What Techniques Are Game Companys Using to Get You to Spend More Money Than You Should?

Tipped off by MassivelyOP (again…), Neverwinter Uncensored brings you a new episode of our gaming psychology 101! This time professor evil talks about the techniques that casinos game companies use to get players to spend way more money than they should. And it’s so easy! You log in, see a lockbox winner announcement and bang, you already got fooled. And another time, and another time.

[su_quote]So, gaming industry, if your aim is to bring down the jackboot of government regulation on loot mechanics and destroy what was once a source of joy to millions of gamers, you’re doing a bangup job. Great progress.[/su_quote]

But make no mistake: The not-so-serious tone here and in the linked article can’t hide the fact that we’re talking about real tricks used by real game developers to play with your mind and get your money. Who cares about a good product when you can sell addiction? Developers literally use the same stuff casinos do, but apparently it’s not gambling, because…? Yeah, why exactly? Although we might sound like a broken record at this point and don’t actually expect lockboxes to go away any time soon, we won’t get tired pointing you guys to interesting posts around the topic either. It’s important to call out this stuff to not become a guilty bystander.


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2 thoughts on “What Techniques Are Game Companys Using to Get You to Spend More Money Than You Should?

  • January 8, 2018 at 9:16 pm
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    I think the problem is most acute when new players think they can buy their way to skill and power, or hope to get a Legendary Mount. Stampeding to level 70 is always a mug’s game, as they miss most of the fun. I had an absolute blast actually playing multiple characters to level 60 and playing the main quest back in the day. In fact, myself and the friends I started with intended to be completely F2P. But after a month we decided to pay some cash because the game really was that good. These days, too many people seem to think they should bypass the fun part, charge straight towards the grind and buy gear with traded Zen from the AH.

    When I used to buy Zen and spend it on keys, Zen were about 340 AD each and we could get Astral Resonators. I was almost guaranteed to “make my money back”, IE, get enough resonators and good stuff to keep and enough good stuff to sell that the stuff I kept was “free” and the AD I made from the resonators and AH paid for the keys. I never knew about the Resonator exploit.

    Of course, it never paid me back any of the cash I had spent, which did not matter as I could easily afford it. 🙂 And after checking what I HAD actually spent over 12 months or so, coupled with several actual, genuine scams run by Craptrick and the most appalling customer service attitudes I have ever come across in my life, I stopped spending completely. Then the Zen backlog hit 14 million due to the Astral Diamond Fountain exploit.

    By then, I had been making made huge amounts of AD from Leadership, Invoking, Dungeon Delves and Skirmish Hour (before the nerfs) and raded it for Zen. When VIP came out I got 18 month’s with three 15% Off coupons in about 5 or 6 weeks. But that all got nerfed and now we have Random Queues destroying the fun of the game.

    But this is the problem with “Free to Play” games. They are designed to weedle money out of people by any means necessary.

    But the worst aspect is that the moment we spend money we regard ourselves as Paying Customers. But the Developers and Men in Grey Suits always regard the game as something they provide “Free” as a philanthropic charity, and the entire player-base are free-loading, scrounging scum. And that is they way we are treated. It took quite some time and some rather stern e-mails to finally build up a rapport with certain senior support staff and get some decent service out of them.

  • January 9, 2018 at 1:25 am
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    I’ve been playing this game since the beta server. every year 12 months v.i.p. I’m buying. I buy ZEN with real money. I spend time. There is a game management that ignores the mistakes, deficits, problems in the game. loose and very comfortable. a system that sees us as a money machine. a solution that is not focused on solutions. There are a lot of people cheating on the cast. fake players earn mythic mouth every day. and they still everyday earn
    There is no admin in the game, no control .. no no no .. It is very difficult to find a person in the management of this game. There is no support for customer representation. There is no name itself. I spent so much effort on the 3-4 year game. I spent real money. otherwise I would not stop for 1 minute.

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