Another day another treatise on the awfulness of modern day video game microtransactions, however, this time it's coming from an official report with legislative power behind it. (A whole report? Golly.) Once again, UK Parliament (That's my home team.) have expressed interest in managing the avarice of games companies through restrictions and regulations. I have exposited my opinion on this before, and if you read my last blog on the matter you will know that I have given up all hope of this situation being solved amicably. Government supervision is the last thing anyone needs in a creative field, but honestly, how are they going to taint the medium any worse than the greedy big corpo's already have?
If you go online to Parliament.UK, you can find an extensive report, apparently the work of 9 months, dedicated to "immersive and addictive technologies". This report defines 'immersive techonogies' as experiences that occupy the realm of digital or augmented reality; essentially meaning VR games and games like Pokemon GO and Ninantic's other cash grabs. They believe that the 'immersion' factor of these games makes them more likely to have an influence on behaviour. Interesting stuff, but I wanna focus on that second one, because that is where Parliament really starts to go for the game's industries' jugular.
'Addictive' technologies is rather self explanatory, referring to products or devices that people either have, or perceive to have, a dependency on. This goes into 'gaming disorder' and 'engagment metrics', all subjects for other blogs, but in Section 3 we get to the juicy stuff: "Financial harms of Immersive technologies." Whenever microtransactions are bought into the world of gaming, the usual arguments start up about; value, pricing and pay-to-win. (or P2W) Lately, as we've moved into the world of rampant monetisation, video games companies have attempted to pooh-pooh any potential backlash with carefully considered statements. "It's just cosmetics" is the, much parroted, phrase that adorns the press release of many an online storefront, whilst "They're time savers" or "It's about player choice." has begun to seep it's vile way into single player games too. Oftentimes gamers are torn between these artificial battle lines that developers have set up, waging between "It's not pay to win if it's just about looks!" and "It's not 'player choice' if the choice is between a fun game and a boring one". (Just look at the recent backlash regarding Fallout 76 and it's fridge to get an example of that.)
Parliament's report will hopefully put an end to much of that debate, as they delve into the murky world of customer manipulation in it's pure form. I will follow their example and establish for everyone that there are real life consequences to systems like these. A while ago I wrote a blog about a family who's children had emptied their parent's bank accounts on FIFA Ultimate team, all wasted on lootboxes for the promise of securing Lionel Messi (Which, due to FUT's lootbox setup, they never did.) Parliament offer a similar tale that pertains to a game that was an absolute blast-to-the-past for me, Runescape. The Report reads "We were contacted by a member of the public whose adult son built up considerable debts, reported to be in excess of £50,000, through spending on microtransactions in British company Jagex’s online game RuneScape."
From this, we can see that people have fallen for the trap of microtransactions before in incredibly serious ways. This is the reason why people gawk when companies like Respawn stand up for their ludicrous price points by saying; "the majority of people never buy them anyway!" That isn't the point. The point is that there as those that do and these people can be abused whilst playing the game. If you're comfortable with creating a product that has the potential/intent to harm or abuse your consumers, then maybe you shouldn't be working in creative fields. "But what can be done?" is the question that must be asked. "Surely if there were ways to cut down on abuse then games companies would have done so!" And they would have, if it wouldn't end up cutting into their bottom line.
The makers of Candy Crush Saga, King, spoke out against accusations that they were complicit in the fleecing and exploitation of it's customers. "we would send an e-mail out when a player’s spend was $250 in a week for the first time. It was an e-mail that said, “We notice you are enjoying the game a lot at the moment. Are you sure you are happy with this?” […] We got back, “I wouldn’t spend the money if I didn’t have it” and things like, “I’m fine, please leave me alone”. We felt it was too intrusive so we stopped doing that." That is all they have done for customer protection, by the by. So that's nice. King sent people emails for a bit until some people complained and then they resolved themselves of all protective responsibilities. (What heroes)
As it just so happens, there is a tool that would be very effective of limiting the exposure of this kind of content to those vulnerable to it. (I.e. Kids and those susceptible to problem spending.) You see, a while back, the Games Industry developed this thing called a 'ratings board', that would provide content guidelines for developers, shops and consumers. (All as a bid to prevent Government oversight.) With the stipulations that this board dictates (I'm specifically referring to PEGI, here) Video games that feature gambling must be labelled as such and be assigned an '18' badge. This would mean that children would not be exposed to the thrill of gamb- I mean loot bo- I mean 'Surprise mechanics' at a young age. (If you feel I was being condescending in that paragraph. Well spotted.)
However, the 'age rating' system was proven pointless after NBA 2K20 unveiled their gambling themed trailer and still got away with a '3' rating. ("Sports games have always been rated 3, why should this one be any different") The part that really gets me is, even if we buy the age old "It isn't technically gambling because you can't cash out!", excuse, the trailer still clearly shows that the game features gambling-esque imagery, which is grounds for a 'Teen' rating under Pegi's own stipulation. Heck, YouTuber YongYea pointed out that Pokemon Red and Blue was labelled 'Teen' for that very reason, and that game didn't even have any microtransactions! (Just an ingeniously clever marketing ploy to get you to buy the game twice.)
I would encourage interested readers to take a look at the article through this link Here and see just what it is that Parliament has to say about the greedy aspects of the gaming industry. (Again, the juicy parts are in section 3.) I'm not yet sure if anything will actually come of it (Especially with the politically tumultuous time that the UK is suffering through right now.) But it's always fun to see someone shine a flashlight under the friendly facade of AAA gaming and watch the cockroaches scurry. As you have likely noticed, this is topic I could talk about until the sky falls down (Falling Skies; great show! Kinda tapered off in the later series...) but I find that situations like this are best left for the observer to look through and come to their own conclusions. Besides, after reading through all of the industries' clandestine action and motivations, I need a bath.
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