Many of you already know about my disapproval of a lot of the practices that Team Fortress 2 has implemented into the game in the past little bit, but ignoring the whole buying items and trading aspect of it, I believe the most negative point about the game is the gigantic marketing tool that it’s become. Let me explain:
Within the past year or so, Valve has been “teaming up” with various game developers, both big and small, and putting items and other goodies relating to both IPs in either game. Inside of TF2, it usually consists of hats, miscellaneous items, and even reskins of weapons. In the other game, it consists of other assorted cosmetic changes as well, usually wearable items. All in all, fairly harmless additions to games, but I find the principle of the matter, as well as motivations of a large crowd of TF2 players to be the big problem. With the ‘black market’ that exists inside of the game, a lot of people will simply buy the game to get their free items inside of TF2, and never even open the game. As a great example, Valve’s most recent deal was with the game ‘Monday Night Combat’, a game I had been playing since the beta and have enjoyed thoroughly to the point of gifting it to a few people for Christmas. Before the promotion, it was pretty much myself and the four people I bought it for who owned the game. On Monday, when the game officially was released and the promotion was announced, a dozen people bought the game within twenty four hours. Of those people, only four have actually played the game as of this morning.
Of course, the big argument to be made for this is that it’s increasing sales for the developer that chooses to advertise this way. While flat-out sales are always good and do help them develop more games, there are two things to note from this. One is that people should be aware that these developers are more than likely paying a substantial sum of money to Valve for this marketing. I don’t know if anyone knows the exact dollar amount, but I imagine it would be a substantial sum since it requires them to design and implement items into the game. Secondly, large sales don’t necessarily send the proper message to game developers. While sales are good, it’s playtime as well as feedback that should be determining if a idea for a game works well or not.
While this lovey-dovey action between large and small developers may seem nice on the surface, I think it truly does hurt both games’ reputation. One game turns into a gigantic marketing platform, and the other is simply getting sales without earning it through good gameplay. Money may be the major benefit here, but I don’t think it’s a good option for consumers in the end.