If You Think The Real Currency In Live Service Games Is Money, You’re Wrong

Live service games skyrocketed in popularity ever since the likes of World of Warcraft dawned upon the gaming world, effectively changing the industry forever. Today, there is an entire genre dedicated to such titles, with more and more developers leaning towards the development of live service iterations as the years go by.

The biggest downside to these games is that they’re pretty big on making the player spend money in exchange for in-game loot, rewards, bonuses, and other cosmetic unlocks. The average gamer often sees this as a means to waste money, but what we fail to realize is that the funds in your account aren’t the only thing on the line here—it’s time as well.

Once you see the shift in perspective, it’s hard to unsee it. 

Time Is Money

The saying “Time is money” has aged like fine wine, and couldn’t be more suiting in the context of live service games. The psychological trick played by these titles is basically FOMO, which is known as the Fear of Missing Out. 

Most live service games hook you in by rewarding you for daily logins, daily task completions, and regular level progressions. Once you miss a day, you feel as if everything’s breaking down, because you skipped out on that time-gated activity or the long-term grind that warranted frequent playthroughs.

Once the feeling starts to kick in, you see microtransactions as a shortcut and a method to bypass that falling-behind feeling, making sure that you never really missed out on something in the first place. This is why players spend money—not for rewards, but to buy back their time instead. 

Battle passes are the true criminals here. They make you plan your schedule and log in even when you don’t want to, only because of the fear of skipping an in-game reward that you’ve already paid for.” 

Realize What You Actually Give Up When You Purchase Loot Boxes 

The smart player, however, recognizes patterns and knows that buying yourself out of a messy situation leads to a lack of exposure. Exposure that would’ve mattered next time in pressure situations and recognizing marketplace trends. Feel free to check what’s available on GG Chest for better pattern recognition and how time alters the way a player thinks in-game.  

Stop letting games exploit the reality that money can be earned back, but time can’t. Create your own schedule, stop spending money just to feel relevant, and play when you want to feel like it, not when you have to pay the game tax in the form of time, with money being the exchange rate. 

Final Thoughts

In another article on eXputer, we talked about some of the best games in the business that respect a player’s time. Make sure to switch sides if you understand that the title you’re playing is just taking too much out of you, both in the form of money and time.