2K senior producer - "VC is an unfortunate reality of modern gaming.”

Games
21

The economics of microtransactions is to make the game bad, then make the bad go away by buying a thing.

Like, if the microtransactions are hats. The defaults hats are ugly, mediocre, ordinary, common, commonplace, indifferent, average, middle-of-the-road, middling, medium, moderate, tolerable, passable, only adequate, inferior, second-rate, uninspired, undistinguished, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, prosaic, lacklustre, forgettable, amateur, amateurish, so-so, bog-standard, plain vanilla, nothing to write home about, no great shakes, not so hot, not up to much. You would literally pay to get rid of such a aggressively mediocre hat.

Is indefensible from many angles

Edit:
Anyway, I am mr.nobody from the internet. A person super-naive that know nothings. So maybe I am superwrong here. I am wrong often.

22

Yep, in-game progression is changed so people buy microtransactions. There is an impact, and it’s a negative one. The “reality” is Take2 is doing this because they like money, just like EA and Activision and so on, and they will continue exploiting their customers until they take it too far, like EA with that Star Wars game, and the backlash will punt them backwards for awhile until they come up and try it again because again, they like money.

This has nothing to do with millennials or every kid getting a trophy or whatever, that’s all bullshit. These games are finely tuned predators. F2P are like great white sharks, but even B2P games like NBA 2kwhatever prey on their customers.

The sports genre is particularly bad because there are no indie competitors. I’ve always thought that was odd-- do sports fans really care about playing with real teams that much? You would think some enterprising indie dev could make a truly great basketball game without Michael Jordan or whoever the famous player of today is and do really well.

23

I think Out of the Park Baseball is still considered niche indie, and for a long time it got by with no real players or teams. It signed a deal with the players union a while ago, and more recently the MLB, so it now has all the official stuff, but it’s still a pretty niche game.

It did add an “Ultimate Team” style feature this go around, so even it went for the money. Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder how successful that’s been for OotPB?

24

The “real teams” aspect is less of a hurdle than the “simulation” aspect. Indies can get away pretty well with doing some sort of arcade-y version of baseball or football or whatever other sport, or the Football Manager-style spreadsheet games we already have, but the major sports games all try to be super realistic, which requires a lot more dev resources than any indie can bring to the table.

As for OotP19’s trading card mode, it’s still not even in public beta yet. They’ve apparently had a lot of issues implementing it.

25

Interesting. I’m really curious to see how that shakes out with the fans of that style of game.

26

Really? You would think realistic gameplay wouldn’t be so difficult to achieve. Realistic graphics are obviously another thing entirely.

27

These discussions are always fascinating to me. On a personal level, I’m not a fan of microtransactions and virtual currencies and what now, though I have purchased things over the years. A lot depends on the context and how much the existence of such things have affected the core game design. I am more conflicted about how to respond to publishers or developers who create games featuring these systems. I generally do not buy games that have extensive microtransactions or that I think push you into paying for stuff constantly, but my decision not to buy isn’t so much an ethical choice as it is a practical decision; I’m not going to like playing those games I am pretty sure. I’m also not the market for most of the big named games in this arena, as I don’t play sports games at all, for instance.

Part of me feels that game companies are in the business of making money; they happen to be making games to do that, but at a root level I’m sure they’d be just as happy making widgets if they could do so as profitably or more so. I can see their logic of leveraging their product as heavily as they can, using its appeal to particular audiences to insure a steady flow of after sale income. There is a despicable air to all of this sometimes, as it is indeed preying on the vulnerable often, but I see the logic in it. You have a product that is in effect addictive to certain people, but with enough ambiguity that you can plausibly separate yourself from, say, dope peddlers. You have a lot of easily commodifiable assets (which cost virtually nothing to make, beyond the rights to their images and names sometimes and some one-time labor costs) that people will gladly spend money on. From a pure market point of view, you’d be insane not to take advantage of this situation. In fact, you might be guilty of malfeasance if your board or stockholders found out that you were leaving money on the table like that.

There is also this sense that somehow there is, or should be, a purity of purpose in developing games, that it’s not just like any other business. I like that vision, but I think it’s completely unrealistic and chimerical, at least when applied to public companies. Creating a compelling product, identifying customers who are the most devoted to that product, and monetizing that devotion is the essence of consumer marketing. When we see it done in other industries, we don’t get as worked up because games are much closer to our emotional centers I think. And, yes, I’m willing to accept too that there are some particularly odious practices in the gaming world involving children and addictive personalities that point out the danger of just following the money at the expense of your soul. I just think arguments based on that aren’t going to do much good in changing things for corporations. Only a huge legal or financial backlash will do that. And how do you pull that off? For ever person complaining about this, there are probably many more avidly playing these games, and who aren’t really concerned with getting ripped off as we might see it. And legally, it’s hard to see in the USA at least what crimes are being committed. Acting like a callous, cynical asshole is not actually illegal, sadly.

28

Realistic gameplay is kind of tied to realistic graphics. You could make a retro 16-bit inspired basketball sim a la Coach K for the Genesis, but that’s not gonna hang with 2K or even Live.

Also, I think current teams and players are very important. Right after 2K lost the NFL license, they put out a football game featuring retired NFL players, but no current players or teams. Despite having gameplay that was almost universally seen as superior to Madden, it just couldn’t compete.

29

Nah, you just do stylized graphics rather than attempting the photorealistic look. That would work fine, but would obviously be a very different experience.

And yeah, it seems like those licensed teams and players are very important for sports fans. Otherwise, why would they buy the new Madden every year?

30

Look, we’ve all had our share of bad Deadmines runs, but ‘unfortunate’ is going too far!

/extreme WoW in-joke

31

I think microtrans are corrosive of game design qua game design. But if the market will support it you can’t really expect big corporations to do something else.

Another reason I’m glad the indie scene is as vibrant as it is…

32

That’s a load of BS. There are plenty of F2P/microtransaction based games that are great and millions play. Just because shitty mobile games use it doesn’t mean its not a valid way to sell a game. Games can be more than just pay $X upfront or it sucks.

33

I mean you’re incorrect, but I’m glad that you’re passionate about it!

34

Can you name a game with non-cosmetic microtransactions where you truly and honestly feel the baseline gameplay would have been the same or worse if those benefits couldn’t be purchased with real money?

35

Now your tossing “non cosmetic” to muck things up when I never tried to be specific in the first place. Just responded to the usual “F2P sucks!” crowd. Not going to get into a minutia debate with you. Find someone else.

36

That’s not really fair, is it? The NBA 2K producer is talking about his non-cosmetic purchases, and I’m pretty sure most people that have a strong opinion of in-game purchases consider cosmetic bits differently.

37

^ you’re

38

2K’s NBA series is not F2P. Apparently it’s very grindy to go along with it’s pay-to-win microtransaction model though. Even the 2K producer doesn’t try to defend it.

39

Yeah, if you have played NBA 2K games lately, this is really disappointing. It feels like every year they make the grind more and more difficult for people that don’t want to buy 60 bucks in VC along with their 60 dollar game.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the VC was limited to online play, but they have put it in the “MyPlayer” mode now, and if you don’t drop some cash on VC, your character physically is worse at the game, and it will take you longer to get competitive. The way the experience and leveling in the 2k games rewards you for better play in games (better scoring or defense = more VC) They have made it a literal pay for performance style game, as VC = Experience points.

In the older games, you would earn points to add to your players stats, and VC was for cosmetic stuff, or unlocking pro dunk styles. Now, it is all lumped together.

Not to mention, I believe people have shown that your starting “MyPlayer” character has lower starting stats than in previous games, thus providing you a stronger urge to pay to play.

I mean, they specifically acknowledge their mistakes in 2k18 here.

It is actively making me want to play a franchise of games less and less each year. I purchased 2k16, but stopped at 2k17 + 2k18 once the microtransactions blew up.

40

People win the lotto too but I wouldn’t plan on buying 100 lotto tickets and then immediately retiring.

Micro transactions for non content strongly encourage the game to be tuned specifically to encourage their use. i don’t see how anyone could argue against that.

99% of the time I would rather just pay a straight fee rather than getting Nickle and dimed every ten seconds or having the experience realistically crippled even if it is theoretically possible. These games are almost always more expensive.

There are exceptions, but they are very rare.