101–110 of 120 posts
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How do you discover new music? That's been an issue for me, considering how I don't use Spotify.
Read MA or RYM reviews and append all the names I don't already know to a big backlog.
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> are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful Fair point, but those are clearly not the ones being pointed out as greedy by most people. ...except for maybe scrappy mobile companies that churn shitty microtransaction games looking for whales, but those are greedy indeed, and I doubt they have the sympathy of you or OP.
I personally not making mobile games or ones with microtransactions. Yet you can basically choose: either there will be microtransaction games for mobile or there will be none. This is not because of developers greed, but because it's the only way to monetize this audience. People voted with their wallet. Microtransactions in PC games are there for the same reason - because you can't just go and sell your game for $2…
Not really. Most of these games are preying on weaknesses. These people are not voting with their wallets. They're being duped into giving away their mental health, and their wallet is taken away when they're not looking because of they're high in dopamine induced by images and sounds.
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Just download some emulators and some roms for them, and you can play thousands of 80s-90s games all you want for free. You'll never have to worry about them turning into microtransaction crap, plus the gameplay is far better than anything current.
How is the gameplay far better than anything current ? Genuine question tho, I just recently started playing again with portal and find most game to be boring, even the acclaimed one like cyberpunk and rdr2, but I don't see how Mario bros and likes could be remotely better. Imo gaming peaked between 2000 and 2010.
> The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch. What you watch today might disappear from all platforms in two months. I have seen so many songs disappear from Spotify lately that I am considering to hoard music again. Gladly I have most of those that disappeared on my HDD anyways, since it's been mostly old songs, but yeah. Was kinda frus…
How do you discover new music? That's been an issue for me, considering how I don't use Spotify.
If you're worried about your games aging out, CD-ROMs did not protect you because the average Windows 98 game won't run on modern computers without significant modifications.
> How can the boxed price of a game (or software) be the same as its Steam or digital version?
In Capitalist economies, prices are set by producers and are significantly influenced by supply and demand. Prices are justified by people's willingness to pay them, and competition creates downward pressure. Games priced at $60 have to compete with $9.99 indie games on Steam, and justify their higher price through quality.
> When you buy a game digitally, it never truly belongs to you; services like Steam or PS Store only allow you to download and play it.
We're still grappling with what "ownership" means in a digital economy, but Steam's model is clearly good enough for 99% of customers. Even Nintendo (which always loved its physical carts) eventually had to admit that most buyers prefer digital downloads. They're willing to take the risk of losing access in the future in return for convenience here, today.
> 20 years later, you can plug in your Atari cartridge and play, but you can’t be sure that Steam won’t go bankrupt and deactivate its servers. (Nintendo recently closed its shops, including for the 3DS, PSP servers are shut down, etc.)
I have Steam games from 15 years ago that I could still play. But that's just it: I could still play them. Do I? No, I'm done with them and I'm playing something else now. I heard about the 3DS shop shutting down, but so what? I've got my Switch and I haven't touched the 3DS in many years.
> The companies, with their excessive pricing, instead of selling their products once, turn them into SaaS with lifetime monthly subscriptions.
Excessive compared to what? Also, most modern software buyers expect continuous updates, patches, security fixes, etc. after the initial purchase, so monthly payments for ongoing labor seem like a natural fit. When you buy a toaster, you don't expect the manufacturer to come into your house a year later and make improvements.
> They sell games for $60 and then add microtransactions, turning them into service games.
Some games do that, many do not. Our choices influence future behavior by game makers. I totally agree with you that microtransactions suck, and I try not to buy games that have them.
> Without the people who dump and archive these contents, the old series you love so much could disappear forever.
Beloved classics rarely disappear. Nintendo Online still offers lots of them on the Switch. But when you describe something as "forgotten software" (as the article did early on), you're admitting that hardly anyone wants to play it.
Here's the thing: I take a step back and realize it's not a big deal. No one's dying, suffering, or anything of the sort because I don't reallly my games through steam or stream my favorite tv shows. Worst case scenario is something is no longer available anywhere thanks to it not being stremaable, rentable, on a service. Is this unfortunate? Yes, but is it enough to feel we need to massively change? Nah... Most of t…
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I'm not sure I follow. Is the argument that Steam is worse than Spotify because a subset of games have got built in self destruct, while Spotify only requires ongoing rent to access that 99¢ song? I think the self destruct is bad, and requiring 3rd party logins for single player games should not be allowed.
The argument is that platforms like Steam encourage developers to implement vendor lock in features. It's something that's more likely to happen with something like software vs standard media like music.
The platform itself will remove everything from you unless you keep paying Taylor Swift every month, and the artists you actually listen to probably don't get anything, unless you only listen to top ten charting songs.
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This. If you really want to support a musician buy their merch not their music. Specifically posters. Posters have the highest profit margin of any merch item and goes directly to the artist… and if you want extra credit, share the pirated music with others so that their fan base grows. Sure musicians would love to sell albums, but those days are long over. Musicians don’t see squat from ticket sales except in rare c…
Very true. I don't know how can get this through to the heads of the artists and have them put some more effort in their merch. I can't count the number of concerts where I carry cash specifically to buy merch, but the merch is crap, so I walk away. Having a dedicated merch manager DOES make a huge difference. E.g. Abbath has one, and I have bought merch in 3 out of 4 concerts in a timespan of 2 years. I don't think…
The thing with shirts and sweats at least in the US is that most bands pay a premium to have them made. I’ve seen unit cost as high as 25 for shirts and 40 for sweats. Tack on shipping and theres not a lot of margin. Also bands have to price match with headliners. The venue fees are usually 10% on soft goods. Which is why posters are so lucrative. They kind of skirt by in the corner. Unless its a true indy band, meaning they press the music themselves with no label support, at best an artist can hope to make a dollar of maybe two off an album sale often times way less. Posters on the other hand, unit cost for a screen printed one are around $2. So for twenty bucks 18 is going directly to the artist. Get that thing signed or not and you’ve got an asset that will probably appreciate and not take up too much space in the process.
Of course if one is in a position to and one really wants to support an artist you should license their music or get your company too.