To most of us, this is probably just a summary of events over the past year or so. But, it’s good to know that this sort of news is reaching non-gaming channels.
Blame gamers for embracing every single greedy move and asking for more. If you shout how fucked up this is and still open your wallet, you are the problem.
Another issue, those people aren’t on here. Or reddit. We’re preaching to the choir and idk what to do outside of standing outside of a Gamestop and trying to lecture people about MTX, but that seems like a good way to get ignored or beat up.
The „gamer“ label has become sort of redundant given the industry is much bigger than movies and music combined now. They‘re just consumers and no matter what silly decisions some of them make, they need protection from certain practices for the good of all of us. Just blaming a small portion of them doesn‘t help us out of any mess.
Let’s blame the consumer for buying something they like, and not the system of capitalism for it’s inevitable march to enshittification which happens across all industries amirght?
Yeah I love Gabi but it hurts that she doesn’t even seem to question whether or not she should stop buying these games. Like, I get that you love Pokemon but you acknowledge yourself that this shit isn’t going to change if people keep buying this shit.
Gamers aren’t a monolith. I’m not going to blame the people who appreciate gaming as an art form when the problem is the people who will buy the latest Madden and Cod games every year
I’m sure there are cases where someone is spending money they shouldn’t, or they know better, but we have to acknowledge that a lot of tactics used are the same predatory strategies that take advantage of human addiction. I don’t think people should gamble, or bet on sports but that shit is everywhere, and it’s normalized. It’s no wonder why so many people fall into it because they don’t think it’s dangerous.
We can scream at people and tell them to stop, but that’s not a real solution, at least I don’t see how that really works. A predatory studio puts out a game that people want to play, then if it fails because people don’t buy enough, they just shut everything down and cancel the content, even when people want it. I think there examples of this happening now.
Vote with your wallet means people with more money get more votes than you do. MTX does not target people at large, they are fishing for the small amount of whales for whom money is no object. It ruins gaming for the rest of us.
There is a reason industries get regulated. Swill milk killed a ton of babies, and sold like hot cakes.
MTX is also aiming for kids stealing thier parents credit cards and charging them up. At a minimum they ask ONLY for game credits for Xmas/bdays to burn on games so they have cool skins to brag to friends about.
I played multiple supercell games (coc, bb, cr, be) for years, each, without paying a dime. They were well polished and fun games, and I got to play them for free.
I also really enjoy foetnite. Again, well polished. I play for free.
Will I ever compete at the highest level? No. And omg I’ll never own all the skins! Lol But I’ve had plenty of fun, because other people will pay the game makers for me. This is fantastic, as far as I’m concerned.
Sure, mtx can be implemented terribly, but I’ve also benefitted from it’s implementation as well.
You playing for free illustrates my point perfectly. You are there to provide entertainment for whales who actually pay for the game. The deal is that you get some entertainment of your own so that you stay around. But the game is not made for you, and that becomes apparent every time the owner puts the screws on to extract some more money.
I get your point, but I disagree because they need me for the whales, so the game has to also be made for the non whales as well. The payment system is made for extracting money from whales.
But really I was responding to the claim that it was ruined for me. And I find that to be the exact opposite: I care about having fun playing a well polished game, and now can do that for free. It’s like the opposite of being ruined.
Up to a point. I mean they have to get a large player base still and if by and large gamers just didn’t pre-order and buy the latest fucking re-hashed, yearly version of COD, I doubt just the whales would be enough to sustain them since whales only get gratification of pay to win against other people.
I mean look at some of the latest rounds of shitty GaaS. Suicide squad, Marvel avengers. No playerbase, not enough whales to sustain.
The biggest portion of people buying this stuff aren’t “gamers” in the way that it’s often used around these circles. It’s the millions of people who buy coins for their Bejeweled clone of choice and have never owned a console in their life. And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world. I remember a Twitch streamer talking about how heartbreaking it was when AC6 came out and gave you the full color wheel plus multiple channels to customize your mech, and their chat was full of kids shocked that you didn’t have to buy skins or color packs. That’s how it used to be. You’d unlock skins by playing the game, not buying them in the store, but that hasn’t been the case in decades now.
And the often touted story of the whale with more money than sense is a myth. Do they exist? Sure. But the vast majority of money coming from mtx from gamers is from people who are psychologically vulnerable to addiction/gambling and people with a poor ability to comprehend finances like kids. These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way. From lootboxes to battle passes and seasonal content to daily quests and washing money through funny money currencies, it’s all been designed to prey upon people with addiction issues, ADHD, training young kids into gambling addicts, etc. It’s the Lotto tickets and pumping extra oxygen into the air of casinos and making sure there’s no natural light in there so you don’t realize how long you’ve been playing slots of the gaming world. Look at WoW, with its daily quests. They train players using Skinner Box techniques to continue logging into the game and paying the monthly subscription long after they’ve stopped enjoying it because it’s become a habit and they are afraid of falling behind.
Voting with your wallet isn’t going to fix it. You’ll never get your average Facebook mom to care enough not to buy Farmville tokens or whatever, and these companies will never stop abusing psychology on their own. Only industry regulation will stop this.
Thank you kindly for your good write-up. If you were to permit it I would like to use excerpts of this in slightly rephrased forms in similar future discussions.
And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world.
That’s the real big issue here, IMO: The North Korea approach. Kids are starting to become able to spend money who were indoctrinated with this. Because to them it’s the north. It’s just a part of this entertainment that you continuously spend small amounts of cash. To them it’s normality.
What’s the saying? Something like, “There’s plenty of fools in the game, and there’s a new one born every minute.”
I feel like the casual mobile gaming crowd falls into the same category. Regardless of how old they are, spending money on mtx is normal because they never knew a world where you just bought a game rather than downloading one onto your phone and putting up with both ads and mtx.
It’s like how words like “unalive” have entered common usage - people have gotten so used to obeying what advertisers want on the internet that it’s started dictating daily life, especially for younger people.
The unregulated gambling aspect designed to exploit human psychology to target vulnerable people to spend money that they probably can’t afford to spend is also a huge issue, but that at least would be easy enough to regulate, if politicians cared enough to do something about it.
These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way.
Those are the real criminals! With all the good they could have done in today’s society, choosing to use their knowledge and training to manipulate people against their best interest is just the worst!
Don’t forget that they were hired by companies looking to make a profit off of exploiting the psychology of people and that the blame also lies with those who hired them for those jobs.
The same companies who have fought tooth and nail to prevent regulation to protect those exploited by these practices when politicians have actually cared enough to try to do something about it.
The gamers?! I don’t hear anyone saying they want loot boxes. This is 100 percent the devs and the companies that put all the best loot behind the loot boxes. Good games such as FFXIV, does not.
Capitalism ruins all in its insatiable pursuit for more and more. Perhaps this isn’t the ultimate way to live our lives? What if there was other undiscovered ways to live our lives? How could we ever discover them if we allow the status quo to stagnate?
In before the capitalist apologists telling us how bad all the other systems are that nobody suggested we use and how great capitalism is while rejecting any suggestions to how it could be reined in.
I think for calling out a sponsorship on a video about greed?
I don’t generally begrudge content creators their sponsorships, gotta pay the bills somehow, god knows youtube’s going to do everything in its power to make sure videos get demonetized.
I disagree with the premise. Nothing has “ruined gaming”. On the production side, it’s a booming industry increasingly making footholds in popular culture. On the consumption side, players have more choice now than they have ever had. Nobody can go load up the front page of steam or even better, the top 100 most played from last year, and tell me with a straight face that we’re worse off than in the 90s or early 2000s without making an appeal to quality that will be heavily colored by their own nostalgia.
Now, are there a lot of games with greedy decision making, loot boxes, etc? Absolutely, nobody disputes that. I personally think there is nuance even there, because I genuinely am not bothered (as a player) by some forms of loot boxes or season passes. Even if you discount every game with those options though, you still have more choice than I did as a kid.
I don’t think that’s a reasonable paraphrase of my argument. I think you’re perfectly entitled to be bothered by things like loot boxes in gaming. I am more than troubled by their implementation in a lot of games aimed at children, like I imagine a lot of us are.
That is a far cry from saying “gaming is ruined”, and that’s really my entire point. One or even several things you’re bothered by existing doesn’t mean that the entire industry or state of gaming is in any way “ruined”.
you’re defending the indefensible. Modern gaming is largely shit. games are boring, with little to no replay value other than “seasons”. Games are regularly released in total shit show conditions only to be patched later. Your argument of ‘we have so much more’ is a bad one as it doesn’t matter how many games we have available, if the large majority of them are garbage or in a garbage state. of course the more shit you throw at the wall, the more will eventually stick. Baldur’s Gate is a once in a generation game.
I just don’t agree that the majority of games are garbage or in a garbage state. There are plenty of good games coming out. I’ve listed several in this thread. Baldur’s Gate is a once in a generation game. So is Elden Ring. So is Outer Wilds. Not being exhaustive here, just some of my favorites. How many “once in a generation” games are required before we can admit that there are good options out there? The state of gaming should not be defined by its lows, but by the whole.
Hey, listen though, I’m just here to have a discussion, not trying to change your mind. There is a lot of bad going on in video games, and I don’t like it either. This is really a matter of perspective at the end of the day, so there’s no right or wrong answer here.
You’re listing games over a year old. Steam had over 14k new releases in 23. There’s maybe 10 good games in any given year, and generally less than 3 great games. They are absolutely swimming in a pool od shit games.
It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose, and I was really just naming semi-recent games that I enjoyed, so I assumed I didn’t need to be exhaustive of every “good” game that has come out to satisfy the argument. There are hundreds of McDonald’s for every French Laundry, dozens of Marvel and adaption movies for every Best Picture winner, and the same applies to games.
I genuinely insist that you focus on that pool of shitty games if you want to. I can see how concerned you and a lot of others in this thread would be, because that is only going to grow as development becomes more accessible. I’m going to focus on the high points, play the good indies in currently backed up on, and have a good time. I don’t expect that supply to dry up any time soon.
I wouldn’t consider Outer Wilds a “once in a generation” game. I was a lack luster space shooter. Elden Ring is right on that edge, good, great even, but it’s difficulty limits the player base. But you’re just naming recent “GOTY” candidates. Of course those ones are good. You’ve named 3-5 games that are “good”. how many shit games come out that are absolute trash? For every Elden Ring there are 15 trash knockoffs on Steam. For every Outer Wilds, there is an “Anthem”. “just some of MY favorites”, again, you’re using YOUR bias to try and prove your point. I know many gamers who didn’t like Baldur’s Gate, Elden Ring, or Outer Wilds because they aren’t “multiplayer” in the way that say, Helldivers or Conan or Apex are. Throw enough shit at the wall and something’s going to stick. There’s a reason emulators are so big. Old games had a certain charm that makes them almost infinitely replayable. People today can pick up Super Mario Bros and have a ball. Mario 3 is one of the best games ever made. Super Metroid is a masterpiece. None of these games had to resort to “seasons” or “loot boxes”. They delivered full, complete games. Publishers today just bank on DLC and “games as a service” to make money instead of making a fun, complete game. I get bug fixes, sure. Games today are far more complex than they ever have been. Season passes, Battle passes, DLC, Loot boxes, skins, etc all drive at the point being made here. Modern gaming isn’t about the game its about how much the publisher can get into your wallet. THAT is why modern gaming sucks.
You’re confusing Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds (no big deal, I have to remind myself constantly lol). Trust me, Outer Wilds is a once in a generation game, at least for some of us.
I don’t really see how you can on one hand accuse me of using my biases and then turn around and say that three GOTY candidates are not actually all that great because you know some people who didn’t like them all that much. That feels inconsistent to me. I was also never arguing that gaming is in a great place because I like these games, but rather just because these were highly-rated (on average by both users and critics).
I have additionally addressed multiple times that I am by no means saying that there are not bad games being released or that there are not problematic patterns, especially in the AAA space. Seeing all these arguments about loot boxes and season passes when I have explicitly mentioned that digging past that layer of titles is necessary to find the good games (which I have listed non-exhaustive examples of above) is just giving me the impression that you are not truly wanting to engage with the core conceit here. You seem very passionate about this and there’s nothing wrong with that, but honestly, I’m not a huge fan of your argument style and I think I’d rather just agree to disagree on this very inconsequential topic. Feel free to respond, but I will likely not reply to your next response.
No, I’m not confusing them. There’s nothing once in a generation about either one to be frank. they are fine games, better than most, but in no way would I define either one a once in a generation game.
You’re putting words into my mouth. If anyone is arguing in poor faith here it’s you. I didn’t say those games were bad, I said there are people that didn’t like them. and you LITERALLY did say gaming was good because you liked those games and they were good in YOUR opinion. I like all those games. Baldur’s gate was one of the best games I can remember playing. Elden ring was amazing after i got over the difficulty curve.
the issue YOU’RE not seeing here is you keep defending these AAA titles with loot boxes and everything by “digging past” it. What do all the GOTY titles we’ve spoke about have in common? no loot boxes. no seasons. none of that bullshit. there is no concessions to be made. your argument of “gaming is in a good place because there are a couple good games that you have to dig to find” is flawed. There is ALWAYS going to be games that rise to the top. always. the point of the original article is that we are in a crap time in gaming, not because there are not ANY good games, but because the majority of what’s being released relies on Loot boxes, seasons, etc to make money instead of making and selling a GOOD game FIRST. The majority of games being released are made with a “service” in mind, be it season passes, battle passes, loot boxes, nickel and diming players to death.
and your “stab” about “you seem very passionate” is a bullshit line. that entire last paragraph is a cop-out because you have no argument that makes sense and you know it so you’re “bowing out of the conversation” in a sad attempt to save face. Feel free to respond but I likely don’t give a shit.
You sure do argue in good faith buddy, for sure. You can even admit when you made a common tiny mistake that I gave you every bit of grace on!
Your paragraphs are just badly-formatted run-on thoughts that don’t even accurately address my points, you completely misunderstand what I mean by “dig through”, you confront random asides instead of the central point I’m making, and you manage to show your ass harder than anyone else in this thread. Wasn’t even here to argue, just wanted to have a discussion on gaming and everyone else here managed to disagree with me politely and just discuss without being a raging asshole. All of that is why I didn’t want to continue my argument with you.
You still haven’t addressed my argument? I’ll wait for that message. To be clear, here it is: While there ARE a multitude of bad games with bad practices out there, particularly in the AAA space, there has NEVER been a more accessible period for indies and AA studios to create games. This has led to an EXPLOSION of solid games without predatory practices. All told, I believe there are MORE of these good AA/indie options than there were good AAA options in the past. I listed some of my favorite above (NON-EXHAUSTIVELY and only as EXAMPLES, not as a basis for my argument, which you ignored TIME and TIME again to set up your STRAWMAN). These games were also highly rated by the industry as a whole, which is why we’re talking about them at all. Of course, this entire discussion is SUBJECTIVE, so there will always be people who despair at the given state of any industry. I though, believe there are PLENTY of fantastic, non-predatory, non-loot-boxed, non-season-passed, highly rated games out there. The fact that there are also a large number of bad games out there too DOES NOT HURT ME if I don’t play them and I have those good options to play. FOR ME, that’s why gaming is in a good state. And to drive another point home, I’M NOT TRYING TO CHANGE YOUR MIND! Hate it if you want. I was just trying to discuss the topic, not have a big fight with a stranger on the internet.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever been called a boomer lol. All good if yall feel a different way. I just think if we have BG3, Helldivers, and Elden Ring in the span of 3 years, it’s hard to say we’re at a loss for good games.
Edit: Also, “ruined” implies a previous better state, which is what I was addressing with my reference to that time period. I figured this would be obvious, but I’m picking up now that some people are thinking I just took a chance to talk about how much harder my childhood was. Possibly just bad wording on my part.
Maybe watch the video lol? She acknowledges games are better then they’ve ever been, she’s just pointing out how corporate greed has created a trend of publishers forcing half-baked games out the front door and fixing them later (or not).
But that’s my point, how is that “ruining gaming”? Her words in the video do not support the premise. Just don’t play those games, and you have a larger backlog than ever of games that she admits are better than they’ve ever been. The presence of bad games does not ruin the good ones. This video is just rage bait for upset gamers.
Totally disagree. The homogenization and enshittification of AAA games has meant that there is less choice than ever. More and more established IPs are tanking in quality and there aren’t enough new ones to replace them. There are certainly “more games”, but the problem with this quantity of quality style of production means that there are fewer standouts and unique experiences to actually choose from. This has resulted in entire genres collapsing under their own weight. There are still unique, standout games but I’d hardly say there are now that 10-15 years ago. And the ones we do have are more often than not made by indie and AA studios.
I’d argue that the indie and AA studios are making games today that are as good as or better than the pre-enshitification AAA games of the 90s and 00s. Maybe not quite as high in production value for cinematics, but on par or better for game content and play.
Like I’ve been largely ignoring AAA options and still have a huge backlog of games and generally have fun with new ones I try out, including finding new gems to add to my favourites.
So I guess if you have a base assumption that great games need to be AAA to even be contenders, the gaming situation looks worse than it did in the past, but IMO that assumption is flawed.
The problem is the AAA games are what prop up gaming consoles, which are the only reasonable way for the average person to afford gaming. All the best AA and indie games have predominantly been on PC. All my favorites are still PC only.
In the year like, 6 months to a year I’ve seen what looks like maybe start of many of them coming to consoles, but we’re still years out from seeing what becomes of that. As for right now, AA studios and indies can only afford to port things to consoles due to the large console adoption, and large console adoption is due to AAA games. If consoles stop being worth it for Sony and Microsoft to make, people will have to buy PCs. And PCs are expensive even to those with the experience to build things themselves and know how to shop for what they need to have a good experience.
The Steam Deck is priced similarly to consoles and gives access to a lot of AA and indie games. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the divide between consoles and PC gets fuzzier and fuzzier as time goes on and consoles eventually just become specific PC configurations that games can optimize for.
Plus, on that note, if you look at overall cost, buying AAA games can add up pretty quickly to outpace the cost of building a PC. If you buy enough games, a console + AAA game collection can surpass the cost of a high end PC + AA and indie game collection, especially if you’re a patient gamer and can wait for good Steam sales. Every month or so, I’ve been buying a handful of games on sale for on average less than half the price of a single AAA new release. Building a PC just has a higher up front cost (though patience can help there, too).
The only way PC gaming is not affordable to the average person is if they’re playing AAA titles. I have a GTX 780 worth ~$60 that I still use to play many indie titles like Party Animals, Planet Crafters, Stardew Valley, Lethal Company, Content Warning, etc.
I don’t think what we’re saying is at odds though. Thinking that AAA games are in a terrible place is a totally valid opinion to have. You get at my point in the tail end of your comment though. It has never been easier for AA and indie studios to make solid games, and there has been an explosion relative to the past. I do not personally think “gaming is ruined” as a whole by AAA games sucking the same way movies aren’t ruined by Marvel and food isn’t ruined by McDonalds. Good games still exist, good movies still exist, good food still exists. Dig a little past that outer layer of the latest CoD or Assassin’s Creed and there’s a plethora of amazing, unique, non-exploitative games available. To me, that’s an argument that gaming is better than it’s ever been.
Your point in there about there being less standouts is really the one that gets at what I’m saying. I do disagree though. If we look at prior eras of gaming, it was almost exclusively AAA making sales and driving the direction of the industry. Even just releasing a game on a major platform was insanely prohibitive. Now, I have a massive laundry list of totally awesome indies. Outer Wilds made me cry, Return of the Obra Dinn was a concept I have never seen before, Baldur’s Gate ruined a month of my life. What series of indie or even AAA releases was able to do a run of games like that in the 360/ps3 era? We barely had xbox arcade on consoles and steam was still in bare infancy, more associated as being an orange box launcher than as a marketplace for indies.
Cause that’s all I played during the rise of microTXs. To me, the way valve went about it was literally the line between monetization and not ruining the game.
I thought that meant it can be done, all it proved looking back is publicly traded companies suck!!
I think what really started the current levels of rot was online passes for used games. They saw that people were playing without paying them directly, and wanted to stop it.
It was unpopular, as were map packs (which split the player base in online games), and here we are now with endless lootboxes and gacha elements. Sure, you can play without paying, but you’ll always feel like a second class citizen if you do. Everything you want will be held deliberately out of reach, and the aspect of “fun” has been reduced to collections and bars filling up.
It’s bred this generation of zombie gamers. I went to see my sister at Christmas, and her husband was playing Fallout 76 “doing his dailies”. I did ask what it was for and he said he didn’t really play it or want anything from the points it gives, and admitted what he was doing was kind of pointless. And then fired up the next game and did the same thing.
I tend to just stay away from multiplayer games these days. They’re pretty much all like that. The idea of playing because it’s fun is dead.
No matter how much hobbyists liked selling their games back to GameStop so the store can mark them up 500%, I have always hated that the industry of used games punished releasing fantastic short singleplayer games much much more than perpetual 2000-hour microtransaction live service games.
That crowd of gamers absolutely contributed to the fall. The general distrust of digital is acknowledged, but if people were just paying low/moderate sale prices for each SP game and keeping them, instead of paying used prices, we’d probably have fewer publishers moving this way.
No, the people who deserved it are the ones at the top with garages full of supercars and fleets of private yachts. The Bobby Koticks, the Don Mattricks, etc.
The ones who I guarantee you are NOT suffering or losing their livelihoods.
The tens of thousands of devs who got into making video games because of their deep love of them… devs who have worked countless hours and crunched over the holidays while missing out on sleep, family events and more all just because management won’t plan, can’t stop chasing trends and pivoting the project, and because they fired 10% of the team last quarter to boost the share price by $0.02.
The devs didn’t deserve any of that.
They don’t deserve to lose their jobs right after some game ships and it turns out no one wants to pay $70 plus micro transactions shoved in their faces every other round between matches.
AAA gaming is broken and many of my peers from that industry seem to be in a bad spot now at no fault of their own… but their boss’s boss’s bosses who keep steering the ship into rocks are the ones you should be throwing rotten produce at.
Man, I have to do this also. No idea why the algorithm doesn’t pick up on me not wanting to watch some idiot ranting about how videogames are woke or whatever.
Well, there’s the fact that outrage seems to drive more activity than other types of content. YouTube sees it as a more profitable option to advertise a Very Angry Gamer™ to you, even if you aren’t interested. I guess they assume that you’ll find something to watch anyhow, but if they will profit even more of they can hook you into the outrage machine.
Then there’s my personal hypothesis that in order to enable this, YouTube’s algorithm weights your demographics, subscriptions, and viewing history much more heavily than your manual inputs.
Maybe game developers should wake up and understand that people like to be able to customize their characters cosmetically and not just click to slash over and over and over again.
You want consumers to spend money based on how much effort you put into a product instead of how appealing it is to the consumer? Newsflash, that’s not how capitalism works.
Yo not gonna lie kinda vibe with this comment. I love gaming as an art and a social activity but it’s also the “sand I bury my head in”. I’m currently on a Factorio playthrough that I started purely as a distraction for my latest bout of depression.
And I do also agree greed has ruined a lot more “important” things than gaming.
But also, no need to shame people for wanting something they love to be free from corporate greed. Be cool friend.
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