Dead Space 3 to Include Microtransactions in Singleplayer

ArenCordial

Senior member
Sep 18, 2012
214
15
81
Ain't that great!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/dead-space-3-has-microtransactions-6402708

They say they are totally optional but lets face it, this is EA and I expect them to want to give us some incentive to use their silly microtransactions system. I bet the drop rate for such materials probably took a plunge after this feature was added.

Thankfully all you need is a fully upgraded Plasma Cutter is Dead Space, but still between this and the co-op I can't say I'm looking forward to Dead Space 3 at all now.

I expect this in Dragon Age 3 also.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
0
0
what's that? Oh you don't have enough power nodes? That's ok, for just 10 ishimura dollars you can buy a power node! Just enter your cc information in origin and you can add ishimura dollars to your dead space with a single click!
 

Ricochet

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
6,390
19
81
Will wait until it hits $5 bargain bin. By then, there will be enough trainers and cheats to make this a non-issue.
 

mindcycle

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2008
1,901
0
76
Lame. Guess i'll wait for it to hit $5 like DS2. Haven't even finished the first one yet.. haha
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
I didn't like Dead Space 2 much anyway. I thought DS1 was far superior.
 

waggy

No Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
68,143
10
81
micro-transactions are a good way to gurentee your game will fail.
 

VulgarDisplay

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2009
6,188
2
76
There has got to be a day where gamers eventually just stop buying this crap and the publishers get the idea.
 

mindcycle

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2008
1,901
0
76
There has got to be a day where gamers eventually just stop buying this crap and the publishers get the idea.

I'd like to think so as well but when you have people willing to shell out $5 for an in game re-textured gun model, or something absurd like that, then you know its only going to get worse before it gets better.

EA is always on the lookout for ways to maximize profits while minimizing content. Just makes good business sense right?
 

rolodomo

Senior member
Mar 19, 2004
269
9
81
Gotta be thankful in this complicated world for an easy decision. Thanks EA, this makes it easy for me to stop participating in this franchise.
 

zebrax2

Senior member
Nov 18, 2007
974
66
91
I just wish most of the gaming media out there had the balls to put this things into light for what it is, a cash cow that punishes all gamers so that we could really see sales on this things to start to dwindle down. Sadly that seems impossible
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
Text Adventures with todays Gaming Market:

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here
>
Look left

West of House
You look to your left and see a a large golden arch boarded up with two by fours held in by rusty nails. On one of the boards is a sign.

>Read sign

You squint at the small lettering and make out the words:
Welcome to Zork! Through these gates (for a small fee) lies a vast adventure!

>Break sign

Sorry, "break" is an advanced pay command. Please upgrade your Zork account to learn the "break" command only 2000 points!
 

Zenoth

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2005
5,202
216
106
Meh, it's just EA doing what they do best, selling stuff to people they know will buy their stuff. This specific case ain't worse than... say... having an alternative appearance pack in single-player for ME3 that costs $2, or having two weapons packs (for single-player) which include already-available weapons (in multi-player) which also costs $2 each. It's not really micro-transactions per se (I mean the ME3 example I gave), but I'm just saying that having "content" (or currency in some cases, to ultimately get new content) for single-player that you bought with real money isn't new to Dead Space 3 so shouldn't be a big deal. I'm getting to a point where I just shrug when I hear about DLCs in general, be it DLCs that most of which (if not all of which) was already "on the disc" but you had to buy to "unlock"... or DLCs labeled as micro-transactions for single-player (or vice-versa) or the other way around. I mean yeah... it's 2013, and DLCs is the a business model that isn't new either and is just getting more common as the years pass. Even Indie games follow the trend (not much choice to do so as an Indie dev I get that, especially when the already big ones do it).

Just taking one Indie game example, namely Gratuitous Space Battle (which I own, excluding all but a single DLC) which I love by the way, nonetheless has seven DLCs for it. The base game costs $15, but each one of the DLCs cost $6, if you were to buy all of them (obviously to get the "full game", rather than the "basic game") at their current price you'd end up paying $57 which is pretty much the price of a "normal" brand new PC or console game. Heck brand new console games can cost up to $69.99 (and even more than that sometimes) such as - but not limited to - "collector's editions", and so on. And even those bundles don't always include all "upcoming" nor all "already released" DLCs and you can end up paying even more than the already higher price of said collector's edition of this and that game due to upcoming DLCs that even the collector's edition will "benefit" from. The point of all this, I guess, is that "a game" today isn't always "complete" by any means upon release as it used to be many years ago (I.E. pretty much prior to this current generation, referring to XBOX360/PS3). It did not "start" with this generation, but it definitely grew and sometimes did so almost out of proportion or control, and occasionally gets quite ridiculous especially in terms of pricing and/or content (and sometimes in the "way" it is being delivered, such as you buying extra to "unlock" content that is already on the disc that you bought full price in the first place).

Anyway, I just want to finally add this. That, today (nowadays) more than ever before (couple of years) a "single-player" game doesn't mean that it *has to* be excluded from micro-transactions nor does it have to be excluded from later-released content. It's not like it used to be, as many of you guys will surely remember... when we used to go out at the store and buy ourselves that brand new SNES, Genesis, PS1 or N64 game. When we bought those games, we bought them "completed", we had "that" and that's it. If we wanted "more of that" we had to wait for a sequel, and if you were gaming on PC during the same years you wouldn't get a DLC, you'd also wait for a sequel or if lucky enough an expansion pack. Today, we buy a game but we don't necessarily buy a "completed" game. We buy a "product in development". Heck, we can even sigh-up for beta games (either closed or open beta of either F2P or subscription-based ones) in which the micro-transaction store is already in place and is in fact presented as probably the most developed part of the game for obvious reasons... to fund the game's development and let it reach another milestone. I'm playing a bit of FireFall lately and that game is undergoing this exact business model (get invited for beta participation, and you can already buy stuff at their micro-transaction store while it's still being developed).

So anyway, yeah, Dead Space 3 gets micro-transactions in single-player... ok... let me shrug it and let me expect Dead Space 4 to have the exact same, exactly because EA knows that, ultimately, it works (even if for some it doesn't "make sense" or isn't "desirable").
 
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Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
3,266
169
106
micro-transactions are a good way to gurentee your game will fail.

Really?

Valve%20more%20HATS-noscale.jpg


Also, ME3's microtransaction system in multiplayer seems to be doing quite well for them.

These microtransactions seem harmless to me. All they do is allow you to skip the searching and grinding for components you would be doing with or without the microtransaction system in place. Don't like it? Don't pay for it. The idea that you would refuse to pay more than $10 or so for the game because of this system -- which implies you were willing to pay more beforehand -- is ridiculous.
 
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Zenoth

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2005
5,202
216
106
Really?

Valve%20more%20HATS-noscale.jpg


Also, ME3's microtransaction system in multiplayer seems to be doing quite well for them.

These microtransactions seem harmless to me. All they do is allow you to skip the searching and grinding for components you would be doing with or without the microtransaction system in place. Don't like it? Don't pay for it. The idea that you would refuse to pay more than $10 or so for the game because of this system -- which implies you were willing to pay more beforehand -- is ridiculous.

There's a potential problem though. I say it's potential, since it depends on "expectations" as a consumer from said micro-transactions for the product's future itself, rather than expectations concerning the content you bought from the transaction itself...

Ok, in other words, for example a number (any number you can speculate on) of players decide to give real money to EA via said ME3 multi-player's micro-transactions. A number of those players will "expect" nothing else from those micro-transactions than what the content is, or could be (since in ME3's case the MP packs you can buy contain randomized items to some extent, even if some types of items are guaranteed in some of the packs). By that I mean that if I pay real money for a "Spectre" pack and I'd happen to be one such player (who expects nothing "more" than what it's supposed to contain) then I'll be happy with what's in it, namely some randomized items and one guaranteed "rare" item as per all Spectre packs. So that's fine.

The other category of micro-transaction consumers, however, is one that usually expects that their micro-transactions play a part in the whole "contribution" process of a product's support over time (any game, or ME3 here in particular) from its development team (and its publisher of course). In such a case, such specific consumers will probably expect that their money (accumulated over time via micro-transactions) will "contribute" to increase said game's longevity and support (future DLCs and patches, etc). The problem, however, specifically with ME3, is that lately it was made rather clear that the next DLC for ME3's single-player will be the last one. Since Bryan Johnson (of BioWare) confirmed that most of the multi-player DLCs were also generated by BioWare Edmonton (that's the team doing the last single-player DLC as well) in this post we can safely assume that at the very least that specific team won't do anything anymore with ME3's MP past the release of said SP DLC.

Which means that, ultimately, ME3 as a whole, including its multi-player portion, will not be supported anymore (no more extra DLCs and no more patches or "imbalance" fixes) unless the work is completely being transferred over to BioWare Montreal (or another team if they got one available for ME3's MP content), which would be surprising since they're already working on ME4. So what's the bottom line? Well, it simply means that micro-transactions aren't even "supposed to" guarantee that the game itself will keep breathing past a certain amount of time. The longevity of certain games nowadays is pitifully short. Let's presume for a moment that, indeed, ME3's multi-player won't be supported anymore past the release of that SP DLC (let's just presume it, since for now that information is not 100% accurate, it might still be supported after DLC but chances are low now). That would mean that in terms of "ongoing support" (and perhaps "activity") ME3's multi-player will have died "on paper" (I.E. died in terms of "official support") barely one year after the game's release last March. Is barely one year considered the norm for games of this generation in terms of support and activity until the next iteration is released? I don't know... but it's pathetic, if you ask me.

So yeah, the micro-transaction model in itself only guarantees one, and one thing only, that whatever you bought using it will only give you what you bought, and the action of buying item(s) that way is not a form of revenue for the development team to ensure the game's support over time. You only get something out of the micro-transaction store *right now* for the game's *current status*, regardless of its future (or lack thereof). But that, in itself, is only a bad thing if you do expect your own micro-transactions to actually have that kind of effect on a game's support over time, when in fact micro-transactions aren't even supposed to accomplish that at all... although I guess that many of us gamers do have the perception that micro-transactions are supposed to guarantee just that.
 
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Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
751
126
Ill buy it if it ever becomes a not EA game.

Im done giving EA money, i havent even picked up ME3 yet even though its one of my favorite series and i loved the first 2.
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
81
Seems pretty much like a pay trainer/cheat code.
Back in the olden days, games used to have a premium rate line you could call for cheats and hints.

Now they just put it in the game.

If you don't want to play easy mode, don't pay for easy mode.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
81
Non-issue. If some people want to pay for shortcuts or some extra help, let them. Better than them getting frustrated and tossing the game aside at any rate.

Personally I wish more games were more open towards lightweight [re]plays of some sort. There's a lot of games out there I've beaten or have yet to touch that I'd like to experience, but at the same time I don't want to trudge through the entirety of it. Dragon Age comes to mind; loved it, would like to try some different angles throughout the story but I also don't feel like dumping dozens of hours on the "in between" crap just to see what happens. Skies of Arcadia is another, one of my absolute favorite old games but those random encounters get old real fast when all you want to do is re-visit the big ship battles and central storyline.

They actually made a cool DLC for ME1 for that kind of thing; it turns it into kind of an interactive comic book type presentation. Lets you re-visit the story and make all the major plot decisions without all the filler combat. I thought it was an awesome idea personally.
 

Madia

Senior member
May 2, 2006
487
1
0
Anyone remember this from Dragon Age Origins?

704358679_ayGHY-L.jpg


Personally, I'm looking forward to Dead Space 3 (I'm playing through the first two now) so this isn't going to cause me to boycott the game until it's ultra cheap. I think that mico transactions are a dumb idea especially in a Dead Space game where you can easily get through the entire game only using the plasma cutter and line gun.
 

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
106
I really wonder if the people who support microtransactions for SP games are also the same people who complains why content seems to gets less and less for the sticker price.