111–120 of 690 posts
I hate that this site breaks the back button to keep on people on their site. That’s worse than loot boxes in my mind.
It's pretty much always the result of a broken redirect / history api usage. You go back to the page which redirected causing it to redirect again.
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.
Your right about a good concept winning a lot of good will and making success possible with less polish, but these days it doesn’t subtract the “risk of never being discovered” if you make an iOS app your just one of millions in the App Store if it’s on steam the shovelware isn’t as bad and discovery is better but it still requires market understanding in order to stand out.
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…
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…
I have basically the opposite opinion of this article. I often hold up Rocket League as an example of a great free-to-play game. 1) You 100% can unlock a lot of cosmetic items through free play. 2) The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals. For the same reason that people wear nice clothes in real life, why are you surprised that some people want to look cool in a video game? A…
simply because it actually pays to play. I've made about $20 bucks this month from just selling cases given out randomly at the end of each match. It cost me nothing to buy yet the in game items (cosmetic skins that don't influence gameplay) regularly sell for good money.
it also make sense to buy the keys to unlock the cases sometimes simply because you might unlock a skin that fetches far more money. so it is a bit like gambling in that aspect.
i'm just constantly amazed how they were able to pull the economics behind this. clearly the ppl who expect a 10~100x ROI on their keys must outnumber those selling the cases. I mean I can imagine a bunch of people just farming cases day and night. Perhaps even a sophisticated AI could pull it off since the in game drops aren't even correlated with your performance.
even more impressive is how this is all legal since it really is gambling of sorts.
Video games are like this because people pay for it. It didn’t start like this. Back when packaged games (i.e. shrink-wrapped cd/dvd cases) were the way games were delivered we had “online” modes that generally cost a fixed amount (including $0) to access. Then someone would experiment with something like a power up or level up for some tiny cost, or a “bundle” of them, etc. and guess what: the market overwhelmingly…
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…
I have basically the opposite opinion of this article. I often hold up Rocket League as an example of a great free-to-play game. 1) You 100% can unlock a lot of cosmetic items through free play. 2) The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals. For the same reason that people wear nice clothes in real life, why are you surprised that some people want to look cool in a video game? A…
it's also super hard to build a great f2p and i think CSGO easily is the best. they bootstrapped it for almost 2 decades from a mod made by Minh Le to what it is today and I must say it is the only f2p game I regularly play. simply because it actually pays to play. I've made about $20 bucks this month from just selling cases given out randomly at the end of each match. It cost me nothing to buy yet the in game items…
> ... so it is a bit like gambling ...
I hate what video games have become.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's also super hard to build a great f2p and i think CSGO easily is the best. they bootstrapped it for almost 2 decades from a mod made by Minh Le to what it is today and I must say it is the only f2p game I regularly play. simply because it actually pays to play. I've made about $20 bucks this month from just selling cases given out randomly at the end of each match. It cost me nothing to buy yet the in game items…
> ... i think CSGO easily is the best ... > ... so it is a bit like gambling ... I hate what video games have become.
again this doesn't impact the gameplay at all and I'm happy to earn some money. was able to buy another title on steam with the money accrued
Video games are like this because people pay for it. It didn’t start like this. Back when packaged games (i.e. shrink-wrapped cd/dvd cases) were the way games were delivered we had “online” modes that generally cost a fixed amount (including $0) to access. Then someone would experiment with something like a power up or level up for some tiny cost, or a “bundle” of them, etc. and guess what: the market overwhelmingly…
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…
Addictiveness and addiction are issues with and around gaming, for sure. But the reliance of f2p games on entranced, pixel-charmed addicts is also overstated. A good number of free to play games have lifespans measured in decades, they can function like a highly social, off-and-on hobby. People are willing to spend $20 to go to the movies a few times per year. How’s it different to spend that on a game you get hundreds of hours of entertainment from?
I have basically the opposite opinion of this article. I often hold up Rocket League as an example of a great free-to-play game. 1) You 100% can unlock a lot of cosmetic items through free play. 2) The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals. For the same reason that people wear nice clothes in real life, why are you surprised that some people want to look cool in a video game? A…
No, because the market for second-hand clothing is extremely oversaturated and clothing, particularly "fast fashion", simply does not last long enough to live a useful second life any more.
A video game skin however does not degrade, it will look the very same (or better) even in two decades.