Football games. I don’t see any gameplay difference between one made in 2007 and the latest football game, so why people still decide to drop 60$ for the very same game every year is something i don’t get.
What is a game you can’t understand why its so popular ?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by 64bithero@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
MurrayL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Two reasons:
- Active multiplayer: Yes this is kind of a chicken and egg situation, but people who play online multiplayer want to play the version of the game with the largest community of active players.
- Roster updates: If you’re a fan of a sports team, you probably want to play using their current active roster. Yes, fan updates are sometimes available for older titles but the latest release will have everything included with face scans etc.
scintilla@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Its also important to note that a lot of sports game fans are just into that style of video game and buy consoles 6ust to play them. They aren’t playing videogames just sports games.
Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
If any sports games where made for the first time today they’d probably just go the subscription model. You buy the base game and need to pay for annual subscription updates and access to multiplayer.
Essentially releasing a game every year is this but the ideal of the subscription model wasn’t around back in 1995 when the first 3D sports games where releasing.
mohab@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Actually, PES and FIFA used to get really good gameplay updates back in the 2000s. Like, the difference between FIFA 2002 and FIFA 2003 was massive, for example.
Then they realized they’re too big to waste money on actual development and went all in on licenses and marketing. It’s been shit every since.
ElectricMachman@geostationary.orbiting.observer 3 weeks ago
FOMO, mainly.
harmbugler@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Bro, if you haven’t played FOMO26 yet, you’re really missing out
Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
Theres actually quite a huge difference. The animations are much better, the detail in ball control, unique player moves, real time stat updates and the multiplayer. Plus there is the collection aspect.
FatVegan@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
The last football game i played was in like 2002. The otger day i saw a friend of mine playing the new fifa (we probably talk about a different kind of football) and i asked him to stream it, because i was waiting for a download or something. The game looked obviously better, but damn these are some low effort games that make billions. BILLIONS. they are the reason that there wasn’t a skate 4. Skate was the better game in every way possible. It even outsold fifa. But fifa made that microtransactions money. They don’t fix bugs, you can still make the same cheap goals as you could do when i played it last. Glitchgoals they call it now i think, so you can win 20-0 every game. The announcers are just as bad as back then. They repeat the same catchphrases over and over. I asked him not 10min in if that is all they have to say.
Everyone can enjoy what they want, but in my honest opinion you have to be a special kimd of idiot if you support these games. They literally laugh at anyone’s face dumb enough to buy their slop. Fifa 2026 sait fifa 2025 in the main menu at launch, that’s how much they care.
HeHoXa@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Tribe
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Tribe was a great game at its time though
riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
If there was a fan game that ran on donations, like stardew valley but on donations, one game could rule them all.
Or like, just make it a free commercial game but don’t put any real players in it. Let the community do that, just intentionally make it moddable. The fans will do the rest.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
People love to shit on the yearly FIFA releases, but if you genuinely can’t see any gameplay differences between one released in 2007 and 2026 then you’re either being disingenuous or haven’t actually played them.
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I own PES 2008 on my PS3, and never felt the need to upgrade throughout its many yearly upgrades. It was just a game to play with my brother if we wanted to play together.
Have tried EA 2026 football game on a playstation cafe with friends a few months ago and I did not think there was anything new compared to what i played as a kid. Sure, you can play the game at 4K, but I don’t even own a 4K TV, and certainly not getting one when all the tv brands keep putting smart tv crap with ads on them.
rethnor@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Cyberball on the Genesis was peak football gameplay. And probably the last one I ever played.
mohab@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Football like PES or FIFA? Or Madden?
Because PES was a whole different beast: like, a proper VG with actual meaningful gameplay changes (for the most part) between versions, and FIFA used to be like that in the 2000s.
IDK about Madden though; I only played a couple and they were fine, but I can vouch for their quality or pinpoint when they stopped being fun.
kossa@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
PES on Wii was peak. You control one player with the nunchuk and with the remote you could tell your other players where to go. That was so, so refreshing, but unfortunately never went anywhere 😭. It was the onhy time I enjoyed some sports game, as I felt for the first time that I had some agency about what’s going on.
lorty@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Any gacha.
“Oh I got so lucky! It only took 20 pulls to get Boobina!”
Yeah man, bet that felt a lot better than just unlocking her by doing her story quests like any normal game. Maybe you need to be a gambling addict or something.
Mr_Wobble@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
It seems like you DO understand why gachas are popular. They are gambling.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gachapon isn’t gambling, though I could see why one could be confused.
Gachapon (from which Gacha games get their name) is a Japanese word that essentially translates to “capsule toy.” It refers to the machine which you insert a coin and spin a knob, which causes the machine to drop a plastic (usually) capsule out of it. You know, like a gumball machine. Or those candy machines that were always full of banana hard candies near the exit at Ross or TJ Maxx.
With gachapon, you are paying for a capsule toy. You aren’t buying a specific capsule toy, you are buying a single capsule toy from the ones in the machine, and whichever one you get is random. However, you aren’t winning or losing, because you always “win the prize.” It might not be the one you want, but you always get what you pay for. Similar concept to blind-box toys.
With gambling, you spend money on a chance to win more money, usually. There is also a chance you win nothing and lose the money you spent. Gambling is when you spend money on something that can (and will often) give you nothing in return, which doesn’t happen with gachapon. With gachapon, you always “win,” but with gambling you very often lose. Gacha games always give you something valuable to the gameplay, even if you get duplicates of something you already have (makes the character more powerful, for example). Gambling often just takes your money and gives you absolutely nothing back except a sad, empty feeling.
Also, just don’t spend money if you don’t want to. It’s not hard. Nobody forces you to spend money on any game with a gun to your head (hopefully). Just have self-control, it’s easy. And if for some reason you don’t have self-control, work on it. Improve yourself.
Gacha games usually have enough free tickets built into it as rewards for playing the game that you can unlock almost everything you need to keep playing the game for free anyway. Just don’t expect to unlock everything in 3 hours.
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Remember when games rewarded you with more game content by actually playing them? Pepperidge Farms remembers
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
If you consider spending money to be a game mechanic then this is still true lol
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To be fair, that’s not an issue isolated to gacha games. Plenty of modern titles take old style unlocks (skins, bonus characters etc) and turns them into small, often paid, DLC. It sucks but it’s a wider problem within the industry.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can butt in on this a little bit. The problem with statements like this is that they treat “gacha” (the monetisation and unit recruitment system) as a genre when gacha games are too varied to be locked under this single umbrella (at least for a conversation like this). To name a few, you have games like:
- Arknights (tower defence)
- Azur Lane (bullet-hell kinda sorta)
- Bang Dream (rhythm game)
- Genshin Impact (action-adventure)
- Girls’ Frontline (tactical autobattler)
- Persona 5X (JRPG, just gacha Persona)
All of them play differently, offer different challenges and the impact of their gacha systems can be all over the place. Sometimes there are limited character pulls which have serious effect on gameplay (most of the modern titles), other times characters are super easy to obtain and improve as most of the monetisation comes from character costumes etc (Girls’ Frontline, Azur Lane for example).
Besides that, many of them have engaging stories, which combined with offering lots of content and being able to play them for free makes the whole thing even more appealing.Not that the aspect of “oh cool, I unlocked new character” doesn’t play any role or that there’s nothing predatory about most of the games using this mechanic, it’s just that “gacha” mechanics aren’t always the sole or main factor keeping people playing.
TL;DR: They are just free games that can, but aren’t always, predatory with a specific gameplay mechanic. Often offer enough value for free players to have fun with them.
64bithero@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To me Gacha isn’t a genre it’s a business model. And I understand their gripes …
kazerniel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, I put 2000+ hours into Genshin over 4 years and have like 75 characters without ever spending any money. But the game is still so full of psychological dark patterns that would squeeze out the last penny from those whose personality or neurodiversity makes them vulnerable against such manipulation.
And yet again, the core of the issue of capitalism. As Stephanie Sterling put it many a time, the companies’ attitude is “Why be satisfied with a lot of money, when we could have all the money.”
lorty@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I agree with you but then I see people calling themselves gacha gamers and hopping into every new gacha regardless of genre or gameplay so I just assumed I just didn’t get it.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And then half the time, “Boobina” is like a 11 year old girl.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
For the ones I play, the actual gameplay is the appeal; and I accept the gacha only if it’s reasonably permissive to free players.
The genre definitely has a recurring issue with power scaling, to get people to roll for the newest gooner bait, and when that becomes too apparent, it kills my interest. That’s the other thing: You have to prepare your sanity for the inevitable day you’ll stop playing that game and sacrifice hours of “character progress” to find something else fun. Heck, could just be another gacha that’s bending over backwards to cater to new players.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As someone with 2000+ hours in Genshin, I completely agree 😆 I only play for exploration nowadays because the story actively pushed me away, while the gambling never appealed to me. I wish we could just unlock characters via quests. I get no joy from a lucky draw, so I just treat gacha pulls in batches of guaranteed unlocks, like the price of this character is 160 pulls and that’s it. But the whole monetisation is disgustingly predatory for those who are even a little susceptible to it.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
arnt these the anime games that are primarly played by a specific demographic.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Eh at least it’s cheaper than actual casinos, let them have it lol
ISOmorph@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Most souls likes. The marketing on those games is pure genius. No budget for an actual story? No problem! Let’s hide some nebulous lore in item descriptions so youtubers can sell their head cannon as “the story”. Oh there’s only enough money for 8 hours of gameplay? I have a solution! Let’s remove the save system everyone got used to these past 20 years so the player has to constantly redo our content just to get to the boss he’s trying to beat. We’ll sell that unecessary tedium as “difficulty”. And people a gobbling that stupid mechanic up because it allows them to flaunt their e-peen, although it just shows they have more time time than skills.
Jobe@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I heard them called rollslop
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
That’s brutal
NannerBanner@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
I think fromsoft shot themselves in the foot there. I really enjoyed dark souls 2 because there were a lot of enemies that your positioning and movement were more important than spamming dodge at the exact right time. Then 3 and elden ring came out, and it’s just ocarina of time, except instead of across hyrule field it’s across the anime glowing lines.
hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
iframing the haters >>>
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Let’s hide some nebulous lore in item descriptions so youtubers can sell their head cannon as “the story”
Don’t you know, every item comes with a little laminated card to give you some mostly-irrelevant quote!
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Hey those quotes are like catnip to a generation who grew up playing JRPGs that could go 10 hours in between meeting any speaking character!
early_riser@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I love building my own worlds, and sometimes I catch myself building head canon around unexplained or poorly explained aspects of other games, but sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion the fans put way more thought and effort into their fanon than the devs did to the official canon.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
I do enjoy Soulslikes, but I honestly do so despite those things and not because of them. I do think you have a general point.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Not saying anyone’s wrong, but I’m not sure I would like them as much unless they had those things.
I’m sure improvements could be made, but I feel like reducing the friction too much would rob the games of a certain flow that only arises from being forced to really get familiar with a run.
I don’t have the time for it anymore so can’t play these games anymore, but when I did…
popcar2@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
I adore soulslikes but I won’t argue people who flaunt how good they are for beating them are really annoying.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I like Soulslikes NOT made by FromSoftware. Those people don’t get The GitGud Apologist System® for any flaws, so they actually have to design well.
My favorite is Another Crab’s Treasure ; mostly because far from being a meme, it literally has the best story and character writing - both humorous and serious - of any Soulslike I’ve played. Fuck vague item description lore driven by fanfic.
TallonMetroid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Another Crab’s Treasure
That ending hit me way harder than it had any right to.
it_depends_man@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If you haven’t played it, try hollow knight.
NannerBanner@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
It’s the nebulous lore part that really gets me. Other games have done the items=lore part before, but weren’t so fart-sniffing about it.
Mika@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
Elden Ring did fix some of runbacks with the stake of Marika before the boss room. Yet, some still exist and are annoying asf.
Don’t agree with 8h of gameplay though. Even if runbacks were fixed, that wouldn’t go under 100.
VivianRixia@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
To me, a good Souls games make you feel an exhilarating level of thrill and satisfaction from beating a tough boss that no other game does.
Beating the final boss of Sekiro, Nine Sols, Lies of P, and Silksong was a feeling no other game could provide. I am constantly looking forward to the next big Souls games that create that level of challenge that both feels impossibly hard, but yet you know you can do it and can see the path to winning if you keep trying.
Deestan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Any game with grinding where microtransactions can invalidate weeks of grind.
It’s already a big ask to make players find fun in a grind, but some C-level dipshits found a way to stamp that fun out too.
lime@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
mobas.
i remember not enjoying warcraft 3 due to its focus on hero characters, then someone modded all of the non-unique units out???
and everyone who plays them seems genuinely miserable.
Sunny@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
League of fucking legends. Why… The repetitiveness and toxic community especially… Just dont get it.
squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi 3 weeks ago
Work simulators and games which gameplay loops turn out to be a work simulators in disguise.
early_riser@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Kingdom Hearts. Goofy and Sephiroth in the same room together breaks my brain, and not in a fun way. I played the first game when it came out on PS2 and decided it wasn’t for me.
I’ve seen story breakdowns of the other games on YouTube and figured I’m not missing anything. Lots of setups and plot hooks that don’t go anywhere or go somewhere stupid.
Madrigal@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That mobile game where you slowly build up a city, train lots of troops, launch attacks on other players’ cities, form alliances and so on, before getting soundly thumped by the Koreans.
Kraiden@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Dark Souls/Souls likes in generals. If I want to bang my head against the same problem endlessly and get hopelessly frustrated, I’d just do my day job
ooterness@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Roblox
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Sports games based on real teams. It makes me feel like I’m playing an ad. Oh yeah and if there are actual ads too. 😪
Give me fake teams, fake players, even fake cities? and you have activated my interest.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
WoW.
It was a boring grindfest when it came out. Why are people still playing this outdated, frankly boring, game 22(?) years later?
godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Any gacha game.
I’ve tried to play them, but many play themselves and are loaded with microtransactions and you’ll hit a wall. I much prefer unlocking things from progressing or doing skillful things within the game.
Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Extraction shooters. You work your ass off to get gear, only to lose it to some griefing asshole hiding in a dark corner. Assuming you actually don’t lose your gear to players, server wipes are almost mandatory to keep people playing and to try and level the playing field. They’re like a worse battle royal.
Bad_Engineering@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Death stranding was the most boring trudge of a game I've ever played. I have no idea why it's so popular.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
GTAV Online
It makes a BILLION DOLLARS a year of PROFIT. Not revenue. Profit. Why?
P00ptart@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Survival games. I want to like em. I’ve tried tons of them. Green hell, 7 days to die, Dayz, hell, even Fallout 76, and lots more. Most of them don’t give you a tutorial, let alone any clues. I get that they’re supposed to be difficult, but most are arbitrarily difficult. But at least tell me how to fucking take something out of inventory and into my hand! It’s not like if thrown into a survival situation I would somehow forget how hands work. And if you’re not going to give a tutorial, at least let me start in a safe area so I can figure it out.
7 days to die really pissed me off because as soon as I’d find a gun, a stupid dog would come out of nowhere straight for me, and they take insane amounts of shots to put em down but the ammo is really REALLY scarce. Seriously though, what kind of dog can take 10 rds at point blank, and be totally unfazed? Someone later told me to combine a rock and a stick and that’ll get them in one hit. Come on, 10 rds won’t do it but a club will?
Or games with like 56 health indicators and you have to keep track of all of them? I’m sorry you’re bored, dude in the zombie apocalypse, but get the fuck over it. How can he be bored?!? Is survival not stimulating enough?
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Anything competative or stupidly difficult like soulslikes.
Life is stressful enough already; games are for having fun and I don’t find stress very fun.HuePony@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Roblox
BaraCoded@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
Pokemon.
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sports games almost all are universally bad and it really shows when a real game adapts sport concepts like Rocket League or Wii sports. These days sport games are just gacha games.
Gacha games all suck period. I’ve given up on them entirely as the gameplay always suffers eventually as mobs just becomes sponges unless you do repetitive garbage daily. Really hate this as some awesome games are being held hostage by gacha extraction but I’ll never be fooled into gacha again, ZZZ was my last chance.
AlboTheGuy@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
I will be lynched for this… But… GTAV, it’s not THAT good.
popcar2@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
Guild Wars 2.
I mean I can kind of see what makes it so popular but I gave it a fair shake and even got into the first DLC after reaching the max level and I was just utterly bored. The story is super mediocre, the combat is mediocre, the world looks nice but is really boring, everything is just grind after checklist after grind… I kept wondering when it gets fun and it never really does. People kept selling it to me as the greatest MMORPG out there and it might be one of the most boring, at least IMO.
It’s also a confusing jumbled mess of 500 different mechanics that don’t fit well together, the game never explains how crafting works or where you can find the materials you need or what 99% of the items are used for. It doesn’t explain why you would want to beat bosses or do dungeons because all of the rewards are very superficial and useless. The devs gave up having to explain anything so the game just constantly points you to the wiki which is indecipherable unless you know exactly what to do.
I’ve played a lot of MMOs and enjoyed all of them except GW2.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
pretty much anything ea makes. Sports games especially.
Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I have a strong preference for co-operative games, so I don’t really understand the attraction of non-team based PvP games like battle royales, extraction shooters, or just straight death matches like in quake or CoD. Like why would you want to be cold and alone with everyone out to get you when you could have friends.
binux@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Basically any battle royale game, they’re marginally fun with friends but they’ve always felt way too repetitive and frustration-inducing for me to ever pay much mind to them. It definitely doesn’t help that the most obvious example (Fortnite) is essentially the epitome of consumer-bait
Kinokoloko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Automation games like Factorio, Satisfactory, etc. I have tried. Everyone makes them seem like the most addictive form of digital crack there is. I just can’t get into them. They feel too much like work to me. Please tell me where the fun is that I am clearly missing
NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
league of legend, this thing is so boring i cant comprehend the reason people are addicted to it since 13 years
tuckerm@feddit.online 3 weeks ago
Chess. Fuckin’ a, no new characters for like a thousand years now. One map. Small children can beat me. Shit’s trash.
Stern@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
UMM ACKSHUALLY the queen was added in the 15th century, replacing the weaker vizier.
Scio@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In my first language we still call the chess queen a vizier!
Klear@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
Last gameplay patch was in the 70s, when they fixed the vertical castling exploit.
BorgDrone@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
What the hell are you on about, they added a new piece just last month.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I thought this was going to be about the nook :(
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Maybe you’d prefer Taikyoku shogi?
Image
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Jesus.
silverchase@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is the blue square for?”
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
An LRR reference in the wild? Absolutely mythical.
biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
According to Star Trek: The Original Series, in around 2 centuries, chess will get updated to support 2 more dimensions. We won’t have to wait long! So exciting!
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Just wait until they have 8 separate cubes each consisting of 8 planes with an 8x8 grid each: true 4D chess.
Now it would only take 8 arrays of 8 of these cubes to advance to 5D chess!
squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi 3 weeks ago
Fuckin’ a, I had to share that with !anarchychess@sopuli.xyz
charokol@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I saw your repost before I saw this. Then I read his comment and thought “did he just steal that quote from the meme I just read?“
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I’m sorry, what…!?
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What about the DLC?