"It's all about player choice..."

Let's play devils advocate.

Video gaming is a very time consuming hobby. Whether your one who chooses to dedicate their time to an online shooter or a full blown JRPG, you're going to be spending some hours with you butt in front of a monitor. Games are hardier endeavours than movies and TV series' and can even trump the length of books, depending on how slow of a reader you are. This is one of the truths of gaming; if you want to achieve something it's going to cost some amount of effort. That is also one the greatest barriers-to-entry for video games. Not everyone has the time-capital to spend on a hundred-hour RPG, or even a forty minute battle royale match. Other obligations get in the way, life gets in the way if you let it. If only there was some sort of way that people like this could enjoy the fun and freedom of a video game whilst saving themselves time.

That is the proposed philosophy behind the humble 'Time savers pack'. Time and time again, developers slip in these little 'booster packs' and 'premium currencies' whilst telling us that their intentions with these additions is purely to benefit accessibility. Do you have a demanding job that affords little 'me' time? You may find it difficult to compete with others who seem to play 24/7, they'll run circles around you when it comes to progression. Lucky for people in your shoes, modern gaming companies will allow you to circumvent the grind that your competitors endured with a small, inconsequential payment. A 'Microtransaction', if you will. Suddenly, you'll be earning progression at thrice the rate that others do and will skyrocket ahead of everyone else. That's great, isn't it? Equality at a price. True capitalism.

Video gaming is a very fund consuming hobby, also. If you're not dropping £60 on brand new releases, you're putting down £50 yearly on online privileges or triple digits on the latest console. Gamers are trained to believe that being up-to-date also means being flush, and that perspective isn't entirely false. Unless you have a substantial amount of disposal income to play with, you'll likely be limiting yourself to one big release a year. Publishers know this all too well. It's why they sink thousands into marketing to catch your eye, it's why October has officially become the 'battle-month' for big AAA releases and why, when they have you, gaming companies will do whatever they can to keep you. What do these two topics have to do with each other? Well, it all comes back to 'controversy'

Game creators are terrified of controversy. Petrified of it. In their eyes, the second negative press falls on their doorstep it is only a matter of time before the public boycotts their products. If no one is around to pick up the next Battlefield or Far Cry then they will miss their sales goals, investors will get spooked and the entire civilized western world will unravel at the seams. That is why after the 'Battlefront 2 lootbox scandal' every company was falling over themselves to let the public know how they would never stoop as low as EA did. "No Lootboxes here!" You'd see plastered all over marketing. "Please buy our game. We promise not to gouge you." It was as though the entire video game industry had got a hint of consumer revolt and were willing to uproot everything to stop it picking up steam. They appeared to be changing their ways, moving away from aggressive monetization and back towards the way games used to be. Unfortunately, if there is one emotion that always manages to override caution, it's greed.

Lootboxes may not be acceptable in the eyes of the public anymore, but what about general microtransactions? Cosmetics, boosters and time savers. Once upon a time these tactics also drew ire from everybody; but now, in the post lootbox age, people are just happy not to have to deal with glorified gambling anymore. So everything moves backwards and now the market is flooded with 'time saver items'. "But it's okay." they tell us. "Because none of this is necessary. It's all optional. We're just giving you a choice to buy them. It's all about player choice." Pretty words but I want to take a little examination and see how much water they hold, if any.

Let's start of by taking these game companies at their word. Let us pretend that these systems aren't pathetic attempts to shake some lose change out of consumers pockets, and act as though these offers are the magnanimous gifts of charitable benefactors. In this hypothetical, video game companies are supremely concerned about the disparity of free time and seek to rectify that divide anyway they can. What are the options? An 'xp-catch' up system has a bad ring to it, people often compare this to 'rubber banding' and complain how it invalidates hard work. 'First win of the day' bonuses do it for some folk. Games like Overwatch imbue the players with a huge influx of extra XP for their first win of the day; it isn't enough to keep things competitive with regular players but it is a nice, mostly inconsequential, boost. Modern day developers and publishers have seen both of these solutions and tossed them aside for something much more 'robust'.

Cue the reveal of Booster packs. Timed consumables that edit the rate at which the player earns experience by doubling their intake or maybe even tripling it. A consumable that is almost always only purchasable with real-world funds. So this fixes the problem, right? Those with free time deficits can now go toe-to-toe with the no-lifers. (à la moi.) Except not. As I said, these consumables are timed, they may only last a day or a week but eventually they will fade away. If the original issue was that the proposed player lacked the free time to play the game extensively, then they will just end up wasting the vast majority of their exp boost. What happens then? Well, then you're right back to square one, being trampled by the more experienced players. "But never fear" They tell us. "because you can just but another and get right back to it!"

When multiplayer games like 'Gotham City: Imposters', Ghost Recon: Wildlands and League of Legends start selling these xp boosts, they always justify it with the same rhetoric; "It's about player choice" or "It helps busy gamers keep up". But as we just deduced, that is inaccurate. The only way these packs could help keep less frequent gamers keep up with regular players would be if they purchased exp boosts constantly, in perpetuity and managed to play exactly half as much as their competition. This is, of course, assuming that the die hard players refuse to buy any exp boosts themselves, out of some strange desire for fair competition. What I'm trying to say is that this entire line of reasoning is, and always has been, bull. Consumable boosts have never been about fairness, and were never targeted at casual players either; They are laser focused on the dedicated gamers to keep them buying and lock them in as recurrent players through a little bit of sunk-cost fallacy.

Who remembers the double xp apocalypse back in 2011? For those unfamiliar, back before the release of Modern Warfare 3 Activison signed up some stereotypical junk food providers to offer double xp codes alongside their products. That means if you bought any Mountain Dew or Doritos from back in that time (and still have the packaging around for some inexplicable reason) you are  able to enjoy anywhere between 15-90 minutes of bonus xp rewards in MW3's online. At this time Activision were still riding off of the high that was the wide-spread success Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer, they knew this game was going to a hit amongst hard-core multiplayer nuts and wanted to cash in. Primarily with incredibly desperate microtransactions, but they got around to good-old fashioned promotions too. Little did they know how successful this particular promotion would be. People went out and bought gallons of Mountain Dew and barrel loads of Doritos, all in order to collect these codes up. When the game finally launched in November, People had days worth of double XP to spend on climbing through the ranks as quickly as possible. The related brands made 'stupid money' (as Michael Bay puts it) and Activision has teamed up for some sort of real-world brand deal every release since. These are the kinds of stories that you should remember the next time you hear some executive tell you that 'time savers' are designed to be in the best interest of the player.

If that was the only time that 'time saving' microtransactions were utilized I could happily ignore it. I am a particularly selfish creature at the end of the day, and competitive multiplayer games has never been my thing. Unfortunately, recent years have seen similar practises making their way to other types of games too. Forza have their 'time saver car packs' wherein players can forgo the progression of the main game and just buy every vehicle from the get go; Fallout 76 has it's repair kits that allow players to fix their gear immediately, shrugging away the effort of gathering resources and finding a workbench; and then there's Assassin's Creed Unity to Odyssey and their XP boosts, which function much how other games do. All of these microtransactions manage to skate past controversy on the thinly veiled pretense of: not 'technically' being pay-to-win. Which, I suppose, is fair. They just destroy any and all balancing, putting it in the hands of the players with the larger bank accounts but sure, it's not 'strictly' to pay to win.

I have spoken about greedy microtransaction practises before, but this has always been one that has got under my skin more than cosmetics or lootboxes. Maybe because of the fact that so few people identify these practises for the gluttonous cesspools they are. Or maybe because the instituters then have the audacity to try to defend themselves by turning the focus back on the us. "This is for your benefit. We did this all for you!". Whilst lootboxes are busy getting eviscerated on the public stage, no one will bother to cast a critical eye to these other microtransaction practises that have been around for so long that we have begrudgingly accepted them. Therefore these companies get to feel like they've gotten away with their nickle-and-diming and feel emboldened to go even further the next time. I have never partaken in this particular practises myself, but I do know others with fewer scruples who would say I am just being a cheapskate. Maybe I am. And maybe, I will refrain from purchasing games with such mechanics altogether and encourage others to do so too. Maybe, I will do my best to shine a spotlight on these shady deals whenever and wherever I see them pop up. Maybe, I will do any and everything in my power to deprive these gremlins of the capital they so crave. Afterall, it's all about player choice.