Xbox Studios live operations director Crystin Cox shared some tips for developers on how to ethically monetize their games in a recent episode of Google for Games’ Game Dev Dialogs podcast.

Cox, who was previously chief game designer and trade manager for Guild Wars 2 and former game director for Nexon’s MapleStory, said developers would be best served by treating all of their players with the same care they treat them. children playing their games.

“In any age group, there are vulnerable and vulnerable groups for various reasons, but still vulnerable,” she said.

While the basic ethics of fairness, respect and accountability should be the same no matter what, Cox said vulnerable populations will have “extreme cases” for developers to take into account and treat, regardless of how often they occur.

“It’s easier to just welcome them than it is to face the consequences of not considering how you’re going to deal with the most vulnerable population,” Cox said.

“Because even though I take the ethics out of this conversation and we’re just talking tough business, there’s nothing good in having thousands of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars billed back to cards. credit and then fined by the credit card payment companies. tons of risk associated with allowing things like overspending or overspending. “

Despite this, Cox has made it clear that he does not want to rely on strict business considerations when making ethical decisions. Too often, she talks to developers about ethics and finds that they decide what is acceptable based on what players want or will tolerate. She said she was trying to push them beyond that line of thinking.

“What if the players put up with anything,” she asked. “What if your players were happy with everything you’ve done? What would you do then? Where are your lines?

“If you’re really willing to do whatever it takes to your players, can you ever speak with conviction to your player base? Can you ever defend yourself? ”

Cristin Cox

These questions need to be answered because anyone who defaults to “what players tolerate” as their ethical litmus test is probably not considering which players this covers, or how the developer is supposed to know which ones don’t tolerate something.

As she explained, “If you’re really willing to do anything that doesn’t bother your players, can you ever speak to your player base with conviction? Can you ever defend yourself? Because those are things that can really happen You can really find yourself in a situation where you’ve made a decision and you could be in a position where one of your developers is going to kind of get thrown under a bus.

“If you don’t come from a place where you have your own strong ethical guidelines that you really feel and stick to, it can be very difficult to resolve these issues.”

Cox didn’t have specific answers on what makes a monetization practice ethical and another not, but offered general advice to developers.

“Think about regrets and design to reduce regrets,” she said. “Look at your gaming experiences, whatever you buy. Does this risk producing regrets? Regret is a good wake-up call for something wrong and unlikely to pass the long-term test to be sustainable, or fair, or easy to understand. “

Beyond that, developers need to consider their position of power in relation to something close to their hearts, namely the game.

“They don’t really have direct control over it, and you do,” she said. “You’ve done that thing they really want and you decide if they can afford it. You decide if it’s possible for them to get that thing. That often leads to a pricing strategy and things like that.

“You really want to be careful that you don’t get stuck in the big spenders paradox, which is: if you focus on the big spenders, then you’ll design all of your monetization to only attract the big spenders. Then you’re just going to have big spenders and then you’re going to create this constant cycle that you can’t get out of. “

Beyond that, she advised developers to be more patient and trust their players instead of forcing them to immediately spend on the game.

“If you can, in any way you can, be a little more patient and trust a little more that if your players like the game, they will come to a place where they want to pay,” she said. .