Hello again Saviors and Toasters, this time I come with a topic on game design that explains a completely EVIL game mechanic, yeah folks game design is not all about the good things, it can be easily manipulated. Let’s get this show on the road:
Game Design is the art of creating meaningful experiences. This concept is important to know as it explains why game designers tend to study more of human psychology than the technical aspects of programming and art and The Wall is all about experiences, here is a diagram that illustrates what The Wall means:
Simple isn’t it? It’s a barrier separating two different types of experience in the same game, it can be a mechanic like assymetric games or it can be the dreaded Invisible pay wall:
Like I said before game design is about creating experiences and that counts bad ones too, a good game designer can take any type of emotion out of the player if he wants to.
So how can I profit out of this? Simple, make a game that tests your patience against the tightness of your wallet, creating a frustating experience for free and a better one paid by micro-transactions so I can use the FREE tag and get the money effectively eating the cake and having it too.
Bloody disgusting isn’t it? Well here are some examples: Dungeon Keeper 2, Star Wars Trexxels, Farmville, Dead Space 3, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm… and many more(So much so that Apple store had to change the tag of freemium games).
But this post is about how can the pay wall exist in an mmo, and here is one of a thousand different ways: The EXP boost.
The EXP boost can be the wall in two similar fashions, the explicit version that is the endgame content and the implicit grinding time.
^Type 1
^Type 2, this type is much more invisible and sneaky but it’s true that just one single parameter like grinding time can create a completely different experience overall, so when people come with the “It’s Optional Card” they are somewhat right, you have two options:
Option 1: Play for free and have a considerably worse experience.
Option 2: Pay up to play the real game.
In the end It’s all about the subliminal incentive to make you purchase, am I supposed to assume that the developer doesn’t want my money? What kind of naive child do you think I am?
Some will say that you have a third optional: Quit the game, although it’s not a valid argument at all if you think about it and even then the developers have a way to minimize losses: The freebie
The Freebie serves the purpose of showing you the better experience so you desire it a lot more in comparision with the other side of the wall, making you want to purchase the boost.
So in conclusion EXP boosts aren’t P2W. They are more like a twisted version of P2P, a developer can easily manipulate the game to get a little profit by deliberatly creating a bad experince for money’s sake, if that isn’t evil I don’t know what is.
If you are for this type of design well, I can just say that all and all you’re just another brick in the wall.
