For example, for the last few years EA Sports has been offering skill packs and boosts, that you may apply to your 'Pro' sports character, in the marketplace of the respected console. For those people willing to pay a few dollars, usually 2-10 dollars, they can forgo hours of in game time training the actual skills, thus buying their 'talent'. In these games the success of a player greatly depends on how high a character's skills are thus those who can afford to pay are at a greater advantage.
This is also seen in social media games (Facebook games in particular) where users can buy more energy, better items, more land area, etc. Battlefield games (another title published by EA) offers entire class level ups in the marketplace for a price of $5. Users also receive all weapons of the class that come with the levels.
I think this is a poor idea from game designers to allow players to buy ranks, especially for sports games. In fact I'll go as far as saying players should not be able to buy their skills but should have to earn their ranks. Players passionate about the game should be rewarded for their time. A player should not be able to go out, buy the game, buy some additional features, and be as good as someone who has put in a hundred hours.
I think another argument, and a better one, is that in sports games, and perhaps all games, players should have a level playing field (except for ones designed for time played = better character ie: RPGs). The game should be based on how well a person can coordinate their hands, the controller, players in the game, and strategize. I think this RPG element being implemented into almost all games being published in recent times is just a way to make games more 'compulsive' (it would be interesting to know if psychologically does compulsiveness make a game seem more interesting/better?), and more importantly make a way for devs to make some extra money on the game. I can't think of a recent game that has come out that doesn't include the RPG style level up and reward system.
One of the biggest disappointments I faced recently was with the release of NHL 12 in September. I hadn't got an NHL game for the last 2 years and was excited to play. I was intrigued by the EA Sports Hockey League mode in which you play with a team that you create which is made up of random team of players from a range of real leagues. You start off with a bunch of random hockey cards and with these cards you form a team and play against other players who've made other randomly generated teams. As you play games you get points which can be used to buy more packs of hockey cards and gradually improve your team, winning games and scoring goals are ways to earn more points. NHL stars are rarities in the decks of cards as they are normally much better players than those who play in the junior leagues. Decks of cards that may contain an NHL player also also pretty expensive, required a player to play in a few games before being able to afford a pack. Needless to say its a fun mode as you get to play manager of a team and play games. I created my team of mainly junior league players from my assortment of cards and went to play a game. I thought this is going to be really fun until I got in the game and was playing against a player with almost all NHL players... I thought how can this be? The game is not even one day old and this person has a team of all stars... Needless to say my team of rising stars was no match against the team of pros and I lost 7-1.
Later I found out packs of cards can be bought for $2.50 each in the marketplace. The player I was going against must have spent quite a bit of real money creating their team just to have a large edge over other players. This pretty much ruins the game mode for me as I'm not willing to spend a wad of my own cash on improving my virtual team. This makes the game almost useless to me unless I'm ok with losing most of the games I play to players frivolous enough to pay real money for their team. It made me remember why I didn't go out and buy NHL 11 last year, and makes me not want to buy NHL 13 next year.
So what is everyone's take on this? Are game devs making a huge mistake in offering virtual skill for real dollars? From a business standpoint its a great move, of course, however from a gaming standpoint it makes the games more of a hobby. One now has to pay $60 for a copy of the game and then however much more to improve their skills just to be able to compete.
I don't like it.
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