Dragon Age dev: I feel microtransaction market is doomed to eventually collapse

Ex-Dragon Age producer Mark Darrah believes the microtransaction and free-to-play market is doomed to eventually collapse...but not any time soon.

[toutmanifik]

Hopefully Dragon Age won't have any microtransactions? Bit of a stretch dealing with EA.

[Michiel1989]

This might only be true for the older gen of gamers who actually grew up in a world where you got complete games. A lot of newer gamers dont know better and for them having a boatload of mtx is how it has always been.

[lodossrage]

@Michiel1989

What you said is 100% correct. Which is all the more reason when companies try to push nonsense, we should ALWAYS push back against it. The newer gamers may not know better, but we older games SHOULD. Instead, you have some of the older gamers (some even on this site) that will sit here and say "big deal" or " it's going to happen anyway".

[CorndogBurglar]

Yep. You and Michiel are 100% spot on. Just think, this all started with $5.00 horse armor lol. (I know microtransactions did exist in some PC games before that. But the $5 horse armor on Elder Scrolls Oblivion is what brought it all to the forefront/mainstream audience.)

It should have been squashed then and there. Now look where we are. Today's generation is so used to seeing them in everything that there's really no stopping it now. Think about it. They are in nearly every console game, to the point that it's advertised as some great feature if it DOESN'T have them, rather than that being the norm. They are in every mobile game. Every single one. And mobile games are a lot of kids' first experience with video games these days.

It's crazy to think that they have no idea what it's like for a complete game to be released.

[lodossrage]

@CorndogBurglar

Honestly, I blame ANYONE in the older generation of gamers that turned a blind eye. The younger generations get there money from mom and dad. Mom and dad in many cases (not all) happen to be the older gamers.

When the older games said things like "so what it's not happening on my system of choice" or "we it's only $5", etc, that paved the way for all the nonsense we deal with now.

[shinoff2183]

I dont buy any dlc unless its real dlc. I dont nickel and dime myself. I really dont even like expansion dlc but ive come to accept that. The rest man f that. Im almost 40 so i remember for sure. Console wise i think it started with the 360 early in its life. What i just read said it had on dreamcast but very very limited due to internet at the time ms popularized it. Ewww

[CorndogBurglar]

God, this is so sad, but so true.

[isarai]

Depends, there are still many games with no MTX. Hell it's actually pretty rare if you stay outside the AAA space

[MrVux000]

Pretty much. I grew up in the days where ''worse case scenarios'' we had EXPANSION packs, of the likes of Diablo II:Lord of Destruction (which was really good). Multiplayer games? We paid only once, and we got the full package. If you wanted to unlock more stuff? You play the game more,simple.

Nowadays, it feels a person either needs to wait for a ''Complete edition'' of games for a full experience or play 100 times more hours to unlock stuff that is otherwise available (in some cases completely closed off) by MTX.

[PhillyDillyDee]

We can only hope. Unfortunately i dont see it happening.

[CorndogBurglar]

Yeah, he's basing this off his own experience of playing free to play mobile games. He said the first one he played he spent $80 on it because he though he would play it forever. But then he quit a few months later.

So the next F2P game he got and he only spent $20, because of his last experience. And he quit even sooner than a few months.

Now he doesn't spend anything on F2P games.

I do agree, some people probably follow this pattern as well. But mobile games and MTX's have been around long enough that I think we would have already seen a decline in their profits of this were true. But by all accounts, MTX's still bring in insane amounts of money for games. Because it's easy and free for companies. It's too easy for them to build a game then hold off some content and sell it separately. Content that they already made as part of the game's launch. It's basically free money for them. And when you've got popular games like CoD charging full price for the game, then still pulling in billions of dollars a year in MTX's? That model isnt going anywhere. People are too dumb and have no problem spending extra on crap that would have been in the game as normal content 15 years ago. And people keep proving this true year after year.

[PhillyDillyDee]

I dont even buy/play full priced games that do this anymore. Im so tired of it and i refuse to support devs/pubs that do it. Which means most of the games I play these days are indies…

[Stanjara]

Not gonna happen because, $5 is better than $70 and you never have $70 cause you always spend that $5.

[Duke19]

Hard disagree (sadly). I think there is much more of a likelyhood that GaaS is the future.

0 Upfront cost to download the game client and play the first level, but then you need to pay to unlock each level after that, etc.

Its horrible and I hate it, but its only a matter of time before that all of these horrendously anti-consumer practices are the norm

[Alos88]

If that were true then Avengers- arguably the biggest IP around right now- wouldn't have bombed. They had the IP, they had the characters (if not the designs), but the formula put people off. The live service model isn't the future, it's an expensive dead end that'll only work in a handful of cases, and the worst part is that in that model if you aren't in the top handful of games, you're making no money at all. It simply isn't a trend worth chasing.

[Duke19]

I think it was still the #7 most purchased game last year or something like that? It shouldn't have been - it was hot garbage, but people still do buy that stuff.

All I know is that paid content (DLC or otherwise) definitely wont be going away anytime soon, and hinting at a "collapse" seems a bit wild

[CorndogBurglar]

So, I agree, but also disagree. (Weird, I know...)

But here's the deal. Avengers, wasn't only hated because of its model. That was a part of it, but the game wasn't fun either. Characters felt very similar. You just mashed the same buttons until your powers recharged, use a power, then mash Normal attack. Repeat repeat repeat.

It had very little content at launch. Only 2 bosses. It had connection issues. It had poor enemy variety. The loot made next to no difference to your character. So they basically made the loot uninteresting.....in a LOOT BASED GAME! lmao. And it was buggy.

But on the other side of the coin, you've got Destiny. Destiny 1 didn't even have microtransactions. But it's biggest failing was its lack of content and GaaS model. However, the gameplay is extremely fun. And kept millions of people playing it trying to collect all the Legendary guns in between expansions. It was still pulling in over a million players a month years after launch when Destiny 2 came out.

Destiny 2 came out and still didn't have MTX's until year 2 when they introduced a cosmetic shop. Then it got worse from there. But.....there are still tons of people playing Destiny 2 right now.

So, Destiny proves that if a game is fun to play, which it undoubtedly is, then people will play it, despite its GaaS model.

[Muigi]

It won’t be as long as kids have access to their parents wallets.

[Gamesual1]

Here is wishing 🙏🏻

[z2g]

be careful what you wish for. It sounds lovely, but MTs generate millions of dollars in revenue and studios don't want to just give that up. especially considering when the cost of video game production/development has skyrocketed exponentially over the decades. If MTs are eventually phased out, you can almost assuredly expect the cost of games to up. We're already getting a glimpse of this from Sony and EA charing $70 for base generation 9 games. Remove those alternate revenue generators that keep money coming in long after the game has been released and sold and it would not be unrealistic for new base level games to start costing $80-100, and you'll have less choices on how much content you can get for that game.

I'm not an advocate for microtransactions, I'm just a realist who understands business. The one good thing about MTs is that they are at least a choice that you have the option to consider or not consider. Just because the MTs are removed doesn't mean all the content they provide stays. You will still spend more on games but have less options/content to keep it fresh later. Theres very little incentive to make additional content post launch which costs money and time, only to give it away for free for a game that would have already hit its peak sales numbers.

[z2g]

which is fine... just be prepared to see the cost of games increase. Sony and EA have already demonstrated that they're ok charing $70 for a base game, and that revenue has to come from somewhere. MTs generate quite a lot of money ironically considering how much people claim to hate them.

if you count for inflation over the decades, the cost of a new game has actually gone down while the cost of development has gone up. The price of Outrun on the Sega Master System for example was $49.99 at launch. In today's dollars that would be $85. The cost to make the game was around $20,000 ($50,000ish in today's money).

For comparison, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) cost between $300-400 million to develop and the base game for ps5 and series x costs $69.99. You can see how this trend makes the math start to not work out...

[Binarycode]

If you make a great game, you don't need microtransactions.

[chicken_in_the_corn]

Funny how gamers are so opposed to micro transactionsbut demand remasters which is a far worse money grab.

[HyperMoused]

As long as people still keep putting millions into them they will only grow, people like to think they are innocent its ok its only just cosmetic etc, well yeah but grinding to unlock stuff where do you think all the good stuff is going to be, the free stuff or the paid tier...it takes away from the game to be sold back...in the old days, you did stuff on harder difficulties to unlock things, now its money, has been forever now but them old days were pretty good.

[ChiefofLoliPolice]

I hope so. Console and PC Gaming market is turning into mobile gaming now. Every damn game has to be live service and free to play. Now while it is true there are games that have had MAJOR success being a Gaas, or LS that doesn't work for every game. Even Sony wants about 10 LS type games in the next few years.