8 ms·

A CEO under who EA introduced lootboxes. A person that proposed that when player runs out of ammo could make an easy instant payment for a quick reload. Unity

by mnau 3y ago

A CEO under who EA introduced lootboxes. A person that proposed that when player runs out of ammo could make an easy instant payment for a quick reload. Unity engine seems to flounder under him, despite rather insane headcount (7,703), acquisition spree laden Unity Technologies with significant debt... I am not impressed, not with his ideas and even less with his results. For comparison, Larry Elisson (Oracle) has distasteful business practices, but very profitable.

bmitc 3y ago
It is amazing how easy some people make falling upwards look.
- kibwen 3y ago
  It is easy, all you need to do is be a member of the executive class.
linuxftw 3y ago
Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade, which is how video games became commercially successful in the first place.
- chambored 3y ago
  But imagine having to do that if you owned the arcade game.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    If there's an EULA, do you really own it?
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      How much of it is enforceable ?
- turndown 3y ago
  Except this was in connection with Battlefield 3, a title you’d have to buy. So it’s more like buying the arcade machine but somebody still takes quarters from you anyway.
- sixothree 3y ago
  Gauntlet is a very specific example of this but with health and not ammo.
- DeepYogurt 3y ago
  > Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade Any chance you have an example? I can't recall an arcade game that had you pay per bullet.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    Arcades in the 90s used the countdown clock,more lives type buy in. You bought time, or they would make the game so seriously hard you had to feed it quarters to keep the game going. Paying on an instant 'hey you could use more ammo for 50cents' at a exploitive time is something I am surprised we did not see as a mechanic in arcades. But they probably would have if they had thought of it. But the idea of feed more quarters in to keep playing was most certainly there.
  - kyteland 3y ago
    This guy wasn't proposing anything as crazy as pay-per-bullet. There's lots of games with limited ammo and you find more in the environment. Even in Doom you might run out of ammo for your favorite gun and need to put it away until you found another ammo pack in the level. This is why Valorant has a knife you can switch to, because if you waste gun ammo you run out on your main weapon. In Fortnite you have to find ammo and weapons in chests, etc. This guy was proposing an option to pay to refill your inventory immediately. But people heard "reload" and assumed something completely different. The real problem with his proposal is it quickly falls apart if you think about it for even a minute. It's a classic pay-to-win mechanic. And once something is pay-to-win it becomes a slippery slope and a race to the bottom for the game makers. Every game has some amount of edge cases where you're playing only to realize "Damn, I'm out, this sucks. I'd pay a buck right now to refill." But once you add in some options to pay in those scenarios, the game maker has a perverse incentive to no longer make it an edge case. Some PM will realize if they make the rare event 10x more likely they'll make 10x more $$$$ and they're off to the races. They start messing with the ammo drop rates to create "pinch points" and now your super fun game really does require you to be "paying to reload" and it's not fun anymore. This guy was trying (and failing) to present it as a player benefit but the reality is he know exactly where this road lead. It's the same place EA games with loot boxes landed in the end.
  - 3y ago
- nirvdrum 3y ago
  Then consoles all but killed arcades because it turns out no one really wanted to keep feeding quarters (and then dollars) into an unfair game even if that turned out to be cheaper than buying a game outright. Removing that monetization strategy improved the quality and diversity of games as well. I'm not keen on rolling back the clock to that version of yesteryear.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  A key difference is that you paid nothing up front to play an arcade game compared to Battlefield 2024 (or whatever). There's decades of expectations/inertia not having microtransactions on home games, but I understand that is what publishers are trying to fight against. It's worth noting that the death of the golden age of arcade games was due to no small part of the rise of console games. People didn't want to pump quarters into a machine to keep playing, they wanted to buy a game once and play it forever.
degreesoffun 3y ago
I have a few friends that work or have worked at Unity. This is purely anecdotal but from what I've heard it sounds like the place is fairly dysfunctional at this point. A lot of the dysfunction that exists now wasn't there even 3-4 years ago.

by mnau 3y ago

bmitc 3y ago

It is amazing how easy some people make falling upwards look.

kibwen 3y ago
It is easy, all you need to do is be a member of the executive class.

linuxftw 3y ago

Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade, which is how video games became commercially successful in the first place.

chambored 3y ago
But imagine having to do that if you owned the arcade game.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  If there's an EULA, do you really own it?
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    How much of it is enforceable ?
turndown 3y ago
Except this was in connection with Battlefield 3, a title you’d have to buy. So it’s more like buying the arcade machine but somebody still takes quarters from you anyway.
sixothree 3y ago
Gauntlet is a very specific example of this but with health and not ammo.
DeepYogurt 3y ago
> Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade Any chance you have an example? I can't recall an arcade game that had you pay per bullet.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  Arcades in the 90s used the countdown clock,more lives type buy in. You bought time, or they would make the game so seriously hard you had to feed it quarters to keep the game going. Paying on an instant 'hey you could use more ammo for 50cents' at a exploitive time is something I am surprised we did not see as a mechanic in arcades. But they probably would have if they had thought of it. But the idea of feed more quarters in to keep playing was most certainly there.
- kyteland 3y ago
  This guy wasn't proposing anything as crazy as pay-per-bullet. There's lots of games with limited ammo and you find more in the environment. Even in Doom you might run out of ammo for your favorite gun and need to put it away until you found another ammo pack in the level. This is why Valorant has a knife you can switch to, because if you waste gun ammo you run out on your main weapon. In Fortnite you have to find ammo and weapons in chests, etc. This guy was proposing an option to pay to refill your inventory immediately. But people heard "reload" and assumed something completely different. The real problem with his proposal is it quickly falls apart if you think about it for even a minute. It's a classic pay-to-win mechanic. And once something is pay-to-win it becomes a slippery slope and a race to the bottom for the game makers. Every game has some amount of edge cases where you're playing only to realize "Damn, I'm out, this sucks. I'd pay a buck right now to refill." But once you add in some options to pay in those scenarios, the game maker has a perverse incentive to no longer make it an edge case. Some PM will realize if they make the rare event 10x more likely they'll make 10x more $$$$ and they're off to the races. They start messing with the ammo drop rates to create "pinch points" and now your super fun game really does require you to be "paying to reload" and it's not fun anymore. This guy was trying (and failing) to present it as a player benefit but the reality is he know exactly where this road lead. It's the same place EA games with loot boxes landed in the end.
- 3y ago
nirvdrum 3y ago
Then consoles all but killed arcades because it turns out no one really wanted to keep feeding quarters (and then dollars) into an unfair game even if that turned out to be cheaper than buying a game outright. Removing that monetization strategy improved the quality and diversity of games as well. I'm not keen on rolling back the clock to that version of yesteryear.
dfxm12 3y ago
A key difference is that you paid nothing up front to play an arcade game compared to Battlefield 2024 (or whatever). There's decades of expectations/inertia not having microtransactions on home games, but I understand that is what publishers are trying to fight against. It's worth noting that the death of the golden age of arcade games was due to no small part of the rise of console games. People didn't want to pump quarters into a machine to keep playing, they wanted to buy a game once and play it forever.

degreesoffun 3y ago

I have a few friends that work or have worked at Unity. This is purely anecdotal but from what I've heard it sounds like the place is fairly dysfunctional at this point. A lot of the dysfunction that exists now wasn't there even 3-4 years ago.