Comment on My mental health has improved after deleting games that have microtransactions in them
swunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks agoI feel that playing a game that has micro transactions and not participating in them still contributes to the problem. In fact, it seems to me that these micro transaction heavy games NEED people that don’t buy the cosmetics. It creates a greater sense of superiority in the people that do buy them by creating a hard line between the “plebs” (f2p players) and themselves. Regardless of how it makes you personally feel, lots of others will succumb to the social pressure of wanting to feel superior to f2p “bots”/“noobs”/“plebs”. It’s the same reason that people buy shit that they don’t need in real life, the difference being that you don’t get to choose whether or not you participate in an economic system
EatATaco@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Im not a big fan of pay to win, but I see no problem with micro transactions for cosmetic stuff. If people are dumb and want to spend their money on that, more power to them, especially if I benefit from it.
swunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Yeah I understand your viewpoint, and this was my perspective for a long time as well. But I’ve come to realise that it’s a self-centered perspective. These people aren’t necessarily dumb, they’re being manipulated by the game developers. Micro transactions are engineered to take advantage of natural human drives for reward and social connection. So I’ll just not play those games, because I don’t want to support that kind of behavior from game studios
EatATaco@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
I’m not going to avoid enjoying myself because you say other people can’t control themselves. That’s like telling someone to not drink alcohol because some people suffer from addiction, and alcohol companies advertise.
swunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Is it not more like saying “I won’t drink Budweiser because they advertise a known harmful substance and I consider that a manipulative business practice”? I could still drink hundreds of other beers and instead support breweries that don’t rely on manipulative advertising tactics to make money. I’m not saying that I don’t play video games, and I’m not suggesting that anyone stop playing video games. I simply choose not to play video games that employ business practices that I consider to be manipulative