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submitted 1 week ago by ryanee@fedia.io to c/games@sh.itjust.works

I want to shed light on a tactic that involves collecting data as you play, feeding this data into complex algorithms and models that then alter the rules of your game under the hood to optimize spending opportunities.

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 week ago

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.

Ban the entire business model.

If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

There are 14,000 games released on Steam every year. What percentage do you believe contain in-game purchases? It's quite literally just the giant AAA venture capitalist backed studios that do this. Just don't buy them.

It's like saying if we allow AI art to continue soon there will be no more humans making art. People will always make art. People will always make games. If all the art you see is corporate slop that's a you problem.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Half the industry by revenue and growing.

'But indies!' means nothing, when you count two games with $43 in revenue between them, like that's twice as many games as Fortnite.

People will always make art. People will always make games. If all the art you see is corporate slop that’s a you problem.

Jesus, why can't people differentiate the content of games from the way they're sold? It's about the money. I'm not shitting on your favorite time-sink, for its art style. I'm angry about the fact it goads you toward paying twenty actual dollars to give your character an ironic t-shirt.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah, no.

I like a bunch of games that do this. I've liked games that do this for 40 years.

I mean, technically you just banned all arcade games that ever existed. I liked a bunch of those.

And I like a bunch of free to play games. I spent a bunch of time playing Hearthstone. I'm gonna say that at least some of the millions of people in LoL would like to keep playing what they're playing. I am looking forward to a bunch of new characters in Street Fighter 6. I kinda don't want to go back to the days where I had to buy a second full price copy of Street Fighter 2 just to get access to 4 new characters.

I get that it sounds good to say this when thinking about the worst parts of the industry, but... yeah, no.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

'But arcades!' Are renting someone else's hardware. Different thing. This did abuse not exist fifteen years ago.

'But free games!' Can just be free. Or pay-what-you-want. Or cheap. Or something you already own. How's your back catalog on Steam?

This Skinner-box horseshit where a game is """free""" but somehow makes a billion dollars is weaponized frustration. The handful of games that were re-released with tiny updates at full price are now the entire industry's goal, thanks to this specific abuse. (And they still got you chumps to buy three 3D versions of Street Fighter.)

You can pay the price of a whole-ass game for a hat.

Lesser versions of that aren't better, just lesser. The opportunity to spend one hundred dollars right the hell now is shoved in your face between rounds. Or dangled each time a lootbox animation juuust misses. Or crammed into your inventory, as a gift, mmyes, if only you bought a key.

If LoL wants to keep making money they can charge a subscription or sell expansions. Y'know - rational consumer purchasing decisions. Not playing keep-away and then tickling people's balls in a controlled environment where fireworks go off each time you click Confirm Purchase.

Inevitably: 'but people don't often go for subscriptions.' Yeah! It's almost like conscious choices are less generous than engineered decisions! Or: 'but budgets rely on that immense revenue!' Then they should shrink. Budgets follow revenue. Always always always. Whatever money these fuckers spent, they expect to extract from you, three times over.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

Wait, in what world is a subscription a "rational consumer purchasing decision" where buying characters for a fighting game if you want them as they come out is not?

I would prefer to pay for in-game content of any kind, cosmetics included, over paying a subscription for a game. Any day. Especially if the content is characters, as is the case in LoL or Street Fighter.

And yeah, I bought three 3D Street Fighter games. And a bunch of characters for each. Even a costume or two. I am extremely on board with that. Money extremely well spent, as far as I'm concerned.

Hell, the SF6 community at the moment is begging for more cosmetics. They just announced a handful of horny-ass swimsuit costumes and people went ballistic. It's not my bag, but if people like them and they know what they're buying who the hell are you to tell them they're wrong, let alone that it should be illegal?

I mean, it's a straightforward enough transaction. You think bikini Cammy with tan lines is hot and will pay some money for that skin. I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Win/win in my book.

That's the problem with this train of thought. There's some stuff where you and I agree there are bad practices and we can probably agree on some common sense regulation for them. But if you're going to come at me with a maximalist approach that boils down to "games I don't like shouldn't exist" we're going to disagree.

Which, if nothing else, is a good reason for regulation of creative products to be relatively loose whenever possible. I was not on board with Hillary wanting to ban Mortal Kombat in the 90s because she didn't like hearts being ripped out and I'm not on board with people wanting to ban free to play games now. It made sense to have age ratings in the 90s and it makes sense to have that and other common sense regulations now.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

None of this is ever about the game part of the game. Fuck entirely off with pearl-clutching over content. This is about a business model. I want people to sell the most addictive, transgressive, customizable bullshit you can imagine, so long as it is either a product or a service. Like anything else you buy. Imaginary shit inside a video game is neither.

You can insist, 'but it's new!,' except it's already in your game. You're looking at it, on someone else's character. This is a dividing line where Oblivion's infamous horse armor is completely above-board. It was a hundred kilobytes of not much, but it was unambiguously an expansion. You, the human being, received a file you did not have before. Not just permission to say your guy had what anyone else could already wear.

This business model reduces the game part of the game to bait on this hook. Whatever people want, or can be made to want, is dangled at ten bucks a pop, fifty items at a time. Eough rubes get gouged for hundreds or thousands of dollars, such that the total revenue exceeds what the studio would get, even if they sold everybody the full-price game three separate times.

I care about those victims. You delight in their exploitation.

Nothing short of banning the abuse would work. We're talking about game designers. Manipulating people into enjoying certain behaviors is literally their job. People finally recognized lootboxes are bad - so they sold gave away the boxes and sold keys. Or sold gems. Or insisted it's just cosmetics. Or-- none of it's fucking different! It's all the same shit! You're all being dragged against the grindstone, using the same tricks that make games fun in the first place. The whole product is an excuse to keep grinding away at you until you decide to open your wallet and look away.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

If you want to say that certain types of business models, like paying for RNG where you don't know what you're buying, are predatory, I would be with you on that.

But your extreme hardline stance of "nothing should cost money ever" is not a reasonable place to draw the line. At least some of what you're railing against should be perfectly fine.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Nothing inside a video game. That part is not optional. I've dealt with too many cranks who see me arguing - JUST SELL GAMES - and then go 'you want it for free!' No, folks, you want it for free. You want to play endlessly-updated games, 'subsidized by teenage hormones.' You imagine that you would never be taken for ungodly sums of money.

Even if you're right, you're counting on other people being taken for all the money you're not paying, and more. That's what it means, when this abuse makes more money.

Predatory abuse is inseparable from this business model. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. You can be made to want whatever bullshit they're allowed to push. That's how games work. They mechanically convince you to value arbitrary nonsense.

edit: oh shit, I thought I hit submit on this five hours ago.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

I do want updated games, yes. My favorite games wouldn't be my favorite games if 1.0 was all we ever got.

Some games have predatory models, and I do oppose that. But only when it actually is predatory. I take issue with how you're trying to say nothing should ever be sold, even when what's being sold is perfectly fair.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

I take issue with how you're still lying about what I said. 'Things being sold' is my entire drive. Did you miss it, in all caps? The problem is this farce of charging real money for permission to use what's already in a game you already paid for.

Games were updated before this nonsense was possible. This business model is only like fifteen years old. Unreal Tournament '99 had updates and new content for years, because people kept buying the game.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

I'm not missing, I'm saying that your hardline stance against things being sold isn't reasonable.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

You're repeatedly misrepresenting my stance after several clear and specific corrections.

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 1 week ago

I don't "delight in their exploitation", I am one of the people who buy this stuff.

I am not a victim just because you decide I am. I have some say in this.

So hell yeah, bait me, daddy. To this day, Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably the best gaming experience I've ever had. I was there at ground floor, bought every character, watched every tournament, got competitive. I ended up with three copies of the game, all 100%-ed and with hundreds of hours of play.

And the only thing that bums me out is that they had to bail out of it early, presumably to go make Marvel Tokon.

I will be on ground floor for Tokon, and I will be funding that mouse engine with a bunch of piecemeal cash, I'm sure.

And I need you to listen to me when I tell you that it's going to be on purpose, that I'm not a victim, that I hope that treadmill lasts for a good long while and that the game is good enough to support it.

So please spare me the benevolent outrage. I don't need your protection from my own taste. I would very much appreciate an offline-playable version of the game I can buy with all the DLC down the line, like I did for Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Street Fighter IV, and thanks to the weirdly wholesome interaction between developers and the FGC I may actually get that at some point to support tournament play. But otherwise? Nobody is complaining. You can go save somebody else.

And hey, I say this being a big fan of single player games, and a big supporter of physical media and game preservation. But you come here to tell me that some of my favourite games —and I'm talking game-changing experiences I cherish deeply— should have been illegal and I just don't know better? Yeah, not gonna fly, Hillary.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like.

Uh huh.

So hell yeah, bait me, daddy.

Nope, pulling the chute on this conversation.

That's somehow worse than the continued lying about banning games when I am talking about a bu-si-ness mo-dellll. Go fuck your strawman alone.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

We're saying the games we like couldn't exist without the business models you want to ban. How does something like Dragon Ball FighterZ continue to expand if you are forbidding them from selling anything that would make character expansions possible?

If you want to say "nothing should cost money ever", then the natural outcome of that is that we just don't get new characters anymore. In effect, you are banning these games by making it impossible for them to exist like this.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Stop lying about what I said. "Nothing inside a video game" does not mean "nothing ever."

And you know goddamn well that fighting games had incremental re-releases, decades before this abuse was possible.

Or, sell actual expansions. You want characters to cost twenty bucks each? Fine, sell that like a game, not like a fucking hat. If it's on your hard drive, in your game, you already fucking have it, and charging real money is a scam.

Or, if you want continuing revenue for an online service - make it a service. Sell subscriptions. Oh sorry, do people not like that? Yeah no shit, because it's up-front about how much it costs, rather than luring people in and gouging them for untold sums.

Or, a game comes out, and plainly exists, and doesn't become the version that's squeezed a billion dollars out of ten percent of players over ten years. Oh well! TF2 without this bullshit would still be TF2. People would still be playing 2fort, forever, the same way they're still doing Ryu vs Ken on Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I do not respect the dishonest conflation of 'FighterZ doesn't get to expand forever' with 'FighterZ would be banned.'

Zero thought for all the games that genuinely don't exist, because publishers killed projects to demand live-service flops. Zero thought for all the novel software people could have spent money on, instead of dropping hundreds in one game that barely changes year-to-year. You're stuck on what exists, as if any change would mean all of it disappears, and you're magically robbed of that past.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Nah, some thoughts.

But not everything is black and white. And in the spectrum of grey there are plenty of in-game sales that are better than the alternative.

Again, I would much rather buy the characters one by one and have the all-in-one box come out later than have to wait for the big box and pay full price for it.

I am genuinely baffled about why you think that's worse than "pay me for the game every month or I take it away". I am even more baffled by how you think that distinction is somehow logical beyond personal preference. Your being adamant about this doesn't make it make sense.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Charging for anything inside a game is like applying a dollar value to soccer goals. It's a category error, exploited for profit. I am fundamentally opposed to this system of manipulating people into wanting arbitrary nonsense and then charging actual money for it. Your glib endorsement of that manipulation does not make it rational.

And this is the shallow end. Characters, you can almost sorta kinda argue, as sloppy expansions. Skins? Fuck off. A bottomless pit of manufactured discontent. Plainly sufficient to wring billions out of people for a game that's "free." Or for a game that's forty fucking dollars and will gladly take another hundred dollars every single year. And characters in a 1v1 fighter are drastically different from MOBA bullshit, where having the wrong options can ruin an hour of four other people's lives.

People are rightly incensed by efforts to charge $80 to own one video game.

This is an entire market of games where you can pay $1000 and still not have the whole thing.

Something's fucky.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

This is an entire market of games where you can pay $1000 and still not have the whole thing.

Those aren't the games we're talking about. We're talking about DBFZ, an example of fixed DLC being sold at a reasonable price, which you want to dishonestly conflate with more predatory models in order to say that nothing should be sold ever.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

"We" includes the guy saying "skins are fine," in reply to the same comment.

Quick search, and... yeah FighterZ specifically still has a $60 base price, a $95 version with some annual pass, and a $110 version with additional content not covered by the pass... and several eyebrow-raising "stamps." There's three hundred of those. They seem to be static character images? They cost several dollars each. So do the voice packs. Music's $15 per pack. Assuming - assuming - the character bundles are cheaper, and include everybody, there's also $80 of them.

So you can definitely spend at least $200 and still be tickled for a deluge of whateverthefuck stamps are for.

Two of those character unlocks were day-one. Not quite the obvious scam of on-disc DLC, but still pretty fuckin' blatant. 'Hey thanks for buying our game, and extra-buying the exclusive preorder bullshit... saaay, you didn't want the powered-up versions of these popular characters, did you? Well don't be a freeloader, pay up.'

If I buy the game, right now, all of those characters are in the game... but I don't get them. I can get my ass kicked by them. But I can't select them. Not until I pony up at least double the price of the actual game. And then apparently I'll be subject to the same predatory bullshit for some JPEGs in chat. (If all characters are unlockable through gameplay, but you can 'pay to skip the grind,' that is predatory bullshit.)

This game is one of the less skeezy examples, and they still manage to turn an unremarkable amount of content into an obscene total price. It's on sale on Steam, and it still costs $130. 'But you can pay less up-front!' is the problem.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

"We" includes the guy saying "skins are fine," in reply to the same comment.

Yes, optional skins are fine. I agree with that statement.

If I buy the game, right now, all of those characters are in the game... but I don't get them. I can get my ass kicked by them. But I can't select them.

This is a good thing, because it means that you can still remain compatible with any opponent even if you choose to stay on the base game. The alternative was the old model where you HAD to buy every upgrade from Street Fighter IV to Super Street Fighter IV to Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition to Ultra Street Fighter IV, or else you were left behind and could no longer play with the rest of the playerbase that moved on to the latest edition.

Would you rather have that be mandatory? Is that the model you want to go back to?

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Skins are predatory bullshit. Skins are surely the majority of this abuse, by revenue. Skins are the easiest way to charge $1000 and still give someone a fraction of the content in one video game. Skins aren't trivial to create... but you sure can crank 'em out.

The model I want to go back to is where buying the game means you get the whole god damn game. Letting people have content, but not use it, is inseparable from anything you'd acknowledge as predatory. We can try to split those hairs, and we would fail. Nothing short of addressing the business model will solve those problem.

The only reason this bullshit can even sound defensible is that Capcom used to be even worse. Like if they sent a guy to your house to take a hammer to your cartridge, and now you can pay him five bucks at the door. Is that better? Probably. Is it tolerable? Nope.

Imagine if this applied to literal versions. 1.1 drops, with bug fixes for save corruption and some balance tweaks, and Steam wants another ten bucks for it. Would you respect if someone scoffed, 'do you want them to make you buy the whole game again?' Plainly not. Incremental changes to the game you already bought... should just go in the game you already fucking bought... because you already fucking bought it.

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Man, you really should play the game if you're trying to be mad about the additional content. It's really good and it's ten bucks on sale right now. Forty to get all the extra content. Well worth it.

The stamps are mostly premium edition filler. There are hundreds in the base game and nobody is particularly mad at the three jpegs they try to sell for two bucks as a way to pretend they added two bucks of value to your premium bundle.

The music pack is pretty solid, though. Lots of licensed anime music. Can't argue with blasting out Solid State Scouter when playing with Bardock. Just... remember to disable it if you're going to stream the game, you will get dinged for copyright infringement on Youtube. You want to get mad about something? How about selling people music as part of a game and then accusing them of infringement for streaming the game they paid for? How silly is that?

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Skins are fine. They are entirely optional. Something existing doesn't mean you must own it.

That's the part where we're not going to agree. Well, the maximalist holier-than-thou stance in general. But otherwise, you see things existing as an affront to you personally. This skin was made by someone and put in the game, and so I'm entitled to it, so it either shouldn't exist or it should be mine.

That just doesn't track. I don't feel any more entitled to some random bikini costume than I do to some random statue bundled with a collector's edition. It's faff some people may want, but I'm not being attacked because somebody is buying and selling collector's edition of Cyberpunk for 200 bucks, just like way I'm not attacked by someone buying some in-game costume.

Also, you do know pro football players get bonuses per goal, right? That comparison means different things depending on whether you know that and both are confusing.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Woe betide the poor bikini artist!

Nevermind their efforts were directed that way so the publisher could rake in hundreds of dollars, per year, for what's obviously the least impactful element of the game. Costumes would normally be an unremarkable detail - some callbacks, some easter eggs, whatever - but now they cost more than the rest of the fucking game.

Do you imagine they took more effort than the rest of the fucking game? Like the horny bonus costumes are worth more than all the effort spent on balance, and netcode, and designing the actual characters. I'll assume not, and underline: that's the total disconnect between price and value. That's the predatory exploitation, laid bare.

Those skins are the entire reason the game exists. That's what makes all the money. Street Fighter has been reduced to bait on that hook. And it still costs forty fucking dollars.

Also, you do know pro football players get bonuses per goal, right?

This subject has the most aggressively off-topic replies. 'There's different forms of value. Some are artificial. You can't just buy more soccer goals.' 'Uh--! But--!' No.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

I fundamentally disagree with your stance that any form of premium content is 'predatory'. You know what you're buying, and no one's putting a gun to your head forcing you to buy it. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's predatory.

Predatory is when gambling-based business models obfuscate true costs and result in players literally financially ruining themselves. Predatory is when FOMO strategies are aggressively pushed to pressure consumers into buying things they otherwise wouldn't. Predatory is when subscription services keep players locked into an ecosystem, with the threat that they'll lose everything if they stop paying (and it's still extremely weird to me that you called this better).

If you want to go after that kind of stuff, I would be with you. But calling everything predatory actually just makes it harder to talk about real problems. You are ruining this word.

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

There is no exploitation in charging different prices for different things. Prices aren't based on how much a thing costs to make, they're based on how much people are willing to pay for it. Welcome to supply and demand.

Cosmetics are (relatively) cheap to make and sold at a high margin because they are subsidizing a game that is sold at very low price. Turns out the sticker price in DBFZ with its what, 24 characters at launch is twenty bucks or so cheaper than good old Street Fighter 2 with its eight characters.

There are a bunch of ways we've been shaving cost from games to keep that somewhat artificial price point. Selling people who are willing to spend more a bunch of non-game-relevant stuff at a higher margin is just one of them. You are extremely outraged by this for some reason, I am very glad.

Because yeah, sure, I spent like 200 bucks in my copy of the game (probably a bit more, I got the Switch version, too) and I subsidized a number of more casual players that only bought the base game.

That's cool. I get more people to play against and they get a cheaper game up front. I played that game for 500 to 1000 hours, I spent 3-5 cents per hour. I have no regrets. Didn't even have to pay a subscription for it, my physical version will live forever and I can still play my Steam copy with forty-plus characters.

You are commited to being mad about this on our behalf, turns out us spenders don't need your protection. If you don't like it, that's fine. You don't have to get it. We'll pick up your slack.

Which is not to say everything is fair game or that there aren't predatory practices at play in gaming. It's to say you're obscuring those by crying wolf because you like being mad about things and have fixated on this in particular to an unreasonable degree.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

And you know goddamn well that fighting games had incremental re-releases, decades before this abuse was possible.

Of course I know, I know how much it fucking sucked! No one wants to go back to that!

You'd rather spend $60 on Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, then spend $60 on Street Fighter II': Champion Edition, then spend $60 on Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, then spend $60 on Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, then spend $60 on Super Street Fighter II Turbo?

That's better to you than being able to get the patches for free, with the option of buying characters at a reasonable price, all while still retaining compatibility with opponents on the latest version even if you don't spend a dime?

How is that better? How?

Or, if you want continuing revenue for an online service - make it a service. Sell subscriptions. Oh sorry, do people not like that?

No, no I don't like that! I would much rather buy a character once than have to subscribe to them forever! If I buy a character I get to keep them, if I subscribe I don't. And I'm not getting gouged, I know what the price tag is. If anything, a subscription is gouging because I have to keep paying again and again in order to keep what I should've only had to pay for once.

I'm actually baffled that you're seriously trying to suggest subscriptions as a better alternative. Like... seriously? Really?

I do not respect the dishonest conflation of 'FighterZ doesn't get to expand forever' with 'FighterZ would be banned.'

FighterZ as we know it would not exist in your world. In your world, it'd just be the 1.0 base game and that'd be it, but I know you know we're talking about what FighterZ was able to become over the course of its lifespan thanks to DLC.

You're taking this needlessly aggressive tone accusing us of misconstruing you, but I know you know damn well what we're saying here while you keep misconstruing us. Don't accuse me of being dishonest when you're playing dumb like this.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Subscriptions are honest. Like actual sales - where you get a thing you didn't have, in exchange for money. Paying money, to be allowed to use part of the game you already have, is not a sale.

SF6 fucking launched with $120 in DLC. Like yeah, you bought the game, at full price... but fuck you, pay us again. Breaking up the fuckening into individual characters, trickled out over years, is psychological manipulation to disguise that abuse.

And I’m not getting gouged, I know what the price tag is.

... the fact you can pay hundreds of dollars and still not have all of a 1v1 fighting game is not made problematic through mystery. No shit you can see the price tag. That price is obscene. Past abuses being worse is no kind of excuse.

I swear to god, Capcom could charge the price of a whole game for each new character bundle, and there'd still be people up my ass about how it must be fine because it was the same in the 90s. You know how I know? Because they do. Annual character passes are $30! Does that get you everything that comes out, that year? Does it, fuck.

I know you know we’re talking about what FighterZ was able to become

Of course you do, because it's what that paragraph was about. How am I the one "playing dumb?" You're still insisting there's no way a game could be updated - aside from the other two ways you don't like! - so that's the same as the game being banned. Because saying it's banned sounds really bad, and serious, and is totally the same thing as saying Capcom doesn't need real negotiable currency in order to change the color of a character's pants.

But hey, this is only the shallow end of a business model that's turning the games industry into a frustration-based casino. Why worry?

[-] missingno@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

DLC is honest. I get a thing in exchange for money. I know what the price tag is, and I'm happy to pay what I think is a fair price. And I only pay once to keep the thing I paid for, unlike a subscription.

Let me just cut straight past all your deflecting. Do you think that the final version of DBFZ, with all of its DLC, sold at its price, should be able to exist in this form?

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

I'm not participating in your all-or-nothing hypothetical. We just discussed how this exact game could have emerged without this exact business model.

And the version of the game with all the damn characters is the version where you had to keep paying to get all the damn characters.

If you mean, from today onward, should the game be priced piecemeal on Steam, then no. But it doesn't magically revert to its launch state. I want them to sell the whole game... like regular. This is not a sprawling MMO. There's not terabytes of content. It's a 1v1 fighter with like thirty characters. If Arc honestly thinks the damn thing should be $130 when everything's 70% off, let them stick that single price on it, and good fucking luck.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

I don't think you understand how much work it takes to design and balance that many characters in a serious competitive fighting game. Serious question, do you play competitive fighters at all, do you know anything about how they work?

In fact, the best way to ensure they're all polished is to start small and expand incrementally over time. This is the right model for a competitive fighter. You're deliberately ignoring the path to get from point A to point B if you think that in your world it would just be the final version right away. I'm saying that in your world, the fighting games I know and love would not be the games that I know and love.

Personally, my favorite game of all time is Skullgirls, and they have been very open and transparent about all the expenses involved in developing a much smaller cast. Look up their finances, look up how long it took their small team to get from the eight characters at launch to what they have today. And I'm very happy with every cent I spent on that game, they didn't scam me by offering more of my favorite game. This is a game that has entertained me for a decade. Even if I count all the money I've spent on traveling to tournaments, which is far more than I spent on the game, it's still quite possibly the most efficient form of entertainment I've ever gotten my money's worth from.

Can I have the games that I know and love, in the format that allowed them to be the games that I know and love? There is no third option here.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

You’re deliberately ignoring the path to get from point A to point B if you think that in your world it would just be the final version right away.

Who are you talking to?

We just discussed how to incrementally build a game, without this specific business model. I am only against the business model. Do you know how to address that, without slapfighting a strawman? 'Game design is hard' doesn't excuse this creeping systemic abuse.

Again: this is the low end, and it still expects $130 for an eight-year-old 1v1 fighter. 70% off. This business model inflates prices to the absurd extremes, even when it's not an antipattern vortex.

[-] missingno@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

I'm talking to you. You're living in fantasy land claiming these games could be the exact same thing without the business model that made them possible. They would not.

Can I have the games that I know and love, in the format that allowed them to be the games that I know and love? There is no third option here.

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

Hey, if latching on to the jokes helps you ignore the point be my guest, but the point stands with or without your acknowledgement.

[-] Maestro@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

But arcades!' Are renting someone else's hardware. Different thing. This did abuse not exist fifteen years ago.

Yes it did, and even longer. Quite a few arcade games were made with intentional difficulty spikes to suck up as many quarters as possible, not to be a fair game.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Read what you quoted.

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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
207 points (99.5% liked)

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