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Indeed. I think gamers are an easy target because they've collectively very little impulse control. Every single time there were talks of boycotts nothing reall

by simias 6y ago

Indeed. I think gamers are an easy target because they've collectively very little impulse control. Every single time there were talks of boycotts nothing really happened as far as I recall. For instance the justification for "paid online" is usually server costs, but that's forgetting that not so long ago most (non-persistent) online games let you host your own servers if you wanted to. So they moved away from that in order to gain more control and give themselves more opportunities for monetization (loot boxes etc...) and then they use that as an excuse to ask money for online. And it worked. Meanwhile, gamers: https://pcinvasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/modernwarfare2-boycott.png https://pcinvasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/modernwarf...

atomicnumber3 6y ago
I say this as a somewhat reluctantly self-identified "gamer". Big agree on the impulse control. It's worsened by the fact that, for lots of gamers, gaming is their strongest form of escapism. But I think it also compounds with this tendenct for gaming to suffer from a lot of the same polarization that's happening in politics. It's like it gets at the same core part of your lizard brain. Instead of Red vs Blue, it's Green vs Blue (and Nintendo stands off to the side, having fun with its family in Wii Fit, and PC is in a basement garbed in dark blue worshiping GabeN and trying to summon HL3). And people will look the other way to an excessive degree while "their" team does bad stuff. I will say that one thing gaming has that politics doesn't is "the only thing we hate as much as the other side is our side". Obviously even microsoft fanboys will be quick to turn on Microsoft if they do something obviously anti-gamer, since gamers also love to be victims.
throwaway894345 6y ago
It's not some nefarious plot, it's just regular economics, the same kind that is motivating a trend away from on-premise software and toward SaaS. The justification was never 'server costs' but rather the costs of the services that xbox provides (text and voice chat, moderation, player profiles, friends lists, matchmaking, video capture and sharing, software update channels, etc).

by simias 6y ago

atomicnumber3 6y ago

I say this as a somewhat reluctantly self-identified "gamer". Big agree on the impulse control. It's worsened by the fact that, for lots of gamers, gaming is their strongest form of escapism. But I think it also compounds with this tendenct for gaming to suffer from a lot of the same polarization that's happening in politics. It's like it gets at the same core part of your lizard brain. Instead of Red vs Blue, it's Green vs Blue (and Nintendo stands off to the side, having fun with its family in Wii Fit, and PC is in a basement garbed in dark blue worshiping GabeN and trying to summon HL3). And people will look the other way to an excessive degree while "their" team does bad stuff. I will say that one thing gaming has that politics doesn't is "the only thing we hate as much as the other side is our side". Obviously even microsoft fanboys will be quick to turn on Microsoft if they do something obviously anti-gamer, since gamers also love to be victims.

throwaway894345 6y ago

It's not some nefarious plot, it's just regular economics, the same kind that is motivating a trend away from on-premise software and toward SaaS. The justification was never 'server costs' but rather the costs of the services that xbox provides (text and voice chat, moderation, player profiles, friends lists, matchmaking, video capture and sharing, software update channels, etc).