The other day I hopped into my car and before I could connect my phone to the car stereo I heard the radio. Big Sean was playing and I thought about his song IDFWU. I thought about all the things I do not fuck with and decided the world needs to know because I haven't told them in a while. Today, I'm not fucking with microtransactions.
Micro transactions, they're the little things you buy in a game. Maybe you're playing a free to play game and want to pay .99 cents to upgrade your character quicker. That's a micro transaction and that's cool when you paid nothing for the game. The problem arises when the game stops being fun unless you're paying to win.
I loved GTA Online, I mean, I put hours into it. Ask anyone you know, I was hanging around doing missions in classic vehicles. I had that long money. Then I took a break and things went sideways. I came back into the game and the price of new items went up. I didn't sweat it, I got my T-20 and two Zentorinos. I was still balling. Heist came, and things costed a little more, but heist brought an increased payout and it was all good. No problem. If you didn't want to buy a shark card, you didn't have to because payouts were fair.
Then came the CEOs, the gun running, the smuggling and everything else. At this point if you weren't spending real life cash you weren't getting anything without ridiculous amounts of grinding. At least seven million on a yacht, that's cool, wasn't going to buy one anyway. I hate water. But lets say you want an explosive sniper rifle to even the field. That's going to cost you. You need $125,000 to purchase and convert the weapon, but to convert it you need to access a mobile operations center which will run you no less than 1.25 Million. What about a 10 million dollar plane? Want a lowrider? Gonna cost you a few hundred thousand to make customization available and a another couple hundred thousand to make upgrades. See, it's a slippery slope when you need to pay millions to access weapons. Maybe you want to spend that much on a motorcycle, because you can now. The answer to all the fan complaints, buy a shark card. I could buy a bunch of shark cards and call it a day, because I don't have time to grind away for hours at a time.
NBA 2K18 dropped and people can't stop talking about how everything in the game costs VC. New clothes, new shoes, new accessories, new haircuts, new packs for my team and the list goes on. The problem arises when you see that they cut the payouts for just about everything. There's no longer a difficulty modifier so if you're playing on Hall of Fame you're doing it for yourself because you're getting paid the same as the guy playing on rookie. All while they shove advertisements in your face.
What about games like Solitaire? You can't put a microtransaction in Solitaire. You're wrong. Microsoft did it and for $1.49 you can upgrade to premium. Now available for Scrabble as well. What the hell is even premium Scrabble or Solitaire?
EA Gets a lot of shit, and they should. But, I will give them credit because when people played FIFA 15 and NHL 15 and saw the transactions. They cut back a lot. You still need to unlock dreadlocks, but that's a rant for another day. Take Two essentially doubled down. They're the real villains in this, making it seem like it's normal. If you aren't aware Take Two is the parent company for both 2K and Rockstar. The biggest criminals in this scheme.
I don't mind if Overwatch is selling lootboxes for 99 cents. That's no big deal. I would have a problem if that were the only way to receive lootboxes other than some tiring means like every 100 kills or something. Microtransactions aren't bad but when you build your game so the options are suffer or pay it's not right.
If my options for GTA Online are to pay $100 real cash, suffer as passive mode fails to work and some finally irresponsible adult drops bomb from 3 million dollar jet, or just not play. I'm just not going to play. I could buy a shark card, but with that money I can buy a ton of other stuff. There's a THQ Humble Bundle right now where I can get 10 games for $8, that's $92 left. Do you know how many games you can get with $92? A lot. It's just not worth it for me to pay $100 on top of what I've already paid.
I like DLC, that usually brings some cool new content to the game. Entire maps, new characters, and it rarely cost you $20 unless it's some mega add on that is also sold as a standalone game. DLC is fine by me. Microtransactions aren't cool and I don't fuck with them.
You should buy Darrell's Book, watch him on the Blerds Online YouTube Channel or The CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts.
