{"id":7846,"date":"2020-11-26T13:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playlab.uta.fi\/?p=7846"},"modified":"2020-11-26T13:00:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T11:00:29","slug":"microtransactions-define-micro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/microtransactions-define-micro\/","title":{"rendered":"Microtransactions \u2013 Define \u201cmicro\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are an active consumer of videogames today, it is quite likely you have come across microtransactions in your games at some point.<\/span>\u00a0The likelihood of this is<\/span>\u00a0even<\/span>\u00a0higher if you\u2019ve played mobile or fre<\/span>e-to-play games,<\/span>\u00a0but even if you stick to single player experiences<\/span>, even ones<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>that you have already paid for<\/span>, you might not have e<\/span>scaped these schemes<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, schemes. That choice of word should make it apparent how this little th<\/span>ink<\/span>\u00a0piece is going to go from here.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

L<\/span>et\u2019s backtrack a little. What is a \u201cmicrotransaction\u201d? According to\u00a0<\/span>Oxford\u2019s English dictionary Lexico, a microtransaction is \u201ca very small financial transaction conducted online.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>There\u2019s a word pair in there that really catches the eye, but let\u2019s look at that a bit later. In practice, microtransactions in the games industry mea<\/span>n all sorts of small things on sale, from power-ups to skins and custom currencies that can be spen<\/span>t in-game for various goods.\u00a0<\/span>The first major example of this that people usually\u00a0<\/span>point<\/span>\u00a0to is in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion<\/span>\u00a0(<\/span>2006<\/span>)<\/span>\u00a0by Bethesda. People were offered small downloadable content packs<\/span>\u00a0for small payments, and for about\u00a0<\/span>two dollars you could buy a set of armour for your horse.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, this was considered ridiculous, and caused a big upr<\/span>oar in the fanbase and the gaming sphere in general.\u00a0<\/span>Downloadable content and expansion packs were an established part of games, but th<\/span>is<\/span>\u00a0meagre<\/span>\u00a0an<\/span>\u00a0amount of content you unlocked for th<\/span>e price was a big deal. At the time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jump to present day, 14 years later.\u00a0<\/span>Microtransactions have become commonplace and aren\u2019t even considered an exception anymore, with games like Fallout 76 (also by Bethesda, surprise surpris<\/span>e), Marvel\u2019s Avengers, the FIFA series,<\/span>\u00a0Overwatch, and hundreds of other games by huge publishers all have some sort of microtransactions in them. Loot boxes,\u00a0<\/span>a form of randomized content for your money, have caught the eyes of countries and government officials around the globe, with China forcing each game to reveal the\u00a0<\/span>probabilities of what you\u2019re going to get, and Belgium has passed a law that makes it illegal to sell them in exchange for real money, because loot boxes break their gambling laws. What once caus<\/span>ed an uproar and heated discussion has become a mainstay in gaming.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I downloaded Riot Game\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Valorant<\/span>\u00a0earlier this year, the main menu immediately advertised skins for weapons that I could by\u00a0<\/span>with Riot\u2019s own premium currency. 7,000 Riot Points for a set of skins? That tells me nothing, so I head to the currency store, and am hit in the face wi<\/span>th shock.<\/span>\u00a0For 11,99e, I could buy 1150 points. That\u2019s an\u00a0<\/span>exhange<\/span>\u00a0rate of around 10e for 1,000 points.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>That set of weapon skins would cost me s e v e n t\u00a0<\/span>y\u00a0 e<\/span>\u00a0u r o s. Except that it\u2019s not even\u00a0<\/span>that easy, since you cannot just buy them in exchange for real money, no\u00a0<\/span>no<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>no<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>The points are sold in bundles, so you\u00a0<\/span>have to<\/span>\u00a0either buy the 99.99e pack\u00a0<\/span>for 10.500 points, or the 53.99e pack and add some of the smaller packs to somehow reach 70 euros worth of points. What the ****.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This nifty set of skins will cost you roughly 71 euros. Worth it?<\/em><\/p>\n

Why has this become acceptable? Should we not be worried about\u00a0<\/span>two euros for horse armour sounding very sensible nowadays, when a single recolouring of a pistol wou<\/span>ld now cost me 10e?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What scares me most about these ridiculous prices is that them being accepted is going to show game companies that they can push even further with these\u00a0<\/span>prices. When a free-to-play game is trying to sell me new textures for more than the average price of a videogame without anyone as much as batting an eye, what stops the<\/span>\u00a0prices from going\u00a0<\/span>higher?<\/span>\u00a0I\u2019m also asking what exactly about these prices can in any way be desc<\/span>ribed as \u201cmicro.\u201d All I see is payments ins<\/span>ide my payments.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pictures taken by the author.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a world where you can pay double the price of your game in #micropayments, what exactly does “micro” mean? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":7848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[1219,1167,1218,1208,1207],"class_list":["post-7846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-horsearmor","tag-microtransactions","tag-oblivion","tag-riotgames","tag-valorant","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}