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Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

bbc.com

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Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#81

Post by spaceisballer »

Bombthecat wrote: post #14
nest0r wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would I need NFTs for that?

Nfts itself aren't the "game changer" the game changer is the combination of nfts and smart contracts, where various attributes are defined for the nfts, and they are not changeable. In the steam marketplace, the developer can change things easily, like changing a super rare card in a collectable card game to a common card.

Is it really a game changer? I don’t see the problem it’s fixing or the benefit from using them. Just because a developer technically could change something means some solution to prevent change should be implemented?

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#82

Post by bigger_cheese »

paulmd wrote: post #40
gameswithgo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I play Path of Exile. I've sunk 1000's of hours into the game at this point. I discovered PoE because I was so disappointed in Blizzard and Diablo 3 (which had terrible monetization problems - real world money auctions etc.)

I buy in game cosmetic items like skins occasionally. Are they bad value? Yes, however I don't consider that when I make the purchase. I've played this game so much and gotten so much enjoyment out of it I see the cosmetic purchases as a donation to the dev team for their time. If paying $30 for some fancy armor every so often helps fund ongoing development I'm happy to do it.

There is a line between "Pay to win" and "Purely cosmetic" microtransactions. I'm happy with the later but try to avoid games with the former.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#83

Post by iepathos »

cehrlich wrote: post #35

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…

A lot of people like to play competitively with friends and strangers. The major free to play games with microtransaction models I think of are League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Dota 2 which feed off the competitive multiplayer aspects that single player games lack entirely. It often takes a bigger budget company to be able to support the servers and development hours needed to support big multiplayer games.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#85

Post by vl »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #70

Android games for kids are so depressing. I imagine iOS is no better. The games AND game ads are so manipulative, so transactional, unregulated. 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 han…

On iOS there is Apple Arcade, which has pretty reasonable curated games. My kids only allowed to get games from Apple Arcade for this reasons (except Minecraft and Roblox). Subscription is included anyway with family Apple One umbrella subscription.

Roblox is evil of course with it's micro transactions, but simple rule of never buying robux kinda fixes that.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#86

Post by tasha0663 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #6
sstevenshang wrote: post #2

Excellent article, and the thing is that if you spend any time talking to gamers or on gaming platforms, there’s a near consensus on this attitude against in-game purchases that contribute nothing to gameplay. Even though people still make these purchases, I’d say most of them are conscious of the fact that the current trend is detrimental to gamers. As a side note, the only people pushing for NTFs in games are crypt…

I think the idea of nfts is cool, imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. So juat like right now, you could buy a ship for 5 dollar, cheaply designed and thousands are available (or endless) or get a unique nice and…

> imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available.

Uh, is that fun or am I back in economics class?

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#87

Post by mbg721 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #37
cehrlich wrote: post #35

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 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.

Or kids who don't have a credit card at the ready, but can ask after they get attached to the game. (Which makes it that much worse.)

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#88

Post by dylan604 »

p1necone wrote: post #68
cehrlich wrote: post #35

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 notice the examples you're giving are all lower budget indie games, it's also worth pointing out that there's a /tonne/ of big budget games that also eschew this kind of nonsense. See: FromSoftware, basically anything that was a Sony published PS4 exclusive (Horizon Zero Dawn, Spiderman, Days Gone, Uncharted, etc etc), Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, basically everything Nintendo puts out, many many more (honestly I…

Not being a game dev, I've often wondered how much the mobile platform for games lowered the barier to entry compared to PC/console games. Unity came along and opened up a lot of doors for people, but I'm not sure how much it is used for mobile (should provide an idea of my knowledge--or lack of--in this area).

Mobile games seems to just be flooded with copycat/clones with slight variations of the same game play with a lot looking like something that could be completed in a weekend or 2 or 3 weekends by someone looking for a quick buck. I've seen some games that look interesting, but their lootbox or other constant nagging for paid enhancements are really just a total turn off.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#89

Post by EdwardDiego »

lewispollard wrote: post #4

It's a bit rich, given there are 14 paid DLCs for the latest Civ game, and they all have pretty negative reviews for being too expensive while adding little to the gameplay.

Yep, the DLC model can be quite obnoxious. Paradox has gone hard on DLCs and cosmetic DLCs are all fine and dandy, but some of the features locked into other DLCs (No espionage in Hearts of Iron 4 without a DLC, no amphibious tanks without a different DLC) are, IMO, core gameplay components that shouldn't require payment.

But I was happy to pay for a DLC that gave Commonwealth countries unique focuses.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#90

Post by falcolas »

3np wrote: post #53
donmcronald wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really, in my opinion. Animal Crossing pocket. Mobile Mario Kart.

Even Animal Crossing on the switch gated its expansion behind the new, expensive subscription.

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