Normally, when you buy a video game, you have a certain set of expectations for your purchase, good graphics, good gameplay, but no one would expect to spend more money.
Micro-transactions are what drive a lot of games further after their initial launch date, where the player is encouraged through a variety of means to spend money on in-game items.
I think that this practice is truly diabolical, as it limits the enjoyment of the player, only for the game producer to make more money instead of focusing on making a good game in general.
These items could include anything from player skins to in-game money that they can spend on “premium products” that they can use while playing the game.
This shift in the industry did not happen overnight.
No one had even heard about micro-transactions until 2006, when Bethesda infamously added a paid horse armour DLC to their flagship game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Once one big studio did this, and consumers bought into it, it became the standard.
Today, in Ubisoft's most recent AAA game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, horse armour is currently on sale for about $10. Oblivion's price was $2.
However, expansion packs like horse armour are the least of a gamer's worries.
In games like Fortnite and even Roblox, they’re pushing micro-transactions to their consumers through methods like Robux and V-Bucks.
In games like these, being a “default skin” basically makes you a pariah to everyone else that's playing who has fully customized skins.
In turn, the consumer who has never spent money in a game before is almost peer-pressured into buying a skin to fit in.
This is all according to the developer's design. They want the consumer to enjoy their game just enough so that they will spend money on it, and once they do that, they'll keep coming back to “get their money's worth.”
In other words, many games are no longer designed to be fun. They are designed to take money, centring the game around a currency that you have to have to enjoy the game.
A good example of this would be in Grand Theft Auto V: online, where the entire gameplay loop is focused on getting money, but if you have real-world money, you can easily buy $10 million in GTA money in exchange for $100 in real-life dollars.
When you play these games online and see people driving flying cars and buying huge in-game yachts, of course, you would want to spend the money when the alternative is spending 15 hours playing the game normally.
That's how they get you, the subtle psychological manipulation that you could be one transaction away from getting that skin you've always seen others use.
It's not the only way they employ to keep you around, though. Daily log-in rewards, battle passes, even claiming a deal when the sale price was already the non-sale price, isn't that illegal? Canada's Competition Bureau described deceptive marketing as "false or misleading ordinary selling price representations, untrue, misleading or unauthorized use of tests and testimonials, bait and switch selling, and the sale of a product above its advertised price."
Many games that have micro-transactions are free to play, which gives anyone who wants to enjoy that game a chance to play it regardless of financial strength.
That's why Fortnite got so popular when it released: it was a fun game that was free, where you could play with friends for hours and not get bored, all while not spending a dime.
The “live-service” nature of most of these games as well would provide players with practically infinite amounts of content.
Fortnite, again, is a great example with its bi-monthly updates, which change the map and add to the overarching story of the game, allowing players to enjoy a fresh experience.
Although there may be some underlying problems with this business model, it shows players, mostly kids, that gambling makes them happy.
When you spend $50 on loot boxes, and the last spin you have gets you the skin you've been wanting for months, no wonder so many young adults have online gambling problems.
Gaming can be a beautiful thing, especially when passionate developers care about their game and audience, but when billion-dollar corporations get their hands on it just to make money, it corrodes a beautiful art and hurts the very essence of creativity.
