Micro-Transactions are becoming more and more apparent as games are getting released. What started as a practice designed for Free-To-Play and mobile games so that they can make an income on their titles has spurred into a new way to ‘experience’ the games that you play. Cashing in on the idea that no one has the time, resources, patience or even skill to play the games and unlock the glorious new items that lay within. But with all these games now playing around with Micro-Transactions, where do they work the best and preferably belong?

To put short, these transactions only have one place to truly belong and that is within Free-To-Play games. These titles are created so that we can experience them with no financial backing and allow us to then support the game by paying out some money for specific things. Now this doesn’t mean that the practice is perfect. There have been many examples out there of games becoming cash cows as they ask for real world money for some insane reasons. Whether this be blocking you from the next level of a game or even saying that you cannot keep playing said game until you have given up some of your wallets paper pennies. This is an example of the practice gone wrong and it should be stopped there or at least worked on to create value for the player, as they will be the consumers for your product. This is where I bring up a great example of this practice, the ever growing FTP title from Digital Extremes, Warframe.

Warframe allows you to play the entirety of the game and unlock everything just by playing it. This includes new Warframes, Prime equipment, weapons, Kubrows you name it. There is so much to unlock here that even if you manage to unlock and build everything in the game, the developers already have something else coming out that will give you more reasons to keep getting more stuff. With this said however, how does the company make their money and how has the game become so successful? Simple, it gives players the value they deserve. The game does have transactions that allow you to buy void keys, mods, resources and even rush the equipment you are building. But they are never forced upon you. There aren’t any pop ups that say you can rush this for twenty plat or any prompts that come up as your buying a blueprint saying ‘Why don’t you just spend fifty plat and get it right now?’. There is no force placed on the player, it is all given as options. This is by far the perfect way to make Micro-Transactions successful. You don’t push or control what your audience should do, you let them do what they want, when they want to do it. Heck, in a recent Devstream on Twitch, the developers announced that they will be removing revives and paying for more revives as the only players that buy them are gamers that ‘don’t know any better’.

Now with this said, does this mean that a non-forced approach can work in a Triple A game? In my opinion no. Simply put I stand by the idea that if you have spent upwards of sixty pounds on a game only to be told that a mechanic or element is hidden behind a pay wall or a micro-transaction, then you are getting screwed out of your purchase. This is simply because you cannot experience the whole game as it may have been intended because a core part is now trapped behind money. Money of which you have already spent and data that is already on that disc or in that download. With this said however, I do not think we should ignore the great games that are coming out. I fell in love with MGSV: The Phantom Pain and I never spent a single penny with its micro-transactions.

So this is what I suggest. If you love the games that do have this practice, then support the game. But if you do not approve of micro-transactions, do not purchase them and do not support them. Let the developers know that you, the consumer of their products, are not in support of this practice. If you want to get a new weapon or piece of armour or even a fancy emote or dance move that is on the disc/download that you have already paid for then why shouldn’t you have it or have the ability to unlock it with game time? Reward the players that play, or is that just an old mentality now that should die out?

Let us know what you think about where Micro-Transactions belong in the comments below. Will you be supporting this practice in games such as Halo 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider?

by Dominic Coles | October 27th, 2015