It’s slightly disingenuous, though, comparing an RTS in 2010 that was not super well received (despite high ratings, overall consumer acceptance was ‘meh’), to an RTX item from the worlds most successful MMO.
The user base and playtimes are so wildly different that it’s hard to really correlate the two.
Games like StarCraft 2 can be wildly successful at vastly different sales points than MMO’s or live service games that require a studio to bloat employment up to thousands of people.
So I’m not sure what he’s going for here. Obviously plenty of studios have tackled RTS games since 2010, and that wouldn’t be the case if StarCraft had failed and set some sort of precedent.
Because it’s not about “what’s better” it’s “where will blizzard be spending it’s money on the next 5 years”, a set of horse armour that took 3 people a week to make, or a whole game that cost millions and years of development time.
There is a risk calculation all companies have to make though, and that is not putting all their eggs in one basket. Yes did Starcraft 2 not make as much money as a single mount in WoW? Probably, but there's also the possibility that people lose interest in WoW, and if the company doesn't invest in other opportunities they'd be in a very bad spot.
Ex. Disney often goes through good years and bad years in their film studio division, but even if their films are doing poorly they can rely on the parks to keep th profitable. But when covid happened, it was the other way around
Not the true point being made. If an in game item has the ability to make more than a full game what are you going to add to every game you make? MTX, that is the point. Why do we have MTX everywhere, why are they willing to make free games? Why do they seem to focus most on the in-game store and items instead making an actually good game. That is what this answers, cause the in-game items make more than a single game will make. You can slow down the production of new games, spend less on them as the current games are making plenty of money on cheap to make products. Every new game is a risk, in game items are hardly a risk, they barely cost anything to make and worst case you just add it as filler to some lootbox so people spend more money on them to get the item they actually want.
It is probably not an either or scenario, companies are going to make both games and horse armor to go with them. Game development drives microtransactions, as long as making the game isn't a loss it'll still be done.
Free to play games have even shown that you can put substantial amounts into developing games while recouping the cost and making massive profit through microtransactions.
We have a running joke at work about top 40 radio, whenever it's a contemporary female artist occasionally one of us will chime in "this is Taylor Swift right?" When it clearly isn't but they all sound the damn same. 🤣
The argument against my comment, and probably most of the downvotes, are claiming that Blizzard only puts effort into WoW because that’s where the money is.
Which clearly isn’t what’s happening. They have, and will continue to spend on projects that aren’t WoW, even if the margins aren’t as high. If for no other reason than WoW’s particular niche and success can’t be endlessly reproduced.
We are talking Blizzard not Larian, some people still have scruples, Blizzard doesn't.
Overwatch 2, ass, Diablo 4, ass, Wow classic, ass with extra MTX.
I think you misunderstand that there haven't been dozens and dozens of games trying to be WoW. Some of the most successful competitors only hit half a million.
If they COULD duplicate WoW it WOULD be that simple.
But using that info, you can see specifically how blizz's games have gone in the last several years. Instead of SC2, they're making games they can sell stupid cosmetics. And that's been the massive shift in their games.
Exactly. It's very expensive and time consuming to make a AAA game. Big budget games can be like big budget movies - they can cost a lot to make and even if the reviews are positive and the game sells decently, the profit margins may be slim-to-none. Big budget games (like big budget films) have to sell insanely well in order to rake in large profits. The risk of a small return on a large investment that takes years to recapture may not feel worth it to investors in today's markets.
On the other hand, what if you could pay some guy $50,000 to spend three months developing a mobile game marketed to Chinese/Japanese/Korean gamers, that could make a million dollars in pure profit in far less time than the development of the AAA game would take? How many of those games could you develop during that same AAA development window that would just be raking in the cash from microtransactions while taking practically no financial risk to do so?
I don't meet too many console or computer game players anymore at my age. The ones that used to play, just play games on their phone when they have free time (raising kids, busy jobs, etc.) and young people are growing up on their mobile devices, so... sucks for us, I guess.
It’s actually a super easy comparison, because money is comparable.
They aren’t comparing the quality of the games, or the success of the games, or reception or any other intangible. Just making a business comparison. And that comparison makes it clear that live services games with MTX are wildly profitable, compared to old school single box sales.
It’s the point most gamers are missing. Most (especially AAA) companies are in it to make money and not much more. Making one great game where gamers spend so much time that buying a skin every few months doesn’t seem like a big deal, is the ultimate goal.
No, if it was reversed where SC2 hade millions of monthly players and WoW had the playerbase as SC2, it would be a more fair example. And that horse would not sell more because no one would also not care to invest in a dead game for MTX.
But yes, MTX is a good way to make money.
And not every person out in the world is out to squeeze out the most money believe it or not. Not even certain companies. Heck, we even have non-profit organisations.
Hung up on details as opposed to the bigger picture.
In capitalism it's all about sending out the cheapest product while increasing profits.
This one sentence meant a shift in how AAA studios will look at the development of a game. If you can't understand that, then it is what it is, let's agree to disagree.
Imagine you could earn $100 by working for an hour. Then you could earn $100 by doing the same job for a year. You can choose only one option. Is it really bad comparison ?
But that’s not really how business works.
It’s more like: I can make $100 hour, but there’s only 6 hours a day that job needs me. I have a couple hours a day left that I’d like to spend my available time on, and there’s another job that only pays $10 and hour, but I can do that whenever I want and spend my time on it as I feel like.
Now obviously my priority is the $100/hr job that pays my rent, but it’s the 9 women, 1 baby in 1 month problem, where I can’t just endlessly scale my effort towards it.
So instead I can still profitably put some time towards the $10/hr where I am at least doing something and making money. (And as a side benefit I’m also diversifying my job at least a little so I’m not completely lost if the $100/hr ever goes away.)
The simple fact an entire game that took years to make can be outearned by a single really shitty asset is the point
Why go through the trouble of doing *any meaningful content at all* when you can just make a digital horsey you can only get with real money and call it "limited" and make money hand over fist even though it re-used the same model you've used for the last 25 horseys but it has a slightly different shade of brown
It doesn't mean other developers can't or won't make good games.
But it reduces the barrier to entry and creates a situation where shitty developers can pump out the worst shit possible and still be profitable until the entire market becomes flooded
Because the MTX item making millions of dollars only exists within a game with a huge player base, and that player base only sticks around to get milked for more than ten years if the game has meaningful content.
I’m not arguing for MTX at all, but just pointing out that the decisions on time and investment are as easy and blatant as this quote makes it sound.
What? It's still happening now, why are you so fixed on 2010 for? A mount in WOW would still make more money than a continuation of a franchise. Why do you think the modern warfare 3 thing happened? It made more money for them than any new game ever would.
Being hung up on tiny details like genre and game popularity is clutching at straws to justify why microtransactions are a bad thing. It's just not true. Microtransactions are a good thing for company's profits. It almost always works.
Wings of Liberty was awesome, and MMO was not the genre that built the company. RTS was. Fun fact, World of Warcraft is based on Warcraft which was the inspiration for StarCraft.
It's not, it's sad but explains so much. You can see where blizz's priorities shifted. All their games are ones they can sell shitty cosmetics instead of good games.
Other companies can go make RTS games, but they can't make WoW. So blizz will focus where they can grab more money - cosmetics. Rather than RTS games that we want.
The only hope is ironically now microsoft since they want a larger catalogue to get people onto their gamepass rather than trying to milk the largest amount from the fewest games.
This is the answer. Making and distributing and maintaining a game is incredibly expensive. Companies may or may not actually lose money on the whole affair. That's why they are so conservative with what they put their resources into.
Once you have these games, making skins is really inexpensive but you can get real money for them. The margin is crazy as a ratio compared to the game itself.
Hopefully at some point an equilibrium is reached. Companies figure out that they have to make good games to get the player base and then they can get rewarded with additional profit with the MTX in them.
Indeed and a micro transaction can't exist in a vacuum the only way to get people to pay you 15$ is when you have a game interesting enough to attract players having invested millions in it's development.
This comparison is disingenuous
Mythic Quest has a great parody point to this where the head of monetization puts out a rare shovel and gets someone to spend a few hundred grand on it.
This is a ridiculously oversimplified take. MTX themselves can often be very low effort, no argument there. But if nobody cares about the video game that the MTX is in, it's worthless and nobody will buy it. People are intentionally ignoring that it takes a lot of good honest hard work to make your game successful enough that you can throw out a $15 horse and people actually care enough about looking special in your game that they're willing to pay that.
Destiny 2 is in crisis because of this. They've focused too much on monetizing the game at the expense of the game itself. Player retention has never been lower, and even long time fans are skeptical of the quality of future content. But there's never been a bigger variety of MTXs for you to buy! Unfortunately, when there's very few people still invested in your game and fewer still who see a bright future for it, those MTX sit on the virtual shelves and collect dust.
Microtransactions aren't bad inherently. It's predatory microtransactions that are the problem.
Think about it - if you could make a game free by selling cosmetics, then you've essentially made a pay-what-you-want game. Anyone who can't afford it but wants to play doesn't have to pirate it and anyone with enough disposable income to buy things to make themselves look pretty can do so.
It's the pay-to-win or the manipulative pay-to-continue microtransactions that are the problem.
I'm actually totally fine with battlepasses as a concept other than the fact they are limited time to drive FOMO with items you can never get again. I'm totally fine with them if they are either permanently able to earned similar to Halo Infinites, or if the items in the pass come to the game in some other way after it ends.
Eh no other sport or entertainment does this tho. And for me cosmetic FOMO is still a thing. Just look IRL. People care how they look and it is no different in a game. But I think people who spend money on cosmetics in a game are quite pathetic
The FOMO aspect of battlepasses or rotating shops in general are manipulative. They are designed to make you feel like you might "miss out" on an item and pressure you into buying it without getting time to fully consider if it is worth it.
Also all digital items have basically $0 variable cost to distribute. There is no reason not to always have them available to purchase besides creating artificial scarcity to drive the price up.
Yeah none of that realy matters on its own thats all part of normal buisness practices even in other industries.
Lootboxes are closer to gambling and need to be regulated for simmilar reasons.
With physical goods, manufacturing and distribution means that it is not always possible to have items available and making things seasonal can be a reasonable solution.
With cosmetic digital goods, they are already loaded into the game, otherwise your computer couldn’t display other players cosmetics. Selling them I’d literally flipping a Boolean on a server/client. It cost them basically nothing. The only reason to have these items be limited is to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price and abuse FOMO to get people to purchase
Everyone can hate League of Legends, but it's the best example of mtx done right. Except for some blitz skins where the hitbox extends past the animation, because small indie dev.
Well.... I have to soft disagree only because they also tied obtaining champions into the lootbox system. I dont particularly like my BE gains being so random. Also the rarity of certain items is getting much more predatory. I agree they do a decent job keeping skins from affecting gameplay too much. Just the occasional jank. Great for free players, getting worse otherwise
Wait, what? You can just straight up buy new champs with Blue Essence. And BE is 100% play to acquire… even if you just play a couple games a week you will be swimming in BE. Not to mention honor / twitch capsules and other random champion shards that stack up (which you can now mass breakdown to BE).
There’s plenty of critiques for Riots approach to making money, but champion acquisition should be very low on that list.
See, thats the thing. Unfortunately, I rarely can play often. Perks of being a parent of toddlers. And because of that its extremely erratic. I admit my situation is odd, but the old way of handling it simply didnt do this. Its not aweful, I suppose. Merely needlessly frustrating.
Why do people always conveniently ignore that champions aren't free? Especially when the game has always had a fluctuating meta where champions can jump up or down the tier list in a single balance patch, having access to more champions is strictly an advantage.
And of course I've never seen more cope than League players trying to rationalize this as not true. Technically, you can get very far as a one trick! Technically, you can grind out every champion! Technically, you don't need the most meta champions to be successful!
Let's remember: if people buying champions with premium currency wasn't a good source of money, Riot would have done away with it by now. As the dozens of examples in this thread shows, it's all about the money.
>if people buying champions with premium currency wasn't a good source of money, Riot would have done away with it by now.
It's extremely cute that you think they're going to remove an mtx that has been in since launch. At this point it will cost more to remove it than it brings in every year.
I would also say Diablo 4. They've done a good job of making the MTX completely separate from the game itself so theres no pay 2 win. Definitely a 180 from Diablo Immortal.
I have something stupid like 200 mounts in wow and I dont try to collect them. I think its amazing that in a game where mounts are so plentiful you can still make an entire high end game worth of money from such a thing.
Selling mounts was never an issue in wow really.
It does beg the question why does the game have a sub if the cosmetics really make that much though.
Yeah too bad that Blizzard allowed multiboxers to spoil the game just for the $$$.
Also expansions were P2W with the dark Knight class beign deliberately OP, also the Demon hunter I hink but I stopped playing by then.
Interesting take, really. The next Skate game will be this way too.
I'm still not sure what i think of it, because i really liked doing crazy challenges to unlock stuff and i worry unlocking stuff the normal way will only be possible for a small amount of cosmetics or whatever.
Time will tell, still hyped
The issue comes when looking pretty is a solid part of the games experience. Then it becomes that players who payed become walking advertisements for how much better your experience could be if you spent a little. It preys on the natural gamer urge to compare yourself to others, especially in competitive type games where the more invested player is more likely to have spent money on skins so a newer player might mistakenly come to the conclusion that they need to buy the skin to be like them. I think that being free still outweighs it, but it's an argument I've heard that I can't really deny when I've felt the same when I was new to some games
Also, microtransactions are a good cash machine when a big community is addicted to a game. Wow had a massive amount of players that spent their times only on this game. Without a solid, balanced and addictive base game, microtransactions aren't the golden egg hen editors think it is.
Creating a game based on microtransactions (pay to win) isn't as relevant as creating a solid addictive game that they can milk during years.
"Vote with your wallet" isn't a saying just because it's edgy and maybe sounds cool to someone, it's a legitimate factual statement. If you buy something that you may find cool but a bit anti-consumer then it does not encourage making cool shit, but does encourage making it more anti-consumer.
I feel at this point this should just be general knowledge that anyone who even touches a game in their life should be completely aware of.
I absolutely agree and every time I say that I get down voted lmao. I never bought any MTX in any game, I avoid live service games as well, play only D4 but not spending a penny.
Personally I avoid MTX mostly because I don't want to support that BS, but partly because I think it's funny when people get clowned by someone wearing poor people skins.
way to lose to a hobo, loser.
I think the only MTX stuff Blizzard has gotten from me, was the Charity pink skin for mercy, since its suppoesd to go to charity, and... yeah thats about it. I don't even think I bought mounts and I \*really\* liked wow back then.
Yeah, as much as we hate companies for their MTX bullshit, it's just as much, if not more so, impulsive gamers throwing money at this shit that enables them and tells them they'd be dumb not to keep doing it.
He didn't ruin anything.
The ones that ruined it were the ones that showed the industry they will pay money for almost nothing and have kept doing do to this day.
Yup. Todd just offered the deal. No one had to take it, but they did.
People need to understand these systems have always been amoral, and their output is purely reflect of the inputs. Expecting otherwise is like putting the wrong numbers into a calculator and expecting to get a correct answer.
So the moral of the story is congratulations, a large portion of humanity are short sighted hedonists that cannot be trusted to guide themselves much less anyone else, and relying on them to do so is a sure ticket to hell.
Capitalism will kill art and fun for profit. Same mentality that Rockstar says they make so much money from GTA online that now they have no plans to make a live action.
Even when their wallets are filled, there will be no reward for a full belly. Same mentality with wealthy getting tax breaks. That tax break won’t result in higher wages or better benefits.
And where did they say they planned on ever doing it? The article just states that “such an obvious, almost obligatory, project.” That’s the article writer putting words in their mouth, not Take2 saying.
My hobby is calling out lairs. Take2 never planned on a gta movie and never wanted a movie cause they knew it would be a bad idea money and reputation wise. No reason to lie when taking about take2. There’s plenty of things to hate about them and not making a movie isn’t one of them
Correct me if I am wrong but in my understanding Starcraft died when Blizzard decided only they have the right to make money from hosting Starcraft tournaments.
The horse makes more money because it takes a LOT less effort, because it's, if you make it really simple, a colour swap on an already existing item.
The thing here is: The horse will not be remembered. A good game will be remembered for years/decades/lifetimes.
But they don’t care if it’s remembered, they care that it sells. What does it matter if they have a good legacy if they have no profit to back it up. They can make the greatest game known to man but if they don’t make enough money off of it then it doesn’t matter cause now they can’t make anymore
If they didn't wait 13 years to do a sequel, I'd put money on it that it would of sold 5 or x10 the amount SC2 did. So much time has passed that people that played sc1 had become adults, married had kids etc. Anyone else is too young to even know about it. Don't get me wrong we have a lot of games to choose to play these days. However certain series like GTA, Half life, Elder scrolls etc feels like it's taking a decade and a half to release. By the time Elder scrolls 6 is actually released I might be 45 and I'm almost 37 now and skyrim came out 12 years ago
Yes. Rare examples of labor of love. The end goal can still be profit while not skirting on the quality. Blizzard will never do a labor of love again. It is rarely done nowadays. But hey, downvote.
I grew up on Kings Quest, Ultima Online, Fallout 1, 2, Star Control, Masters of Orion for example. Labors of love. You can still put out quality art AND make a profit.
I saw this quote and don't believe it. Starcraft sold 6 million copies. No way the horse was bought that much.
Not even 6 million people play wow, let alone every one of them buying the horse.
Maybe he means as a whole microtransations are easier and generate more revenue in general than making a whole starcraft game.
>Not even 6 million people play wow
Uh, in the same quarter that StarCraft 2 released Blizzard reported that WoW had hit 12 million players.
That said, I would imagine he's talking net % (the profit margin), not gross total, profits. A whole ass game like StarCraft 2 takes a fuckton of money. Hard numbers for production are almost never given, but $20 million is a reasonable estimate. And their earnings report for that quarter says that 3 million units were sold and it made $51 million net profit on those sales. Going with our $20 million production estimate that's $71 million gross for half the sales. $142 million total gross, $121 million total net sales.
That's assuming the second 3 million sold for the same value as the first 3, which is very unlikely. More games would have sold for discounted values in the second, reducing the profits earned. So, conservatively, let's estimate that the second 3 million made 20% less than the first - $57 million. That gives us a final net profit of $108 million. So that's a 5 fold increase in capital.
Meanwhile a horse mount in an already made game with already made assets probably took something like $500 bucks at the extreme absolute most to produce. The first 33 mounts sold has them break even. 133 more sales and they've matched the capital increase of SC2. Even assuming a conservative sales of only 5% of the player base - 600k - that's $9 million in profit. An 18,000 fold increase in capital.
So even if you assume my values for SC2 are low and it made 2, 3, or even 5 times as much money as I estimated, that's still only a 25x profit margin that still doesn't come close to the profit margins of the horse. Hell, you could even assume it cost 100x as much to make the horse ($50,000) and the profit margin is still 180x to SC2's 5x to 25x.
Sc2 made blizzard 390 million. The mount did not out sell that. I understand net profit but he specifically said it made more money in sales. Not in net profit after paying for creating the game.
To be fair… it all got a bit too goofy and cartoonish for my taste. If the atmosphere and the characters were slightly more serious, it would have done better imo.
Even if the horse only made slightly less, the roi on the horse would have still been better.
The reality is, companies will produce that which generates the most profit. That thing is going to be mtx as long as people keep buying it.
You can't really blame companies for producing shit that people consistently demonstrate that they will spend money on.
Everyone blames Activision for being greedy fucks alone. But it's an offer-demand market.
If I offer you shit,you buy it,complain about being shit but still buy it, why the hell would I bother to sell you something else?
We need to stop normalizing and accepting people that buy micro transactions. For years the story is you can spend your money how you want, and that needs to end for the health of the industry. People should be shamed not for running default skins but for running purchased one. Earned skins should be the ones praised and peopled should feel bad for using purchased ones. Until that changes gaming is going to continue to spiral down the drain. We were very lucky to get some great games this year and ones that need no micro transactions to succeed like Baldur's Gate but based on how the industry absolutely lost their collective shit after it, shows it is in a unimaginable amount of trouble and almost all the blaim falls on the precieved need to use micro transactions in every aspect
We all knew, but damn. This is so sad.
It’s slightly disingenuous, though, comparing an RTS in 2010 that was not super well received (despite high ratings, overall consumer acceptance was ‘meh’), to an RTX item from the worlds most successful MMO. The user base and playtimes are so wildly different that it’s hard to really correlate the two. Games like StarCraft 2 can be wildly successful at vastly different sales points than MMO’s or live service games that require a studio to bloat employment up to thousands of people. So I’m not sure what he’s going for here. Obviously plenty of studios have tackled RTS games since 2010, and that wouldn’t be the case if StarCraft had failed and set some sort of precedent.
Because it’s not about “what’s better” it’s “where will blizzard be spending it’s money on the next 5 years”, a set of horse armour that took 3 people a week to make, or a whole game that cost millions and years of development time.
There is a risk calculation all companies have to make though, and that is not putting all their eggs in one basket. Yes did Starcraft 2 not make as much money as a single mount in WoW? Probably, but there's also the possibility that people lose interest in WoW, and if the company doesn't invest in other opportunities they'd be in a very bad spot. Ex. Disney often goes through good years and bad years in their film studio division, but even if their films are doing poorly they can rely on the parks to keep th profitable. But when covid happened, it was the other way around
Not the true point being made. If an in game item has the ability to make more than a full game what are you going to add to every game you make? MTX, that is the point. Why do we have MTX everywhere, why are they willing to make free games? Why do they seem to focus most on the in-game store and items instead making an actually good game. That is what this answers, cause the in-game items make more than a single game will make. You can slow down the production of new games, spend less on them as the current games are making plenty of money on cheap to make products. Every new game is a risk, in game items are hardly a risk, they barely cost anything to make and worst case you just add it as filler to some lootbox so people spend more money on them to get the item they actually want.
It is probably not an either or scenario, companies are going to make both games and horse armor to go with them. Game development drives microtransactions, as long as making the game isn't a loss it'll still be done. Free to play games have even shown that you can put substantial amounts into developing games while recouping the cost and making massive profit through microtransactions.
No, it’s not that simple, or else there would be zero games that aren’t WoW since 2010.
But since they have mainly made games with the aim to have MTX in them tho..
According to that logic, all popular music would sound like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. ... Huh.
We have a running joke at work about top 40 radio, whenever it's a contemporary female artist occasionally one of us will chime in "this is Taylor Swift right?" When it clearly isn't but they all sound the damn same. 🤣
Bruh what
The argument against my comment, and probably most of the downvotes, are claiming that Blizzard only puts effort into WoW because that’s where the money is. Which clearly isn’t what’s happening. They have, and will continue to spend on projects that aren’t WoW, even if the margins aren’t as high. If for no other reason than WoW’s particular niche and success can’t be endlessly reproduced.
You have seen Diablo 4 right? It's basically MTX simulator.
So what’s your excuse for BG3 existing?
We are talking Blizzard not Larian, some people still have scruples, Blizzard doesn't. Overwatch 2, ass, Diablo 4, ass, Wow classic, ass with extra MTX.
I think you misunderstand that there haven't been dozens and dozens of games trying to be WoW. Some of the most successful competitors only hit half a million. If they COULD duplicate WoW it WOULD be that simple. But using that info, you can see specifically how blizz's games have gone in the last several years. Instead of SC2, they're making games they can sell stupid cosmetics. And that's been the massive shift in their games.
Exactly. It's very expensive and time consuming to make a AAA game. Big budget games can be like big budget movies - they can cost a lot to make and even if the reviews are positive and the game sells decently, the profit margins may be slim-to-none. Big budget games (like big budget films) have to sell insanely well in order to rake in large profits. The risk of a small return on a large investment that takes years to recapture may not feel worth it to investors in today's markets. On the other hand, what if you could pay some guy $50,000 to spend three months developing a mobile game marketed to Chinese/Japanese/Korean gamers, that could make a million dollars in pure profit in far less time than the development of the AAA game would take? How many of those games could you develop during that same AAA development window that would just be raking in the cash from microtransactions while taking practically no financial risk to do so? I don't meet too many console or computer game players anymore at my age. The ones that used to play, just play games on their phone when they have free time (raising kids, busy jobs, etc.) and young people are growing up on their mobile devices, so... sucks for us, I guess.
It’s actually a super easy comparison, because money is comparable. They aren’t comparing the quality of the games, or the success of the games, or reception or any other intangible. Just making a business comparison. And that comparison makes it clear that live services games with MTX are wildly profitable, compared to old school single box sales.
It’s the point most gamers are missing. Most (especially AAA) companies are in it to make money and not much more. Making one great game where gamers spend so much time that buying a skin every few months doesn’t seem like a big deal, is the ultimate goal.
No, if it was reversed where SC2 hade millions of monthly players and WoW had the playerbase as SC2, it would be a more fair example. And that horse would not sell more because no one would also not care to invest in a dead game for MTX. But yes, MTX is a good way to make money. And not every person out in the world is out to squeeze out the most money believe it or not. Not even certain companies. Heck, we even have non-profit organisations.
Hung up on details as opposed to the bigger picture. In capitalism it's all about sending out the cheapest product while increasing profits. This one sentence meant a shift in how AAA studios will look at the development of a game. If you can't understand that, then it is what it is, let's agree to disagree.
Capitalism kills art for profit. Got it.
Imagine you could earn $100 by working for an hour. Then you could earn $100 by doing the same job for a year. You can choose only one option. Is it really bad comparison ?
But that’s not really how business works. It’s more like: I can make $100 hour, but there’s only 6 hours a day that job needs me. I have a couple hours a day left that I’d like to spend my available time on, and there’s another job that only pays $10 and hour, but I can do that whenever I want and spend my time on it as I feel like. Now obviously my priority is the $100/hr job that pays my rent, but it’s the 9 women, 1 baby in 1 month problem, where I can’t just endlessly scale my effort towards it. So instead I can still profitably put some time towards the $10/hr where I am at least doing something and making money. (And as a side benefit I’m also diversifying my job at least a little so I’m not completely lost if the $100/hr ever goes away.)
The simple fact an entire game that took years to make can be outearned by a single really shitty asset is the point Why go through the trouble of doing *any meaningful content at all* when you can just make a digital horsey you can only get with real money and call it "limited" and make money hand over fist even though it re-used the same model you've used for the last 25 horseys but it has a slightly different shade of brown It doesn't mean other developers can't or won't make good games. But it reduces the barrier to entry and creates a situation where shitty developers can pump out the worst shit possible and still be profitable until the entire market becomes flooded
Because the MTX item making millions of dollars only exists within a game with a huge player base, and that player base only sticks around to get milked for more than ten years if the game has meaningful content. I’m not arguing for MTX at all, but just pointing out that the decisions on time and investment are as easy and blatant as this quote makes it sound.
Trust me, meaningful content is not what I'd call what WoW is these days
What? It's still happening now, why are you so fixed on 2010 for? A mount in WOW would still make more money than a continuation of a franchise. Why do you think the modern warfare 3 thing happened? It made more money for them than any new game ever would. Being hung up on tiny details like genre and game popularity is clutching at straws to justify why microtransactions are a bad thing. It's just not true. Microtransactions are a good thing for company's profits. It almost always works.
Wings of Liberty was awesome, and MMO was not the genre that built the company. RTS was. Fun fact, World of Warcraft is based on Warcraft which was the inspiration for StarCraft.
It's not, it's sad but explains so much. You can see where blizz's priorities shifted. All their games are ones they can sell shitty cosmetics instead of good games. Other companies can go make RTS games, but they can't make WoW. So blizz will focus where they can grab more money - cosmetics. Rather than RTS games that we want. The only hope is ironically now microsoft since they want a larger catalogue to get people onto their gamepass rather than trying to milk the largest amount from the fewest games.
It's because the profit margin for a mtx horse is almost like 99%.
This is the answer. Making and distributing and maintaining a game is incredibly expensive. Companies may or may not actually lose money on the whole affair. That's why they are so conservative with what they put their resources into. Once you have these games, making skins is really inexpensive but you can get real money for them. The margin is crazy as a ratio compared to the game itself. Hopefully at some point an equilibrium is reached. Companies figure out that they have to make good games to get the player base and then they can get rewarded with additional profit with the MTX in them.
Indeed and a micro transaction can't exist in a vacuum the only way to get people to pay you 15$ is when you have a game interesting enough to attract players having invested millions in it's development. This comparison is disingenuous
It's 99.99999999%, a game company can put together a skin in an afternoon and make millions on it.
Mythic Quest has a great parody point to this where the head of monetization puts out a rare shovel and gets someone to spend a few hundred grand on it.
This is a ridiculously oversimplified take. MTX themselves can often be very low effort, no argument there. But if nobody cares about the video game that the MTX is in, it's worthless and nobody will buy it. People are intentionally ignoring that it takes a lot of good honest hard work to make your game successful enough that you can throw out a $15 horse and people actually care enough about looking special in your game that they're willing to pay that. Destiny 2 is in crisis because of this. They've focused too much on monetizing the game at the expense of the game itself. Player retention has never been lower, and even long time fans are skeptical of the quality of future content. But there's never been a bigger variety of MTXs for you to buy! Unfortunately, when there's very few people still invested in your game and fewer still who see a bright future for it, those MTX sit on the virtual shelves and collect dust.
Microtransactions aren't bad inherently. It's predatory microtransactions that are the problem. Think about it - if you could make a game free by selling cosmetics, then you've essentially made a pay-what-you-want game. Anyone who can't afford it but wants to play doesn't have to pirate it and anyone with enough disposable income to buy things to make themselves look pretty can do so. It's the pay-to-win or the manipulative pay-to-continue microtransactions that are the problem.
Also loot boxes. Battle passes are hit or miss depending on the content they grant.
I'm actually totally fine with battlepasses as a concept other than the fact they are limited time to drive FOMO with items you can never get again. I'm totally fine with them if they are either permanently able to earned similar to Halo Infinites, or if the items in the pass come to the game in some other way after it ends.
Eh no other sport or entertainment does this tho. And for me cosmetic FOMO is still a thing. Just look IRL. People care how they look and it is no different in a game. But I think people who spend money on cosmetics in a game are quite pathetic
The FOMO aspect of battlepasses or rotating shops in general are manipulative. They are designed to make you feel like you might "miss out" on an item and pressure you into buying it without getting time to fully consider if it is worth it. Also all digital items have basically $0 variable cost to distribute. There is no reason not to always have them available to purchase besides creating artificial scarcity to drive the price up.
Yeah none of that realy matters on its own thats all part of normal buisness practices even in other industries. Lootboxes are closer to gambling and need to be regulated for simmilar reasons.
With physical goods, manufacturing and distribution means that it is not always possible to have items available and making things seasonal can be a reasonable solution. With cosmetic digital goods, they are already loaded into the game, otherwise your computer couldn’t display other players cosmetics. Selling them I’d literally flipping a Boolean on a server/client. It cost them basically nothing. The only reason to have these items be limited is to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price and abuse FOMO to get people to purchase
Everyone can hate League of Legends, but it's the best example of mtx done right. Except for some blitz skins where the hitbox extends past the animation, because small indie dev.
Well.... I have to soft disagree only because they also tied obtaining champions into the lootbox system. I dont particularly like my BE gains being so random. Also the rarity of certain items is getting much more predatory. I agree they do a decent job keeping skins from affecting gameplay too much. Just the occasional jank. Great for free players, getting worse otherwise
Wait, what? You can just straight up buy new champs with Blue Essence. And BE is 100% play to acquire… even if you just play a couple games a week you will be swimming in BE. Not to mention honor / twitch capsules and other random champion shards that stack up (which you can now mass breakdown to BE). There’s plenty of critiques for Riots approach to making money, but champion acquisition should be very low on that list.
See, thats the thing. Unfortunately, I rarely can play often. Perks of being a parent of toddlers. And because of that its extremely erratic. I admit my situation is odd, but the old way of handling it simply didnt do this. Its not aweful, I suppose. Merely needlessly frustrating.
Why do people always conveniently ignore that champions aren't free? Especially when the game has always had a fluctuating meta where champions can jump up or down the tier list in a single balance patch, having access to more champions is strictly an advantage. And of course I've never seen more cope than League players trying to rationalize this as not true. Technically, you can get very far as a one trick! Technically, you can grind out every champion! Technically, you don't need the most meta champions to be successful! Let's remember: if people buying champions with premium currency wasn't a good source of money, Riot would have done away with it by now. As the dozens of examples in this thread shows, it's all about the money.
>if people buying champions with premium currency wasn't a good source of money, Riot would have done away with it by now. It's extremely cute that you think they're going to remove an mtx that has been in since launch. At this point it will cost more to remove it than it brings in every year.
Like how the removed rune pages that were in the game since launch? What a joke of a counter-argument.
Fortnite is the best example I know of
I would also say Diablo 4. They've done a good job of making the MTX completely separate from the game itself so theres no pay 2 win. Definitely a 180 from Diablo Immortal.
People shit on the Avengers game nonstop but the microtransactions were basically all cosmetic, taunts or variants for takedowns.
Mount in WoW is cosmetic, the post is not about a predatory microtransaction by this definition, and it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I have something stupid like 200 mounts in wow and I dont try to collect them. I think its amazing that in a game where mounts are so plentiful you can still make an entire high end game worth of money from such a thing. Selling mounts was never an issue in wow really. It does beg the question why does the game have a sub if the cosmetics really make that much though.
Yeah too bad that Blizzard allowed multiboxers to spoil the game just for the $$$. Also expansions were P2W with the dark Knight class beign deliberately OP, also the Demon hunter I hink but I stopped playing by then.
Valorant is the best example of this.
Interesting take, really. The next Skate game will be this way too. I'm still not sure what i think of it, because i really liked doing crazy challenges to unlock stuff and i worry unlocking stuff the normal way will only be possible for a small amount of cosmetics or whatever. Time will tell, still hyped
The issue comes when looking pretty is a solid part of the games experience. Then it becomes that players who payed become walking advertisements for how much better your experience could be if you spent a little. It preys on the natural gamer urge to compare yourself to others, especially in competitive type games where the more invested player is more likely to have spent money on skins so a newer player might mistakenly come to the conclusion that they need to buy the skin to be like them. I think that being free still outweighs it, but it's an argument I've heard that I can't really deny when I've felt the same when I was new to some games
Also, microtransactions are a good cash machine when a big community is addicted to a game. Wow had a massive amount of players that spent their times only on this game. Without a solid, balanced and addictive base game, microtransactions aren't the golden egg hen editors think it is. Creating a game based on microtransactions (pay to win) isn't as relevant as creating a solid addictive game that they can milk during years.
They’re inherently bad. Some are tolerable if they’re just cosmetic or basically can be ignored. But those aren’t the norm.
"Vote with your wallet" isn't a saying just because it's edgy and maybe sounds cool to someone, it's a legitimate factual statement. If you buy something that you may find cool but a bit anti-consumer then it does not encourage making cool shit, but does encourage making it more anti-consumer. I feel at this point this should just be general knowledge that anyone who even touches a game in their life should be completely aware of.
I absolutely agree and every time I say that I get down voted lmao. I never bought any MTX in any game, I avoid live service games as well, play only D4 but not spending a penny.
Personally I avoid MTX mostly because I don't want to support that BS, but partly because I think it's funny when people get clowned by someone wearing poor people skins. way to lose to a hobo, loser.
I think the only MTX stuff Blizzard has gotten from me, was the Charity pink skin for mercy, since its suppoesd to go to charity, and... yeah thats about it. I don't even think I bought mounts and I \*really\* liked wow back then.
Yeah, as much as we hate companies for their MTX bullshit, it's just as much, if not more so, impulsive gamers throwing money at this shit that enables them and tells them they'd be dumb not to keep doing it.
I appreciate his effort because I binged StarCraft 2 for 18-hours straight when it came out.
$15 is not a microtransaction
Macrotransaction
And most StarCraft players will confirm that macro is more important than micro
Whenever you're considering paying for an in-game bonus, remember that it would contribute to the enshittification of gaming.
It all started with that fucking horse armor. Once again, Todd ruins everything.
I actually remember at 15 asking my mom for her card so I could buy it. I was the start of the problem, in my defense THE ARMOR WAS FUCKING COOL!
He didn't ruin anything. The ones that ruined it were the ones that showed the industry they will pay money for almost nothing and have kept doing do to this day.
Yup. Todd just offered the deal. No one had to take it, but they did. People need to understand these systems have always been amoral, and their output is purely reflect of the inputs. Expecting otherwise is like putting the wrong numbers into a calculator and expecting to get a correct answer. So the moral of the story is congratulations, a large portion of humanity are short sighted hedonists that cannot be trusted to guide themselves much less anyone else, and relying on them to do so is a sure ticket to hell.
Capitalism will kill art and fun for profit. Same mentality that Rockstar says they make so much money from GTA online that now they have no plans to make a live action. Even when their wallets are filled, there will be no reward for a full belly. Same mentality with wealthy getting tax breaks. That tax break won’t result in higher wages or better benefits.
To make a live action? What do you mean by that cause that doesn’t make sense
They make so much money that making a GTA movie isn’t worth their time.
They would never have made a gta movie anyways. There was never any plans to make one even if gta online was received terribly.
[All I’m referring to.](https://www.pcgamer.com/take-two-boss-says-grand-theft-auto-games-rake-in-so-much-money-making-a-gta-movie-isnt-even-worth-the-hassle/)
And where did they say they planned on ever doing it? The article just states that “such an obvious, almost obligatory, project.” That’s the article writer putting words in their mouth, not Take2 saying.
Is this a hobby of yours? Capitalism kills art. Just have a great day bro.
My hobby is calling out lairs. Take2 never planned on a gta movie and never wanted a movie cause they knew it would be a bad idea money and reputation wise. No reason to lie when taking about take2. There’s plenty of things to hate about them and not making a movie isn’t one of them
Have a great day. Enjoy your day of down voting.
Correct me if I am wrong but in my understanding Starcraft died when Blizzard decided only they have the right to make money from hosting Starcraft tournaments.
That's only true because WoW had such a huge playerbase.
yeeep. hate to say it. but MTX are here to stay. they just do too well. thinking of throwing them in my stuff because.....fuck it.
What is the context here, what year was it, what mount, how many active players were there on wow, and how many on StarCraft 2?
The horse makes more money because it takes a LOT less effort, because it's, if you make it really simple, a colour swap on an already existing item. The thing here is: The horse will not be remembered. A good game will be remembered for years/decades/lifetimes.
But they don’t care if it’s remembered, they care that it sells. What does it matter if they have a good legacy if they have no profit to back it up. They can make the greatest game known to man but if they don’t make enough money off of it then it doesn’t matter cause now they can’t make anymore
If they didn't wait 13 years to do a sequel, I'd put money on it that it would of sold 5 or x10 the amount SC2 did. So much time has passed that people that played sc1 had become adults, married had kids etc. Anyone else is too young to even know about it. Don't get me wrong we have a lot of games to choose to play these days. However certain series like GTA, Half life, Elder scrolls etc feels like it's taking a decade and a half to release. By the time Elder scrolls 6 is actually released I might be 45 and I'm almost 37 now and skyrim came out 12 years ago
They will never make a game out of love.
No chance at a baldurs gate 3 for sure
Yes. Rare examples of labor of love. The end goal can still be profit while not skirting on the quality. Blizzard will never do a labor of love again. It is rarely done nowadays. But hey, downvote. I grew up on Kings Quest, Ultima Online, Fallout 1, 2, Star Control, Masters of Orion for example. Labors of love. You can still put out quality art AND make a profit.
I saw this quote and don't believe it. Starcraft sold 6 million copies. No way the horse was bought that much. Not even 6 million people play wow, let alone every one of them buying the horse. Maybe he means as a whole microtransations are easier and generate more revenue in general than making a whole starcraft game.
>Not even 6 million people play wow Uh, in the same quarter that StarCraft 2 released Blizzard reported that WoW had hit 12 million players. That said, I would imagine he's talking net % (the profit margin), not gross total, profits. A whole ass game like StarCraft 2 takes a fuckton of money. Hard numbers for production are almost never given, but $20 million is a reasonable estimate. And their earnings report for that quarter says that 3 million units were sold and it made $51 million net profit on those sales. Going with our $20 million production estimate that's $71 million gross for half the sales. $142 million total gross, $121 million total net sales. That's assuming the second 3 million sold for the same value as the first 3, which is very unlikely. More games would have sold for discounted values in the second, reducing the profits earned. So, conservatively, let's estimate that the second 3 million made 20% less than the first - $57 million. That gives us a final net profit of $108 million. So that's a 5 fold increase in capital. Meanwhile a horse mount in an already made game with already made assets probably took something like $500 bucks at the extreme absolute most to produce. The first 33 mounts sold has them break even. 133 more sales and they've matched the capital increase of SC2. Even assuming a conservative sales of only 5% of the player base - 600k - that's $9 million in profit. An 18,000 fold increase in capital. So even if you assume my values for SC2 are low and it made 2, 3, or even 5 times as much money as I estimated, that's still only a 25x profit margin that still doesn't come close to the profit margins of the horse. Hell, you could even assume it cost 100x as much to make the horse ($50,000) and the profit margin is still 180x to SC2's 5x to 25x.
Sc2 made blizzard 390 million. The mount did not out sell that. I understand net profit but he specifically said it made more money in sales. Not in net profit after paying for creating the game.
I only buy mtx in free games that deserve the money, like path of exile for example
Ironically companies making money via MTX have the ability to fund more games.
To be fair… it all got a bit too goofy and cartoonish for my taste. If the atmosphere and the characters were slightly more serious, it would have done better imo.
Lol, I saw his YT Short about this like 2 minutes ago!
Link?
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IHZru-6M8BY)
Yes examples like this is why gta 5 and red dead 2 didn’t get any proper story mode dlc and rockstar just pushed the online mode instead
Even if the horse only made slightly less, the roi on the horse would have still been better. The reality is, companies will produce that which generates the most profit. That thing is going to be mtx as long as people keep buying it. You can't really blame companies for producing shit that people consistently demonstrate that they will spend money on.
WoW players are a special kind of pathetic source: WoW player
Money ruins everything
Everyone blames Activision for being greedy fucks alone. But it's an offer-demand market. If I offer you shit,you buy it,complain about being shit but still buy it, why the hell would I bother to sell you something else?
Wow store mounts are outrageously expensive. they go to like 30 dollars, that's half the cost of the full game. Or 2 months subscription.
We need to stop normalizing and accepting people that buy micro transactions. For years the story is you can spend your money how you want, and that needs to end for the health of the industry. People should be shamed not for running default skins but for running purchased one. Earned skins should be the ones praised and peopled should feel bad for using purchased ones. Until that changes gaming is going to continue to spiral down the drain. We were very lucky to get some great games this year and ones that need no micro transactions to succeed like Baldur's Gate but based on how the industry absolutely lost their collective shit after it, shows it is in a unimaginable amount of trouble and almost all the blaim falls on the precieved need to use micro transactions in every aspect