Adrian quoted on microtransactions, addiction and the free-to-play gaming business in Asia

Adrian was asked by online portal Asiaone for his views on microtransactions, free-to-play games in Asia, and whether MTX fueled addiction, following the recent WHO news on gaming disorder. As part of the team that built a PC online and mobile gaming business across 15 Asia territories using Electronic Arts (EA) intellectual property in a F2P/MTX/live services model for Asia markets as the "thin edge of the wedge" for console- and AAA-focused Western companies, he was happy to weigh in.

“On the one hand, you do have that addiction worry. On the other hand, as a dev seeking sticky and engaged users who will hopefully be invested enough to want to spend on items or a season pass, you have some motivation to want to include a ‘compulsion loop’, right?” said the veteran lawyer.

While Kwong is agnostic about gaming-addiction-as-a-disease, he does care about addiction in general, especially for the young. Ultimately, he’s a realist — at the end of the day, he doesn’t think these aspects of games can really be banned. "I don’t think monetisation through free-to-play and microtransactions are inherently necessarily bad, and the reality is it did result in big and long-lasting changes to how games are made, and the business of games,” Kwong explained. 

Read more in the article - long read - here.

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