Commerce - Microtransactions

How Has Microtransactions influenced Games Development?

While there is base content in games, developers can choose to further expand the experience by adding in additional content. Microtransactions are additional purchasable content that are included in videogames that provides additional content or access to the content. This is a practice added in videogames that can help developers make back more money to help repay the initial cost of developing the games in the first place, ranging from Lootboxes, Downloadable Content, Season Passes and in-game currency.

Microtransactions can be implemented poorly however as Call of Duty’s Black Ops 4 has gathered negative attention due to their addition of microtransactions. (Gravelle, 2018) points out about how microtransactions have gotten worse in the game which could possibly lead as an influence for future Call of Duty games to follow the same path. A twitter user known as ‘@MacMicMar’ tweeted in 2018 that he unlocked all of the items in the game that was available, costing him around 100,000 COD points which calculates to around £700 being spent to unlock all of the items in the game (without including the price of the base game that needs to be purchased on top of it) (Gravelle, 2018). From this article, it is clear that Black Ops 4’s microtransactions are designed to force players to spend a large amount of money to unlock in-game items. This negative attention could make developers take consideration of implementing microtransactions in their games to avoid receiving backlash similar to the Call of Duty game, or even follow that system to make as much money for their games as possible. Games could possibly be designed to force players into spending actual money to give them extra content or benefit them in game.