10 Video Game Developer Roles You Didn't Know Exist

"BoOooOoooo. BooOooo, monetisation, boo!"

Yeah, yeah, we know, we know - you hate paying for stuff. I hate paying for stuff too (and probably moreso, as I'm Scottish). But whilst games are created for entertainment purposes, you also have to sell the damned things, and if you're not going with a more typical one-and-done £60 price tag, you're likely going to need a monetisation designer.

And no, it's not just slapping price stickers on stuff. A monetisation designer might have to work quite closely with other systems designers in order to consider things like how the player progresses, which items hold the most value (and if that in-game value would change if the items were monetised at all).

Simply put, the monetisation designer's job gets more and more intricate depending on how many design mechanics interact with monetisation. It's probably not advisable to make people pay for things core to the gaming experience, unless you want to deal with the ripple effect that'll cascade into all the other mechanics and systems of the game.

Overwatch 2 has come under some flak recently for its changes to product monetisation for this very reason; Overwatch was a paid-for £50 game with everything core unlocked for everyone (with only cosmetics costing extra), whilst Overwatch 2 is a free-to-play game with core components such as characters now purchasable via the optional battlepass.

It's this major change that would've required the expertise of a monetisation designer... for better or worse.