Profit in Gaming

        For this unit in Art of Rhetoric we focused on the early history of America and the hardships Native Americans faced along with their portrayal to Europeans and how visual rhetoric painted them in a biased false light. 

Aside from that we studied various opinion pieces and more importantly how to establish your self as credible with out a formal education in the topic. So below this paragraph is my shot at an Op-Ed by expressing my credibility without an masters in the economy, or experience creating a game in the current industry

Op-Ed:

        Gaming is a highly opinionated topic. Hypercritical and hypocritical gamers will write a manifesto on r/gaming on Reddit about how some small indie horror game is the pinnacle of gaming. Alternatively, they will treat recent popular releases as the worst games to ever exist and how the entire fanbase is toxic, while being toxic themselves. But every gamer will agree on something, micro-transactions are either the worst thing to ever curse video games or it's their paycheck.

        Micro-transactions or in-app purchases are 1 to 5 dollar payments usually speeding up the game in some way like Candy Crush asking for a dollar to restore lives or Clash of Clan's gem system. Which is fine in those kind of games because they’re both free, say you pay $60 for a game, then are asked to pay another $40 or trudge through 200 hours of playtime to compete with long time players. That's the unreasonable fate that anyone who bought Electronic Art’s Star Wars Battlefront 2 suffered. 

As you can tell people weren't happy about it. The problem is Battlefront wasn’t the only game to do such a thing; it was one more example in the middle of a pandemic of massive AAA tier of blockbusters charging extra for expected content. Now this was a common practice where the developers of the game could ask $5 for a map pack or additional content. But, people have a problem when paying can give you an advantage in gameplay. 

        Conversely it can be a developers paycheck? Sense 1994 with Sonic 3 Triple A games have never varied from the $50-70 price range. In 2017 Sonic Mania's release, the direct Successor to Sonic 3 is priced at 20$! In spite of the Fact that Sonic Mania has over double the amount of content. In Short gamers expect more for less and on the flip side developers put in more for less. The only way developers have been compensating for inflation is by expanding the player base. Sadly the world wide player base has been decelerating in growth forcing companies to charge for every drop of content. See this video for more information.

        So right now we are stuck in a nightmare of cheated players or broke developers. So how can we fix this problem? I propose we up the Triple A price from $60-80. That has the obvious problem of cutting out most of the teenage audience as we dont have much money to our name and we at least want to be (or starting to be) self sufficient. But the self sufficient adult audience will adjust to the new price.

        A likely side effect of upping the price is that the 5 to 40 dollar price range will probably be solidified as the Independent developer range and the main audience will probably be teenagers. Forcing us to become more aware of how we use our dollars as the easiest way to access indie games is to purchase them on steam which is known for having little to no quality control. so to compensate, buyers will adjust to doing their research thus forcing teenagers to have a better eye for recognizing scams. And If you think there isn’t any worth in the indie mid tier, It just so happens to harbor Game Maker's Tool Kit Most Innovative award winner Baba is You($15), #17 on best selling games of all time Terraria($10) and hosts both versions of the highest selling game, Minecraft($30) at 200,000,000 copies sold! See this page for more information. By handing developers an easier to reach player base it can allow for more unlikely and Sleeper Hits Such as Among Us(5$).

        So that is what I think about the current state profiteering in gaming. The most common system is infuriating I recommend of instead of trying to be fancy about it keep it plain and keep it simple charge extra up front and expand the price range for games all over the internet.

Explanatory Paragraph:

My attempt at gaining credibility is through being an insider common terminology and referencing specific events, such as using AAA and Indie to describe the publishing of games and referencing the response to EA's Battlefront 2 or Mark Brown's Game Makers Tool Kit award. In the fourth paragraph of my Op-Ed I swapped between referring to teenagers In the 2nd and 3rd person. it was an attempt at hinting towards my age with out being direct about it and interrupting the flow of the paragraph. Other general topics I referenced was Steam's non existent quality control and state of r/gaming on reddit.