Patient gamers gang rise up.

Best thing to do, is not buy the game at all. Whales don't like spending money in empty games, they have no one to show off to. Simply avoiding the mtx isn't good enough.

The big two are whales, which they actively target and exploit the addiction to the games, and kids. A surprisingly high amount of parents just leave their credit cards in the console and let the kids buy.

Funny, everything is about protect the kids now but nothing is being done about predatory micro transactions

we only have a switch and a few ios games, we pay for game, play game. Check done.

I'm saddened by the phenomenon because there's plenty of evidence that the audiences for these most of these games hate the experience, but they can't stop playing because they've become victims of predatory psychological tactics designed to keep them addicted and their wallets wide open. These publishers and studios literally hire psychologists who specialize in generating this addiction, using models optimized to prey on their own users as much as humanly possible. It's sickening. The sports games are especially shameless about this. Ruining people's finances and their core sense of financial responsibility to fatten their pockets. I don't know how they sleep at night. Sociopaths, the lot of them.

The big problem is that a company will look at something like World of Warcraft/Destiny at the height of their popularity and think "We want that!"

Then they'll put out a (we're being optimistic here) serviceable, good game with a respectable amount of content... but it won't be able to hold a candle to something that: already has that much content + more AND players who are already 'stuck' with the game (sunk cost, friends/family/community, etc).

So you put out a game, get a brief spurt of attention from people who are a bit bored of the same ol' same ol', but then once they breakneck through all the content you have in less than a month they turn around and head back to their comfort food game and never look back. Congratulations, you can now put out a master class on how to waste millions of dollars.

In order to make a game as a service now you need either an extremely good hook, or you need to not only be comparable to an existing game but also EXCEED what that game offers and continue to provide content at a staggering speed until you've coerced people to have invested enough in the game to then be their comfort food/sunk cost game of choice.

yeah, unfortunately everything and everyone is doing their dangdest to get there - that reoccurring revenue is toooo tempting.

We keep seeing a pivot to “services” in so many industries, from movies and tv to music to even Apple - expect the same from big gaming.

Sure, there will be some justifications for the new hardware, but it t will be for the niche hardcore gamers, but not for the majority.

Makes sense, it’s just the way it’s all going.