Microtransactions and DLC (Downloadable Content) are two relatively new phenomenon in Games. In Asia, the big thing in online games are Free-2-Play the big model, were you play for free and have the option to buy small micro-items in game. Many small transactions, that combined add up to a bunch of money. In the west this type of thing in games haven’t really become successful, yet. But it seems that the whole industry are focusing their attention for this and develop games with this in mind. DLC have become big, were the developer can expand the life of a game buy developing new extra content for a game. This works for game, that is a consuming and interactive media. One example that comes to mind in books are when JK Rowling wrote a extra short story for her Harry Potter universe.
For big games, from big publishers this works very well. But til now big games that are already or on the way out on the market, DLC maybe doesn’t cost so much to develop. But it still a risk to incorporate it from scratch and depend the whole project on it. Here, we at GamersGate have been developing a complete platform to ease for developers to incorporating microtransactions into their games. Microtransaction and DLC are indeed the future, or a part of the future, it have many advantages but still have some childhood things to fix. But this is probably just the beginning!
