2.3. Small money, big impact? – Microtransactions in Gaming

The success of microtransactions in gaming began back in the 1970s with arcade video games: In public arcades, games such as Donkey Kong or Pacman could be started on machines by inserting a coin. Today, so-called free-to-play games – which dominate the market – initially offered free of charge are financed with microtransactions that can be used to buy in-game progress, items or characters.

This is where parts of the games industry have developed particularly sophisticated strategies: Using the smallest payments, marginal in themselves, to reduce the threshold for a transaction to a minimum. And anyone who has made a purchase once will do so again – that’s how intelligent or manipulative the data-driven algorithms are in their search for a small pool of financially strong players, often minors, who then become increasingly addicted to the game and are referred to in technical jargon as “whales” that the game makers want to “catch”. In addition, microtransactions have also changed game design: Those who no longer want to use the game to advertise its purchase, but constantly monetize within a game, will design the game in such a way that a transaction seems to make sense as often as possible. A manipulation mechanism?