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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#631

Post by DaveSapien »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #578
DaveSapien wrote: post #308

At great expense to my carrier I have out and out refused to take part in creating these predatory practices. If you could hear the contempt that "some" game devs have for their customers, you might never buy a game ever again. It really is quite shocking...and the contempt exists from top to bottom, its everywhere. That isn't to say there's not a vast number of of honourable people in the industry, not at all. It's…

Having worked in the games industry on Facebook and mobile games, I don't think your perspective is representative. Most f2p games are targeting a % mix of whales, dolphins, flounders, guppies. You might shoot for 0.1% whales, 10% dolphins,40% flounders, 50% guppies. The whales will have an outsized impact on revenue for their count, and you largely can't plan for them to arrive. They're typically (very) wealthy peop…

Thank you for confirming what I said.

I know I won't convince you one way or the other. I've seen statements eerily similar to yours before, that I feel that it might be a regurgitation from some article or book somewhere.

Note the use of dehumanising terms, literally calling customers animals and 'cannon fodder'.

This is what this (part of the) industry thinks of the people that play their games, cattle.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#632

Post by philipov »

spiderice wrote: post #541
philipov wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of pay-to-win games, but LoL is not one of them. LoL has cosmetics, and pay-to-progress, but there's nothing you can buy that will give you an advantage in-game over people who play for free. Unlocking new characters with RMT is not pay-to-win, because all the characters are obtainable for free without requiring unreasonable effort. You're not forced to get them from random lootboxes like Gacha games…

You and I clearly have a different definition of pay to win. If I start the game on a new account, and don't have access to the same champions as my enemy from game 1 unless I spend money, then the game is pay to win. Period. The fact that I could pay money, in that moment, to win, means the game is pay to win. Edit: Further, here is an article[1] breaking down how long it would take to unlock all champions without p…

LoL is a game that rewards learning deep, not wide. You won't win just because you have access to many champions. You will lose, because you don't know how to play those champions, and will never learn how, because you are always starting over with a new one. Counterpicking and tier lists are lies that scrubs tell themselves to feel better about their lack of basic skills. You need 1 champion you can play perfectly without error, and a couple backups in case you don't get to play that 1 champion.

At 1 game a day, it will take you far longer than 9.5 years to learn to play every champion in the game, so it is irrelevant how long it would take to get all of them. You could play more than 300 hours on a single character before it would benefit you to add a second one.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#633

Post by ratorx »

plaguepilled wrote: post #608
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 arguments premise is flawed. Cosmetics are not nearly that resource intensive to produce, so its not about 'wearing nice clothes' a-la real life, where good materials are more expensive to produce. Attaching a price tag is PURELY for the benefit of the publisher. Attaching real world costs to purchases in games also disproportionately targets neurodivergent and fiscally uneducated people. That seems like a fairl…

There is a real world equivalent which affects many more people. Wearing nice clothes might mean wearing well-made clothes, or wearing branded clothes. Although there is some correlation, there are definitely examples of moderate quality clothes being sold for insane prices because of a brand.

Not to say that micro transactions are good practice or that they can’t be dealt with independently, but micro transactions are a very similar problem to real world cosmetics.

Sure you could argue that just having some correlation between true quality and perceived value is good enough, but I’d argue that charging for more visually appealing and better designed models ALSO is not zero correlation.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#634

Post by cupofpython »

SentientNo4 wrote: post #236
qwery wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>people would have to pay to unlock them

see: Halo Infinite

Want to be black? that will be $10 please

Re: I hate what video games have become

#635

Post by s_trumpet »

ianbutler wrote: post #446

Counter points: literally every indie game, Elden Ring, Tiny Tina's Wonderland, God of War, all of Nintendo (they have other issues though) and the literally hundreds of triple A games that aren't live service. I'm quite sure I'm missing a lot, but these are just top of mind. They've chosen a very narrow definition of video games to be disappointed over.

Sadly, this curse is nearly inescapable if you want to play modern online multiplayer or PVP games. MOBAs, MMOs, shooters, racing games, etc. are almost all like this now.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#636

Post by watwut »

wodenokoto wrote: post #213
yourdeadneopet wrote: post #168

A few years ago, Nintendo made a wonderful game called Super Mario Run. It was simple - Mario automatically runs and you tap to jump - but surprisingly deep. The timing of the jumps and the height of jump was paramount, and there was a ton of replayability in trying to get out-of-reach coins and finding shortcuts. It also captured the aesthetic of the Mario World games with modern graphics. I was VERY skeptical of a…

Super Mario Run, on top of being a great game at a great price is basically single payment f2p. And most people didn’t get that you could buy it and not worry about needing to buy berries or diamonds for real world money. Not worry about your child spending hundreds of real world dollars when playing on your phone. People just hated the fact that they had to pay for the cheapest priced Mario game ever.

> And most people didn’t get that you could buy it and not worry about needing to buy berries or diamonds for real world money. Not worry about your child spending hundreds of real world dollars when playing on your phone.

People already figured how to not allow kids to pay real money in games. They don't worry about that. You just don't attach card to account or require password.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#638

Post by somehnacct3757 »

DaveSapien wrote: post #631
somehnacct3757 wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in the games industry on Facebook and mobile games, I don't think your perspective is representative. Most f2p games are targeting a % mix of whales, dolphins, flounders, guppies. You might shoot for 0.1% whales, 10% dolphins,40% flounders, 50% guppies. The whales will have an outsized impact on revenue for their count, and you largely can't plan for them to arrive. They're typically (very) wealthy peop…

Thank you for confirming what I said. I know I won't convince you one way or the other. I've seen statements eerily similar to yours before, that I feel that it might be a regurgitation from some article or book somewhere. Note the use of dehumanising terms, literally calling customers animals and 'cannon fodder'. This is what this (part of the) industry thinks of the people that play their games, cattle.

You have to call cohorts something. I know a gaming company that went very publicly out of their way to refer to the cohorts as Big Spenders, Hobbyists, etc. It didn't save their company. What you name your buckets doesn't matter.

SaaS companies call customers Users, talks about Activating and Retaining them, put them in Buckets. If this is your bar for dehumanizing then this must be a very frustrating website for you to visit.

Do you not shop at grocery stores? They put the milk and eggs in the back to psychologically manipulate you into walking past other items. And you're stored in their database as nothing but a phone number! So dehumanizing.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#639

Post by badsectoracula »

tjader wrote: post #343
badsectoracula wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't believe RL or other modern online games could survive with even a tenth of the player base if they didn't have decent matchmaking, and you can't have decent matchmaking if you depend on players finding each other outside the game and one of them running a server and sharing the IP address. It's way too much friction to expect most players to do that.

You can still run a default/master server.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#640

Post by badsectoracula »

roganartu wrote: post #559
badsectoracula wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have 2600 hours in Rocket League. It's a fair bit for a "casual" player, but it's got nothing on pros (who are mostly up over 15k hours these days). I have some friends I play fairly regularly with, but we don't usually play against each other we play with each other. The main reason I still play is to continue improving, and I don't think I could ever do that effectively if I was limited to only playing against pe…

You can still run a default/master server. This isn't really a new problem.
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