Shop till you drop... some cash
Microtransactions are very hip these days among game publishers. The most popular version of this trend is to give a game away and finance development solely by selling in-game items to players for a buck or two (as with many recent MMOs such as Runes of Magic). However, games you already bought and paid for are in the act now too. A few well-known cases: in 2006 Bethsoft was widely criticized for charging $1.99 for horse armor for Oblivion; they lowered the price and increased the content and wound up with a modest success on subsequent offers. In WoW you have a chance at random in-game vanity items by buying playing cards. And in July of last year, EA opened the beta of the Sims Store (a distinct entity from the EA Store, where EA sells full games online).
Is this economic model bad for games or gamers? A lot of gamers find the whole thing distasteful, but these are usually folks who would rather get the stuff for free (or included in the game at no extra charge). We all like free stuff, but game developers don’t owe it to us. Unfortunately, in the case of the Sims 2 Store, it’s the way microtransactions are implemented that’s the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
