to explain it?
Again...please have as much fun in SoT as you can have, I wish it to you without any second thought. Do as you please, respect to you.
-
I personaly think MT is the cancer of the game industry. (at least in a non f2p game)
When i buy a game, i dont want to have MT in it. if i hear that this game will have MT, then i will immediately refund it, and stop playing it.
DLC's on the other hand are ok, if they are like in Witcher 3. (eg. no story of the maingame or other "cut" content from the game).
if they want for us to always have additional content, they could try to release their modding tools. many people would create stories/ characters / items and so on. But please dont milk the modding community for money. (aka "paid mods")
-
I hate MTs and I never get them. I preordered and intend on playing the $h*+ out of this game, but to have to buy a pet with actual cash makes me upset (they made clear pirate customization is a focus). I understand that devs need capital for continued development, but to accept at face value that this is the only sound financial strategy, is laughable (or tear inducing).
-
@y0ujerk said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
I hate MTs and I never get them. I preordered and intend on playing the $h*+ out of this game, but to have to buy a pet with actual cash makes me upset (they made clear pirate customization is a focus). I understand that devs need capital for continued development, but to accept at face value that this is the only sound financial strategy, is laughable (or tear inducing).
After reading a bit more, it seems I had a misunderstanding. Is it their intention to allow players to grind to get pets?
-
@d3adking said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
I personaly think MT is the cancer of the game industry. (at least in a non f2p game)
When i buy a game, i dont want to have MT in it. if i hear that this game will have MT, then i will immediately refund it, and stop playing it.
DLC's on the other hand are ok, if they are like in Witcher 3. (eg. no story of the maingame or other "cut" content from the game).
if they want for us to always have additional content, they could try to release their modding tools. many people would create stories/ characters / items and so on. But please dont milk the modding community for money. (aka "paid mods")
LOL are you simple? They can't afford to develop a game several years after it comes out without any form of additional revenue. Do you wanna go back to the times when we didn't get patches or more content in games, and were lucky to get an expansion on a separate disc 2 years later? Where games still costed $60? Also, aren't DLCs the same thing, or even worse? Why does Witcher 3 (PRAISE GERALDO DEL RIVERIA FOR HE IS THE BEST GAME OF EVER) get a free pass?
-
@kustho no profit determines future development. Esp with a Microsoft owned studio. With your logic you could say imagine if the game was only £10 then u could give £40 to cancer research etc. The fact is games are getting more and more expensive to make and even more so to maintain over time. You have to keep a steady income and that comes from in game transactions and merchandise. I work for a datacenter and trust me servers are expensive lol.
-
LOL are you simple? They can't afford to develop a game several years after it comes out without any form of additional revenue. Do you wanna go back to the times when we didn't get patches or more content in games, and were lucky to get an expansion on a separate disc 2 years later? Where games still costed $60? Also, aren't DLCs the same thing, or even worse? Why does Witcher 3 (PRAISE GERALDO DEL RIVERIA FOR HE IS THE BEST GAME OF EVER) get a free pass?
Yep.
Take me back to those days when it comes to single player stuff.
Not these days, where you pay 60bucls for the menus and a barebones framework, then build the game piecemeal for additional cost.The witcher dlc was mostly free, with two major expansions being paid content.
They were like the old school expansion packs, with entirely new content, you could tell had been developed after the release of the base game as it incorporated feedback and even a couple of cheeky references to memes that had developed.So yeah, by all means hate the witcher cos it is popular, but don't deny that it did dlc well.
In regards SoT and other "triple aye" games with "micro transactions" that are multiplayer focussed, online only etc - why not just make the game free to play?
Obviously greed. Let's face it.
I mean, if warframe, world of tanks, warthunder, and countless other games can provide the base content free and still make a killing from MTs, why exactly is the 60buck entry fee necessary? (US 60$ I'm assuming? Cos man, it's like 110dorra here in NZ)Especially for a digital version. I mean, they don't even make manuals and boxes now, so what the hell costs so much that can't just be recouped through a free to play model?
Its always just greedy suits wanting more cash.Tldr- single player games should cost up front, no Mt.
Multiplayer stuff should be free to play with Mt, or cost up front. No Mt, no whining about server costs.
One or the other, not both! -
Why there should be mincrotransactions in the first place? If you want money make a good game. I say this game, if it will have replay ability and all, will turn out to be good. No need for risky actions like those.
Just make a game for the sake of fun god gamn it. Stop making games for money. Let that be a bonus. -
@knifelife I agree with the fast-track reason. I personally hate in-game purchases. I'm fine with expansions, so long as it's not like Destiny 2, where you get 50% of a game to start with.
-
@secretcodrin They need to be able to afford to pay people to make this game a year, two years, etc, down the line. Continued development a'int cheap!
-
@secretcodrin said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
Why there should be mincrotransactions in the first place? If you want money make a good game. I say this game, if it will have replay ability and all, will turn out to be good. No need for risky actions like those.
Just make a game for the sake of fun god gamn it. Stop making games for money. Let that be a bonus.If there was no ongoing expense than I'd agree with you, however, we don't live in the magic server world where scalable cloud instances are free to operate. They also are planning on continuing to develop new content (the suggestion was for ~10years apparently). The fine folks at Rare shouldn't be expected to continue making content for the game without a paycheck. These are real tangible expenses that they need to have revenue to pay for them otherwise the services backing the game will be shutdown and you will have no game.
-
@alexgambrel12 said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
@secretcodrin They need to be able to afford to pay people to make this game a year, two years, etc, down the line. Continued development a'int cheap!
Oh, C****t, another White-Knight-Pirate looking out for the bottom line of Microsoft and RARE.......
People need to stop with this way of thinking because it isn't reciprocated by these mega corporation.
Sea of Thieves is a Free-To-Play game, built as a Free-To-Play game in terms of content and progression, with future 'services' and DLC being that of a Free-To-Play game. Literally nothing about SoT is structured as that of a traditional game. The upfront ask of $60 on what they are openly promoting as a "service" is hilarious.
Do you honestly believe Microsoft (As of this writing worth $724.24 Billion USD) can't show a return on Sea of Thieves with only one monetization route being used, F2P or Retail? This is also ignoring the merchandising that is going on along side of it, as well as the savings seen by being their own Publisher, Developer, Distributor.
No, but please, continue to worry about their business operations and how they achieve a satisfactory ROI. Not about what you actually get for your money.
If Sea of Thieves isn't vastly overhauled by launch it will either go Free-To-Play at launch, or, shortly after to survive. You can not ask $60 for a game that has zero progression outside of cosmetic/social standing and then tie in micro-transactions that fills that progression, cosmetic or not.
With Sea of Thieves' current state the only different between Pirate Bob with 2,000 hours and Pirate Dope with 1 hour is how they look. Great, right? Well, except when Pirate Dope looks just as 'amazing' or 'better' because he tossed down an extra $100 on cosmetics.
People don't respond to that well.
Cosmetics as micro-transactions are debatable enough as it is but when the game they are in only has cosmetics as its progression......
Iceberg!!!!!!!!!!
-
@yeetvigs You already pay a $10 a month subscription fee to Rare to play their online game. (Rare is owned by Microsoft.)
With that said micro transactions never increase the game experience only detract from it. With that said I don't mind paying for DLC as long as it brings worthwhile content to a game.
-
@ant-heuser-kush I would actually prefer a sub fee. Then there is no holding back for the players. Open all the content, all the items and unlockables, and all the DLC. I'd sub.
-
@yeetvigs You pay monthly for xbox online. Your money goes to supporting Microsoft servers. The same servers that will carry and run SoT.
-
@lumpaywk Actually graphs from quarterly earnings from companies like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision all show that they are currently spending less for development now then they did well over a decade ago. Yet these companies are also showing record growth. That is why all these companies are very liked by their investors. Continual growth and huge profits at the expense of the player base.
-
@wrothamoeba388 I would love to see these charts. maybe overall budgets could be lower but inderviduca games esp with continual development not so sure there. Destiney - $500mil, GTA V $265mil etc everything I am reading indicates huge rises in the cost of development. With that also comes the fact that games have actually gotten cheaper over time, esp when you account for inflation.
An inconvenient truth: game prices have come down with time
Has the price of video games gone up with time? There's no easy answer, but …
Why video games are so expensive to develop
Hiring more graphic artists and Hollywood actors has swollen wage bills, while marketing budgets have ballooned
I am no dev, I work in IT but not game development so i could be wrong. Either way I don't think that £50 is a lot to ask for something that will give hundreds of hours play time. Then I personally like that I am then able to buy stuff to make my player stand out. There is no pay to win transactions just cool little stuff like pets.
-
@lumpaywk said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
@wrothamoeba388 I would love to see these charts. maybe overall budgets could be lower but inderviduca games esp with continual development not so sure there. Destiney - $500mil, GTA V $265mil etc everything I am reading indicates huge rises in the cost of development. With that also comes the fact that games have actually gotten cheaper over time, esp when you account for inflation.
I am no dev, I work in IT but not game development so i could be wrong. Either way I don't think that £50 is a lot to ask for something that will give hundreds of hours play time. Then I personally like that I am then able to buy stuff to make my player stand out. There is no pay to win transactions just cool little stuff like pets.
First of all thank you for a well thought out response. To answer you I will not reply with an editorial but with figures directly from the NASDAQ. We will be using EA for our discussion because I was following them anyway. I apologize if the post is long.
The average cost for game development and R&D quarterly for EA is $290 million. This is eclipsed by the spending of EA during 2017 as they do not have a quarter dropping below $300 mil. $335 mil being the top of the chart hitting in 1st quarter 2017, reported 03-31-2017. This seems to support the statement of raised costs until you compare it to Q3 2008 coming in at a cost of 372 mil, reported 09-30-2008. Again knowing that average developement costs over the last 5 years was $290 mil we see a drop over the cost of development compared to over all cost of the 2008 year.
Also directly from the Nasdaq you can follow EAs stock growth and valuation since 2008 until now. This will be figured using the fact that EA has approximately 308 mil shares (307,925,000) in circulation. Sadly I did not look up the stock splits that occured over this time (It would further show the gap), but please forgive my omission of these facts. We will just level the field at 308 mil shares, even though there would have been less in 2008.
The cost per share of EA was $55.15 in 2008. Giving the company a value at around $17 Bil. Since then EA has increased in total value to around $40 Bil by 2018, valued at $128.57 per share. This is primarily due to reporting very few quarterly losses since 2005. It has been a stable growth company, only showing a major hiccup in Q4 2017 due to the Star Wars debacle. This has since stabilized after they reported micro transaction returning to Star Wars. But I digress.
The point being that yearly spending for R&D annually in 2008 compared to company valuation was approximately 10% whereas 2017 R&D compared to valuation is approximately 4%. Showing a distinct drop in R&D verses company valuation. This means more profit for the company and continued growth. You could point out the R&D cost of 182 mil in 2005, but I would counter with the Stock cost of little over $20 per share at that time, showing them taking a much larger risk.
Again these numbers aren't fully complete without showing the costs of marketing or taking into exemption the tent pole titles that you mentioned previously, it just shows development and profits on a whole. However, I don't feel that those numbers would skew greatly with those totals as those totals are included in the overall reporting.
Again, these are just raw numbers from one companies quarterly reports. You will see similar trends with most of your major publishers out today.
I do admit that you did say that overall budgets may be better, but they rarely give you a way to compare game by game stats. The don't generally release individual title earnings, other then the total numbers of units sold.
Sorry again for the long post. I just didn't feel I could paint the proper picture without it. Thank you for reading if you made it this far.
Feel free to check any of my numbers directly through Nasdaq or through your favorite stock trading app.
Thanks again. Cheers.
-
@zedyias If I have to take MTs then I agree this is the least manipulative way. I would accept it, even if I still wouldn't like it.
-
@suave-beard said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
@alexgambrel12 said in [Mega Thread] - Microtransactions, DLC, and Games as a Service:
@secretcodrin They need to be able to afford to pay people to make this game a year, two years, etc, down the line. Continued development a'int cheap!
Oh, C****t, another White-Knight-Pirate looking out for the bottom line of Microsoft and RARE.......
People need to stop with this way of thinking because it isn't reciprocated by these mega corporation.
Sea of Thieves is a Free-To-Play game, built as a Free-To-Play game in terms of content and progression, with future 'services' and DLC being that of a Free-To-Play game. Literally nothing about SoT is structured as that of a traditional game. The upfront ask of $60 on what they are openly promoting as a "service" is hilarious.
Do you honestly believe Microsoft (As of this writing worth $724.24 Billion USD) can't show a return on Sea of Thieves with only one monetization route being used, F2P or Retail? This is also ignoring the merchandising that is going on along side of it, as well as the savings seen by being their own Publisher, Developer, Distributor.
No, but please, continue to worry about their business operations and how they achieve a satisfactory ROI. Not about what you actually get for your money.
If Sea of Thieves isn't vastly overhauled by launch it will either go Free-To-Play at launch, or, shortly after to survive. You can not ask $60 for a game that has zero progression outside of cosmetic/social standing and then tie in micro-transactions that fills that progression, cosmetic or not.
With Sea of Thieves' current state the only different between Pirate Bob with 2,000 hours and Pirate Dope with 1 hour is how they look. Great, right? Well, except when Pirate Dope looks just as 'amazing' or 'better' because he tossed down an extra $100 on cosmetics.
People don't respond to that well.
Cosmetics as micro-transactions are debatable enough as it is but when the game they are in only has cosmetics as its progression......
Iceberg!!!!!!!!!!
Cool story bro, seems to be working for Fashion Wars 2. If you only play something so that you can get things that are better than what someone else has, you are an envious person. You are missing the journey for the destination. In your example, a player spent an extra $100 and looks cool. Good for him. The first player has 2000 hours of enjoyment and adventures they have gone on.
An inconvenient truth: game prices have come down with time
Why video games are so expensive to develop
EA