My thoughts on the recent outrage about ESO's monetization practices

Charon_on_Vacation

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

Jeffrey530

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Jeffrey530 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

A few people have asserted that ZOS will make ESO better and pay its devs better if they make more money.

Those people need to do some research and see that the two things do not have a direct connection.

Some companies may pay more when they can afford it, but most will just push the profits up instead, since they are publicly owned and thus want maximum income. Paying more for devs and development works against that.

Has anyone seen anything where ZOS said they would give everyone a raise if they sell more Crown Store items? What do you base your beliefs on for this view otherwise?

Lmao supporting the devs and the game doesn't necessarily mean there needs to be a literal raise in their pay whenever someone purchase a single crown store item. Yes they may as well be contracted and get a certain amount each month, but if the game makes more money it is an indication to the board/stakeholders they are doing a good job no? Perhaps it will help their career, keep the servers on longer so we can play and they have a job.

Why is it even an argument that more people paying more in any game is better or worse for the devs? They make games for profit after all.

Study business more. More income does not mean higher salaries in far too many cases.

They could double the Crown Store income and still pay people the same. Why would they have to pay more?

That is a fact across many types of businesses. It doesn't mean companies are evil, that is just the way things work. Few companies will pay more for anything if they don't have to do that.

Read my post again, I literally said it does not mean higher salaries (literal raise in their pay) for the devs, and my point is by buying more and supporting the game, it does not matter whether those funds directly go into the dev's pocket, it is equally important for the devs to have the stats to prove to the board that the game is still racking in an increasing profit so they can keep their jobs and we get to play.

So by making the game more profitable, we are also essentially supporting the devs EVEN if my 15000 crowns purchase does not go right into their pockets.

Jeffrey530

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

You can say the same about any sports,entertainment in general. People may not like it, but it is the reality and money is indeed an important if not the most important driving force for the industry to keep growing and improving on itself. Imagine just thinking 'passion' and 'didn't care about money' would get us from whatever eg. Tetrus to the current mmorpgs and a wide spectrum of other games.

Ultimately, as you said, it is all about expectations. In modern days without the massive investments, games of the scale of ESO would not exist. Then why would anyone invest in making by games? Because they predict they can rake in massive amount of money in return. Somehow players expect they not to try earn as much as possible.

In fact, I'd say the bunch making ESO are still relatively passionate than many other gaming studios. Look at the current mobile Gatcha games, they earn way more with much less effort put into game development.

Tetrus is still around, people are go back to their 'passionate' times if they really want to.

Charon_on_Vacation

Jeffrey530 wrote: »

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

You can say the same about any sports,entertainment in general. People may not like it, but it is the reality and money is indeed an important if not the most important driving force for the industry to keep growing and improving on itself. Imagine just thinking 'passion' and 'didn't care about money' would get us from whatever eg. Tetrus to the current mmorpgs and a wide spectrum of other games.

Ultimately, as you said, it is all about expectations. In modern days without the massive investments, games of the scale of ESO would not exist. Then why would anyone invest in making by games? Because they predict they can rake in massive amount of money in return. Somehow players expect they not to try earn as much as possible.

In fact, I'd say the bunch making ESO are still relatively passionate than many other gaming studios. Look at the current mobile Gatcha games, they earn way more with much less effort put into game development.

Tetrus is still around, people are go back to their 'passionate' times if they really want to.

keep growing, yes.
improving? no.
in ways to make money, yes.
but theres nothing i can say on that topic that steve jobs did not already say.
of course it is the same in all the other industries that are already in the hands of business, but you can't blame the people for becoming angry when business comes in, takes over and makes it a bad experience for everyone involved except for themselves.
the business didn't make WoW, FF, DAoC, insert any innovative game that shaped the future.
business makes CoD25, FIFA33, and so on.
i have the feeling you are not actually part of the industry and don't understand the process of making a game.
game dev changed from "that would be cool to do, what do i want to do?" as the first question to "how can we make money with it?" and this really is no exaggeration.

Jeffrey530

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

Jeffrey530 wrote: »

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

You can say the same about any sports,entertainment in general. People may not like it, but it is the reality and money is indeed an important if not the most important driving force for the industry to keep growing and improving on itself. Imagine just thinking 'passion' and 'didn't care about money' would get us from whatever eg. Tetrus to the current mmorpgs and a wide spectrum of other games.

Ultimately, as you said, it is all about expectations. In modern days without the massive investments, games of the scale of ESO would not exist. Then why would anyone invest in making by games? Because they predict they can rake in massive amount of money in return. Somehow players expect they not to try earn as much as possible.

In fact, I'd say the bunch making ESO are still relatively passionate than many other gaming studios. Look at the current mobile Gatcha games, they earn way more with much less effort put into game development.

Tetrus is still around, people are go back to their 'passionate' times if they really want to.

keep growing, yes.
improving? no.
in ways to make money, yes.
but theres nothing i can say on that topic that steve jobs did not already say.
of course it is the same in all the other industries that are already in the hands of business, but you can't blame the people for becoming angry when business comes in, takes over and makes it a bad experience for everyone involved except for themselves.
the business didn't make WoW, FF, DAoC, insert any innovative game that shaped the future.
business makes CoD25, FIFA33, and so on.
i have the feeling you are not actually part of the industry and don't understand the process of making a game.
game dev changed from "that would be cool to do, what do i want to do?" as the first question to "how can we make money with it?" and this really is no exaggeration.

Of course I am not lol I work in healthcare. I'm just a consumer of the industry, and I understand the intention and motive behind any innovation- profit.

There's no improvement in the industry? You must be joking, the new unreal engine looks great, as per many other new games this year( personally I enjoyed ' It Takes Two' with my partner)

What kind of logic is that, Wow, FF is as innovative as the first ever COD or Fifa (at least imo the early cods and fifa were actually fun), and all of them are businesses, unless Wow is somehow made by a ngo. Square Enix that developed FF is one if not the worst blood sucking developer/publishing in the industry, just look at all their gatcha games.

And the change of mentality is perfectly understandable and acceptable in modern days, just look at healthcare around the world, if you don't have money, in majority of countries you will get suboptimal healthcare. If something that is directly related to basic human rights are done that way, wouldn't it be sensible to re-adjust expectations in the entertainment industry?

Thavie

Square Enix that developed FF is one if not the worst blood sucking developer/publishing in the industry, just look at all their gatcha games.

And Bethesda basically gave birth to DLC by bringing up paid horse armour into a single player game. What's your point? FF isn't nearly as predatory as ESO is. Most of their mounts, pets, outfits come from playing the game with a cheaper sub.

MEBengalsFan2001

Raideen wrote: »

The outrage is real, and for good reason.

People fundamentally do not like having companies always reaching into their wallet/purse. And this is exactly what ESO does, its designed to.

Nowhere is it stated when someone purchases ESO that the majority of collectables are locked behind a pay wall, collectables that in the most popular MMORPG's in history are obtained for simply playing the game. And not just that, but collectables that can and often go beyond the price of an entire base game/expansion.

Nowhere is it stated when someone purchases ESO that the game by design manufacturers 'problems' and then sells solutions in the crown store. For example. The 420+ crafting mats that eat up storage. Rich Lambert himself said recently "though I would say I don't know how people live without craftbag" meaning the crafting bag as part of ESO+, a 15 dollar a month "subscription". If Rich believes the 'craft bag' is mandatory for gameplay, this mirrors what many have aid for years that its "mandatory" to enjoy the game and shuts down opposing commentary that "it's not mandatory".

People do not expect to buy a game, and then pay 15 bucks a month for a game only to be told that if they want a mount, a pet, a costume etc, that these are only obtainable for money, on top of the money already spent. It feels like double dipping.

TLDR: When people purchase a game, they expect to play that game and be able to obtain items in the game by playing the game that they see in promotional videos.

Consider this, as Einstein would say "a thought experiment". Imagine what ESO would look like in game, if you removed every mount, pet, skin, outfit, emote, memento, dye, personality, hairstyle, adornments, markings, facial hairs, polymorphs, houses, furnishings that are only obtainable in the crown store. These items showcase how little there is in the base game/chapters and how much additional money must be spent by the consumer to have "nice things".

People expect content when they buy a game, they dont expect to buy a game, then have to buy everything in game separately.

EDITED to finalize thoughts in some paragraphs above.

ESO items in the Crown Store are not that bad. Go play a Free MMO games that has a store and tell me which one is truly better. Even WOW has changed their tactics, because in game store items is where most MMOs now make their money. Memberships are not where companies make profit any more.

As for ESO+, you get crowns equal to the value you paid for your membership, in fact a higher value in crowns. I see no issues at all with ESO and how the developers are going about their crown store. I buy what I want when I want it and if there isn't anything there oh well.

Just like the daily login award. I prefer the crates but I know 2018 was its first year and I was on daily collecting the freebies and loved it. I still try to login daily for whatever is given each month. Some months I don't get anything because life happens.

ive_wonder

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

ESO items in the Crown Store are not that bad. Go play a Free MMO games that has a store and tell me which one is truly better. Even WOW has changed their tactics, because in game store items is where most MMOs now make their money. Memberships are not where companies make profit any more.

And if we compare ESO's cash shop with some mobile games it will look even better in comparison.
Maybe your comparison is not that good?

Kiralyn2000

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be

and still is / can be.

Just because all these cash shop items exist, doesn't mean people need to buy them.
(honestly, I'm confused by the "all these things to trick/take advantage of the New Player" comments, because I can't imagine a New Player rushing off to the cash shop to buy stuff. Especially not without looking for more info on some of them.)

Heck, if you played ESO like I played WoW back in the vanilla->Cataclysm era (buy expansions, pay subscription every month), it'd be roughly the same price as 15 years ago. Plus you'd have the monthly ESO+ crowns to play with. (yeesh, that's almost 20k/year if you keep up your sub.)



And many of the hobbies I've done or experienced in the past have been much more expensive than videogames.(and still are, inflation effects everything).
Don't even ask what stuff costs with my father's ***-scale model trains.
Boardgames have gone up to the $60-80-100+ range, and many of them are designed with expansions in mind (plus all the third-party extras like special-designed storage trays & part racks).
CCGs have always been a money pit.
And oh, boy, don't get me started on tabletop miniatures games (especially Games Workshop. Thankfully, I got over my GW habit in the mid-to-late 00's. Still have too many armies for too many games. )

ive_wonder

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be

and still is / can be.

Just because all these cash shop items exist, doesn't mean people need to buy them.
(honestly, I'm confused by the "all these things to trick/take advantage of the New Player" comments, because I can't imagine a New Player rushing off to the cash shop to buy stuff. Especially not without looking for more info on some of them.)

Heck, if you played ESO like I played WoW back in the vanilla->Cataclysm era (buy expansions, pay subscription every month), it'd be roughly the same price as 15 years ago. Plus you'd have the monthly ESO+ crowns to play with. (yeesh, that's almost 20k/year if you keep up your sub.)



And many of the hobbies I've done or experienced in the past have been much more expensive than videogames.(and still are, inflation effects everything).
Don't even ask what stuff costs with my father's ***-scale model trains.
Boardgames have gone up to the $60-80-100+ range, and many of them are designed with expansions in mind (plus all the third-party extras like special-designed storage trays & part racks).
CCGs have always been a money pit.
And oh, boy, don't get me started on tabletop miniatures games (especially Games Workshop. Thankfully, I got over my GW habit in the mid-to-late 00's. Still have too many armies for too many games. )

Regarding "all these things to trick/take advantage of the New Player" from what i understand controversy started from attempt by ZOS to market some unnessesary crown store items to new players in an advertisement somewhere.
Thing with those items, you can't even call them "convenience" items, those are more like a bottles of air with a price tag on it.
Crown store potions, respec scrolls, crown food, vampire bites/cures, experience scrolls (well, this one maybe has some value, but really, isn't levelling up on a dolmens like super fast?).
Obviously no one already playing the game would pay for those, so question - which audience that advertisement tried to target?

"Just because all these cash shop items exist, doesn't mean people need to buy them."
This is true, but players want to experience all ingame content if possible. With sub based games it's super easy, you get to experience 95% of the game content for a sub price.
With ESO ... some categories of items are locked behind crown store completely, if i'm not mistaken. So even if you pay the sub price for ESO, you still lose.

MEBengalsFan2001

ive_wonder wrote: »

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

ESO items in the Crown Store are not that bad. Go play a Free MMO games that has a store and tell me which one is truly better. Even WOW has changed their tactics, because in game store items is where most MMOs now make their money. Memberships are not where companies make profit any more.

And if we compare ESO's cash shop with some mobile games it will look even better in comparison.
Maybe your comparison is not that good?

ESO cash shop isn't all that much about skipping content like other games. Which is why I don't mind paying what I pay for items in the game crown store. I never bought any gems or respect tokens. It is on the player to do their research. We are living in the digital age where information is literally at our finger tips. There is no excuse for laziness and in ability to look up information that is readily available online.

Jeremy

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

Gaming used to be cheap? Back when I was a boy and took up the hobby it would cost me 70 bucks to buy a good game, and that was back in the 1980's. So I don't even want to imagine what that would cost in todays' terms, but probably at least triple that. You can buy ESO brand new off Amazon for 30 bucks, and it has mountains of more content.

And have you looked at Steam lately? There are probably hundreds of good games on there you can buy for a couple of bucks. So I would say games have definitely got cheaper.

SeaGtGruff

Back in my day, a new game for the Atari 2600 VCS cost anywhere from maybe $15 to $35 depending on the title, and those games were very primitive in terms of graphics and very limited in terms of how much game content they could squeeze into the ROM cartridges. Adjust those prices for today's economy and there's simply no comparison to today's games.

Charon_on_Vacation

Jeremy wrote: »

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

some people in this thread seem to forget that gaming as a hobby was actually quite cheap and could be.
its just that the industry changed.
it was a industry of passionate people that made games because they wanted to and didnt care too much about the money involved.
it was doing well, and because of that, business people started coming in, not because they had passion for games, but because they wanted to make a lot of money, so they slowly started to change the industry in what it is today.
you can be sure, almost all the money the industry makes it not needed to make the games.
if you spend 10 dollars on a costume, 90% of that is going somewhere else and has nothing to do with supporting the game, the devs or the industry.
its understandable that people don't like that concept.
just imagine going into a bakery, paying 20 dollars for bread and the baker gets 2 dollars, while the thug that holds a knife to his throat gets the rest.
that is what the industry is today and leads to a lot of problems, not only in terms of costs.
nobody should be surprised that zenimax, which is a big player, uses the same methods as any of the big corps to make as much money as possible.

Gaming used to be cheap? Back when I was a boy and took up the hobby it would cost me 70 bucks to buy a good game, and that was back in the 1980's. So I don't even want to imagine what that would cost in todays' terms, but probably at least triple that. You can buy ESO brand new off Amazon for 30 bucks, and it has mountains of more content.

And have you looked at Steam lately? There are probably hundreds of good games on there you can buy for a couple of bucks. So I would say games have definitely got cheaper.

but you got all the content that was made.
do you really believe the few hours of work that go into making and implementing a costume are worth the money?
you said, you paid 70 bucks. how would you feel as a kid if you started the game and all you got was a character that could were 7 outfits and wouldn't even move?
now, just to be clear, they money they earn from that is not meant to improve the game. if it were, it would at least be a bit more understandable, but its not. that is just one of the issues.
we are talking about the monetization here. of course you can get a lot of games for cheap, and why is that?
its either made from a smaller group of devs or even dev, which is somewhat the way it used to be, or they are reduced in price because how flooded the market is, which has nothing to do with the monetization.
distribution today is a lot easier that it was. A LOT.
i don't know how you could come up with the conclusion that games today would have to be more expensive, if you know how tech and dev works then and now.
we can talk in private dms to exchange professional experiences in the industry, if you want to.

Kiralyn2000

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Back in my day, a new game for the Atari 2600 VCS cost anywhere from maybe $15 to $35 depending on the title, and those games were very primitive in terms of graphics and very limited in terms of how much game content they could squeeze into the ROM cartridges. Adjust those prices for today's economy and there's simply no comparison to today's games.

Yeah, it's always 'fun' playing with the Inflation Adjuster webpage.

Atari 2600 came out in 1977. Adjusted prices:
Console: $199 --> $912
Game: $30 --> $137

NES came out in 1983
Console: $199 -> $555
Game: $60 -> $167

(and then there's the scanned ads for SNES games on Reddit - they didn't have standard pricing, so the "big games" were up there. Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, $70; Final Fantasy 3, $80...)

---

And yeah, those games didn't have DLC/etc. Two of the main reasons the companies started going for that stuff were 1) they held PS1-PS4 era games at $50 and then $60 much longer than inflation would have suggested, development prices kept going up, they had to get more from somewhere - expansions & DLC it is; and 2) used console games. With Gamestop/etc selling used games as quickly as a week or two after launch for $5 less, with the devs getting 0% of the sale price, again - they needed some way to tack a revenue source to that. DLC that you had to pay them directly for was perfect - Gamestop/etc couldn't resell that.

Of course, once that showed how successful it was, there was no going back. /shrug


edit: and development prices keep going up. Even ignoring the current inflation surge - people demand 4k textures, 7.1 audio, more content. All that stuff takes work. And sure, they're trying to use the PS5/XBoxWhyDidn'tTheyDoSomethingLessConfusing generation shift to make $70 the 'accepted' thing, but that still doesn't cover the higher costs of production unless you're a zillion-seller. And of course, the "omg so expensive" crew will yell at any price change.