Perhaps it would be easier to take this article more seriously if Gamespot hadn't given AC Syndicate a 9. They answered their own question pretty handily.
@resident_jisen @SergioMX The very fact that this exists is a negative outcome.
When people used to need extra resources, they would cheat. Now they're encouraging you to spend money for it. If EA was really concerned with the customer's convenience, a simple cheat code would do. But instead, we get this.
@Mythgar @MInitiative The common consumer doesn't really know better, actually. Hence why games like CoD sell millions on marketing alone.
But the thing here you're not seeing is the continuation of a trend that started with DLC. This is not some jerky reaction to what might happen. This is very real, and you'd have to be woefully ignorant to not see it.
It started with Horse Armor in Oblivion. Then they removed map packs for free from FPSs, reduced the content delivered, recycled maps in some games, and now it's culminated in things like Capcom's blatant on-disc DLC or controversies over ME3's dlc being cut from release to monetize it. These are not mere coincidences.
For a decade now companies have been continually testing the market to see how far they can push the consumer. DLC gave them a highly exploitable tool to earn profits with. Once the floodgate cracked open, the water flowed over. Companies grabbed hold of the model and have exploited it masterfully, just like an profit-oriented business would do.
And now, microtransactions in single player. This is not a coincidence. It is the continuation of a trend. They are testing gamers once again to see how far they can push, how much more money can they squeeze out a production.
Because that's how it starts you see. Once you let the foot in the door, it only gets worse. Now a AAA production is adding microtransactions for its single player. Not its multiplayer, not cosmetic dlc, nor gameplay related dlc, just straight microtransactions for resources.
The potential implications of this are terrifying. If such a model succeeds, it paves the way for it to get used more and more. Soon (and this is very possibly happening with DS3 already), games will be designed with the microtransactions in mind. This is not a good thing. It'll never be a good thing.
Number 3 is the big factor that ladies almost never acknowledge in this conversation. Hearing it from a female VP from a major gaming company is quite encouraging.
Every university in the country will tell you it to you straight - we need ladies in our STEM departments. You'll see a good amount of women in the intro to computer engineering but a bare fraction of them in the graduating classes. Working in the mainstream gaming industry is not child's play; the really big companies, our EAs, Activisions and Ubisofts, all want people who are highly qualified in tech and engineering. So when the ladies are outnumbered by the dozens in ratio when it comes to degrees in STEM, who can really blame the industry for hiring more men?
It's a rather negative way of looking at it, but yes, the blame is totally warranted. Also, it has a lot less to do with the developers and much more to do with publishers, who control cash flow and demand things be done in a timely fashion because time is money.
RE4 did indeed start a trend down the path of a more action oriented survival horror genre, now to the point where it doesn't even feel like survival horror anymore. Similarly, Call of Duty 4's massive success has utterly killed the arena shooter and resulted in a slew of military themed imitators. Likewise, WoW's success spawned many failed imitations too and has bogged down the MMO genre. That is part of of all the mentioned games' legacies. It is merely a symptom of AAA title development in the gaming industry.
We repeat this rhetoric every time. Every. Single. Time.
They go for video games every time. They go for it because it's an easy, widespread and accessible target that has difficulty defending itself and gives politicians, parents and groups something to direct their rage at. Ultimately however, nothing ever happens because studies can never come up with remotely conclusive evidence that video games = increase in violent crime. Over the last two decades violent crime has dropped sharply across all age groups, in reality.
Nothing will happen. It'll all get lost in the crowd until another school shooting pops up and starts the process all over again. The sad truth of it is that it's a mental health issue, and because parents are so protective over their children they're less likely to shut down or more likely to overlook something that could be a very serious, dangerous mental health issue. The harsh reality is that short of a Minority Report-like pre-crime precognition system, we're never going to catch all of them. Children with serious issues can be hard to read for many reasons. Parents are more likely to think it's just a phase, other adults will not make it their business because it's not their child, and other children/teens will simply ignore or deride it (let's not even get into the fact that parents themselves can be the source of the problems...).
That is reasonable to a degree. You have to understand something about brand loyalty though - the consumer will only take so much bullshit before they start to color their views negatively when associating with that brand.
This entire comment thread is filled with venom, and Bioware and EA have no one to blame but themselves. People gave them their chances. Now they're going to have work extra hard to regain that trust.
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