61–70 of 145 posts
I agree with him completely. But I also wonder sometimes: Who is spending money on all of these awful games? There's so much good stuff on Steam, GOG, the Switch eStore, etc. Wonderful games made by people who care, for a fair price, without exploitative monetisation, that I don't feel even remotely tempted to play whatever Ubisoft is currently peddling. Some examples I've played in recent years are Celeste, Into the…
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When I played WoW I liked collecting pets and old mounts that were dropped from raid bosses that became solo-able or duo-able. I can't imagine anyone building a modern game where collecting cosmetics is nothing more than a fun side game rather than a revenue stream.
Nintendo is very good, still. BoTW, Animal Crossing.
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I think the NFT thing should be illegal. It adds nothing beyond a false promise that you're buying an "investment" instead of an in game item. IMO it's disgusting to see game companies targeting kids with a scam like that. As for the rest of the article, he could be talking about me. I've basically given up on PC gaming. I used to love gaming and now it feels like a second job. It feels like I'm being forced to "acco…
I guess it very much depends what kind of games you play. These are the games I enjoy : Rimworld, Valheim, Police Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio, Skyrim, Mount and Blade 2 : Bannerlord. None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.
over-monetization is actually one of the things that's ruining modding, because if you let players mod whatever they want there's no way to get them to pay 10 bucks for a vorpal sword +3 when they could just mod it in.
this is one of the major pushes away from story-driven offline single-player content at present, there's no safe way to monetize it. To monetize it safely you need always-online, DRM, and ideally it would be better if there was some minimal amount of "multiplayer" interaction (but not so much that you have to spend a bunch of money on servers).
the titles you've named are mostly old titles (Skyrim) before monetization really took off, or indie titles. To get an AAA developed these days it pretty much needs an online component.
I agree with him completely. But I also wonder sometimes: Who is spending money on all of these awful games? There's so much good stuff on Steam, GOG, the Switch eStore, etc. Wonderful games made by people who care, for a fair price, without exploitative monetisation, that I don't feel even remotely tempted to play whatever Ubisoft is currently peddling. Some examples I've played in recent years are Celeste, Into the…
Sid is a few years too late with the warning. Gameplay and original game design have taken a backseat to increasingly hostile monetization schemes, lazy/safe/rehashed game loops and marketing/shareholder driven development for at least a decade now. The amount of AAA titles built on hype and released broken at launch, with promises of future patches, is too long to list. With some notable exceptions, most of the inno…
If I understood Zuckerberg correctly during his Lex Fridman interview, he's trying to build an entire alternate reality based on this concept of monetizing in game items. He said something along the lines of, "People want to dress nice and look good in person, so why not in a VR meeting?" and then proceeded to talk about charging people for clothes and haircuts in the Metaverse. I have to wonder what sort of scenario…
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I think it is largely "casual" gamers and or gamers who can't afford the upfront $50 or $20 for a game and are lured in by the "Free" game and then of course addiction kicks in and they spend $100 or more on it. Sad state of affairs, and something that has only gotten worse with app stores. I don't know if it is causal but they certainly haven't helped stop it.
a skin in some of these games is $10 or more. Even as someone who might conceivably be tempted (I've bought stuff for TF2 before), there's a point where it's just an obviously bad use of your money. 20 bucks is a nice dinner out, I'm not spending that on a skin. Maybe I am just stuck in 2012 but $2-3 is about the limit for me for a skin. "Unusual" hats (particle effects) in TF2 are basically the original NFT, they ar…
In the process the games themselves degrade. Addictive mechanisms are added, stories are dragged out or split into DLCs, money distorts competition between players, games are designed to waste the players time, and so forth.
And the problem is not just the industry or 'capitalism' or whatever, I think culturally we also have lost the ability to talk about entertainment critically. Games that are glorified slot machines should be called out for it, parents should tell their kids not to play them, and people need to start valuing their attention.
I agree with him completely. But I also wonder sometimes: Who is spending money on all of these awful games? There's so much good stuff on Steam, GOG, the Switch eStore, etc. Wonderful games made by people who care, for a fair price, without exploitative monetisation, that I don't feel even remotely tempted to play whatever Ubisoft is currently peddling. Some examples I've played in recent years are Celeste, Into the…
Really if you ignore the 'axis of evil' publishers (Activision, EA, Ubisoft) /most/ AAA games are fine.
Also in any single player Ubisoft game I've played (so mostly Far Cry and Assassins creed + Ghost Recon Wildlands (which is great btw)) the microtransactions can be completely ignored, none of their games are balanced around people spending money like mobile games are, nor is any meaningful content locked behind a pay wall unless it's in the form of a proper expansion/stand alone spinoff.
There seems to be a commonly held opinion on HN threads like this that the gaming industry has failed beyond repair, and all AAA games are dark pattern riddled slot machines. But it's really not true outside of a handful of large bad actor publishers. Just open up Steam and read user reviews, it's pretty obvious when a game is a poor cash grab.
I echo the sentiment of another comment here, saying that the market for "good" games never went away (really it's grown). It's just that there's now also another market, serving different customers with casual games with gameplay related microtransactions - which you can completely ignore as a consumer.
I agree with him completely. But I also wonder sometimes: Who is spending money on all of these awful games? There's so much good stuff on Steam, GOG, the Switch eStore, etc. Wonderful games made by people who care, for a fair price, without exploitative monetisation, that I don't feel even remotely tempted to play whatever Ubisoft is currently peddling. Some examples I've played in recent years are Celeste, Into the…
I think the problem is these sorts of games are still relatively niche compared to most releases by the big shops, which appeal more to people with a passing interest in games as an occasional pastime versus a hobby. For example I knew someone who played a good bit of FIFA, but didn't really have any interest in other games, in the same way someone else might not be interested in Criterion collection movies but might…
World is big and people are numerous. Games can be more than text adventures, 90s era, shooters, or whatever pure-blood PC master race gray beards think they are/were/should be.
It does not take long for me to come to the realization: WOW, these games are all employing addiction triggers, are all manipulative, are all without depth, and the two major app stores are 100% in cahoots with these parasites.
In the dawn of the TV age there was so much handwringing about children's programming, advertising. Where are the regulators? I'm not even concerned about depictions of violence or sex or drugs or hedonism. What concerns me the most is the outright psychological manipulation of dopamine triggers and other manipulations.
And having played a Machine Zone game (thankfully for not a lot of money) I am familiar with the graduated versions of the childrens "programming": illusory emotional investment, bullying, false group dynamics, fake peer pressure, harassment, direct addiction, rapidly changing economics/devaluation, and other tactics to get you to pony up an endless stream of money.
Obviously the app stores won't police this to even a small degree, too much 30% sweet commission involved.
I'm going to have to setup a retro emulator for my kid so they can play games that aren't riddled with ads and are designed around manipulation.