国际战略中aaa模式

This weekend, while most of the technology and gaming press wasn’t working on anything particularly important, Warner Bros. Interactive tried to slip a small news item past their attention. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the highly-anticipated sequel to the Tolkien-themed adventure game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, will include microtransactions. This $60 game—up to $100 USD if you spring for the special pre-order versions—will ask players to pay even more in bite-sized chunks to unlock some of its content faster.

这个周末，虽然大多数技术和游戏媒体都没有做任何特别重要的事情，但华纳兄弟互动公司试图将一则小新闻漏掉。 《中土：战争之影》是托尔金主题冒险游戏《 中土： 魔多之 影 》备受期待的续集，其中将包括微交易 。 这款60美元的游戏(如果您准备购买特殊的预购版本，则最高可达到100美元)，将要求玩家支付更多费用，以更快地解锁部分内容。

It isn’t the first time the small but infinitely extensible payments have jumped from free-to-play fare to the realm of full-priced PC and console releases. But for a variety of reasons, this one has been hit with instant and vocal backlash from gamers who were excited to take up Talion’s fight against Sauron once again. For one, we’re only two months out from release, and many gamers had already taken the bait of exclusive characters to pre-order the game (pre-order pushes and expensive bundles already being a casus belli for a lot of us) without being told about the microtransaction model the game would use. Another is that Warner Bros. Interactive has had a string of public relations failures with recent games, from the controversy surrounding YouTube reviews for the original Shadow of Mordor to the disastrous PC launch of Arkham Knight to the similar sequel-plus-loot box formula of Injustice 2.

但这不是第一次，小而无穷的付款已经从免费游戏跃升为全价PC和游戏机发行版的领域。 但是由于种种原因，这一游戏受到了游戏玩家的即时和口头反击，他们很高兴再次参加Talion与Sauron的战斗。 一方面，我们距离发布只有两个月的时间，而且许多游戏玩家已经以独家角色的诱饵来预订游戏(预订推送和昂贵的捆绑包已经成为我们中许多人的最爱 )被告知游戏将使用的微交易模型。 另一个是华纳兄弟互动公司在最近的游戏中出现了一系列的公共关系失败，从围绕YouTube对原版Shadow of Mordor的 评论引发的争议到灾难性的PC发行Arkham Knight   类似于《 不公正2》的类似续集-抢劫盒子公式 。

But the bigger problem, for Warner Bros. and for gamers, is that there’s a sense of fatigue that comes with every major new release that succumbs to this model. The nightmare scenario of paying extra to reload the bullets in your digital gun, famously proposed by an EA executive just a few years ago, seems to be upon us in many ways. The pay-to-win systems so indicative of some of the worst trends in mobile games are coming to the PC and consoles, in full-priced, major franchise releases, and there’s nothing gamers can really do to stop it if we actually want to play those games.

但是对于华纳兄弟公司和游戏玩家来说，更大的问题是，屈服于该模型的每个主要新版本都带有一种疲劳感。 几年前 ， 一位EA高管曾提出过著名的噩梦，那就是花额外的钱在电子枪中重新装上子弹，这似乎在许多方面给我们带来了麻烦。 在全价，主要特许经营版本中，以付费为目的的系统已经预示着手机游戏中一些最坏的趋势正出现在PC和游戏机上，如果我们真的想阻止它，那么玩家就无能为力了。玩那些游戏。

The debate around the latest big release to lean on this model has been fierce. Some gamers are upset enough that they’ve cancelled their pre-orders and won’t buy it at full (or any) price, others are disappointed in the game and the general trend but plan to buy it anyway, and a small but vocal minority are saying that it’s not an important factor.

关于依赖该模型的最新大版本的争论一直很激烈。 一些游戏玩家非常沮丧，以至于他们取消了预购并不会以全价(或任何价格)购买游戏，其他游戏者对游戏和总体趋势感到失望，但仍打算购买游戏，虽然有些小但声音很大少数人说这不是重要因素。

It is important, though. Pairing mobile, freemium-style microtransactions with a game at any price fundamentally alters both the way it’s designed and the way it’s played. Let’s take a look at some of the justifications for microtransactions in full-priced games, and why they don’t add up.

不过，这很重要。 将移动，免费增值风格的微交易与任何价格的游戏配对，从根本上改变了游戏的设计方式和玩法。 让我们看一看在全价游戏中进行微交易的理由，以及为什么它们不加总。

“出版商和开发商需要额外的收入” (“Publishers and Developers Need the Extra Revenue”)

No, they don’t. This is especially untrue of the biggest and most flagrant users of microtransactions in full-priced games, EA, Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros. Interactive. These companies bring in huge slices of the estimated $100 billion dollar gaming industry, and would get big slices no matter what their revenue models were on specific games.

不，他们没有。 对于全价游戏(例如EA，Activision-Blizzard，Ubisoft和Warner Bros. Interactive)中微交易的最大和最公然的用户而言，尤其如此。 这些公司在估计价值1000亿美元的游戏产业中占据了巨大的份额，无论他们在特定游戏上的收入模式是什么，它们都将获得巨大的份额。

Since the discussion is about Shadow of War, let’s take a look at the numbers for its predecessor. For a AAA title from a major publisher, Shadow of Mordor was actually something of a surprise hit, with combined console and PC sales of approximately 6 million units according to VGChartz. At $60 a copy that would mean a revenue of roughly $360 million, but a lot of those copies were probably bought on sale, so let’s cut the estimated revenue in half to $180 million. Assuming that Shadow of Mordor had a production budget on par with similar games like The Witcher 3, it would be somewhere in the $50 million range to produce. With perhaps another $30-40 million in marketing and distribution costs, the game still would have made its money back for Warner Bros. at least twice over.

由于讨论的是战争阴影 ，因此让我们看一下其前身的数字。 对于一家主要发行商的AAA称号来说，《 Undertow魔多》实际上是出人意料的， 根据VGChartz的说法，控制台和PC的总销量约为600万台。 以每本60美元的价格，这意味着大约3.6亿美元的收入，但是其中许多副本可能是出售的，所以让我们将估计收入减少一半，至1.8亿美元。 假设Shadow of Mordor的制作预算与The Witcher 3等类似游戏的制作预算相当，则制作费用将在5,000万美元左右。 也许再加上30-40百万美元的市场营销和发行成本，这款游戏仍然可以为华纳兄弟公司赚钱至少两次。

So, to imply that the sequel to Shadow of Mordor “needs” any extra revenue stream is disingenuous. And again, it’s hardly at the top of the high-budget gaming heap: the yearly installment of Call of Duty can be depended upon to make somewhere between $500 million and a billion dollars on its own, The Division sold over 7 million units for Ubisoft last year, and the FIFA 2017 soccer game sold over 15 million copies, making money at Hollywood blockbuster levels from initial sales alone. These are the extreme examples, of course, and every developer and publisher is expected to have its ups and downs, but to say that microtransactions are somehow unavoidable at the highest level of game sales is simply not true.

因此，暗示“ 魔多之影 ”的续集“需要”任何额外的收入来源。 再说一次，它几乎不在高预算游戏堆的顶部：《 使命召唤》的年度分期可依靠自己赚取5亿至10亿美元 ， 该部门为Ubisoft 售出了700万套去年，《 FIFA 2017》足球游戏的销量超过1500万本 ，仅凭最初的销售就达到了好莱坞大片的水平。 当然，这些都是极端的例子，每个开发者和发行者都会有起有落，但要说在游戏销售的最高水平上微交易不可避免地是不正确的。

Oh, and The Division, FIFA 2017, and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare all included microtransactions, despite earning back their budgets multiple times over from conventional sales alone. EA’s Ultimate Team modes for its sports games, which reward the biggest spenders on in-game digital currency, earns the company $800 billion a year. The takeaway is this: standard video game sales can earn a mind-boggling amount of money at the highest level, enough to make any company profitable. Adding microtransactions on top of that is simply a way to squeeze every possible dollar out of development. That’s a really great thing if you’re an EA stockholder…but not so much if you’re a player.

哦， 尽管该部门的预算比传统销售高出许多倍，但该部门，《 FIFA 2017》和《 使命召唤无限战争》都包括微交易。 EA的体育游戏终极团队模式，奖励了游戏内数字货币上最大的支出者， 每年为公司赚了8000亿美元 。 得出的结论是：标准视频游戏销售可以在最高水平上赚到令人难以置信的钱，足以使任何公司获利。 在此之上添加微交易只是从开发中挤出每一美元的一种方法。 如果您是EA股东，那确实是一件很棒的事情……但如果您是一名玩家，那就没什么了。

“您仍然可以赚取游戏中的所有内容而无需支付额外费用” (“You Can Still Earn Everything In The Game Without Paying Extra”)

This kind of reasoning often adorns some of the more exploitative free-to-play mobile games, and it’s no less appealing when it shows up on a game with a $60 price tag. It’s often repeated for games like Overwatch, and it even showed up in the official press release announcing Shadow of War‘s loot crate system.

这种推理通常会装饰一些更具开发性的免费游戏，当它出现在价格为60美元的游戏上时，它的吸引力也同样存在。 对于《 守望先锋》(Overwatch)之类的游戏来说，它经常被重复使用，甚至出现在官方的新闻稿中，宣布了《 Undertow之战 》的战利品箱系统。

Please note: No content in the game is gated by Gold. All content can be acquired naturally through normal gameplay.

请注意：游戏中没有任何内容由Gold控制。 所有内容均可通过正常游戏自然获得。

That sounds fine, right? The only thing gained by the players who spend extra money is a little time. And indeed, that would be a fairly reasonable way to explain microtransactions and other paid extras…but the logic breaks down pretty quickly once you start to think about it.

听起来不错吧？ 花费额外金钱的玩家唯一获得的就是一点时间。 确实，这是解释微交易和其他有偿额外费用的相当合理的方法……但是一旦您开始考虑，逻辑就会很快崩溃。

Video games take more than just technical skill when it comes to design, and more than conventional artistic prowess as well. There are practical aspects of game design that have evolved over the last few decades as the medium has grown. Things like skill balancing, a difficulty curve, or even a compulsion or “reward” loop, are relatively intangible concepts that nevertheless help determine a game’s quality. And these elements are affected—in fact, can’t help but be affected—when microtransactions are built in.

在设计方面，视频游戏不仅需要技术技能，而且还需要传统的艺术才能。 在过去几十年中，随着媒体的发展，游戏设计的一些实用方面也得到了发展。 诸如技能平衡，难度曲线甚至是强迫或“奖励”循环之类的东西都是相对无形的概念，它们仍然可以帮助确定游戏的质量。 当内置微交易时，这些元素会受到影响(实际上是无济于事)。

These ideas can incorporate the player’s own skill, the danger of enemies, the frequency of rewards, and any number of other elements. But when you tie them in to a system that can be bypassed with real money, the progression is no longer exclusively reliant on time, or skill, or even blind luck. The developer and publisher now have a vested interest in changing the formula. And not so that the player doesn’t get overwhelmed or bored by poorly-leveled enemies, and not so the player is motivated to continue with periodic rewards. The question now becomes, “how infrequently can we reward the player—enough that they’ll continue to play the game, but not so frequently that they’ll have no motivation to spend even more money to play through it faster?”

这些想法可以结合玩家自身的技能，敌人的危险，奖励的频率以及许多其他因素。 但是，当您将它们绑定到可以用真钱绕开的系统上时，进度就不再完全依赖时间，技能或什至是盲目运气了。 开发人员和发布者现在对更改公式有既得利益。 并不是这样，玩家就不会被水平低下的敌人淹没或感到无聊，也不是为了激励玩家继续获得定期奖励。 现在的问题变成了：“我们怎么不经常奖励玩家，只要他们继续玩游戏，而又没有那么频繁，他们就没有动力花更多的钱更快地玩游戏了？”

This is the core mechanic of pay-to-win mobile titles like Clash of Clans. The psychology behind these games is almost devious, giving early players frequent rewards to encourage them, tasking them with investing hours and hours in a free game to become competitive…and then hitting them with a skewed difficulty wall that’s all but impossible to overcome without spending real money to hasten their progress and power up. Yes, technically everything in the game can be achieved by simply waiting long enough to earn it…but that wait quickly balloons to weeks or months as you grind away repetitively, unless you’re willing to spend real money on upgrades.

这是《部落冲突》等双赢手机游戏的核心机制。 这些游戏背后的心理几乎是vious回的，给早期玩家频繁的奖励以鼓励他们，要求他们花几个小时在免费游戏中以提高竞争力……然后以倾斜的难度墙打他们，如果没有花费，这些墙几乎是无法克服的真正的钱来加速他们的进步和力量。 是的，从技术上讲，只要等待足够长的时间就能赚钱，就可以实现游戏中的所有内容……但是当您反复磨削时，它会Swift膨胀到数周或数月，除非您愿意花费真钱进行升级。

Applying this logic to a multiplayer game, like Call of Duty or FIFA, has obvious flaws: whoever pays the most, the fastest, will get an advantage over other players with better gear or digital athletes. That’s a disheartening prospect for anyone who’s paid full price, especially if they had hoped to compete with online foes in some kind of leveled playing field.

将这种逻辑应用于诸如《 使命召唤》或《 FIFA》之类的多人游戏存在明显的缺陷：谁付钱最多，最快，谁就会比其他拥有更好装备或数字运动员的玩家更具优势。 对于付了全价的任何人来说，这都是令人沮丧的前景，特别是如果他们希望在某种公平的竞争环境中与在线敌人竞争。

But even in a single-player game, the mechanic itself is ripe for exploitation. A game with a finely-balanced progression system, dolling out rewards that keep the player both challenged and engaged, now has to serve both the core experience of the game itself and the publisher’s ambitions to make as much money as possible. For a single-player game like Shadow of War, it might break the balance of the title altogether in an attempt to force the player into free-to-play-style payments for more natural progression…even after a $60 purchase.

但是，即使在单人游戏中，机制本身也已经成熟，可以被利用。 一款具有良好平衡的进度系统的游戏，可以发放奖励，使玩家不断挑战和参与，现在必须既服务于游戏本身的核心体验，又要满足发行商赚钱的雄心。 对于像《战争之影》这样的单人游戏，它可能会完全打破标题的平衡，以试图迫使玩家以免费方式进行支付，以实现更自然的进步……甚至在购买了60美元之后。

“全是化妆品，不影响游戏玩法” (“It’s All Cosmetic, It Doesn’t Affect Gameplay”)

The rallying cry of cosmetic-only items is a popular one, especially for online multiplayer games where any perceived gameplay advantage for a paid extra is nearly instantly labelled as a “pay-to-win” mechanic. Restricting all paid upgrades to visual flair for players can be an easy way for developers to ease the concerns of would-be customers.

化妆品类产品引起人们的广泛欢迎，尤其是对于在线多人游戏，在在线多人游戏中，任何感知到的付费额外游戏优势几乎都立即被标记为“赢钱”机制。 将播放器的所有付费升级限制在视觉效果上，可能是开发人员缓解潜在客户担忧的简便方法。

But even this system has some built-in problems. The same tendency to alter the core rewards of gameplay can affect it, artificially increasing the slow, grinding progress of players who won’t pay to skip the tedium. The most prominent current game to use this model seems to have essentially built itself around this wait-or-pay system.

但是，即使该系统也存在一些内置问题。 改变游戏核心奖励的相同趋势也会对其产生影响，从而人为地增加了那些愿意为沉闷而付费的玩家的缓慢，艰苦的进步。 当前使用该模型的最杰出的游戏似乎基本上是围绕“等待或付费”系统构建的。

Take Overwatch and its loot boxes: technically, everything in the game can be earned by simply playing multiplayer matches, gaining experience points, and opening randomized boxes. Since the loot is random—as it almost always is in these kinds of systems—that progression is slow, with many duplicates of items one already has offering a roadblock to this theoretical endgame. Duplicates earn coins that can be spent towards specific pieces of cosmetic gear that players want, but the value of the coins is only a fraction of the value of the duplicate item, again, making that theoretical endgame farther and farther away. So the core progression mechanic in Overwatch, even if it’s technically possible to earn everything without paying, is inexorably and intentionally designed to frustrate players just enough to make them spend real money on loot boxes (see above). It doesn’t help that the system is stuffed with literally thousands of low-value items like sprays, one- or two-word voice lines, and player icons, making it all the harder to hit a rare skin or emote in the quasi-gambling randomized loot system.

以《 守望先锋》及其战利品箱为例：从技术上讲，游戏中的所有内容都可以通过简单地玩多人游戏，获得经验值并打开随机箱来获得。 由于战利品是随机的(在这种系统中几乎总是如此)，进展缓慢，许多物品的重复已经为理论上的最终结果提供了障碍。 复制品会赢得可用于玩家想要的特定装饰装备的硬币，但是硬币的价值只是复制品价值的一小部分，再次使理论上的最终局面越来越远。 因此，即使《 守望先锋》的核心进度机制，即使在技术上有可能不付任何费用就赚钱，也无可避免地被故意设计，以挫败玩家，使他们只花真钱在战利品箱上(见上文)。 该系统实际上填充了成千上万种低价值的物品，如喷雾剂，一两个单词的语音线和播放器图标，这无济于事，这使得在稀有皮肤或准表情中更难打到。赌博的随机战利品系统。

Frequent in-game events, where even rarer and more expensive items are only available for a short time, all but force completionists to spend between three and a hundred dollars on randomized gear…in a game that they’ve already paid $40-60 to play. Because loot boxes are rewarded at each player level, and loot boxes are then intrinsically tied to the game’s progress—indeed, they are the progression system for everything except the competitive ranked mode—it creates a meta-game that’s all about spending time playing the most “profitable” game modes. Or, of course, paying to unlock purely cosmetic items even faster…but still being punished with the random loot-coin drop combo.

频繁的游戏内活动，即使是稀有和较昂贵的物品也只能在短时间内提供，所有这些活动都迫使完成主义者花3到100美元购买随机装备……在他们已经为这些游戏支付40-60美元的游戏中玩。 由于战利品盒会在每个玩家级别得到奖励，然后战利品盒会与游戏的进度本质上联系在一起(实际上，它们是除竞争性排名模式以外的所有事物的进度系统)，它创建了一个元游戏，所有这些都是花时间玩游戏最“有利可图”的游戏模式。 或者，当然，甚至可以更快地支付费用来解锁纯粹的化妆品……但是仍然会受到随机的战利品掉落组合的惩罚。

There’s an even more flagrant abuser of this kind of system: Dead or Alive. The most risque of mainstream fighting series started way back on the PlayStation (the first one), tantalizing players with more than a dozen revealing costumes for its female polygonal fighters at a time when two or three would have been luxurious. The roster got longer and the skirts got shorter as the series progressed, with the character and costume unlocks basically functioning as the progression system in the otherwise balanced 3D fighter. But the fifth entry in the series, now having the full benefit of online play and years of DLC culture to draw upon, walled off a huge portion of these costumes behind in-game microtransactions (or, arguably, tiny portions of DLC). Hundreds of in-game costumes for the digital pin-ups are broken up into individual purchases or bundled packs, with the grand total of extras costing more than ten times the amount of the original game, a sequel to games that never required any extra money at all for the “full” experience.

这种系统有一个甚至更公然的滥用者： Dead或Alive 。 最冒险的主流格斗游戏系列可以追溯到PlayStation(第一个)，在两三本本来很豪华的时候，诱使玩家为其女多角形战斗机展示十几种服装。 随着系列的进行，花名册变得更长，裙子也变得更短，角色和服装的解锁基本上充当了平衡的3D战斗机中的进阶系统。 但是，该系列的第五个参赛作品，现在已经充分利用了在线游戏的乐趣，并拥有多年的DLC文化经验，可以在游戏中进行微交易(或可以说是DLC的很小一部分)后，将这些服装中的很大一部分隔离开来。 数百种用于数字海报的游戏服装被分解为个人购买或捆绑包装 ，总费用超过原始游戏的十倍，这是从未需要任何额外金钱的游戏的续集完全是为了获得“完整”的体验。

Dead or Alive 5 and similar titles at least have the arguable virtue of giving their fans what they want for a set price, without the randomized, semi-gambling frustration of loot crates. But the point remains that once a developer decides to wall off portions of its game behind a paid system, even if the paid system doesn’t technically affect gameplay, things soon get out of hand. There are examples of developers that respect their players and offer a more tempered balance between non-competitive paid extras and core gameplay, like Rocket League and Don’t Starve. but they’re becoming more and more infrequent, especially among the big names of modern gaming.

Dead or Alive 5和类似的头衔至少具有可争议的优点，即以固定价格为粉丝提供他们想要的东西，而不会出现随机，半赌博性的掠夺者cr陷。 但是，重点仍然是，一旦开发人员决定将其游戏的某些部分限制在付费系统之后，即使付费系统在技术上不影响游戏玩法，事情也会很快失控。 有一些开发人员尊重他们的玩家，并在非竞争性付费演员和核心游戏玩法之间提供了更为平衡的平衡，例如Rocket League和Do n't Starve 。 但是它们变得越来越少见，尤其是在现代游戏的知名人士中。

“如果您不喜欢它，就不要购买” (“If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Buy It”)

The free market argument has been used by more than one developer to try to excuse its profiteering business model, and a fair bit of gamers have echoed it in their defense. And yes, at the end of the day, no one is forcing you to buy a game with a monetization system that you don’t agree with. But that’s small comfort to millions of gamers who enjoyed the deep orc army system of Shadow of Mordor, and are now faced with the choice to either play a game they’ve spent three years waiting for or do without to make an ideological stand.  A stand which, if current AAA monetization trends continue, won’t actually accomplish much of anything.

自由市场的论点已被不止一个开发商用来借口其牟取暴利的商业模式，并且有相当多的游戏玩家在其辩护中呼应了它。 是的，最终，没有人强迫您购买您不同意的货币化游戏。 但这对于数百万喜欢深厚的兽人阴影的兽人军系统的游戏玩家来说是很小的安慰，他们现在面临的选择是要么玩他们花了三年时间等待的游戏，要么不做一个思想立场。 如果当前的AAA货币化趋势持续下去，那么这个立场实际上将不会做任何事情。

The “don’t like it, don’t buy it” argument was used when games started offering ridiculous pre-order bonuses as an incentive to help publishers boast in quarterly reviews. It was used when games started padding out their content, locking bits and pieces of gameplay that used to be included at no extra charge behind deluxe editions that cost $100 instead of $60. Now it’s being used to defend billion-dollar publishers as they bring schemes from freemium mobile titles into the world of full-priced games.

当游戏开始提供荒谬的预购奖金时，会使用“不喜欢，不购买”的说法，以鼓励发行商夸耀季度评论。 当游戏开始填充其内容，锁定游戏内容时，通常会使用该功能，而豪华版本的价格为100美元(而不是60美元)，以前不收取额外费用。 现在，当数十亿美元的发行商将免费增值手机游戏的计划带入全价游戏世界时，它已被用来捍卫这一价值。

Even the games that launch with no in-app purchases often add them further down the line, bolting on the same problems to a previously unaffected game: see The Division and Payday II (whose developers promised the games would be free of microtransactions), and even older titles like the remastered Call of Duty 4 or the seven-year-old Two Worlds II. Often games that underperform will be remade into a free-to-play title, forcing the few players who are still active to abandon their original purchase or adapt to a system they didn’t sign up for when they bought the game. This is especially true of multiplayer shooters (see Battleborn and Evolve) and online RPGs.

即使是不带应用程序内购买的游戏，也常常将它们添加到产品线的下方，将相同的问题与以前未受影响的游戏联系在一起：请参阅《 The Division and Payday II》(其开发者承诺该游戏将不包含微交易)，以及甚至更老的游戏，例如重新制作的《 使命召唤4》或7岁的《 两个世界II》 。 表现不佳的游戏通常会被改成免费游戏，迫使仍然活跃的少数玩家放弃其最初购买的产品或改用他们在购买游戏时未注册的系统。 对于多人射击游戏(请参阅Battleborn和Evolve )和在线RPG尤其如此。

Video games didn’t always have hidden payments for parts of the game that should ostensibly have been free. We used to have cheat codes to skip the grind, or secret areas or unknown techniques for special items, or just possibly, developers with enough self-awareness not to bite the hands that fed them. Granted, this sort of “golden age” thinking isn’t altogether helpful: the plain truth of the matter is that if today’s always-connected Internet with its instant payment systems had been available in 1985, someone would have tried to charge for a dysentery cure in Oregon Trail. (That might be less of a joke than you think, by the way.)

电子游戏并非总是隐含支付游戏本来应该免费的部分。 我们曾经使用作弊代码来跳过特殊项目的研磨，秘密区域或未知技术，或者有可能具有足够的自我意识的开发人员不会咬他们的手。 当然，这种“黄金时代”的想法并没有完全帮助：事情的基本事实是，如果今天一直在线连接的即时支付系统在1985年问世，那么有人会因为痢疾而收费在俄勒冈步道治愈。 (顺便说一句，这可能不是您想的那样开玩笑 。)

If you don’t like it, you can indeed not buy it. But before long you’ll be severely self-limiting the games you do allow yourself to buy…and even the ones that you enjoy might switch over when the sequel comes out.

如果您不喜欢它，那么您确实无法购买。 但是不久之后，您就会严格限制自己的游戏，您确实会允许自己购买……甚至当续集问世时，即使是您喜欢的游戏也可能会切换。

那我们该怎么办？ (So What Should We Do?)

Unfortunately, there appears to be very little that gamers or even the loudspeaker of the gaming press can actually accomplish to battle this trend. Each time it happens, forums and comment sections fill up with irate gamers who refuse to support an increasingly manipulative system. And more often than not, those games go on to sell millions of copies and make quite a bit of money off their microtransaction systems, too.

不幸的是，似乎游戏玩家甚至游戏新闻界的扬声器几乎无法真正克服这种趋势。 每次发生这种情况时，论坛和评论部分都会充满愤怒的游戏玩家，他们拒绝支持越来越多的操纵系统。 而且，这些游戏通常会继续销售数百万张，并从其微交易系统中赚取很多钱。

You can limit your purchases to games that have conventional, value-adding DLC (sprawling RPGs from Bethesda and Bioware, most recent Nintendo games, quite a lot of independent titles). Or simply stick to cheaper games and free-to-play fare, which has all the problems of a microtransaction economy but doesn’t have the gall to ask you to pay up front. But eventually you’re probably going to run into a full-priced microtransaction game that you really want to play, forcing you to either fork up or miss out.

您可以将购买限制为具有常规增值DLC的游戏(贝塞斯达和Bioware提供的庞大的RPG，最近的任天堂游戏以及大量独立游戏)。 或者只是坚持使用更便宜的游戏和免费票价，这存在小额交易经济的所有问题，但没有胆量要求您提前付款。 但是最终您可能会遇到真正想要玩的全价微交易游戏，这迫使您要么分叉要么错过。

It’s just faintly possible that governments could get involved. That’s an avenue that’s fraught with perils of its own, but in a few isolated cases it’s at least provided consumers with some extra tools. China now requires developers to publish the odds of winning specific items in randomized, gambling-like systems such as Overwatch loot crates, and the European Commission has taken long, hard looks at the marketing for “free” games that try to make you pay at every turn. But it seems more or less impossible that any kind of laws will do anything except shed a little more light on some of the more deplorable practices of the modern gaming industry.

政府很可能卷入其中。 这是一条充满风险的途径，但是在少数情况下，它至少为消费者提供了一些额外的工具。 中国现在要求开发者以随机，类似赌博的系统(例如《 守望先锋》的战利品箱) 发布赢取特定物品的几率 ，并且欧盟委员会对“免费”游戏的营销进行了长期而认真的调查 ，试图让您以每转。 但是，除了对现代游戏产业中一些更可悲的做法有更多了解之外，任何一种法律似乎都不可能做任何事情。

I’m sorry to end such an exhaustive evaluation of current trends on such a downer note. But if there’s anything that the last ten years of gaming has taught us, it’s that the biggest corporate players don’t have anything approaching shame when it comes to inventing new ways to wring money out of their customers with the least amount of effort possible.

很遗憾在如此低调的情况下结束对当前趋势的详尽评估。 但是，如果过去十年的游戏学到了什么，那就是最大的企业参与者在发明新方法以最小的努力从他们的客户中赚钱时就不会感到羞耻。

As the saying goes, you can’t un-ring the bell—especially when it’s the “DING” of a cash register. At the very least, be aware of the above methods of microtransactions, and why their justifications don’t ring true. Being informed is the best way to keep from being ripped off…or at least being ripped off without knowing why.

俗话说，您不能打铃，特别是当它是收银机的“叮”铃时。 至少要了解上述微交易的方法，以及为什么它们的理由不正确。 被告知是避免被窃取或至少在不知道为什么的情况下被窃取的最佳方法。

Image credit: DualShockers, VG24/7

图片来源： DualShockers ， VG24 / 7

翻译自: https://www.howtogeek.com/321101/microtransactions-in-aaa-games-are-here-to-stay-but-theyre-still-terrible/

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