Docprof Says: One of the more famous psychology lessons from World of Warcraft - framing is everything. Players hated the "rest" system when it was seen as a penalty for playing too long; they loved it when it was seen as a reward for spending time not playing.
Recently, your friend and mine Cliff Bleszinski wrote an essay defending microtransactions in general and EA in specific. There are a lot of things to be said about this essay - some of which are said expertly by Jim Sterling here, and some of which touch on concepts discussed by Shamus Young writing a couple of years ago about Bobby Kotick here and here.
Cliff’s main point is that game developers exist within an economic landscape, and as such they will do what makes them money and avoid what doesn’t. As consumers, our job is to vote with our wallets, supporting what we like and boycotting what we don’t.
In response to this, I’m going to finally post something I wrote back in October 2011. I never put it up before because I couldn’t find a way to turn it into a full article. It’s really just one simple idea. But as foreseen by Nathan Grayson and proved by the recent SimCity debacle, if anything it’s more relevant today than it was a year and a half ago.
You may have heard that there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle recently in response to some news about Diablo III. I’ll walk you through it - but first, we need to talk about Ubisoft.
I quit World of Warcraft in June of 2009. I quit hard. I donated my assets to the guild bank and deleted all of my characters. I didn’t want to leave the door open to come back. I wanted to burn it down and salt the earth.
Are you on the fringes of gaming? Do you want to get in deeper, but find yourself unsure where to start? Do conversations with experienced gamers leave you feeling lost? Is “sorry, but our princess is in another castle” your freshest gaming joke? When it comes to gamer culture, are you on the outside looking in?