I had a dream of the future the other night, and it was a future that involved pain and suffering. Yes, I dreamed that the virus that is overtaking the internet’s “game sector” will spread to other areas of our lives and we will literally be nickel and dimed to death. Yes, I’m talking microtransactions.

For those not “in the know”, a microtransaction is a new way of charging unsuspecting “users” for a product or service (such as a game.) In the old days of internet gaming, the standard model was to charge a user to buy the game, or offer a download of the game for free, then charge an ongoing monthly subscription fee. This worked pretty well when there weren’t a lot of games around to compete with one another, and the games that did exist were generally pretty full featured (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, for example.) But, as time went on, more and more games came out and costs of producing these behemoths skyrocketed and users couldn’t/wouldn’t pay for multiple subscriptions, causing existing subscriptions to tend to drop off when a newer, better game came out and causing developers to make less money. To solve this problem, someone somewhere along the line got the idea that maybe crappy little “free” games people can play “casually” were the way to go. The problem with this, of course, was how do you make money with crappy games? You could provide them through a “gaming portal” like Pogo or Microsoft Gaming Zone, and run ads and hope people would click on them, or you could offer “premium” accounts, and charge a smaller monthly fee of say, $5, so people could skip the ads (many ads were interstitial ads, ie, you had to sit there and wait for them to load then they’d refresh to a new screen where you could keep playing again. Interstitial ads are very annoying and many users (addicts) would gladly pay $5/mo to avoid them.) Then, some genius came up with the idea of microtransactions. Once “social networking” took off, many people were playing games on these networks, and apparently ad revenue wasn’t high enough, so some of these games started charging people for items in the game using “currency” they bought with real money. So, they sucker you in with a “free” game, get you addicted, then make you believe you need an item (usually they’re rare “limited edition” or they make your character more powerful or something, in other words they fill a “need” you didn’t know you even had) then you’ll blindly shell out a couple bucks here and there and it won’t even hurt much. And, from what I’ve heard, companies are raking in serious dough this way, it’s way more profitable than the old subscription based model. And, precisely because it’s so profitable, I fear it may take over everything.

Television will likely be the first target. Right now, many people in America pay for cable or satellite to get their TV stations. Often, the fees charged for basic service as well as “extra” channels like movie or sports channels, are ridiculously high. But just imagine, if you could get your cable TV “free” each month but only had to pay say fifty cents every time you watched a show, would you do it? For some people, this would be a huge bargain. For others, their total might be more, but they wouldn’t really notice it, a few cents here, a few cents there. Maybe a buck or two to watch a newly released movie, five or ten to watch a big event like the Super Bowl or a concert. With the advent of “streaming TV” I am certain this will happen. Right now I pay about $10/mo to Netflix for the privilege of not only getting DVDs through the mail, but watching things on TV through their streaming service. Right now they don’t charge extra for that. Eventually, I think they will not only stop the DVD portion of their service, but they will switch to a microtransaction fee structure. Why? Because they’ll make boatloads of money, that’s why. And people like me, who have gotten “addicted” to being able to watch streaming content anytime they want, will gladly pay a little here, a little there. And soon, it will spread … look around at all the things you do everyday that are “free” … driving to work, parking your car, using a software program, taking a walk in the park with your dog, reading a book from the library, using the bathroom, the microwave, the washing machine, opening the refrigerator … now imagine a world where just about everything you do that you don’t currently pay for, you had to shell out a micro fee each time you did it. Start saving your nickels and dimes my friends, because your life in Hell is right around the corner, and someone, probably not you, is going to get rich making your life miserable.

Coming soon to a moon near you.

“Και ένα νέο αίμα θα αυξηθεί επάνω στις ακτές του νέου βασίλειου… ”

Don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger.