Though it’s never been a staid subject among gamers, Electronic Arts ignited a rather heated controversy last week when chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, appeared to suggest that microtransactions would be incorporated into each of the publisher’s upcoming games.
“We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be,” Jorgensen announced last week. And naturally — perhaps due partly to the weapons crafting system in Dead Space 3 — many construed “ability” as the gamer’s ability to pay for additional content “along the way,” which of course would require an active microtransaction system to already be in place.
Jorgensen attempted to clarify that picture today, however, while addressing the Wedbush Technology Conference in New York City. According to Polygon, the CFO explained that he was referencing broader technology being developed by EA that would merely support the facilitation of credit card payments and digital downloads. Microtransactions wouldn’t necessarily be mandated for every game, platform-wide; the publisher would simply be better aligned to “manage a world in which there are more and more micro-transactions as part of what we offer.”
Part of what EA intends to offer is, in fact, microtransactions across all of its mobile games. Jorgensen says this distinction from EA’s console and PC agenda might have given his comments last week a mixed message:
“I made a statement in the conference along the lines of ‘We’ll have micro-transactions in our games’ and the community read that to mean all our games, and that’s really not true. All of our mobile games will have micro-transactions in them, because almost all of them are going to a world where they are play for free.”
In either case, it’s hardly a secret that more developers and publishers in today’s industry are condensing around the model of content dilution, of spreading payment opportunities throughout different portions of a game and throughout different periods of its life cycle. Jorgensen acknowledged this as a future strategy of EA’s console and PC offerings, citing the way Battlefield 3‘s post-release expansions (Back to Karkand, Close Quarters, Armored Kill, Aftermath and, this month, the final addition, End Game) will have allowed the shooter to stay fresh and relevant in the mind of its audience for a solid two years. (Battlefield 4, however, is slated to replace it this Fall.)
But whether a microtransaction (like a buzz saw attachment in Dead Space 3) or a macrotransaction (like a season of DLC) the general questions are the same: How much are we willing to invest in experiences we’ve already become partial to? How much do we crave what we already love? Jorgensen never downplays EA’s ambition to burgeon its games with more transactions, but maintains that player value is always a consideration:
”It allows someone to take a game that maybe they played for 1,000 hours and play it for 2,000 hours. We are very conscious that we don’t want to make consumers feel like they’re not getting value. We want to make sure consumers are getting value.”
Ranters, how do you view EA’s position on microtransactions? How should companies balance the initial cost of a game with content that extends it later in the life cycle?
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Follow Brian on Twitter @Brian_Sipple.
Source: Polygon
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Haha that’s funny. It almost looks like they said it publicly to test the waters but who knows. Either way, something negative will come of this in the comments section.
Yup, and I will start the negativity by saying b*******.
I wouldnt label your dissent as “negative” at all. Especially if something positive results from not buying into this jive.
Well thats b.s I can’t say b.s. sob.
Sure ya can! Try harder! Don’t doubt yerself!
I’ll continue the hate by saying that He Knew what he meant the first time. Granted there is a possibility he could’ve been testing the waters like ATG said but even so, He knew what he meant.This is an attempt at damage control not a correction/clarification to his earlier statement. The sugar is killing me in these articles but I love the site..
I thought it was weird that Grima Wormtongue was whispering into Jorgensens ear during that whole conference…
Call me crazy but I am not put entirely at ease by these lawyerly statements. Adding a thousand hours to a thousand hour game would be impressive as hell, especially for a microtransaction. They don’t make Elder Scrolls though, they make Dead Space and Splinter Cell. Those are more like five to fifteen hours apiece, and SC gets shorter as surely as Sam gets younger, every single time! If a microtransaction doubled the playtime then it’s still pretty impressive content, but nothing like the innocent facilitator he is pretending to be. Charging for weapons, etc. and pay to play for a game that takes less than ten hours and costs 60 bucks is what I expect, and nothing like what he implies. I hope he is back peddling because of outrage, and I hope it makes the company more generous and cautious with us, but the writing is on the wall, and bad things are coming sooner or later. Buckle up.
I hate to be ‘that guy’ but Splinter Cell is not published by EA.
Thanks guy! My goofy mistake. I knew better. Surely my point still resonates though. The trends of shorter games and more charges become exacerbated at every turn by on disc dlc, microtransactions and the piles of codes that we have to input as essentially an annoyance we full price buyers are saddled with… I buy used as well, but it’s funny that we are penalized when we buy some games new because we have to spend an hour poking in 16 digit codes by the handful. The charges, frustrations and penalties are encroaching from all sides while business men try to double talk us out of any backlash or impatience. I encourage speaking up, voicing outrage and even boycotting, but I think it will be of little use. They could attach an always-on Internet annoyance to COD5 and it would still probably be the best selling game of all time. We are mostly at the mercy of any idea they can think of because we can’t do much to negate the profit they engineer. It’s deeply frustrating, and for a company like EA that has a rep for squeezing the blood out of employees and raking it in hand over fist from all of us, it’s especially disheartening to hear the latest schemes to maximize profits at the cost to everyone else.
As for an EA franchise, when has a Mass Effect game, (which is easily several times longer than most EA stuff at forty hours or so) had anywhere near a thousand hours? And what have they added to that which doubled its playtime? Maybe with four separate 15$ expansions you could double the life to 80 hours buy spending twice as much on the game. That’s far from the fantasy world where a microtransaction adds a thousand hours. Sounds pretty impressive when he says it, so if people don’t know any better than they may believe him.
I completely agree with you. Though I’m certain that when he refers to a thousand hours of gameplay, he’s pretty much talking about Battlefield multiplayer. I don’t think the EA big wigs are really aware of stories in games. I think they probably see it as “Play long time, make more $$. Me am best. You make more game? Me make more $$! You! Make game more like that one. People play more that one. More play, more $$ for I!” and then he conks Femshep over the head with a cudgel and drags her back to his penthouse to breed more bastard Mass Effect games. I’m almost certain this is how EA makes games.
I think you’ve found the winning formula! But even if he is referring to multiplayer as the “thousands of hours of gameplay”, when has a microtransaction ever doubled that? In fact, when has a huge, expensive multi map expansion DLC even done that? For a guy throwing around numbers, he sure is a long way from reality. Is he completely detached from how things are, or just a big fat liar trying to sound reasonable when his company is in the wrong and looking like jerks? Niether answer is impressive.
And here I was looking forward to Dragon Age III
This is what I like to refer as “a load of hooey”.
It would seem that the major companies are out to nickel and dime us to death. If the rumors are true and the new consoles will not play older games without us paying some kind of “season pass” type fee that will suck, hell they do it to us now. If that comes to pass then they will continue to grind money out of us by having us pay fees for everything from weapon parts to pay toilets. This is getting out of control. If this is the future of video games, count me out.