'My son spent £3,160 in one game' (BBC article looking at exploitative MTXs)

[Woodbeam]

You'd be surprised, actually :P
This is especially true among F2P gamers, where your converter rate is usually less than 5%. Of that 5% or less, the majority of them are spending on smaller purchases only, and may not even be repeat customers.

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I don't know what this says beyond players wanting to spend as little as they can, which is obvious. The implication that consumers are considering the motives of game developers when they're making a purchase decision still seems like a massive stretch. Beyond that, systems in these games are built to break down the ability to make objective purchasing decisions, making the idea that most consumers are thinking about how "generous" developers are being or not being even harder to believe.

Yes, there's ample academic research (and live data) suggesting that microtransactions are driven by impulse purchases, and that impulse purchasing intent drops with price increases. You can probably find some papers if you search "impulse purchase intent price point" or some other combination of related keywords. I can probably scrounge up some examples of this in action, but I'll have to think about it because the clearest examples are probably proprietary info.

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Well, for one thing, I was talking about "larger purchases" there, not microtransactions. But yes, higher prices make impulse purchases less likely... generally. Let me get back to what I'm arguing against specifically, this statement: "At that price point, they're fully aware of the impact of their purchase." Larger purchases are subject to cognitive biases and active manipulation the same way that microtransactions are, even if those biases and manipulation tactics aren't always the same. Higher prices may push for some level of greater objectivity in a vacuum, but that can be broken down just the same as any other purchasing decision. "Full awareness" is a lofty goal under the best circumstances, and I don't think we can pretend that game developers are attempting to achieve it in general.

It just comes down to what the game is, is what I mean. Some games are designed to operate well in isolation (e.g. Candy Crush); others are dependent, at minimum, of a critical mass of CCU in order to have a good experience (any game with matchmaking). For the latter, CCU is a much more important figure. For the former, which makes up the bulk of F2P mobile, it take a backseat to LTV. For games like Apex Legends (or any AAA title), CCU is worn as a badge of pride, even if the LTV of those players isn't amazing. League of Legends makes a boatload of money based on very high engagement metrics but its LTV isn't amazing comparable to other titles in the RTS/strategy genre.

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This all makes sense, though it doesn't answer my question.

I talked a bit about this in another thread about loot boxes here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/th...nimation-for-each.129552/page-2#post-22837119

There is a general academic basis for a lot of the ideas in game design, but until they are rigorously tested against a control, there is no validation for them working. Anecdotes are a useful indication of an effect, but game developers have the power of experimentation at the population level; therefore, for us to consider an effect true, it needs to be validated at that level. To date, I have not seen any evidence of this type of social pressure actually working with real world data, so it could be a thing, and it might not be. I'm just not willing to accept it as true by default, even if it's wiser to design for it by default to be "safe". Hope that makes sense.

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So it's being designed for by default, but there's no data to robustly support it? That seems very strange. But really I'm just stunned that effects as basic as vanity, conformity and peer pressure don't have robust backing in data in games, it's just impossible. Why do cosmetics even exist otherwise? The principles they operate by exist far beyond games and are extremely well known. I'm just baffled.

Just hearsay :)

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Oddly... specific hearsay.