9 Crippling Problems With The Gaming Industry’s Future

7. Pester Power

Much like the controversy around some forms of DLC, some developers have taken on licences that have the whole intention of forcing parents to pump money into the collecting habits of their child, with the main culprits here being Skylanders and Disney: Infinity. If you're not familiar with these games, they are standard third-person adventure games which are brought to life using an NFC "portal" (read: plastic platform) and specially-made statues, the idea being that you buy a pack with the little statue, place it on the portal and unlock specific levels related to that character. The idea in principle is actually pretty cute, blurring the lines between playing with toys and playing games, but the execution is nigh-on theft. Looking at Skylanders specifically; to buy one of the three Skylanders games with three toys and the portal peripheral will run you about £70 - which is pricey but not too bad - but then the additional toys cost up to £9 each on their own and at current count across all three games there are 241 of them. Look at that carefully, two-hundred-and-forty-one figurines at around £9 each; using bloke maths (which is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate) that would run to over two grand to get everything. Disney Infinity is not much cheaper either and it has been proved over the years that this kind of game sells to kids. They're action-packed, brightly-coloured, relatively simple to pick up and then there is the added draw of the collectable toys. Kids go crazy for them and whenever a new entry in the series is released you guarantee that any visit to a game store will have you spotting some beleaguered parent giving in to their kid's will and dropping money on Skylanders/Infinity toys, safe in the knowledge that it won't be the last time either.