[Semi OT] Microtransactions, Lootboxes and in-game pay mechanisms - The Thread.

[Snowflakez]

You realize a video game like Overwatch which sold something like 30+ million copies at $60 dollars (USD) and less Blizzard Entertainment can keep on supporting it and release cosmetic items for years and years, since they earned over $1+ billion dollars (USD) in selling the video game?

Heroes of the Storm can be changed from a Free to Play (F2P) video game to a paid video game for $30 dollars (USD) and get expansion packs released for sale as well.

Change all Free to Play (F2P) video games to paid video games, unless they are MMO video games then those I guess can stay Free to Play (F2P) because no other MMO video game will ever top World of Warcraft's $15 dollars (USD) a month subscription.

World of Warcraft is the only MMO video game I actually play and have been paying $15 dollars (USD) a month for World of Warcraft.

I play EVE Online as well.

I play The Elder Scrolls Online also.

I rarely or don't even play Free to Play (F2P) video games.

Any video game that is Free to Play (F2P) if it goes to become a paid video game then I will purchase it from gog.com or pay $15 dollars (USD) if it's a MMO like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV.

That's not at all how game development works, as much as I wish that wasn't the case. Do you know how much money 3D modelling, animation, concept art, etc. costs in a game like Overwatch?

A metric f***ton. $1 billion seems like a lot to the average gamer, myself included - but game development and design costs WAY, way more than that for a game like OW. We are talking billions of dollars, not millions or hundreds of millions. Ongoing Q&A testing, constant balance patches, new heroes (with art, gameplay mechanics, voice lines and cosmetic skins to go with them), new maps (With all the art, mechanics, etc. that go with them), customer support for millions of players (due to it being a multiplayer title).

Every single time Blizzard releases a new hero or map, they have to balance it around every single other hero in the game - they can't just throw in a new hero and say "hey look at these sick abilities! Who cares how they interact with other characters' abilities, have fun!". As they add new maps and heroes to the game, the development time goes up exponentially. This is why it takes so long to release extensive balance patches and new heroes.

This stuff costs a crap ton of money. Multiplayer games, especially ones that don't have paid DLC, must recoup these costs somewhere. Singleplayer games, of course, should always be microtransaction-free - no exceptions.

Finally, Blizzard doesn't think in terms of 2 or 3 years from now - they think in terms of 10, 15 years from now. That's why WoW is still around. If Overwatch was just going to survive on its own sale price, it would be dead within a few years at BEST. Blizzard wants Overwatch to become like TF2 - they want to support the game for years and years, and keep adding high quality content to it. And that is what the players want, too.

Just to be clear here, I'm on your side in spirit. If I had my way, I'd remove all micro transactions from all games - period. They'd be gone in a heartbeat. But I'm just trying to explain that business realities have to win out in the end.

THIS! This is what I want to say and smack this into their face to Microtransaction Haters. They feel like they are the victim but in the reality of business they are also a victim as well. Just like he said about cosmetics and stuffs, I also want to add about the Piracy of the Single Player games in the game industry that’s still unavoidable until now.

One of the reason why CEO Kiciński is teasing the Online Elements of Cyberpunk 2077 it’s because of this. He want to practice a Online Business Services such as Blizzard for his Games and I’m totally support for that because they have right to deserve it. CDPR wants to give us more greater experience for the game where us and them works right. Blizzard Game such as WoW and Overwatch doesn’t practice what EA does. They have different games and way of service for customers. CDPR wants to have that kind of service too for us fans and their customers. I’m completely not against for that idea and I wish they will become more like Blizzard Entertainment when it comes to reputation of the company.

Let’s support CDPR until they explain us what is their truly goal for this Cyberpunk 2077 and their future.

For what it's worth, Piracy has been proven to have no impact on sales. Just wanted to throw that out there. Indeed, theres some evidence that suggests it might actually HELP video game sales in particular.

Also, CP2077 won't have any micro transactions or games as a service things, nor would I want it to. Single player games are a separate beast. I will only accept microtransactions in multiplayer titles, where the ongoing costs justify that sort of monetization.

What I do like about CDPR is that they are starting to diversify. Their singleplayer titles will undoubtedly continue as they have -- without loot boxes, microtransactions, etc -- but they are starting to add smaller F2P games to their line-up that will have some of those elements. People underestimate how much Gwent's success will positively impact the rest of CDPR';s endeavours. They can throw their "games as service" online mechanics into a game like Gwent, and use that money to fund the very customer-centric titles like Witcher 3 and (I presume) Cyberpunk 2077.

 

[Garrison72]

I don't like expansions and DLCs either, the idea of them. What happened with all said and done philisophy?

Why in the world would you not want expansions??

 

[Balloers100]

That's not at all how game development works, as much as I wish that wasn't the case. Do you know how much money 3D modelling, animation, concept art, etc. costs in a game like Overwatch?

A metric f***ton. $1 billion seems like a lot to the average gamer, myself included - but game development and design costs WAY, way more than that for a game like OW. We are talking billions of dollars, not millions or hundreds of millions. Ongoing Q&A testing, constant balance patches, new heroes (with art, gameplay mechanics, voice lines and cosmetic skins to go with them), new maps (With all the art, mechanics, etc. that go with them), customer support for millions of players (due to it being a multiplayer title).

Every single time Blizzard releases a new hero or map, they have to balance it around every single other hero in the game - they can't just throw in a new hero and say "hey look at these sick abilities! Who cares how they interact with other characters' abilities, have fun!". As they add new maps and heroes to the game, the development time goes up exponentially. This is why it takes so long to release extensive balance patches and new heroes.

This stuff costs a crap ton of money. Multiplayer games, especially ones that don't have paid DLC, must recoup these costs somewhere. Singleplayer games, of course, should always be microtransaction-free - no exceptions.

Finally, Blizzard doesn't think in terms of 2 or 3 years from now - they think in terms of 10, 15 years from now. That's why WoW is still around. If Overwatch was just going to survive on its own sale price, it would be dead within a few years at BEST. Blizzard wants Overwatch to become like TF2 - they want to support the game for years and years, and keep adding high quality content to it. And that is what the players want, too.

Just to be clear here, I'm on your side in spirit. If I had my way, I'd remove all micro transactions from all games - period. They'd be gone in a heartbeat. But I'm just trying to explain that business realities have to win out in the end.



For what it's worth, Piracy has been proven to have no impact on sales. Just wanted to throw that out there. Indeed, theres some evidence that suggests it might actually HELP video game sales in particular.

Also, CP2077 won't have any micro transactions or games as a service things, nor would I want it to. Single player games are a separate beast. I will only accept microtransactions in multiplayer titles, where the ongoing costs justify that sort of monetization.

What I do like about CDPR is that they are starting to diversify. Their singleplayer titles will undoubtedly continue as they have -- without loot boxes, microtransactions, etc -- but they are starting to add smaller F2P games to their line-up that will have some of those elements. People underestimate how much Gwent's success will positively impact the rest of CDPR';s endeavours. They can throw their "games as service" online mechanics into a game like Gwent, and use that money to fund the very customer-centric titles like Witcher 3 and (I presume) Cyberpunk 2077.

Do you not remember that video games before 2009 got maps and new guns, and new anything for free in patches? At least the PC versions of video games did.

The Call of Duty video games are a example they got new guns and new maps in patches for free.

Activision earns $500+ million dollars (USD) from selling the Call of Duty video games every year, so Activision can afford to release new guns and new maps for free in patches for their Call of Duty video games.

Once again video games do not cost as much as movies to develop, watch Jim Sterling's YouTube video about him saying that video games are not that expensive to develop.

Ten years or fifteen years is also enough to give video games new guns, new maps, and new skins for free, Blizzard Entertainment earns enough money every year from selling copies of Overwatch.

Yes releasing the new guns, the new maps, and the new skins cost money because they have to balance them and test them for bugs, but none of them should ever be sold because the video game publishing companies and the video game development companies earn money from each copy of the video games that they sell.

The way humanity is today wanting to sell every possible thing that we as human beings can makes me have no faith in humanity anymore, we human beings are a bunch of greedy selfish species.

 

[Snowflakez]

Do you not remember that video games before 2009 got maps and new guns, and new anything for free in patches? At least the PC versions of video games did.

The Call of Duty video games are a example they got new guns and new maps in patches for free.

Activision earns $500+ million dollars (USD) from selling the Call of Duty video games every year, so Activision can afford to release new guns and new maps for free in patches for their Call of Duty video games.

Once again video games do not cost as much as movies to develop, watch Jim Sterling's YouTube video about him saying that video games are not that expensive to develop.

Ten years or fifteen years is also enough to give video games new guns, new maps, and new skins for free, Blizzard Entertainment earns enough money every year from selling copies of Overwatch.

Yes releasing the new guns, the new maps, and the new skins cost money because they have to balance them and test them for bugs, but none of them should ever be sold because the video game publishing companies and the video game development companies earn money from each copy of the video games that they sell.

The way humanity is today wanting to sell every possible thing that we as human beings can makes me have no faith in humanity anymore, we human beings are a bunch of greedy selfish species.

Yes, video games back in 2009 got all that stuff for free because it wasn't nearly as expensive to develop them as it is now.

I'm also a fan of Jim Sterling and have been for some time. I'm aware of the arguments he makes. But even he admits that there's nothing wrong with microtransactions, its specifically the tripling and quadrupling down on monetization that companies do that bothers him (And me, for that matter).

Here's the crux of the issue, and why Activision is a definitively crappier company than Blizzard - Blizzard made a super-creative, fun game that they are continuing to add on to with completely new gameplay mechanics (in the form of new heroes and maps). They release new content for free, and use microtransactions to finance that content development. Again, Blizzard has 10+ year plan for their games, so they need a steady revenue stream to make it happen. The only way this h appens is via microtransactions. Again, game sales are not enough in Blizzard's case, for the reasons I stated before.

Activision, on the other hand, releases arguably unimaginitive, boring Call of Duties every year that bring little new to the table. Because they release them every year, they do not need to add microtransactions, as their ongoing development costs never come into play like they do with Overwatch. And yet they still DO add microtransactions, because they're greedy bastards.You're totally right that they don't need to, but they do anyway.

Its horrendous business practice on Activision's part, and it pisses me off to no end. This is what Jim Sterling means when he talks about the "quadrupling down" of monetization in AAA titles. They don't just want some money, as he says, they want "all of the money".

You say none of these content updates should ever be sold - why? Are you suggesting video game companies should lose money just for the privilege of developing content for their players? Game sales for any multiplayer title that doesn't re-release annually are not enough to keep the company in business long-term. They need additional forms of monetization.

Again, I agree with you in spirit here. I've been a gamer for a long time now, and I remember the days when microtransactions didn't even exist. But they're here now, and they're necessary for certain games and genres.

 

[Suhiira]

:cheers:

 

[Sardukhar]

Well, Witcher 3 was about 80 million to make, from Wikipedia.

This estimate I found on Quora, with links https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-B...game-Overwatch has the OW build costing between 15 and 25 million, plus the assets they used from Titan, which were repurposed and were another 50 million. Obviously higher than should have been since they dumped Titan development.

AAA games are generally 50 million and up, a lot of which is marketing.

Not a billion. Overwatch has grossed roughly a billion - pretty amazing return on 125 million. Witcher 3 at 80 million to make and in 2016 shipped 10 million worldwide, for about 600 million USD..and growing.

So x8 returns, if you can afford the upfront cost AND manage to make a gaming classic.

Blizzard could easily fund OW development off bought copy profits alone, never needed another Mtx ever, if they wanted. They don't.

 

[Snowflakez]

Well, Witcher 3 was about 80 million to make, from Wikipedia.

This estimate I found on Quora, with links https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-B...game-Overwatch has the OW build costing between 15 and 25 million, plus the assets they used from Titan, which were repurposed and were another 50 million. Obviously higher than should have been since they dumped Titan development.

AAA games are generally 50 million and up, a lot of which is marketing.

Not a billion. Overwatch has grossed roughly a billion - pretty amazing return on 125 million. Witcher 3 at 80 million to make and in 2016 shipped 10 million worldwide, for about 600 million USD..and growing.

So x8 returns, if you can afford the upfront cost AND manage to make a gaming classic.

Blizzard could easily fund OW development off bought copy profits alone, never needed another Mtx ever, if they wanted. They don't.

That Quora number covered developers only, not research, marketing or game maintenance. These costs often far exceed the cost of the game itself, usually by a factor of 5-10. And it extends for years. This is common for multiplayer titles. Games like CoD are exceptions because, again, Activision doesn't give a damn about a CoD game because it becomes outdated in a year anyway.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Is this thread now about "why microtransactions are (somehow) necessary"?


They weren't before, they aren't now (outside free-to-play MMO's and multiplayerfocused games). The developement and marketing costs to catch with sales these days are ridiculous compared to what the games actually offer.

 

[Guest 4149880]

Is this thread now about "why microtransactions are (somehow) necessary"?


They weren't before, they aren't now (outside free-to-play MMO's and multiplayerfocused games). The developement and marketing costs to catch with sales these days are ridiculous compared to what the games actually offer.

That coupled with everyone regurgitating "certain facts" to back up their claims based on their opinions on this matter when no one really knows what the outcome will actually be down the road when it comes to anything related to this topic, even though they'd like to think they know.

 

[Sardukhar]

That Quora number covered developers only, not research, marketing or game maintenance. These costs often far exceed the cost of the game itself, usually by a factor of 5-10. And it extends for years. This is common for multiplayer titles. Games like CoD are exceptions because, again, Activision doesn't give a damn about a CoD game because it becomes outdated in a year anyway.

Actually, I'm not sure where the Quora numbers come from, although they seem reasonable. Development numbers typically -do- include marketing. Witcher 3 numbers did include marketing, for example. So did GTA V numbers. Post-game support varies, but is much, much less than initial cost.

I don't know why you'd say they exceed cost at all, never mind such a crazy high figure. You're suggesting that marketing and post launch support for Witcher 3 would have cost, what, 150 to 300 million dollars US? No.

GTA V, famously expensive, ran about 250 million to make -and- market.

AAA games are costly to make, but they aren't 300 million to a billion dollars US to make. Or anything like that.

Microtransaction may be necessary to pay for no-buy games, but something like Overwatch is in no need of that intake. It cost $125 million to make and it has 30 million paid, registered users. At US40 for PC and $60 for console, that's over a billion in revenue just for paid copies.

Yeah, they need revenue from lootboxes not at all.

 

[Guest 4149880]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say we have our very own professional video game industry R&D team in the works here on the Cyberpunk forums. Keep up the good work everyone, Steller job.


:listen::hmm::look::comeatmebro:

 

[metalmaniac21]

Why in the world would you not want expansions??

Why in the world you would not want a whole new game instead of half-measures?

 

[Balloers100]

That Quora number covered developers only, not research, marketing or game maintenance. These costs often far exceed the cost of the game itself, usually by a factor of 5-10. And it extends for years. This is common for multiplayer titles. Games like CoD are exceptions because, again, Activision doesn't give a damn about a CoD game because it becomes outdated in a year anyway.

That's the problem, video games are really not expensive to develop they cost anywhere from $50+ million dollars (USD) to develop.

The marketing is what makes video games end up having $100+ million dollars (USD) added to their cost.

AAA video game publishing companies don't really need to do a lot of marketing now a days when you got more people talking about video games and recommending to their family and friends just by word of mouth alone.

Cut out most of the big marketing push.

I read Activision spent for Destiny 1 $500 million dollars (USD) for marketing, that's just ridiculous. Activision should of had up to $100 million dollars (USD) in marketing for Destiny 1.

Bungie said they have a ten year plan for Destiny 1, guess what? Destiny 2 got released this year for sale and Destiny 1 will not get many updates anymore in the coming year and still has microtransactions released for sale for it and is a Free to Play (F2P) video game.

I really don't buy it that video games that focus on multiplayer and for ten years or more than ten years need microtransactions to be kept alive and the video game development company in business.

Especially on PC if you give PC gamers Rentable Dedicated Servers so we can rent our own servers 24/7 we can cut out part of the cost of the video game publishing companies and video game development companies spending money on server costs to run 24/7.

Now a days though for some reason most AAA video game publishing companies and AAA video game development companies do not give us the ability to rent our own servers to run 24/7 if we want to.

Only Electronic Arts (EA) and DICE do with the Battlefield video games.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Why in the world you would not want a whole new game instead of half-measures?

I agree. Although...

They could make it so, that they use the same base game for a whole series of games. Let's say a trilogy where the first game is Cyberpunk 2077, the other Cyberpunk 2077 [insert subtitle], the third Cyberpunk 2077 [insert subtitle #2] so that every new subtitle is just a campaigns worth of content on top of the core campaign selectable at the start of the game, all of which might even happen at the same time and even intertwine so that playing campaign #2 might throw in some scripted glimpses of the other two protagosinsts. So in the end you'd have a full trilogy in one game and they'd save loads with not having to build up the world again for every title, just create the new content (story, world, characters) and the tweaks for gameplay so that they all fit with every campaign; plus graphical updates as a separate package if at all necessary. And on top, a "new" game might not cost as much as a new game to the consumer since it's more cheaply produced.

That could be neat for Cyberpunk. Three separate games all with their own character creation, storyline, sets of reactivity and C&C in one package and one singular gameworld.

 

[eraser7278]

Especially on PC if you give PC gamers Rentable Dedicated Servers so we can rent our own servers 24/7 we can cut out part of the cost of the video game publishing companies and video game development companies spending money on server costs to run 24/7. Now a days though for some reason most AAA video game publishing companies and AAA video game development companies do not give us the ability to rent our own servers to run 24/7 if we want to.

well it's obvious why they can't do that. If people used servers outside their iron grip then it's possible someone would mess with the server to give themselves or their team an advantage, and the AAA companies simply will not abide an uneven playing field...unless they get to profit off it

 

[metalmaniac21]

They could make it so, that they use the same base game for a whole series of games. Let's say a trilogy where the first game is Cyberpunk 2077, the other Cyberpunk 2077 [insert subtitle], the third Cyberpunk 2077 [insert subtitle #2] so that every new subtitle is just a campaigns worth of content on top of the core campaign selectable at the start of the game, all of which might even happen at the same time and even intertwine so that playing campaign #2 might throw in some scripted glimpses of the other two protagosinsts. So in the end you'd have a full trilogy in one game and they'd save loads with not having to build up the world again for every title, just create the new content (story, world, characters) and the tweaks for gameplay so that they all fit with every campaign; plus graphical updates as a separate package if at all necessary. And on top, a "new" game might not cost as much as a new game to the consumer since it's more cheaply produced.
That could be neat for Cyberpunk. Three separate games all with their own character creation, storyline, sets of reactivity and C&C in one package and one singular gameworld.

Yes, that's what I would propose too. Besides, it's not a new word in the industry. Fallout 1-2/3-NV, Baldur's Gate, Gothic and endless list of Goldbox engine D&D adaptations comes to mind first. Exploring new territories would be neat too, though. Like wasteland around Night City, San Francisco or even European cities.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Yes, that's what I would propose too. Besides, it's not a new word in the industry. Fallout 1-2/3-NV, Baldur's Gate, Gothic and endless list of Goldbox engine D&D adaptations comes to mind first. Exploring new territories would be neat too, though. Like wasteland around Night City, San Francisco or even European cities.

Yeah, although as for the examples, I don't mean just sharing the engine and assets, but using the original game as the base for the follow-ups (it all being in the same locations at the same time'd make it impossible to "continue" a singular storyline like, for example, how Fallout 2 loosely continued the Fallout 1 story by having you play the descendant of the Vault Dweller; all the overallpping stories would require a different character). That all the art, assets, form and base dynamics of the world are there already and need not be recreated for the follow-up games.

Exploring new areas could work organically if they used a district (hub) based worldmap where adding in new enterable areas would suffice. The "series" would basically expand the overall map a bit with ever subsequent "campaign" and in the end create a sort of "whole CP2077" with three "mainquests" for three different characters and three games worth of sidemissions and activities all (or most, how ever they might tie in with the storyline being run) open for any campaign.

 

[Snowflakez]

I feel like some of you are maybe misunderstanding my motives here. I'm not a games industry shill, and I'm not an ardent micro transaction defender. If they all disappeared tomorrow, I'd be happy about it. I don't like them anymore than anyone else. I'm just trying to offer perspective on why we're in the situation we're in. I'm not saying it's our fault, or that we should take it lying down. But if we try to make arguments against the state of the industry without understanding both sides, we're going off half-cocked.

Moving on... without actually digging into anything more than a few articles saying "this game cost x to develop" and a quora question, I just don't think we're getting the whole picture. You are drastically underestimating (or ignoring) the costs that go into server maintenance (And other back-end stuff), tech support, customer service (Which is not the same thing as tech support) and more. And yes, there are the marketing costs which are NOT always factored into the public numbers given out by companies regarding "This game cost X amount to make".

These numbers DO reach into the hundreds of millions, like it or not. They have to pay sizable teams dedicated to this stuff, so they aren't just trivial costs.

Should games cost this much? It's debatable, but IMO, no they shouldn't. Companies spend way, way too much on stupid marketing campaigns that shouldn't cost more than ~50m. But the fact is, they do it anyway. And because they do it anyway, and because they put way too much time into art and not enough into other aspects of the game, their costs are skyrocketing - not to mention the push for 4K visuals...

Games like the Witcher 3 don't even figure into the equation here, not sure why that's even a part of this discussion. That's a single playter title without the costs associated with a massive multiplayer title like Overwatch. Single player games never have an excuse for microtransactions, IMO. The worst they should have is paid DLC, which is often a good thing (as was the case with TW3).

This is why I don't think specifically multiplayer games that do not offer paid DLC or other methods of monetization are the actual devil for including not-terrible microtransactions. Emphasis on the "not terrible" part.

Also, for the record, I don't even play Overwatch anymore (haven't for about 6 months) because I despise its loot box system. I hate it, but I understand why they use it, and I understand why the game has microtransactions from the business side. Blizzard isn't a saint, but they are by no means as greedy as the likes of EA or Warner Brothers.

Hopefully this made some amount of sense, even if you don't agree with me. I'm not very good at articulating my thoughts sometimes.

TL;DR

Companies that create multiplayer games with 10-year plans have a lot of other costs to worry about aside from standard development costs (customer support teams, tech support teams, server maintenance teams, etc.) that can reach into the hundreds of millions. Additionally, companies are idiots for dumping so much money into art and marketing, but they do it anyway, so that's why their costs are skyrocketing. Its dumb, but its how it is.

Bottom line? Support the companies that do things mostly the right way. Companies like Bethesda (arguably), CDPR, Devolver Digital and others all deserve our money.

 

[eraser7278]

Companies that create multiplayer games with 10-year plans have a lot of other costs to worry about aside from standard development costs (customer support teams, tech support teams, server maintenance teams, etc.) that can reach into the hundreds of millions.

*citation needed

 

[metalmaniac21]

Companies like Bethesda (arguably), CDPR, Devolver Digital and others all deserve our money.

Surely not Bethesda. They're dumbing down their main series (TES, *ugh*...Fallout) and selling mods because their PR guy thinks the audience is like him, stupid plebs, tend to fuck developers up and delivering unfinished and buggy games (Dishonored 2, New Vegas, The Evil Within) and pandering to lefties and soundly so in their twitter shitposting marketing campaigns (Wolfenstein II: TNC), fucking up marketing to make excuses for single player games to go down in history. (Wolfensten II: TNC, The Evil Within 2)

Bethesda is poisonous.