Comment by TameAntelope
4 years ago
I wouldn't think of a game like Runescape as one thing, but more of a collection of many things.
What you pay for is the ability to skip the parts of the game you don't like, so you can focus on the parts of the game you do like. Ideally everyone would like everything you make, but that feels more like a naive way of thinking than to worry about people wanting to skip parts of your game.
As long as "pay to skip" doesn't become "pay to win", I'd say a game is probably fine, overall, if people are enjoying substantial portions of that game, even if they're not enjoying all of it.
It's odd that this doesn't come up in other media or other experiences, right? The closest analogy I can think of is unskippable advertising.
We never have a movie series where people pay extra money to remove scenes. You never go to a restaurant where the owner forces you to eat carrots before you can have your main meal, even though some diners might like carrots. It's basically just games and advertising where we have this model that consumers should either be forced to endure a part of the experience they dislike or that they should pay us money to give them the stuff that they directly do like.
Like, imagine if you were watching a show on Netflix, and you tried to skip a filler episode or fast-forward through a gory section, and Netflix wouldn't let you continue the series until you either watched that content in its entirety or paid them 99 cents.
>We never have a movie series where people pay extra money to remove scenes.
Star Wars fans keep asking though.
:) Okay, that's a fair point. The Lucas estate/Disney continue to be kind of weird about this.
I don’t know if it is possible to have “pay to skip” not become “pay to win” in an MMO.
The whole point of an MMO is that your character progresses and gets better as they do more things in the game. If you are paying to skip something that makes your character better, your character will be better than if you didn’t pay to skip that.
If what you are skipping is not making your character better, you wouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
MMOs are be definition pay to win. You either pay with time or pay with money.
People getting around games ToS' will always be a thing - since Runescape is the example being used, it is expressly banned to both purchase and sell gold coins. This is not a problem exclusive to MMOs, it's a problem with any game with a leveling system, currency, or items that are tradable between players.
Examples: FIFA packs, Runescape/MMO gold, League of Legends accounts/boosts (names as well) , Valorant accounts/boosts, CS:GO items (names, accounts and boosts as well), Neopets items and gift boxes, Diablo 3 boosts/accounts, and on and on...
Then maybe it's fine to be "pay to win"? Seems like millions of people are enjoying their time spent, and are willing to spend more time to continue to win.
Who are we to judge?
The presence of aggregate societal harm tends to be the motivator for other regulation around otherwise voluntary behavior such as gambling. So if that harm can be demonstrated then there may be a case for legislating if companies can offer such games and on what terms they can do so.