Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Konami are facing some rather negative PR. First, there’s the whole Hideo Kojima issue. Now, there’s the optional microtransaction effect. The former is old news, but the latter is something that’s been like Snake under a cardboard box – there, but at the same time not. Hints have pointed to people being able to spend money to do things in the game, and now it’s a step closer to being confirmed with an Italian PlayStation Store page that flat out says “optional in-game purchases.”
Which means the internet (well, the part that cares about Metal Gear Solid V ) is now in an uproar. It’s all about how Konami is bad, microtransactions are bad, and of course the talk that this could ruin the game. You know, like all of this wasn’t foreshadowed and broadcast. I mean, we knew this would happen.
Look at Konami. The company has said that it wants to focus on mobile games. That means implementing mobile game practices, the most notable of which are microtransactions. Freemium games, and even some paid mobile apps, are all about optional purchases that complement the game and save you time and effort. If the company is going to adopt that philosophy, of course it will slip it into its console games if it can.
It even groomed Metal Gear Solid fans to prepare for this. Remember the Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes iDroid app? There was a Mother Base Mode. Know what that was similar to? All of those free-to-play games where you build up a base, and eventually reach points where you’d really have to pay to make efficient and substantial improvements. While iDroid wasn’t eying your wallet so much, it did help ease people into the idea of mobile game elements in Metal Gear Solid.
Besides, it isn’t like this hasn’t been done before. Look at EA and games like Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3 . Once the company got a taste of the sweetness that comes from microtransaction based interactions in its mobile games, it had to see if there was a way to slip them into console games as well – and it did. Konami is the same way. Especially since, as you can guess, some people actually went ahead and paid.
That’s the crux of it. We may all say we dislike microtransactions and rage against their inclusion, but that means nothing when there are people out there willing to buy them. Like the Gears of War 3 weapon skins, which are completely useless and only slightly change the appearance for $3 or $4 a pack, depending on whether you bought ones that were animated or not. You know people will talk badly about the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain microtransactions, but still go ahead and pay for them.
At least we can take solace in the notion that these optional purchases are exactly that – optional. Early reports suggest that people will be paying to speed up the pace of the game, making things available more quickly. This should hopefully be addressed at E3 2015, and perhaps even reassure people who are seeing such a development as unexpected and virtual-life-altering.
Because really people, we’re dealing with Konami. The company’s shift in focus means we’re going to start seeing developments like this more often.