Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fuelled is adding microtransactions and, although no one should be particularly surprised, that doesn’t make it alright. This entire situation feels incredibly shady for a number of reasons; first off, Activision said in a public statement that microtransactions would not be coming to the title, which was a breath of fresh air considering the current state of the industry. The Fortnite-esque store design and tightly regulated distribution of in-game currency were, as people feared, preparations to set up a system that allowed players to ‘supplement’ their earnings by paying more money on top of the base game’s price tag. Doing this a month post-launch also means that CTR:NF has sidestepped all the critical reviews that released with the game, and is now free to implement whatever the hell they want because no one is going to keep updating their scores to comment on questionable business practices.
That isn’t entirely the point of this piece. Obviously it matters a great deal to me because this is Crash Bandicoot they’re milking, but more importantly I think is the Fear of Missing Out and what that phrase means. Time limited cosmetic items, monthly seasons, and I guess even yearly multiplayer game releases in the vein of Call of Duty all carry with them a social pressure that companies weaponize. In essence, humans feel immense discomfort when they perceive those around them to be doing something that they aren’t involved in. I’ve been watching Jim Sterling’s videos on the topic recently where I was introduced to a lecture called ‘Let’s go Whaling’ and it really opened my eyes to just how cognizant developers are of the psychological techniques they are using to manipulate the vulnerable into handing over their cash. When someone spends money for instance, you need to tell the players around that person that they are spending in order to make buying skins the norm. On the playground ‘default’ is an insult and that’s no accident; the drop in revenue if kids were going around bullying the ones who had the money to purchase cosmetics would be significant, and companies know this. If they make sure everyone has a skin that could have been bought (through loot boxes for example), everyone is going to want a skin of their own because otherwise they are going to feel left out, and being on the outside of a social circle feels absolutely appalling.
Videogames can generate this anxiety even without microtransactions and spending habits, and the whole ‘git gud, casual’ environment of some communities (or the stereotype, at least) is partly to blame. Not everyone has the time to practise a game until they’re unbeatable at PvP because they have jobs, families and other commitments that make it an unachievable feat. In the really hard games like Dark Souls, it can mean the difference between being good enough to defeat a boss and not being able to fully explore the product that you paid for. I’m still of the opinion that not every game needs an easy mode and that developers are entitled to create the type of experience they want because, if someone really cares, I do believe that they will make the time to get what they want out of a product. The issue comes from the communities and the peer pressuring, the trash talking and the spoilers. If you haven’t bought this game, reached this stage, done this arbitrary thing, you are locked out of the conversation until you have, by which point everyone has already moved on.
The rise of social media represents just another facet of the Fear of Missing Out. Everywhere you go, someone will have their phone in their hand, checking for texts and internet posts because out there, somewhere, something is happening and they don’t want to be left out. I’ve had several nights out with good friends where there’s a slight lull in the conversation and, all of a sudden, everyone’s wielding their phone so close to their face you’d have thought they’d never seen one before. Our untamable interconnectivity has rendered us insatiable for more and unable to properly bare the mundane aspects of our everyday life. I really don’t like Reddit, for example, yet two or three times a day I will find myself trawling through inane posts about my favourite games and topics because I am sure that this time I will surely find that one piece of news, artwork or thread that will make it worthwhile.
It isn’t something that has arisen out of nowhere though, it’s human nature; social media is the perfect platform for people to put out their best moments and accrue the social currency of attention (likes, comments, shares, you name it). A lot of our self-worth is tied to what we see because we naturally compare ourselves to our peers, but we compare what we know about ourselves with what other people present, and the disparity is unsurprisingly huge. People don’t openly admit to sick fantasies, bad habits, stupid mistakes or any of the negative aspects of the human experience: they don’t present it and we don’t see it, yet we are utterly aware of our own deeper selves and can’t help but question why we are so awful when everyone else is so great. When we see a post that said our friend has just flown out for a holiday in the Caribbean, a cocktail of thoughts rushes through our heads; “why wasn’t I invited?”; “why don’t I ever make the time to travel?”; “why am I sitting here scrolling through social media when everyone else is having fun?”.
There is nothing fundamentally insidious about these concepts because they are so natural, but the way they are being manipulated to force consumers into spending feels absolutely egregious. Coming back to videogames, a common defense for microtransactions is that if they weren’t implemented, new content wouldn’t be produced. As long as it’s only cosmetics that are being monetised and not gameplay advantages that’s fine though, right? Stirling makes the point very concisely that for many people, cosmetics aren’t an option due to the peer pressure that is being foisted upon the playerbase, and if they don’t have the time to grind out their daily pittance of coins to buy the skin that’s only available for the next four hours, of course they are going to succumb to microtransactions, because it is in their psychological makeup to do so. Another argument is that, if you don’t like microtransactions, you just shouldn’t buy them, and for a very long time I have struggled to find an argument countering that sentiment. However, I have just been reading through a comment thread (because I am an addict, we have established) and one person made the point that unlocking cosmetics and seeing your character look more and more impressive over time was one of the main draws for some games in the past. Now that people can just buy the shiniest skins, that process and the joy of playing the game has become devalued. As one commenter says, why should microtransactions only be damaging when it suits you? If it’s all cosmetic and not pay-to-win, then that’s fine for everyone, right? That’s the only thing we care about and so people need to stop whining. In truth, cosmetics do matter to a very large group of people, otherwise game companies wouldn’t put so much time and effort into monetising skins and justifying it with the tagline of “it’s all optional”.
I’m finding it difficult to be really angry because such a shift in the way that games and content are marketed is just a natural progression, and it wouldn’t surprise me if three or four years down the line the levels of bull just get thicker. Everyone experiences the Fear of Missing Out and it is very easy to become entrenched in it; having just finished University I found myself thinking the other day “why is it that I’m the only one who doesn’t know what they’re doing?” I’m not the only one, and neither are you, nor anyone else. I think sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is take a step back and really appreciate the here and now. It just takes a splash of logic to realise that we’re all in the same boat: next step is figuring out how to combat the parasites using human nature against us.
Iguanapost 