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Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

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Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#111

Post by opportune »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #89
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.

If you are patient Paradox games become reasonably priced over time during sales or through bundles. Also they are so much more replayable than other games, it's perfectly reasonable to spend $100-250 on them (I logged >1000 hours in EU4 before a third of the DLCs even came out).

I like that their DLC model gives them the opportunity to support and expand games for so long. I don't like that their base games pretty much stink until they get at least the first few DLC though - there's not much reason to play CK3 when it's so content-bare and CK2 exists as a "complete" game with tons of content.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#112

Post by 3np »

falcolas wrote: post #90
3np wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I’m replying to this specifically, not monetization schemes in general. WoW has/had subscription too.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#113

Post by somedude895 »

eezurr wrote: post #60

If the video game market is growing, that means the quantity of people playing games is increasing. Perhaps what's really happening is that a new category of players are being captured by the modern video game market, and that 'old school' video games are still alive and well. I mean, there are still great video games being released. Maybe the audience for those hasn't really changed in size as much. A year or two ag…

> It seems unnecessary to be concerned by the modern video game market.

The problem is that more publishers who hold well beloved IPs are moving in that direction, see for example Bethesda. So I think it's fair to be concerned.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#114

Post by ksec »

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…

>Who is spending money on all of these awful games?

Have you ever played games like Rise of Kingdoms [1], or a lot of similar game of gathering resources, upgrading, attack etc. During one of cross server event you would see the whole server burning Millions ( USD ) worth of items within hours in just one battle. I still remember there was a whale working in investment bank ( or so he says ) that got $50k worth of whatever in-game resources wiped because he was busy in a meeting. He paid another $50K within a week to built back his troops.

These people easily spend $200K to million+ over their entire time in the game. And some will even help you to pay for resources in game as part of being the Guild.

And 80%+ of mobile game IAP revenues comes from just top 2-4% of players. So it isn't as another comment suggest lots of $20 to $50 dollars around from casual players.

Why do they do that? I dont know, I guess they want to be the king inside a virtual world. These freemium games means a lot of people gets to enjoy it without paying a cent. This also generate a feedback loop to the psychology of being king, after all what is the point of being King without followers?

It is unfortunate both Apple and Google are sucked into these money as part of their services revenue. Although I see this as an opportunity for a third mobile operating system. ( Hello Xbox Mobile? )

[1] https://rok.lilith.com/en

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#115

Post by tasha0663 »

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.

> developer can change things easily, like changing a super rare card in a collectable card game to a common card.

NFT doesn't block this at all. Just because an attribute on the token specifies it's rarity, doesn't mean there aren't a gajillion other tokens pointing to the same thing. Or that someone won't just tweak things on the server so that token_url /foo/92 isn't legendary magic beans anymore but common turd burgers instead.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#116

Post by 8note »

dylan604 wrote: post #88
p1necone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mobile imo replaced flash games... which were also full of variations on a theme

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#117

Post by Shadonototra »

that's how south korea managed to become something in the gaming industry, by using shady monetization schemes

they are after NFTs nowadays, the sooner that shit gets banned, the better the western developers will live, not having to kill their brands and reputation to compete with shitty KR and SEA brands in general

one can dream

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#118

Post by antifa »

Bombthecat wrote: post #20
verdverm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard problem is how to use an asset in-game, beyond the visual aspect. What is the speed, rate of fire, etc. Each game does this differently, their code is not the same, their assets are managed in many ways. How do you propose to deal with this?

Like any rpg, but not for character creation, but for whatever?

As usual, NFTs have a lot of "these 2 circles will be an awesome owl" but the rest of the owl never gets drawn.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#119

Post by antifa »

thebean11 wrote: post #46
vorpalhex wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how often do you import those assets to find they don't work correctly in your game? That they need a different shader, renderer, lighting or additional configuration? How often do they fail to blend in with other prefabs?

The cost to integrate them into a game certainly isn't zero, agree with you there

But a dev will spend time making or integrating them just so you can buy an NFT from a random other dev?

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#120

Post by washadjeffmad »

p1necone wrote: post #75
bluefirebrand wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like their stores and skins Two types of people here, too. Those who bought "Horse Armor" and those who thought it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard of. Personally I dislike the move towards every game being a live service to justify the presence of a store with skins and emotes and such. I'm getting sick of always online, seasonal event driven live service games where the game balance consta…

> Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are not just introducing new content but also removing old content, content I paid for and now can never access again. There are good reasons why this can be healthy for a game that's constantly evolving with new content and is intended to be live for like a decade+ like Destiny. By sunsetting old content periodically they have a much easier time balancing eve…

PoE leagues are exactly what I expected from Destiny 2, so I was pretty confused when I realized there wasn't a "main game" to go back to. Whatever you didn't accomplish during the season was lost when it ended, and nothing you worked to gain was guaranteed to be worth anything next time.

I suppose it was my first "MMO" because I certainly hadn't played anything with that type of model before.

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