Video game Development Ethics Dylan Olson Topics Games as a - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Video game Development Ethics

Dylan Olson

Topics

• Games as a Service
• Asset Reuse
• Overmonitization
• Lying to the Customer
• Microtransactions

Games as a Service

• Minimum Viable Product (M.V.P.) is the least amount of a product that can be sold for a

price

• Closer - Enters close to release to cut the product down to a MVP
• Games as a service - Selling an M.V.P. and building upon it later on
• Some examples include Anthem, Fallout 76, Destiny 1 and 2

Games as a Service - Good Examples

• Warframe
• CS:GO
• DOTA 2
• Path of Exile

Great examples of games with a balance of free and paid experiences

Games as a service - Good examples

• An expensive skin won’t make you git gud

Games as a Service - Destiny

• Started out with little to do
• Considered a good game only after first expansion
• Destiny 2 launched in a worse state than Destiny 1
• Destiny 2 considered good only after first expansion
• Links between cut content of Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 DLC
• Destiny 1 DLC content areas discovered in Vanilla
• Cut content would cost additional $120

Games as a Service - Fallout 76

• Full of bugs at launch, but still sold for $60
• Players had to wait while new content added
• Beta deleting itself (45 GB)

Asset Reuse - Fallout 76

• Free cosmetics from Fallout 4 sold for real money
• A lot of assets reused from Fallout 4
• Code has many references to Fallout 4 and Skyrim

Asset Reuse - Destiny

• 34% of Destiny 2 Exotic Weapons reused from Destiny 1

Suros Regime Zhalo Supercell/Riskrunner Thorn

Overmonitization - Black ops 4

• $60 base game
• $50 season pass
• Battle Pass

○ 50 day season, 200 tiers ○ Some exclusive content for the season ○ 333 hours and 20 minutes(13.89 days) to complete ○ $1 to buy next tier

• Loot boxes
• Shop Rotations
• Previously free reticles now cost money

Lying to the Customer - Fallout 76

• Customers ask if MTX will be game impacting
• Customers told only cosmetic MTX
• Recent update adds Repair kits
• Repair kits seen as Pay to Win

Lying to the Customer - No Man’s Sky

• Many things missing from the base game that were supposed to be
• Almost 3 year later, still some of the content doesn't exist
• Reddit post

Lying to the Customer - Anthem

• Soderlund stunned by demo in Spring 2017
• Demo was foundation of E3 2017 trailer
• Trailer was completely faked
• Bioware staff didn't know what the game was supposed to be until the trailer

Anthem Continued

• Loot scaling math lie
• Empty gear slots improved dps
• Luck does nothing
• Updates meant to fix, break thing
• Update makes accidental change that helps the game, and gets reverted
• No real testing
• Lots of emotes, fabrics, metals, and armor pieces cut for G.A.A.S.

Lying to the Customer - The Division

• Graphical downgrade from reveal trailer
• Core mechanics gone
• Game world drastically downgraded
• Lied to players

Lying to the Customer - The Division 2

• Little downgrading compared to the reveal trailer
• Learned to not lie to customer
• Received great reviews because of this

The Division 2 vs Anthem (4/29/2019)

Microtransactions

• For Honor – Feb 14th 2017 - $700
• Battlefront 2 – Nov 17th 2017 - $2100
• Mortal Kombat 11 – April 23rd 2019- $6500

Case Study

• Studio B wants to make a video game
• They want to make a lot of money from the game
• Studio B makes a fake demo, and the publisher loves it
• The demo is used to make a reveal trailer, saying the trailer was real time footage in game
• The game eventually releases, and many fans are upset that the game is different than

what was advertised

• Did Studio B do anything unethical?

Case Study

• 1st formulation of Kant

○ Studio B lied to consumers ○ Studio B wants others to tell them the truth ○ Studio B is acting Unethically

• 2nd formulation of Kant

○ Studio B knew the trailer was fake ○ Because of the trailer, many people pre-ordered the game ○ Studio B lied to the consumer to make money ○ Studio B is acting Unethically

Want to open loot boxes? Try this

Questions?