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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#101

Post by cletus »

In the early smartphone era I was extremely bullish on mobile gaming. I expected a creative explosion and a golden age of gaming due to the power, convenience and (inevitable) ubiqutity.

But then in-app purchases happened and we got to see first hand what happens with developers have seamless integration into a payments infrastructure combined with the ability to push updates constantly and easily. This really should've been no surprise because the addiction-loop of Farmville and the like were already established. Even so, I was surprised.

"Gaming" is now about "micro" (they're not that micro) transactions and a highly-A/B-tested loop optimized to get users to log on every day, do some menial task, get th eillusion of a reward and to want tomsething that is in the distance and only a few dollars away.

I can't necessarily blame game developers for this. We as users are really to blame ultimately. But it means that games that are actually games where you just buy the game and play the game without spending additional money are a rarity.

And that is sad.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#102

Post by Wowfunhappy »

pmarreck wrote: post #78
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I've been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land for the past hour. No microtransactions to speak of.

I have 424 Steam games and not a single one is a freemium game, funny how that works

^ I can’t speak for which 424 games you have in your library, but careful with the terminology—there are (sadly) lots of paid games with microtransactions and dark patterns.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#103

Post by Nowado »

whynaut wrote: post #99
8note wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most famous one, fortnite, splits users by being able to express themselves or not. If you pay, you're a member of the community, if not, you're not

Are you referring to emotes? (I don’t play fortnite)

Most likely, almost verbatim, to that video specifically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0

Re: I hate what video games have become

#105

Post by chii »

cletus wrote: post #101

In the early smartphone era I was extremely bullish on mobile gaming. I expected a creative explosion and a golden age of gaming due to the power, convenience and (inevitable) ubiqutity. But then in-app purchases happened and we got to see first hand what happens with developers have seamless integration into a payments infrastructure combined with the ability to push updates constantly and easily. This really should…

> games where you just buy the game and play the game without spending additional money are a rarity.

it might look like a rarity, but it's not imho. The absolute amount of indie games that come out, even if you don't include the free ones (which would only push the numbers higher) is absurd. have a look on itch.io, let a lone steam.

The quality varies, but it's acceptable. The "golden age" of gaming, back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, don't compare to today in terms of quality and amount.

It's only a rarity if you count monetary successes and the ratio of commercial successes vs the number of games. Success is always a rarity, and it's sad that exploitative games tend to be more successful - but they aren't the only ones with success.

And these mobile exploitative games aren't all that different from the arcades of yester-decades. I do agree that the arcades require honed skills, where as today's mobile pay to win games cannot be won via pure skill - the key differentiating factor.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#106

Post by Wowfunhappy »

pengaru wrote: post #15

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.

That depends on how good the concept is! Plenty of indie games have succeeded without gambling mechanics, look at something like Baba Is You for instance. I don’t know that the developer became rich off of it but be seems to have done well enough.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#107

Post by thot_experiment »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #21
pengaru wrote: post #15

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.

Yeah, people blame the developers, blame the publishers, but I think the sad truth is, gamers themselves shoulder much of the blame. Somehow the public came to believe that everything should be free. Maybe it was the internet? Maybe it was sites/apps like Facebook? Regardless, when a great piece of software that happens to have a price tag fails to sell, whose fault is that? Don't blame developers/publishers for goin…

Artificial scarcity is bad, actually. Things that don't cost money to duplicate should be free, we need UBI and maybe a general shift to patronage-based models, luckily this is starting to happen.

There are also plenty of games that implement a cometic lootboxes that don't impact gameplay model that are totally fine.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#108

Post by samatman »

shusaku wrote: post #33
pengaru wrote: post #15

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.

The other option is to apparently blanket your game with advertisements. I spent some time yesterday looking for word games in the iOS store, and it seems like everything was “free”, but had non stop, unskippable ads. One offered to remove ads for a fee, but even after paying they remained in various parts of the game.

Some of that is that Apple's App Store search remains the worst search engine I'm forced to use, but some of it is evaporative cooling from Apple Arcade.

Most of the decent games have migrated there. I barely use it, but I think it works out to two bucks with the other iStuff I'm happy to pay for, and having a few games on my tablet or phone can be nice when I'm traveling.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#109

Post by Semaphor »

BigJono wrote: post #100
Semaphor wrote: post #90

I’m glad there is this whole parallel universe of amazing single player (or MP-optional) games with absolutely no dark patterns, loot boxes or any of the shit people who play MP games have to put up with. I buy a game, and unless I get the DLC(s)/Expanions pack(s), that’s all I’ll ever have to pay. Civilization V: Over 2000 hours. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the righteous: Over 1000 hours each. Stellaris [0]: Almo…

Civ V is an interesting case, since there's another thread in here somewhere about companies charging to fix design mistakes, and Civilization was really one of the OGs when it comes to that. I wouldn't say Vanilla Civ V was bad , but it wasn't great. I probably wouldn't recommend it without the two expansions. I guess it's a moot point these days though since it's all sold together.

A mod from the early days of Civ V was Communitas [0], it became the Community Balance Patch and is nowadays called Vox Populi [1]. It vastly improves AI, balance and adds a ton of features. There is still regular development, with stable versions being released every 1-2 months.

Without this mod I’d have long stopped playing Civ V, and the lack of such a fix/balance mod (Civ V had an official source release and SDK which is what made the mod possible) is why I can’t get into Civ VI

[0]: https://civmodding.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/balance-units/

[1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-patch-how-t...

Re: I hate what video games have become

#110

Post by fsh »

mrjangles wrote: post #98
bccdee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's a strong power law going on with microtransactions. Most players don't spend any money at all on them; some spend a couple bucks on an item or two. The model becomes profitable because of the top 1% of spenders — "whales," in industry parlance — some of whom have deeply unhealthy relationships to the gambling mechanics and social pressures underlying microtransaction economies. So it's not exactly tr…

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that developers have discovered it is best to offer an amazing free product to the whole world in order to get them involved in the game, and then this attracts rich people, who then go ahead and pay for the whole things themselves. But if you don't attract the little guy with free stuff, you don't get a great game, and so you don't attract the rich people. Seems like a goo…

Gambling addicts are financing these games. Most of them are not rich at all.
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