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Bribing Your Way to Victory: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
==
=== Card Games ===
* The ''[[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]'' series of card games has a set of official T-shirts. According to the official tournament rules, wearing one of these shirts grants special powers, such as the ability to draw extra cards and increasing the amount of treasure you get when killing monsters. It also has a series of bookmarks that cancels out the effect of the t-shirts. In fact, all Munchkin related products affect the card game in some way.
** Possibly the most outrageous example ever? [http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/cookie/ A cookie.]
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** Somewhat inverted when [[Wizards of the Coast]] released a ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' boxset containing tournament-winning decks from two of the best professional Magic players, including several expensive rares. The catch was that the cards had visual notifiers marking them as not tournament-legal, and thus effectively worthless on the resale market.
*** Furthermore, there are 'Limited format' tournaments, where the price of entry (around $20) includes several packs of cards, which the tournament participants must then make decks out of (in some versions, the player is limited to whichever packs were given him at random; in others, the players pass the packs around the table and pick a single card). At the end, cards are kept (though rares are sometimes put aside to be handed out, with higher ranking participants going first). Because cards are chosen non-randomly, this is actually a cheaper method of obtaining the cards you want.
**** As said above, this trope is normally completely averted in limited formats. However it is played straight with in the Magic Extra Life 2016 charity event (the "Donation Sealed" portion), in which players can use as many boosters as you want (with money being the limiting factor), instead of using only six and being stuck with boosters from the same set as everyone else. Those boosters cost money, of course (which helps the charity), and viewers can pay for the packs to increase their favorite player's card pool, which increases the quality of that players deck, which increases that players chance of winning.
*** ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' however also plays this totally straight with the introduction of a new level of rarity. On top of Common, Uncommon and Rare, are the new so-called Mythic Rares—which tend to not only be powerful, but for the tournament-worthy ones, very costly to buy. It used to be you needed to dig back into Arabian Nights for an $80 card, but say hello to the mind sculptor...
** Averted by the [[Star Wars Customizable Card Game]], which managed to work [[Screw the Money, I Have Rules]] ''into'' the rules. Many conflicts in the game are resolved by chance, but instead of rolling dice you draw the top card of your deck and check its "Destiny" value, which goes from 0 to 7. Cards which were rare, powerful and expensive had low Destiny, whereas the common and sucky ones had high values. Thus, players with cheaper cards get more luck. (In the end, it actually didn't work, but it was still a nice try.)
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''! is a major offender (yet not at Munchkin levels), although for very different reasons. UDE has an annoying habit of increasing the number and rarity of cards in the expansion sets before releasing them, as well as making it easy for retailers to pluck those cards out and sell them as singles. The only people able to get the better cards are either rich enough to buy them from the retailer, at high prices; buy whole boxes, at high prices; or have the luck to find an honest retailer.
** Ever since UDE was dropped as a distributor in the West, Konami has continued the practice, but toned down the blatant practice slightly. Their rarities get shuffled, but at most a card doesn't go higher than Ultra Rare (compared to UDE's 'powerful card=highest rarity possible' tactic. The more useful cards get bumped down a bit, like Blackwing - Sirocco of the Dawn, a cornerstone piece in a Blackwing Deck, one very powerful deckstype, is a Common in US, compared to the Japanese Super Rare.
*** For a very blatant example of UDE's tactic: Dark Armed Dragon, at one point in the metagame the ''most expensive single card'' ever, is in the U.S. Secret Rare (one per
** Also, the US tend to release TCG exclusive cards that can
* The ''Illuminati: New World Order'' SubGenius set has a card with a special ability that is activated by sending one dollar to the SubGenius Foundation. The card suggests that the other players require the user to actually mail the dollar.
* You can play ''[[Alteil]]'' for free forever, getting all cards, even. Just don't expect to expand your deck as quickly as those who are willing to dish out dough. Oh, and there are also some cool customization stuff you can get with cash, but it is entirely optional.
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* The [[Pokémon (game)|Pokémon Trading Card Game]], as of the [[Pokémon Black and White]] sets, has increased the rarity of the most powerful cards. This is a bane for not only players looking for some of these specific cards, but for collectors, as the ''quantity'' of these cards have increased too, requiring the spending of 3 to 4 times as much money to obtain a complete set than before.
=== Tabletop
* The [[LARP|live-action role-playing game]] ''NERO'' plays this very straight - you can straight out buy experience points with real-world money.
** There was a company which hired temporary workers by paying them in NERO experience points instead of dollars. They had to stop when someone pointed out that they were paying them the equivalent of 67c per hour, which is far below the legal minimum wage. And yet, some of the players preferred this to getting real money!
* The parodic roleplaying game ''Violence: the Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed'' allows a player to improve his character's stats by paying the [[Game Master]], or by sending money to the game's author.
* While [[Games Workshop]] mostly averts this trope by making ''everything'' [[Crack is Cheaper|outrageously expensive]], on average each faction will have at least one figurine that is only available in "Fine-Cast" resin. Eldar Wraithguard or Dark Eldar Beastmaster. One player calculated you would have to pay an excess of ''$400'' for the points equivalent of a 75 dollar tank of another faction, if you decided to buy the GW versions of the beasts and the beastmaster—which you will have to do if you wish to play with them during a tournament, as non-Games Workshop models are officially prohibited during tournaments.▼
** ''Plastic Dudesmen'' [https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/05/plastic-dudesmen-166-victory-points-for-everyone.html #166 - Victory Points for Everyone!] speculates on what will happen should GW become as blatant about it as software publishers.▼
* Tracy Hickman, fantasy author and ''[[Dragonlance]]'' co-creator, often ran a "Killer Breakfast" joke role-playing event at conventions. Attendees would buy tickets for a chance to play pre-generated characters whom Mr. Hickman would kill out of the game as quickly as [[Rule of Funny]] allowed. Blatantly bribing him with snack food was often the best way to deflect his lethal attention to somebody else's character.
=== War Games ===
▲* While [[Games Workshop]] mostly averts this trope by making ''everything'' [[Crack is Cheaper|outrageously expensive]], on average each faction will have at least one figurine that is only available in "Fine-Cast" resin. Eldar Wraithguard or Dark Eldar Beastmaster. One player calculated you would have to pay an excess of ''$400'' for the points equivalent of a 75 dollar tank of another faction, if you decided to buy the GW versions of the beasts and the
▲** ''Plastic Dudesmen'' [https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/05/plastic-dudesmen-166-victory-points-for-everyone.html #166 - Victory Points for Everyone!] speculates on what will happen should GW become as blatant about it as software publishers.
== Video Games ==
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* In the West, originally, ''[[Pokémon]]'' was marketed so that players ''were'' [[The Power of Friendship|encouraged to make friends]] with each other ''and'' trade their Pokemon around to [[To Be a Master|collect all 150]] of them... [[Broken Aesop|Instead, this taught kids to buy multiple GameBoys and every single cartridge.]] [[Gone Horribly Right|... Win?]]
** At least until the addition of the Global Trade Station in Gen. IV. You can trade for any Pokemon you've seen before. Gen. V also added GTS Negotiations, where you can negotiate with others for ''any'' Pokemon.
* ''[[Madden NFL|Madden NFL 10]]'', at least for the [[Play Station 3]], has gone absolutely insane with it. It's bad enough that they expect you to shell out ten dollars to purchase an "AFC LEGACY PACK" that's just a few different costumes and stadiums that in all honesty should have just come with the game in retail. But for the first time, inputting cheat codes for the single player games isn't a matter of using 'cards' awarded in game for good play, but rather purchasing the use of those cheat codes online in the [[PlayStation]] Store. Not to mention the new "Madden Ultimate Online" mode, which is like any other online mode, but with the added fun of shelling out $5 a pack for 11 cards, and needing a deck of 100 cards to play. Oh, and those cards you just paid real life money for? They disappear from your account forever after playing enough online games with them (usually around 6), forcing you to buy more packs.
** Madden's college counterpart, NCAA 10, is slightly less insane about it. You can pay for dynasty accelerators, such as recruiting reports (they give you a leg up in recruiting new players) and a 'Toughest Places to Play' boost (it bumps your stadium higher on the list of toughest stadiums to play in, which rattles visiting teams). Quite a lot of people, this troper included (who plays on All-American, the second-highest difficulty) don't bother with the accelerators because they're unnecessary. I don't recall if it was ever patched, but there was a lot of controversy over players using the accelerators in Online Dynasty, which gave them an advantage over the other OD players.
* ''[[Bloodline Champions]]'' allows you to obtain all the characters by paying real money for them.
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** And it just got even worse. They nerfed the TP gains for non-subscribers to is 1-11 TP per game. Meanwhile, premium subscribers get 1,000 TP a month. The official message explaining this said it was for "balance" purposes. The only balancing going on there is in their checkbooks.
** And now the US version, ''Tetris Friends'', has a similar deal. The "Tuning Style" (i.e. non-cosmetic) upgrades can be bought with Tokens (earned from playing, like TP) or Rubies (bought with cash, or through TrialPay). For an idea of the amount of grind needed, fully upgrading everything requires 210,000 Tokens, when it's rare to see 100 Tokens awarded for a single game. Or you can pay for about 7 bucks worth of Rubies.
** ''Tetris Friends'' then proceeded to add items which allow players to artificially inflate their Arena skill rating points. For about a dollar per day, you can double your increase in rating points for wins, or you can buy "Armor" to absorb your rating points losses for about $2.50 per 1,000 points (with the scale going from 0 to 19,999). And you can have both active simultaneously. As a result, ''the entire Top 100
* Probably the single biggest example would be ''Zhengtu Online'', a Chinese MMORPG deliberately designed from the ground up for gold buyers. The game physically blocks you from advancing without buying experience and items for real world money. See [https://web.archive.org/web/20080511221059/http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php this article] for how blatantly the game nickels and dimes its players. Oh, and it's the single most popular game in China by a long shot...
* ''[[Combat Arms]]'' has a lot of equipment that can only be bought, or more often, rented, with real money. Earlier in the game's history, the items you could buy were either purely cosmetic or very slightly better than the weapons rentable with game currency. But they are drawing nearer to [[Game Breaker]] status with every new addition as the developers attempt to lure more players into Bribing Their Way To Victory.
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** However, if you tried this your score would be divided by the number of credits, so this didn't actually let you do better in the game as far as score was concerned, and could even hurt.
* The 'real time tactics simulation' game ''[[Navy Field]]'' can be played for free. However paying for a 'gold' account gives you double experience points from battles and you can buy special (aka game breaking) ships and weapons using real money. Ironically this doesn't always help as certain groups of free players will specifically target premium ships.
** The disparity in terms of playability between those who pay and those who do not is so great, that this may even belong under "Allegedly Free Game." As if more evidence was needed, I suppose you could argue that non-paying players are limited in the amount of the game they are allowed to see, since they are generally denied their rights. In disputes, the mods and [[Game Master|GMs]] are INFAMOUS for almost always siding with the player that pays more. Hell, it's called $DE for a reason.
* ''[[Battle Stations]]'' allows the player to buy rare items, which usually require a lot of luck-based exploring or questing to acquire. There are, however, three items for sale which cannot be found via exploration. These items can be traded on the ingame auction, though, so a wealthy character could try and get them there instead.
** Also in the cash shop are Action Point packages, allowing the player to gain more Ap than the regular Ap regeneration provides.
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* In the UK, there is a mathematical competition called the Senior Mathematical Challenge. There are also 2 follow-on rounds, the British Mathematical Olympiad Round 1 and Round 2. You need a certain score in each competition to advance to the next. That is, unless you pay a fee (£16.50 for Round 1, £22 for Round 2). So you can be really good at maths, yet be in the final round with [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|people who are terrible at math, but paid the fee.]]
* This has long been a routine strategy indulged in by(of course) the [[Byzantine Empire]] among others.
**During [[World War
== In-Universe ==
=== Anime and Manga ===
* In ''[[Wizard's Soul - Koi no Seisen]]'', the game ''Wizard's Soul'' [[Serious Business|is society's go-to way to assess people's luck, ability, and intellect in aggregate]]. Even so, people apparently only play [https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Constructed Constructed], and the fact that having money to buy expensive cards provides an advantage is acknowledged by people within the story.
=== Newspaper Comics ===
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[[Category:Power At a Price]]
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[[Category:Collectible Card Game]]
[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]
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