Armello, DLC, and Microtransactions
(Those of you familiar with my thought process are probably already aware that Armello is not going to be the actual focus of this post, but was the catalyst towards the rest of my rant.)
I’m one of those johnny-come-latelies when it comes to some games, this was one of them. As of this writing, Armello is available for free play on Steam (until Friday morning) or you can purchase for about $12 (it’s 40% off, usually will cost you about $20.) That’s not bad at all! It was apparently started by a crowdfunding enterprise on Kickstarter, was successful there, is the product of an Indy Dev studio and is generally the picture of what the community wants an Indy Game to look like. It’s got some great music, the idea is fun, the board game style layout is easily understood, and the prologue takes you through a quick how-to without too much fuss. The artistry is really engaging, and the game gives you references to who drew/animated the various pieces with a simple mouseover. It’s really very good for what I played of it.
The thing I didn’t love about the game cropped up the moment I finished the prologue — I noticed a lot of shopping-cart icons hovering over half the available characters to play. Micro-transactions having become the norm in video games, this isn’t a huge surprise to me but it is a turn-off. This might be a bit of a whiny thing to stand on, but I’m still of the opinion that if I paid you money for a game, I should be getting the whole game. I really don’t like the DLC and Micro-transactions culture that has slithered into video games as a whole. I paid you for the game, give me the game. If you want there to be more to add on to the game and get more of my money in the process, I suggest you either work that in prior to release and up the price to reflect your more robust offering, or make it a sequel/expansion altogether. Realistically, I’m complaining now for the same reason I dislike going to some conventions and the state fair — I’m not interested in paying someone for the privilege to spend more money. Give me a complete experience, or stop trying to grab my wallet.
Those who know me, I can hear you thinking “But Q! You spend money on FF 14, and that is a constant subscriber game!” Or perhaps, “I know you spent real money on Pokemon Go!” Here’s where those differ for me:
- The MMORPGs I play with any regularity have yet to charge me more for getting more content mid-stream. You can pay to do cosmetic things, you can pay to skip some of the game and get a character leveled to a certain level (not for me, but I can see why some would use it) and new content is usually delivered via a patch between expansions. The main story expansions may have a cost at the same level of a usual game but they’re still delivering an entire package in that, and I find the cost to be adequate to the time I enjoy the new content in expansions. If I don’t find that to be matching, I vote with my wallet and wander off. WoW has seen me unsub and resub a few times, and any veteran WoW player can probably guess with accuracy which expansions made me jump ship, because it made a *lot of players* jump ship.
- On the “paying money for free games” thing, a la Pokemon Go: The big difference for me in these games is that I don’t *have* to spend that money to really enjoy the game (screw you Candy Crush, I know what you’re about!) I didn’t have to pay an entry fee, and I generally view spending money on mobile free-to-play microtransactions as supporting the developer. Sometimes that developer is a big company like Nintendo, and sometimes that developer is a tiny little puzzle-maker that makes Pictocross puzzles that I’m hopelessly addicted to. Upon reflection, I don’t think I’ve even spent as much on any one of those games than I would had they been a 3DS AAA Title.
- Yes, I get that DLC is (sometimes) supposed to be considered “mini expansions,” and in the cases where DLC is put forward after a reasonable amount of time and offered for a reasonable price, you’ll not hear a peep from me other than whether or not it looked interesting enough to get my credit card numbers. What I cannot stand is when we have a video game released with DLC coming out in a couple of months (or better yet, the DLC is released alongside the game for an upcharge.) Don’t screw with me here — you had that shit ready to go, and just figured you could get an extra few bucks from your consumers by tacking it on quickly.
I get that it’s something that is becoming the new norm, but I’m going to bemoan it. This will be my “remember the days when” moment, and I really hope someone can take this to heart for the younger generation. Kids, there was a time when either the game was complete and ready, or you didn’t ship that bullshit. There was a time when Day-One patches would have been considered a sign of weakness. There was a time where you played the game in front of you, and could enjoy the play and story that unfolded in front of you without logging out to a screen that asked if you liked the game enough to spend more money on its optional bullshit RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW.
To wrap this up — is Armello some symbol of corporate greed gone haywire? NO. It’s a good premise, a pretty game, and seems to have an idea where you could legit sit there and play this board game for quite a while. It maintains a solid 75% on Metacritic and seems to be keeping that. I don’t begrudge it the Character packs and other micro-transactions because that’s now unfortunately the norm. What I will bitch and moan about is an otherwise pretty solid title getting wrapped up in what the EAs and Warner Brothers and Ubisofts of the world have convinced their consumers is OK to have happen, ’cause that’s a goddamn shame.

