Games

horse armor

OG gamers remember how this all started. We got what the whales deserve.

100 people see dumb ad.

40 people click on dumb ad.

10 people play game from dumb ad.

5 people stick it out and continue playing.

1 of those 5 spends money.

Games that are p2w exist in a symbiotic relationship with people who are willing to spend copious amounts of money. The people who don't spend money and still exist within these games help fill in the environment. ALL players of these games are the problem.

Mobile games are the most common example of this, though other games fall under similar banners. The truth is any free game with live service needs money to operate. Hell, even that fan-run DBZ MMO has costs associated with it that the community helps fund. This won't go away, it'll just disguise itself as something else.

I do believe, however, that for larger games the bloated cost of development needs to fuck right off. 100mil and 5 years or more? There is a logistical issue there that needs to be addressed. One of many, I'm afraid.

Start making fun of people that buy skins and horse armor and maybe people will stop buying shit that has no value.

The Team Fortress / CS:GO model of microtransactions was the least offensive and honestly not much different than the pastiche upgrades you could get before DLC, via "Special Edition" game releases and other gimmicks.

Even then, what's obnoxious about modern gaming is the endless injection of ads. Compare Diablo 4 and Baldur's Gate 3, and one of the first things that jump out at you is how much more BG3 is a game and D4 is just a grind that demands more and more of your money. Meanwhile, with the exception of an artbook and soundtrack, what you see with BG3 is what you get. They even tacked on incremental improvements after release that weren't bundled as nickle-and-dime add-ons.

And look who made more money? It was a tie!

I don't think you can strictly shame Microsoft/Blizzard/Activison at this point, because the current C-level staff can get caught in the middle of a serial sexual harassment scandal and still just shrug it off. I don't think you can influence them with your wallet, either, because their model appears to work well-enough (even Diablo Immortal brought in half a billion dollars, and that game sucked shit) relative to BG3 which brought in slightly over $650M.

I think, at some point, you just have to ignore these games at a personal level and satisfy yourself with the knowledge that a dozen or so high quality games get released every year, even if they're swimming in a sea of hundreds of crappy freemium over-promoted titles. Don't worry about the Whales. Just focus on what's good.

There are too many people who have way too much money and don't care. Games with aggressive monetization aren't going anywhere but the same is true for games made by passionate devs who care about making a good game. Anyone complaining all games are soulless cash grabs isn't giving smaller indie devs a chance.

Whales are largely a myth created by game companies to create a false class war amongst us rather than holding the truly responsible parties at fault. No different than pitting the middle class against the poor.

Do whales exist? Absolutely. However, the vast majority of mtx money comes from people with addiction problems, mental health issues that make fiscal responsibility difficult, and kids who don't know any better. Many of whom who are spending money that they can't afford to spend but can't help themselves from spending.

These companies quite literally hire psychologists to tell them exactly how to exploit people's own brain chemistry against them to most effectively extract money from their wallets. Epic Games got in trouble because it was believed that they were trying to create a culture in Fornite that shamed kids for having default skins. Everything from daily login bonuses to seasons and battle passes to rotating stores are designed to keep you logging in and playing and therefore paying. They turn logging in into a habit and then hit you with the FOMO and completing your collection needs.

You're not going to fix this by shaming people any more than you can cure drug, alcohol, and gambling addiction by shaming people.

Been making fun of them since TF2. It doesn't work when they have no shame and plenty of money to waste.

Star Citizen has a $48,000 package BECAUSE PEOPLE ASKED FOR IT!

They didn't just decide to do that. There are actually people that said "I want to buy everything you have but I don't want to have to add one item at a time..." You can only access that package if you've already spent over 1k I believe.

There were even content creators that didn't want to reveal the identity of their viewers, but said they've played with people that have spent $100k... I don't know how true that is, but I've watched one of them enough to get a feel for their personality and they don't seem like to type to make that up.

10% of game developers are actually CEOs? That doesn't make any sense.

Or management

The first one got confiscated.

He cheaped out on the second.

Now he has to jack up the prices and fire a few workers so he can save up for a proper one in a few years. Third time's the charm!

Think about the economy! The 10 fired gamedevs are gonna find new employment easily while the chef, 4 security guards, captain and 10 crew are much less in demand!

"...The price point, at the time, was the issue. We felt, it's probably worth this," he said. "I won't say who at Microsoft said, 'Well, that's less than we sell a theme for; a wallpaper is more than that. You should charge this; you can always lower it'"

Even the horse armor, allegedly, was heavily influenced by Microsoft.

It always bothered me that Ubisoft sells micro transactions to level up characters in a single player game. Like wtf who is buying this stuff? And why?

Why pay to avoid playing a game?