I played apex legends for free for nearly a year before buying any silly cosmetics. Granted, now that i do i am hooked and have overall paid more than if i had paid 60 for apex to begin with, but i think its a good volontary subscription model. And since there isn't any pay to win aspect, i'm totally fine with this business model.
I hate what video games have become
191–200 of 690 posts
Re: I hate what video games have become
#192Talk about entitled. Freemium exists because of piracy. Why blame the video game industry for something caused by criminals. Developers need to eat too.
Let me correct you: Freemium exists because a bunch of nihilistic dipshits decided that it was OK to charge users not to endure a completely fabricated delay just because they knew they would pay to progress in the game. Also that people realized that things nonessential to game progression such as emotes and outfits were valuable to users in multiplayer games. Piracy has existed as long as games have and continues t…
I tend to not wholly agree. While I have spent insane amounts of money on both computer games and movies, some of us pirate simply to get rid of obnoxious DRM crap. As an example, I find it infuriating that my multimedia setup involves two separate but identical DVD players, just to get around DVD region crap.
I regularly play minecraft together with my daughter on our LAN,
but recently I've had to configure two extra dummy accounts just to be able to continue playing with her, to get around Microsoft now requiring all mojang accounts be 'migrated' to microsoft accounts. Including their dark pattern, where your initial account is locked and flagged for 'suspicious activity' (), so they can try to squeeze your mobile phone number out of you, if you want to play the game you BOUGHT, after 7 days have passed.
() There IS no 'suspicious activity', their activity log indicated 5 logins FROM MY HOME ADDRESS, which by the way reveals that they are continously tracking the lat/lon coordinates of me playing the minecraft game I PAID FOR.
And not only poor people pirate, or commit any crime in general. It works in reverse. Activities by poor people, that rich people don't appreciate, is what our society labels 'crime'. When rich people commit unwanted activities, it is called 'privilege'. There is a reason poor people are incarcerated in prisons, whereas rich people are fined for their transgressions. I have yet to hear of more than a single person (a swiss guy) going to jail for what transpired in 2007 and 2008. If anybody got in prison for that in 2008, it was the victims. I too hate what modern games have become. And I hate that I used to be able to buy movies as perpetual DVDs, but that big business privilege in the intervening 20 years have changed the laws into "you have a right to RENT movies from us".
Re: I hate what video games have become
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
One complaint I've had with RL recently is that it seems like they've put all their energy into new visuals and cosmetics while leaving the game mostly unchanged. The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. I guess it's simp…
Not that I'm outright opposed to this kind of thing, but often messing with core mechanics in wacky ways is a lot more fun on paper than in practice. There's a lot of games that have a sort of boring standard (SC2's 1v1 ladder maps are all same-y, nobody competitive plays Smash with items on, etc.) and the fact that you see this pop up repeatedly in unrelated communities should probably tell you something. IMO, when…
Those are pretty bad examples. Mario Kart and Smash are literally some of the top selling games of all time. If their "wacky ways" are played and enjoyed by 10% of players, that's still millions of sales.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#194This economic model for games is kind of required at this point, but the author is hitting on something true about the industry: it's not as good as it used to be. The golden age of gaming ended somewhere in 2005-ish, and now the vast majority of games are derivative and often worse than the originals in terms of gameplay. They sell because people like new content. They are also less about the art, and more about the…
>The golden age of gaming ended somewhere in 2005-ish.
This kind of statement definitely requires a source.
>They are also less about the art, and more about the money.
There have never been more experimental and indie games released than now.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did this a long time in the past (See: Rocket League Rocket Labs) and it was near-universally disliked. The complication when it comes to adding new features is that Rocket League is built on top of a bespoke scripting engine that was discontinued after Unreal Engine 3, so they have to fully recreate RL in UE5. Because of this they don't want to put any additional resources into new features for UE3 since it's w…
Interesting, have they said much about that or when to expect it? I did like that game mode where the ball would gravitate towards the goal!
They turn those weird modes and maps on occasionally - called Limited Time Modes.
The only genuinely new one they've done for years was the NFL mode, which they presumably got paid for and wasn't very good.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#196purchase price of non-indie games have to go up like 3x then (at least), and people have to accept that….
But since gamers are uniquely price sensitive for prices that haven’t changed in 30 years, for an entertainment form that last longer than pretty much all other forms
Then you have micropayments to nickel and dime gamers to reach the same result
Re: I hate what video games have become
#197This seems like a good time to mention this site DarkPattern.games[0] which lists mobile games that utilize such things as loot boxes, etc. and actually has quite some granularity over the different types of mechanics and how that game rates for those. For example, games which force you to wait some duration of time before being able to proceed, or force you to watch an ad, or other things like that. "A gaming dark p…
I don't like how some of my favorite mechanics (grinding, guilds) are listed as dark patterns.
In another comment you've admitted to spending $10k on some games, so clearly the patterns are doing their job.
These things are specifically made to create a strong addiction and wring the max possible amount of money out of people whether they can afford it or not. If you are in the former camp then you do you, but it doesn't make them not dark.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#198Support real independent studios and self-publishing developers, they're the ones with the creativity and freedom to advance the medium.
Before they were bought-out, Psyonix (Rocket League Studio) was a real independent, self-publishing studio. They created something unique that still has no equivalent.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#199This seems like a good time to mention this site DarkPattern.games[0] which lists mobile games that utilize such things as loot boxes, etc. and actually has quite some granularity over the different types of mechanics and how that game rates for those. For example, games which force you to wait some duration of time before being able to proceed, or force you to watch an ad, or other things like that. "A gaming dark p…
I just wish someone would make the mobile game shown in the ads
Unlike in the days of olde where ads had to look better than the game, the games in the mobile ads look like real games that would be fun to play
Re: I hate what video games have become
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like how some of my favorite mechanics (grinding, guilds) are listed as dark patterns.
In another comment you've admitted to spending $10k on some games, so clearly the patterns are doing their job. These things are specifically made to create a strong addiction and wring the max possible amount of money out of people whether they can afford it or not. If you are in the former camp then you do you, but it doesn't make them not dark.
The games I like grinding in (Factorio/Satisfactory, survival games) and with guilds (World of Warcraft) are not the same I spend money in. I feel it's unfair to use another unrelated comment of mine and make assumptions on that.
The rest of the mechanics (especially the ones making me spend money) I have no problem calling dark patterns.