10 ms·

Excellent article, and the thing is that if you spend any time talking to gamers or on gaming platforms, there’s a near consensus on this attitude against in-ga

Excellent article, and the thing is that if you spend any time talking to gamers or on gaming platforms, there’s a near consensus on this attitude against in-game purchases that contribute nothing to gameplay. Even though people still make these purchases, I’d say most of them are conscious of the fact that the current trend is detrimental to gamers. As a side note, the only people pushing for NTFs in games are crypto enthusiasts or profit-seeking actors who do not care about game experience at all. Even gamers who are also into crypto do not advocate for NTF in games. The whole thing is a shit show IMO.

stemlord 5y ago
Do you mean "NFTs"?
- sstevenshang 5y ago
  Yes NFT! I keep making the same typo everywhere.
Bombthecat 5y ago
I think the idea of nfts is cool, imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. So juat like right now, you could buy a ship for 5 dollar, cheaply designed and thousands are available (or endless) or get a unique nice and good looking ship for ome thousand (or more?) because you need to pay the work of one guy for several days and its only one time available. What get right now: bullshit, scams and everything controlled by the company selling the game.
- tasha0663 5y ago
  > imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. Uh, is that fun or am I back in economics class?
  - 83457 5y ago
    Yes
- nest0r 5y ago
  But why would I need NFTs for that?
  - saurik 5y ago
    NFTs (as defined by ERC721 or whatever it is) by and large end up acting as an interoperable standard that allows the assets to be traded on unified exchanges with assets from other games in a way that doesn't require any of the game developers to have to deal with money transmission issues (as they would only ever sell, not buy or facilitate trade). Like in some sense all the NFT is to the game you develop is a minimal external yet-trustable representation of the existence of some in-game asset so people can then go and use all of these systems you don't have to worry about to trade it around and then anyone can provide the receipt back to your game later to be the potentially-new owner.
    - nest0r 5y ago
      Why would any publisher do that? They make their profit on ingame marketplaces by taking a cut of the transaction it just doesn't make any sense.
      - Bombthecat 5y ago
        The publisher can take a cut from minting (creating an nft) and taking a cut from every sale, for example 30 percent first sale and then any other sale 10 percent.
        nest0r 5y ago
        What would be difference between whaht they are doing now ie. Steam wihth cosmetics in csgo or tf2 and NFTs? It would only add overhead.
        thebean11 5y ago
        Wouldn't it remove overhead? They don't need to develop or host the "auction house" or whatever it is.
- fattless 5y ago
  I’ve always said that something like this could be a cool idea, but I don’t get why nft/blockchain is necessary. Speaking about the Ubisoft nft thing (because I understand it the best), Steam marketplace has been doing the same thing very well for years, offering a very similar expirence. Is there something I’m missing?
  - kipchak 5y ago
    The only downsides to to the Steam marketplace is it hasn't caught on very much outside of Valve's own titles, and you can only cash out to store credit, which has resulted in third party trading sites that run on top of the steam marketplace to emerge such as marketplace.tf, which relies on trusting the site not to swindle you. Both of those are fairly small issues, I think the trickier part is creating an environment/reason for anyone to care about the digital items that are for sale.
    - fattless 5y ago
      Agreed. These all seem like problems that can be solved somewhat easily, this seems like a problem that has been solved already and others are trying to cram blockchain into it. Like I said, could be totally missing something though.
washadjeffmad 5y ago
I'd separate that into two categories: consensus that "withholding content, breaking games up, or locking devices to stores to artificially create redundant sales" and "abusive monetization design where the game is mostly a flimsy pretext for their real product, a gambling addiction simulator" are reviled industry practices. People like their stores and skins, they just don't want to have to gamble to get them or be tricked into pay-to-play. I tried a popular mobile game for the first time recently and almost immediately uninstalled it. As a new player I was overwhelmed with freebies, but every action funneled me back to the store or demanded some kind of worthless interaction. I was horrified at the thought that I might ever allow myself to get used to it and just how many people already had.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  > People like their stores and skins Two types of people here, too. Those who bought "Horse Armor" and those who thought it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard of. Personally I dislike the move towards every game being a live service to justify the presence of a store with skins and emotes and such. I'm getting sick of always online, seasonal event driven live service games where the game balance constantly changes and new stuff is funnelled into it constantly. It is such a relief to me when a game just is released in a mostly final shape, with maybe some QoL patches and an expansion dlc or two. Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are not just introducing new content but also removing old content, content I paid for and now can never access again. It has set a terrible precedent and I'm just not going to use my money on games like that anymore.
  - pom66 5y ago
  - p1necone 5y ago
    > Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are not just introducing new content but also removing old content, content I paid for and now can never access again. There are good reasons why this can be healthy for a game that's constantly evolving with new content and is intended to be live for like a decade+ like Destiny. By sunsetting old content periodically they have a much easier time balancing everything, and making sure the world is consistent. They can also do visual improvements over time without having to polish an ever increasing pile of old content. See also: leagues in Path of Exile, set rotation in trading card games. Destiny is an MMO, you should know going in that it's a live, evolving beast. Not something that you can rely on staying the same forever.
donmcronald 5y ago
I think the NFT thing should be illegal. It adds nothing beyond a false promise that you're buying an "investment" instead of an in game item. IMO it's disgusting to see game companies targeting kids with a scam like that. As for the rest of the article, he could be talking about me. I've basically given up on PC gaming. I used to love gaming and now it feels like a second job. It feels like I'm being forced to "accomplish" a bunch of in game goals because the developer thinks "engaging" me like that is going to lead to a microtransaction. I thought I'm probably just getting older and grumpier, but I bought an Oculus Quest before Christmas and it's been a blast. Games like The Room had me feeling like a kid who just got their first PC game. I think a lot of it has to do with VR being a new platform and there's less focus on developers squeezing every penny out of you and more incentive for them to build small, fun games that help discover what makes sense in VR. The craziest part is that I've spent several hundred dollars on VR games in a few months which is more than I've spent on PC games in the last 5 years combined. I know it's popular to trash Meta/Facebook, but I think they did a really good job of pricing VR games. It's <$30 on the high end and they have frequent sales, but the sales aren't such deep discounts that I feel bad for buying something at full price. I also think microtransactions can make sense. GGG did a good job with Path of Exile. I've played that game on and off and every time I pick it back up I play for a bit and if my stash starts getting disorganized with items that have a convenience stash tab as a microtransaction I'll buy that stash tab. It's always after I've spent a weekend playing and it's only $20, so I don't feel like I've gotten ripped off or forced into buying something. I've probably spent twice as much on that game as any other in recent memory.
- prox 5y ago
  I guess it very much depends what kind of games you play. These are the games I enjoy : Rimworld, Valheim, Police Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio, Skyrim, Mount and Blade 2 : Bannerlord. None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    You're right! Rimworld and Factorio have been on my Steam wishlist for a while.

stemlord 5y ago

Do you mean "NFTs"?

sstevenshang 5y ago
Yes NFT! I keep making the same typo everywhere.

Bombthecat 5y ago

I think the idea of nfts is cool, imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. So juat like right now, you could buy a ship for 5 dollar, cheaply designed and thousands are available (or endless) or get a unique nice and good looking ship for ome thousand (or more?) because you need to pay the work of one guy for several days and its only one time available. What get right now: bullshit, scams and everything controlled by the company selling the game.

tasha0663 5y ago
> imagine star citizen where everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell it and how many are available. Uh, is that fun or am I back in economics class?
- 83457 5y ago
  Yes
nest0r 5y ago
But why would I need NFTs for that?
- saurik 5y ago
  NFTs (as defined by ERC721 or whatever it is) by and large end up acting as an interoperable standard that allows the assets to be traded on unified exchanges with assets from other games in a way that doesn't require any of the game developers to have to deal with money transmission issues (as they would only ever sell, not buy or facilitate trade). Like in some sense all the NFT is to the game you develop is a minimal external yet-trustable representation of the existence of some in-game asset so people can then go and use all of these systems you don't have to worry about to trade it around and then anyone can provide the receipt back to your game later to be the potentially-new owner.
  - nest0r 5y ago
    Why would any publisher do that? They make their profit on ingame marketplaces by taking a cut of the transaction it just doesn't make any sense.
    - Bombthecat 5y ago
      The publisher can take a cut from minting (creating an nft) and taking a cut from every sale, for example 30 percent first sale and then any other sale 10 percent.
      - nest0r 5y ago
        What would be difference between whaht they are doing now ie. Steam wihth cosmetics in csgo or tf2 and NFTs? It would only add overhead.
        thebean11 5y ago
        Wouldn't it remove overhead? They don't need to develop or host the "auction house" or whatever it is.
fattless 5y ago
I’ve always said that something like this could be a cool idea, but I don’t get why nft/blockchain is necessary. Speaking about the Ubisoft nft thing (because I understand it the best), Steam marketplace has been doing the same thing very well for years, offering a very similar expirence. Is there something I’m missing?
- kipchak 5y ago
  The only downsides to to the Steam marketplace is it hasn't caught on very much outside of Valve's own titles, and you can only cash out to store credit, which has resulted in third party trading sites that run on top of the steam marketplace to emerge such as marketplace.tf, which relies on trusting the site not to swindle you. Both of those are fairly small issues, I think the trickier part is creating an environment/reason for anyone to care about the digital items that are for sale.
  - fattless 5y ago
    Agreed. These all seem like problems that can be solved somewhat easily, this seems like a problem that has been solved already and others are trying to cram blockchain into it. Like I said, could be totally missing something though.

washadjeffmad 5y ago

I'd separate that into two categories: consensus that "withholding content, breaking games up, or locking devices to stores to artificially create redundant sales" and "abusive monetization design where the game is mostly a flimsy pretext for their real product, a gambling addiction simulator" are reviled industry practices. People like their stores and skins, they just don't want to have to gamble to get them or be tricked into pay-to-play. I tried a popular mobile game for the first time recently and almost immediately uninstalled it. As a new player I was overwhelmed with freebies, but every action funneled me back to the store or demanded some kind of worthless interaction. I was horrified at the thought that I might ever allow myself to get used to it and just how many people already had.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
> People like their stores and skins Two types of people here, too. Those who bought "Horse Armor" and those who thought it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard of. Personally I dislike the move towards every game being a live service to justify the presence of a store with skins and emotes and such. I'm getting sick of always online, seasonal event driven live service games where the game balance constantly changes and new stuff is funnelled into it constantly. It is such a relief to me when a game just is released in a mostly final shape, with maybe some QoL patches and an expansion dlc or two. Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are not just introducing new content but also removing old content, content I paid for and now can never access again. It has set a terrible precedent and I'm just not going to use my money on games like that anymore.
- pom66 5y ago
- p1necone 5y ago
  > Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are not just introducing new content but also removing old content, content I paid for and now can never access again. There are good reasons why this can be healthy for a game that's constantly evolving with new content and is intended to be live for like a decade+ like Destiny. By sunsetting old content periodically they have a much easier time balancing everything, and making sure the world is consistent. They can also do visual improvements over time without having to polish an ever increasing pile of old content. See also: leagues in Path of Exile, set rotation in trading card games. Destiny is an MMO, you should know going in that it's a live, evolving beast. Not something that you can rely on staying the same forever.

donmcronald 5y ago

I think the NFT thing should be illegal. It adds nothing beyond a false promise that you're buying an "investment" instead of an in game item. IMO it's disgusting to see game companies targeting kids with a scam like that. As for the rest of the article, he could be talking about me. I've basically given up on PC gaming. I used to love gaming and now it feels like a second job. It feels like I'm being forced to "accomplish" a bunch of in game goals because the developer thinks "engaging" me like that is going to lead to a microtransaction. I thought I'm probably just getting older and grumpier, but I bought an Oculus Quest before Christmas and it's been a blast. Games like The Room had me feeling like a kid who just got their first PC game. I think a lot of it has to do with VR being a new platform and there's less focus on developers squeezing every penny out of you and more incentive for them to build small, fun games that help discover what makes sense in VR. The craziest part is that I've spent several hundred dollars on VR games in a few months which is more than I've spent on PC games in the last 5 years combined. I know it's popular to trash Meta/Facebook, but I think they did a really good job of pricing VR games. It's <$30 on the high end and they have frequent sales, but the sales aren't such deep discounts that I feel bad for buying something at full price. I also think microtransactions can make sense. GGG did a good job with Path of Exile. I've played that game on and off and every time I pick it back up I play for a bit and if my stash starts getting disorganized with items that have a convenience stash tab as a microtransaction I'll buy that stash tab. It's always after I've spent a weekend playing and it's only $20, so I don't feel like I've gotten ripped off or forced into buying something. I've probably spent twice as much on that game as any other in recent memory.

prox 5y ago
I guess it very much depends what kind of games you play. These are the games I enjoy : Rimworld, Valheim, Police Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio, Skyrim, Mount and Blade 2 : Bannerlord. None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  You're right! Rimworld and Factorio have been on my Steam wishlist for a while.