Last week, EA announced that they were closing down Visceral Games, the studio working on a new Star Wars game, essentially because it was too linear and story-based - meaning, exactly what I want from a Star Wars game.
They said the game is instead being “reshaped” to fit the “games as service” brand, which is a business model causing a whole bunch of developers to turn their backs on the type of games I grew up playing - the ones I’ve loved for my entire life. Of course, Battlefront 2 has a 5-7 hour single-player campaign, but it also has microtransactions that, in the beta, effectively encouraged a pay-to-win, low-key gambling system.
Just like Shadow of War had microtransaction controversies with orcs up for sale, and even after that, season passes are still very much a thing and have prices that range from half or more of the base game’s price, and people keep buying them.
This is the games industry in 2017. This is where we’re at.
This is the games industry in 2017. This is where we’re at. Of course, we still have some games focusing on a strong single-player experience without microtransactions - like Bethesda, with The Evil Within 2, Prey, Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, but hey, you know what games didn’t sell as well as expected, despite not having any microtransaction controversies? All of those.
So, despite people being angry in the comments sections about loot boxes, a recent article on games industry.biz noted that the controversies are having literally no negative impact on sales. Destiny 2 had items locked behind a glorified gambling system even though they were available in the first game, and it’s already the single best-selling console game of the year. It came out in September.
It’s true that, every year, video games are getting more expensive to make. But every year, consumers are purchasing more games to meet the rising costs of the industry and, as it stands right now, every year publishers are finding new ways for players to spend more money. I don’t believe that microtransactions are an answer to games being unaffordable when publishers like EA are only increasing their profit year over year - they make $800 million dollars off of FIFA in a single year - JUST FIFA.
This is publishers making as much money as possible as quickly as possible, and we clearly haven’t hit a limit yet, but we most likely will. It happened when major publishers kept trying to jump onto mobile gaming, it happened with the now all but dead Toys-To-Life market, it happened with music-based games like Guitar Hero, and I have no doubt that it’ll happen again. As is the nature of our fast-thinking, very, very young industry.
The negative PR will eventually catch up, and the bubble will burst.
So, that brings us to the thing that I don’t think publishers are considering - yes, these games, despite their controversies, are selling well. But this is something that is immediate, short-term gain only, because they’re completely ignoring how this is breeding long-term resentment, and every new microtransaction added is a bad PR move, encouraging fans to be more critical, and, slowly, feel like they’re being taken advantage of by companies they previously adored. This short-term gain is going to eventually make marketing harder, and more expensive - it’s not a long-lasting quick buck that they can keep milking forever.
In essence, just because something is selling well doesn’t mean there’s no damage being done. The negative PR will eventually catch up, and the bubble will burst, and there’ll be a whole lot of work they’ll have to put into regaining all of the consumer loyalty they lost along the way.
Alanah Pearce is a writer and producer at IGN, you can find her on Twitter @Charalanahzard.
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