Nipah
@Nipah@kbin.social
- Comment on Xbox Player Gets Banned for 1 Year After Recording Baldur's Gate 3 Scenes 10 months ago:
When I used to work at a video game store, I used to try and dissuade parents from buying their 10 year old GTA 3/VC.
"So you can just walk down the street and shoot a random person, then when the cops show up, you can just shoot all of them as well."
Oh, well they probably see worse things on TV!
"Uh huh... you can also pick up a hooker, drive to a secluded area, have sex with them, pay them, and then run them over when they leave to get your money back."
Wait, it also has sex?!
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
As someone who played/plays a lot of MMOs and stuff like Destiny/The Division: You'd be amazed at the number of people who don't get to step two of that simple statement.
People who are just downright angry at a game but still actively playing... "Man, I can't believe they're forcing me to go into PvP to get [some arbitrary weapon or cosmetic item]!" they grumble, not realizing that they don't need to tick that little check box in their collection.
People who say things like "I grinded out this holiday season and bought the event pass and I didn't even like the stuff it offered!" is perhaps not technically 'common', but that kind of situation happens often enough that I'm a bit worried for gamers as a whole.
Its some kind of weird combination of a hoarder's mentality, a sunk cost fallacy, and probably some FOMO sprinkled on top... all mixed together by some psychologist on a company's payroll to maximize profits.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
I reply the "Metroid-vania" Castlevanias every few years (SotN, GBA/DS games), and one of my goals is always maximum map completion... obviously not required for actually beating the games, but I only consider the game completed if I get all the rooms on my map.
More specifically for SotN, I also gotta get the Crissaegrim + Medusa Shield otherwise am I even playing the game properly?
Some of the others I try to get all the doodads: cards, souls, glyphs, whatever. Some are a bit more annoying than others, so sometimes I'll skip out on the really annoying ones if I don't get it done before filling in the map.
- Comment on Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon are the "barbarians at the gate" of the games industry, says ex-Sony boss 1 year ago:
The main problem is that its not enough to be competitive with Steam at this point... you need to put out something so good that it give people enough of a reason to leave the comfort of Steam... you need Steam and then another layer of goodness on top of Steam.
This is the same issue that a lot of MMOs had when trying to become a WoW killer. You not only needed to have pretty much everything Blizzard put into the game, but more on top because otherwise why would anyone bother to leave the comforts of Azeroth to play something that is maybe marginally better, or a possibly worse experience?
- Comment on Noooooo you can't make a microtransactions free game and finished too 😭😭😭 1 year ago:
Microtransactions are 'small' purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).
DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn't be considered DLC, I'd say).
All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)
I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn't 'playable content'. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn't be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they're essentially 'world cosmetics', but its a hard and fast rule and not something I'd try to enforce as a law, ya know?
- Comment on In 2023, console video game players will spend $21B on in-game items and subscriptions, as "live service games" make the market more akin to mobile 1 year ago:
I see this take a lot, and while I don't disagree... I think it downplays the number of people who DO make 'sensible' purchases in a lot of these games.
I personally don't bother with in-game purchases (I also rarely buy DLC... but I also sub to FFXIV regularly, and have all the content for Destiny 2, so sometimes I can be got) for cosmetics or especially boosts. I'd rather earn the items in game, or a step down, earn in-game currency to purchase those items instead because I'm, at the end of the day, paying for a game to play it and while I want to look good in game while doing so, I'm not gonna drop $15 on digital t-shirts.
But there are plenty of people who don't mind tossing down $60 additionally a year into a game like Destiny 2 for sparkly new transmog outfits from the Eververse store, and they'll see it as any sort of reason to do so ('because I have the money', 'because I want to support the developer', 'because I have to collect everything', 'because because because'), and we can't just pretend like its a handful of dudes dropping thousands of dollars while everyone else nobly boycotts the practice.
- Comment on In 2023, console video game players will spend $21B on in-game items and subscriptions, as "live service games" make the market more akin to mobile 1 year ago:
The big problem is that a company will look at something like World of Warcraft/Destiny at the height of their popularity and think "We want that!"
Then they'll put out a (we're being optimistic here) serviceable, good game with a respectable amount of content... but it won't be able to hold a candle to something that: already has that much content + more AND players who are already 'stuck' with the game (sunk cost, friends/family/community, etc).
So you put out a game, get a brief spurt of attention from people who are a bit bored of the same ol' same ol', but then once they breakneck through all the content you have in less than a month they turn around and head back to their comfort food game and never look back. Congratulations, you can now put out a master class on how to waste millions of dollars.
In order to make a game as a service now you need either an extremely good hook, or you need to not only be comparable to an existing game but also EXCEED what that game offers and continue to provide content at a staggering speed until you've coerced people to have invested enough in the game to then be their comfort food/sunk cost game of choice.