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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

#61

Post by christoph »

strictnein wrote: post #28
KhalPanda wrote: post #16

I (sadly) don't play any mobile games for this reason. _Every_ game seems to revolve around engineering you to buy to speed up progress. It's just one step worse (maybe two) than everything being a subscription. I prefer buying games(/software) once and being left to enjoy the game.

What sucks is that they've gone back and added so much of this junk to older games too. Games like Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds used to just be skill based journeys through increasingly difficult levels. The last time I opened one of those games I hardly recognized them.

What's particularly galling is that many of those games had a reasonable up-front cost with an unwritten agreement you were buying a complete product, then as time and updates have gone by, they've totally junked the original product you paid your money for. I'm basically done with anything on mobile that has IAP or potentially might at a future date.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#62

Post by yamtaddle »

mxkopy wrote: post #53
yamtaddle wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but other publishers that aren't heavy on microtransactions reduce prices more and have better sales, too. Though the other stores they sell through probably do get a lot of money through microtransactions, that's true. I think the main factor's that Nintendo's got this weird cheap-on-the-hardware-side-premium-on-the-software-side thing going on. Which seems to be working for them—I'm not complaining, just obse…

> I think the main factor's that Nintendo's got this weird cheap-on-the-hardware-side-premium-on-the-software-side thing going on. So do you think this is the weird economics that's responsible for Nintendo shifting more to the 'standard' model of DLCs and possibly microtransactions? Because selling the hardware doesn't make as much sense nowadays?

Microtransactions are new and worrisome. DLC, they've so far treated more like traditional expansion packs (from what I've seen), rather than short-changing the core game so they can easily soak buyers for extra money for what should have been the full version to begin with, as has become standard practice in much of the rest of the industry. I didn't notice e.g. base Mario Kart coming with notably-few tracks or anything (we've paid for zero of the DLC for that, and have plenty of tracks, don't remember Double Dash or other older ones having more)

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#63

Post by jjulius »

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.

Am on desktop, and was genuinely interested in learning about the subject, but stopped reading 1/3 through because I didn't want to have to keep clicking and watching an animation after every sentence.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#64

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

strictnein wrote: post #28
KhalPanda wrote: post #16

I (sadly) don't play any mobile games for this reason. _Every_ game seems to revolve around engineering you to buy to speed up progress. It's just one step worse (maybe two) than everything being a subscription. I prefer buying games(/software) once and being left to enjoy the game.

What sucks is that they've gone back and added so much of this junk to older games too. Games like Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds used to just be skill based journeys through increasingly difficult levels. The last time I opened one of those games I hardly recognized them.

I just installed and played Plants vs Zombies (the original) on Android a few days ago. I did not see any way to purchase anything…. Yet

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#65

Post by m000 »

It would be interesting if someone could check if the game is available in Belgium, where loot boxes are illegal.

And if it is available, is Nintendo blatantly ignoring the ban pretending that "firing the pipe" is not a loot box? Or have they tweaked the in-game economic mechanics to be compatible with the Belgian law?

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#66

Post by pcstl »

bentley wrote: post #38
mxkopy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Nintendo also doesn't do microtransactions or DLCs. I'm sure if they did that they could afford more sales. I'm wondering if not having microtransactions is just not profitable anymore.

Nintendo has high‐profile DLC coming out this year for both Pokémon and Mario Kart.

I really don't see an issue with Pokémon moving to a DLC model. They're essentially replacing the updated rerelease they used to do (Platinum to Diamond/Pearl, Emerald to Ruby/Sapphire) with just releasing more content for the same game.

Mario Kart is also mostly course packs. Fun, but not vital.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#67

Post by jimktrains2 »

gambiting wrote: post #6

What sort of nonsense website is this. It tells you that it works best in landscape mode when on mobile, but switching to landscape renders half of the page off screen.

It also refuses to render for me in fennec. It sayd I'm not supported.

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#68

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

bogwog wrote: post #23
Accacin wrote: post #7

Sadly, people play and buy these games as evidenced by the dumpster fire that was Diablo Immortal. I love Diablo, but there was no way in hell (lol) that I'd download that game and even play for free. I feel like these mobile games need regulating heavily, but it's also down to use to not support these games.

> but it's also down to use to not support these games. Not really true. Gambling is heavily regulated for a reason, it's just that these games haven't been officially categorized as gambling under existing gambling laws (yet). If you ever meet a gambling addict, try telling them to "just stop gambling" and see how well it works. There's something about the human brain that's highly vulnerable to this particular vice…

Gambling is more addictive than drugs or alcohol because it actually DOES pay (sometimes).

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#69

Post by guestbest »

causi wrote: post #34
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…

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.

You could say the same thing about coin operated arcade games

Re: Mario Kart Tour Triggers You into Gambling Your Money

#70

Post by goosedragons »

falcolas wrote: post #25
CM30 wrote: post #12

It's a shame the game is so predatory with its monentisation tactics, since the actual content (tracks, characters, items, etc) is actually rather good. It's just most of it is buried under this pay to win, limited time bullshit. Still, at least Nintendo does provide a way to get this stuff without being subject to Tour's lootboxes. The Booster Course Pass DLC for 8 Deluxe on Switch offers much of the same content, e…

> in a game that isn't trying to exploit you at every turn. With as profitable as these tactics are, I wonder for how much longer they’ll keep those tactics off their Switch games. Or, more cynically, “… game that isn’t trying to exploit you yet …”

They've been pretty good so far. Mario Kart Tour is 4 years old at this point, Fire Emblem Heroes is 6 years old. We've seen 3 non-spinoff Fire Emblem games since the release of Heroes and AFAIK they aren't microtransaction filled nonsense.
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