Gaming's Biggest Arguments Were Laughed Off at TGA. Their Impact Is Harder to Dodge

As for TGA itself, who ends up controlling its voice is probably a separate question worth discussing.

Since its 2014 overhaul, The Game Awards (TGA) has become more than an awards show or a stage for sponsors. This three-hour event, covering games already released, still in operation, and yet to come, is the most direct recap there is of the year's biggest moments in gaming.

Eight million players voted through social media, and 11.5 million watched the ceremony live across various platforms. TGA's viewership and hashtag use tripled from the previous year, and related Twitter discussion doubled. Plenty of players were wondering whether a result as contentious as last year's would repeat itself.

In 2016, the multiplayer online game Overwatch beat the traditional single-player Uncharted 4 for Game of the Year, setting off an earthquake in the gaming community and pushing the multiplayer-versus-single-player argument to another peak. This year's matchup was just as eye-catching: PUBG, which broke multiple sales and player-count records, had somehow drawn level with an old franchise like Zelda. Would TGA's choice tip the award itself toward being a popularity contest? That was the answer many players were waiting for.

To the relief of a lot of core players, 2017's outcome stayed within the lines — Zelda took the top prize as everyone expected, and the other categories produced no great upsets, as if the results had been written to players' order. For now, people swallowed the anger and the complaints they had ready.

The gaming world itself was not calm this year, though. Two sharpening conflicts have taken over the headlines, and they touch every player's spending and playing experience, along with the future of everyone working in the industry. Even at a lighthearted awards ceremony, both surfaced in a rather playful way and quickly became viral moments.

Microtransactions are a winning business model, but players are fighting back

While presenting Best Action Game, presenter Zachary Levi found the envelope still sealed. Pulling out a letter opener, he blurted out, without missing a beat, "Oh man, I might need to do a microtransaction to unlock this." Amid knowing laughter and cheers, Levi leaned into the microphone: "You know, that's really dumb."

If you had to pick one keyword for the 2017 game industry, "microtransactions" (in-game purchases) would certainly make the shortlist — it may be the year's most-used word. It stands for a shift in how mainstream games make money, and it is enough on its own to sum up the main conflict between publishers and players today. The plain buyer-seller relationship of the old pay-once deal has turned into a standoff: one side keeps trying to monetize step by step, and the other feels robbed and is quicker to anger.

It came out of a "low-end" market — free-to-play mobile games that live purely on in-app purchases, and the Chinese online games of a decade ago — indulged by a crowd that hardcore players don't even count as players, until it became the most popular business model around.

Three years ago, microtransactions in this kind of mobile game already accounted for 92% of App Store revenue and 98% of Google Play revenue. By selling items and in-game currency, microtransactions can do anything from small flourishes — changing a character's look, unlocking a new character — to letting players skip content or reshaping game mechanics outright, pushing a game toward Pay to Win.

Hardcore players once believed this had nothing to do with them. In the pay-once model this group was used to, buying the real thing and beating it on skill formed the base of the experience; Pay to Win barely existed, and no serious gaming community would encourage it. In that simple model, DLC was the only "evil," often treated as a game company's greed made visible, since it could so easily warp into "cut content out of the main game, then profit off an incomplete product plus a string of paid DLC."

What players didn't see coming was a new invader that would make DLC look mild by comparison.

Mass Effect 3, released in 2012, was the turning point. It is regarded as the first AAA game with a loot-box-style microtransaction system, and it gave EA its first taste of what microtransactions could do in a game like that — they found they could squeeze far more value out of a single title.

"You have to understand how much money microtransactions bring in," said Manveer Heir, a designer at BioWare Montreal, the studio EA has since restructured. "We made so much money on the card packs we sold in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer that Dragon Age and a bunch of other EA products afterward used the same multiplayer model — that had never happened before. This wasn't one-time revenue anymore, it was recurring revenue. I've seen people spend $15,000 on multiplayer card packs."

FIFA's Ultimate Team mode paid off the same way. EA made it free in 2010 and monetized it by selling card packs, a model that adds a steady $800 million a year to EA's revenue.

Microtransactions turned up again in the single-player campaign of 2013's Dead Space 3 (developer Visceral Games has since been shut down by EA), setting a basic Pay-to-Win template for console games. Players could buy resources to get through the game faster; refuse to pay and you had to scavenge resources in-game. On paper you could still finish after a single purchase, but it would obviously take longer than for players who spent. What you were really buying was time.

Four years on, more big publishers clearly couldn't hold back. In 2016, mobile game revenue passed console and PC revenue for the first time, confirming the free-to-play-plus-in-app-purchase model as the more profitable one.

Rising development costs have also pushed traditional single-player publishers toward this kind of sustainable income. So even console games with an upfront price have shifted toward being "services" — buying the product often marks only the start of the service. Once the product enters a long run of free updates, it keeps producing "service fees" for the seller through player microtransactions. Overwatch, crowned last year, is the classic case. Making money off DLC has become the outdated approach, because you don't want paid new maps and missions to turn into a barrier.

From this year's Forza Motorsport 7 to Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and even the paid mod shop Bethesda added to the older Fallout 4 and Skyrim, microtransactions combined with loot boxes, mixing in-game currency and real money, have plainly moved from niche to mainstream — and the profits already show signs of overtaking digital sales (in Ubisoft's first-half results, recurring spending including microtransactions exceeded digital game sales for the first time). Had a string of events not landed at once, the trend would likely have run on unobstructed.

First, pay-to-save-time systems finally provoked public anger. One line of criticism came to dominate the conversation: if repetitive tasks are dropped into a game's progression only so players will pay to skip them, then those tasks shouldn't be there at all. At bottom, players pay for a flawed experience — one that has nothing to do with their own skill or with the mechanics — and then pay again to remove the flaw. This way of making money, carried over from free mobile and online games into paid single-player titles, has come with nothing from developers but one simple line: "It just gives players who want to save time another option."

A developer with an actual conscience should answer the way Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto did: "We want players to experience the content we designed for them, rather than give them an option to skip past it… Loot is already a core mechanic of the game — there's no need to cram in a microtransaction version of it."

Loot boxes then took the microtransaction storm to its peak. Unlike clearly priced in-app purchases, loot boxes carry an element of randomness — what drops isn't necessarily what the player wanted — which led many people to call them gambling in disguise.

EA's Star Wars Battlefront II had a complicated system of points, in-game currency and real-money upgrades. Under the combined weight of microtransactions and loot boxes, unlocking Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker without paying took 40 hours of combat each. Other characters needed their own point totals, which added up to nearly endless playtime. As for why the paid model wasn't applied to items that don't affect finishing the game, CFO Blake Jorgensen explained that they didn't want to interfere with the authenticity of the Star Wars universe (even though the game puts characters from several generations on the same battlefield): "You don't want to see Darth Vader in pink."

Worse, they issued a disastrous reply — "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes".

"Pride and accomplishment" became the most popular joke in the gaming community for the rest of the year. EA not only broke Reddit's all-time record for most downvoted comment, it also became a target and drew the attention of politicians. Legislators and regulators in the UK, the US, Belgium and France spoke up one after another, using Battlefront II to condemn loot boxes, saying they could harm young players whose judgment isn't formed yet, and calling on ratings bodies to update their definition of online gambling.

Once players and people outside the industry were speaking at once, even Disney CEO Robert Iger took notice. Disney didn't want the Star Wars brand's image damaged. By one account, after Jimmy Pitaro, chairman of Disney's interactive division, phoned EA CEO Andrew Wilson, EA first halved the unlock point requirements, then "temporarily" pulled the whole microtransaction system.

This pushback probably ranks alongside PUBG's rise and the Switch's launch as one of 2017's three biggest gaming stories. For a moment, core players brought a force that looked certain to win — the giant EA, the Star Wars IP, and microtransactions as the apparent future — to a halt.

Nobody knows when the system will return, but with so many parties on record, publishers will move more carefully; several studios have already said they will keep a clear distance from loot boxes. Microtransactions will stay the trend for mainstream blockbusters, since they have proven to be the more promising way to make money. But they will show up in quieter, more gradual forms from now on, and the whole system will try to adjust to the change in core players' mood. Nobody wants to repeat EA's mistake.

Single-player games are irreplaceable — and that now has to be said out loud

Microtransactions are tied to the fate of single-player games as well. Precisely because they are seen as the better way to make money, single-player games, which don't lend themselves to the model, have been written off.

The panic about single-player dying started early. Four or five years ago, voices were already saying these games had no future, were too much of a gimmick, struggled to make money, and couldn't satisfy players' hunger for "connection". The key weakness was named long ago too — World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo said in 2013, "I don't see a great business model for that mechanic today, and that's really sad. There are a lot of factors out there making these games harder and harder to make; for a publisher, pouring in millions and millions without a matching return is hard to accept."

Four years later, though, the death of single-player keeps being postponed. Over the past few years these games have held half the territory and left behind plenty of work people won't forget. Studios with strong reputations — Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Rockstar, Arkane, Sony's first-party studios — are still building single-player experiences.

It's just that the spread of microtransactions has made the "single-player is endangered" panic worse than ever, because paired with multiplayer they do far too much damage.

At one end of the market, publishers are working out how to profit; at the other, players worry that multiplayer games — lower barrier, heavier on social experience — have made casual players the group publishers most want to please. That group asks for little and puts up with a lot, so the revenue microtransactions bring keeps climbing, which will tilt development resources toward those games. At a time when pushing the boundaries of games still falls largely to single-player titles, that tilt may do the progress of games and the growth of the industry no good.

This view differs somewhat from what publishers say. When they pick the multiplayer route, they claim the choice rests entirely on player feedback: their surveys supposedly show players want something beyond single-player's linear missions. "Linear gameplay isn't as popular as it was five years ago," EA explained after closing Visceral Games, which had been making a single-player Star Wars game.

Players do welcome more variety, granted, but that doesn't mean they will give up single-player to get it. The category still stands for the best storytelling, character work, art direction and emotional pull. In artistic terms, most multiplayer games — perfunctory plots, endless combat — simply don't have that advantage.

This year's TGA winners proved the point. Game of the Year, Best Independent Game, Games for Impact, Best Action Game, Best Score/Music, Best Art Direction, Most Anticipated Game (voted on by players alone)… every award you can name was single-player ground. Multiplayer games appeared only in their own categories and the esports awards. PUBG's one win, Best Multiplayer Game, was even skipped over during the ceremony.

On sales, single-player has held its ground too. The year's best-selling game was indeed PUBG, but single-player hasn't lost its shine. Over the past two months, South Park, Shadow of War and Assassin's Creed Origins all performed strongly, bringing in $160 million in digital sales in October alone. Super Mario Odyssey posted the biggest launch sales of any game since the Switch came out. Before that, Zelda, Horizon and NieR: Automata all won both reviews and sales.

One view holds that cross-platform multiplayer games haven't actually pulled users away from single-player; the PUBGs of the world have simply widened the definition of "player." And like every argument online, the supposed multiplayer-versus-single-player war has mostly been inflamed by the most extreme voices in each camp.

What will the future of single-player look like?

It will probably stay the weaker side on profit. Superdata issued a warning that single-player lacks long-term staying power: "Compared to multiplayer, single-player won't be as successful over the long run, because it's relatively hard to monetize single-player games through in-app purchases."

Meanwhile, some publishers will put more of their energy into multiplayer. "It's become obvious that players want experiences they can come back to and play for a long time, so we need to overhaul our design," EA explained. "This is ultimately a decision made on economic grounds… when you find you can't make more money, you tear down the bridge without hesitating."

But plenty of players and developers still care about the single-player experience.

"Saying single-player is going to disappear is nonsense," said Zach Wilson, a level designer who used to work at Visceral. "EA may not be the leader in single-player anymore, but plenty of other game companies are passionate about these games, and they're not going anywhere." Development budgets for single-player games may not be as large, he noted, but he would be glad to see the category go the route of fewer and better.

Where there is demand, products appear. Trading on players' enthusiasm for single-player, Bethesda ran a single-player marketing push at TGA, releasing a comic promotional spot called Save the Single-Player Gamer.

"Every hour that passes, another neglected player feels lonely, shut out by friends absorbed in their multiplayer games… but here at Bethesda, we're working on solutions for players. We make all kinds of games, but the single-player experience is set into our DNA. Players looking for a single-player experience have been coldly ignored and forgotten by the market, but they find salvation in our games." As the screen flashed images from Prey, Dishonored 2, The Evil Within 2 and Skyrim, set to a lyrical voiceover by Lynda Carter, the original Wonder Woman, every viewer understood: this was Bethesda's "tribute" to its multiplayer-obsessed peers.

Bethesda even deliberately cut multiplayer out of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, worried it would hurt the game's mechanics. VP Pete Hines told Rolling Stone, "We're aware of the controversy around this category lately… This year we had a few chances to add multiplayer to our games, but given the current market, doing something people didn't expect felt pretty cool."

What people shouldn't overlook either is that multiplayer games are working to meet players' demand for single-player content. Destiny 2 and Battlefront II both heard their players and adjusted accordingly; the single-player stories they added may not be that gripping, but they are at least a statement: we hear you asking for single-player.

So even as game companies shift their focus to survive, single-player games have not reached a life-or-death moment. As long as the quality stays first-rate, they will keep taking TGA's awards. Rather than a gradual surrender, the more likely outcome is that the two modes converge inside mainstream games. Once this adjustment period passes, the conflict will largely dissolve.

TGA respects "public opinion" — but who really calls the shots in the future?

Josef Fares, developer of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (there to present his new co-op game A Way Out), became the center of attention thanks to one unguarded moment at the ceremony. He grabbed the microphone with an air of complete indifference and said, "Fuck the Oscars."

TGA producer Geoff Keighley later explained that his ever-enthusiastic friend had been carried away by the mood, but that he was glad everyone was talking about it.

Since the overhaul, TGA has been called the Oscars of gaming, though Keighley himself doesn't quite agree with the comparison: "In a lot of ways, we don't need to be the Oscars of gaming to earn our credibility. TGA is unique and successful in its own right."

For ten years TGA belonged to the Spike TV network, back when it was called the VGA (Video Game Awards). From 2003 to 2013, Spike honored the year's best-performing games each December. But its thick commercial atmosphere drew constant criticism: rather than a celebration of what the games industry had achieved, it looked like a stage for sponsors and unrelated celebrities, who were there for the ratings. Players looked down on it, and publishers seemed uninterested as well, which left the ceremony with even less worth watching.

Geoff Keighley, a veteran games journalist who had hosted the show several times, took it over in 2014. He set out to give the award a second life and turn it into what it should have been all along — a gathering of the people who make games.

After the break from Spike, Keighley decided to stream the show online, which freed him from worrying about ratings. Well-known software and hardware makers and studios formed an advisory committee, which picked dozens of influential gaming outlets (52 this year) to draw up the nominations. The final round is decided by 10% online voting and 90% votes from the gaming-media jury.

After a year of lobbying, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and several major publishers decided to invest — the industry really was missing a celebration of that scale and standing. Comparable ceremonies such as the Golden Joystick Awards, the BAFTA Games Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) were all limited to some degree by region or field, and their selection processes were relatively narrow. A year-end TGA could become the summing-up awards show.

Keighley delivered on his promise. From 2 million viewers at the first post-overhaul show to more than 10 million now, TGA's influence has spread widely, and the jury has doubled in size.

As he sees it, the biggest difference between TGA and the Oscars is that the Oscars don't need to please their audience, while TGA is grounded in players at every turn. That comes not only from the nature of games, but from who sits on the jury.

TGA even gives awards to the most influential players. "You've never seen someone win an award for watching a movie or listening to music… This award matters because gaming is an interactive process, and players are part of the experience — so why not reward them? The Oscar model suits film. As an industry, gaming has to embrace what makes it distinct."

Player sentiment can affect the jury. What exact process do the gaming outlets on that jury follow in the final round? TGA has never said. But people suspect these outlets weigh the consequences of a controversial pick fairly carefully.

One optimistic reading is that anyone who cares about TGA must be a core player, someone deep in the world of games, and will naturally end up defending the classic values of the medium. But if TGA and the gaming press reflect public opinion and the prevailing wind, then the industry's own conflicts will be reflected in them too. The definition of "gamer" keeps being stretched, and once the time-killers people play on the subway are part of the conversation, it becomes hard to say whose public opinion this is, and whether core players' voices are being muffled by it or amplified.

"Fuck the Oscars" is certainly a position. But who can say for sure who stands on the other side of the Oscars?

Cover image from TGA, Cuphead, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.