I hate what video games have become • Hacker News Board

Re: I hate what video games have become

#491

Post by sabujp » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

This is all due to having a device in your pocket constantly connected to the sum of all human knowledge. This device created an attention economy that forces producers/developers to create ever increasing ways of engaging your attention for as long as possible. Mobile game spend was $80 billion in 2020, PC $37 billion, and consoles $45 billion [1]. There are still games out there that don't go the loot box route, but perhaps they aren't as popular (addictive) as the free loot box ones, specifically due to the reason mentioned in the parentheses.

[1] : https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/05/27/mobile...

Re: I hate what video games have become

#492

Post by tomtheelder » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #225

madrox wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people naively think of moves like this as pure money grabs and don’t appreciate that a lot of these moves are out of survival…especially for games like Rocket League that require a sufficient player base to even be a viable live service game.

Well, Rocket League doesn't need to be a "viable live service game", it could just be a regular multiplayer game that gives you a client and server executable to run your own. It isn't like not being a live service game killed Quake 3, for example.

Yes, Psyonix could drop development of RL and start work on new titles. That's just comparatively risky for them.

> It isn't like not being a live service game killed Quake 3, for example.

Dead to who? It still has players, but it's "financially" dead, which is what the studio cares about when making these choices.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#493

Post by lajy » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

originalvichy wrote: post #485

boredtofears wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hitboxes are the same, so to any seasoned player the visuals really don't matter gameplay wise, as long as the model isn't too out of scale with it's hitbox.

Unless there have been changes in the game, different cars have different hitboxes so technically in this circumstance you might be wrong. Not that there any absolutely amazing car for hitboxes, but there are differences and they affect gameplay.

I assume you're still talking about Rocket League? All models in that game fall under 1 of 6 hitbox types [1], each of which are attainable without purchase

[1] https://support.rocketleague.com/hc/en-us/articles/360029832...

Re: I hate what video games have become

#494

Post by sabujp » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

I recently got my kids playing Trackmania to help their eye hand coordination. It operates on the freemium model but the free version is adequate enough since there are enough tracks every season and enough previous seasons available to keep them engaged during daily video game time. You can also download user created tracks (or create your own!) and addons that keep things interesting. Hopefully ubisoft doesn't switch this to the loot box model, once you start adding incentives and milestones, that's when things start getting addictive.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#495

Post by tomtheelder » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

gigaflop wrote: post #440

telchior wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair criticism, but one that is only relevant in the first place because of freemium. Prior to that business model, there was no such thing as a company continuing to provide regular, ongoing support to a 7 year old game of the non-subscription variety. I mean, how or why would they? You release something; it makes 90% of its lifetime revenue in year 1; if you continue working on it for 6 more years, you're out of bu…

I don't trust AAA studios, or any game studio for that matter, to implement NFTs in a responsible and ethical manner. Ubisoft has announced NFT integration via their own platform. However, unlike an actual "I can do what I want with this" token, it may as well be a database entry in the company network: https://quartz.ubisoft.com/welcome/ I don't think there's any way to 'solve' NFTs in games right now: A true NFT ca…

> I don't think there's any way to 'solve' NFTs in games right now: A true NFT can be moved anywhere on an open network (monkey jpeg receipts, etc), but a game-related NFT needs to be constrained to those users who play the game, otherwise it's even more useless.

Agree totally. NFTs for games make quite literally no sense. You are buying an asset or whatever from a central authority (the developer/publisher) that only exists or makes any sense within their game/platform/ecosystem. What value could a token bring there? The only value add I could see is that your ability to buy and sell the asset is now out of the hands of the publisher... except it isn't since they still control access to the asset and can therefor constrain your use of it in any way they see fit.

This is really a problem with most of the NFT related ideas floating around. Once a central authority is involved your token ceases being meaningful and just becomes, like you said, an ID in a database somewhere.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#496

Post by 999900000999 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #364

999900000999 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100%. Kena Bridge of Spirits and Tony Hawk 1 + 2 HD are amazing games and have no DLC. It's a very complicated problem to solve, on some level adults have the freedom to be self-destructive. In another business case, dating apps are known to knowingly allow fake profiles to roam to encourage people to subscribe. And even after that, you have various freemium add-ons. Between this, and a very scary experience,…

> I think a good compromise would be to restrict games with free to play mechanics to adults, as in if you're not at least 18 you're not allowed to play games with loot boxes. Once you're an adult, gambling is fine. Yes. As it stands many of these games are simply an end-run around gambling laws. It would be nice if games with these mechanics were clearly labelled (ESRB is showing its conflict of interest here) and r…

Absolutely, if we all just acknowledge this is gambling I think some progress can be made on allowing adults to gamble.

I personally think the legal age to gamble or drink should be 18, but to comply with state law it's not unreasonable to say restrict boxes to those 21 and over.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#497

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #112

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This only works if you either already have a brand like Zachatronics or if you have the patience to support/polish these small games for years till the random slot machine of the universe drops you enough reviews that you get critical mass and decent sales… or you pay for PR and you can successfully profit from even a shit game with enough PR money so why bother at that point… Your right about a good concept winning…

The reason I referenced Baba Is You is because that concept was so incredibly brilliant, I legitimately believe you could have dropped the game into five parallel universes and it would have gotten attention every single time. Just get the game in front of one journalist for five minutes, and they'll very quickly see how brilliant it is.

Discovering a game concept like that is hard, but it does happen.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#498

Post by tomtheelder » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

dendriti wrote: post #193

TulliusCicero wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's probably more like 99% of players, but I think you're missing the point a little. What that commenter is getting at is that if your target audience are competitive players then it's not in your best interest to introduce "wackier" modes, as it isn't what those sorts of players want and might actually be off putting to them.

If your primary audience is casual, like in the case of Nintendo games, then it makes all the sense in the world.

Obviously you could argue that Psyonix ought to be appealing to a casual audience. That's a separate conversation, and I'd argue that RL is a fundamentally bad fit for that sort of game, but given what they have been going for thus far, not introducing crazier modes makes a lot of sense.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#499

Post by tehredplague » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

If it's purely cosmetic and gives no advantage (outside them style points) then I don't care. As for whether or not you "own" what you're paying for. These things that merely represent physical objects, but are in fact just pixels. Well you've gotta let that one go. Would you complain about how every time you buy a cheeseburger after you eat it your money was wasted because you no longer own a cheeseburger? I doubt it. Perhaps there's a valuable lesson to be learned here. If you think by spending money you will enhance you're experience, then you paid for the experience not the material possession. kaboom.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#500

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #180

freedom2099 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you do like gambling! Buying chests is exactly that! Just like a casino gambler might prefer blackjack over roulette!

No, in most games I know what I'm getting so there's no randomness. I buy a chest of 1000 gems in order to buy X in game. How is that gambling? Sure, some games force the randomness on me through chests with unknown content but that's not what I'm paying for.

"Chest of gems" != Loot box (which is probably what freedom2099 meant when they said "chests")