• Nalivai@lemmy.world
    26·
    1 day ago

    Not pictured: seven trillion indie games, half of which is the worst shit you’ve ever saw, the other half is your new obsession that you play so much it redefines your personality.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    18·
    2 days ago

    I’m pretty sure the current failure of AAA gaming has to do to companies getting captured by private equity, but the rise of lootboxes, of subscription-based games and NFTs softened up the AAA industry enough to make it vulnerable to private equity share grabs.

    • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
      51·
      2 days ago

      Disclaimer: I am NOT defending video game companies.

      I think loot boxes and other fuckery are due to our unwillingness to pay more for the game itself. Shit, I remember seeing new games on the fucking Super Nintendo costing $60. That equivalent price today is almost $150. You can argue about profit margins and greed all day, but that’s an enormous difference. These companies have to make up for that somewhere. So in light of the fact we won’t pay those prices (I sure as hell wouldn’t), they had to get tricky.

      • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        1 day ago

        I don’t have the data to back it up, but I disagree. By the time that lootboxes and micro transactions appeared, the video game industry was already in competition with Hollywood for profits - if not already making more.

        One of the largest costs for the industry historically has been manufacturing the physical media. It costs a lot to produce all the cartridges and packaging, and to have that shipped around the world. As technology improved, however, those costs began to drop on a per unit basis from the cartridges of old to the cds and dvds of the 2000s, allowing for a higher profit margin on a per unit basis. But the biggest kicker was the development of digital storefronts. Suddenly, you didn’t have to make a single piece of physical media in order to sell a game, and companies suddenly began to make back a lot more of that $60 directly instead of having it spent on manufacturing. They make the game once, and then each copy they sell after the first costs effectively $0 to manufacture since it’s the exact same copy as the first. Then you also have every game selling a “digital deluxe edition” for as much as $100 (or more!), often for just some exclusive cosmetics.

        Micro transactions and live service is what they call the “long tail” of a game - you already made the product and sold it, but it continues to bring in money after the fact. Companies don’t have to spend huge sums to make a brand new game when they can just trickle out incremental updates and skins and rake in the money.

        • shaztopher@lemmy.zip
          4·
          1 day ago

          That $60 game costs them $20 to sell on steam. So not that different than paying $20 to manufacture a cartridge really.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 day ago

            The retail store the physical media was sold in would take $30 of that $60, going by the usual retail margins. Though they did also have to pay for the shipping and people to put the games on the shelves, take money for the games, and prevent people from just walking out the door with them. But the game publisher would only see $30 from retail stores or $40 from steam either way.

            Also I bet the retailers had certain ad budget requirements before they’d even consider putting them on shelves.

    • bridgeburner@lemmy.world
      52·
      2 days ago

      The rise of lootboxes is equally to blame on those moron players who buy them. Especially the fucking whales, who spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on them. Recurringly. Whales fucking ruin everything they touch. They are to blame why most video games turn to shit, since they show the companies that it is much more lucrative for them to just release new lootboxes with some new super rare items or whatever instead of actually releasing meaningful content. And I mean who can blame them, really? Creating lootboxes barely costs anything wrt to development costs and time, but making new meaningful content does. Fuck whales.

      • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        It’s easy to blame players, but gambling compulsion is a known psychological phenomenon that can bypass the reasoning of some particularly susceptible people. The law quite often leans towards it not being players’ fault they’re so addicted, hence no ads for casinos.

        Honestly, we kind of need the law to catch up - on sports betting too.

      • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        3·
        1 day ago

        Whales are largely a myth told by video game (and gambling) companies to hide the truth of who they’re actually targeting and to keep you blaming the wrong people.

        They want you to blame the dude with more money than the church and not enough brains to know the difference between cents and sense, but the truth is that the vast VAST majority of money made through lootboxes and other forms of gambling comes from 3 sources:

        Kids aged 15 and under, people with addiction issues, and people with mental health issues like depression or neurodivergent conditions like ADHD.

        Game companies hire psychologists to develop the most effective ways to exploit the way the human brain functions in order to maximize the amount of money that they can squeeze out of people, and all 3 of these groups suffer from the same issues that they exploit: poor impulse control and difficulty with keeping track of how much they’re actually spending. Kids because their brains aren’t physically developed enough yet, addicts (and people with ADHD to a lesser extent) because their brains are literally wired that way, and people with mental health issues have reduced capacity for both and are more likely to seek out things that promise quick access to dopamine and serotonin (think “retail therapy” or self medicating). Also of note is that researchers suspect that kids who grow up spending money on lootboxes and micro transactions in general are more likely to develop addictive personality issues later in life - basically being groomed into gambling addicts.

        That’s also why they never let you buy stuff directly with money and use fake currencies that don’t have a 1 to 1 translation - it makes it 10 times harder to track how much you actually spent. It’s also why you can never buy the exact amount you need for an item: if you have currency left over, you’re more likely to buy more so that it isn’t “wasted”.

  • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
    411·
    2 days ago

    Manly Death: Heterosexual Warfare looks to be full of naked men. Just saying.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    256·
    2 days ago

    Chinese Spyware

    Yeah, uh, think again bucko. Spyware in Microsoft is 100% home grown American, like God intended.

    That’s Sam Altman’s data, and he will pen a very weepy Op-Ed in the Washington Post if he thinks for a single second that the filthy yellow dragon of the East might be trivially bypassing his lowest bidder security setup to download a trillion petabytes of Esports fast-clicker metadata plus all your credit card info.

    • QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works
      19·
      1 day ago

      I believe they’re talking about the FPS games invasive anticheat, not windows itself. Examples include Vanguard, EasyAnticheat, Battleye, Duenvo etc.

      Also they come from all around the globe, not specifically China. (Though technically there are ones from China, but those are made for games with a Chinese audience)

      • DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 day ago

        To my knowledge, Denuvo is not an anticheat nor is it invasive. It’s an always online DRM with a grace period inbetween check-ins.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        2 days ago

        I believe they’re talking about the FPS games invasive anticheat, not windows itself.

        I’m sure the Blizzard/Activision game portal is also trying to suck out all my client data like a depressurizing spaceship.

        (Though technically there are ones from China, but those are made for games with a Chinese audience)

        That’s even worse! Stop stealing our games, China!