30
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
30 points (63.2% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
6216 readers
317 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Again I find myself on your side ChillDude... 100% with you on this one.
The biggest issue with this monetization model is that the developers ARE REQUIRED TO INVALIDATE your progress in some way. When a person buys everything they need and still plays the game, their only contribution is literally stealing bandwidth. Unless they're contributing to some external resource.
Being treated like that is extremely dehumanizing so I can't in good conscience put any money in these kinds of games.
THIS IS EXACTLY THE POINT THAT I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MAKING.
This is why it's categorically impossible for there to be any "good" examples of these games. As long as they're following this model, they can't be okay and they must be boycotted by anyone who gives a shit about games.
I think this is why I was so frustrated, when people were asking me for examples of this model fucking shit up. It's not about specific examples. Examples aren't needed. There simply isn't any way for this shit to be anything other than harmful.
It's like if I said "getting whacked on the thumb with a sledgehammer will cause injury" and people were like "uhhh, could you cite some examples of this claim being true?"
Like, no. Just no. It's fucking obvious. Asking for citations to prove that obvious harm is harmful is intellectually dishonest.
I've got a great example of what you described (not to be confused with good) There's a mobile game called "Hooked inc." I installed it on a whim while looking for something to similar to an old PC game I used to play. I played until things slowed down and to really progress in a timely manner you needed to spend the paid currency, but you can acquire it slowly by watching ads. So I did for a bit. Had the idea of an auto clicker macro so it could accumulate while I sleep, put an android emu on my laptop and did that until I discovered that the creator hadn't anticipated keyboard access and had left in some shortcuts (presumably for testing). One button , i, u, or l maybe, gave you a skill point to spend, another gave a spin of the wheel without watching any ads. I maxed out the skill points and set a macro to constantly spin the wheel. Bought all the passive bonus characters and leveled them up, got tons of the rare items and leveled them. Made it significantly farther. Did a little math to see how long it would take to finish grinding out passive bonus levels and experience to get further. It would take days or weeks of spinning. Made me really feel bad for those watching ads thinking it'll help them make some progress. Uninstalled the game a couple years, reinstalled to see if my "progress" has been wiped. Nope, but with all of the additions it felt rather insignificant. They'd added more grindy ad mechanics.
Sorry for the novel, Tldr for these games you can watch ads nonstop for weeks and have nothing to show for it. Better off uninstalling.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. And honestly, if it had just remained on the mobile platform, I could dismiss it. Like, "well, people are free to waste their time and/or money."
But these new games like "Honky Stair Rail" and "Getshit Implants" are available on PC and consoles. They're moving into territory that has traditionally been occupied by less hyper-monetized games. That means the developers of traditional games will be feeling more and more pressure to add hyper-monetization features into their games.
It's scary. As I've mentioned, that could eventually lead to a second video game industry crash.
Right, it's invaded games in a big way, all the big shooters like COD & Fortnite are basically cosmetic stores pushing micro transactions and battle passes. Now games are built with features paywalled and the only updates after launch are adding paid cosmetics.