31–40 of 690 posts
I bought a skin to support the devs, just like I did on Among Us.
As a generally “always by the cart” type of person, I think I'm starting to come around to the “pay what you want” model.
[deleted]
There's a lot to dislike, but my gripes as a developer who occasionally dabbles in games are more along the lines of "this puzzle game prototype is interesting and may be worth polishing up and tossing on steam, but oh right, it won't even pay for itself unless I turn it into yet another gambling machine." Then I go back to writing system software.
There are still a ton of solid games that aren't constantly asking for money. TLOU, Elden Ring, RDR2 to name three huge ones. I'm 50/50 on Ubisoft because their games are still great standalone, but do offer IAP that I just ignore. I'm OK with those offering freemium and such so long as it doesn't kill off the old model. I don't think it will.
There are countless indie games out there too worth all your time and more. If you like elden ring you need to experience the whole soulsborne series. AAA games are as trash as they've ever been.
Honest question: I understand the gripes about lootboxes being toxic because gambling systems are generally manipulative, but I don't know how to respond to "Just don't buy them". They don't affect gameplay, they're really just there as whale bait, but if you're invested in the game you don't necessarily have to get invested in cosmetics. The only two games I play these days both happen to be gacha games, and actuall…
This opinion might vary by the person and the game. I was playing some free-to-play game the other day which was like you described - it had a store and some tokens, and a way to slowly gain the premium token as you played.
But I found there to be something deeply gross about it which did impact my gameplay experience. I’m playing a game (rather than doing something else) because I want a curated experience of fun. Tokens like this make the relationship adversarial. In this case, the game has some mechanics which it keeps waving in your face - “quick! Click now to spend 2 whatevers to have a 4 hour boost!” And I have to actively avoid the shiny fun part because it costs real money to do. It makes the experience tiring in the same way shopping is tiring. Is the game trying to be fun or not? Pick a lane.
That said, I enjoyed Dota2 for many years even though it had hat stores and loot boxes full of art. I’m not sure what the difference is - I think I just never really had to resist the pull to pull out my credit card in dota. And I payed way more as a result! I chipped in a few dollars each year for the international prize pool, and that was a blast.
I think a lot of us have a vision of a childlike, halcyon "purity" of experience, in the joy of gameplay itself, that we would seek and enjoy with or without other people's presence, with or without money. We want to experience that, we also as programmers (who may have learned to code because we like games) often have a deep desire to create that, to give it to others. It's like the "Beatific Vision" in the life of one who likes games.
We all know there always was a need for money, and passionate creativity exists in its margin. I think the complaint here really is that this margin seems to have less room in the eyes of the complainers, because the pull for money is present in virtually every game loop now, as opposed to being outside of the box...
A question I want to ask is, for newest generation of whales, is there a memory of some great, memorable exploratory rush in the big spend for them, part of a broader set of social interactions that gave them great joy and built them up in their community? Would their experience with the game due to this purchased power inspire them in any way, maybe to make some potentially positive, impactful life decisions? Or is it literally just a borderline scam at every single possible level?
I dislike microtransactions of any kind strongly, but I am at least trying here to be open to the possibility that someone who did them was able to feel something similar in relationship to them somehow.
I wrote my own free open source browser game. https://landgreen.github.io/sidescroller/
"N-gon is a physics-based single player 2-d platformer shooter with hundreds of different power ups. You move with the keyboard and aim with the mouse. The core game is done, but I'm still adding new content.
You can play here for free. It's open source, no ads, no tracking, no data harvesting, no crypto-mining, no DLCs, no freemium, no microtransactions, no gacha."
Talk about entitled. Freemium exists because of piracy. Why blame the video game industry for something caused by criminals. Developers need to eat too.
I’m not a fan of loot boxes or “free to play,” but it’s hard to take this complaint about dark patterns seriously on a site with a blocking popup and back-button jankiness.
“Like our content? Install our app so we can send you notifications and monetise you better!” - no, I’m not enjoying your content. I haven’t even read any of it yet. Your obnoxious pop up is the only content I’ve seen so far and it makes me want to pour water in your server rack. I’m not going to install your app.