[fro0116]

> The designers of free-to-play games, by using an intermittent variable to dole out small prizes, found that they could keep players engaged—and spending—for longer.

I'm really glad the article also touches on the loot-box phenomenon. I think it's by far the worst thing to ever happen to game design.

It's exploitative in the same way that gambling in general is exploitative, but isn't bound by the tight legal restrictions that prevent gambling companies from targeting children who might be most vulnerable to these exploitative tactics and more likely to fall into a vicious cycle of addiction early in life, which can have dramatic, literally life-changing consequences.

That said, I can't really deny either that at least part of this trend is self-inflicted on the part of the gaming community at large. Gamers have all but collectively rejected the subscription model where we pay for the games we play on a recurring basis. For games like MMOs that require ongoing funding to develop new content in order for the community around it to thrive, what other funding models outside of the freemium model do designers really have?

The DLC/expansion pack model also worked adequately for some time, and still does for games that involve mostly episodic experiences, but not so much for games that have living worlds and require ongoing development of new content and incur ongoing infrastructure costs. It also comes with similar problems as the model of paying for software upgrades, because developer incentives and users' needs can become misaligned. Oftentimes in this model, bug fixes and quality of life improvements get sidelined in favor of more content/features, and the community becomes fractured across expansion packs, undermining the natural network effects that these kinds of games inherently tend to create.

It's also really difficult to fault freemium games for using exploitative tactics that target players who do end up paying to pay more, when the distribution of people who actually pay for things in these games is often so wildly unevenly distributed that the top percentage of paying players often account for a disproportionate percentage of overall revenue, while the vast majority of overall player-base pay absolutely nothing, and those who do so often wear it as badge of pride, no less.

I've always wanted to build a game myself, but I could never figure out how to align my own need for ongoing revenue to support the development of a game that I might love and end up wanting to keep working on indefinitely, with that of a gaming community that has soundly rejected any funding model that makes it possible to achieve that without resorting to tactics I'd rather not stoop to.

[deogeo]

> That said, I can't really deny either that at least part of this trend is self-inflicted on the part of the gaming community at large. Gamers have all but collectively rejected the subscription model where we pay for the games we play on a recurring basis. For games like MMOs that require ongoing funding to develop new content in order for the community around it to thrive, what other funding models outside of the freemium model do designers really have?

World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online all still successfully use the subscription model (with varying levels of free trials).

But publishers wanted more money - from people unwilling to pay subscriptions, and from people that would spend at a cash shop in addition to a subscription, so freemium models get added. It hardly seems fair to blame the entire gaming community for the existence of these people, and the profit-maximizing game publishers.

> It's also really difficult to fault freemium games for using exploitative tactics that target players who do end up paying to pay more

I don't find it difficult to fault exploitative behavior just because it's profitable.

[fro0116]

> World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online all still successfully use the subscription model (with varying levels of free trials).

The most recently released game in that list is Final Fantasy XIV, which was released in 2010, almost a decade ago, and the rest are about a decade older than that. A _lot_ more MMOs since then have tried the subscription model and failed. It may have worked in a few rare cases in the past, and some of those might still live on today through sheer inertia, but I think it's reasonable to claim that subscription is generally no longer considered a viable model for new MMOs.

I'm not saying some publishers won't find ways to extract more money from players by adding freemium features on top of subscription games if they could. Of course some would, greed knows no bounds. But I am saying that they can't afford to charge a subscription fee to begin with, if they want their game to become successful in today's climate, even if they intend to use that as their only source of funding, forgoing freemium features entirely.

> I don't find it difficult to fault exploitative behavior just because it's profitable.

I think I made it pretty clear I find those practices despicable too. But if your only option is the freemium model, you don't really have much of a choice but to discriminate based on who's willing to pay and how much. That's literally the only way the model can work, by definition.

[deogeo]

The games are old, but they're still live. So it could just as well mean that the subscription MMO market is viable but saturated, so they're expanding into non-subscription. There's nowhere near enough evidence to go right for the players-won't-pay explanation, when there are literally millions of subscription-paying players.

I'd argue that the drawn out deaths of those MMOs shows how creatively bankrupt the MMO market is - people aren't leaving for new MMOs, they're staying with old ones till they get bored, because there's nothing better out there.

[fro0116]

That's one way to see it, and it's certainly not unreasonable to see it that way.

But looking at it another perspective, you can also argue that making MMOs with persistent worlds that can only be supported by subscription has become so risky of an investment that nobody is willing to experiment with drastically new paradigms/mechanics because historically an overwhelming majority of those who tried have failed, which could be what led to the creatively bankrupt landscape we have today.

It's impossible to know which perspective is more accurate because it's clearly a chicken-or-egg situation. But one thing that we can observe today is that practically (or maybe actually?) nobody even tries to make MMOs with subscriptions anymore, and new MMOs today end up defaulting to freemium (and all the morally bankrupt behavior that the model leads to), whatever the reason for that might be, and I think that's a shame.

[projektir]

> I'd argue that the drawn out deaths of those MMOs shows how creatively bankrupt the MMO market is - people aren't leaving for new MMOs, they're staying with old ones till they get bored, because there's nothing better out there.

Indeed. I like MMOs, but there's just nothing up my alley at this point and I'm waiting for the revival of a 15 year old game (WoW Classic) or the spiritual successor of an even older game (Pantheon).

[jayd16]

I think it's a bit extreme to say it's exploitative but it's certainly a philosophical dilemma. At what point does improving user engagement become a bad thing? People _love_ to gamble and play games of chance.

Buying random drop rolls does seem in poor taste. Though I never understood why you would pay to not play the game.

[CM30]

> It's exploitative in the same way that gambling in general is exploitative, but isn't bound by the tight legal restrictions that prevent gambling companies from targeting children who might be most vulnerable to these exploitative tactics and more likely to fall into a vicious cycle of addiction early in life, which can have dramatic, literally life-changing consequences.

Yet. There has already been a lot of controversy over lootboxes and how they're basically promoting gambling to kids, and they've already been banned in certain countries (like Belgium) and drawn fire from governments and gambling comission officials in others.

There's a pretty good chance that at some point, these types of practices will get cracked down on hard, that'll they'll likely affect age ratings more in future and (like with GDPR and privacy or accessibility and the internet), they'll lead to lawsuits.