I read a piece on The Guardian earlier this month about how shrinkflation is hitting some commodity-based industries. Basically, instead of raising the price of a product (and taking flak for it), companies will just reduce the amount of product they’re selling. (It’s an especially fun article since I’m not from the UK and the brands being discussed sound made-up to me – frazzles and chipsticks? Adorable.)
Anyhow, I thought it would be interesting to kick this idea back to the MMO industry. We’ve talked at length about the price of subscriptions and the triple and quadruple dipping going on in our genre as companies scavenge our wallets trying to satisfy shareholders. But we haven’t talked as much about it from the perspective of intentionally making games smaller with less-ambitious features – the equivalent of fewer frazzles and chipsticks.
Do you think the MMO genre is suffering from shrinkflation?
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!
