Remember last gen when the micro transactions hit and everyone freaked out.  You are going to charge me $4 for Horse Armor, NOOOOO!! Burn down Bethesda!!! Somewhere along the seven long years of the now last generation we became accustomed to micro transactions, exclusive content, season passes, basically having extra parts of our games left out so that devs can make a little bit of money off of it. What would happen if instead of extra content being monetized the entire core of game was replaced with pay to win system? Well it is happening now and for some reason outside of the Forza 5 uproar none of it is getting any coverage.

The basis of this new trend is the free to play model of games. In those games the player gets the game for free but it is usually a game that takes a very long amount of time to unlock new levels, characters, or upgrades. Usually there is a ton of free content and if you would like you can simply grind away forever and never pay a dime but the short cut to more powerful characters or weapons is always there for a price. This price is tied to some in game currency that you very slowly earn through playing the game encouraging the more impatient gamers to pay up. I have no problem what so ever with this model in games that are FREE to play. I did not pay for the game and yet I get to enjoy the game, if I so choose I will pay to enjoy the game a little bit more. It is not a perfect model but it works well enough for free to play games.

Imagine that pay model in a game you paid $60 for, welcome to next gen.  Forza 5 got the most attention because it became clear that the devs made it more difficult to make in game money and made it more expensive to buy in game cars, but hey you can spend real money to get the fake money! Gran Turismo 6 has implemented this pay for fake money system as well though it did not generate as much anger, probably because the changes are much more subtle. Some sites have put together a chart of all the free cars the player would earn through events in GT5 compared to GT6, in GT6 the list was cut by half. Less free cars means less money as you can’t sell them so there has been some changes.

The biggest culprit so far in my opinion is NBA2K14 which I do own and have experienced firsthand how the virtual currency (or “VC” as it is called) has ruined almost every aspect of the game. Every single major mode is tied to VC in some way, from upgrading your characters stats in My Player, to unlocking the option to trade players or set prices in My GM mode. To fully enjoy these modes as they are supposed to be enjoyed one must amass an incredibly high amount of VC which is earned rather sparingly through playing the game.

A member at Neogaf named floatingdivider crunched some numbers and figured it could take 160 hours of play time to max out your My Player stats. Or you can spend $40 to do the same thing. That is just one mode, the other two major modes can take just as long to unlock everything.  If that wasn’t bad enough on its own, the use of VC requires a server connection every time you earn or spend VC to make sure the system cannot be cheated. So what happens when you don’t have an internet connection, well the game becomes almost unplayable. If you can even get it to start up offline you are welcomed to a game where almost every single game mode has been removed. I lost internet last week when I started up NBA2K14 the main menu looked like a different game, essentially NBA is an online only game. There are a few other disturbing aspects to the game like the ability to skip by any game break or highlight except when it is sponsored by a company; that Sprint logo sorry cant skip it.

So why didn’t any of the NBA2K14 reviews mention this? Seriously go read the reviews there is no mention as to prevalence of VC throughout the game. The reason is partly because 2K released a patch after the game came out that removed features when playing offline so the game did change after it was reviewed, which is another despicable act. Still it’s happening now and none of the major websites have bothered to provide an update or address how a system like this is changing almost every aspect of the game we paid $60 for.  The list of games that are adopting this method of macro transactions is going to grow. The next MLB The Show seems to be heading in this same direction as well.

So far this seems to be infecting only sports games but it might be only a manner of time before this becomes common in other genres. GTA Online gets criticized for being overly grindy mostly because of this very same pay for in game currency system. Imagine a game like The Elder Scrolls now taking 10 hours to level up your character, or you can spend $10 to gain ten levels now! Want some good guns and armor to play online with in Call of Duty, grind for 20 hours or pay $10 to get it now!  This won’t be some extra piece of content that does not add much to a game, this fundamentally alters the very core of the games. This must be stopped immediately before it sneaks into more titles and becomes another aspect of gaming we all just deal with.  The major gaming websites need to get on this now, when they interview the developers of these games they must ask the hard questions, and reviews need to be effected. We as a community altered a potential horrible situation with the Xbox One. We need to do the same for currency monetization before it becomes prevalent in gaming.