Deep into the Relay article on whether Star Citizen is pay-to-win that we covered a while back, the author, Commander Llama, said something I thought deserved illumination.
“I’m also sorry the very term Pay2Win is a bit of a misnomer. It’s often read literally, and it’s also used as a sort of slur. All of this stunts any discussion from the start. Maybe we do need a new term, although we don’t need twenty different terms, each individually defined.”
He’s not wrong that there are lots of definitions of pay-to-win, and each one is dependent on interpretations of the words “pay” and “win,” which sort of makes sense – plus you’ve got the folks who use it for every game ever, or who apply it only to PvP, or who insist that winning faster or winning stylishly doesn’t count, and on and on. That’s no doubt why some folks have proposed other terms, like pay-to-play or pay-to-convenience or pay-to-cosmetic, to provide some clarity.
Let’s imagine for the morning that we’re going to collectively abandon the term and replace it with other terms that are more specific and helpful to genre debates. What are some useful alternatives to the term “pay-to-win”?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
