Greetings everybody =)

We are game design students from NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda, The Netherlands. We are conducting a research on in-game stores and virtual item sales and to support our thesis we need the opinions and experiences of gamers. For that we have prepared this modest questionnaire that will shed some light for us on the topic. We welcome anybody to take it, whether you play often or not, visit in-game stores or not, all of your input will be valuable.

The answers you provide are anonymous, only a total number of answers given will be processed by the program. No personal information is ever asked of you apart from age and gender.

You can find the questionnaire by clicking on the link below.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dGxqdWdlZDZGQjNydHJGNGkxWVhOX1E6MQ#gid=0

Thank you so much in advance for participating and helping us with our research. =)

Filled out

I hate in-game stores... 9/10 times <_<

bah google. my country blocked the site

Anayway, is it regional specific?

I hear you. Very dumb. I am not wasting my money on some item that could make my character better. I already spent $50+ on a game, and they expect me to spend more money on it? The sad part is that there are so many players that don't care, buy the items online, and the people that want to use their money for more useful things in life get screwed because I don't have "The Sword of Dark Eternity that has 600 attack, and a 95% chance of blocking the opponents attack." What do I have? The best weapon the game has to offer without purchasing which is 10 times worse then the weapon bought in an in-game store....

Hello fellow Dutchman! Of course I'll fill it in.


F2P games won't survive without in-game stores.I only find in-game stores a problem when they offer unfair advantages that other people can't get without paying (buying 'power').

The TF2 system works fine because there's nothing you can buy that others can't craft themselves or find randomly while playing the game. And the fact that that game has received tons and tons of significant free updates.

Filled it out.Not all the fond of in-game stores but occasionally I will buy something.

Done!


I don't mind in-game stores as long as they only sell aesthetic items. So I don't mind the TF2 store or Portal 2 store, but I hate in-game stores in games like Allods Online and other MMOs where you can buy experience boosters and crap like that.

Done. If the items able to be purchased with real money are aesthetic, I still think it's a bit dumb and a waste of money, but beyond that I don't really have a problem with it. If those items affected skills or experience or what have you, well then I think it unbalances the game and I have a much bigger problem with it.

Done, Marco.

Thank you all so much for filling it out and replying in this thread as well. Me and my friend who i'm doing the research with have decided to keep the survey up till next weeks wednesday and then take it down and anolyse the data we collected from it. It's also great that you post your opinion on this subject in this thread. I think it's a really interesting subject to discuss with other gamers since we keep seeing it more and more games are being released with stores attached to them.

Helped the poll to help in the advancement of science.

The only game I play with an in-game item store is TF2, which I think is the most fair item store in any game.

In-game stores? Like Jobasha's Rare Books in Morrowind? Of course I visit in-game stores, where else does my character get his potions and stuff?

EDIT: Nevermind, I understand now...

99% of the time I loathe F2P games with some kind of pay for feature. The only time these games are really good or successful, is if they were previously pay for MMOs, that have pay features including some kind of subscription (D&DO, EQ2, ect) that gives a "full product", or if it is viable to use in game means to obtain the same things. Compared to the stereotypical Asian grindfest MMO with "item malls", the "game" really just becomes a pointless money sink, requiring nothing but a deep pocket. The best in-game store I've seen is the one League of Legends uses. You can still obtain just about everything in the game with the in game currency (save cosmetic skins, and thats about it), although it becomes sort of a grind and can be fairly time consuming. This is the only game I have actually spent money on (besides subscription based MMOs, and buying single purchase titles...and some DLC, but rarely), and that was to buy boosts and maybe some other things (I have yet to spend all my currency).

If a game is to be F2P, it needs to have the entire game free and viable, and not hard locked (have to buy this "expansion slot" to get to this area) or soft locked (have to have items/stats/gear that you can only get by paying money) in some fashion. In the end it should come down to whether or not reaching a certain in game goal is worth more of your time or more of your money. Would you rather invest the time it takes to grind, farm, or level yourself to reach a certain feature, or would you rather take a short cut for a certain real life price? The best F2P games have a fairly equal balance of a need to pay and the ability to play to reach the same end goal. However, a game that requires too much grinding, or offers too much of a shortcut by paying (usually these problems are the same), to the point where it becomes boring or frustrating are not a success, even if you can unlock all features in an in game fashion.

In my opinion, a game with micro transactions are a failure if you have to spend more than the average cost of a game ($50-$60) in order to unlock everything. Even then, these are usually still "failures" as new areas or things will inevitably be released requiring more money to reach this complete status. Other situations where F2P games fail are competitive games, usually a shooter of some kind, where you can gain an edge over everyone else by buying better weapons (or something similar), to the point where the only way to compete is to end up paying money yourself (even if you had no intention to). The odd ball situation of games that offer only cosmetic, or not game changing items, for real money are okay in my book, but I would very very rarely ever pay for something like that.

First of all thanks again for everyone who is still replying to it we're getting some very interesting results. Of course before you start doing research on something like this you have your own opinion on it and we had some expectations of what the outcome of the research would be. By looking at the results atm there are some questions which where we kinda got what we predicted so far but there are also some surprises in there. I'll post some statistics here next week when we're done collecting the data and anolysed it, maybe its interesting for the ones that participated in this to see the outcome of it. In the meantime keep the responses coming, your all helping out a lot