MOP reader The Grand Nagus recently pointed us to his thread on the Star Trek Online reddit where players were trying to sort out how they could “wallet vote” in a game that is essentially offering them only one type of item. “If the only thing a game sells is items, then how can people who want more mission content use their money to show it?”
“I want more mission/episode type content, and am not really interested in buying yet another variant of a ship I already have multiple variants of. However, because they don’t actually sell any mission/episode content, there is nothing I can buy that ‘shows’ I want more of that. And if I just buy ships, I can only assume it tells them ‘make more ships.’ I genuinely want to support this game, but I want to use my money to ‘show’ what I want more of. So how can I as a customer use my money to ‘show’ that I want more mission/episode type content?”
So let’s talk about TGN’s question. How are you meant to wallet-vote, to show the devs what you want with your money when the things you want aren’t even being offered? How do you voice that opinion other ways without just becoming feedback noise? Which MMOs have the worst business models for wallet-voters?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Woooof, I feel this one, not just in terms of MMOs but gaming in general. I’m a big fan of the Mother/Earthbound series, but “vote with your wallet” basically means I feel pressured into buying every new Nintendo console’s port of the same two games in hopes that it means something, the least of which would be finally localizing the third game. Does it? Well, we keep getting ports, but no remakes, HD versions, nothing. The best you can do, in my opinion, is be part of a very vocal gaming group that gains media/streamer attraction, so tweet and get your reddit buddies to make some noise, then make enough noise that other outlets draw more attention to the issue.
As much as voting with your wallet can help signal overall (un)happiness with a game company and what you’ll pay for if it’s being offered, you have to make some noise – not just you but others too, and sometimes that’s unpleasant (just don’t take it out on randos). The sad fact is that most companies, not even just game companies, will do what they please until it has negative consequences. A combination of petitions, social media movements, and holding back payments helps (especially if you were purchasing content before). One thing I’ve done, and I’m not sure if it helps, is show a developer that I’m willing to pay for content, not just from them, but competitors. Remember how scared Blizzard got of Final Fantasy XIV? Generate that fear.
As for which MMO is the worst business model for wallet voters, that’s a tough one. I feel like most MMOs keep things diverse, but off the top of my head, I’d guess that anything that’s P2E is bad, like Entropia Universe.
Andy McAdams:Â This isn’t an easy answer. Any game, particularly a F2P, is going to be looking for the least expensive way to generate the most revenue, so doing something like buying an item that’s new shade of mauve is exponentially cheaper to produce than full episodes of content. In that world, even though players might want more episodic content they can purchase and the studio might still make money on it, their revenue folks internally are going to be going, “Well, I can spend 30 hours of developer time and generate $50,0000 or spend that same 30 hours of developer time and only generate $40,000 in revenue.” As long as the customers keep “voting with their wallet” in that case, the developers will continue to work on this thing that gets them more money with least effort. Grossly oversimplified, but mostly accurate.
I think the only real option is becoming part of the feedback noise and hoping someone pays attention. Send unsolicited feedback, post on the forums, shout into the abyss onto Twitter. But be polite; provide well thought-out context. A detailed reasoned piece of feedback is always going to get more eyes than “Your marketplace sucks. Just do what X game does. It’s stupid simple and you are stupid for not doing it already.” If you happen to get a GM’s ear, ask if you can give some unrelated feedback.
As for the worst MMOs for wallet voters, for me personally I’d have to say Guild Wars 2. There’s so much I want to do to support that game, but I look through the cash shop and I always leave decided “meh” on options that cost what I’m willing to spend, and going “Are you effin’ kidding me?!” when look at things that I do want but are stupidly expensive. There’s such a dearth of things I want to spend money on in that game; it’s either “lol buy these boosters noob” or “pay some comparatively astronomical amount to get the exact mount skin I want.” So the net is, I love the game, I would love to support it more, but I don’t because there’s rarely anything reasonably priced I want to spend money on.
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I’ve read some of the other responses, and while I agree that this is an issue with F2P, it’s not exclusive to that model. The same problem exists in a sub-only model, where players subscribe to an all-or-nothing experience without the ability to make a more granular statement regarding favorite systems or game aspects. In short, I don’t have an answer but perhaps this dilemma is why folks with this hobby tend to be so vocal on forums and social platforms.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): We’re making a valiant effort here, but I don’t think there’s going to be a satisfying answer. Wallet voting has always been a sledgehammer approach; long before free-to-play, your options were “pay sub” or “don’t pay sub,” with no specific way to explain what pushed you over the edge when you quit. F2P and B2P should’ve created that specificity, but they don’t, and I think we should probably admit that the reason is that the companies don’t want to. It’s not an oversight. It’s intentional. They don’t want to put content in the cash shop because 1) it creates barriers to play and 2) cosmetics and convenience are more profitable given the effort required to build it.
The way to wallet-vote in the example given is to just… not buy the ships. And then be super loud and annoying through whatever feedback channels are available to you. Forums, Reddit, social media – heck, maybe you even have a platform like ours. That’s it. That’s the only avenue they’ve given you, and it’s on them, not on you, if that results in ineffective feedback.
The other way to wallet-vote is to quit and put your money toward a game that actually cares about your playstyle. And yes, this sucks.
The worst example outside of play-to-earn is always going to be the World of Warcrafts of the genre, since you really do have just two buttons to push, and we already know Blizzard has spent years dismissing the millions of people who pushed the “unsub” button. Apart from MMOs like Elder Scrolls Online, where you actually can directly buy DLC content, most cash shops don’t offer content at all, so they also don’t offer this precise choice. But when they do, make sure you’re going all in – money where your mouth is. When Guild Wars 2 announced End of Dragons, I bought the biggest package and shouted it from the rooftops. When a game does do the right thing and listens to feedback, reward it.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): This one has been rattling around in my brain and after all that time I still don’t know that I have a good answer. On the one hand, voting with a wallet certainly feels like the sort of action that studios – or studio top brass, more specifically – would pay heed to. But on the other hand, it also doesn’t seem to work all that well.
I think that voting with the wallet in favor of wanted things is only one tool in a player’s feedback toolbox. I still think that actually submitted feedback (that’s written constructively) is just a bit more effective. Maybe.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): I’m a long-standing advocate of voting with your wallet. At the same time, I think that a lot of people also take it to be a little more substantial than it is. Voting with your wallet is usually not the same as offering constructive feedback or marking a clear referendum about what you want from the game; it’s more a matter of declaring that you’re not going to support a studio or a game while it does something specific. And yes, it is by its very nature a bit ambiguous and hard to work in the positive way. You cannot exactly vote with your wallet to say you want more of something that isn’t monetized.
Well, all right, you can to an extent; you can give a game more money in the hopes that it results in getting more of what you want in the first place. But that’s still kind of ambiguous.
As someone who advocates in favor of voting with your wallet, I think it’s important to do and to show when a game for whatever reason crosses a line that you’re not willing to support, cutting off your financial support when it feels necessary. (There’s a reason World of Warcraft isn’t getting one cent of my money at the moment.) But it can’t be the only source of feedback you offer; you have to be clear why you’re voting against something and consistently bring it up. It’s an important component, but it’s not enough in and of itself.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): So this is a really great question, but I really don’t have a great answer. As others said, when you can’t buy the content you want to support then there’s no direct way to voice that opinion with your wallet. In this case all I can say is to not buy the items they do sell.
The next best you can do is be the squeaky wheel along with others and hope that you make enough noise to get noticed. We do see companies paying attention when they feel enough push back from their audience. All the NFT push back so far has encouraged many companies to rethink that strategy.
While I can’t think of any worst offenders, I can point to some of the cash shop items in Guild Wars 2 as a way wallet voting may be working. We used to see most of the new armors sold as outfits, which are all or nothing sets where you can’t choose individual pieces to wear. More recently, though, I’ve seen individual pieces of gear being sold often too. The down side is a full set will cost more, I think, than just a the outfit, but it is more versatile.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I don’t have a solution for The Grand Nagus’ specific problem, but I can say this is one of the main reasons I still prefer buy to play with paid DLC over pure free to play. It incentivizes developers to prioritize quality content.
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