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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#681

Post by bradknowles »

chefandy wrote: post #680
bradknowles wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I think the concern with Travelers Checks is the potential loss of money from your account, if someone is able to forge your signature on them, and how that might potentially be used to tie you to other events or crimes that may have occurred.

It was a joke. Travelers checks aren’t like regular checks — they’re more like cashier’s checks or money orders. Losing them is a very big problem.

Oh, sorry. I guess it's been about twenty or thirty years since I used them.

Thanks for the clarification!

Re: I hate what video games have become

#682

Post by HWR_14 »

yomly wrote: post #668
HWR_14 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think ease of access is unrated as a contributing factor. But even scarier than that is the ubiquity. The ability to get a fix whenever you want (after all, it's easy to open the game and spend money!) makes resisting it a 24/7 chore.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#683

Post by yomly »

HWR_14 wrote: post #682
yomly wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I think ease of access is unrated as a contributing factor. But even scarier than that is the ubiquity. The ability to get a fix whenever you want (after all, it's easy to open the game and spend money!) makes resisting it a 24/7 chore.

yes - I very often absentmindedly open Clash out of habit even if I wasn't intending to play it.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#684

Post by chefandy »

bradknowles wrote: post #681
chefandy wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a joke. Travelers checks aren’t like regular checks — they’re more like cashier’s checks or money orders. Losing them is a very big problem.

Oh, sorry. I guess it's been about twenty or thirty years since I used them. Thanks for the clarification!

Yeah. I dated myself with that reference.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#685

Post by bccdee »

cercatrova wrote: post #65
bccdee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's a strong power law going on with microtransactions. Most players don't spend any money at all on them; some spend a couple bucks on an item or two. The model becomes profitable because of the top 1% of spenders — "whales," in industry parlance — some of whom have deeply unhealthy relationships to the gambling mechanics and social pressures underlying microtransaction economies. So it's not exactly tr…

They are voting with their wallets. It's just that not every vote has a value of 1; their vote is the number of dollars they spend.

Right, so the market is being disproportionately swayed by gambling addicts and the experiences which appeal to them. This is not a healthy state of affairs.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#686

Post by cercatrova »

bccdee wrote: post #685
cercatrova wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are voting with their wallets. It's just that not every vote has a value of 1; their vote is the number of dollars they spend.

Right, so the market is being disproportionately swayed by gambling addicts and the experiences which appeal to them. This is not a healthy state of affairs.

Perhaps. There are a lot of games that are not like that though, catering to gambling, and I presume even in the future many games will not as well. There is always a group of people who like games without stuff like that in there, and it seems like at least some of these game creators do quite well, such as CDPR with their Witcher and Cyberpunk series.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#687

Post by bccdee »

slightwinder wrote: post #257
bccdee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's a strong power law going on with microtransactions. Most players don't spend any money at all on them; some spend a couple bucks on an item or two. The model becomes profitable because of the top 1% of spenders — "whales," in industry parlance — some of whom have deeply unhealthy relationships to the gambling mechanics and social pressures underlying microtransaction economies. So it's not exactly tr…

It's not always gambling. There are also collectors and people who just like to show off. Also, the usually f*ing rich dude who has no understanding on the difference between $2 and $20k. Games today are the new social club, where you go and meet and show off your life. And as there are corners for the average people, there are also corners for the rich and powerful. There are some games which really just exist so ri…

> There are some games which really just exist so rich dudes can casually meet and show off how much money they spend on some stupid skin.

Possibly, but not in the mainstream market. I'm not concerned with some weird niche luxury thing that 8 rich guys are doing. And as far as the mainstream market goes, the "rich guy to whom money means nothing" is not the average whale. Most whales (as I recall) are of fairly average means.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#688

Post by plaguepilled »

dado3212 wrote: post #616
plaguepilled wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This arguments premise is flawed. Cosmetics are not nearly that resource intensive to produce, so its not about 'wearing nice clothes' a-la real life, where good materials are more expensive to produce. Attaching a price tag is PURELY for the benefit of the publisher. Attaching real world costs to purchases in games also disproportionately targets neurodivergent and fiscally uneducated people. That seems like a fairl…

There is still the value of creating the model asset, though I agree that it’s a cost that doesn’t scale with how many people buy it (except for maybe some of the song packs, not sure how RL’s royalty package is structured). Why does attaching real world costs to purchases in-game strike you as “malicious” but not the real world cost of buying the game?

The issue is twofold.

The first issue is that like I originally mentioned, microtransactions disproportionately affect neurodivergent individuals because of the addictive mechanics used to implement them. The concept of 'whales' is a term used to refer to big spenders in a game economy without fully examining the reason they are spending so much. For example, where you can only buy one copy of Elden Ring, you could easily buy a new copy of Forza every year and buy each car, which may be a compulsion if you have OCD, for example. The same argument could be (and should be) made against tiered subscription services in games. If there is a lootbox mechanic involved, the issue is only compounded further as it is an introduction of gambling mechanics. In some cases, it can be worth examining the presence of envy economics 'Oooh I want was they have! How much is it? Oh I want it more now I know!'.

The second issue is the scale difference is ridiculous. The amount of dev and artist time to produce a game sits at around 1.5 to 4 years and sometimes much more. There is a large number of artistic assets that are used in combination with code when making a game and those assets are paid for using the proceeds from the game sales. When micro transactions are produced, a fraction of those assets are divided out of the main game (or less often, added later) and can be produced on a 6 month cycle to be sold separately. To be explicit, the amount of assets made in a microtransaction is FAR less than those used to make the game, but often the price of the microtransaction does not reflect this (again, refer to Forza and the $200 car dlc for a minimum-$100 game). This means that either the publisher or the developer team (including art team) is receiving that margin, and if you think the developers are receiving a proportionate amount of that margin then I have some bad news for you.

To be clear, I think game monetisation is OK. But that does not mean all forms of monetisation are OK, and it definitely does not mean that diluting a product in a harmful way is OK.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#689

Post by martinmunk »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #614
flohofwoe wrote: post #186

This is just a self-inflicted bubble problem. There are now so many interesting games without any dark patterns on Steam alone that one can spend an entire lifetime playing awesome games without ever encountering a single loot box, just step a bit outside the AAA and mobile bubbles.

Outside the AAA bubble, stuff is native for Linux as a bonus. :D

I payed for Rocket League quite a while back, as it had Linux support. But then they removed it. Ofc. I couldn't get my money back from Steam, and admittedly its not their fault but still.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#690

Post by Handytinge »

legalcorrection wrote: post #326
Kiro wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not into MLM schemes (or gambling) but I do love celebrity gossip. Since apparently you get to decide what interests are cool or not, I would love to hear what kind of amazing things you are into!

Mostly telling people on the internet that they are wrong.

This is the funniest thing I've seen on HN!
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