I want to shed light on a tactic that involves collecting data as you play, feeding this data into complex algorithms and models that then alter the rules of your game under the hood to optimize spending opportunities.
Being a lifelong pessimist, I am getting really tired of article headlines telling me that [x] is worse than I think.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
When you sell them, they’re unregulated gambling that children can access.
I still don’t see a way that this could ever be anything other than creating an incentive to play the game for reasons beyond the game being fun, no matter how “fair” it is to the person needing to spend money or not. They’re still artificially creating another body in the matchmaking pool that creates value for someone more willing to part with their dollar. If your player base dries up when you stop offering your battle pass incentives, I’d say that was some artificial retention, and it’s kind of gross.
I definitely didn’t need more reasons to hate live services. The business model has always affected the game design, and a lot of the author’s bullet points could be seen as far back as the arcades, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a better business model for all parties than “sell a good product at a fair price”.