Pyromania

Back in 1999 programers created a tongue and cheek mod for quake called Team Fortress, which was later bought by valve and sold. Team fortress was a class based multiplayer game where two teams: Blu and Red, fight over "Intelligence" simply because the other team exists. In 2007 valve released a sequel, with an updated source engine onto xbox, playstation and PC (Later added to mac). The PC version was changed to free to play and was encouraged to make their own levels. Valve introduced micro-purchases, in game items that can be purchased for real currency, creating an in game economy (http://tf2spreadsheet.blogspot.com/) that buys and sells items by how rare, demand, and difficultly to get. To advertise the game, Valve created "Meet the ___" to show off each of the classes. After five years, Meet the Pyro has been released, starting an in game ARG (Augmented reality game). This event is similar to usual holiday events, where players can complete an objective to earn an exclusive item, but by equipping the goggles (Provided on log in), you see the world through the eyes of the pyro (See video). Valve makes a lot of money off of these updates, by charging the player 2.59 for a key to open an exclusive crate that is time limited. Each crate has one item that cannot be obtained through crafting or randomly throughout the game, and often has a "Strange" weapon that counts how many kills you have gotten with it. at 2.59 a piece, nearly every player will end up buying at least one.