Price to pay: the damage caused by Pay to Win games.
A while ago I made a big step in my career and joined the videogame industry. A childhood dream come true. Since then, I have been delving deeper into Game Design concepts, trying to understand the similarities and differences in UX Design applied to products that do not try to solve a user problem, like entertainment games.
During this learning journey, besides discussing with colleagues, reading books, and the like, I have been obviously playing a lot (Yeah…the things we do for work =P ). And then a mobile strategy game caught my attention: Viking Rise.
The game’s theme and mechanics seemed quite intriguing to me — something like Age of Empires, but with Vikings. Also, there’s the main character, who is a copy-paste version of male Eivor from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
The real fun came after the first days playing, when you start to interact with other players.
So far you were a tribe chief, focused in developing your city, your army, your people. But then suddenly you realize there are plenty more tribe chiefs like you living side by side in a big world.
And things start to heating up.
You can now be part of a bigger tribe, bringing together many players under the same banner. That allows you to progress faster with skills and buffs, besides granting some extra protection since you’re not alone anymore.
It ticks all the social interactions boxes. You now have a ranking that shows your development compared to your peers. You can help other tribe members with resources and other tasks, which will build up your reputation with other players among other benefits. And of course, the social factor grows a lot. If you play often, you start to make friends, establish relationships and bonds with other people.
Something very important and sensitive to deal with in a recent post-pandemic context, with a lot of people still struggling to get out of the isolation mode.
And that’s where I found myself. Making friends in a game quite fun and casual so far. But wait, hold on tight. The Ragnarök battles are yet to come.
With the social factor, comes the opportunities and needs to add some order to chaos. To help other tribe members, lead and guide them towards a common path. This way the entire group keep getting stronger, by conquering more land, especial areas and reputation. And then more bonds and human connections are created. The game adds a layer of responsibility and commitment to those who lead.
You have to increase your online presence to help the others, to answer their questions, to interact with enemy tribes, to participate and mediate conflicts.
And until now we would have a very interesting game for many different reasons and factors.
But that’s when the nightmare begins.
Besides your internal rankings and tribe members comparisons, this global game mode put you in direct competition with every other player. And it’s a mad world. It’s do or die. And then you realize something quite surprising. There are tribes and players with 10, 20 or even 100x your power and capacity in the game.
Would all that be due to these players skills? Did they all grind their way to earn such power? Of course not.
I, as a longtime gamer with more than 30 years in this life, have never fall for the temptation of paying to get extra boosts. Something quite common to see after the 2000’s, especially on mobile.
And for the first time I saw myself willing to do it. “How come there are other players with so much more power than me? That’s absurd! I need to do something for my tribe. For me. I need to take care of my friends and myself.”
And so the spending begins. $5, $10, $20, $100. And the feeling of progress and to be catching up with the others starts to show.
And while I was going down this tortuous and mischievous path, another nightmare kicks in. The bullying.
Stronger players are now not only a target to hit. They start to dictate what you can or cannot do in the game. As if they owned it. As if they had any authority over you and your friends. Because they paid, and paid a lot. — You can find stories of players spending from $3.000 to $20.000 to date on Discord servers and Reddit threads.
And then, all the fun is gone, as snow melting in the fields when summer arrives in Scandinavia.
I saw scenes worthy of crimes outside the virtual world. Coercion. Pay to Win players threatening others with game-extinction if they refuse their demands. And I saw it happen more than once.
Entire tribes were wiped out. Pay to Win players who see themselves as a family (maybe the mob?) were eager to beat up disobedient tribes and share along the laurels of victory with everyone…victory of oppression and inequality, obviously.
I tried to talk and support a few of these players targeted by the bullies, as the situation was clearly going far beyond being a joke on a silly game.
Some described horrific feelings of abandonment, helplessness, and frustration as they tried to stand up against a far greater force. And they said there was no alternative but to abandon the game. And that’s what they did.
Think about it! To give up of something you enjoy doing because a bully full of money forced you.
I started then to spy what these bullies were doing and thinking. They made the decisions among their inner circle, shared it with the rest of players on the server, and those who did not obey were threatened and destroyed. Like a gang.
We have to admit at least, they really embodied the Viking role. Despite the fact the old Vikings didn’t have limitless credit cards to back up their power, right? Usually a strong blow of their axes would come only after many years of hard work in their farms first. That part these players totally ignored.
And that’s how the interest I still had for this game as a player was gone. I was there now out of curiosity, to observe. I was also trying to talk to people and offer some comfort. Because as hard as it may be to remember that, these players mentioned so far are all human.
The feelings of friendship, collaboration, belonging are all real. And when suddenly taken like that they can really do some damage and leave quite big scars. A real harm that for sure has not been taken into account by the company behind the game, IGG, and that usually is ignored by all companies willing to board the Pay to Win train.
I met players from all ages and many different backgrounds: teenagers, students, parents having fun in their free time, doctors, teachers, even people playing to forget about their real world problems, as severe health conditions, or as said before, people trying to make friends after a long period staying at home.
It was scary to realize that they were all vulnerable to this gang-like behavior, and there was nothing they could do about it. And even worse, to see many did not realize the nightmare they were in.
With constant progress, the game grows on you and makes you dedicate to it more and more. And here we need to give a round of applause to the team behind it. They did a great job. All triggers needed to capture your attention are there. To name a few:
- Rankings and leaderboards to foster competitiveness.
- Local and global/cross-server chats to increase social interactions and experience exchange between players.
- Constant notifications and reminders for missions and tasks to keep you engaged.
- Repetitive missions and goals to keep you coming back daily.
- Short, mid and long term rewards, to ensure you will keep putting your time and effort in the game.
However, nothing prepares you to face these heartbreaking situations, where you can see everything suddenly lost, because someone throwing money everywhere told you to jump and you said no.
I tried looking for more information on the game’s official Discord. I tried to contact the company to find out what precautions were taken to avoid psychological damage to players.
I got no answers other than default messages saying “I’m sorry. Your feedback is very important to us.” Yeah, right.
I was also surprised to see that much of the company’s Discord was run by volunteer players. Again, another way to create social connections and stand out from the other players. Or would it be another gimmick for the company to profit, by reducing its personnel costs? Why pay when there is someone willing to do it for free, right? Clever!
All that made me question more and more the Pay to Win model(or P2W), a game mechanic explained in the best way possible by Reddit user RedHavok, more or less like this:
“You are one of the best musicians of all time and you are auditioning for a demanding orchestra. You have worked all your life to be here. Richie Rich walks in and gets 1st violin.”
That’s the feeling. To be powerless. To feel robbed. Like something was unfairly and indefensibly taken from you.
It’s an avalanche of negative feelings evicted after time invested and human connections created.
Psychologists and Social Scientists have been researching P2W and its impacts for some time, but there is still a certain lack of data. Especially when we think about motivation. What drives someone to spend so much money on a “free” game?
The eager to win? Addiction? The eternal quest for social approval? There can be numerous reasons.
Fred Steinmetz, Ingo Fiedler, Marc von Meduna & Lennart Ante state in their paper “Pay-to-Win Gaming and its Interrelation with Gambling: Findings from a Representative Population Sample”:
“Pay-to-Win ‘gamblifies’ gaming not by introducing elements of chance but by potentially provoking psychological responses similar to gambling. For example, by linking in-game purchases with virtual superiority over other players, Pay-to-Win games intensify competition and monetize individuals’ competitiveness.”
If companies want to monetize gamer’s competitive spirit, there are definitely healthy ways to do it. You don’t need to be a genius to realize there will always be a huge difference in the balance between players who pay and those who play without the money boost.
So why not separate them? If not on dedicated servers for players with the same habits, then at least on direct combat situations and competitions. Why make a level 1 player compete against someone at level 100? Can anyone guess the result? Did any of the players enjoy their experience?
If the development effort is considered too big, then why not at least implement a decent community support and moderation system, which helps to prevent bullying or predatory behavior to avoid situations like “obey me or I will end your existence “?
These are all simple questions that could be used to improve the experience for all kinds of players. But to get there, we need to take a very important step: to care.
But if there are problems in understanding the motivation of players who pay, what about the consequences of P2W mechanics?
For sure companies that abuse these tactics are not caring about the psychological damage it brings. Both for those who get carried away and invest their money, and for others who just want to spend some time playing something fun.
And that’s my biggest concern.
As a UX Designer, I’m responsible for seeing products and solutions through the eyes of end users. And while it’s easy to imagine someone saying “yes, I would love to have a way to speed up my growth and progress in a game”, it’s hard to imagine the other side of that coin.
Who would be comfortable competing with someone who doesn’t want to put their effort, time, and skills into a game, but would rather like to bring their packed piggy bank and their real-world privileges along?
Okay, the spender player profile for this type of game can be quite vast and diverse, but the oppressive and uneven mechanics that the game reproduces straight from the real world does not change. The game, which was supposed to be fun, now reminds you constantly of one real world sad rule: cash calls the shots. And then a line is draw between the cool kids with all the dollars and the window shoppers.
These ideas are not new. They’ve been on the market for at least 20 years, and they’re certainly not going anywhere anytime soon. Not while people still feels like they can line their pockets with money by catching the Whales, the small group of players who spend obscene sums while the rest of the mortals contribute with their micro-transactions of $5 or less.
What worries me is what we, the developers behind these mechanics, are doing to, if not prevent and eradicate this type of abuse, then at least lessen the damage caused by our decisions.
Because yes, there is a whole team behind it and several decision makers involved. However, at the end of the day, UX Designers will always be the representatives of their users.
In the games industry, the Game Designer also plays a very important role in this matter, even if they are often more guided by creativity than by empathy and user-centered design. Still, it is these people who should deal with a bad conscious the most.
And I hope they really do, so that one day we can live with a model where companies’ quick profit can coexist with players who choose to spend their money, without necessarily throwing everyone involved into a vortex of psychological damnation, addiction, and frustration.
If you still remember, I said at the begin I was trying to understand the similarities and differences of UX Design in the context of regular products and games. Well, here is one of the major ones:
When we use a free app, we usually end up paying with our data, with or without our consent. When we play a free game, we might be offering our mental health as the bargaining chip.
I have my doubts whether the players would be willing to embark on such adventure, if all this was much more exposed and clear. It is up to game companies and game developers to be honest or not with their audience. Who would have thought that choosing to sleep with a clear conscience could also be an act of empathy, right?
Anyway, after all of this, I’m going to play a bit to clear my mind. A non-Pay to Win game, of course, where frustration can only come from my lack of skill and not from constant reminders of the inequality of the world we live in.
