Some of us actually understand that the quality of assets has significantly risen since the 00s and it takes artists significantly more time and effort to make high quality cosmetics. We’re talking about going from assets taking days to assets taking weeks. Is the cost of the game supposed to eat all that extra development time? Are artists supposed to work for free? The realistic alternative to paid cosmetics is no extra cosmetics because quality cosmetic items are too expensive to make. Is that what you want?
You’re free to be the old man yelling at the cloud but at least acknowledge that that is what you are.
warm@kbin.earth 2 days ago
No need to start throwing insults. It takes away from your argument. If you want to pay for cosmetics, sure go for it, but that's how we got in this mess.
Artists get paid either way, they are not paid on commission of skin sales. Any extra profit goes to the executives anyway, not to the artists. So that entire point is null.
Games existed before with no paid cosmetics, they would exist again without them. This used to be the free-to-play model, but now they realise they can charge you for the game and then again and again for skins. These types of games are designed to extract as much money from you as possible, that's their entire purpose. They are not giving you extra skins to be nice and then paying the artists more from it. A skin is made one time and sold a potentially infinite amount of times for ridiculous prices.
As I said:
Why would you ever want to advocate for a worse experience? It blows my mind, but that's the situation we got ourselves into.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 2 days ago
Pretty ironic considering you’re implying people who think it’s okay to pay for cosmetics are crazy.
Like I said before, the realistic alternative to paid cosmetics is no extra cosmetics. Artists get paid anyway but if their work is freely given away how does it justify them working on it? And if you strip away the capitalist BS it becomes even more apparent that the artists making the assets deserve to be compensated for their labor.
A game is also made once and sold infinite amount of times. Why aren’t you complaining about having to pay for games?
I’m not, which is why I’m advocating for cosmetic items to be reasonably priced. You’re advocating for a worse experience where cosmetic items get made with minimal effort (if they even get made at all) because the labor is not going to pay off.
warm@kbin.earth 2 days ago
I said the situation is crazy, not a specific person. I dont blame any individual, the strategies used over the years by these companies to sell skins and make consumers complacent are all very manipulative and effective. The people designing the systems and the ones doing the marketing have done a very, very good job.
You seem stuck on artists all being freelance, getting paid on some sort of commission. They are almost always salaried employees like anyone else at the development company.
Weird analogy, paying for a game, something usually worked on for years, is a lot different than paying for a cosmetic change to something. It's like going to the movies and paying the price of the ticket again to sit in a green chair instead of a red one and being told that's completely normal and something you should do.
I agree, if skins were sold for $0.50, $1.00, max $5, then I would have less issue with them. I'd still have issue with the predatory practices used to sell them though. Some people are more susceptible to this than others, so I would rather it didnt exist at all.
You buy a game once, have all the content and are not pressured again to spend anything, that's the ideal scenario, why would I compromise on that?
Games should be a sustainable art form, not gross corporate projects to extract as much money as possible from consumers.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
Maybe you should’ve been clearer on what you meant considering your passive aggressive tone towards the consumer like “consumers keep sucking it up” (I don’t think this one need explaining) or calling them complacent (indirectly criticizing people for being too passive or indifferent) or saying we forgot cosmetics used to be free (implies we used to know better and now don’t).
First of all, whether they’re freelance or not shouldn’t matter to you considering you’re claiming they shouldn’t get paid either. And secondly I don’t think you understand how companies operate. People at companies work to generate revenue. Free cosmetics do not generate revenue and if they’re packaged with the game their contribution to the pricing is marginal thus the labor cost of making these assets would be disproportionate to their value and they don’t get made. The artists will get paid by they won’t be working of cosmetics. For artists to work on cosmetics there needs to be an incentive to work on them.
Is it? Last time I checked money goes off my account and I get something that costs no extra for the company (outside of making the thing).
Or are you drawing the difference at the amount of time it takes to make something? So a game made within a month should be free? A cosmetic that for some reasons took years to make should be paid? Or is it a matter of respect? That you respect game devs and their labor but you don’t respect artists and their labor?
As for your cinema analogy, some cinemas have higher quality chairs in the same theater and as a matter of fact, you do pay extra for them.
Are set starting to move the goal post here? Cosmetics costing less shouldn’t matter to you at all because your issue is that you have pay ANY amount for them.
Which is a completely different issue. I also have issues with predatory practices but the existence of predatory practices doesn’t mean cosmetics should be free.
And if the game releases a DLC with new content are you not pressured to buy the DLC? Are you going to argue that DLC should also be free or are you going to draw another arbitrary line in the sand stating that game devs deserve the money but artists don’t?
And how exactly is something sustainable when you give it away for free?