Hi I'm Tommy Thompson and welcome to Design Dive here on AI and Games. In recent years
a hot topic within the games industry is the adoption of microtransactions, where players
spend are encouraged to spend money on a variety of small add-ons that can change cosmetic
appearance of characters or outright influence the overall experience. In addition, you've
had lootboxes, where you don't know what item you're getting until you take the gamble and
open the box. Throughout this current generation of gaming, we've seen a significant increase
in these monetisation models being employed in large-scale commercial titles without appropriate
consideration, to a point that it received significant backlash not just from players,
but it has now invoked the ire of governments around the world and regulation is hot on
everyone's mind. In this episode I want to dive into this issue, why it's so problematic,
but more importantly, the clear and present danger that AI presents to consumers as it
is adopted in these monetisation systems.
Now before we get into the meat of this video, I want to make two points. First let me stress
that what the points I'm making are not based on evidence I have found of specific AI applications
to microtransactions and lootboxes in commercial games, but rather an argument based on my
knowledge and understanding of this industry, how game publishers aggressively pursue in-game
monetisation and how these machine learning technologies can be employed in this space.
So while this is purely conjecture on my part, it is an educated argument - or at least I
like to think it is - and I strongly imagine that some of what I'm suggesting is either
on the horizon, if not already underway.
Secondly, as you'll notice throughout this video, my focus is on the behaviour of publishers,
not developers. Game developers often receive the bulk of criticism and harrassment for
something they have little to no say in as a game is being built. And that is frankly
unacceptable. In my experience developers are - like players - often having to work
around the realities of having these microtransactions injected into the games they're involved with.
As such, if you have a bone to pick with the topics of this video, you take it to the publisher
and more importantly, you speak with your wallet. You don't like what's happening here,
don't spend the fucking money.
So let's go back to the beginning: microtransactions are - as the name implies - an effort to have
players of a game spend small amounts of money as part of the ongoing interaction and enjoyment
of the product. These small purchases often are tied to elements that are cosmetic in
nature, such as costumes for characters, or they can have some actual value in the context
of the game itself. This could mean extra lives in Candy Crush or new characters in
a game such as Marvel: Contest of Champions. The concept arose predominantly from mobile
gaming in late 2000's, where instead of selling games at a specific price point, they are
completely free to download, but your ability to progress in these games and the rate at
which you do so is often heavily tied to the amount of real-world money players inject
into it. This is certainly a popular and lucrative format, but it requires players to continue
to invest their time and more importantly their money, into the game itself, with this
leading to a variety of complex and convoluted economies emerging in these games to not only
reinforce the need to spend money, but obfuscate the true value of what you're spending money
on.
This has been compounded by the lootbox: an idea that existed in mobile gaming for over
10 years before being popularised in the console and PC gaming market by Overwatch published
by Activision Blizzard. In each instance, players open a box that has one or more items
of potential value to players. These boxes can typically be earned through in-game activity,
but at a relatively slow pace. However, they can more easily be attained by spending money
within the games economy. In each instance, the probability of a valuable item is often
incredibly low and only now are games being forced in some markets to display the probabilities
of attaining the most lucrative items on offer.
All of these practices have continued to evolve and mutate as they thrive not just in mobile,
but also in the console and PC-gaming spaces. However, there has been some pushback as it
moves further into the console market, given that these economies are being injected into
paid products. Players have already spent say £40 or $60 on the game, with publishers
subsequently trying to squeeze more cash out of their players. Much of the AAA game industry
- most notably Activision, Take Two Interactive and Electronic Arts - has embraced this. While
the argument is often made it's a reality brought on by the ever increasing costs of
game development, many of these publishers have seen revenues and in-turn profits skyrocket
largely due to in-game monetisation. One need only look at Electronic Art's FIFA and Madden
franchises: where the Ultimate Team component of these games - where players purchase random
digital cards based on real world sports stars - garnered $1.1 billion dollars of revenue
in 2018. That's more than the boxed games themselves and account not just for 50% of
all revenue from digital products by the publisher, but is also 21% of EA's total revenue for
that fiscal year. Publishers want microtransactions to stay, because they're making them a LOT
of money.
It's been a huge point of consternation for players given the impact it has on how games
are designed and the psychological manipulation that becomes laced throughout a given title
in an effort to encourage you to spend money. In a previous Design Dive on Dark Souls I
discussed how games build reward loops and feedback systems to encourage continued play
and provide a sense of progression. While this typically laced into player performance
and perseverance in the case of Dark Souls, many economy-driven games either stifle or
limit that progression without a further injection of cash or outright inhibit it. While many
publishers - and the players who play their games - often defend these practices given
the additions found in microtransactions and lootboxes are cosmetic in nature such as new
skins for characters or weapons, it is deliberate choice that inhibits a players engagement
or enjoyment. Cosmetic items are often heavily tied into the social element of play in these
games. You'll note that most lootbox-heavy games are ones with online multiplayer, whereby
you're not just defeating the enemy team, but you're doing it whilst showing off your
cosmetic bling. This adds social stigma to an existing pressure to engage in the monetisation,
given it creates fashion trends within the ecosystem of the game. This might seem trivial
to some, but in the case of games such as Fortnite, it leads to bullying in schools
towards kids who don't spend money given they're 'default' for wearing the free original skins.
Everywhere you go, monetisation-laden games are deliberately constructed to steer players
towards in-game purchases, with lucrative offers made early in a game to get you on
board. As well as periodic deals that encourage you to maybe put down a few bob here and there
to get that item you wanted. This combined with obfuscation of the in-game economy can
have a crippling effect on players and their wallets. Particularly if the player in question
suffers from gambling addictions or if children are involved. In-game monetisation is not
restricted in accordance with player age, as such when games like FIFA or Crash Team
Racing are rating by the PEGI and ESRB rating bodies as safe for children, they don't factor
the monetisation systems involved. Plus in some instances publishers such as Activision
frequently add the monetisation system as an update to the game *after* it is rated
and released in an effort to avoid negative press in the build-up to release. Thus further
adding to the confusion and surreptitiously driving you towards spending money.
In addition to all this is the Battle Pass approach, adopted in the likes of free-to-play
games like Dota2 as well as battle royale games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, but
they are rather upfront about what they're doing, given it's clear what you're paying
for as well as what you can attain. However, they're still a bit nasty, given they are
essentially a purchase that requires a time commitment, given that the unlocks within
a battle pass are often not available after the original gameplay season that pass is
associated with.
Now in late 2019 we're seeing this begin to reach a critical juncture. As publishers brazenly
slap more and more microtransactions on premium $60 products aimed at children without fear
of reprisal, gambling commissions and governments around the world are now looking to intervene.
While some countries have outright banned lootbox behaviour given the principle of spending
money (albeit indirectly) for a random reward is tantamount to gambling, others such as
the United States and the United Kingdom are now investigating what new forms of legislation
could and should be implemented to protect vulnerable individuals from what is an otherwise
predatory behaviour. Resulting in the likes of EA and Epic Games being brought forward
to speak at committee level of the UK government. This is a pretty scary proposition as EA act
like a bunch of chancers by drawing parallels to the likes of Kinder Eggs and collectable
card games in an effort to normalise their behaviour as 'surprise mechanics', which is
- professionally speaking - a load of old horse shite.
So why am I talking about all of this? Two words. Player analytics. It's a process where
you gather up data en masse about the behaviour of players within your game in order to better
understand what they're doing and how they're going about it. Over on the main AI and Games
series, I've explored analytics a couple of times already, with the likes of the PsyOps
project being able to establish how players adopt specific gameplay responsibilities in
Battlefield depending on their personality or more critically, their age. Meanwhile the
video exploring research in Tomb Raider: Underworld highlighted one of the first real efforts
by developers to understand what is happening in their game after it's released into the
wild by reading data from players over the Xbox Live network. But perhaps more critically,
is the episode from back in 2017 where I explored academic research that examined the Team Fortress
2 hat economy. As explored in the episode, there are distinct correlations that can be
estavlished from perceived social status in the games ecosystem to the quality of virtual
items they possess and the distinct profiles of players that exist - ranging from those
simply uninterested to those who crave attaining the most lucrative items. Perhaps most critically,
is the research itself warns of sociological issues that can emerge when social dynamics
intersect with virtual economies, with the very real threat of privilege and marginalisation
emerging in these communities.
Now all of these research projects are comparatively quite old now. The Team Fortress and Battlefield
research date back to around 2012-2013, while the Tomb Raider Underworld project dates back
all the way to 2009. Back when originally published, the idea of recording player data
to gather fairly accurate information about behavioural traits was very much in its infancy.
Meanwhile in 2019, any publisher working on a live-service games will be have entire data
science divisions dedicated to player analytics and other heavily data-driven fields. It's
an entire facet of game development that has only really emerged in the last 5-10 years.
These teams can be focussed perhaps on individual titles or all titles under the publisher.
Analytics of player data is equally applicable to your behaviour around monetisation as it
is for any other in-game activity. Now this has been happening - especially in mobile
games - for a few years now. Such as identifying the types of products people buy and whether
particular levels of a game are where most players get stuck, given it provides an ample
point to sell a booster pack at a discounted rate. But there are already existing machine
learning driven metrics regularly used when assessing a players engagement in a particular
game. One of the most well known examples is called churn prediction.
Churn prediction is used in a variety of consumer services on the web and it's used to identify
when you - the customer - become a churner, meaning you're not going to continue to engage
in a particular service and - more critically - won't pay them for it. Hence Amazon goes
out their way to send you emails if you haven't bought anything in a while, or Netflix might
encourage you to try out a new show if you haven't used your subscription and they're
worried you're not going to renew. All of this in an effort to put your money back into
their ecosystem. Now churn prediction in games is identifying two key things related to players
and microtransactions:
- First of all identifying the ratio of churn within the game. Where by examining in-game
behaviour of all players, you can understand what proportion of the audience will spend
money on microtransactions within a period of time, if ever.
- Secondly, the churn rate: at what point do players turn into churners.
Churn predication can be achieved using a variety of machine learning technologies.
Once you combine this with player segmentation - where you cluster and categorise players
based on specific attributes, ranging from in-game performance to your engagement with
the monetisation services, then you're getting to the interesting but also scary point. At
an abstract level the entire playerbase can be analysed to see what's happening: where
are the problems in the game, what balancing issues need to be addressed, but also what
monetisation packages are proving popular and how many players are not spending money.
Now I don't like to be doom n gloom about AI on this show and I rarely ever am. In fact
AI and Games was built to challenge the stigma and bad reporting that surrounds artificial
intelligence. But the problem is, AAA publishers are really embracing this stuff and they don't
have a great track record with monetisation as it is.
Right now we're in a position where at a top level decisions can be made to rebalance and
tweak parts of a game and in the context of monetisation, edits can be made to the economy
of a game such that things become easier or harder. Meanwhile at present, new promotional
products can be released into the economy and targeted towards players who have never
spent money or spend very little money. This is a tactic that already exists within mobile
gaming, given it's a little easier to make these changes so quickly and that it's appealing
to a broader base of consumers that are a little less incensed by it all.
Now, take this to the next logical step - this is the big conjecture part btw - where your
machine learning prediction systems become ongoing real-time services. Where a game can
poll these analytics services, to make judgements on what changes to make to the game you're
playing, to encourage you to spend money, in real-time. Said game is tweaking its economy
and progression systems and even coming up with unique and bespoke products - for you,
this particular player based on your current gameplay experience. And it's being driven
by the analytics services that have been built. Does this sound scary? Yes! Is it far fetched...
I don't think so, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it. Don't forget in 2017 Activision
was granted a patent based on ideas of manipulating matchmaking to encourage use of microtransactions.
Be that to give you an advantage in the game, or just to force you to play against opponents
with cooler outfits or costumes. How do you think such a system would be able to identify
what brackets you fall into for the matchmaking process? This, right here, is what I'm worried
about.
Imagine games are being tailored to appeal to both casual and more hardcore players,
with the in-game monetisation prioritising specific aspects of player behaviour within
those sectors. Perhaps for the more hardcore is offering better deals on cosmetics, while
the more casual audiences are getting better affordances for progression given they want
to avoid a grind that's being artificially inflated in real time? I can see this happening
in mobile given as a I said, mobile audiences aren't typically not as actively engaged in
the media that surrounds a game. Plus many of these games are actually isolated individual
titles without a larger multiplayer meta that players a communally trying to establish.
And there are products out there offering machine learning driven analytics for mobile
developers. Again, I recognise the value of it, but all it takes is for one stupidly popular
game to figure out how to pull it off.
Naturally I'm worried about my hobby (or whatever my relationship to games has become in recent
years). But this could be a real red-flag that could impact more vulnerable individuals
who are skirting around games that have been soaked in microtransaction models. There needs
to be a better understanding of what these systems can do and how they're being employed
in particular games. Would legislation help? Perhaps. But governments are often slow to
understand how technology works and then make the most heavy-handed and ill-judged decisions.
This is why we're in this situation to begin with, given nobody really noticed the effect
all of this is having on games and their players until now. Plus if you consider my two biggest
audiences on this channel - the US and the UK - I don't think either country can really
advocate for how clued-in their governments are when it comes to protecting the wellbeing
of their citizens from technological upheaval.
Is this all being blown out of proportion? I'd like to think so, but on the other hand
this is an idea that I can imagine investors are salivating at the prospect of. Right now
there is next to no consumer protection or appropriate guidance given when using these
sorts of practices. Particularly lootboxes. Only now at the time of writing this video
did news break that platform holders will start to release the odds of lootboxes, several
years after they've flooded the market. It's a start, but I don't think it's going to be
enough.
Either way, I think it's real food for thought and while this is a bit of a detour from regular
episodes of Design Dive, I think it's something that I needed to talk about! But don't sweat,
I'll be back talking about video games in the more traditional sense in the next Design
Dive episode. Be sure to subscribe as after two years I'm returning to Dark Souls next
month as I talk about my time playing Dark Souls II - Scholar of the First Sin as I continue
my rather personal journey through the series.
That's it for this episode of Design Dive - part of my work here on AI and Games that
is sponsored by these wonderful folks you see on screen now. Join the AI and Games Patreon
or become a member of the YouTube channel to help support my work. Thanks for watching,
stay safe, have fun, I'll be back.