7 ms·

As a young girl, I was absolutely addicted to playing games. My drug of choice was Final Fantasy, because it allowed me an entirely new world to explore. I coul

by ydb 7y ago

As a young girl, I was absolutely addicted to playing games. My drug of choice was Final Fantasy, because it allowed me an entirely new world to explore. I could escape the bullies; I could escape my father. Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. Take for example the microtransactions that so many gamers lament. What of a beautiful narrative, empathetic characters, and engaging gameplay (since they are games after all)? I'm not entirely certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium for the masses that so many hoped it could be.

beenBoutIT 7y ago
The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.
- jacobush 7y ago
  But in some cases, recent past. Fallout 4 comes to mind.
- uxcolumbo 7y ago
  What about recent games like: - Heavy Rain - Beyond 2 Souls - Detroit: Become Human - Witcher 3 - Horizon Zero Dawn - Mass Effect Series And then there are classic adventure type games from http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com Those don't include any micro transaction and you pay once upfront.
  - jason46 7y ago
    While Horizon Zero Dawn is an Awesome game, and I did play it mostly on a PC through remote play, it does require a PS4 to play.
- maccard 7y ago
  > For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past. I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead. They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman, Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech, Into the Breach. All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p (Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right now.
  - tiredyam 7y ago
    Dude.. this comment is infuriating. You have a valid point, but you stuff your points justification with blatant lies AND you know they are lies. You ask us to call you out but the many of us who are not deeply knowledgeable about games would not know which examples are incorrect and how many are incorrect. From skimming over your references roughly 40 percent of your examples have micro transactions and about 40 percent do not have rich narratives. Yes, I pulled these numbers out of my ass and you can nitpick them all you want, but I work in the gaming industry and know what I am talking about /s
    - maccard 7y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is - I was trying to say that there is a laundry list of narrative rich, mtx free titles, and that they exist beside more accessible options which _do_ have microtransactions, but he latter category existing doesn't detract from the former at all.
- ionised 7y ago
  Most games are still 'pay once upfront'.
johnchristopher 7y ago
Out of curiosity, which final fantasy games were you playing ? I always felt that the grinding in the early games was as frustrating as the looting that came after.
- vSanjo 7y ago
  I used to play MapleStory in my teenage years. I would wake from 7AM, grind-grind-grind all day with friends (socialise, communicate, learn) and then sleep at anywhere from 9PM to 1AM. I did that for years and I never batted an eyelid. I enjoyed the levelling and the returns those gave, I enjoyed the mindless attacking sprites all-day and the optimisation that allowed me, I enjoyed sharing that load with friends (new and old, real and digital). I'm not your OP but I can absolutely say I would love to relive a year of that life given genie-magic.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    Ah, I see. Thanks for sharing. I remember spending some summer days like that from time to time.
raxxorrax 7y ago
We see that there is a clear aspiration for publishers to make development of games more predictable and reliable. That is why we see more subscription models that aren't tied to any specific games (PS Plus, Origin, etc.). While I can understand the motivation, I do think it does indeed have a strong negative effect on games. Best games come from creative people that are willing to take a risk. Others games will end up like you said, on the lowest common denominator, mass appeal being the primary goal. I can also understand game developers wanting to have at least some form of job security. Although certainly interesting, I really don't envy developers of large game publishers from what we heard in some reports. Cinemas are more successful than theatres... Maybe games that we remember fondly and think are representative for games will be pushed into a market for connoisseurs.
dijit 7y ago
> Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. I'm not saying that there aren't greedy game companies, or outright nefarious practices; but speaking as an industry insider I can at least understand why the entire industry has lurched this way. There's 3 things that you must take on faith are true: 1) Microtransactions bring in money. 2) Games cost more to produce than they ever have. 3) Roughly 90% of gamers are very price sensitive. So, if you leave out micro transactions, then your budget is slashed and you have to make a lesser game, you might think this is fine, but our competitors will (and do, because we have a very tight policy regarding microtransactions) walk all over us in terms of budget. R&D is expensive and we'll be playing catch-up for years. You could of course, attempt to keep the budget and not introduce micro-transactions. You could argue that our games make a modest profit even without monetisation but that's certainly not always true, and the closer we move to operating on the breadline the more likely we are to make "safe" choices because risking anything could put hundreds of people out of work (and, we are guilty of this in some cases; see: Assassins Creed) Finally you could say: well, if the cost of producing games has increased, why not increase the base price instead of chopping it up into add-ons to create special editions and in-game content that needs to be purchased. The answer is of course that if we raise the base price people will be outraged, games can be expensive (if you only play a handful of hours they are more expensive than a movie ticket, but obviously the cost-per-hour of entertainment goes down if you enjoy the game- still, there is personal risk for this) so people aren't willing to risk $100-$120 for a base game, in fact, many people wait for the game to come down in price before buying (as high as 15% of players based on the last time I looked at our market segmentation). I mean, I understand, it's not enriching your experience to have paywalled content inside the game. But what you don't realise is that a lot of the content that even made it in to the base game, made it in on the fact that there are people who _really_ want to buy a special hat.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  If gamers are all that price sensitive, why are they buying new games at all? Wait a few years for the price to drop in half. It seems to me that the solution to this problem should be either: • Make newly-released games cost $80+ • Stop the price from dropping so quickly Everyone seems to think the former will be catastrophic, but consider that after adjusting for inflation, game prices have fallen significantly over the past 15 years or so. The latter option is easier said than done (since the price is still largely determined by the used resale market), but Nintendo always manages it somehow, so I'm inclined to think it's possible.
jason46 7y ago
I recently got into playing Dark Souls 3, Fromsoftware is definitely not garnering to the lowest common denominator.
- regular_person 7y ago
  Fromsoft is a great example of how you don't HAVE to make cheap, lowest common denominator shit and you can still be really successful. But it takes a lot more work and arguably a genius at the helm (Miyazaki) so we're going to keep seeing most companies take the cheap route.
mytec 7y ago
This is exactly why I played World of Warcraft so much. I used it as an escape from my problems in life. One day I realized I achieve more with my character than I do in my own life. That was a huge turning point that made me deal with my various life problems.
- cdelsolar 7y ago
  I mean isn't this true of any game? At night I can race across abandoned mines with 11 other people around the world, fight pink blobs at the Fountain of Dreams and adventure across medieval lands with mithril swords. I don't do any of this in real life.
  - jerf 7y ago
    With WoW, you can end up doing things like "running a guild" that is not entirely dissimilar from "running a business or an office of a business" and training up other real skills that are valuable to real business. I can well believe there's some people who just sort of slid into doing that sort of thing, and one day had the revelation that if they can do this, they must be more capable than various other elements of their life had been telling them they were. I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a path to explicitly seek out per se, but if it's one you're already walking, it's a great thing to realize and be empowered by.
    - salawat 7y ago
      This is part of what finally broke my gaming habit actually. The other part was a resentment at constantly having things changed out from under you as a player. After a certain point, I realized I could probably put a bit more effort into making my mark on the real world, where at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I'd accomplished something that wouldn't disappear just because some 0's and 1's got jumbled.
dfxm12 7y ago
Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. I don't think the industry changed in that regard. Its goal was always to make as much money as possible. What changed is that there are a lot more tools now to make money. I'm not entirely certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium for the masses that so many hoped it could be. There's more to gaming than AAA mainstream titles. Just like film has its summer blockbusters and also art house films and genre pieces, etc. If you're fed up with the current offerings, I'm sure there are a ton of classics you've yet to consume as well.

by ydb 7y ago

beenBoutIT 7y ago

The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.

jacobush 7y ago
But in some cases, recent past. Fallout 4 comes to mind.
uxcolumbo 7y ago
What about recent games like: - Heavy Rain - Beyond 2 Souls - Detroit: Become Human - Witcher 3 - Horizon Zero Dawn - Mass Effect Series And then there are classic adventure type games from http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com Those don't include any micro transaction and you pay once upfront.
- jason46 7y ago
  While Horizon Zero Dawn is an Awesome game, and I did play it mostly on a PC through remote play, it does require a PS4 to play.
maccard 7y ago
> For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past. I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead. They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman, Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech, Into the Breach. All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p (Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right now.
- tiredyam 7y ago
  Dude.. this comment is infuriating. You have a valid point, but you stuff your points justification with blatant lies AND you know they are lies. You ask us to call you out but the many of us who are not deeply knowledgeable about games would not know which examples are incorrect and how many are incorrect. From skimming over your references roughly 40 percent of your examples have micro transactions and about 40 percent do not have rich narratives. Yes, I pulled these numbers out of my ass and you can nitpick them all you want, but I work in the gaming industry and know what I am talking about /s
  - maccard 7y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is - I was trying to say that there is a laundry list of narrative rich, mtx free titles, and that they exist beside more accessible options which _do_ have microtransactions, but he latter category existing doesn't detract from the former at all.
ionised 7y ago
Most games are still 'pay once upfront'.

johnchristopher 7y ago

Out of curiosity, which final fantasy games were you playing ? I always felt that the grinding in the early games was as frustrating as the looting that came after.

vSanjo 7y ago
I used to play MapleStory in my teenage years. I would wake from 7AM, grind-grind-grind all day with friends (socialise, communicate, learn) and then sleep at anywhere from 9PM to 1AM. I did that for years and I never batted an eyelid. I enjoyed the levelling and the returns those gave, I enjoyed the mindless attacking sprites all-day and the optimisation that allowed me, I enjoyed sharing that load with friends (new and old, real and digital). I'm not your OP but I can absolutely say I would love to relive a year of that life given genie-magic.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Ah, I see. Thanks for sharing. I remember spending some summer days like that from time to time.

raxxorrax 7y ago

We see that there is a clear aspiration for publishers to make development of games more predictable and reliable. That is why we see more subscription models that aren't tied to any specific games (PS Plus, Origin, etc.). While I can understand the motivation, I do think it does indeed have a strong negative effect on games. Best games come from creative people that are willing to take a risk. Others games will end up like you said, on the lowest common denominator, mass appeal being the primary goal. I can also understand game developers wanting to have at least some form of job security. Although certainly interesting, I really don't envy developers of large game publishers from what we heard in some reports. Cinemas are more successful than theatres... Maybe games that we remember fondly and think are representative for games will be pushed into a market for connoisseurs.

dijit 7y ago

> Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. I'm not saying that there aren't greedy game companies, or outright nefarious practices; but speaking as an industry insider I can at least understand why the entire industry has lurched this way. There's 3 things that you must take on faith are true: 1) Microtransactions bring in money. 2) Games cost more to produce than they ever have. 3) Roughly 90% of gamers are very price sensitive. So, if you leave out micro transactions, then your budget is slashed and you have to make a lesser game, you might think this is fine, but our competitors will (and do, because we have a very tight policy regarding microtransactions) walk all over us in terms of budget. R&D is expensive and we'll be playing catch-up for years. You could of course, attempt to keep the budget and not introduce micro-transactions. You could argue that our games make a modest profit even without monetisation but that's certainly not always true, and the closer we move to operating on the breadline the more likely we are to make "safe" choices because risking anything could put hundreds of people out of work (and, we are guilty of this in some cases; see: Assassins Creed) Finally you could say: well, if the cost of producing games has increased, why not increase the base price instead of chopping it up into add-ons to create special editions and in-game content that needs to be purchased. The answer is of course that if we raise the base price people will be outraged, games can be expensive (if you only play a handful of hours they are more expensive than a movie ticket, but obviously the cost-per-hour of entertainment goes down if you enjoy the game- still, there is personal risk for this) so people aren't willing to risk $100-$120 for a base game, in fact, many people wait for the game to come down in price before buying (as high as 15% of players based on the last time I looked at our market segmentation). I mean, I understand, it's not enriching your experience to have paywalled content inside the game. But what you don't realise is that a lot of the content that even made it in to the base game, made it in on the fact that there are people who _really_ want to buy a special hat.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
If gamers are all that price sensitive, why are they buying new games at all? Wait a few years for the price to drop in half. It seems to me that the solution to this problem should be either: • Make newly-released games cost $80+ • Stop the price from dropping so quickly Everyone seems to think the former will be catastrophic, but consider that after adjusting for inflation, game prices have fallen significantly over the past 15 years or so. The latter option is easier said than done (since the price is still largely determined by the used resale market), but Nintendo always manages it somehow, so I'm inclined to think it's possible.

jason46 7y ago

I recently got into playing Dark Souls 3, Fromsoftware is definitely not garnering to the lowest common denominator.

regular_person 7y ago
Fromsoft is a great example of how you don't HAVE to make cheap, lowest common denominator shit and you can still be really successful. But it takes a lot more work and arguably a genius at the helm (Miyazaki) so we're going to keep seeing most companies take the cheap route.

mytec 7y ago

This is exactly why I played World of Warcraft so much. I used it as an escape from my problems in life. One day I realized I achieve more with my character than I do in my own life. That was a huge turning point that made me deal with my various life problems.

cdelsolar 7y ago
I mean isn't this true of any game? At night I can race across abandoned mines with 11 other people around the world, fight pink blobs at the Fountain of Dreams and adventure across medieval lands with mithril swords. I don't do any of this in real life.
- jerf 7y ago
  With WoW, you can end up doing things like "running a guild" that is not entirely dissimilar from "running a business or an office of a business" and training up other real skills that are valuable to real business. I can well believe there's some people who just sort of slid into doing that sort of thing, and one day had the revelation that if they can do this, they must be more capable than various other elements of their life had been telling them they were. I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a path to explicitly seek out per se, but if it's one you're already walking, it's a great thing to realize and be empowered by.
  - salawat 7y ago
    This is part of what finally broke my gaming habit actually. The other part was a resentment at constantly having things changed out from under you as a player. After a certain point, I realized I could probably put a bit more effort into making my mark on the real world, where at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I'd accomplished something that wouldn't disappear just because some 0's and 1's got jumbled.

dfxm12 7y ago

Yet, at some point in the past decade an insatiable greed appears to have taken over the industry. I don't think the industry changed in that regard. Its goal was always to make as much money as possible. What changed is that there are a lot more tools now to make money. I'm not entirely certain of the correct path to take, but I know that appealing to the lowest common denominator will not allow gaming to become the grand artistic medium for the masses that so many hoped it could be. There's more to gaming than AAA mainstream titles. Just like film has its summer blockbusters and also art house films and genre pieces, etc. If you're fed up with the current offerings, I'm sure there are a ton of classics you've yet to consume as well.