Gears of War 4: Another Microtransaction Garbage Fire

Surprising no one, Gears of War 4 is getting a bunch of crappy microtransactions. Even better, they're doubling down on the CCG failure mode of Halo 5's monetization model. The only positive is that they seemed to have learned their lesson from selling in-game weapons and vehicles through some convoluted rarity loop. Gears microtransactions will feature cosmetic upgrades, only.

Wait, what's wrong with Halo 5? Latest reports are that Halo 5 has racked up $1.5m in microtransactions. Well, ok, that's maybe not a lot, especially when compared with Grand Theft Auto Online which has raked in over $500m in microtransactions. Clearly, people are willing to spend a LOT of money on video game microtransactions. So what is Microsoft doing wrong?

Stop trying to make CCG's a thing.

Video games are at the same point tabletop games were back in like '97-'99. Everyone thought CCG was the best model ever because holy balls MTG is crazy popular! Thing is, your base game really needs some solid gameplay that synergizes with the CCG aspect of chasing rare cards. Many good games were released, like Netrunner, Legend of the Five Rings (which just recently went under and was sold to FFG to become a LCG), Battletech, Decipher's Star Wars CCG, and others. I would argue that these games (except for Magic: The Gathering) really made poor use of the CCG business model, and in some ways are hurt by it.

Legend of the Five Rings is a very solid game that has a lot of strategic depth and interaction, and is probably near the top for card games, at least in my opinion. But I think the CCG aspect ends up hurting a game like that in the long run because of how deep the game is.

Magic: The Gathering is, on its face, a rather simplistic game, truth be told. This simplicity mitigates with gameplay some of the pay2win aspects that are inherent to a CCG model. An even better example of this is Hearthstone. It is even simpler than Magic, but by all measures is very successful as a CCG.

The CCG (Collectible Card Game) business model is absolutely the worst part of the traditional games industry, i.e. tabletop games, etc. Now that every CCG has died out except for MTG, much better models are gaining popularity, like LCG (Living Card Game) and minis games like X-wing.

Right now, the video games industry is still in the phase of trying to copycat the success of Candy Crush and other mobile microtransaction games.

Here, Rod Fergusson head of the Gears of War sweatshop, er studio The Coalition, displays an amazing misunderstanding of how CCG's work.

"I feel like that paradigm of cards is really clear to understand for collectibles, like the ability to collect things. We had weapon skins and character skins, so that idea of collecting cards is just easily understood. It felt like it added some engagement in terms of its not the, 'Oh, I like Tiger Stripe. I bought Tiger Stripe. I'm done. I don't need to engage with that system anymore. There's no need for me to hang around.'"

"I like the idea of why you buy Magic: The Gathering booster pack," he added. "If I could just buy the one card I want then I'm out, then you lose it, right?"

He thinks people come back to CCG's for the "collectible" aspect alone. And yeah, as far as MTG is concerned, you can just buy the one card. The internet and game shops are full of vendors that willing to sell you MTG singles. The second-hand market has always been a huge part of collectible cards.

However, Hearthstone and MTG work precisely because they are more than card collection, but just barely so. I could get into how CCGs create pay2win scnearios and how Hearthstone/MTG sort of nullify those concerns, but suffice it to say that none of those things are in play with Gears of War 4.