This Dumb Industry: Charging More for a Worse Product
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=41879
This is a fascinating article and spot on when it comes to the coming price increase in AAA games. My favorite section:
Back in 1991, McDonald’s rolled out their "value menu". They noticed a lot of people just bought a drink and a burger, and didn’t bother getting the french fries. So they introduced the "Value Meal", which included drink, fries, and a burger for one "low price". This sped up ordering, since someone could simply order a "Number 1" without having to list all of the items individually. It also created the false impression that they were saving money by ordering the meal. (If you added up the cost of items individually, they were within a few cents of the cost of the equivalent meal.) And most importantly, it got people to buy more food.
It sped up order times, it got people to order more food, and it made the customer think they were saving money! You might not like this sort of behavior, but it was effective and clever.
Now imagine a version of McDonalds run like EA. The company leadership doesn’t really eat fast food except to sample their own products, and going to a fast food restaurant with the family isn’t something they would ever do.
So when they decide they want more money, the idea of a value meal doesn’t occur to them. Instead they just charge more. Charge for ketchup packets. Charge for napkins. Charge for bags.
There’s an outcry, and the leadership doesn’t understand why. They did the math and they figured these new policies should only add a few cents onto the usual order. What they didn’t foresee was just how much this change would hurt the overall dining experience. Now a lone mother with three kids has to stop and calculate how many napkins her children might need before they place the order. A guy who runs out of ketchup has to go and stand in line to get one more packet, while his food gets cold back at the table. Cheapskates try to save money by going without lids and straws, which results in more spills for the staff to clean up.
Pay-to-win microtransactions, lootboxes, and turning key parts of the experience into DLC is the equivalent of charging for napkins and straws. Yes, it might squeeze a little more money out of additional customers. But what you can’t measure is how much it damages the experience of using your product. If you understood your customers it would be obvious, and if you don’t understand or care about your games then you’ll never understand it. If Andrew Wilson had been personally looking forward to playing Star Wars: Battlefront II then he would immediately have sensed how upsetting the lootbox policy would be. He’d be able to say, “Wow. 40 hours of grind just to unlock Luke Skywalker? That sounds like a complete killjoy. That might even ruin the game for me.” But instead he only understands games as products for “other people”.
