3 ms·

This comment would've made sense 10 years ago, but it doesn't today. The modern gaming landscape is generally incompatible with organic competitive scene develo

by bakugo 4y ago

This comment would've made sense 10 years ago, but it doesn't today. The modern gaming landscape is generally incompatible with organic competitive scene development, and really anything else that might be considered "organic". The developers want to have full control over the game, how it's played, when it's played, and who plays it. They don't want anything to develop "organically" without them having a hand in it so they can extract as much profit from it. > They're games, people play them for fun. There's another big problem right there: this isn't really true anymore for most multiplayer games. Most that released in the past few years (and some games that were older but were updated) come with dozens of "features" designed to force people to play them even when they don't want to: battle passes, limited time events, endless grinds, etc, this is done to maximize engagement and profit and effectively turns the games into chores rather than something you do for fun. Doesn't help that most of these games weren't really fun in the first place.

noobermin 4y ago
Stuff like this is why people overestimate "market effects" and under estimate just group think in industries. Sure it is "more profitable" in some sense to do it this way, but you'd imagine someone somewhere will make a small fps that doesn't have this overly controlled crap and then win big, taking a share of the big guys' profits, and then the cycle churns into a new area of phase space. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because a) gamers are just too dumb or lead by hype to try small non-triple A titles (which isn't quite true) or b) the groupthink in the industry is too thick for anyone to even try it. I feel like it's a combination of these two, probably more of b) but enough of a) justifies developer's collective illusions about what is proftable (that is, b))
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  New gamers with disposable income and generally little education or world experience are produced cyclically. Middle and high school students have the time to no life games long enough to become truly great at them in ways that no adult with only a few free hours every week can compete with. So the adults with jobs and families and kids drop out of the AAA games using FOMO as a crutch to prop up sales and engagement metrics. The kids, lacking fully developed PFCs get enamored by these exploitative tactics and every now and then one of these games get this perfect and print billions. With a declining population, incoming generations who grew up with modern video games and their tactics, and increasing scrutiny of psychological manipulation of children by video game companies I expect these companies to maliciously double down on their tactics instead of increasing investment into original content and novel games that present too much risk for the boring and greedy money men running the companies and investment funds.
serf 4y ago
>There's another big problem right there: this isn't really true anymore for most multiplayer games. I was recently introduced to the game Rust. In chat within a server a player asked "How do I keep my base from being destroyed when i'm offline?", the answer that the crowd provided him was "Set your mobile to alert you when your base detects people near it.". It then dawned on me that there are probably quite a few players who will wake up out of a sound sleep, dash to their computers and rush to defend a virtual base from players in distant lands -- sacrificing their personal lives and sleep health not due to the enjoyment of the game, but simply because someone somewhere antagonized them in an environment they were disconnected from entirely. I can understand pulling late/all hour sessions due to a personal obsession ; game/coding/hobbies/etc. I've done that way too many times throughout my life; but the marathon represents to me a stream of enjoyment and fascination. It's tough for me to consider pulling late sessions and deriving myself from sleep as a constant response to antagonism in an always-on persistent world. I guess what i'm trying to say is that I totally agree with you; games aren't only played for fun now -- they're played sometimes in an entirely reactionary form to either gain from the current limited time event, a fear of missing out, or a fear of loss of competitive advantage -- and all of these concepts are being orchestrated by the game developers and the industry at large. I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, but I recognize the problem and absolutely agree. The move from pastimes being an entertainment value to a constant worry surely plants more asses in seats, but it feels entirely unhealthy and psychologically damaging.
- omnibrain 4y ago
  > I was recently introduced to the game Rust. In chat within a server a player asked "How do I keep my base from being destroyed when i'm offline?", the answer that the crowd provided him was "Set your mobile to alert you when your base detects people near it.". About twenty years ago there was this german browser game "Ogame" (It's still around, but I have no idea how it works nowadays). I was looking for my scifi gaming fix, found "Ogame", decided to try it out and encountered the o so usual game mechanics for the first time: Timers, timers timers. Everything took time. from minutes, to hours to days. I noticed on my first day, that even to have modest progress I would have to set my alarm clock at arbitrary times to start the next "process". But it gets even worse. You build your fleet and the only mechanic to not have it destroyed by random other players while you are not around is to send it travelling from one star system to another. So you had to set an additional timer/alarm clock. Not just to progress, but to avoid having all your progress taken from you.

by bakugo 4y ago

noobermin 4y ago

Stuff like this is why people overestimate "market effects" and under estimate just group think in industries. Sure it is "more profitable" in some sense to do it this way, but you'd imagine someone somewhere will make a small fps that doesn't have this overly controlled crap and then win big, taking a share of the big guys' profits, and then the cycle churns into a new area of phase space. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because a) gamers are just too dumb or lead by hype to try small non-triple A titles (which isn't quite true) or b) the groupthink in the industry is too thick for anyone to even try it. I feel like it's a combination of these two, probably more of b) but enough of a) justifies developer's collective illusions about what is proftable (that is, b))

Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
New gamers with disposable income and generally little education or world experience are produced cyclically. Middle and high school students have the time to no life games long enough to become truly great at them in ways that no adult with only a few free hours every week can compete with. So the adults with jobs and families and kids drop out of the AAA games using FOMO as a crutch to prop up sales and engagement metrics. The kids, lacking fully developed PFCs get enamored by these exploitative tactics and every now and then one of these games get this perfect and print billions. With a declining population, incoming generations who grew up with modern video games and their tactics, and increasing scrutiny of psychological manipulation of children by video game companies I expect these companies to maliciously double down on their tactics instead of increasing investment into original content and novel games that present too much risk for the boring and greedy money men running the companies and investment funds.

serf 4y ago

>There's another big problem right there: this isn't really true anymore for most multiplayer games. I was recently introduced to the game Rust. In chat within a server a player asked "How do I keep my base from being destroyed when i'm offline?", the answer that the crowd provided him was "Set your mobile to alert you when your base detects people near it.". It then dawned on me that there are probably quite a few players who will wake up out of a sound sleep, dash to their computers and rush to defend a virtual base from players in distant lands -- sacrificing their personal lives and sleep health not due to the enjoyment of the game, but simply because someone somewhere antagonized them in an environment they were disconnected from entirely. I can understand pulling late/all hour sessions due to a personal obsession ; game/coding/hobbies/etc. I've done that way too many times throughout my life; but the marathon represents to me a stream of enjoyment and fascination. It's tough for me to consider pulling late sessions and deriving myself from sleep as a constant response to antagonism in an always-on persistent world. I guess what i'm trying to say is that I totally agree with you; games aren't only played for fun now -- they're played sometimes in an entirely reactionary form to either gain from the current limited time event, a fear of missing out, or a fear of loss of competitive advantage -- and all of these concepts are being orchestrated by the game developers and the industry at large. I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, but I recognize the problem and absolutely agree. The move from pastimes being an entertainment value to a constant worry surely plants more asses in seats, but it feels entirely unhealthy and psychologically damaging.

omnibrain 4y ago
> I was recently introduced to the game Rust. In chat within a server a player asked "How do I keep my base from being destroyed when i'm offline?", the answer that the crowd provided him was "Set your mobile to alert you when your base detects people near it.". About twenty years ago there was this german browser game "Ogame" (It's still around, but I have no idea how it works nowadays). I was looking for my scifi gaming fix, found "Ogame", decided to try it out and encountered the o so usual game mechanics for the first time: Timers, timers timers. Everything took time. from minutes, to hours to days. I noticed on my first day, that even to have modest progress I would have to set my alarm clock at arbitrary times to start the next "process". But it gets even worse. You build your fleet and the only mechanic to not have it destroyed by random other players while you are not around is to send it travelling from one star system to another. So you had to set an additional timer/alarm clock. Not just to progress, but to avoid having all your progress taken from you.