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[Fantastapotamus]

So unsurprisingly EA announced it'll bring microtransactins to PvZ Garden Warfare. I know, big shock right? Even though I couldn't really care less about PvZ and, as far as I can tell, this seems to be like Valve handles MTAs in Team Fortress (I game I dearly love), this article from Kotaku shocked me a bit:

Microtransactions Coming To Garden Warfare This Week. Thank Goodness.

Now I know, I know. We all hate Kotaku, they are the worst etc. blablablabla. But that's not it. As I said, Valve handles it the same right? Well, other then the part were TF2 is Free 2 Play and does not cost 30$. But let's even ignore this. My main problem is not that author Mike Fahey is fine witch MTAs in Garden Warfare. It's the part where he is thankfull for it and, according to himself "mildley begged for it" in his review of the game. Really? Fucking really?

If you don't want to klick on the link, look at this:

If I focused on the game for a couple of hours, I could probably earn 40,000 or so. These coins are used to purchase sticker packs, which offer cosmetic items, weapon upgrades and resources, as well as multi-part stickers that unlock the game's alternate character types when completed.

I've been playing on and off since launch, and I've unlocked four variant characters. As of the recent Zomboss Down free expansion, there are 48. So yeah, I could use a little help.

A little help, huh? This isn't "a little help". EA is "solving" a problem that they PURPOSEFULLY created and are now charging money to "help you". Would you be thankfull if I sold you a crutch after I broke your leg? Yeah, probably not.
If a system doesn't allow you to unlock stuff in a reasonable pace, you should critize that, NOT be thankfull if you can pay money to bypass it.

Imagine if there were bosses in Dark Souls that could not be beaten by using magic. Sucks to be a scorcerer then. You probably could try again and again and beat the boss after hours but why bother? Look, From Software is selling a "Beat this boss" DLC, for just 99 Cents! Awesome! Thanks From Software!

Fucking hell. Is this where we're at? Thanking publishers for letting us give them more money?

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

Oh good, I was starting to stubbornly think Kotaku was okay. I much prefer being justified in disliking them. I thought it was a sarcastic title at first but... no, that's genuine gratitude. Glad I didn't click.

 

[SwiftDeath]

Eh the kotaku writer in question seems a bit too enthusiastic about giving EA money to unlock game progress but I've thus far only heard good things about PVZ GW's Mattricks and rate of unlock so it's not too bad

 

[McBacon]

Thanks EA for letting me pay to fix the problem that, uh, EA made!

This insane logic, and bizarre Stockholm syndrome response, is how the even more pernicious microtransactions will sneak through.

 

[Bessy67]

That guy is easily the worst player in the entire world if he's been playing since launch and only unlocked 4 character variants. You can easily get 50-75k coins per hour of play, and 40k gets you a new character. Unless by "on and off" he means he's only played 5 or 6 hours since launch.

 

[Odrion]

Oh good, I was starting to stubbornly think Kotaku was okay.

Never think that way again: http://loltaku.tumblr.com/.

 

[erpg]

I'll be thankful when videogames put so much importance on filling bars and unlocks that I'll have to pay someone to play it for me. That's a future I'm looking forward to.

 

[TheHall]

Devil's Advocate here: I also happily enjoyed the micro transactions in Mass Effect 3 MP.

Plenty of people who didn't use it, but it were the people that DID use the system that financed 4 free expansion packs for that "tacked on" Multiplayer.

I probably spend a good $200 on Mass Effect 3 booster packs and i'd do it again.

With that investment i could comfortably play Platinum Games that had a good time/reward ratio to naturally grow my arsenal.

/Devil's advocate.


TL;DR

Micro transactions are the devil and EA steals all our monies!

 

[Com_Raven]

I know people will give me flack for it, but I do think for Garden Warfare specifically (so yes, I am talking about this specific instance), Micro-transactions are a good idea.

You can unlock all the customization options through gameplay, but if you don't want to do that, you can pay.

And the best part: Thanks to this - and much like with Mass Effect 3, from which this model was copied - it means that ALL players get Free Maps, so there is no splitting the user base here. That is a huge bonus, especially for any retail shooter not called CoD, BF or Halo, as those often struggle with smaller install bases in the first place.

To me, that is win-win (and yeah, I bought some packs in ME3 myself).

 

[Bessy67]

I'll be thankful when videogames put so much importance on filling bars and unlocks that I'll have to pay someone to play it for me. That's a future I'm looking forward to.

Don't people do that already in MMOs?

 

[Shanlei91]

If I focused on the game for a couple of hours, I could probably earn 40,000 or so.

You can easily get 40,000 coins in 30 minutes or less. And that's if you're a terrible player. Is he spending hours staring at the title screen?

 

[DocSeuss]

It should be noted that Fahey's Kotaku's online/MMO guy, so his preferences frequently seem to diverge from our opinions.

I hardly think one dude's article is enough to dismiss an entire site. If I avoided all websites that had opinions I disagreed with, the only thing I'd ever do on the internet is visit Old Man Murray every day and sigh a little.

Worth noting that I just freelanced a piece for them and they were nothing but fantastic to me. But I sought them out for freelancing 'cause I've liked 'em for years. It's not some massive opinion change on my end. Do I take issue with some of their writers? Yup. Fahey's not one of them, though.

 

[Marcel]

Good ole apologist Kotaku. Countdown to Jason linking me to something where they are 'tough' on game companies.

 

[Anion]

You can easily get 40,000 coins in 30 minutes or less. And that's if you're a terrible player. Is he spending hours staring at the title screen?

Eh, I would say and hour max for a less than mid ranking player. 30 min or less for a good player.

Like I've been saying, I feel like little kids will fall for this the most.

 

[Goodacre0081]

im guessing these reviewers don't pay for MTA's out of their own pocket? maybe that should change, we might see different scores.

 

[LTWood12]

Guys, I'm so thankful that my local tire shop let me buy new tires from them. The fact that the owners left shattered glass all over our local streets was an inconvenience, but they've made up for it by selling us new tires.

 

[Salvor.Hardin]

Guess the writer is completely oblivious to the intention of regressive ingame economies.

 

[Marcel]

im guessing these reviewers don't pay for MTA's out of their own pocket? maybe that should change, we might see different scores.

The article is just conveying that the IAPs are coming. It's not clear if reviewers are provided a cache of IAP money for their review or not (at least as far as I know). It wouldn't surprise me if they were though.

Guess the writer is completely oblivious to the intention of regressive ingame economies.

Mike Fahey writes reviews for Doritos and Twinkies for Kotaku. He's probably oblivious to a lot of things.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

Anyone who says it takes forever to unlock characters either has not put any significant time in with the game and/or is not good at it.

It takes 2 games, TWO games, of Gardens & Graveyards to get around 20-30,000 coins. You can get like 3 kills and still easily get over 10,000 coins.

 

[jschreier]

Good ole apologist Kotaku. Countdown to Jason linking me to something where they are 'tough' on game companies.

Fahey is allowed to voice whatever opinions he'd like. And if you only knew half of what we've been through with video game publishers over the past few months, you'd know why I'm laughing out loud at the idea that someone would ever call us "apologist."

 

[SteveWinwood]

If he wrote the article saying all games should be free and that they finance each one with cosmetic micro transactions that would be a fun and interesting read (I'm not saying I'd agree with that), but he wrote a thing begging ea to give him more ways to satisfy his ocd that they are intentionally trying to fluster with high costs in the first place.

 

[Kerned]

Fahey is allowed to voice whatever opinions he'd like. And if you only knew half of what we've been through with video game publishers over the past few months, you'd know why I'm laughing out loud at the idea that someone would ever call us "apologist."

He's allowed to voice whatever opinions he likes, and others are allowed to form whatever opinions of him that they like.

 

[Delta Assault]

Man, EA sure is a pal. They're always helping out the gamer with these pesky problems...

 

[chrominance]

That guy is easily the worst player in the entire world if he's been playing since launch and only unlocked 4 character variants. You can easily get 50-75k coins per hour of play, and 40k gets you a new character. Unless by "on and off" he means he's only played 5 or 6 hours since launch.

Weirdly, this is my biggest issue with the Kotaku piece, because it's this kind of information (40k per character) that helps me decide whether EA has engineered the game to waste his time and he's just completely clueless, or he's actually just a F2P whale type who is happy to spend money if it saves him even twenty minutes.

There's a discrepancy here because you say 50-70k per hour, and Fahey's saying 40k per couple of hours. So I'm still not sure whether Fahey's a whale or clueless, but at least now I have an idea of how much the items cost in game.

 

[Bsigg12]

People who can't put significant time into the game because of life seem like the ones targeted for the micro transactions. I still feel there is nothing wrong with then offering coin packs because I earn coins very easily and in such amounts that I wouldn't need to ever use this method.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Now I know, I know. We all hate Kotaku, they are the worst etc. blablablabla. But that's not it. As I said, Valve handles it the same right? Well, other then the part were TF2 is Free 2 Play and does not cost 30$.

TF2 was not free to play when they introduced the item shop. The F2P part came later.

How about Counter-Strike Global Offensive? That's a paid game with microtransactions just like PvZ Garden Warfare. In fact, Valve's implementation is worse than EA's because Valve keeps dropping you crates and tells you to pay $2 to open one or you will not actually get anything. EA just gives you the option of paying or playing to get points.

 

[LilJoka]

A little help, huh? This isn't "a little help". EA is "solving" a problem that they PURPOSEFULLY created and are now charging money to "help you". Would you be thankfull if I sold you a crutch after I broke your leg? Yeah, probably not.
If a system doesn't allow you to unlock stuff in a reasonable pace, you should critize that, NOT be thankfull if you can pay money to bypass it.

So much fact.

 

[waitwhat42]

I left Kotaku a few years ago and never looked back. I see they're still in the business of writing inane, crazy bullshit.

Edit: spelling is hard

 

[Akuun]

I think Cryptolocker uses the same marketing philosophy. Makes a problem for you, then offers you a deal to fix it.

 

[jschreier]

He's allowed to voice whatever opinions he likes, and others are allowed to form whatever opinions of him that they like.

Oh, of course. But to call us "apologist" shows some serious ignorance about Kotaku, the games press, and the video game industry in general.

 

[Mman235]

Jumping for joy at being able to pay to skip playing a game, and having no clue or insight about how the game was intentionally broken to accommodate that? Yep that's Games Journalism alright.

 

[spindoctor]

I can't tell if this is a deliberately contrarian, devil's advocate kind of piece or whether it's actually sincere. You only have 4 out of 48 heroes unlocked because EA put those unlocks behind a long grind. To thank them for letting you buy your way out of the artificial grind is insane.

 

[nelchaar]

Clicked on this hoping it was sarcasm.

Nope.

Nothing to do here.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

TF2 was not free to play when they introduced the item shop. The F2P part came later.

How about Counter-Strike Global Offensive? That's a paid game with microtransactions just like PvZ Garden Warfare. In fact, Valve's implementation is worse than EA's because Valve keeps dropping you crates and tells you to pay $2 to open one or you will not actually get anything. EA just gives you the option of paying or playing to get points.

That's a fair point. And if somebody out there would thank Valve for doing that, I'd be just as furious about it.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I tried to post a comment, but it wouldn't allow me without creating an account. This is what I said:

​"This is fucking bizarre logic, and people like you are the reason publishers try to crowbar micro-transactions (the term 'micro' isn't vaguely truthful in a lot of situations) into as many full-price games as possible. When writers start *thanking* publishers for letting them buy progress is when I truly fear for the future of my favourite hobby."

J. Schreier, you seem like a really great guy and an actual journalist who tries to research things and convey opinions fairly and properly, but I really hate the rest of Kotaku.

 

[LTWood12]

Fahey is allowed to voice whatever opinions he'd like. And if you only knew half of what we've been through with video game publishers over the past few months, you'd know why I'm laughing out loud at the idea that someone would ever call us "apologist."

That's fair. Though judging from the tone of the article, I would imagine he knew the exact reaction he'd get for writing that article. The title of the article is anything but subtle. He's absolutely entitled to his opinion. As long as he doesn't complain about reader's reaction to it then whatever.

You've been doing great work by the way Jason. I'm a fan.

 

[soultron]

Good ole apologist Kotaku. Countdown to Jason linking me to something where they are 'tough' on game companies.

Out of fairness, can we have a link to where you're cherrypicking that quote from? Context is key.

 

[Alista]

Have to wonder if they'd be happy to fork out money for micro transactions if it were their own cash they were spending on these games and not promo code unlocks from the publishers or something they can just claim back on expenses.

 

[Chocolate & Vanilla]

Came expecting sarcasm. Did not get.

 

[Haunted]

Deplorable.

 

[Bessy67]

I can't tell if this is a deliberately contrarian, devil's advocate kind of piece or whether it's actually sincere. You only have 4 out of 40 heroes unlocked because EA put those unlocks behind a long grind. To thank them for letting you buy your way out of the artificial grind is insane.

Long grind my ass. You get 2000 coins just for finishing a team vanquish match, another 500 if you win, and another 500-2000 depending on how you did during the match. And that takes about 5 minutes. You can easily get 15-20K credits in one 10-15 minute gardens and graveyards match as well.

 

[Goodacre0081]

The article is just conveying that the IAPs are coming. It's not clear if reviewers are provided a cache of IAP money for their review or not (at least as far as I know). It wouldn't surprise me if they were though.

this is why I seek the opinions of my peers instead of the gaming press. their real world experience is based off being an actual consumer.

 

[Lothars]

So much fact.

I can't tell if this is a deliberately contrarian, devil's advocate kind of piece or whether it's actually sincere. You only have 4 out of 48 heroes unlocked because EA put those unlocks behind a long grind. To thank them for letting you buy your way out of the artificial grind is insane.

The grind is not insane, the game gets you a fair number of coins per match. I wish people would look at facts instead of blowing this out of proportion. I think real money buying packs is fine since its just like the way mass effect handled it.

 

[KJRS_1993]

I dislike this.
The progression of full-priced games should not be crippled just to justify updating it with Mattrick's later on.
This is an example of "bad" Mattrick's that should never be supported.

 

[SwiftDeath]

Hmm I have a hard time truly forming an opinion on this type of monetization scheme. While I don't think it's very predatory as the unlock rate for an average player seems to be healthy enough I do wonder what the long term implications of the general acceptance of such pay schemes might lead to.

In general consumers slowly accept things if publishers implement them slowly enough. DLC and I guess now Season Passes are perhaps the best example of this as it's now the case that devs will ship a mostly finished game with plans to create DLC according to a schedule that adds additional content but this all happens before the game even ships.

I worry general acceptance of PaytoSkip will lead to far more predatory monetization methods in the future and that if publishers experiment slowly enough consumers won't fight back until it's too late or simply not at all as it was with DLC

Perhaps I'm just rambling on though

 

[MilkybKid]

The problem I have with this is that if the micro transactions were simply skips, unlocks for characters etc then I would dislike it but see the point of it (assuming the unlocks are sidegrades/"play how you want" type things). Some people want the cool thing but can't/won't level up to get it, I can understand that having time restrictions of my own (even if i've never actually done this myself)

But that doesn't seem to be happening here, from reading around you buy "packs of upgrades" like you did in mass effect 3 so don't have control over what you get. So what you are doing is gambling, your are hoping that the money you spent will get you what you want but you don't have 100% control over it, this is where the line should be drawn for most people (of course the line has been drawn many times, but its constantly stepped on and muddled).

That is the sort of micro transaction I dislike, its the worst part of the mobile gaming scene and it disappoints me that its started to come into play more and more into retail games.

 

[MR ARCADE FOREVER]

Guys is this game good? Gameplay looks fun how is it??

 

[MSMrRound]

Oh, of course. But to call us "apologist" shows some serious ignorance about Kotaku, the games press, and the video game industry in general.

Well...when they aren't egging game developers by saying that they shouldn't hire 13 year-olds to design characters...

Still a bit salty about how other writers ganged up on the developer when the writer isn't exactly the innocent party...

 

[Exile20]

I am not going to lie, this turned me off from the pc game but one can rationalized it by putting thier own figure on the map pack update's worth and spend that money on microtransactions.

 

[Jb]

This is so fucking dumb. Oh my god sometimes I forget they're a sister site to motherfucking Gawker and their horrendous clickbait articles.