TY - JOUR
T1 - Pay to Win or Pay to Cheat
T2 - How Players of Competitive Online Games Perceive Fairness of In-Game Purchases
AU - Freeman, Guo
AU - Wu, Karen
AU - Nower, Nicholas
AU - Wohn, Donghee Yvette
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous Reddit posters for sharing their gameplay experiences. We also thank our reviewers for their valuable suggestions that help us improve this paper. We want to especially thank Dane Acena's significant contribution to data collection, analysis, and an early draft of this paper; and Michael Wedderburn's help with data analysis.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 ACM.
PY - 2022/10/29
Y1 - 2022/10/29
N2 - The advent of various in-game purchasing systems has led to several ethical concerns in contemporary gaming ecosystems, including the monetary dark patterns in game design and the potential harms on gamer welling by introducing cheating, gambling, and addictive mechanisms. These concerns have resulted in the rise of tensions regarding the impacts of in-game purchases on players who pay versus those who do not pay, such as their perceptions of "fairness"in highly competitive gaming contexts when spending is involved. Using 2,685 Reddit posts from five subreddits of popular online sports and card games that focus on player-to-player competition, we investigate how players of these games perceive fairness of their in-game purchases. This research expands our existing knowledge on ethical concerns and fairness in gaming by highlighting consumers' (players') diverse ethical judgments regarding the increasingly popular monetization mechanisms in modern gaming. It also highlights ethical dilemmas surrounding competition, spending, and enjoyment in online gaming and informs the design of future digital consumption systems for fairer, healthier, and more ethical gaming dynamics.
AB - The advent of various in-game purchasing systems has led to several ethical concerns in contemporary gaming ecosystems, including the monetary dark patterns in game design and the potential harms on gamer welling by introducing cheating, gambling, and addictive mechanisms. These concerns have resulted in the rise of tensions regarding the impacts of in-game purchases on players who pay versus those who do not pay, such as their perceptions of "fairness"in highly competitive gaming contexts when spending is involved. Using 2,685 Reddit posts from five subreddits of popular online sports and card games that focus on player-to-player competition, we investigate how players of these games perceive fairness of their in-game purchases. This research expands our existing knowledge on ethical concerns and fairness in gaming by highlighting consumers' (players') diverse ethical judgments regarding the increasingly popular monetization mechanisms in modern gaming. It also highlights ethical dilemmas surrounding competition, spending, and enjoyment in online gaming and informs the design of future digital consumption systems for fairer, healthier, and more ethical gaming dynamics.
KW - card games
KW - competitive online games
KW - ethics
KW - fairness
KW - in-game purchases
KW - microtransactions
KW - sports games
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146328054&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/3549510
DO - 10.1145/3549510
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85146328054
SN - 2573-0142
VL - 6
JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
M1 - 247
ER -