The Slow Divide Between Games As A Service And Single Player Experience

THE DEATH OF SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCES?

There is one thing certain about 2017 in gaming. It will forever be known as the year of the lootbox. With great titles like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nier Automata, Hellblade and other fantastic games hitting the market all year round, one can overlook the problems coming from some of the triple "A" giants in the industry and their monetization practices involving paywalls and lootboxes. Actually, it can be quite easy as a gamer. As a casual(you know the one), that picks up a title here or there throughout the year and looks to industry standard production values like EA and Activision, it can become very easy to see that these companies are preying on the casual consumer base with their "Game As Service" model. Locking content behind enormous grinds or dishing out the money, companies like EA are taking household product brands like Star Wars and putting in every tactic they can to scam the casual gamer out of their money.

Hits Of 2017

It seems consumer awareness about these preying tactics need to be delivered to the masses and EA having practically made headlines across all forms of media for their debacle handling of Battlefront 2 can help in the situation. While, it is easy to assume that everyone knows about video games and the business practices they present, there is still an enormous amount of people that don't play video games but purchase them for gifts. Usually these gifts are for children or adolescences. This creates a huge problem where the kid's will grow up in an environment where we see lootboxes and microtransaction paywalls as a normal activity and something to spend money on. You know, there was a time that the video game industry actually had a hard time convincing the general public that these were a great product to have in their homes. With general good practices setup by older console generations like the NES, a lot of those misconceptions were spelled to rest. Unfortunately, that market is gone. Long gone, I would say. And, unfortunately, it has gotten to the point of needing to have buyer beware on certain game titles before putting them in the hands of the younger audience.
OVERWATCH LOOTBOXES
STAR CARDS: BATTLEFRONT 2

This targetting of casual gamers is also affecting the market of the gamers that do invest in newer titles with zeal and sometimes reckless abandon, but the consumer awareness of these type of individuals is a lot higher and also their willingness to speak their mind about the unfair practices beginning to latch onto the industry. With the larger companies attaching branding to the, "Games As A Service" model, where they put a lot of commitment into trying to make their product relevant for a long-term endeavor usually involving multiplayer aspects, all the while slipping in tons of microtranactions or DLC to have consumers forking over the bucks, does make the game industry on the blockbuster titles seem to be leaning away from single player experience. The more diehard gamers now need to look more to the indie titles or "AA" companies to deliver the experiences we know and love. Also, with major console companies like Nintendo still rocking it with great single player experience release titles, the landscape still looks very promising.

Hellblade
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

The gaming market has changed for better or worse. The way games are being developed and marketed have changed. No longer is this a market where you can pickup your favorite sports title or the newest blockbuster high-production multiplayer without their being some inner-trappings and content gating inside the product. Does this mean we disregard these products? Leave them for the consumers that don't know better but will purchase them year-after-year like religious zealots or gifts for their kids not knowing what lies inside once these games are booted up? I don't think so. With the strong force shown on how gamer's can boycott product launches, the pendulum may well switch back into the gamer's favor. This is a buyer's market. Never the seller. We don't like the product....we don't have to buy it and they will change it. It isn't that we don't want to play the game's they develop or endorse their products. It is just that as a whole the gaming community aren't naive and if anything we are better trained to combat the tactics they are trying to throw at us in the best way possible; our wallet.