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The entire point of battle passes and Micro/Macrotransastions (MTX), is to get you to continually spend money. That’s the idea, to “spend” as much money as possible. It’s called a Revenue Stream. That’s the entire point of microtransactions and battle passes, to keep you spending more and more. Battle Passes and MTX Store do not give entitlements of any kind nor do you have a say in anything. It gives you nothing but the ability to buy what, in normal circumstance, you’d be earning in-game as rewards. Why do you think the majority of cosmetics is locked behind a pay wall with an expensive price tag attach to it? Why do you think you have bundles of MTX play money charging you any where from $1.99 to upwards of $99.99 to $150.00 real world money?
Think about it, you are paying real world money to buy play money to then buy a cosmetic items that should be earn in-game. You can sit there and argue that I’m broke and that’s why I don’t spend any money. If that’s the poor argument you’re going to make, then you need to understand why you are dubbed with the title Whale. I’m not a whale by any stretch. If you don’t know nor understand what Whale is, here’s the definition. A whale is a person who spends hundreds and thousands of dollars on a game. These people are the most dedicated players and are also the top players because they can afford to buy skills and equipment to make their characters the strongest. I’m not broke, I just don’t fit that category!
Games like Warzone, you’re not going to be able to transfer anything over to Modern Warfare II’s Warzone. But you will have a Battle Pass and an MTX Store so you can continue to spend money, continually. In other words, come Warzone 2, we are all starting form scratch. Warzone is not your normal Battle Royal that’s going to be there for the next 5 to 10 years just adding new content. If that were true, then what’s the point of Warzone 2? Why not just keep the original Call of Duty Warzone and just add new maps and put the maps in rotation?
Warzone does not need to be tied to any Call of Duty Game or, have multiple Warzone every time a new Call of Duty comes out. Warzone has a good enough designed to be a stand alone game. Further more, maps from different eras can be added, as I’ve said, in rotation. For instance, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, or any given map from past Call of Duty game universe. By doing this, the player base never get split apart due to multiple battle royals.
In poker, you have poker terminologies. One of the terms used in poker for a really bad player is Donkey. A Donkey is a bad player who makes bad poker plays. Normally, these are people that have little to no experience and rely heavily on luck. Another term in poker is the word Shark. A shark is considered a skilled poker player. Sharks can always spot a donkey. In a game of Texas Hold’em Poker, a donkey may be lucky in a few hands, win a few pots, but at the end, the donkey is going pay off the shark and then home broke. When a shark spots a donkey, you want to have a conversation, make the donkey laugh, make the donkey feel comfortable. That’s just the way it is. Especially if a shark is at the table and want to extract money from the donkey. Now, in the world of video games, you have your Whales, it’s pretty similar to a donkey.
With a gaming whale, you don’t need to use cards to take his money. There’s no luck involved. A gaming whale will gladly spend his money continually as long as the whale thinks he’s achieving something in-game. Especially if the game has an addictive component. If you’re like me and you say that retail games have no business having battle passes or microtransactions, then, most likely, you are not a whale. Look at Diablo Immortal. Diablo immortal, is designed for whales. Addiction is a component added to certain games to take advantage of that weakness. Hence, the more addicted you become, the more likely you’ll continue to spend money.
Below, this streamer spend a little over 10K in Diablo Immortal just to see what he can get and got nothing for it, other than loosing 10K. It’s been estimated that you can spend around 10K to 100K+ to max out one character. That’s real money.
Sure, I can sit here and rage on Activision because they know what they are doing and their intent. In truth, Activision is a business. And if Activision feels they have an open door to take advantage of players, they will do that, we’ve seen it already. It’s not just Activision, you have other gaming companies that do the same, or almost the same. Take Tow Interactive have done something similar to GTAV online. It’s been almost 10 years and we haven’t had one DLC expansion, no a new GTA game. Why? The answer is simple, GTAV, because of whales, have been to lucrative to ignore. If and when GTA 6 comes out, the online won’t be any different than what you see now with Shak Cards Microtransactions.
You can sit here and scream, complain, rage at Activision all you want, it’s the whales that continue spending money. Whales are easy targets for gaming companies. So why should companies like Activision stop? Activision is not forcing anyone to buy anything, it’s just there for the taking but it comes with a hefty price. The more a whale is willing to spend, the further they’ll push the prices until it hits a braking point. So, when we complain about why our gears, weapons, battle pass items won’t transfer over to Warzone 2, this is why. Battle passes and MTX are for whales to continually spend and spend. In the mean while, it’s Activision job to tell you, hey, they love the game and spending money on what they love is ok. They’re having fun! In the mean time, we’re just wasting our breath when we want to see change and we never get it. Now you know why.
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