Are subscription game item shops the third Trammel?

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Forgive me, but I can't remember who first said this, but here's my first initial response to it, that I originally left on spinks blog.

"Green Armadillo waxes nostalgic about the good old days, with a pang of regret that the third “trammel” has arrived.

I think it’s misleading and misplaced to make those comparisons.

devs never at any time placed designing a game we want to play over making money.

RMT and sub MMORPG’s are one in the same philosophically. Devs at one time designed games that we’d want to pay to play.

Yes, through it all they used what freedom they had to design a game with varied amounts of heart and soul.

They still do this. The different way we play hasn’t changed devs artistic desires or corrupted them in some kind of cthulu type manner.

It really operates more like a micro-government. The things that are happening are based on capitalism and player “votes”.

Really what’s happening is that players have voted and devs are giving us what we want, while still being able to make money.

But who am I to say he can’t wax nostalgic at past gameplay that he or others miss now:)"

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"devs never at any time placed designing a game we want to play over making money."

Actually they've always been one and the same. If you want to make money, you make a game that players want to play. Fairly simple.

"They still do this. The different way we play hasn’t changed devs artistic desires or corrupted them in some kind of cthulu type manner."

Actually microtransactions present a very worrying conflict of interests in game design. It ends up being in the devs (or their controlling, suit wearing corporate meatplow overlords) best interests to design a game in such a way with flaws, which are only repaired by the player spending more money on microtransactions.

If the flaws are subtle enough, players won't complain, they'll just haul out their wallets and buy those XP potions, rare weapons or mounts.

Sure if the game sticks to only selling cosmetic items, then this might be avoided, however a lot of people play these games for the cosmetic items. In the case of WoW, they're already paying 15 bucks a month for access to cool looking pets and mounts. Now you're withholding some of those cool looking pets for more money? Sounds pretty damned unethical to me.

"Really what’s happening is that players have voted and devs are giving us what we want, while still being able to make money."

The 'vote' in this case is misleading. There will always be more than enough dumb people to make any reasonably couched product sell. Hell, plenty of people bought Microsoft Vista. In any given day you can find a plethora of moronic items that for some reason still sell like proverbial hotcakes. In fact I'd be willing to bet a pandaren monk that a significant number of people complaining about the microtransactions are STILL spending money on them.

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