Games

To be honest, I mainly bought the game to make a statement & show my support for what type of treatment & product I want as a customer. Nowadays everything just seems to want to milk me, games are quite often literally designed around it so that it becomes a core part of the games themselves. And I'm so damn over all of this bullshit.

I can see how Game Pass popularity could be bad for a number of studios, as he says in the article. But, I’ve never understood how Game Pass’s existence was anti-consumer.

We always get these baffling quotes like “Microsoft insists on renting you your games, and you will like it.” or “I’m not going to be forced to pay $17 a month just to play my games”. GP never gained popularity off Microsoft forcing people into it, people voluntarily signed up, even when MS continues to make their games available for direct purchase.

The previous quote from Ubisoft even seemed more like an investor excuse than a threat to gamers.

I mean yes, but also no. I work at a private company and profits seem to be the only thing to get anyone with a title to move their ass.

Most Directors or below have their teams, or customers, or the product front of mind. But once you get to VP seats they just.. don’t, it seems.

And this is super anecdotal, I know, but.. basically my point is private vs public doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

This guy is just a good guy. He knows what matters to people and speaks from his heart, not his wallet.

It's not even about what we want, but what the stakeholders and decision-makers push for in order to rack in more profits.

The gaming industry was at its highest in terms of fun and variability and innovation when the industry was still figuring out best ways to make mad money, no matter how ethical or morally bankrupt - now they know they can use fear of missing out and predatory tactics to lure people into essentially gambling in a free-to-play online game, or pad out a singleplayer one with mechanics that contribute nothing to the gameplay, but manage to fool game journalists (the ones that weren't already paid) into praising the game for its deep and branching loops, attracting more investor money or something.

A lot of people accuse us gamers of being a whiny crowd that cares too much and doesn't like to have fun, but I guess yeah, we do care a little too much and that's why so many of us try to actively influence the industry to go into a better direction when we vote with our wallets or write reviews or discuss games and practices in ways that can be hopefully seen by the industry's decision-makers.

Not to say there isn't just as many (if not more) gamers that don't care enough and still pour money into games and practices that are ultimately making the industry worse, only to make the stakeholders and CEOs wealthier.

Honestly I don't regret paying a subscription for WoW. Maybe it's different now, but when I played it felt fair. You got reliable servers, frequent updates,somewhat reasonable balance changes, and seasonal events. You didn't get any loot box bullshit, just playing the game regularly generally got you the rewards with minimal effort.

Sure expansions also cost extra, but that was $30 and about 1 every 2 years.

For a game that ate all your free time, it didn't hit your wallet that hard.

Unfortunately it works the same way as with StarCitizen, you're aware it's a ripoff, but if you want to play this particular type of a game, pay up or leave.

With MMORPGs specifically, here are the options:

• Free to Play. Enormous cash shop, often pay to win. Usually these games actually require the most money to play on high level, or waste your time by slowing down the grind and having an optional "premium" sub, which effectively makes it a sub MMO.

• Buy to Play. Much less predatory, rarely pay to win, but often with huge cash shop. Get ready to see tons of cool cosmetics that are only available through micro transactions, and the base game often receives scrapes from the table. Still, some of these games like TESO effectively force you to pay a sub by introducing a mechanic (like bottomless reagent bag) that make the game without them miserable on high level.

• Pay to play. Most obvious predator, nobody needs this much money to develop a game that already charges almost full price for base game and for all new DLCs, but also usually has the most tame cash shop. WoW for instance has a tiniest (comparing to games like TESO) cash shop with 20-ish mounts and pets nobody cares about.

This creates effectively a pick-your-Devil situation with these games. No good monetization, pick whatever feels least predatory for you

Fucking BASED.

Not to mention the sheer amount of amazing indie games coming out lately. Why even check out this gacha and subscription games?

Micros rake in the cash because they exploit the stupidity of "whales" (people with more money than sense).

Larian is privately owned. They don't have stockholders to appease with short term gains.

He's a CEO of a relatively small company that is product focused. He has yet to grow and focus margins in any serious way.