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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

#151

Post by chongli »

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.…

That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is

I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this?

I was really turned off. I can see how this would be highly manipulative to kids though.

Why is Nintendo doing this crap? They’re a privately owned, family-run company. They don’t have outside shareholders to please. They could just choose to be less profitable and focus on protecting their family-friendly brand. This excessive greed is highly unseemly.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#153

Post by surfsvammel »

What ever happened to just playing a game, without having to install deamon programs on your PC, without having to consent to them tracking you, without having to create fifteen new accounts, without having to endure in game ads, without having to constantly be reminded that I don’t have the special in game currency that is the only way to get that pink hat?

Of course I understand what has happened. But it’s kind of taken the fun out of gaming. Or maybe I’m just old, grumpy and nostalgic.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#154

Post by atdrummond »

chongli wrote: post #151
guelo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this? I was really turned off. I can…

For what it is worth, the Yamauchi family has been slowly selling their portion of the company for nearly a decade. (https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-...). The shareholder structure is the only thing keeping in control and they definitely care about how happy shareholders are. Luckily, the particular shareholders they are concerned with tend to hold for an extremely long period of time (Japanese banks and holding cos).

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#155

Post by Wowfunhappy »

surfsvammel wrote: post #150
currymj wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I played Mario run when it came out and loved it. Recently installed it on my son’s iPad. The game has totally transformed into this kind of crap.

They added some daily bonus type stuff that may seem similar at first--I think they did that because it's what the mobile market largely expects, sadly--but there's nothing tied to payment, and it's pretty easy to just play the game.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#156

Post by Yhippa »

This is the sad tale of gaming even 10 years ago. The first games that had in-game currencies, like MMOs had a lot of these elements, albeit not as sophisticated as what was laid out here.

For me, and I wonder for other people, when you play one of these games you come to a point where you either keep playing or stop. Is the game fun? Is progression reasonable? Is this achievable without dumping huge amounts of cash into it? If any of those is "no", I quit.

The problem is that newer games pop up and I'm sure they're going to get even more subtle about getting you to part with your money. Pretty gross.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#157

Post by rektide »

The submission yesterday on TV streaming systems all being jank/getting worse[1], Mario Kart getting the rough treatment: it's all so much enshittifcation.

I feel like I should get a decent sized rubber stamp: #enshittification[2]. Alas that I cant stamp it that all over web pages & apps.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/23621907/streaming-tv-boxes-roku-am... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35051353

[2] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480479

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#158

Post by endemic »

chongli wrote: post #151
guelo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this? I was really turned off. I can…

The coins are a "fun" value add thing. You can get small discounts on digital games if you use the gold ones. The silver ones can get you various digital/physical goodies. You're not missing out if you don't use them.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#159

Post by frozenlettuce »

bentley wrote: post #58
causi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile games in general are garbage. Considering the number of games, you could just emulate console games for the rest of your life and in doing so only play games that were built as games, not exploitation machines.

It feels like there was a sweet spot in between the arcade era (where gameplay was tailored to get your quarters) and the mobile era (where gameplay is tailored to get microtransactions), where game designers saw the most success by providing a complete high‐quality experience in a single purchase. There have been exploitative home console games and non‐exploitative arcade games and mobile games, but to me the overal…

I think that's the reason for the quality of GBA games - at that time the industry already had lots of knowledge on how to create fun experiences and the hardware was capable of providing nice simple 2d graphics

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#160

Post by freedomben »

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.

They have the data so they would certainly know better than me, but my anecdotal experience was just so wildly different. I bought it, and nearly everyone I know did. It was a great game, and did not of the scummy things that so many games did! The always online and the "won't run on rooted device" checks were very annoying to me, but it didn't exceed my tolerance threshold. I and many others praised them for just charging a one time payment for the whole game. My anecdotal experience made me very optimistic that Nintendo was going to prove that you didn't have to be scummy! Apparently not.
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