Insert coin to continue

by Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) , London, Ontario, Canada, Thursday, February 28, 2013, 19:22 (4382 days ago) @ Cody Miller

First of all, the money has to come from somewhere, so what you're advocating is essentially the hardcore players spending more than $60 to subsidize the casuals playing for free or cheap, and that's really really stupid. This is a leisure, luxury activity so we don't need to be spreading the wealth around so the casuals can play for free at (literally) our expense, thank you very much.

I only made one "microtransaction" in a year of playing Mass Effect 3's online multiplayer*; the big spenders were those coming in later and wanting to unlock new classes of player without "grinding" the game's credit system. So there are ways that this would be completely the reverse of your model; core players playing without cost to keep player populations high enough to draw in casuals willing to pay.

Second of all, how would you keep players playing?

Arcades found a way. MMOs found a different way. ME3 found yet another. There are probably many more.

-- Steve thinks studios are getting more imaginative about this, and that can be good.

* I had some free MS points left over from their Rewards program and bought a kit pack with it on a whim because I wanted to unlock a particular character (I think it was the Geth Infiltrator) and hadn't had much luck. The extra chance paid off... but I doubt I'd do that sort of thing much in games. I'm too cheap for that.