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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

#131

Post by danaris »

lmm wrote: post #96
Bombthecat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A few old RPGs tried to make it possible to import characters from the previous entry in the series. This generally didn't work very well, and those were first-party games; to do it for a third-party game seems a lot harder.

The Gold Box series of licensed D&D RPGs from SSI back in the early '90s actually did this quite well—you could create characters at level 1 in the first game in the series, and import them into each subsequent game intact except for the loss of a couple of game-specific magic items, all the way through the fourth entry (in the case of the Forgotten Realms series; the Krynn series only had 3 entries, but worked basically the same).

But this wasn't just the same company, it was, with some incremental modifications, the same game engine, and by the time the last entries came out, it was showing its age. There's no way you could have taken, say, a character—or even an item—from a completely different game like Ultima VI and turned it into an NFT that could then be added seamlessly into SSI's Secret of the Silver Blades. The two games, despite both being RPGs that came out the same year, are just so completely different that it wouldn't make any sense even if Origin and SSI did want to collaborate on making that possible.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#132

Post by thebean11 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #130
thebean11 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, maybe not. There are probably incentives in terms of playerbase, depending on how big these NFTs are. The NFT holders could also voluntarily fund the cost of integration, as it adds a "use" to their NFT. My point was though that interoperable game assets aren't farfetched, they already exist.

It wouldn't be a one time "make NFTs work" task. Every NFT requires the work. We are talking a couple of hours per NFT - and ongoing work and testing. There's a reason most games only have a few outfits or a handful of cars players can choose. Every model, skin and so on is a pile of regular, ongoing work. Even SecondLife required per-model import work, rigging, custom scripting, etc.

Most NFTs are just palette swaps / different hats / eyes / mouth on the same model.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#133

Post by mtnygard »

jmyeet wrote: post #92

Yeah this was obvious 10 years ago with the rise of mobile gaming. The only difference between mobile gaming and other forms is that the payment infrastructure was so easily accessible and seamless integrated. But 10+ years ago we had Farmville and then on mobile we had thing slike Candy Crush, Clash of Clans and so on. These aren't games. They're A/B tested addiction loops optimized to extract as much money from you…

I worked with someone in the mobile games industry that called them "stimulators" and "Skinner boxes".

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#134

Post by ece »

time_to_smile wrote: post #25

I think the real issue is that we've just left a brief period where the best way to succeed in the market was to make good games . Anyone who grew up playing arcade games knows that, for the vast majority of cases, the pre-console arcade world was about finding the best way to keep you feeding quarters to a machine. Difficult, almost beating the boss, but ultimately simple games ruled the day. Some are classics now b…

I think this is an underappreciated point, consoles and PC stores have been able to maintain some quality, but I doubt most people playing gacha games today know they're gacha, much less what the odds on pulls are. In moderation this is all ok, but getting there as an industry seems tough on mobile. There are more good ports than ever, especially for indies on mobile, which is a good start.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#135

Post by fattless »

ericd wrote: post #28
fattless wrote: post #19

The worst part of this trend to me is how many games sacrifice their identity to fit the mold that is now most profitable, it feels so soulless. This is all from my own experience/memory. Every game needs live service, seasons, and a battle pass. While I appreciate that it can keep the game fresh and evolving over time, I think a lot of times its harmful. Sometimes a relatively simple game is blown out of proportion…

Yeah, the presence of a season pass means an automatic pass from me. I don’t need any heavily monetized skinner boxes in my life, thanks.

Fair. Personally I think if their done right it's fine. The master chief collection has one of the best, most consumer friendly ones that I've seen.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#136

Post by fattless »

prox wrote: post #34
fattless wrote: post #19

The worst part of this trend to me is how many games sacrifice their identity to fit the mold that is now most profitable, it feels so soulless. This is all from my own experience/memory. Every game needs live service, seasons, and a battle pass. While I appreciate that it can keep the game fresh and evolving over time, I think a lot of times its harmful. Sometimes a relatively simple game is blown out of proportion…

There are many great games coming out from smaller studios and still being maintained. Cases : Rimworld, Valheim, Police Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio. All off the games you mention seem to be FPS games, perhaps that segment and the sport games suffer segment the most from Pay to Keep Playing schemes.

Yeah I guess my comment was focusing on the biggest budget, AAA titles which usually end up going this way. I'd bet the focus on fps and sports comes down to the mainstream appeal/type of audience those games get.

But yeah the indie and smaller dev scene is going great, I play all those games mentioned and countless more that don't fall to the problems

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#137

Post by fattless »

donmcronald wrote: post #38
falcolas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being a player who wants to collect new skins or looks in a modern game. In almost any modern game that offers microtransactions. Even indie games are starting to sell cosmetics, so they aren't left out of the feast, err, leaving money on the table. Your choice is usually limited to: 1) spend money, 2) be unable to get all cosmetics, and occasionally 3) spend hundreds to thousands of hours to obtain the skins…

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.

As for the last point, plenty of smaller devs, indies, and a number of bigger studios don't fall into the greed and keep that classic simplicity- microtransactions show up in limited ways if at all. I'd say is just slowly becoming more uncommon.

For a triple a game and decent comparison to WOW, Destiny. I would spend time hunting down exotics/cosmetics, with very minor flair items offered for real money. You can buy dlc or battlepass, but usually these end up being pretty big events adding a lot to the game

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#138

Post by fattless »

kipchak wrote: post #42
fattless wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always said that something like this could be a cool idea, but I don’t get why nft/blockchain is necessary. Speaking about the Ubisoft nft thing (because I understand it the best), Steam marketplace has been doing the same thing very well for years, offering a very similar expirence. Is there something I’m missing?

The only downsides to to the Steam marketplace is it hasn't caught on very much outside of Valve's own titles, and you can only cash out to store credit, which has resulted in third party trading sites that run on top of the steam marketplace to emerge such as marketplace.tf, which relies on trusting the site not to swindle you. Both of those are fairly small issues, I think the trickier part is creating an environme…

Agreed. These all seem like problems that can be solved somewhat easily, this seems like a problem that has been solved already and others are trying to cram blockchain into it. Like I said, could be totally missing something though.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#139

Post by bentcorner »

falcolas wrote: post #26
fattless wrote: post #19

The worst part of this trend to me is how many games sacrifice their identity to fit the mold that is now most profitable, it feels so soulless. This is all from my own experience/memory. Every game needs live service, seasons, and a battle pass. While I appreciate that it can keep the game fresh and evolving over time, I think a lot of times its harmful. Sometimes a relatively simple game is blown out of proportion…

Imagine being a player who wants to collect new skins or looks in a modern game. In almost any modern game that offers microtransactions. Even indie games are starting to sell cosmetics, so they aren't left out of the feast, err, leaving money on the table. Your choice is usually limited to: 1) spend money, 2) be unable to get all cosmetics, and occasionally 3) spend hundreds to thousands of hours to obtain the skins…

I play a lot of Overwatch and the really nice thing is that it's relatively straightforward to get every single cosmetic in the game.

I've only bought a single skin (Blizzard donated 100% of the proceeds to Breast Cancer Research Foundation), and every other cosmetic was "free". I have nearly all the cosmetics in the game and have spent about 1000 hours (spread over 5 years since launch).

Compared to current games it's a very generous model that I think will end up going away when the sequel launches in the next year or two.

Additionally everything you can pay for is purely cosmetic (there are no weapons or characters to unlock) so even if you got the game today you're not at a disadvantage.

Re: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

#140

Post by volfied »

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…

Every game has their fair share of whales. People with so much money that it doesn't matter to them how much they spend on lootboxes.

One example I can give is Post Malone in Apex Legends, I think people estimated that he spent $1,600, he buys every heirloom skin as soon as it comes out.

There are a lot of streamers out there who will spend at least $100 a month on skins just to keep their content fresh. Or they buy battle pass levels second it comes out so they can show them off. It's a huge revenue stream for AAA studios.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/t0m44q/post_ma...

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