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Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

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Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#121

Post by thecatspaw »

archi42 wrote: post #32
nathanwh wrote: post #14

Something about how this article was animated out hurt my brain to look at. It had a lot on page telling me about how much there was too much information on the screen of the phone which was nested inside the page. And then every arrow press would move around the dialog boxes (some of which jiggled to fight for my attention extra hard) and update the little avatar. The content was interesting but it felt kind of iron…

It's pretty well executed on desktop. Maybe revisit it, if you're interested in the visuals or want to learn about how that Mario Kart title drains your wallet.

I am on desktop, and on a technical level, its well executed. But it was so much more exhausting to read than a simple text article with pictures.

I initially visited the site, saw how the navigation etc worked, figured it wasnt worth the read. Only after reading some comments here I figured I'd bear through it. Wasnt worth it in the end imho

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#122

Post by BoorishBears »

klodolph wrote: post #20
preinheimer wrote: post #10

First, that was an amazing breakdown of what's happening. If you enjoyed reading that you might like Folding Ideas breakdown of Fortnite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 Second, I've personally become very wary of any mobile app that introduces multiple currency types. There's gold, and rubies, and power balls, and stardust! At some point pretty early on I decide it's not worth it to figure out how much…

Multiple currency types are a key part of freemium / microtransaction games, but there are other reasons to have multiple currency types, and it’s becoming more and more common across all types of games. In a sense, games are often about managing resources. Currency is a resource. If you have one currency type, you can come up with a dominant strategy that maximizes production of that particular currency type. If you…

You setup a strawman (perhaps unintentionally) with this sentence:

> Currency is a resource

by ignoring the context of the comment you replied to, and the rest of your comment just builds upon that.

Currency in this context is not just a resource, it's specifically resources tied into a system of microtransactions.

So that includes currency you buy directly with money and currency that is accepted alongside purchasable currency. Having Rubies, Emeralds, and Gold as three different currencies obviously doesn't mean anything special in isolation. Why would having X resource types in a game be special or predatory in isolation?

-

What makes it predatory is when only Rubies and Gold can be purchased with money, and some items can be purchased with Emeralds or Rubies, and the pricing for Rubies and Gold are different... the end result is muddying the actual costs of items, and making it more difficult for players to only spend once.

The main MO behind systems like that is to make one currency more important at the start, for example, by letting it get you ahead on core mechanics. Then in the later game having content like skins and characters be locked behind another currency which you're now encouraged to buy having naturally accumulated enough of the first currency through gameplay.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#123

Post by no_wizard »

givinguflac wrote: post #88
zug_zug wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think I'd buy 10x as many games on mobile if there was a way to filter out all in-app purchases (other than pay once: add-free forever no more asks to buy)

This is why I love Apple Arcade. No ads, no in app purchases, and plenty of classic and big name games too. They aren’t all good, but there’s plenty there to make it worth it.

Bloons TD 6+

One of the most fun tower defense games I've played in a long, long time

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#124

Post by boringg »

xg15 wrote: post #116

This was a really great writeup and an amazing way to present it. My hunch is, there is another dark pattern hidden which he didn't discuss yet: the quantities in which you buy gems. You'll often land just one or two gems short of the number you actually needed. Then you can either buy the 3 gem pack for the worst relative price or buy another larger pack, encouraging you to come back later. It seems hard to really s…

How much time and effort went into producing that? I'm curious how such a project got put together and why.

Video games are really becoming way too exploitative.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#125

Post by kome »

"super mario run" is another mobile game by nintendo, you pay 10 dollars and it's yours forever. plenty of content, extremely well crafted and fun. I download it in 2016, and i still use it to this day.

but people criticized it for having to pay up front. and it was a commercial failure.

so, people gets what they deserve i guess.

(btw, "super mario run" is still updated, if you have kids just buy it, it's well worth the money)

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#126

Post by hbn »

currymj wrote: post #118
Naga wrote: post #5

Nintendo has such a great, family friendly brand. If I was in charge, I wouldn't want my brand to be anywhere close to being associated to this type of thing.

they didn't initially. their first mobile game, Super Mario Run, cost $10 and had none of the usual manipulative mobile game elements. People did not buy it so they switched to the same F2P nonsense as everyone else for future games.

Super Mario Run was also always-online for no reason, you couldn't play without an internet connection.

And it wasn't a particularly impressive game. There's no shortage of endless runners on mobile, and Nintendo didn't do much to differentiate themselves, so it's no surprise nobody bought it.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#127

Post by hbn »

guelo wrote: post #120
Naga wrote: post #5

Nintendo has such a great, family friendly brand. If I was in charge, I wouldn't want my brand to be anywhere close to being associated to this type of thing.

I've never been into Nintendo but after having kids I kept hearing this about how great they are for families so I bought a Switch. That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is: overcharging for games, nickle and dimeing for everything, and abusing their fan's nostalgia. I definitely don't want to get my kids invested in their platform so I got rid of the Switch. Steam has more than we need anyway.…

What games are you being nickle-and-dimed for?

I bought Super Mario Odyssey on release day in 2017 and it's never asked me for more money. In fact I think it got a few free content updates. It's the tightly-made, quality video game experience that it was when it came out.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#128

Post by falsenapkin »

bakugo wrote: post #92
bastard_op wrote: post #76

It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic. I play no mobile games, they're all some cash trap like a vacuum cleaner, and simply not fun when you realize you'll never truly win anything unless you pay and pay hard. What do YOU really get for the money? I gues…

> It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic. Nintendo is no better than any other game publisher, they're just behind on predatory industry trends by 5-10 years, that's it. They're just now entering the "cut out content from games to sell it as DLC that you…

I have like 4k hours on Splatoon and I have to say that while you're not wrong, I wouldn't quite characterize it as doom and gloom. 2 was worth $60, the DLC content was worth... what was it even? The 3 DLC is $25. Anyway, the 2 DLC was worth the much larger more difficult higher replay value solo content. All of 3s content is achievable if you play it often and none of it is in any way "needed". If anything they've loosened things up a bit by making gear easier to customize, making it easier to acquire the stuff with which you do the customization. Even people with half the time as me at the end of 2 had maxed out their money and owned everything. What's the point in having money if it's trivial to buy everything? While now they have pass mechanics in place, previous seasons content is available in new seasons albeit from a gacha machine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yeah they have the essence of some problematic mechanics at work but if anything I find navigating them to be rewarding and not limiting. In this case they're not even really behind the industry, they're kind of lateral just lacking real money. I think this is an interesting position to be in, my big concern is they may be training players to feel good about these systems and then in S4 they allow you to put real money in...

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#130

Post by joe_guy »

inkcapmushroom wrote: post #45
nathanwh wrote: post #14

Something about how this article was animated out hurt my brain to look at. It had a lot on page telling me about how much there was too much information on the screen of the phone which was nested inside the page. And then every arrow press would move around the dialog boxes (some of which jiggled to fight for my attention extra hard) and update the little avatar. The content was interesting but it felt kind of iron…

I liked that they took all the time to decry all these dark practices, and then hit you at the end with "Do you want a summary of the presentation? Click this button!" which I'm sure requires you to sign up for their email newsletter and start on their customer pipeline.

I don't see it being at the end a dark pattern. It's not withholding anything in exchange for contact information.
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