Monetization and RuneScape?

Do you thing that the dominant ideology of Capitalism has taken over Runescape in terms of Monetization and Advertising in the past 7 years?

Monetization - Is how a game can virtually force you to buy their products such as Solomans Store in Runescape.


"Monetization is the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender. How does this apply to games? If your answer is that you can stick a price tag on a game and convert it to money by selling it, then perhaps you are correct. For the purposes of this paper, and my definition, I am going to describe the application of a single price to a virtual product as “retail monetization”. So if you have a software product, anything from the simplest mobile app to a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you have done nothing more than stick a price tag on the product, and/or applied a flat subscription to the service, you are engaging in retail monetization." - By Ramin Shokrizade

If you would like to read his whole article click here: http://gameful.org/group/games-for-change/forum/topics/game-monetization-defined

I agree that RS has been getting the main focus on real money making. Being non-member is boring, but if you buy member you actually don't have to buy other things. If playing right you will notice that it is easy to get the amount of money for bonds etc. So if you're a really good player you could assume that the first membership you buy will be your last, of course in practice this wouldn't be like that but technically it would be possible.

A lot of people nowadays are caught in this idea of 'that they need to get something to fit in'. In one of the older debates in here, the violence one, everyone in todays society feels the need to fit in with the others that participate in such activities. Relating this back to RS, players see others with different perks and cosmetics which tempts them to buy any item from solomon's store.

If this debate existed before the idea of DLCs I don't think it would get much attention, but the fact that you can spend 'irl geepeez' to get extra perks buys into the company's agenda of suckering people into spending 'irl geepeez'.