Gamers Should Pay MORE MICROTRANSACTIONS!? and be happy about it?

While it's true that we pay relatively less per hour, we also play it for hours on end to justify that balance. Some people spend $60 and play it 3 times over the year, just because they can. Others can only afford to have a handful of games each year so they stretch that one game out as long as possible. Other games are rinse and repeat so the value of those games should be calculated differently (imo). If you're comparing price per hour for entertainment value though, Netflix and HBO blow gaming out of the water. Even cable is pennies on the dollar for individual series. The price for gaming doesn't need to be raised, we need to value games more. Which is where MTX and DLC come in. I understand not everyone wants them, but for certain productions, it's a justified implementation of what amounts to donations. Blizzard nailed it, Activision is alright about it (I'm not particularly thrilled with it in D2, but oh well), EA just dropped the ball cause they thought it was a free pass as long as the people who they're trying to sell it to will accept it as being an alternative to grinding. Which that implementation of it completely skews the entire argument because we're paying more to play less. Not only that, it really feels like pay to win and in multiplayer, that can't happen. Otherwise, the person who drops the most money will always win and scare away any other person who might enjoy the game otherwise. Anyway, I don't know where I'm trying to go with this point now, but the idea behind what EA did is wrong for a lot of reasons, and MTX are here to stay because 5% of people will utilize it (or whatever that stat was in the other video).

tldr - EA done goofed and (to me) that analyst kinda shot his own argument down in this case, even tho he has some valid points.

It's not about money, it's about the ethics of put the game behind a hidden paywall

The analysts seemed to have completely missed the point. For the most part, people were up in arms about the way microtransactions were implemented, not the fact they existed. The gaming community at large has more or less accepted the fact microtransactions and paid DLC are part of the way games work these days. What was not (and is not) ok is the fact major aspects of the game play (aspects that a majority of gamers felt should have been either much more accessible or accessible from the start seeing as how they were that way in the previous game) were locked behind either massive time gates or pay gates (and I suspect these analyst types are the kind of people who like to say time is money). I get that there's a lot of pressure on developers/publishers to get more than just the $60/unit and I've payed a lot more than that for a good number of games without feeling overcharged, but it's never been for a game I thought required I pay more to be competitive or gain access to what I believe should be core content.

Here's my problem with analysts; they tend to make blanket statements about the industry based on one or two games. Gamers complain about Battlefront 2's MTXs and suddenly they forget that games like Overwatch can have a lot of success with them while still not pissing off their customers. Also remember how they tried to say that 3D platforming collect-a-thons were dead when Yooka-Laylee came out? Turns out you just needed a game like Super Mario Odyssey to do it well.

If a game's worth buying at $60, it's worth buying at 70. I'd much rather pay more for a complete game than have this shit plague good games. 

They can complain about the cost of making a game all they want, they chose to increase the budget. Other developers manage just fine with budgets way smaller.

Thanks to the price of games (£50 here in the UK) and the government cuts meaning less disposable income, I haven't bought a new AAA game in well over a year cause I straight up can't afford £50 on one game, and yet if I managed to save up enough for one, I'd be faced with that game constantly asking for more money, fuck that.

I'm not the only one I know either in this situation.

"We're gamers!" (We just have the money to not care how much they cost so fuck everyone else) Anyone else see that unspoken quote in there?

Agreed with most of the comments below. This isn't just tone deaf by the analysts but terrible analysis of the situation in general. Microtransactions are (sadly) not the problem here, and if they where giving their customers good advice they'd say some thing along the lines of "Don't panic this isn't gamers up in arms over microtransactions, this is gamers up in arms over *badly implimented* microtransactions." They'd get their point across without coming across as snearing condescending ***ts treating a genuine complaint about game design as people being cry babies.

Next even if gaming is a comparatively good deal, it's not the amount of work or the theoretical per hour price of triple A Gaming their (sketchy) maths works out, it's the amount people are willing to pay for it. And if Gamers (aka the Market) count the per hour value of gameplay as less than the per hour value of a rented movie then that's what game are worth. 

Over all a very condescending, badly sourced, misinforming, article. And if I need finanical advice in the next few years I know one firm I won't be going to.

So this Evan Wingren guys firm is affiliated with EA: https://imgur.com/gallery/oS4IA 

Lootboxes and microtransactions are fundamentally anti-consumer and exist for the sole purpose of squeezing more money out of gamers than they would be reasonably willing to pay. Any analyst that says anything to the contrary of this irrefutable fact is either a complete moron, or a corporate shill.

Do not be fooled. Microtransactions are NEVER good for gamers, or for the games they are in, for that matter.

Wake up, sheeple.

I would personally be fine with the price of an $80 dollar game if I was guaranteed there would be no micro transactions in the game. That would let me know for sure that the game was not built around making you feel like you need to spend more money so you can get the targeted experience the designers meant for the player to have.

Publishers always talk about how they offer micro transactions to give players the option of skipping the grind in a game if they want to. However, if they really just wanted to giver players the option to skip the grind in a game, then they should just put in cheat codes like they did back in the day and not actually charge players to skip the grind. Charging customer to skip some kind of grind in a game is purely to make more money off of their players and not to help them out with other options to skip content.

Loot boxes with cosmetic items = ok.  Loot boxes that lock the game behind a paywall = not ok.

It's pretty simple.

Also here's a thought, maybe you're putting too much into your games at a $60 price point.  Maybe start focusing on story again, or at least one that you can finish in the "base" game.  Or how about just an overall pleasant gaming experience that gives the player a sense of replayability towards your game.  These are very simple concepts that, as an older gamer, I feel have been lost over the years when it come to game development.