Pay-to-Win tactics in video games

Principle: People generally respond to incentives in predictable ways. Question: How do companies use pay-to-win tactics to get people to buy microtransactions.

 Pay-to-win tactics have become fairly infamous in the gaming community, as they are systems that are designed to give advantages to players who spend extra money (more than the initial price for the game) for extra advantages while playing against other players. Tactics that use microtransactions and in-game purchases are usually reserved for free-to-play games, where the game is initially free, and the payments are usually for exclusive items, access to more of the game, or cosmetic items that have no real effect on gameplay. These systems are both widespread and generally accepted. However, company’s can receive backlash if the system becomes exploitative. The most hated of these systems usually allow players to buy advantages over others players in multiplayer modes. Recently, gamers have become increasingly angry at giant publishers like EA who, in games that already cost full price and have more expensive “Advanced” editions, are implementing and ramping these systems up to 11.

One of the tactics publishers use is offering “lootboxes”, which gives you an item of differing value based on a percentage chance. Lootboxes can be highly exploitative because the percentage chance of specific items dropping from the boxes aren't always made public, and can be immensely low, like in EA’s FIFA Ultimate Team. Because of recent gamer and international backlash to the use of “lootboxes” in multiplayer games like Battlefront II (a Star Wars First Person Shooter) and FIFA Ultimate Team, the Australian Environment and Communications Reference Committee (ECRC) surveyed more than 7,400 gamers to determine responses to “chance-based” items like loot boxes. The study determined that lootboxes and the way they are used is “psychologically akin to gambling.”

https://www.windowscentral.com/fifa-19-ultimate-team-card-pack-odds-revealed-and-theyre-not-great
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/277317-study-loot-boxes-are-psychologically-akin-to-gambling