I’ve not blogged for a while so this time I have handed the mantle to Dan on my team who, much to my joy, accepted the challenge. Read below for some insights into why video games companies need to love their players back.

Despite the increase in legal scrutiny and occasional bursts of societal outrage, microtransactions in video games are not going anywhere any time soon. Loot boxes, prize crates, downloadable content, expansions and microtransactions are all terms that have become so commonplace that they’re known outside of the games industry, and not usually in the best light. 

 Looking at the headlines, it's not hard to see why. Recently one player of ‘Transformers: Earth Wars’ was identified as having spent over $150,000 on microtransactions, and authorities in China have just placed a hard limit on how much users are able to spend on in-game purchases each month. Every new game is evaluated on the prominence of its in-game purchases, or lack of them, with players and pundits alike calling for the boycotting of the worst offenders.

So why do games companies keep cramming these less-than-loved systems into their games? Are they just being greedy? Well, some of them are, yes. But most games today include microtransactions, DLC and expansions as it enables those companies to stay afloat financially. In fact - microtransactions are the main reason video game prices have remained so (relatively) flat for the last decade.

 Somewhere along the line the industry realised it made more financial sense to extend the life of existing games by adding content, at a price. MMOs did it first, and their old-school subscription models gradually morphed into things like season passes, loot boxes and in-game stores across almost every genre of gaming, helped along in no small part by the rise of mobile gaming.

 But now that video games are no longer single-purchase items, and many are specifically designed to foster long term engagement with their players, these news stories about gambling, overspending and gaming addiction underline a need for games developers to take responsibility for their player’s wellbeing. Naturally the worst offenders have a vested interest in avoiding taking this kind of responsibility.

 For many companies however, taking effective care of their player’s mental health and curbing the worst excesses of the current gaming paradigm represents a huge opportunity to, not only set the standard for how future player-game relationships should be framed, but also set themselves above their competitors. 

 This means more than just setting up an addiction spotting AI to monitor for extreme player activity and sending an automated ‘maybe you should slow down’ message. The companies that will take the lead in this space will be ones that can encourage players to slow down through game design, rather than encourage them to excess with simple skinner-box mental levers. 

 As more players spend more time with single games, a higher percentage of the profits needs to be spent on safety nets for those susceptible to overspending. This means employing real people capable of real empathy and human connection to reach out and help. Players love their video games and the worlds they can transport them to. As games find ways to make them stay and play longer, it is not too unrealistic to ask games to show some of that commitment back.