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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

No grocery store has my personal details...and yes I also have a big problem with grocery stores employing that tactic against children. Its psychological abuse and I will never, have never, taken a child in these places.

Horrible behaviour is not acceptable because other companies do it. What kind of argument is that?

Calling customers a User, is calling them a human being with a certain behaviour attached (using your app/service).

Naming your customers animals is a reflection of attitudes towards these customers. A hostile attitude I have tackled multiple times and every time I have called out, walked out, or changed the company. Its hard, not for everyone and I cant recommend it. I am just too aware of the tragic social impact of these tactics, and I have to try and not make the world a worse place.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly telling people on the internet that they are wrong.

This is either the most amazingly self-aware joke I've seen, or a completely tone-deaf unbelievably cynical response. I can't tell.

:)

Re: I hate what video games have become

#663
post #658
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have anecdotes, not stats. But some people do ruin their lives with F2P gaming addictions.

financially? ie they played an f2p got hooked and spent dumped their money into oblivion such that they couldn't financially recover? Getting addicted to an F2P game and losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion

Financially. I personally know one person who pissed away their rent money on a F2P and got evicted. I also know of several other stories of people (not who I know personally) where they spend a lot of money they don't have, to the point of ruin. (Not being able to financially recover is a very high bar - you can financially recover from a bankruptcy for instance.)

I mean, sometimes they are kids (or the developmentally challenged)[1] but adults [2] too. There are more sad stories. One I recall was a developer who invited their superwhales to a launch of the new beta expansion in person. (All expenses paid) They sent one a plane ticket, but the the player never showed because they couldn't afford to get to the airport. I wish I could find that story online.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48925623

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-s...

> losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion

I very clearly and explicitly said "money they didn't have" in my first post and was talking about financial costs.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#664
post #135

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…

You're probably right, but I still think we should add another ball to soccer/football and see what happens.

ooh never thought of this, 3 balls! like foosball

Re: I hate what video games have become

#665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is because people absolutely hated that Tokyo map with the embankments, myself included. Rocket League is unique in that the core gameplay is so good, that messing around with it is just a bad idea. It’s like asking why there aren’t new pieces being released for Chess, or why people don’t start adding unconventional elements to a soccer field. It’s because novelties like those take away from what is alread…

Oh god, I forgot about how awful that Tokyo map was. I enjoyed the wide slightly sloped wasteland though.

It wasn't great, but, it represented something different, and along with the hexagon map it added variety. Feels like there's much more room to get creative in terms of map shapes/obstacles/nuances.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#666
post #279
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... i think CSGO easily is the best ... > ... so it is a bit like gambling ... I hate what video games have become.

I hate what video games have become. I think this is more than anything, an app store sickness. It has spread a little to consoles and desktop, but I can still buy a 100% offline, single player game, which has the main purpose of entertaining me. It has a story, a point to it, a mystery often, fun things to do which aren't mining or grinding away. I pay 80 bucks for the privilege, and am quite happy to do so. It is w…

I have kids now and the last game I prioritized to play this way was BoW during a summer vacation. I just hope these grand single player offline adventures wont go extinct until I will get some solid free time again. But on the other hand, I have such a long backlog of "old games" I want to play so I'm not really worried. It's more my kids that will get caught up in the Fortnites of the future and never experience the world building possible.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if games shipped without textures and shaders Back in the days we used mods and texture packs to remove (hardware) expensive textures from the game so we get more FPS. I'm not sure if your argument applies to all games. For many games there is a competitive scene that usually don't give a shit about visuals and would trade most visual features for more frames per second.

So how many games provide an option to hide cosmetics that other players are using?

Iam not a real gamer anymore but in World Of warships there are serveral crossover skins (like from animes) that some people love and use and others hate them and are able to turn them off completely.

https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/sales-and-events/arpeggi...

Re: I hate what video games have become

#668
post #663
post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

financially? ie they played an f2p got hooked and spent dumped their money into oblivion such that they couldn't financially recover? Getting addicted to an F2P game and losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion

Financially. I personally know one person who pissed away their rent money on a F2P and got evicted. I also know of several other stories of people (not who I know personally) where they spend a lot of money they don't have, to the point of ruin. (Not being able to financially recover is a very high bar - you can financially recover from a bankruptcy for instance.) I mean, sometimes they are kids (or the developmenta…

>I very clearly and explicitly said "money they didn't have" in my first post and was talking about financial costs.

fair - I missed that context when reading the immediate response replying to.

Thanks for sharing your anecdata - the industry is definitely in need of regulation something I've long believed. The ubiquity and ease of access is probably the most dangerous bit. It's astounding that mobile games were able to copy/hire all the knowledge acquired in building slot machines to create an industry that doesn't even have to pay out..!

Re: I hate what video games have become

#669

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…

This is false and proven false by your link. Super Mario Run was freemium from the start. The app was free in the stores from day one. You could download and play the first few levels and then you were (surprisingly) asked to pay $9.99 to unlock the rest of the game.

Users were annoyed by the bait and switch. Nintendo should have charged $9.99 in the store and been done with it. Instead they tried to straddle some line between freemium, paid, and demo.

In addition, Nintendo added always-on DRM so that even those who fully paid for the game were dealing with silly issues that you would only expect in a freemium game.

“While still using the freemium model, Nintendo eschewed requiring players to keep paying to access more levels, instead offering the game as a free demo with the first three levels unlocked and requiring a one-time payment to unlock the rest of the game.[12] Part of the reason for this pricing scheme was to make it transparent to parents who may be purchasing the game for their children so that they would not incur further costs.[42] Fearing piracy of the game, Nintendo added always-on DRM, which requires that players have a persistent Internet connection to play.”

Re: I hate what video games have become

#670
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think an f2p game and your typical "open-source" software have anywhere near the same business model.

I don’t think they meant OSS per-se. I mean, compare Google services with a popular f2p game like Valorant. Google mines your data to target advertisements at you on a psychological level. In Valorant, you can spend money to make your gun look cooler. I think the latter business model is very respectable because it’s not sneaky and it isn’t manipulating me nearly as much. You can have hardly any money at all, play on…

I won’t use either. No Valorant, no Google.

I want to pay once for a game the same way I want to pay once for a car. Elden Ring is a perfect example.

I understand others feel differently. To each their own.

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