If reception to Baldur’s Gate says anything, it’s that people hate microtransactions in their AAA games.
Not exactly, though I see your point. I think it would be more accurate if McDonald’s charged for ketchup, mustard, salt, drink cups, lids, straws etc.
Fun fact: In literally every single analogy that has ever and will ever exist, you can add things to it to make it even more analogous.
The big difference with physical goods is that it’s much harder to steal a McDonald’s burger that it is to crack a single player, offline game. Furthermore, once you ate your burger, if you want more, you have to buy another because it’s a consumables.
On the other hand games are prone to piracy, expecially on pc, you pay once but can play anytime while patched and updates require prolonged work after you purchase.
It isn’t strange that developers look at dlc, microtransanction or game as a service with subscription, because they allow a stable flow of income that can support development, and it’s harder to avoid paying when the game is always online and stuff like that.
Movies and books exist and they are one time purchases that you use once and stop interacting with. Why do games get special excuses for being extremely exploitative and shitty to their players? I don’t have to pay for a book chapter by chapter or pay extra for a character to appear, but authors and filmmakers still make TONS of money.
The game industry makes lots of excuses for it’s shitty behavior but none of them hold water.
but authors and filmmakers still make TONS of money.
This is an affirmation many writers would find offensive lol
The editorial sector is in deep crisis, it’s really hard to live off as a writer unless you’re ridiculously famous.
Same thing for the filmmaking industry, look at protest of screenwriters and actors, and to companies terrible financial sheets, and to movie theaters basically bankrupting as maybe their time is over. Also we both agree there’s been a shift from movies to tv series and one of the reason is that you “buy the product piece by piece”?
Ps: funnily enough, period publication of chapters were a thing until not long ago, and still are in somewhere (for example manga in Japan)
Webnovel sites in Korea and China sell books one chapter at a time, and some of their publishers are trying to break into the Western market with the same structure (ie Wattpad bought by naver, Webnovel.com owned by Qidian). They also like using virtual currency for buying chapters. Korean and Chinese web comics are also sold this way. Publishers really like the microtransaction money no matter the industry. If they could figure out how to sell microtransactions for movies I bet they would do it.
Side note: I downloaded this chinese app for downloading region locked games on mobile and they somehow figured out how to put gacha in it. Publishers seem to do anything for money no matter how little sense it makes.
Furthermore, once you ate your burger, if you want more, you have to buy another because it’s a consumables.
The same goes for single-player offline games, though. There’s only so much entertainment you can get out of one before you’ve seen everything, get bored, and look for another one.
you pay once but can play anytime while patched and updates require prolonged work after you purchase
If a studio fails to budget for that and make sure those costs are included in the price of the game, it frankly deserves to go bust.
There’s only so much entertainment you can get out of one before you’ve seen everything, get bored, and look for another one.
You’re absolutely right, but that’s true from “your perspective”. For you the fame might last 50 hours and that’s all, but the developers still need to work on big patches, content and fixes even years after release.
If a studio fails to budget for that and make sure those costs are included in the price of the game, it frankly deserves to go bust
And this introduces another topic I think. Would the average consumer willing to spend more for a game with everything in it? AAA already cost 70$ at launch, would the average consumer accept further price increases, or would selling plummet in comparison with reduced price+dlc or free to play with microtransanction?
At the end companies are not inherently “evil” they just look for what works and what doesn’t by trial and error
