I hate what video games have become • Hacker News Board

Re: I hate what video games have become

#561

Post by bengy5959 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

playpause wrote: post #142

Gigachad wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why blame anyone? Gamers get the content they want in the way they prefer to pay for it, developers and publishers get paid. The market has pretty clearly spoken and decided that people prefer cosmetic micro transactions with free to play games. Just because it doesn’t match the Hacker News gaming utopia template doesn’t mean anyone is doing anything wrong. This is especially true for multiplayer games where a lot of…

I also think “Why blame anyone?”, but not because there’s no problem. Just because it doesn’t make sense to blame individuals for market movements. Markets are powered by billions of instances of “what someone wants” but that doesn’t mean the resulting market movements are always a good indicator of what everyone wants as an environment. Sometimes aggregate human activity results in a crappy experience for most parti…

Same thing for airlines. I hate the argument "consumers decided they wanted smaller seats, no free food or drinks, etc by buying the cheapest tickets." People just tried to get the best deal possible in the market, they aren't analyzing which airline has the best seats and amenities and making their decision from there.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#562

Post by smordistan » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #556

I don't agree. The industry has begun splintering in the same manner as Hollywood. Disney releases popcorn-entertainment and makes money off merchandise. Indie studios are creating quality movies of a tier that we never used to see before. Lastly, have some quirky bigwigs (wes anderson, Edgar Wright) who reliably create highly-stylized memorable if familiar works. Epic, EA and Ubisoft are the Disney equivalents. Nint…

Nintendo is most certainly Disney, not quirky. The Zelda series might be an exception but the rest of Nintendo's IP is very Disney-eqsue.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#563

Post by skazazes » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

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…

This reminds me of an old trick from the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare days. You could edit the player model skins locally if you had the correct Photoshop plugins installed. Players would just spray over the character model skins with blaze orange so you could pick people out from across the map, even if they were hiding in deep vegetation. Eventually the 'pro-mod' developers caught on and implemented some client side hash checking but the public non 'pro-mod' servers were never protected against this afaik

Re: I hate what video games have become

#564

Post by bytehowl » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #340

tsimionescu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true though. No game lives off the general public buying a few cosmetics. It lives off a few addicted people buying thousands of dollars worth, while the vast majority pay nothing. It's a terrible business model that will hopefully be outlawed in the coming decade.

I had assumed those "few addicted people buying thousands of dollars worth" were instead just people with a lot of disposable income. You could be right though, and it is addiction. That would in fact be uncool. My only data-point though is a friend of mine who has spent hundreds of dollars (or more?) on Star Citizen ships and he is the disposable-income kind of gamer.

This video by Jim Sterling is a good overview of how knowingly sinister microtransactions truly are, with a couple narrated testimonies of people who fell for them despite not being able to afford them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S-DGTBZU14

Re: I hate what video games have become

#565

Post by saturdaysaint » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #366

saturdaysaint wrote: post #328

I play Fall Guys and Warzone, both of which offer cosmetic modifications that are unlockable both through gameplay and by purchasing them. IMO, the cosmetics are little more than flair that add a little bit of fun and personal expression to the experience. Along with the "Battle Pass" model, where users are rewarded for regular play during content "Seasons", these mini-economies incentivize people to play regularly (…

Yeah the Rambo skin was worth $10 and it added to the experience. I don’t mind paying extra for it. However Warzone is a prime example of cosmetics affecting the game - remember any of the scandals (DMR-gate of Dec 2020), when the desire to sell weapon blueprints / Battle Pass pushes the designers overpower the new weapons. It’s subtle but very toxic. Or the Roze skin. Even if that one wasn’t intentional they can’t c…

Yeah, there's room to quibble when it comes to Warzone, but it really doesn't add up to much in my view. The most gamebreaking advantages - The Roze skin and the broken Mac-10 blueprint - were basically accidents when it was a fairly young game (Most blueprints effectively just make levelling up new weapons a more pleasant experience, maybe saving you 1 - 2 hours for $20.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#566

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

This is happening to all IP industries and leaking into other ones. You no longer buy a song, movie, ebook, or game and truly own it. You get a non-transferrable license that only last as long as you don't do anything to anger the fickle platform overlords.

You can't lend IP you've purchased to a friend. You can't resell your content to others. Even consumer electronics are becoming increasingly worthless, as they require perpetual internet connection so they can rent seek via subscriptions and ads for a device you already paid for.

The idea of ownership is being destroyed, and consumers' ambivalence to this is extremely disappointing to me.

It should be illegal to have "buy" button when the purchaser doesn't really own anything.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#567

Post by godshatter » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #374

nopcode wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better phrasing is whether they offer a competitive advantage.

The reality is that they kinda do, people with expensive cosmetics are viewed as being better players by their teammates and opponents. The significance of this can be hard to measure, but in most games it's bigger than a small stat boost that would be immediately seen as p2w

So the less skilled players with expensive cosmetics get their abilities over-estimated while the skilled players in the base skins get their abilities under-estimated. That sounds like a win for the skilled players in the base skins to me. Better to be under-estimated than over-estimated.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#568

Post by ghostDancer » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #566

This is happening to all IP industries and leaking into other ones. You no longer buy a song, movie, ebook, or game and truly own it. You get a non-transferrable license that only last as long as you don't do anything to anger the fickle platform overlords. You can't lend IP you've purchased to a friend. You can't resell your content to others. Even consumer electronics are becoming increasingly worthless, as they re…

The new generations are being taught to not have anything but to have access to it, songs, games, movies, ... . They don't know anything else and the ubiquity of access to everything makes them think it will always be there. I see it with my son and friends. And when I try to explain them they look at me like an old man shouting at the clouds (it's almost literal). When I try to explain my son that is better to buy buy, even if it's more expensive, the physical copy of a game instead of the digital copy he understands it but can't see the problem, I guess till he lose something won't realize.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#569

Post by rchaud » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

midasuni wrote: post #215

bootloop wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd. So you also don't use any software products which are a) free to use or b) habe a free tier?

Back in the 90s shareware was common, you’d get the first level of Duke Nukem, but to get the rest you had to pay That’s closer to the “free tier” stuff, and a very different model to modern “freenium” games.

First level? They gave away Part 1 of the whole game!

The full game included a Part 2 and Part 3.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#570

Post by jimmyjazz14 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

spiderice wrote: post #406

andechs wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median spend might be zero $ per year.

Also might be more. And with a game like Lol, where it is literally pay to win, I wouldn't be surprised if it were more.

League doesn't feel pay to win at all to me, yeah you do have to play or pay to unlock champions but they are not necessarily better champions in most cases (for new players at least).