Buying your rewards

He's hungry for your money

Some people out there say you can't buy your way to happiness, success, or fame. If the past few years in gaming have been weighing in on this idea, they seem to be of the opposite opinion. Ever since at least Bad Company 2 I've seen scenarios in which DLC has had a route to go in which lets you unlock content. Online this triggers disputes and hatred towards people who don't deserve their unlocks, and to the company that allowed such to go on, meanwhile... the real world continues to not really raise a finger at it, or may even give in and buy stuff. You wont hear people actually hating each other for this kind of thing, and... well I'll get back to that point in a moment. Now we're seeing Mortal Kombat X possibly pulling one of the weirdest shows of this: Buyable fatalities. Yeah... that's just plain weird. Personally speaking, I sit with mixed feelings on this whole subject, but lean towards that area of never buying this junk. At least not in cases like Battlefield. However its not because people with money and a busy life suck, its because of a much bigger problem I see in the industry and one I'm kind of disappointed in people for not being more vocal against it.

Now in theory I don't have a problem with people buying unlocks. That's their business and I want that to be as clear as daylight. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and telling you that you must throw money down to unlock cosmetics instead of beating it the old fashion way. That old fashion way is there, and unless its clearly done in a pathetic grind (which is happening and I'll get to that later) there is no reason to fuss at Micro-transactions. And what if you're worried about your friends or other players? Well I'll put it this way: you're not their mother. You have no business telling them what to do with their money or how to play the game they bought. Not everybody interested in sub-zero's classic costume, or that final tier scope of their favorite sniper rifle in Battlefield, has the time to master whatever challenge it requires. Some people surprisingly want to play the game for fun, a concept that seems to be surprisingly foreign to some gamers. Sometimes unlocking is the fun, and sometimes its just a chore, and if there's a way for the player to make that call and dodge the chore then I say "good, more power to you!".

This situation of buying unlocks isn't anything ground breaking either, there used to be entire businesses based around selling you a way to unlock your games or make them do weird stuff that put you in a position of unusual advantage. I knew them by the names of GameShark, and CodeBreaker (which I will state is a bit different than selling DLC cheat codes, which I dislike). I also discovered from some gamers, like a little guy known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, that such things have existed since the 80's era of gaming. Is he suddenly less of a gamer for using it, even though he's famous for gaming related video content? Does that disqualify everything I did here, and all my enjoyment in gaming, because I decided to goof off with infinite ammo in Killzone? Does that really effect your life in any negative way that some random guy has decided to buy a Fatality coin and use it in some match for a nice ending flair to a victory? I'd hope the answer to all of those questions is no. Going back to what I was saying earlier, you don't see people treating each other badly for this kind of thing because the person that does it looks like a complete idiot (on top of coming off as a control freak and/or elitist). In the real world, gaming is just what it is: Its an entertaining and artsitic form of media. Its not something to be taken so seriously that you convict and degrade people over it.

Well this was quite nostalgic for me

I come very much in with a mindset similar to what this video says about PvZ:GW. I wasn't always in that mindset though. Back when bad company 2 did this, I looked at it as an offering, something that wasn't there before. Now after many games with various branches to grind up, large amounts of guns with trivial stat tweaks dangled in front of you as "rewards", and a combination of better or crazier degrees of this going on, I can safely say I see that the problem was from the very base of the game's design. Instead of thanking Bad Company 2, I want to condemn it and many of its brethren for installing a ridiculous F2P type system in a retail game. Unfortunately its well integrated and this point, and you're more likely to see backlash against a game without progression than the other way around. Progression systems are deemed a welcome standard and are considered to be at the heart of a modern AAA shooter experience. People love to chase their carrots on a stick, and when they get tired of it they become those that fall into the gratitude trap mentioned in the video.

However I want to ask, in what way is it at all different from a F2P grind? You can name some small differences. There's a rent system for free users in many F2P games, where as an unlocked gun in COD is kept. However that's probably the most significant, well that and the fact that F2P will always have purely premium content and most retail games will let you grind or "earn" your stuff in some way without pay. However outside of that its the exact same thing. You're spending hours and hours and hours chasing after those points to get some weapon you may not even like in the end. Then on top of that you usually have minor contrived achievement pieces. Its hours of work and dedication to grind up certain things. None of it is about skill or that feeling you get when you used to discover something in an older game. Its not like beating those challenge modes in timesplitters, it more like the rate at which you get them per the time you spent on the game. That's yet another reason why I mock those who act like its a criminal offense to buy their way around the system. They sure love making it sound like they actually achieved something and other guys are just free loaders, but the real fact is all they're doing is running a hamster wheel that was built into the system. One that was later offered a way out by money, and I'm not sure why its a crime to say "enough with the wheel" and get off it. When F2P guys do this, they intentionally build the game to make it less desirable to sit and wait, that's how they get their money. So why on earth are people protecting the unpleasant thing while degrading the artificial answer? It makes no sense. This is IMO wrong for a retail market and I'm personally fed up with it and refuse to support the practice. Under that case, maybe I will ask that those buying these unlocks stop and consider what they're doing.

He "earned" all his BF4 guns though! Now for the attachments...

I will say I'm slightly more lenient to those games where the unlocks are done in a normal old fashion style. I loved unlocking the shortcut piece to modnation racers because there wasn't a grind but rather a real and frustrating challenge to get the content, and I didn't want any part of that. While I'd have preferred a free cheat code, its nice that I at least had an option there and yet the game wasn't exactly going F2P on me. Completionists could still freely run after their stuff without paying, and good job to those who get everything and truly earned it. Like-wise, I still love well paced or well spread normal cosmetic DLC. I already discussed that stuff here. That... I'm totally fine with. Its just I'm done with full on and shameless grinding. I actually like playing and experimenting with what the game has to offer, and not having to work for it to the point of frustration or boredom I don't want grinding to be there to begin with, I don't want extra money to be pressured in order to play the basic game, and I don't want people to demonize each other over their own preferences and play styles. That's really not too much to ask for considering older shooters and pre-microtransaction days went along just fine.

Many are bringing up the idea of a dreaded gaming crash over this idea, and I can't really blame them. There's a lot of things to be tired of that this one particular thing brings up, and when consumer fatigue hits on a major scale that's when a crash forms. I'm hoping that's not the case, but maybe its what is needed to fix this mindset that grinding and premium fixes just so you don't have to work to have your fun are somehow the norm. I know that personally I as an individual am finished with this particular nonsense. The last game I played with this kind of thing (actually PvZ) was free, and before that maybe The Last of Us (PS3 version) which has an interesting take on this DLC issue, but still a bad one I didn't put a single dime into. I haven't financially supported a game, nor the DLC, for a while and I am actively raising some skepticism for the upcoming Battlefront because of things like this. As things go on, I'm finding more and more justification in being excited for the simple things like R&C, the remastered Legend of Kay game, or catching up on old games like the copy of Jurassic The Hunted I have coming in the mail. If it wasn't for things like those, well I don't know what I'd do. Gaming has become more of a minefield for this sort of thing, watching carefully for what you do and do not want to work through or what principles you hold closer, and eventually its possible that enough people will look at that field and decide its not worth even bothering to touch.

Or maybe parts of my childhood are just coming back in weird ways...