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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#231

Post by automatic6131 »

Lazare wrote: post #201

I dunno. First, there's more non free-to-play games out there than ever before, and some are truly amazing and innovative, so I'm not sure about what "games have become". In the last couple of years my top games by hours spent have probably been... 1) Valheim, a truly lovely indie game with a traditional "buy it upfront" model. Don't regret that purchase at all, great game. 2) Final Fantasy XIV, a traditional MMO mod…

Apex Legends is a game that I've currently got over 1000 hours in, which has been a consistent 1 to 2 hours most days since launch three years ago.

I've also spent roughly $1000 dollars in it too to get the "cool" skins. But I don't mind this since I've also subsidized many free players to pay $0 and enjoy it with me and there's no gameplay advantage so I don't feel like it's cheating (and it means there aren't any gross practices)

Now, World of Tanks, there's a game full of dark patterns and gross monetization.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#232

Post by automatic6131 »

Semaphor wrote: post #210
sofixa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There are ways to do it in which it's obvious where the business model is, and it isn't too forceful or gambling. The World of Tanks/Battleships/Warplanes series, are free to play, with progression through experience ( you unlock higher level machines based on xp points you accumulate through playing and success at it), or through paying to go up the ladder faster or unlock special machines. You can play…

Isn’t WoT the game where you can pay to get slightly better bullets? Even if that’s just a small bonus, that makes it P2W instantly.

Yes, and they used to be premium, real money shells only. But years ago they made them simply purchaseable with ingame money. But to have any of that spare, you need to play with "premium" time (which is fairly easy to get for free) or be really good at the game.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#233

Post by emilsedgh »

015a wrote: post #59
lofatdairy wrote: post #23

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…

My response to "just don't buy them": 1) "Whales" keep nearly all of these games going. "Vote with your wallet" is a misnomer because in typical democratic systems a vote is a vote; but capitalism isn't a democracy and a very small portion of the playerbase will actually sustain the game near-singlehandedly. Its not a situation where enough people don't buy it and the game company changes; its a situation where enoug…

I only play Dota and no other game and I think how the game works is extremely fair. It's free to play. For all. Can you believe that? And it only charges you for skins that have no competitive edge. How is that not fair? I mean there's not a single dark ui pattern to trick you into doing it.

I honestly think we've become too entitled.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#234

Post by vladvasiliu »

duckmysick wrote: post #178
OtomotO wrote: post #151

As a (non game) developer, I can say, thay free to play is instantly dead on arrival for me. The moment something is known to become or becomes free to play is the moment I lose all interest. The dishonesty in the system itself is what makes this unbearable for me. Developers need to eat, Managers need to eat, Marketeers need to eat... And sometimes psychologists doing evil mindtricks and supporting gambling addictio…

I've been wondering why we have such different reactions to free to play games and free software. I know gaming has different value proposition, but free software and services share a lot of similarities. It's not just feeding the creators. There are tricks and "addictions" too. Do you like the free version but want to scale up, remove that restrictive license, or unlock new features? No problem, just pay up a bit. I…

I think the issue is that it doesn't do what it says on the box, or if it does, there are disclaimers in super-tiny print.

I'm not big on games, and even less so on mobile, but I remember that the ones I've tried to kill time during my commute, I could basically play them for 5 minutes if I didn't want to buy gems or whatever.

This, to me, looks much more like the "shareware" / demo versions of old than "free to play". And I think I'd see them in a better light if they were upfront about it.

To compare this with an "open source with paid features" product I'm familiar with, Elasticsearch, they're much more clear about it. At the time, it didn't even support TLS, no authentication, etc. You were of course on your own if you couldn't figure something out. But you'd know this upfront, and you didn't have to reboot the cluster every 10 minutes or 100 searches.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#235

Post by vpilcx »

homerhomer wrote: post #82

Steam is the best thing to happen to gaming. My library is always updated. I'm able to play most of my catalog of games on Windows, Linux and here soon on Chromebooks. Since I started to use Steam I have amassed a HUGE library that I periodically have dig into and find stuff. It's really is amazing. Yep, I can't sell old games and yes there's a bunch of freemium games that are focused on addicts but who cares. Yep Ro…

I think the number one thing, at least for me, that keeps Steam so competitive is its refund policy. Devs, especially indie devs who make short games, hate it, but I don't know any other platform that has something like it.

For those unfamiliar, you can return and refund any game that you've played less than 2 hours. Now this obviously sucks for any games that are less than 2 hours in their entireity. (Maybe they need to adjust it to less than an hour?)

But for someone like who can't afford to waste money on games that they aren't going to play, this is great. I just bought a game (Phantom Doctrine) on Playstation. It was $6 which is a really good price. I'd been wanting to play it for a very long time. I was very disappointed. It's like X-Com with a spycraft theme but much worse gameplay. Played an hour and knew I'd probably never play again.

I've bought four games on Steam and returned all of them. Most because they just didn't run on my computer. The fourth one, I just didn't like very much after about ten minutes.

One thing that does suck, if you're not aware of it, is Early Access games that just get dropped. I can name half a dozen games off the top of my head that I spent good money for and the dev just dropped development halfway through or released a shitty buggy product. But I think as long as you wait at least a year to buy an Early Access game, you should be fine.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#236

Post by SentientNo4 »

qwery wrote: post #211
dado3212 wrote: post #7

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…

The whole 'preying on the vulnerable' thing kind of puts me off. But I want to respond to this: > The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals Cosmetic items are not just visual though. They are real elements in the game. Cosmetic items are interactive. They are unlockable, collectable, wearable items. Further, visuals do impact the gameplay. You could argue about the difference b…

> Cosmetic items are not just visual though. They are real elements in the game.

Yes, I really hate this argument that cosmetics are not gameplay. Visuals are a huge part of what makes a game, no one would be happy if games shipped without textures and shaders and people would have to pay to unlock them.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#237

Post by wink »

OtomotO wrote: post #151

As a (non game) developer, I can say, thay free to play is instantly dead on arrival for me. The moment something is known to become or becomes free to play is the moment I lose all interest. The dishonesty in the system itself is what makes this unbearable for me. Developers need to eat, Managers need to eat, Marketeers need to eat... And sometimes psychologists doing evil mindtricks and supporting gambling addictio…

I think context matters a lot.

If it's an F2P MMO then it's not a decision on a whim by the studio/publisher - it's been the default for a few years and good luck launching a subscription MMO in the last few years.

If it's an AAA single player title and you have loot boxes then it's just someone being greedy.

If it's a mobile game then it would probably not exist without f2p.

But I get your point, I used to not like this F2P trend but over the years I actually like to not completely stop playing some MMOs because I don't want to pay the sub. With F2P I can login three times per month and play for an hour. This might be different if I was willing to pay 10$ for 3h of play.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#238

Post by AussieWog93 »

yomly wrote: post #205
soultrees wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question out of curiosity - what do you get out spending that much on a game? I’ve heard some whales spending 10-20k a week and that’s probably not even the highest. Do you get genuine enjoyment out of it or do you ever feel fleeced at all?

I think those numbers are all relative? If you're a bored prince with billions of liquid cash and even more billions of yielding assets, do you really care about 10-20k of weekly outlays? Or reduce the scale, if you have 100k annual salary, do you miss that $3 a day you spend on coffee or $5 a week you spend on mobile gaming? ... or $15.99 a month you spend on Netflix? Everyone has a thing and a threshold they are co…

Just to follow up on what you said, one of the things I've learned after a couple of years in online retail is that a huge proportion of people genuinely enjoy spending money.

They don't consider the opportunity cost or feel the pain of lost potential, but get a rush of "feeling rich" whenever they spend $50 on a T-shirt they'll wear once.

It's cross-cultural, natural psychology, and I doubt it'll go anywhere.

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