Who Killed Videogames?

jjp9999 writes "Video game developer and novelist Tim Rogers exposes the underbelly of free-to-play games that use real-world currency. They're not trying to entertain you — they're trying to get you hooked. Every minute you play is being analyzed by men in suits reeling you into a cycle of addiction so they can keep you coming for more, and hopefully opening your wallet to buy premium points here and there. To do this, they intentionally give you an hour's worth of gameplay dragged out over the course of a week to keep it on your mind, dropping coins here and there for you to pick up, and playing on your own sense of work and profit to keep you coming back."

Comments

same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

capitalism

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not capitalism its greed.

Re:same as with everything else

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

More subtle than that, arguably.

Consider this bit from TFA:
"An ex-drug-dealer (now a video game industry powerbrain) once told me that he doesn’t understand why people buy heroin. The heroin peddler isn’t even doing heroin. Like him or not, when you hear Cliff Bleszinski talk about Gears of War, he sounds — in a good way — like a weed dealer. He sounds like he endorses what he is selling. When you’re in a room with social games guys, the “I never touch the stuff” attitude is so thick you’ll need a box cutter to breathe properly."

With the traditional, boxed lump-'o-retail game, there was a certain necessary straightforwardness, possibly even honesty about the thing: You make the game and either get my $50 or not. Even if you are merely calculating, you still want to make a fun game, because you need me to buy it. If you are genuinely enthusiastic about games, you also want to make a fun game.

Once you get into the world of DLC and MMORPGs and such, you are in a sort of intermediate position: There is still the upfront purchase; but you have a constant nagging incentive to see what you can get away with in terms of sucking me in for another month's grind, or making some downloaded component semi-obligatory.

Once you get to "freemium", our interests are more or less at odds: I'm a net loss to you as long as I play for free, so you have an incentive to try every dirty trick in the book to 'monetize' me, and create a game that induces payment without ever overtly demanding it.

It's ironic, actually, that the "casual" games would be the ones where this rather ugly dynamic is strongest. The stereotype(not 100% without supporting anecdotes, but rather overplayed) is that the 'serious' gamers are the ones where the hardcore addictions are; but that is the area where the publisher's incentive to create addictive gameplay is weakest: You already have my $60, you want me to enjoy myself so I'll buy the sequel; but you gain nothing from sucking away my life. On the casual side, you start with nothing from me, and you have to scrape it out one microtransaction at a time...

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Enhanced by capitalism and the need for money.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a difference?

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

capitalism is a manifestation of greed, by definition

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not capitalism its greed.

There's a difference?

Re:same as with everything else

[msobkow]

I was hooked on Mafia Wars for a few months, until I realized how much time I was wasting for nothing. So-called "social media" games are anything but. There is no social aspect to them at all -- no in-game conversation, no player messaging support, nothing. Anyone with a headset and an XBox experiences more social interaction while gaming than on Crackbook.

Once I stepped back from them, I realized you couldn't even really call them "games". There is no winning or losing, only perpetual grinding for enough points/items to accomplish a mission, after which you eternally move on to the next mission that they've added in the meantime.

There is no skill involved, no choice involved, and no thought involved. Just keep clicking long enough, and you'll get to the "next level."

I'd call them Ponzi schemes, except you were never promised anything of use or value if you choose to spend real money on them.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism is greed. Eliminate greed and it becomes communism.

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

The funny thing is that it's pretty much direct result of piracy. Do you remember all the posts on Slashdot that told record labels and developers to adapt to changing times? Well quite frankly, they did. The results is this - free games with microtransactions, impossible to pirate. All of you actually demanded it, so don't cry now.

Just as a side note, even though I owned TF2 before, it's really enjoyable even as free2play and the item store.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

4/10

would not troll again.

Re:same as with everything else

[maguxs]

same thing

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

People didn't demand negative adaptation. People demanded positive adaptation. You're really straining to be insightful if you're trying to claim that people asked to have it worse.

Re:same as with everything else

[TreeInMyCube]

Calling them games is similar to calling Solitaire a game, or calling the various betting-related activities in a casino "gaming." Yes, poker and blackjack require a measure of skill, but craps and roulette are just contests against random events. People derive enjoyment during the "pastimes", and that keeps them coming back. The obvious difference between casino games and social online games is that the casino stacks the probabilities so that the house always wins, and the player always loses, in the long term. For social games, the player does win ... the farm gets bigger, the points pile up. Would you call pinball a "game"? Can you win anything in solitaire/freecell beyond the satisfaction of clearing all the cards?

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

That still doesn't change the fact that it's a direct result of it, and people actually demanded the adaption. Actions usually have consequences, sometimes bad (even though Valve has shown that you can do f2p model good way too). Development still needs to be funded, and people wanted free games. Well, here they are.

However, you do still have lots of normal games too. Those aren't gone even though Facebook has casual games for other people. It just means the gaming market has grown, especially with girls and women.

Re:same as with everything else

[digitig]

Clearly the free games with microtransactions are adaptive. People didn't realise what they were asking for, but yes, they asked for it and are rewarding it.

Re:same as with everything else

[RoFLKOPTr]

The funny thing is that it's pretty much direct result of piracy. Do you remember all the posts on Slashdot that told record labels and developers to adapt to changing times? Well quite frankly, they did. The results is this - free games with microtransactions, impossible to pirate. All of you actually demanded it, so don't cry now.

That is so completely unrelated that I can't even be sure you read the summary. Social games are a different sector of the industry than conventional games. In fact, one could probably consider them a completely different industry given that their demographics have nearly no overlap and their business models are completely different. Social games are not designed to be "fun", but addictive. They hire psychologists and shit to determine the most effective ways of getting people hooked on their crappy sort-of-games. The conventional gaming industry profits on making fun games... they don't need you to be addicted to make money off you because they already have your money. Piracy has nothing to do with the social games industry because it's not like game designers stopped making conventional games and switched to social games in response to it..... get it?

Just as a side note, even though I owned TF2 before, it's really enjoyable even as free2play and the item store.

Also completely unrelated. TF2 is a conventional video game that started as pay-to-own. Valve only switched to F2P after they had already made millions selling the game to nearly everybody who would ever in their lives wish to play it and came up with a different business model as a way to profit further from those who have hundreds or thousands of hours in-game (I myself have almost 600 hours... but haven't played it in probably over a year). TF2 is not a game designed solely with addiction in mind like social games are.

Re:same as with everything else

[andresa]

Poker is also just a game based on pure luck. In the long run you will only end up losing and the casino collects the rakes and profits. The cards that come out are random, the cards that other players have are random, and the cards you have are random. If hit and play until end of the hand, it's completely random which cards come out. You can't win the game with skill, so it's almost like lottery. You can only increase your changes of winning, like in lottery if you buy more tickets. But in the end, the house always wins. You cannot control it.

Re:same as with everything else

[msobkow]

I don't think so. MMOs and such use the microtransaction approach as well, but even they have more social interaction than so-called "social" games.

Shifting to microtransactions doesn't mean you have to abandon the idea of providing a good game experience.

Re:same as with everything else

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Meanwhile, you were passing the time doing something that interested you.

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

Summary or the article don't talk anything about social games, they talk about the whole f2p model and microtransactions. It's not limited to only social games, there are hundreds of games supported this way. Almost all games developed and played in Asia work with this way. Even Blizzard had to change their subscription model there because the gamers weren't use to paying upfront and subscriptions for games. So in Asia WoW players buy hours instead of monthly subscription. It's been slowly coming to western games too, but it has certainly been there longer than Zynga and other Facebook games. They are just a really visible segment, that's all.

TF2, however, was released before western world was used to microtransactions in games. And it wasn't even sold separately, it was part of Orange Box which came with HL2, Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

The funny thing is that it's pretty much direct result of piracy.

That is purely bullshit.

Piracy has not reduced the profitability of games one bit. There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them.

The F2P debacle is simply the direct result of the entitlement mentality of corporations who feel that any money that is in your pocket that is not destined for their pocket is some sort of existential affront to the corporation's very existence. They HATE the idea that anybody might not be giving them money.

Last week we had an admission from an industry group that "lost profits" was not really what was driving their efforts with the MPAA and worldwide lobbying efforts to create local police states, but rather it was their loss of control. I see you're new to Slashdot, so I'll explain: "Profits" means money. "Control" means "The power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events".

The only "direct result of piracy" is groups of corporations fear that a day may come when human beings will realize that they, corporations, are not people and thus should not control everything in the world. And the terror that notion strikes into their hearts has induced them to set out on one last big all-or-nothing effort to lock down the fucking world through bribery, thuggery and dishonesty.

I guess it never occurred to them to try just making high-quality games and charging fair, reasonable prices for them. The experience of Valve's Steam, that people will gladly pay instead of pirate a game if it's $25 instead of $60 and that many people won't lay out $60 for a game after having been burned by the last time they paid $60 for a buggy console port that ended up with only 5 hours of gameplay and needed several patches just to be playable. just never made an impact on the primitive corporate brainstem.

If you listen carefully, TechLA, you can almost hear the sound of the world changing. People are starting, though slowly (and a little late) to figure out that corporations have not been performing on their side of the social contract. How funny that with all their wealth and alleged technical prowess that the corporations themselves are going to be the last to realize what's happening.

Here, let me leave you with a little something. I saw this in the Salt Lake Tribune today:

A Time poll released Thursday morning found that 54 percent of those surveyed view the Wall Street protests favorably, compared with 23 percent who think the opposite. Interestingly, only 23 percent say they donâ(TM)t have an opinion, which suggests that the protests have succeeded in reaching the mainstream.

Also: The most populist positions espoused by Occupy Wall Street â" that the gap between rich and poor has grown too large; that taxes should be raised on the rich; that executives responsible for the meltdown should be prosecuted â" all have strong support.

Meanwhile, the poll found that 27 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the tea party. My handy calculator tells me that this is half the number of those who view Occupy Wall Street favorably.

In a little over a week, an anti-corporate movement went from complete obscurity, known only to a very few online activists, to a popular, global movement that even a significant number of self-described Republicans are getting behind.

The only corporations that are going to win in this new climate are the ones that get a clue. And it may be time for corporate apologists to take note, too, my very high-UID friend. You might want to pass the message up the line. There might be a gold star in it for you.

Re:same as with everything else

[VAElynx]

Do you realise that those complainers then , and those who complain now aren't necessarily the same people? "People on slashdot" is a broad class.

Re:same as with everything else

[DarkTempes]

A direct result of piracy is definitely a stretch. At best piracy is a contributor to more established studios getting into the social/web game market (and social/web games have their own versions of 'piracy': almost all features that one can pay for can eventually be gotten with scripting).

Free-to-play web games have been around since the creation of the internet (and like most other websites they are usually funded by advertisements).
Then as they got tied in with social platforms they got exposure to larger audiences and became 'social games'.
Nothing new, nothing to scream, "OH MY GOD, PIRACY PUSHED THIS TO HAPPEN".

As they got more popular business people found better ways to monetize them (microtransactions) though even that is not new nor is it a direct result of piracy.
It's been common in asian games for ages (and while piracy is a problem in the asian market I would suggest that piracy rates, microtransactions, lower costs are more of a result of poverty).

Re:same as with everything else

[turbidostato]

"Poker is also just a game based on pure luck"

Yes. Unless we forget the fact it is not, that is.

"it's completely random which cards come out."

Yes, but it is not completly random what the contenders will bet against their respective odds.

"If hit and play until end of the hand, it's completely random which cards come out"

If you promise me that you will stick to that behaviour you can play poker with me whenever you want.

"You can't win the game with skill"

That's right. Except that's wrong, I mean. The fact that on 500 to 1000 gamers tournaments there's a bunch of names that consistenly repeat should make you to consider that there must be something out of randomness that make this to happen.

It certainly might be that all those games are fooled but unless you have proof that's the case you must accept that it might be that the more skilled are *not* at odds with the less skilled ones. Once and if you can accept that, then we can go on what could be that makes the more skilled to win more often.

"the house always wins. You cannot control it."

That's an absolutly different thing because "the house always wins" doesn't mean that "the house always wins *all*".

Re:same as with everything else

[RCL]

Bullshit, that has nothing to do with greed.

People play less these days (lack of time - damn, we get older!), and those who play the most (teenagers) usually pirate, so they want it free. F2P is the natural answer. You don't have to pay up front, so you may invite all of your friends. You pay either with time or money, so if you can't play 10 hours a week, you can pay and get the same result. You don't pay for something you don't need, so it's even more fair than 'classic' games.

Sure, players' behavior is analyzed to make the game more attractive for them, but hey - that's natural. People want to influence the game, they provide a lot of feedback (mostly asking for new stuff or complaining), so game developers consider all the input - both explicit and implicit - when making decisions.

Where's greed here?

Re:same as with everything else

[hakahaka]

Piracy has not reduced the profitability of games one bit. There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them.

I pirate many single player games because I can. Multiplayer games, however, I have to buy because otherwise I can't play on the real servers or at all. But as single player games are easily available without paying, I don't feel the need to pay 50 euros for them. Skyrim will be single player so... and I need to buy Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 at the same time anyway, because I mostly enjoy them online. If it wasn't possible to pirate Skyrim, I would buy it, because I really want to play it.

Re:same as with everything else

[Stan92057]

It wasn't for nothing, it was your entertainment. Same as a hobby, a hobbyist doesn't expect a return on the money because they do it for fun and to waste time.

Re:same as with everything else

[Gadget_Guy]

People play less these days (lack of time - damn, we get older!), and those who play the most (teenagers) usually pirate, so they want it free.

The only problem with that theory is that it does not match the evidence. The games industry keeps making more and more money every year. A lot of that increase is due to games costing way more than they used to, but it shows that there are still a lot of people paying for games.

Re:same as with everything else

[greentshirt]

Obviously the motivation behind it is greed, but the vehicle by which it is so widely perpetuated is capitalism. Capitalism is the the rational accumulation of money for the sole purpose of investing it to make more money. It's a cycle, there's no end to it, there's no "enough" - profitable companies don't often just abandon their business because they made all the profit that they wanted to. Every single quarter, every single year, the financial goal of almost every major corporation is to make more money than the last. Even the most successful tech and oil companies still want to make more. This is greed, to be sure, but it's systemic, organized, rational, highly efficient greed.

Re:same as with everything else

[bigstrat2003]

Piracy has not reduced the profitability of games one bit. There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them.

You overstate your case. If you don't know even one gamer who would buy a game that they pirate (if piracy weren't an option), you either know very few gamers or have an exceptional circle of acquaintances. I don't hold with the attitude that (insert copyright Nazi group here) espouses that every pirated copy is a lost sale. That's bullshit. But it's equally bullshit to claim that no pirated copies represent a lost sale.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. If we try to argue the opposite extreme as the (insert copyright Nazi group), then we're frankly no better than they are.

Re:same as with everything else

[WilyCoder]

If skyrim cost $1 you wouldn't pirate it.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

If you don't know even one gamer who would buy a game that they pirate

I'm not saying that no pirated game represents a lost sale, just that it did not affect the profitability of the game companies.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

That's a copout. There is this conventional wisdom that "halfway between any two opinions lies the truth". It's not true.

There has never been a bit of evidence that game publishers have lost profits due to piracy.

Re:same as with everything else

[bigstrat2003]

There has never been a bit of evidence that game publishers have lost profits due to piracy.

I'm not saying that no pirated game represents a lost sale...

If they lost a sale (that is, if someone would have bought the game if not for being able to pirate it, which you seem to agree does happen with a non-zero frequency), they lost profits. You don't need to lose millions upon millions of dollars to lose profits.

Re:same as with everything else

[Truekaiser]

I have to admit i pirated oblivion, which in turn made me glad i did not spend 60 bucks on the dumbed down. hand holding like your a two year old port of a console designed game that the elder-scroll series has become. when i realized how much crap it was and how many mods i would of had to use to make it playable i deleted it and tossed the disc in the garbage.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

I pirate many single player games because I can.

Isn't that interesting? I reply to one industry astroturfer with a very high UID and like magic someone immediately registers with Slashdot only to post one comment which supports the astroturfer's assertion.

I'll say one thing, TechLA, you're a hard worker. But too obvious. You must be new at this. I know times are hard but there must have been a more ethical job out there, like drug dealer.

Re:same as with everything else

[kestasjk]

What have we done!?.. TFA asked who killed video games, and now we must accept with horror: We killed video games!

The only thing that can take my mind off the guilt now is some more Portal 2, Battlefield MW 2, Civ V and Bioshock 2.

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

A lot of that increase is due to games costing way more than they used to

Wait, what? No they don't. Games have always costed the same amount. In fact, we now have lots of games that are actually cheaper than what most new games were before, thanks to indie games and internet distribution. And yes, even back then there were a few games that cost above the average, for example I remember Sierra's Pro Pilot flight simulator costing more than the average game.

Re:same as with everything else

[Nemyst]

Indie gaming is but a fraction of the business. If you look at console games, you'll note that the price point is now roughly between 60 and 70 dollars, whereas it was 50 a generation or two ago. This can be attributed in part to inflation, but not entirely.

PC gaming has it easier thanks to Steam and its competitors driving prices down, but new releases still hit the 60 dollars mark often enough.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

If they lost a sale (that is, if someone would have bought the game if not for being able to pirate it, which you seem to agree does happen with a non-zero frequency), they lost profits.

Not if they gained other sales due to the interest generated by those who pirated the game and who otherwise might not have bought it.

The argument here is whether piracy has cost the corporations profits, not whether one lost sale represents lost profits. Is the aggregate effect of piracy lost profits? There has been no evidence to suggest this.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

I have to admit i pirated oblivion, which in turn made me glad i did not spend 60 bucks on the dumbed down.

Did you finish the game? You seem to suggest you did not.

So, would you call it "lost profits" if a download prevented someone from being fooled into paying $60 for a game that they never would have if they knew how bad it was? It's perfectly reasonable for someone to expect to try something before they buy it. Now I don't mean you should be able to eat a hamburger before you decide to pay for it, but you should at least be able to get a look at it to see if meat is rancid.

What was the last time you saw someone offer a money-back guarantee on a video game? When you have a business model that is dependent on selling an inferior product but relying on them not realizing it until you have their money, you deserve to lose profits.

I don't really believe purchasing products is supposed to be like buying a lottery ticket. If a corporation loses profits because people get wise to the fact that they are selling empty boxes, then I believe that's a good thing for people, if not for the corporation who was selling empty boxes.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you're right. It can't be entirely attributed to inflation because games are CHEAPER now when you account for inflation.

Re:same as with everything else

[EdgeCreeper]

The funny thing is that it's pretty much direct result of piracy.

No, it isn't.

Much closer to the truth is that this is a result of creating a software product for "non-traditional" gamers. These people find it appealing because they cannot lose in any meaningful way in the game. They are solely designed to addict and suck as much money from certain vulnerable individuals. I cannot see any way that users of these games benefit at all from them.

Please note that the article is only about "social" games, such as those on Facebook, and the iPad or iPhone or whatever. It also says that the figures bandied about are that 95% of the population who touch a "social" game spend nothing. Here is what it says about those that do spend the money:

Do players buy energy? What sorts of players buy energy? The short answer is: actual idiots. The long answer is: people who don’t understand why they have so much real-world money.

So, unscrupulous individuals have found a way to sucker feeble-minded people with stupid half-formed pseudo-games. They are worse than casinos. Do not touch these things. Anybody playing them needs to be hit with a cluebat, hard.

Please read the TFA, even if it is a somewhat epic in length, it is some of the best writing I have encountered.

Re:same as with everything else

[Belial6]

It should also be noted that the percentage of games that are pirated has plummeted over the years. So, both the number of games paid for in absolute numbers, as well as the percentage of games paid for has increased.

Re:same as with everything else

[RCL]

This data looks weird, especially the part where movies and music generate less revenue than games (and books!).

Anyway, I cannot speak for the whole industry, but from POV of a single company it becomes harder to make profitable games, not easier. You need many more people for an AAA project - so many that in fact few studios can produce an AAA game single-handedly, most need to outsource grunt work (like content creation). This increases costs and risks, and thus prices.

Re:same as with everything else

[RCL]

You can also find quite a few console games priced 40 USD and less (like Homefront) - which was unheard of a generation ago.

Re:same as with everything else

[schnell]

That is purely bullshit.

There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them.

Hi there. Several years ago, I wanted Sid Meier's "Pirates" for the PC. Right after the game came out, I picked up the game in a cracked version while I was on a trip to Asia because it was easy and cost 40 cents. I played it for a while and enjoyed it okay, but not enough that I ever got around to buying it to make my purchase legit. I have copied music and games from my friends many times before, and since I have some disposable income I really do try to buy copies when I enjoy them. But this is one case where I just didn't.

I am quite certain that had I not had easy access to the pirated version (in the great computer market at Panthip Plaza in Bangkok) at the time the game came out, I would definitely have bought it.

So the next time you plan to say that there is NO evidence that anyone who ever pirated a game was going to buy it otherwise, do us all a favor and shut the f**k up. That way you won't make the arguments of the rest of us who do "try before we buy" look stupid when you make asinine assertions that nobody actually pirates anything.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

ffs keep it down. Some of us are trying to make a living/mound of ca$h here.

Oh and it is to do with piracy, very much. Apple made DLC the only non-pirate-able thing by only giving secure receipt validation for DLC, not for the original app. Piracy on iOS is very substantial, I have a 3M+ user title under my wing using DLC and a lesser one as a $-per-install app.

Piracy on the previous paid-purchase app was substantial (double-digit %); it was a server based app so we knew each discrete actual user vs app-store receipts for downloads. Lots of people warezed it. We saw the warez sites with the cracked .ipa on, and we saw a _lot_ of pirate users.

DLC = no warez. Being free gives you 10x the downloads. Ask apple why they won't provide server receipt validation for paid app downloads.

Re:same as with everything else

[Babbster]

If you look at console games, you'll note that the price point is now roughly between 60 and 70 dollars, whereas it was 50 a generation or two ago.

No, you won't note that. You'll note that the price point is now roughly between 50 and 60 dollars, assuming you're talking US dollars. You'll also note that $50 was the standard price for console games for much longer than "a generation or two" - more like over 20 years. Heck, I remember Super Nintendo games up to $75 at retail and N64 games sometimes debuted at even higher prices! Playstation prices bucked the trend (and in fact set a new trend) by being cheaper because pressing CDs cost publishers next to nothing (just as DVD and even Blu-ray duplication is extremely cheap compared to cartridges). In short, adjusting for inflation, retail console game prices have gone down over the years. This is thanks, again, to the disc formats replacing cartridges and the economies of scale. Even with significantly higher game development costs, more games sold means profits can be realized at lower retail prices. I think the reason people think that game prices are higher today is that the average age of gamers has risen steadily over the years which means that more people playing games today bought them with their own money. I was buying games with my own money before the Genesis and Super Nintendo hit the scene, so I've had to know game prices for over 20 years.

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

At least here console games have always been 60-70 euros. They were that 10-15 years ago, and they still are. They go down in price a lot faster now than 10 years ago though. On PC things like Steam sales and cheap web stores have also brought down prices a lot.

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

That still doesn't change the fact that it's a direct result of it, and people actually demanded the adaption.

Fair enough. From now on, I'll come to your house every day and hit you in the face. When you demand that I stop being unreasonable, I'll show up every other day and kick you in the crotch instead, and then lecture you on how the status quo is a direct result of your complaints.

Stop being disingenuous.

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

People didn't demand negative adaptation. People demanded positive adaptation.

Which part of that confused you?

Re:same as with everything else

[Machtyn]

The one thing the freemium games have is that the payments are low, not even noticeable, to the user. $0.50 here, $1.00 there. Buy a card for $10.00, we'll give you 2.5 times the points for double the money. The kicker is that "everyone" has to have the best now! I want it now... I don't want to grind my way through 50,000 points in three weeks, I'll buy those points in a few minutes. And I'm done. Then, before I know it, I'm down $100 to a game that I wouldn't have spent $20.00 on in a box.

Of course, if you realize what is going on, enjoy the game and suffer the grind, you eventually get it. Like life - even with talent, you still have to work at it. And it's going to take time.

No, these companies make nothing off me. I'm a drain on their resources. But, if a game is good enough. If I have really enjoyed it - I'll lay down some cash - they deserve the earnings. However, I watch my payments and I don't overspend.

Sidebar: Of all the free to play games I've played, I've laid down $10.00. It was worth it.

Re:same as with everything else

[KahabutDieDrake]

You are out of your mind. When I was 12, a copy of Chuck Yeager's Air combat sold for 29.99. The only other game over 19.99 on the shelf was Falcon 3.0 (15 floppies!!!). Console games started out closer to the $30 mark as well, if memory serves. What is a new title go for today? $60. Sometimes even $65. I'd say that's a bit of a jump.

Indie games have always been around. Ever heard of Myst?

Re:same as with everything else

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Must we not now become video games ourselves, if only to seem worthy of it?

Re:same as with everything else

[bryan1945]

I was going to go with 'the radio star' to close the loop.

Re:same as with everything else

[KDR_11k]

F2P doesn't usually operate in the AAA space anyway, most widely played F2P games are very simplistic games that would take maybe 1-2 people to make in Flash. Often they are too simplistic, I get bored of most of 'em due to the lack of a challenge or variety and the one that I did stick with (Gun Bros) kept tossing ad notifications on my phone (on the iPod I could disable those) so it got erased.

Re:same as with everything else

[KDR_11k]

From my experience casual gamers are usually much more hardcore in the way they play individual games to perfection while hardcore gamers can only casually dip into individual games because the next release is already around the corner and they don't have enough time to go hardcore on everything.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they asked for change, and they got it. That's what happens when you cry and whine all the time but not make any serious, positive contributions towards solutions.
"Negative" adaptation? Adaptation is adaptation, your assignment of value is only your opinion.

Re:same as with everything else

[KDR_11k]

F2P is an attempt to sidestep the normal market dynamics. On the PC most F2P games are C-grade clones of popular AAA games that try to compete by not charging anything up front. On the mobile phones the F2P games exist to avoid the price pressure as most mobile gamers have learned that anything can be had for a dollar or free if you wait for a sale, F2P extracts more money from such people.

Me, I prefer paid equivalents since they don't give the dev any incentive to add needless "pay a buck to skip this" grinds that hurt the fun badly if you don't pay up. That usually means they strive to make the game more fun and cut grinds like that out.

The worst I've played was one of those F2P FPSes on Steam (War Inc I believe), weapons could only reasonably be earned as rentals (for a week on level up and a few days for ingame currency IIRC), to get things permanently you'd practically have to pay real money. Meanwhile games like a Call of Duty MW2 which I got for 30€ up front at launch (compared to some ingame item bundles that cost as much in War Inc) let me keep all the items I unlock once and are much better in every respect. Mind you, I'm not big on CoDMW2 but it was clearly much better than War Inc.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the poll found that 27 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the tea party. My handy calculator tells me that this is half the number of those who view Occupy Wall Street favorably.

Although I generally agree with your perspective, next time, I suggest quoting someone who isn't such a blatant moron. And if anyone reading this can't see the basic mathematical error in this logic I suggest keeping out of complex social and political discussions until you've gone back and finished grammar-school again.

Re:same as with everything else

[RCL]

This will change. Crytek (those guys who did FarCry & Crysis) has already announced their first AAA F2P.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

People didn't demand negative adaptation. People demanded positive adaptation.

Which part of that confused you?

Maybe that the population at large seems to be quite happy with what you call "negative adaption"?

Re:same as with everything else

[billcopc]

Agreed. The games I had in the 90s cost between $10 and $30. The concept of "DLC" was also simply called shareware, and almost every computer shop had a carrousel full of inexpensive games, usually just a floppy and title card in a baggie or jewel case. I fondly remember buying Dungeon Master for $10 one summer, playing the crap out of it for months. Games were cheap enough that I could entertain myself at least 5-6 hours a day as a pre-teen, while saving up my $10 weekly allowance to afford a Sound Blaster by the end of the summer. I'd walk to the computer shop every Tuesday to check out their new arrivals. I still have a floppy case full of those old games somewhere... Makes me wanna fire up Commander Keen for old times' sake.

Then the CD-Rom happened, and games took a nosedive. Everything became a prerendered shit show and prices shot upward, to cover the cost of all those render farms. I have another box with all those stinkers, mostly because I'm a nostalgic packrat. I doubt I'll ever want to play "The Daedalus Encounter" again.

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

The population at large is a different group from the people who actively complain about the state of the gaming business. In this discussion, we're talking about the latter.

I suppose it makes sense that people who don't read TFA they're commenting on won't read TFP they're replying to.

Re:same as with everything else

[taoareyou]

Since when is making money off a product greed? Do you work at a job? Do you get paid for what you do? Does that make you greedy? Profit does not equal greed. Profit = people being able to pay rent, utilities, buy food, and try to live a life that is above poverty level. Game developers are not super rich elite. Every company that makes money is not greedy. They employ good people who make good money. Get off the greed kick.

Re:same as with everything else

[billcopc]

F2P is a bit of a catch-22, as the revenue model is based on players paying for premium features, boosts or exclusive content, but by being free in the first place, they attract a mob of kids (or foreigners) that have no money, who promptly ruin the game for everyone else.

Exhibit A. : Runescape
Exhibit B. : League of Legends
Exhibit C. : Spiral Knights

These games, at the core, aren't bad. Heck, I think League of Legends is a very well designed successor to DOTA (with godawful programming). In both cases, they are riddled with grief-play, trolling, and any other abuse those prepubescent bastards can conjure up.

A guy like me, who really hates the griefers, would gladly pay a token amount to "buy" the game, as that would be an effective way of shutting out the trolls, who will simply take their racist monologues elsewhere. You don't see anywhere near that level of abuse in paid MMOs, because people tend to be a bit more respectful when a ban means having to pay $20-40 to get a new account.

Re:same as with everything else

[dcollins]

Good points. Perhaps we should call them "junk games", similar to "junk food".

Re:same as with everything else

[Truekaiser]

yes, i got tired of the game pointing me exactly where i need to go with the compass. or the regenerating mana taking away any strategy other then spell spamming. or that if you level up a few times your suddenly facing high level monsters with beginner equipment. or that the game maker falsely advertises that you can use multiple ways to solve quests(diplomacy, stealth, or fighting like in daggerfall) when the game is strictly scripted to force you to only fight.(took a peek in their editor.) or that you can do what would even in a remotely rational game which followed it's own canon would be impossible. be the head of both the fighter's and the mage's guild both of which don't like each other..

Re:same as with everything else

[DNS-and-BIND]

Assuming US dollars? Uh, dude, I don't think anyone here uses Hong Kong dollars or Namibian dollars in casual conversation. From now on, assume lowercase-d dollar means USD. I've been living abroad for years and nobody but you ever has this confusion. Pompous ass.

Re:same as with everything else

[dswskinner]

Try Canadian it Australian. I see them thrown around on here quite a lot.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

but by being free in the first place, they attract a mob of kids (or foreigners) that have no money, who promptly ruin the game for everyone else.

Ah, I see you are advocating the "country club" model of discrimination. Well played, sir.

Which types of unseemly people do you believe should be kept away to avoid offending the sensibilities of affluent white people? Shall we keep out the Jews? Black people? Asians? Obviously, there's no question about keeping the poor away... they smell, even online.

Re:same as with everything else

[blahplusplus]

" I was buying games with my own money before the Genesis and Super Nintendo hit the scene, so I've had to know game prices for over 20 years."

While the game prices haven't changed much the size of the market has changed offsetting the need to increase prices because of market expansion. I really hate how people say "games are cheaper because of inflation" but then fail to mention stagnant wages and the erosion of buying power from said inflation.

It's too simplistic an explanation that doesn't take into account multitude of variables.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd definitely buy it" always sounded like an excuse to me.

"Sure I'd buy it (if I had money at the time and it was available at a shop nearby and the pirated version wasn't cheaper and and and), except that I didn't".

Basing predictions on claimed intents is pretty lame, you either buy it (may be after pirating it before) or not. At least be fucking honest with yourself.

Re:same as with everything else

[Zontar The Mindless]

Since when is making money off a product greed?

The objections being raised are not to profit in or per se. What is being objected to is

1. Profit *to the exclusion of all other considerations*.

2. *Ever-increasing* profit in proportion to actual producer costs.

Re:same as with everything else

[maxwell demon]

Capitalism is greed. Eliminate greed and it becomes communism.

No, capitalism is the belief that if everyone is greedy, then it turns out best for everyone. That's not the same as greed. Is is used to justify greed, and it certainly advances greed, but it is not greed. You can be greedy without being capitalist (although if you are greedy, it's probably a good idea to at least pretend that you believe in capitalism; well, unless you happen to be in a communist country, of course :-)).

Re:same as with everything else

[maxwell demon]

Since when is making money off a product greed?

It's greed as soon as you care more about the money than about the product.

Re:same as with everything else

[Ardyvee]

Why not, instead do this: pirate it, and when you can afford it, buy it?

This way, you get to play it, and they get their money :D

Re:same as with everything else

[Dr_Barnowl]

Many of those games were roughly equivalent to indie games these days, in terms of the amount of manpower required to produce them.

So ... what has the march of time brought us?

Firstly, inflation. The price of a loaf of bread in 1980 was £0.33, in 1990 £0.50 ; now it's more like £1, so prices have roughly doubled for the essentials of living.

An A-list title in the mid 80s would have been something like Elite ; I remember paying £15 for it (on cassette tape). The package was a robust cardboard box, with the cassette, a manual, a novella, a reference card, etc. I remember getting other games in just the standard plastic cassette box for less.

Elite was originally the product of just two programmers ; although it spawned a large number of conversions and a few unsuccessful sequels.

Right now, I can see Elder Scrolls : Skyrim listed for £29.99 . This is similarly, an A-list title of it's age. The quantity of man effort to produce it has no doubt been enormous. There is no doubt that you are getting a product that contains far, far more content than Elite, which used procedural generation for the bulk of it's content. Being silly ; you are getting around 300,000 times as much game (considering data volumes) - although it's probably more fair to rate it in terms of the hours of gameplay you get before being bored.

So, an A-list PC title seems to be priced about the same as it was in 1985, accounting for inflation, even though it probably cost several orders of magnitude more to produce.

Part of this is accountable in terms of duplication costs - it's cheaper to duplicate optical disks in a standard box than it ever was to duplicate floppy disks and cassettes. Part of it is the expansion of the market ; back then, a computer was a niche item - I had to walk to the next town to buy that copy of Elite. These things really go a long way to compensate for the fact that making games is MUCH more expensive than it used to be. You could knock out a feature-parity copy of Elite pretty quickly these days - modern programming tools would make it a cinch to achieve what you used to have to do manually in assembler or even raw 6502 machine code, and the plentiful resources a modern computer has means you wouldn't have to resort to dirty little tricks like changing screen modes in the middle of a raster frame so you could have a display that was monochrome, but high res at the top, and colour but low res at the bottom.

Even indie developers have to produce a product that is visually and aurally much more polished than anything from the 80s or 90s if they want to succeed. When you look at something beautifully simple like Osmos, you do wonder how they manage to sell that for a price that is, inflation included, around a quarter what you used to pay for a game in the 80s, given the level of artistry involved.

I agree with your observation that with the advent of CD-ROM, publishers went a little mad, and desperately sought ways to get "value for money" out of all that storage space they weren't using - they went from having perhaps 10MB to play with (if your game shipped on 15 floppies, not uncommon), to having 700MB. Hence the "Full Motion Video" crapfests of that period.

Re:same as with everything else

[Tom]

Once you get into the world of DLC and MMORPGs

Not necessarily. There are a couple MMOs out there that are genuinely fun and if they are built on the principle of addiction, it is very well hidden. Guild Wars is still one of my favorites for that very reason. They already had your money (it had no subscription, you paid once and then could play), so their goal was to make you want more (expansion packs), but I never got the feeling that the game was a "trailer" for the expansion packs. Maybe because they did things so differently from everyone else in the industry - for example, no expansion pack raised the level cap.

I'm sure there are more exotics like this. I'd like to hear about them.

Re:same as with everything else

[Dr_Barnowl]

That has to be one of the most ridiculous trolls I've ever seen.

You can't discriminate on any of those grounds in an online game, because none of those characteristics are exposed.

The only things that will be exposed are that which it is acceptable to discriminate on - personality and behaviour.

Granted, the GP is demonstrating a little prejudice by assuming that these people are predominantly children and foreigners. Some of them are probably rich white bankers. Childish behaviour and incoherent English are not limited to any social group.

If anything, F2P games are more discriminatory than normal subscription MMOs, because the affluent player can typically afford advantages that the free player cannot - usually in the form of faster progression (XP boosters, loot boosters) and more bling (higher social status). These are designed right into the game from the start, rather than being a consequence of black market trading (gold for cash) or being added later (like in EVE Online).

So which is worse.. the F2P game which is designed right from the start to be a 2-tier society, or the subscription MMO which is designed to discriminate only on the level of work you put into the game (but has a price for entry)?

If it's the choice of the country club, or the crack den ... I'm not sure I want to hang around in either of them, to be honest.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

But that is a game.

Re:same as with everything else

[jellomizer]

Yes there is.
Capitalism is a economic process designed to keep civilization working smoothly. It rewards people more for making goods and services that are rare (jobs that people don't want to do) but are in demand (people want it or society needs it). And to get better productivity people who choose these jobs do these jobs. Maximizing profit is a good thing, if you price too low you create overselling your product and create a shortage situation, where people who need the product cannot get it because they cannot make enough widgets or enough resorces to keep up with the services and you don't have the capital to expand. If you price too high you loose more customers and you loose money.

Greed is a personal vice where you want to take everything for yourself and not give back. Greed are the thiefs and con-men who take things without giving you the agreed services.

The problem is many of us have our priorities messed up. Where video games is our life and food clothing and shelter is just those annoying extra expenses that we need to pay for, work is gap in our living just so we get more games and entertainment. So game companies are profiting because people want the crap they produce. If it is greed the greed of the consumer is much more of a factor then the greed of the producer.
It is not that greed isn't a component in capitalism however everyone's greed is canceled out.

Re:same as with everything else

[bjorniac]

Good catch. That one is just a bit too obvious - a single, total "I'm a douchebag" post just to provide support for a frankly disproved argument through a single anecdote.

If games are available cheap and fast, no-one would bother pirating outside a few groups trying to demonstrate their skills. Remove DRM and there would be no point for anyone - I'd happily pay for a game that I can download quickly, play right away and wherever I am. Hell, the only thing that annoys me about Steam is that I can't play my games offline so easily (waiting in airports etc - I know that people complain about not selling used games, but I've never really felt the need. I'm sure it's annoying for people who do, though).

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you were buying with euros 10-15 years ago...

Re:same as with everything else

[slartibartfastatp]

Capitalism is a economic process designed to keep civilization working smoothly.

I see. Just like communism [claimed to be].

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of things wrong with Oblivion, but most of them are fixed by mods. For example, your first complaint is remedied by Map Marker Overhaul.

Re:same as with everything else

[jellomizer]

Yes. But capitalism has a better historical track record.
Why do you think there was so much tension between capitalism and communism. Their end goals are the same just a different process.

Or was that a lame argument to make capitalism sound like a neferious system.

Re:same as with everything else

[datavirtue]

Think before you speak. Capitalism is just he described, and I would go so far as to say true. Communism is a defunct idea. It has no proof of ever working. For some reason democracy is never involved with communism.

Re:same as with everything else

[datavirtue]

Check out Daniel Pink's book Drive. He does an analysis of human motivation and how it has changed through our evolution. Very short book, good stuff. It helped me clarify my own stance on certain issues and prompted my decision to take my--what I thought was profit centered--(5 year old, mature) software project open source. Business needs to catch up with the science.

Re:same as with everything else

[datavirtue]

Plus, many software technologies that had to be developed from scratch are now well known and can even be hijacked in part from open source projects.

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

So opinion is opinion? How remarkably insightful. "Negative" adaptation in this context obviously means adaptation in a manner that is generally thought to be negative.

Re:same as with everything else

[makomk]

I'm actually quite cautious about buying from Steam these days; too much obnoxious DRM. Even Valve are getting in on the act with Portal 2, which has some new buggy DRM that glitches out randomly on genuine purchasers, requires me to disable my antivirus software to even run the game, and is designed to make the game uncompletable if it thinks you've pirated it. (I think I may have tripped this on my genuine, purchased copy; it's hard to tell.)

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact is though, whatever the reason: videogames are a fading medium. We've all been there, done that a thousand times already.

Re:same as with everything else

[FooAtWFU]

You're both wrong.

Capitalism is the idea that whoever builds the means of production gets to have its output. If you own capital, you get to benefit from it. This means that people have an incentive to invest in capital, and build things which will make money for them. This results in a society with more capital to do useful things for it (factories, homes, restaurant espresso machines, satellites, server farms). It also means that people take better care of the capital.

Capitalism harnesses the inevitable human vice of Greed, and (when combined with free-market competition in an efficient market) can make this greed more productive to society at large, but reckless wonton greed is not a value it intrinsically promotes. It's not really a value system; it's merely an ownership system. (Notice also that only markets with low transaction costs and low barriers to entry are really efficient. This is important. Notice what a mess we see when neither is the case: health care, cell phone providers...)

Usually, competition with other greedy capitalists is enough to keep a capitalist in line, and not exploiting and abusing his fellow man too much. When this is no longer the case, it's entirely reasonable to pass moral judgement (or attempt to restrain) these people who are taking their reckless, wonton greed and exploiting their fellow man. Capitalism is not an excuse... but it's not the illness, either.

Re:same as with everything else

[Guido von Guido]

Ignoring the issue of whether or not piracy had anything to do with this or whether this is just a consequence of the rise of social media, what gives you the idea that this is "negative" adaptation? From the perspective of the gaming companies themselves, any innovation that makes money for them is positive and any innovation that doesn't make money for them is negative. If they're getting enough casual gamers to play their games, that can more than offset the loss of the traditional gaming crowd.

Re:same as with everything else

[Oligonicella]

Well, if you truly want to catch up with the science, then realize that the bulk of sociology and anthropology is speculation. He may 'analyze' the human motivation of our prehistoric ancestors, but he (and you) will never know if his analysis was accurate.

It reminds me of the scifi where Shakespeare comes forward in time and for amusement takes a course on himself. He flunks because he wrote in all the correct motivations for his characters, not any of the myriad of conjectures from literary scholars.

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

What gives me the idea that it's "negative" adaptation?

The parent that I replied to specifically addressed the people who are unhappy about the changes, so we're talking about that group of people. I'm not sure you can make a case that the changes are positive for the people who don't like them.

Re:same as with everything else

[TechLA]

It was obviously converted from the currency used back then. It still amounted to same.

Re:same as with everything else

[Truekaiser]

you seem to be missing the gist of the argument. why should i 'pay' Bethesda for their crappy product, and then have to rely on unpaid people who make mods out of their spare time to make what 'should' of been playable for a 60 dollar game out of the box? if i wanted to play that crap yet perfect example of what modern games have become from big name companies 'again' i would rather pirate the thing, then hand the 60 dollars to the mod makers who actually make it playable. especially for someone who is not mentally handicapped and doesn't need their hand held like a toddler because OMG you have actually use your brains to figure out how to find something.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

So the next time you plan to say that there is NO evidence that anyone who ever pirated a game was going to buy it otherwise

That's not what I said.

I said that there is NO evidence that piracy creates less profit. How many people did you tell about the game? How many people bought the game after pirating it? How many people found out about the game from someone who had pirated it and went out and bought it.

It's possible that all the pirated copies increase profits for the game company. There is at least as much evidence to support this as to support claims that piracy hurts profits.

Re:same as with everything else

[kheldan]

Yeah, exactly. Everything else is getting "monetized", so why not monetize people who want to play games, too? It's like The Matrix, except with cash instead of energy.

Re:same as with everything else

[brit74]

> "Piracy has not reduced the profitability of games one bit. There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them."
Oh, really? I doubt that.

While the games industry has expanded a lot in the past 15 years, almost all the growth has been in console games (Microsoft cracks down on piracy, PS3 was impossible to pirate until recently) and online games (can't pirate). The PC market (which is the absolute easiest platform for pirating) has been stagnant for the same period.

I also find it suggestive that Modern Warfare 2 had roughly the same number of players on the PC and XBox360, but because the piracy rate of PCs was so much higher, the vast majority of revenue came from the XBox 360 version. 86% of the people playing Modern Warfare 2 on the PC had pirated it, while that number was 6% on the XBox 360. Of course, Microsoft really put the fear of god into a lot of pirates by banning 1 million XBox accounts before the game's release, and it seems to have had an effect. I have a hard time believing the explanation that 94% of MW2 players on the XBox thought MW2 was "worth the money" but only 14% of MW2 PC gamers thought the same. My explanation is much more obvious: people pirate it if they can because whether or not the game is good, it saves them the cost of having to pay for it.

You make the claim that "There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would otherwise buy them.", but ignore the fact that I could say the exact opposite "There is no evidence that the people who are pirating games would NOT have paid for them if piracy was unavailable." My own opinion is sometimes people would pay for software if piracy was unavailable and sometimes people wouldn't pay for it. How do I know that? Conversations with people who are pirates. I know people who are big nerds who play lots of games but never ever pay for anything. They would most certainly be buying stuff if they couldn't pirate because they have money and they're big gamers. I also know pirates who say things like "why are you paying for something you can get online for free?" That always galls me because they're saying "it doesn't matter if the game is worth the money or not, because it's always better to not pay than to pay." If the game is great, they get to play a great game AND keep their money.

We've even got some examples of a developer having his game pirated, then he puts out an update telling pirates that they should pay for his software or he complains on Slashdot (like the guy who made Tap-Fu, got it pirated, and had a post on Slashdot) and a few of the pirates feel guilty and they pay. What this says is that some pirates felt the game was worth the money (which is why they paid up), they were just being lazy about paying for it until they were guilted into it.

Re:same as with everything else

[Nyder]

capitalism

I call it Hollywood myself.

When Hollywood got involved, suddenly the greed got bigger.

Suddenly games were taking 10 of millions of dollars to make, and they expected a big return, or they didn't make money.

While some games have been good, most aren't, and games are way shorter now then they were years ago.

On top of it, suddenly these "gaming companies" suddenly got really greedy (probably because their business model changed from something that worked fine, to something only works when all your games are top selling), and really starting complaining that piracy was hurting their bottom line (which is a lie) and then they started blasting 2nt hand sales.

But it is just plain greed, which is what happens when you give corporations more power then you give people in a country (and more rights then the people).

Re:same as with everything else

[brit74]

And yet games in the smartphone app store get pirated.

Case in point: Remember that Slashdot post a while back involving the creator of "Tap Fu" complaining about his game getting pirated? Here's a link to the article: http://smellslikedonkey.com/wordpress/?page_id=274

He was selling for $4, and the price (now) is only $2. Do you think he still gets pirated? Of course he does. From the article: "If you look at the total numbers, the percentage of of pirated copies of the game submitting high scores is 71.2%."

Re:same as with everything else

[Nyder]

Bullshit, that has nothing to do with greed.

People play less these days (lack of time - damn, we get older!), and those who play the most (teenagers) usually pirate, so they want it free. ...

people huh? You mean, you play less. Maybe your friends play less, but that does NOT mean the whole world plays less.

And rest of your argument is based on your false premise that people play less, which isn't the case, so what you posted is pointless.

Remember, the world doesn't operate based on your view of things, it works based on what really goes on.

Re:same as with everything else

[Nyder]

If skyrim cost $1 you wouldn't pirate it.

yes, i would.

Re:same as with everything else

[brit74]

> "Is the aggregate effect of piracy lost profits? There has been no evidence to suggest this."

On that point, it's worth pointing out that you can make a distinction between "piracy rates as they exist" and "piracy rates as they could exist". If piracy rates are low and a game is not well-known, then one could make the argument that the extra visibility the game gets from piracy offsets the lost sales. However, if a game is already popular (i.e. it doesn't need the extra exposure) or if piracy rates in society are high (the extra visibility from piracy will just lead to more people pirating it, instead of sales) then the effects can quickly become negative. This means that piracy should be fought against, if for no other reason than to prevent it from becoming common which would cause the effects of piracy to become very negative.

Re:same as with everything else

[Nyder]

I pirate many single player games because I can.

Isn't that interesting? I reply to one industry astroturfer with a very high UID and like magic someone immediately registers with Slashdot only to post one comment which supports the astroturfer's assertion.

I'll say one thing, TechLA, you're a hard worker. But too obvious. You must be new at this. I know times are hard but there must have been a more ethical job out there, like drug dealer.

I love slashdot.

I just scrolled back, to see what you replied to and what you were talking about, and no where is someone with a high UID and the quote you put.

I mean, wtf slashdot, go back to the old way you used to do this so you can actually follow threads a lot better.

In fact, using google, and the term "I pirate many single player games because I can." the only post it links to is the person i'm quoting off.

So, once again, WTF.

Did someone with a high UID post that, or did PopeRatzo make it up?

Re:same as with everything else

[Chibi Merrow]

The F2P debacle is simply the direct result of the entitlement mentality of corporations who feel that any money that is in your pocket that is not destined for their pocket is some sort of existential affront to the corporation's very existence. They HATE the idea that anybody might not be giving them money.

Dude, get over yourself. They just found a way to make money, that's it.

On top of that, I take serious issue with you lumping all games that follow the "Free to Play" model in with the Zynga-style "games". In a market dominated by World of Warcraft, F2P has proven to be the best model to get people to be willing to even give your online game a try, since they're generally not willing to part with any upfront cost. Switching to F2P from a subscription based model significantly increased both the player bases and the profits for several games like DDO and LotRO. The developers got to continue working on what they wanted and some people got to play a game they enjoy and might otherwise never have tried.
What the fuck is evil or nefarious about that?

In a little over a week, an anti-corporate movement went from complete obscurity, known only to a very few online activists, to a popular, global movement that even a significant number of self-described Republicans are getting behind.

To be fair here, the much-maligned "Tea Party" movement was very vocally against the cozy relationship between the government and the banks/wall street from the beginning, so the fact that some Republicans are supporting Occupy Wall Street is not surprising.

Wait a minute. WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DISCUSSING POLITICS IN A VIDEO GAME THREAD FOR!? For the love of God... I hate this place...

Re:same as with everything else

[Luckyo]

Usually competition in capitalism is bought out or killed off. Capitalism's end game is always in fascism (or as those who dislike nazi links from WW2 to that name call it, "corporatism") where large capital-based industrial monopolies take over the government through buying out those in power.

It happened many times over the course of history.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played the Elder scrolls games since Arena was new.
Still play Daggerfall and Morrowind occasionally.Oblivion lost my interest the moment I got out of the starter Dungeon and walked from one side of the map to the other in 15 minutes. I hear Skyrim is even smaller. It looks nice but I don't want Skyrim even for free. Lump it in with Redguard and the other failures. WOnt get fooled again.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

On top of that, I take serious issue with you lumping all games that follow the "Free to Play" model in with the Zynga-style "games".

I didn't. I lumped in "Free to Play" games in with the "Games that Suck" games.

To be fair here, the much-maligned "Tea Party" movement was very vocally against the cozy relationship between the government and the banks/wall street from the beginning

You just made that up. To be "fair here" the "Tea Party movement was vocally against a black guy in the White House from the beginning. Then they were organized into the "Keep the Government out of Our Medicare", organized by Republican fundraiser Dick Armey's group Americans for Prosperity. The numbers involved were a tiny fraction of the number of people involved nationwide in the Occupy movement, yet they because the darlings of corporate media.

It turns out that as of a poll published Friday, 27% of Americans approve of the Tea Party and 54% of Americans approve of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Say what you will about Americans, but they seem to be able to tell the difference between phoney-baloney and real.

Re:same as with everything else

[general_re]

It happened many times over the course of history.

Name three instances. Be as specific as possible.

Re:same as with everything else

[Babbster]

It's too simplistic an explanation that doesn't take into account multitude of variables.

If you want to do a more complex analysis, I'm certainly open to correction. However, keeping in mind the increased spending in game development, I think you'd be hard pressed to find today's games to be anything other than a significantly increased value compared to those sold in the 80s and 90s.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your insightful words! It's called entertainment, and it's there to avoid thinking about your life and your death.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, whatever. It seems you could not see the satire.

All I did was take a riff from the logical implications of the poster's exact quote. "A little prejudice"? Really? The poster was equating lack of money with kids/foreigners and saying that people without money ruin the game (by some sort of constitutional predilection, apparently). Read through the rest of the poster's comment carefully and realize the poster is bigoted against those who lack money. How is this materially different than the various rationales used by country clubs to discriminate? "We have to keep the riff-raff out or they will ruin the place."

Your comments about the two-tier development of F2P games (ie. those who spend real money vs. those who do not) are irrelevant to my point about the poster. The poster wasn't arguing for some weird "social justice" theory, but rather that "these games would be a lot more fun if we could just keep out people who lack adequate amounts of money."

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1991 all games were "indie games" from a production standpoint. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat required maybe a half dozen people to create it, and that was a big budget triple-A title.

Re:same as with everything else

[tenco]

Define "negative" and "positive".

Re:same as with everything else

[mikkelm]

There are several dictionaries available on the Internet that are free to use.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

the vast majority of revenue came from the XBox 360

You know that revenue does not equal profit, right?

While the games industry has expanded a lot in the past 15 years, almost all the growth has been in console games (Microsoft cracks down on piracy, PS3 was impossible to pirate until recently) and online games (can't pirate).

The fact that gaming has expanded into consoles does not mean that computer gaming has not also grown. There is a myth of "market share". The point is that the big game companies are making money. Steam is making money and they don't sell to consoles.

Further, there is the whole issue of game/hardware tie-ins. You know that 90 second commercial that you see whenever you start a game? That translates into profit for the game companies. Thing is, we don't know how much of a game company's profits even come from the sales of a game. There's merchandising, there's movie tie-ins, there's all sorts of corporate fuckery that is designed to separate suckers, I mean consumers from their money that doesn't have anything to do with actually playing a game.

If computer gaming is so horrible because of piracy, then why are there still companies having these huge computer game roll outs? Geez, it's not even Halloween and we've got blockbuster games coming out. Do you think that these companies are rolling out these big games in spite of the fact that piracy has destroyed PC gaming?

Go look at any of the big online computer hardware stores like Newegg, Tiger Direct and others. Notice how much of their website is strictly targeted to computer gamers. Do you think this is in spite of the fact that piracy has destroyed computer gaming?

Just because there may be some other business sector that is even more profitable does not mean that the less profitable sector is not making money had over fist. Have you seen some of the budgets for AAA games nowadays? Do you think that's in spite of the fact that piracy has destroyed computer games?

Do you believe that EA or Warner or Ubisoft or some other is still releasing huge-budget games for PC because they're just so dedicated to PCs as a platform for gaming? No, it's because it makes them rich.

I also know pirates who say things like "why are you paying for something you can get online for free?"

You know, I've noticed a certain trope that you see in advocacy journalism where the author uses as an example some anecdote that can not be checked and may not be true. David Brooks loves to do this. He'll say "I was in a cab today and the cabdriver told me he thinks Barack Obama needs to cut taxes on the oil companies." Of course, this unnamed "cabdriver" cannot be found to see if the story is true, so all we have is this story, of a "regular person" who just happens to agree 100% with David Brooks and David Brooks writes an entire column presenting this unnamed regular person as an indication of just how right unassailable is his position.

It's almost always bullshit, and it's similar to the guy last night, commenting on this same story, who registered a brand new Slashdot account just so he could say "I pirate games, and the GP is absolutely correct".

Come on.

My own opinion is sometimes people would pay for software if piracy was unavailable and sometimes people wouldn't pay for it.

But the only data we have is your opinion. And forget about whether or not there are people pirating a game. We still haven't even come close to indicating that their piracy has cost the game industry one thin dime. How do we know that the buzz surrounding a scene release doesn't boost the company's profits?

From the time it was released to March, 2011, Apple sold 108 million iPhones. During that time, a lot of people bought other phones, Blackberries, Android pho

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

A guy like me, who really hates the griefers, would gladly pay a token amount to "buy" the game, as that would be an effective way of shutting out the trolls, who will simply take their racist monologues elsewhere. You don't see anywhere near that level of abuse in paid MMOs, because people tend to be a bit more respectful when a ban means having to pay $20-40 to get a new account.

Yes, that's why I love playing World of Warcraft. The subscription fee means the people are much more considerate and polite than a free to play game like D&D Online,

Your real problem is that you're playing games targeted at 13 year old boys (Runescape? Really?) and hyper-competitive douchebags (League of Legends).

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

However, if a game is already popular (i.e. it doesn't need the extra exposure) or if piracy rates in society are high (the extra visibility from piracy will just lead to more people pirating it, instead of sales) then the effects can quickly become negative.

If this was true, then you wouldn't have corporations spending huge sums to advertise games that are already extremely popular. Modern Warfare 3 is going to sell a zillion copies. Yet, there will be a very large ad campaign with billboards on the side of every bus. A marketing department would say there is no such thing as "enough exposure" when you're trying to sell a product.

And still, your entire point is anecdotal. There is not a bit of evidence that supports it. It's all based on the word of the gaming industry that continues to spend big money releasing games for PC. Strange that they would spend so much money to bring a product to a gaming market that piracy has destroyed, don't you think?

Re:same as with everything else

[orasio]

Yes there is.
Capitalism is a economic process designed to keep civilization working smoothly.

Capitalism was never designed. It's just the statu quo. You might say it's a natural consequence of having private banks, but not much more than that.

I don't believe there is such a difference. For instance, an investor is not supposed to "give back" anything. Their job is exactly to extract money from the markets. In fact, an executive usually has the legal obligation (towards shareholders) to do exactly that.

I am not a native English speaker, but I believe the only difference between "greed" and this, is that "greed" denotes an excess in the pursuit of wealth. I don't believe there is a line between moderate or an excessive wealth, in capitalism.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

I just scrolled back, to see what you replied to and what you were talking about, and no where is someone with a high UID and the quote you put.

Actually, there was. The person to whom I was originally replying is named TechLA (2482532). The person person to whom I was replying beneath that, his sockpuppet, had registered about 5 minutes after I posted my reply to TechLA. His username is "hakahaka (2485890)"

Did someone with a high UID post that, or did PopeRatzo make it up?

You do understand that it's a lot easier to check whether I'm making it up or not than having to use Google, right? All you have to do is click my comment and then the little link at the bottom that says "Parent". It will take you to the previous comment to whom I was replying.

Now, you sleazy cocksucker, don't you ever impugn my honesty again. You may call me off-the-wall, a troll or simply wrong, but you may not call me dishonest, especially when it's so dead easy to check my statements.

"Google", indeed.

Re:same as with everything else

[blahplusplus]

Games have no value if they are not fun no matter how much developers spend on developing them regardless. A 50 million dollar game that is not fun is zero value. Therefore to say games increase in value is completely incorrect. If a game increased in value it would be fun on release and grow more fun with time without additions and that is not what happens in entertainment products.

Re:same as with everything else

[Chibi Merrow]

I didn't. I lumped in "Free to Play" games in with the "Games that Suck" games.

Well, then you're just wrong. DDO, LotRO, LoL... those are not games that suck. They're also games that have managed to be very successful with the F2P model.

You just made that up. To be "fair here" the "Tea Party movement was vocally against a black guy in the White House from the beginning.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09067/954066-454.stm/

To quote the article:

Several hundred people gathered on the Capitol steps yesterday to protest the "B word" -- the ongoing bailout, by the federal government, of mismanaged banks, poorly run auto makers, homeowners who can't pay their mortgages and state officials who can't control their spending.

"These are people who believe in limited federal and state government, but who think government has overstepped its limited role in our lives," said foundation President Matthew Brouillette.

Speakers and participants denounced both Republicans, such as former President George Bush and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, and Democrats, such as President Barack Obama and Gov. Ed Rendell.

They disliked Mr. Bush's action last fall to give federal money to banks that made poisonous home loans. They also criticized Mr. Obama for spending additional billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up General Motors and Chrysler, to help overleveraged homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure and to help deficit-ridden states with his $787 billion economic stimulus program.

Emphasis obviously mine.

I can keep digging up news reports and speech transcripts all day of the original Tea Party rallies and how they all dealt primarily with the need to reduce government spending, and anger over the billions of dollars being given to the people in charge of the companies that fucked up the economy in the first place.

Can you honestly back up your claims of racism with any evidence? Any at all? I know it's easy to just dismiss people you disagree with as bigots, but it's not very productive.

Re:same as with everything else

[bjorniac]

Well, I'd question high scores lists as a method of determining piracy, as to cheat a high score you would probably want to crack the application - see online high scores for scrabble in facebook for example, a program that is free. However that is an interesting point and it does seem absolutely ridiculous that someone would buy an iPhone for $ridiculous but be willing to spend time to avoid buying a $4 app.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

Microsoft is hundreds of miles behind Apple, and may always be.

So you're saying the Tea Party started in March of '09?

You better thing that one over a little bit because it runs counter to the Tea Party's own creation myth, that it began as a reaction to the overspending by the Bush Administration and was not really a partisan political phenomenon.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

Sorry, this was the quote I meant to use above:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09067/954066-454.stm/ [post-gazette.com]

To quote the article:

Re:same as with everything else

[Babbster]

Well, you see, now you're going down an entirely different, subjective road. Make up your mind: Either you want to criticize my "simplistic" approach for its lack of objective detail or you want to assign values based on more ephemeral factors.

For the record, I agree with you. But when you're taking me to task for how I respond to/attempt to correct a completely misguided post, it seems out of line to move the goalposts like this.

Re:same as with everything else

[adolf]

I've done my fair share of playing Portal 2, and haven't noticed any issues.

I just logged into Steam and entered the ID from the disc jacket. The whole thing downloaded*, and I was able to play it some reasonable time later. Everything worked, aside from a couple of very minor in-game glitches (which are common on any new software from any timeframe, in my experience), and that was all.

The only tweaking that I did was to bump up the graphics settings toward "more pretty."

This is not dissimilar from the other games I have from Steam. Things seem to generally just work.

Meanwhile, if Valve thinks you've stolen something, it won't work. At all. They're not, as far as I can tell, in the business of using subterfuge to combat piracy.

Are you sure that your problem with completing Portal 2 is with DRM, and not a wonky combination of hardware, software, and drivers on your own computer?

*: I downloaded it instead of installing from disc because I bought the PS3 version, which includes a free Steam version to play on a PC...but no disc for it, just a code. Which was fine for me and a steal for about $23 total at release time.

Re:same as with everything else

[ildon]

You're an idiot. A game is not a product like a toaster or car, it's entertainment, like a movie or a play. If you go to a play on opening night and get burned, well that's your problem. If you wait a while, read some reviews, ask other people who went to the play what they thought of it and what type of play it was, then you can decide to see it or not. People don't demand their money back from plays/movies unless the advertising was purposefully deceptive or it was particularly egregiously bad (which means like less than 1% of the time).

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

>wonton greed

Fortunately, this is a societal ill that is easily cured by a visit to Main Noodle House in NYC.

Re:same as with everything else

[Triklyn]

no you wouldn't, cost vs effort. Is waiting and tying up bandwidth worth a dollar? is access to patches? is dealing with shady cracks? don't be obtuse.

Re:same as with everything else

[rtb61]

As long as everyone watches out for peer pressure marketing it is fine. So ramp up, "You're A Loser If You Buy It, Rather Than Grinding It", to balance things out. Ultimately that is the typical worst impact of psychological motivated marketing, getting children to target and abuse those who don't keep up with the greed based demands of corporate marketing.

One of the best ways to counter act the marketing manipulations is peer to peer promotion of, delete you current status, suck it up and start again, if you can't you are a slave and an addict, if you can then you are free. So play, learn, have fun but don't let them own you.

Re:same as with everything else

[Luckyo]

Do you prefer more recent history, such as South-Korea and Japan, early industrialization (US late 1890s with its trusts), or even European dark ages when large economic interests bought aristocracy (debt) ending up controlling them, or even the infamous destruction of Knights Templar (which was the first well documented large-scale political attempt to kill a large corporation wielding too much political power).

You can take your pick.

Re:same as with everything else

[Chibi Merrow]

No, I think the first organized demonstrations were in January of '09. I wouldn't know for sure, though--I wasn't particularly interested. The passage of the bank bailout bills was definitely the event that lead to the eventual formation of the Tea Party Movement. The problem was, the new guy was even worse in that regard. :)

Re:same as with everything else

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

I can chime in here... as I've pirated tons and TONS of iOS apps.

Once you know you can pirate them, the sense of value attached to individual apps is lost (Still, to this day, I do not consider apps to have 'value'... same with movies and CDs...I can't fathom spending money on them)

Then you want to try them all, etc..... I guess the question becomes, why NOT pirate the game, $2 or $4? Money saved is money saved.. and downloading pirated iOS apps is as easy as the regular store once you have everything set up. If there's 20 iOS apps you want to load on your iPod touch, you are probably a bit loathe to drop $40-$80 at once... but it's no problem to que them up in hackul0us (sorry if this is old, been a long time since i've had an iOs device)

Re:same as with everything else

[WorBlux]

I call BS. Even if there were zero piracy possible, there would still be people interested in a cheap and engaging way to waste time. Before everyone had broadband it just wasn't possible to capture it in the same way. What you saw instead was goobers and goobers of shareware.

Re:same as with everything else

[slartibartfastatp]

the key word here is "designed". Both systems were economically designed to keep civilization working smoothly, however by different means.

Re:same as with everything else

[PopeRatzo]

If you go to a play on opening night and get burned, well that's your problem.

Actually, no. You can go to the box office and you'll get your money back. Same with a movie.

It's more common than you would think.

Re:same as with everything else

[phorm]

And if you count distribution by "steam" etc where they have some kickass sales (usually where I end up getting my games), then pricing is a *hell* of a lot better than it was 10-20 years ago

Re:same as with everything else

[jellomizer]

1. Capitalism is a man made invention. So it has been designed, and there is a lot of effort on keeping it working. If left untouched products that are in high demand will get stolen or violence will take over to get those products.

2. Investors do give back. They give companies who need money to grow the capital to do such with the promise they will get paid back plus some extra.
You want to buy a house. You do not want to save up your money for 20 years to buy one so you go to the bank and get a loan, so you can personally get that house now and you pay the bank the money back plus extra for letting you have the money. You get the house, the bank gets more money everyone wins. The bank invested in your home. Even those big bankers. Say they bough 1000 shares in Apple from Apple. Apple gets the money that they could go into hiring 2 more people for a year. That is two more people with a Job, Apple has 2 more people on their work force. The investor gets a note that gives them partial ownership in the company which they can sell to someone else if they feel like it, which they may if the company grows further. Or if they feel the value of the company is dropping.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

It's lose, not loose. Unless you are in the act of freeing whatever is the subject of your verb.

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're talking about soup, the word you are after is "wanton".

Re:same as with everything else

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason democracy is never involved with communism.

Given that under communism no state state exists to rule over people isn't it that democracy in its purest form?

There is a reason the USSR was not called the USCR.

Re:same as with everything else

[orasio]

1. Your second statement does not follow the first, that's a logical fallacy. Anyhow, I get your point, but I don't agree. Just because there is some regulation, it doesn't mean it has a design.

2. You mean that investors are good for the economy, or for others. But they don't give back. They take as much as they can, period. That's their job. Of course, there might be some benefits to society from that, but it's not because they "give back". If there is a benefit to society, it's not intentional, but inevitable.
The whole point was that capitalism is indistinguishable from greed. I thing that in order to be a difference, it would be easy to tell, for instance, a good investor from a greedy investor. I believe there is no difference. There is no such thing as too much profit.

Re:same as with everything else

[taoareyou]

I see. So it's greed based on some subjective opinion as to what you think they care most about. Got it.

Re:same as with everything else

[general_re]

Considering that the US is neither fascist nor controlled by corporations, your declaration that capitalism "always" ends in such is rather suspect. One simple counterexample invalidates such a sweeping generalization. I suppose you will now follow with a diatribe intended to display the corporate domination of the US. Carry on.

Re:same as with everything else

[Luckyo]

Why is it suspect? I show that natural flow of capitalism, when uninterrupted by revolutionary level of resistance always leads to the same end. In US, anti-trust legislation of 1920s was absolutely revolutionary in its own right, being the first true attempt to limit power of corporations though non-discriminatory (on personal level) legal means rather then direct application of force (example: pogroms) and extended by legislation that came after great depression.

It's worth noting that repealing parts of said legislation package has led to severe banking crisis and significant growth of corporate power in US. It's certainly not where South-Korea and Japan are today in terms of fascist influences, but it's most definitely on the same road, heading in the same direction. The main limiter is the culture, which supports West individualism over East-Asian style collectivism, severely limiting the speed at which capitalism can reach end game unresisted.

I haven't read the article, but hear me out here..

[intellitech]

This summary quite literally illustrates exactly what is driving away gamers, and which nothing to do with the games but instead the various companies behind it and their various little pay-as-you-go niches (map packs, songs, excessive subscriptions, etc.). It's all about the various companies involved in the development and marketing of a game, who nearly always turn out to be greedy little pigs. Take, for instance, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and their Double XP Promotion. This really pisses off real gamers (the ones who play a lot and get better through time and practice), and especially pisses off those who had to work hard for their last prestige. One mere example, but, regardless, they really need to knock it off.

This is different?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is different than any other game? Granted, they're trying to make their $60, but isn't any game designed to "hook" you into "liking" their game? (Or, I should say, "shouldn't any game...")

Re:This is different?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes nothing new here

Re:This is different?

[Dunbal]

The difference, according TFA, being that these games intentionally provide variable stimulus (the most powerful type of stimulus according to behavioral psychologists) and diminishing returns in order to maximize profits. A regular game which you paid up front is designed to entertain you. Whether or not you actually finish the game depends on the perceived difficulty of the game, the appeal of the game view (world, story, graphics, physics system, etc) presented to you and your own desire and willingness to keep playing. Whether you actually finish the game or not makes no difference to the creator, he has been paid up front.

What these guys are doing is intentionally manipulating your emotions by constantly dangling candy in front of you, but just out of reach. Every time they see you starting to lose interest, they might move the candy a little closer, every time they see you are really interested they move it a little further. Therefore you are being intentionally manipulated not to achieve satisfaction with the game but rather to achieve you sending them a credit card authorization. Satisfaction will come later, we promise.

Re:This is different?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every time they see you starting to lose interest, they might move the candy a little closer, every time they see you are really interested they move it a little further."

Sounds like /. Every time I log out for a few days, and then log back in, I get mod points; else, not.

Re:This is different?

[zAPPzAPP]

The original Civilisation provided variable stimulus enough to never stop playing it. Just another turn syndrome. And it was pretty successful.
It did not, however, use this marketing scheme.

I played the original Counter-Strike for years almost exclusivly and on a daily basis. And that game never really changed, there were no dangling fruits, no mastermind that carefuly crafted my gaming experience. Just the same game every time, about 20 minutes of rahter simpple action and the final scoreboard.

So I don't think that addicting game design and the free to play model are the same thing, or that one is the result of the other.
They just show up in the same games often nowadays.

Re:This is different?

[hairyfeet]

So is that how they do it in Farmville? Honestly I don't get that fucking thing, I swear its like crack to females. I've even had women come in and base their computer on how well it would play Farmville!

I saw the same thing with the original Age Of Empires. i thought my old boss Doug was fricking nuts when he brought in a whole box of AoE discs and told me to start installing but he said "Just you watch" and put one of our all in one units in the window playing the demo of AoE. sure enough it wasn't 20 minutes before we had females coming in going "What is that? Age Of Empire?" and our sales went up 25%.

I don't know if they've figured out "the formula" for guys yet but that damned Farmville/Frontierville/Mafia Wars sure does have the females addicted. I've even been paid to make house-calls simply to get Farmville working on a system. man that thing is nuts!

Re:This is different?

[EdgeCreeper]

Of course, there are people — like me — who would never spend money on one of those games. That’s actually ninety-five-ish percent of the people.

And then there are the people — statistics show they are middle-aged women — who will gladly spend upward of $10,000 on one game in less than a year.

So TFA is quite accurate here, according to your experience.

Re:This is different?

[KingAlanI]

I'd agree that there are many addictive games that don't use this manipulative nickel-and-diming business model.

Civilization is certainly one of them. Here I am awake at 6 AM thanks to Civilization II

Yes, "one more turn" extends each individual game (or "just a bit more" for real-time games), but there's a lot of replayability thanks to random map generation.

Assorted scenarios/campaigns/premade maps extend gameplay time further. (These things may or may not be in expansion packs and expansion packs may or may not have these things.) At any rate, these are nice additional features rather than something annoying built into the inherent structure of the game.

SimCity, Age of Empires and Starcraft are some other successes in this regard

League of Legends

[Anonymous Coward]

I play League of Legends and I don't mind the company selling everything with real money or experience points.

You can pretty much get anything you want by playing the game normally, except for non-game-changing things like skins.

I think there is nothing immoral in trying to make money off a game...

Re:League of Legends

[Omestes]

LOL has a serious problem though... You are not allowed to learn how to play. I logged on, played five games, then deleted it thanks to being called all manner of stupid names, and being verbally assaulted for not memorizing all the silly terms ("leash blue!", wtf?) before hand. It seemed fun, but the community verges too much on "hardcore" (read: 13 year old boys) for my tastes. I miss silly online shooters, like UT2k3. TF2 is close, but I got sick of Valve updating the whole 30Gb package every three days just to include a stupid hat.

Re:League of Legends

[KahabutDieDrake]

That is less true than it used to be. Now there is a decent training mode, and a practice mode, so you can learn without pissing off the (admittedly) rather noxious community. I won't lie to you, the community is noxious. Something about DOTA games, not sure what.

That being said, LOL gets my vote. They make a fun game, that is actually free to play, where you can't ever buy an advantage. Oh... you can buy an awful lot, and they definitely set the pricing in such a way as to maximize profits. However, you can play for free, and unlock every piece of game content for free. You can NOT unlock skins (they are sometimes very cool), nor certain other perks. Perks which have no ingame effect what so ever. You must use cash for these things. However, you can be a long time League of Legends player and never spend any cash, and compete with anyone else, which isn't unique, but it's close.

Spiral knights is a perfect example of the opposite. It's a fun game, but it requires a rather healthy amount of cash to advance in the game. Pay to win, as it were.

Re:League of Legends

[Omestes]

I was going to bring up Spiral Knights. So far its my favorite "freemium" game. I disagree about needing real money to advance though, somewhat. When I started playing (when it hit Steam) I coughed up $5.00 for the in game currency, and since then I haven't had to pay a dime, thanks to playing the ever inflating markets, and being wise in my upgrades and grinding. Its odd, though, that it almost encourages you to not play too much. To keep up with upgrades and such, it makes the most sense to only utilize your daily free energy, and not dip into you actionable/buy-able reserves, as such I only log in for about an hour a day.

Though I've pretty much stopped playing since it is, at core, a very shallow game once you get beyond the economic mini-game.

They have to make money somehow..

[thelonesun]

While I don't approve of the skinner box techniques, they DO have to make money.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[bmo]

No, they don't have to make money. Profit is not a right.

--
BMO

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't have to make money. Profit is not a right.

Neither is having new titles created by talented professionals available to consume.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Cruorin]

Neither are games.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[cyber-vandal]

They have to make money in order to keep the business going dumbass.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confused. They need to make money in order to keep the business going. Profit is not a right, it's a reward.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[bky1701]

It is making them money by further exploiting the people who aren't pirating. Just like DRM and every other inane scheme they came up with. Pirates still pay what they always did: nothing.

The logical response to losing your business to copyright infringement does not involve pissing off the people are are buying your products.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is making them money by further exploiting the people who aren't pirating.

The target market for FPS and complex strategy video games is males aged 14-26 (roughly). What demographic is most likely to pirate their software? You got it, males aged 14-26. BTW what is Slashdot's demographic, and what is the opinion of the vast majority of posters here on digital piracy laws and enforcement?

If their aren't enough purchasers to fund development and provide a healthy profit margin (remember it has to be greater than average because of the investment risk), the title won't be made.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[geminidomino]

The logical response to losing your business to copyright infringement does not involve pissing off the people are are buying your products.

From your lips to EA/ActiBlizzards/Squeenix's ears...

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[bky1701]

That is simply another knee-jerk reaction to the situation, that does not at all address my post. You still claim slashdot bias though, as all the people who fail to back up their arguments do these days.

So tell me how pissing off your customers, no matter what demographic they might be, helps, when the people you're targeting don't even notice you're doing it? Because I'd love to see whatever insane logic you can come up with for that.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell me how pissing off your customers, no matter what demographic they might be, helps,

By analogy, I personally dislike it (I wouldn't use the term "pissed off", but that wouldn't be totally incorrect) when radio stations have five minute commercial breaks with one ad following another. And the station manager realizes that a fairly significant portion of the audience is going to switch channels or turn off the radio altogether during those breaks. But they do it anyway, because that's how they can make their revenue plan so their business model works. They've found - the successful stations, anyway - that enough of their audience will stick around for the program content, even with those long breaks.

So when you ask "how does it help to piss off your customers", that's only looking at half of the equation. The other half is that they need to do those kinds of things to make money so they can stay in business. If you demand that businesses go all out to serve your needs, without getting hard revenue in return, well I think that's an infantile attitude.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[steve buttgereit]

Profit is not a right? The alternative is slavery. When I go to work, I get paid a wage and thus earn a profit. I can think of no more fundamental right than to profit from my productive output be that realized through my organizational skills, my creativity... even my brute force and to make as much profit as anyone is willing to voluntarily pay me for my efforts.

So tell me... what gives you the right to demand productive efforts without reward?

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[bky1701]

Nice straw man. Notice the comma at the end there that seems floating in space? That's because you purposely misquoted me, lacking any real argument except the canned one, "business does as it needs to [wants]."

So tell me how pissing off your customers, no matter what demographic they might be, helps, when the people you're targeting don't even notice you're doing it?

Schemes like DRM are not necessary, because they are targeted at people whom they inherently have no effect on. Hence, they only lower the value of the product to those who do buy it. Not good economics, but I guess it's fairly complicated because you don't seem to understand it.

Anyway, I thought the whole purpose of free enterprise was to provide better products. Obviously, you would agree that's not working, and seem to think it can't work, so maybe we need to look at interventionism or even statism for a solution. Of course, I suspect you don't think that, but at least it follows from what you said. Now, your diatribe about my post...

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[julesh]

They have to make money in order to keep the business going dumbass.

You're confused. They need to make money in order to keep the business going. Profit is not a right, it's a reward.

You seem to be drawing a distinction between the phrases "need to [do something]" and "have to [do something]" which I don't think exists.

need v.(2)
    8.a To be under a necessity or obligation to do something.

have v.
    7.c With infinitive: To be under obligation, to be obliged; to be necessitated to do something.

(source: OED CD-ROM edition 4.0)

Those are *extremely* similar, as far as I can see, and I really don't understand what you're trying to say by differentiating between them.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Opportunist]

Huh? You may not enter a work contract where you agree to be not paid? Someone please tell our interns that they're breaking the law!

When you go to work, you have a contract with your employer that you and your employer agreed on. Your right to get paid stems from this contract, not from some unalienable right to money for work. A right to profit would essentially mean that you're entitled to get money for any kind of work you do, no matter whether someone else considers it useful enough to be worth any money.

Say, are you working for the RIAA? I mean, then I could understand that position...

But snide comments aside, I think what you mean is that everyone has the right to try to make a profit from their work, which is well within the margins of the law and I think nobody but a few hard core commies would doubt that. But nobody has a "right to profit". You have the right to try, but whether or not you make one depends on whether or not someone else considers what you provide valuable enough to pay you more than your expense to produce it.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[maxwell demon]

So tell me... what gives you the right to demand productive efforts without reward?

I can demand pretty much what I want (with few exceptions). I don't have a right to get it, though.

I hereby demand that you pay me ten million dollars. You don't want to pay me that money? Well, I can't do anything about it. But I didn't break the law by demanding it.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[steve buttgereit]

Your points are valid. And yes... I was speaking strictly in the apparent context of the discussion, which I took to mean not that I have no right to trade my efforts, but rather that there was no right at all to profit from your work.... that to profit from your own work was a privilege granted to you by those with a prior claim to your life: something I clearly reject.

The only statement of yours I take issue with is your last. First, the law is not necessarily a reflection of rights as much as it is the declaration of rules that will be enforced by those with the physical power to enforce them. Under the best circumstances law do coincide with rights and that power to enforce the law becomes a force for good. Frequently, however, the law departs from protecting 'rights' to protecting actions that deny rights. What is a 'right' has not changed and is not subject to law, however you may be bludgeoned for exercising your rights. I also disagree with your idea that nobody but a few hard core commies would think that the right to try and earn a profit for your work is valid... much of the narrative from the street today (at least in my nation) is that having made the profit is wrong... regardless if that was done morally without force/fraud or immorally through force/fraud. I hear no distinction being made at all.

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[Opportunist]

I don't think they protest "against profit". If they were against profit, where were they the last millenium? Why was there no protesting going on in the 80s, when profiting and "getting rich is right" was the creed of the yuppies? Why were there no protests until now?

People are not against profiting. They are against "unfair" profiting. They are not against free market. They are against the "privatize profit, socialize losses" market that infected our system, which is actually the very anathema of free market and capitalism.

They are not against profiting from work and the production of goods and services. They are against profiting from being nothing but a racketeer, crying "bail me out or I take you down with me".

Re:They have to make money somehow..

[steve buttgereit]

There were no protests then because the impact on the individuals of the day was small and since we had more capital to consume back then, our excesses of consumption could still be absorbed without apparent consequences. There is outrage today over 'unfair profits', largely because now there are impacts to day to day life as a result: there are no jobs in part because there is no capital.

And to be sure some are protesting against profit altogether, and some are not. This is where the movement itself has a muddled sense of principles that make it unpalatable to me. I find movements that know what to stand against, but not what to stand for, aimless and dangerous. One such experiment, Libya, should be interesting to watch.... now that they've beaten what they were against, it will be interesting to find out what they now strive for.

By the way, I do agree with being against acts that 'privatize profit, socialize losses'. Businesses that fail need to do so along with any consequences that may befall the owners and debtors of those businesses. I do not subscribe to the concept of 'too big to fail' and thing that clearing away the cruft as quick as possible allows resources to be deployed to more effective uses. But I do not believe in any limit on, or any theft of, a fortune of any size that was earned through free and voluntary trade. Based on some of the comments I hear from the protesters, they by and large don't distinguish between those that gain from their pull and those that gain from their production.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[oakgrove]

One of the main reasons I stopped playing games is I couldn't stomach the level of intellectual insults I was enduring anymore. And I moved to Linux. That too.

I keed. I keed!

"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[CmdrEdem]

That's an easy one. When videogames became a profitable industry they started to focus on be more and more profitable. And there are "cheap" tricks to do that with a broader spectrum of users than the average gamer (as seen in causal market). As videogames get more profitable they try to reduce risk using psychological rewards and known mechanics that players approve. Money killed videogames, and we, gamers, gave the poison.

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[Osgeld]

so ever since Atari and pong, pretty much day one for real video games

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[CmdrEdem]

Well... there was no "mind tricks" used in Pong. Players get hooked because our little brains are conditioned to look for rewards and invest effort (or the human equivalent: money) to get some reward and social games use every trick in the book to do so for money. All games want money? Sure they want. But the amount of effort they spend trying to convince you that they deserve your money is important too.

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[Osgeld]

so no mind tricks in pong and yet pong provides a mental reward in exchange for money... sorry I don't see how that is different other than being more subtle.

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[CmdrEdem]

Subtlety can make all difference. Intention too. At his time Pong was a great effort to be creative. And that is really important here. The point here is that instead of being made by people trying to be creative games are being made by businessman with simple old tricks out of their hats. And really, Pong was mind-blowing at his time for the technical achievements, but this social games have nothing remarkable or creative. That is the real issue. They are just making the same-old recipe to make people interested, not looking for something else. I don't know about you but I respect people that put effort to "write the book" instead of just using it. When I play I look for something new, and Pong delivered it at his time. This games now (infinite sequels, social, casual) fail to bring something new, thus they fail to provide the reward I look for.

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[Osgeld]

one could argue that point with any modern video game, where is your pong of 2011? all I see is sequals and what is new is really the same old shit.

outside of indy games there has not been anything new or innovative since the ps1, its the same slock with prettier graphics for the most part.

Listen I love video games, but I also am 32 years old and have not seen anything that made me say HOLY FUCK WOW since at least GTA 3, and that at the time was something innovative against the standard treadmill

Asherons Call also made me say that, but in 1999 I really expected more out of a social RPG than the now standard issue XP treadmill, and that only lasted a couple days before I saw it for what it was, pay us monies for a chat system and your standard issue DC, though I played it for years

Re:"Industrialisation" killed Videogames

[CmdrEdem]

I agree! Nowadays I get small victories whenever I can. Indy games are the main source of those. Those are enough for now and I hope they last until I can make my own contribution.

Silly.

[kamapuaa]

Video games have been about making money since the beginning. Arcade games used to last approximately 26 seconds a play, and you put in a quarter every game. If you want I guess you could couch it in really loaded terms: "business men in suits crawl out of the gutter and analyze player behavior to get more and more quarters into their greedy hands."

And are there actually businessmen in suits looking over the computer-generated databases on player behavior? If there are, is this a bad thing? This whole article is bullshit with some kind of weird nonsensical anti-establishment bias. Perhaps you'd be better off occupying Wall Street.

Re:Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

The complaint isn't about them making money, it's about the way in which they try to make money ruining the game. And yes, you don't have to play the game then. That is what's being said, that it drives gamers away.

Re:Silly.

[Osgeld]

I was watching a old computer chronicles from 88? anyway there was a game designer talking about arcade games

"Its almost like inventing a drug, and finding that balance between letting people play forever and not frustrating them so they keep dropping the quarters in, is the key, just give them a big enough dose that they cant stop"

Re:Silly.

[sackvillian]

Video games have been about making money since the beginning.

Well, so what? You could say something similar about music, film, and literature. Fine - that doesn't mean that the increasingly focus-tested, mass-appeal garbage we're getting in all of these media isn't worse than it used to be.

Find me any 1950's equivalents to Justin Bieber, like Elvis for example, and I will guarantee they will have more artistic merit than the Biebs.

Re:Silly.

[Dunbal]

Video games have been about making money since the beginning. Arcade games used to last approximately 26 seconds a play, and you put in a quarter every game

And as a direct result of this, home video consoles like the Fairchild and Atari were born, as parents figured out it would be cheaper to pay $180 and buy one of those for the kid for Christmas instead of feeding him $10 bills every weekend...

Re:Silly.

[Twinbee]

Not all arcade game producers were like that. Many games such as 'The New Zealand Story', 'Pang', 'Super Wonderboy', 'Strider' or 'R-Type' would last quite a while, especially if you were good. These games were created out of a love for their craft, rather than purely just money.

Sure they made them tricky, and often short. But in any case, often I wish more games these days had more quality over quantity like that, where you get a better run in a shorter time frame.

So you're partially wrong in 2 different ways.

Re:Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

And are there actually businessmen in suits looking over the computer-generated databases on player behavior? If there are, is this a bad thing?

Unless you happen to be said businessmen, yeah.

Re:Silly.

[BlueBat]

Video games have been about making money since the beginning. Arcade games used to last approximately 26 seconds a play, and you put in a quarter every game.

Yeah, I remember Double Dragon, I think it may have been Double Dragon 2, I got so good at it that I could literally play for 2 hours on one quarter. I also got quite good on Ms. Pac Man. They eventually were losing money on me because I could play for so long on a single quarter. The reason I got so good is that I would never continue a game. When I died, I started over from the beginning.

I don't do that so much anymore. I pay money for my games and there is a good story usually to follow and I want to see how it goes. Sometimes I will play a game over again just because I liked how it played e.g. Diablo, Diablo 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Crysis and a few other games. I much prefer to play single player as I really don't like the jerks I run into while playing a multiplayer only game.

Re:Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually had to check the date, thought it was 1990 and about arcades when I read the summary.

Re:Silly.

[MarkvW]

Perhaps you'd be better off working on a better gaming system.

Perhaps you'd be better off regulating those unlimited greedheads on Wall Street!

Re:Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Find me any 1950's equivalents to Justin Bieber, like Elvis for example, and I will guarantee they will have more artistic merit than the Biebs.

And when you're back in the 50s searching for them, you'll find your doppelganger from that era waiting to bitch about how the modern bands THEN didn't have any artistic merit either, not compared to the 20's and 30's...

This is your lawn. Defend it well.

Re:Silly.

[antdude]

http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles would have it. Go dig it up for us. [grin]

Re:Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, so what? You could say something similar about music, film, and literature.

Music has been about making money since the beginning? Are you kidding me? Music predates currency. In fact, it predates recorded history.

Re:Silly.

[HalAtWork]

...which is why consoles are more successful, and even console versions of arcade games that tuned the gameplay experience for longer play sessions with balanced difficulty as opposed to quarter munching. Classics such as Contra, Bionic Commando, etc. have much more popular console adaptations. Racing games are no longer check-point affairs. Only fighting games have more or less remained the same. People don't want to keep paying a rate, they would rather own.

Re:Silly.

[Osgeld]

problem is I have watched damn near every single one of them lol

Re:Silly.

[antdude]

I didn't. I saw half of them? I was surprised it went off the air late. :(

Re:Silly.

[Otter Popinski]

IIRC, that's about the time arcade games went funny. (Maybe I'm missing it by a few years?) Games like Robotron 2084 or Sinistar or even Pac Man are sort of open-ended. You play until you die x times and you try to get on the high scores list. Whereas something like Golden Axe is a pure grind. If you have enough quarters, you can play to the end. What fun is that?

Re:Silly.

[Quirkz]

So do games. Not computer games, of course, but games definitely do.

Re:Silly.

[benhattman]

The arcade comparison is very smart. Yet, most people definitely feel differently about arcade games than Zynga games. I think there's a few differences, which get directly to what's wrong with "social" games without resorting to "greedy accountants" type statements.

1) Challenge - all true games involve some level of challenge. In a population of healthy adults, everyone can successfully put a stack of papers on a table, so that would never be a game. Add a time limit though, and some competition (who can stack the papers fastest) and even if it's a dumb game you now have a game.
2) Optionality - you've got to be able to choose to join a game, otherwise it's not a game it's a job. In the arcade, you could walk down the isle and the only lever a manufacturer had for convincing you to play their game was to make it look fun. If it doesn't look fun, just walk by. In contrast, freemium games incentivize people to harass me to play their games.
3) Dishonesty - arcade games advertise exactly what you get. Put in a quarter, and play until you die one time. Most freemium games do not. And, full games where you have to pay to unlock features are even trickier. When a parent buys a $60 game, they expect it to all be there, not to have to pay to unlock levels in two weeks.

Not all freemium games violate all (or even any) of these criterion, but so many do that it casts a pall over the entire genre. If just half of freemium games were good honest games, it would look the genre look terrible, but in reality it's gotta be nearly 100%.

Re:Silly.

[J-1000]

The problem is not that they are stealing your money, the problem is that they are stealing your time. They've figured out some psychological hooks that keep people playing their games 24/7. This is not ethical, not when you can just as easily have the hooks bringing your customers back in more reasonable time chunks.

I'll give you an example. Animal Crossing (which is a traditional buy-it-and-own-it game) is a very addictive game that rewards players for coming back day after day. But unlike some games, Animal Crossing places a soft limit on the number of activities you can do in a particular day. At a certain point the game gracefully encourages you to hang up your hat and come back tomorrow. This doesn't hurt the addictive qualities of the game, but it does help the user to be more reasonable with their time commitment. People still collect items obsessively, so there's still plenty of room for microtransactions. But there's also room for sanity.

Contrast this to World of Warcraft, which pours on the crack cocaine and never holds back.

If only

[Anonymous Coward]

there was something in your brain to keep you from spending too much money.

Re:If only

[Anonymous Coward]

there was something in your brain to keep you from spending too much money.

Nothing better than putting a bullet into it. The effect in stopping one form spending any money after is guaranteed.

Well...yeah.

[chemicaldave]

They're not trying to entertain you — they're trying to get you hooked.

From my perspective as a consumer, what's the difference? It's all the same to me as long as I'm satisfied.

Re:Well...yeah.

[CmdrEdem]

From my perspective as a consumer, what's the difference? It's all the same to me as long as I'm satisfied.

The difference is in how you do that. Behaviorism techniques, like the ones used in facebook games, are easy to put into a game but hollow. Players used to higher reward points are numb to this kind of trick. So there is people that is not satisfied.

Re:Well...yeah.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Well the nice thing about terms like 'addictive' or 'psychological manipulation' is that it makes people blameless 'wasting time'. TV went thru this nonsense too.

Re:Well...yeah.

[Xyrus]

Exactly.

You are trading money for entertainment. If you determine the amount of money is worth the amount of entertainment you get from a game, then it is worth it. The same goes with TV, internet, fly fishing, astronomy, or whatever other hobby you happen to have.

Most hobbies are time and money sinks. It becomes a problem when those time and money sinks start destroying your life. If you're failing in school, getting fired from jobs, etc. due to your hobby, then it isn't a hobby anymore.

We regularly hear stories about how some people get addicted to MMORPGs and such. What we don't often hear about are the thousands of others that are NOT addicted to such games.

Re:Well...yeah.

[i kan reed]

No, it's not. They actually engage in tactics to guilt-trip or peer pressure you into continuing to play and pay. That doesn't feel good, it just relieves some of the stress they created in the first place.

It's the opposite of fun. It reminds me of my favorite casino game: "spot a smiling slots player."

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Dunbal]

You don't have to buy their games. Fortunately the games market - at least for PC's and smart phones - is fairly easy to get into. Yeah ok if you want to talk retail distribution then it's harder if you're not doing it online - getting your game into brick and mortar stores around the world is next to impossible unless you sign with a major publisher. But even the major publishers are moving to online distribution, so the independent has no excuse. The market is coming to expect to be able to download games and apps now. And many, many independent games have achieved surprising success.

Therefore there will always be some game genres that don't follow the mainstream trend - if everyone is monetizing, at some point they are not going to be getting new customers because everyone will be busy playing the non-monetized games. Apart from the occasional idiot who never learns, you can only take people for a ride so often. Eventually people are going to get a feel for these cash-sucking parasites, just like people get a feel for telemarketers or infomercials and instantly switch off, and this "industry" will extinguish itself. I think good games are never going to die because human creativity is never going to die.

Real video games haven't changed

[Dahamma]

I play plenty of video games on consoles and the PC, and have for over 30 years. You know what? I don't see any difference (beyond all of the technological innovations) because there are just as many *real* games out there as there have always been.

So a bunch of middle-aged homemakers are now sucked into Farmville - these are *new* customers who have never played the "traditional" video games that existed before the glut of free-to-play Facebook crap, and will probably never be a part of that market.

Face it, the markets for "real" console and PC video games and free-to-play social network games have very little overlap, so there is no reason to think the popularity of the latter will kill the former. It's like claiming hamburger sales are doomed because the vegetarians are eating more tofu.

Re:Real video games haven't changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on whether the ranchers decide they'ed rather keep their market or go for the tofu market, but yes, if they go for the tofu, someone else will move into the meat market.

We may seem Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Mega Man, Dragon Warrior, Metroid, Phantasy Star and other established franchises become absolute crap. Perhaps we'll never again see a good Zelda. (Maybe all the rest will be using horrible controls, making them no longer fun, I certainly found the last two portable Zeldas more annoying than fun, didn't even finish the last.)

Still, assuming everything is either bad-controlled to death or stupidity like Capcom and the one-play-through with the upcoming Resident Evil becomes standard... you can bet that someone else will make a similar game without that nonsense. You may not have the game you want, but you may have the start of a new franchise which may become even better. Compare current Zeldas to the early ones. The alternative may not be polished today, but 2-3 more games in the series and watch it change! (Although the move to the SNES also helped the look of Zelda a great deal)

Re:Real video games haven't changed

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the problem (for me) is the games then shoot for being accessible long term to the lowest common denominator long after release, which dumbs down the top end of the games by removing things people get good at enough to gain advantages. It doesn't matter if the game has been out for years with the same mechanics. You see it in things like cones of fire and increases for popular weapons, slow game play, larger delays on popular abilities etc... The term game "balance" in everything but MMO's is a synonym for we cater to bad players at this point. At least in games where everyone has access to the same abilities.

It's the result of them trying to be accessible to the equivalent of the middle-age homemaker. The people funding the games easily forget that having a high top end can actually increase the amount of players and longevity of the games. For everything but subscription service though that is a bad thing if they want to sell you the sequel.

Re:Real video games haven't changed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Face it, the markets for "real" console and PC video games and free-to-play social network games have very little overlap"

Really? I do both and I'm not a homemaker. I dick around in the facebook games because they are something I can do for a few minutes at a time. I plan on getting Battlefield 3 but that is the sort of game you have to plan a few hours for. I used to play Warcraft but that was the worst time vampire ever made and I got sick of its demands.

Re:Real video games haven't changed

[Dahamma]

It's possible to cater to more than one skill level, though. In fact, I just picked up Forza 4 and it's a good example - it has 5 difficulty levels that let beginners have fun and experts experience accurate racing techniquies. I haven't played a decent driving game in a while so I started at "medium". If I get into it, I'll probably bump it up to hard/advanced, but may never go to expert since I just don't have enough time to practice these days. Same with some of the better FPS shooters, etc - you can choose if you want aim assist or not. Honestly, these days I usually leave it on because again I don't have the time to put into it, and just want to experience the story, etc.

Re:Real video games haven't changed

[Dahamma]

I think the issue there may not be as much a matter of video games in general, but of sequels that should just die and developers who should take a risk once in a while :)

Back up a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when were video games dead?

Re:Back up a minute

[AngryDill]

1983. But they "got better".

Why post here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is for women. Ask this on Oprah. People with testicles do not play shit like farmfuckingville and mafiacunting wars.

Re:Why post here?

[couchslug]

Such passion indicates a different market addressed by different games.

More nostalgia goggles

[antifoidulus]

How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

Shareware games->designed to get you hooked on the first few levels so you buy the game

Those little SNES consoles they set up at stores back in the day->designed to get you hooked on the game so you guy it.

hell even a lot of arcade games were intentionally designed to be really easy for the first stage or two so you would get hooked and feel compelled to pump more quarters in. This guy has some serious nostalgia goggles, the model has, and always will be to get gamers to spend money on the game by tempting them with a little taste of what is in store if they do spend money on the game. Free to play has just added another method for achieving the same objective.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[LazyBoot]

Those little SNES consoles they set up at stores back in the day->designed to get you hooked on the game so you guy it.

I believe they still got those (Only with xboxes and playstations of course...)

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[sakari]

How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

It is fundementally different, because of the design objectives. They are designing the game to hook the player in by putting monetary gain as the primary motivation of design, not playability or making the game fun for the players. Monetary gain is the objective of this game.

This creates very different kind of games than those that were originally designed for just the love of making videogames!

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[edremy]

You never played Gauntlet back in the arcade days, did you?

Yeah, it was a great game. Yeah, the guy who wrote it probably loved videogames. But damn, did he like quarters just as much, because there's never been a wallet vacuum like that game.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Hoi Polloi]

If the game is decent or gives me some enjoyment for a few hours at a time then why is it wrong for them to try to get me to spend money on it? Still cheaper than going to the movies in most places and more fun than watching TV.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[vitaflo]

How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

Shareware games->designed to get you hooked on the first few levels so you buy the game

Those little SNES consoles they set up at stores back in the day->designed to get you hooked on the game so you guy it.

hell even a lot of arcade games were intentionally designed to be really easy for the first stage or two so you would get hooked and feel compelled to pump more quarters in. This guy has some serious nostalgia goggles, the model has, and always will be to get gamers to spend money on the game by tempting them with a little taste of what is in store if they do spend money on the game. Free to play has just added another method for achieving the same objective.

You didn't actually read the entire article did you.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[antifoidulus]

Yes I did, and guess what, the author still offers 0 evidence to say how these games are fundamentally different from what has happened in the past. What is your point other than trying to be a smartass?

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Raenex]

You never played Gauntlet back in the arcade days, did you?

I remember being a poor boy going to the video arcade, and watching this guy plunk down like $10 worth of quarters on the machine and start playing. I was so jealous.

ps: "Remember, don't shoot food!"

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Programmer needs quarters . . . badly.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

"This creates very different kind of games than those that were originally designed for just the love of making videogames!"

And those people are called "poor". Everyone likes to be paid for their work.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[spokenoise]

Game: 'Valkarie is about to die' Me: 'shit shit shit shit where are more coins.....' Loved the game- it was the first game you *could* pay to continue rather than dying and having to restart. Would love the arcade version @ home!

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Stan92057]

Its called Advertising and it works

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[grumbel]

How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

Ever played FarmVille? No? Give it a try. Within the first few minutes you will learn that that games works quite different from anything you played in the past. Among other things:

* based on realtime, forcing you to revisit the game to not spoil your crop
* regular calls to spam your friends, for in-game reward
* regular calls to exchange your real world money for in-game currency
* randomized in-game reward whenever you start the game
* essentially free of challenge, all the game requires is clicking on stuff to get rewards

None of those elements have been present in that form in traditional games.

Certain elements of course overlap a bit, Civ has some of those addicting elements, Diablo had them, etc. But the way they are directly exploited and analyzed in free to play games is quite a different thing then what you had in the past.

Arcade games where of course somewhat similar in trying to exploit the player, but they where limited by needing an expensive arcade machine that could only serve one or two players. Online games not only no longer have that limitation, they also allow regular changes to the games to optimize them for maximum revenue.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[mandelbr0t]

No +1 funny? Shame, that's the best laugh I've had all day.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[vitaflo]

My point was that you didn't get his point, apparently.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

If one played Gauntlet for high score, adding more coins for additional health was the worst possible thing to do.

Ignoring the obvious fact that after level 8 the game keeps shuffling levels, rotating levels and/or changing the wall colors and/or enemies and enemy generators for the level--score per coin was simply the total score earned divided by the number of coins used. That score of something like 31, 590... say someone used 3 coins... well the Score per Coin initials board showed the result of 31,590 / 3 or 10,530. Or, if 10,530 was too low to make the Score per Coin high scores list--no initial entry at all and they didn't make the list.

If one just played to see how far they could last on their bankroll, then inserting a coin and hitting Start/Magic as soon as health went low was a frequent ocurrence, of course. As it turned out, the game had no actual ending so players were definitely buying additional play time, but not working any further towards any end-of game objective.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[kbolino]

They are designing the game to hook the player in by putting monetary gain as the primary motivation of design

"Please insert coin(s)"

Or are you too young for the arcade days?

not playability or making the game fun for the players

If people are playing it, then it must be enjoyable to them. I find most of them crap, and I'm sure you do too, but we're not the target market.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[syousef]

* based on realtime, forcing you to revisit the game to not spoil your crop = PAIN IN THE ARSE - If I can't automate that, not interested!
* regular calls to spam your friends, for in-game reward = HELL NO. I want to keep my friends
* regular calls to exchange your real world money for in-game currency = FUCK OFF, I don't buy virtual crap. If you sell me the game that is a real world item. If you start trying to sell me in game items I walk away
* randomized in-game reward whenever you start the game = WOOOHOOO write a script to start the game daily ;-)
* essentially free of challenge, all the game requires is clicking on stuff to get rewards = Same as any video game I've played. Just gotta click the right stuff.

No wonder I've never been interested in farmville.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[CronoCloud]

Yes, but in the old days the screen was at eye level or below and there was but one FULL game in there, not just a demo disc with a few videos. Hell, considering all the PS3 and 360 can do they should have mutliple machines set up showing of various features and NOT with video but actually letting people get to use the PS3's web browser, or visit PS3 Home as a guest, etc.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue Programmer needs quarters . . . badly.

FTFY

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[CronoCloud]

It's been available for the home ever since the NES era. While the NES Gauntlet I isn't "real" Gauntlet, the NES port of Gauntlet II is faithful, though slow. Don't know about the Genesis or Lynx versions. There's a version for the SNES in one of those Midway collections released late in the SNES's life... It's also available for the PSone, PS2, PS3 (PSN download as well as the forementioned PSone and PS2 titles if you have a CECHA/B/E PS3), and PSP.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[xhrit]

I spend a lot of time in the arcade when I was young, and I was always drawn to the multiplayer fighters for this reason. My favorite arcade had a Namco System 11 running Tekken 2.5 set to 3 round victory and 125% health. The machine was a total meat grinder with long drawn out battles and as such lines of people would always be at it. I would see someone would crack open a roll of quarters and place a row along the edge of screen on the arcade cabinet, and me a poor boy would walk up and put 25c into the machine and stomp them. into shit. I would play for hours on a single quarter.

Which is good since most days I did not have many quarters so I would just hang out, watch other people play, and bum smokes.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[MindPrison]

+1 one from me 2!

The quote is from Gauntlet (Wizard needs food...badly), obviously there aren't many real old-skool Slashdotters here anymore...sadly :/

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

None of these elements? Not true.
  - Based on realtime - this idea dates back to the Tamagotchi (1996). In a farming context, try growing berries in Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire (2002)
  - Regular calls to spam your friends for in-game reward - true of many shareware games
  - Exchange real money for in-game currency - comparable with old arcade games (Gauntlet) that let you "buy" more health by shovelling in more quarters.
  - Essentially free of challenge - again, see Tamagotchi.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[grumbel]

- Regular calls to spam your friends for in-game reward - true of many shareware games

Could you name some? The only cases I have seen are a few games that require twitter spam to get them for free, but then those are rather recent games and essentially part of the whole free-to-play games thing that is currently evolving.

As for the rest, yes, none of these ideas are fundamentally new, but none of the examples combine all those elements. A Tamagotchi annoys you in realtime, it however doesn't have a pop up that ask for real world money to speed up the process. Also a Tamagotchi has a defined end, the online free-to-play games don't, they want to keep you hooked as long as possible.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there something immoral to automating facebook interactions? You may have to hire out the sign-up captcha cracking I suppose, if you want to take advantage of point 2.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider FarmVille a survival horror game.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's about making money. I like to eat, have shelter and tools to do my trade. I'm part of a successful indy gaming house that makes really social freemium games. Are these simple? Yes, of course they are. They are not made for Friday nights in front of the PC alone. They're made for 3 minute breaks in the office so you don't kill your coworkers. Don't confuse what "traditional games" offer with what social freemium games offer. It's a different form of entertainment.

In exchange for money we offer players fun. Actually we don't even demand nor ask funds from you. It's up to you. If you have to be number one and crush everyone else, then yeah, pay up and put the time in. If you think we've done a good job, then thank us by buying some bonuses and enjoy the benefits. If not, play for free and be a drain on our servers, time and customer service. But you don't hear us complaining and booting you offline.

We do boot addicts out of our games (after trying to work with them) as we don't want to make money from evil. But what I can't comprehend is how people are pissed off that we're trying to make the games fun. Maybe it's not fun for you, at this time, but it's fun for others now. If you don't like the games you don't have to play our games. Go find ones you do like. Or watch TV with ads -- that has far less engagement than any game and decades of manipulation.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[grumbel]

But what I can't comprehend is how people are pissed off that we're trying to make the games fun.

People are not pissed of at others making games that are meant to be fun, people are pissed of at developer who make games with the sole goal of maximizing profit. A lot of features that get implemented into free games are there to do the exact opposite of fun, they are there to maximize the player annoyance and willingness to pay to skip or speed up that step in the fast. Essentially these games are exploits of human psychology and they work damn well when you look at the amount of money Zynga is making. Jonathan Blow has held a few good talks on the subject, look them up if you still have a problem understanding what people are complaining about.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[phorm]

In the case of shareware or demo-consoles, the game generally had to be good enough to get you hooked in the first place..

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[benhattman]

How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

The main difference is the direction of monetization. In the past, the idea was that I'd give you a sample, and you'll find it so fun you'll trip over yourself to give me some money to play more. Too much of the fremium model looks more like me getting you hooked on little rewards, which gradually slow in their frequency, but if you hand me a wad of cash I will temporarily inflate the rate at which you are rewarded (by harvesting tomatoes or something).

The secondary difference is that games in the past ended. In fact, as a seller you wanted me to complete your game as fast as possible, while still being satisfied with it. That combination meant you were ready to buy the next game I released. Those games were literally designed to be an experience, much like going to a movie, reading a book, attending a magic show, or taking a vacation. This new breed of game, which includes freemium and MMORPGs is instead designed to keep you paying for as long as possible...a lot like cocaine.

The makers of these games have every right to sell their product, and to make a profit. But, I can't see why we'd have anyone on here defending them. Their business model is to abuse human behavior so they can suction as much money out of people while producing as little reciprocal benefit as possible. That's not noble. That's not beneficial. That's not laudable. And, it's not defendable.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Dogtanian]

Ever played FarmVille? No? Give it a try. [It is] essentially free of challenge, all the game requires is clicking on stuff to get rewards

I first came across this worthless type of game around 4 years ago, some time before Farmville, when spam links to something called "MyMiniCity" started appearing on Slashdot.

While it was dressed up as something superficially resembling a cut-down Sim City, it didn't take a genius to quickly figure out that the game had no metric beyond how many people from different IPs visited your page that day (and presumably see their advertising). In other words, your progress in this worthless "game" was only a reflection of how many people you had managed to convince- or con- into visiting your lousy page.

It was clever... on the part of the designers, who figured out a way to rope in easily amused (and not necessarily clever) people into doing their spamming by turning the process into a pseudo-game that pandered to some warped sense of achievement.

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[CodeHxr]

The secondary difference is that games in the past ended. In fact, as a seller you wanted me to complete your game as fast as possible, while still being satisfied with it. That combination meant you were ready to buy the next game I released.

Of course, you're referring to games in the past like Asteroids, Pac Man, Dig Dug, and Donkey Kong, right? (Technically Pac Man and Donkey Kong "could" end, but only by glitch that could only be reached if you were super-awesome good at the game - they didn't end by design).

Re:More nostalgia goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't about getting you hooked back in the day. With the shareware games and the consoles being setup in stores i believe were more or less setup to actually let the consumer test it out before they tried it. Arcades on the other hand i would agree. I think that scene from waynes world really sums it up. One of the biggest drives in our society (american) is money. And with the changes, developments and progression in game making these companies have found ways to really screw the pooch and charge how they want, and what they want with these free-to-play games. Yes you can choose to not buy these games, but it just comes down to in my opinion the fact that in the early days of gaming it was geared more towards putting out a quality game then continuing to make money off the same game.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[sonicmerlin]

I was actually about to comment on how surprising it is that it took this long for the games industry to mutate to this model. Games have always been ripe for psychological manipulation of the customer, but for the most part until recently game developers had focused solely on the "pure" goal of providing a great experience. Eventually this led to publishers milking franchises to maximize profits, but usually those sequels (like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout) were actually quite good. Now we have "achievements" and "trophies" and other bizarre and meaningless "rewards" mostly unrelated to the actual game experience.

FUD in light of industry history

[otaku244]

I think what is lost in this conversation is that the game industry HAS been here before. Does anyone remember arcade games? Play Time Crisis and try to tell me with a straight face that that series was a well made, complex strategy shooter that you could play for more than 5 minutes on less than $1 of coins. I agree to an extent that the pay-as-you-go model is getting pretty pervasive and it should be implemented in more moderation. Just don't try to sell me that this will take over the WHOLE industry. It might fill the niche market of mobile apps, but I don't see this being the model of choice for console and PC markets. They are different audiences. And, even if you're right, the likely result is that history will repeat itself like it did with arcades and the model will collapse in some measurable amount of time.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[Anonymous Coward]

Er...you CAN clear Time Crisis in one credit. A lot of players did that in my local arcade, while everyone watched excited.
No one would watch a Zynga game being played with excitement.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[oldmac31310]

Regarding arcade games, for me that is why it is so nice in recent years to be able to play games of my youth via emulator + roms without having to spend anything! Back in the day it really galled me that to even get a little bit proficient I had to spend a lot of money. In hindsight I see that the 'cool' guys who were really good at the games spent crazy amounts of money and in my experience, these were usually not the sharpest tools in the shed. Back then, arcade games, while fun, always did seems like a big cheat to me.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[jtownatpunk.net]

All hail the great Zynga! They get people to pay more money to build a single virtual structure than a WoW player pays for an entire month of play. Magnificent bastards.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[Commontwist]

Meh. I tried Mafia Wars without paying anything and eventually got sick of waiting--so I quit.

Really, when you start paying to get ahead of someone else that's not skill and thus zero achievement/satisfaction. Sadly, too many people don't care.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst bit of F2P games?

Unlike arcade games they live on a server, when they die they will be dead.

They will never turn up on emulators in the future.

Re:FUD in light of industry history

[grumbel]

It might fill the niche market of mobile apps,

That "niche" is worth billions of dollar and when a company like Zynga is valued more then EA, you should really start to worry.

but I don't see this being the model of choice for console and PC markets.

It's already starting to make it's way into mainstream games, see Diablo3 with it's in-game auction for real world money. Playstation Home will sell you a new virtual hat for more money then it would cost to buy a real hat. The last Need for speed also had plenty of "social" components. Achievements are also going into a direction similar to those social-games, using cooperative behavior of humans to make them play games that they would otherwise not touch. It's not that big of an issue right now as achievements are not yet directly exploited for cash and micro-payment and free-to-play games are a tiny minority on consoles if they exist at all, but don't kid yourself, publishers are looking real close at those business model and once they find a good way to exploit it in regular PC and console games, they will.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[cyber-vandal]

There's something wrong when you use "working hard" in a sentence about gaming. Gaming is supposed to be fun, it's not supposed to be work.

"A strange game."

[zenasprime]

"...The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

The indie game scenes is still out there creating some wonderfully beautiful, challenging, and meaningful games, and making money to boot. The universe remains in balance.

Nothing New

[paleo2002]

The name of the site hosting the article pretty much says it all: "Insert Credit". Free-to-Play models harken back to the coin-eating arcades of our youth. Why did you have a limited number of lives or continues? Why was there a time limit to clear a board? To get you to pump more coins into the machine, to make money. Enticing you to keep paying to play is nothing new. Some companies have simply discovered a new way to develop a sustainable revenue stream from modern console and PC games.

As much as the F2P model is applauded for boosting interest in lagging MMO's and giving gamers a chance to see if they're interested in a game without putting money into it, its a very shady deal. I'd honestly rather pay a subscription fee. At least then I know exactly how much I'll be paying for content and I don't have to contend with constant in-game come ons to buy diamonds, doubloons, etc. Or, how about Valve's Steam Trading system or the real-money auction house in the upcoming Diablo 3. Both are optional ways to buy something extra for your gaming experience, but they also allow you the opportunity to get something back - either by trading or outright selling virtual items. They're optional, there's opportunity for a two-way exchange, and the companies still get their cut of transaction fees, etc.

This reminds me vaguely of Graham Watkins' Virus

[brokeninside]

Except instead of a computer virus that is trying to optimize users so that they supply a steady input of data, it's businessmen trying to optimize users so that they supply a stead input of cash. In both cases, through trial and error the would-be optimizers eventually discover the secrets to getting users to play over and over and over until they're absolutely drained.

Gosh, when I put it like that it also sounds like the golden age of video games. Pong, Space Invaders, Q*Bert, Pac-Man, etc. were just big excuses to get users to put in quarter after quarter.

Depends on the Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick your games. I can think of plenty of games that are great free to play games, Team fortress 2, league of legends, heroes of newerth all have acceptable free to play models. If someone picks up any of these games they wont be disadvantaged if they don't shell out money and they can work towards in game goals in any way they want.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[phantomfive]

Take, for instance, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and their Double XP Promotion [pcgamer.com]. This really pisses off real gamers (the ones who play a lot and get better through time and practice), and especially pisses off those who had to work hard for their last prestige.

Sure, but you'll still buy it, mate?

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent poster is obviously not the kind of guy you listen opinion about video gaming since he use MW3 as an example to explain how REAL GAMERS feel about it.

He even add insult to injury by noting that real gamers are those who play a lot AND GET BETTER THROUGH TIME AND PRACTICE, still do I have to remember you that hes talking about MW3 ?

So they are making there game fun and engrossing..

[Anonymous Coward]

So they are making there game fun and engrossing in the hope that, upon playing it, you will decide that it is so much fun and engrossing that you are willing to part with some real world money for some additional perks- rewards as it were for keeping the game going.

This is a bad thing, or will 'kill the video game'.... how exactly?

Near as I can tell this will only spurn on development as each game attempts to be different from its peers so as to carve it's own niche (since you ideally want a completely separate market for free to play, so that you get exclusive access to your players wallets). By having multiple free to play games carving niches we see indie games seeing a potential niche and building a game revolving around that as well. Finally the large studios may, possibly, see new game markets and FINALLY make something that is not 'FPS game with narrow boxy corridors #X'

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

wordup oakgrove. nothing like coming home from a long days work, playing some counter-strike to unwind, only to find yourself amidst a gaggle of 13 year olds with names like pizzacunt and pussywrench threatening to lose their virginity on your mother.

That's not true!

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't wear suits!

Everything else is true though...

Terrible writing

[solferino]

He wasn't kidding about being 'The Worst Journalist In The World'.

Skinner Box

[F-3582]

There was an awesome Extra Credits video exactly about this issue, very worth watching: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/metrics

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[n00bCarnivore]

That promotion pissed me off to no extent. Any game developer who really cared about his game wouldn't ruin the balance of gameplay with cheap marketing schemes. This guy seemed to get it right. Too bad the poor sap won't make a dime.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[zAPPzAPP]

I am not sure I can agree with you.
You talk about MW but you clearly think of something else than Mech Warrior. I can not support that.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't have to "work hard" for anything. Does your XP meter ever go down? No. You sit there and push the buttons, and the game tells you you're good at it.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

Tennis is a game. People work at it.

Is that what they're for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they were to display the class of people in an area.

For example, I've been to Walmarts in upscale locations where the demo consoles and laptops were out in the open, unprotected, and intact.

I've been to Walmarts in other areas where laptops had keys ripped off and demo consoles had controllers broken.

Finally, I've been to Walmarts where I don't recall seeing demo consoles, and the laptops were locked up behind a centimeter thick shield of some sort. ...Uh, also, what's the plural of Walmart? I'm using Walmarts, but it makes me sound barbaric and plebian. Walmarti? Yeah, Imma use Walmarti from now on.

Re:Is that what they're for?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're in a Walmart, nothing else matters - you have no class. It's the scourge of local business, a job killer and hurts local communities. Once you're there, you've left your soul at the door already.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[TechLA]

Team Fortress 2 is a great example of a well done f2p game with microtransactions. It feels far from crap game and because you can get those items by just playing, crafting or trading, you don't feel like you're constantly pressured to buy something. However, many people do if they really want some item now, providing the developer with income. I have also used the store a few times when I wanted a specific item for the spy (to complete a set and improve it how I wanted to play), but don't feel like I was pressured to do so even though I also originally bought the game when it came out.

Like with the usual games, many f2p games will be shit. Some will be top-notch. The f2p model doesn't change that.

What comes to games market being easy to get into, sure you can now distribute your game more cheaply. But you need to get financing to actually develop the game, even more so if you plan to work with it full time and have a time. Publishers are still highly required for that, as I doubt you can walk to a bank and ask a few million dollars loan to create a game (and you would still get the risk of the game not selling, and hence you would be unable to pay back the loan).

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Culture20]

Now we have "achievements" and "trophies" and other bizarre and meaningless "rewards" mostly unrelated to the actual game experience.

When video games started out, we had points and high scores with three-letter winner boards featuring winners like ???, TIT, and POO. Those were pretty meaningless. Then we moved on to computer games, and they kept the arcade style leader boards, which were even more meaningless, then the "send in a letter to the publisher in care of 'I won!' with a self addressed, stamped envelope to receive your certificate of completion of the game. Congratulations!". And then that went away too, so the end cutscene was the reward. Let's face it, no game is going to give out a real reward like a space alien coming to recruit you to be a starfighter in a great galactic battle. We were lucky to have a brief period where good storytelling was the goal of a game. We might get it again, but in the mean-time, just play the old games like I do.

1,450,700 AS_

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Darinbob]

It's up to the players to recognize this and just avoid what they don't like. This attitude of "omg they just want money!" is naive and stupid. They've always wanted money, they're no more or less evil than they were 10 years ago. The game companies have never been their pals.

If people don't like it they should vote with their wallets. Support good games with good replay value.

We get the games

[Seriman]

that we deserve. Some developers make games they want to play and others make games that they think will sell. Oddly enough, they probably have similar ratios for success and miserable failure. Do you think Bay 12 or Notch studied demographics before making wildly fun and popular games? Equally, some of those FTP shooters are pretty fun right up until the point you realize that the only reason L33tb3@v3r69 killed you was because he dropped 20 bucks on the AK 47++. Then you get some extra gratification from the revenge of penetrating his puny douchebag hitbox with your bullets made of hate and Internet. Somewhere behind the scenes there is a developer who cares and against all odds they put out a good game for a greedy company, meanwhile some indie dev manages to code his or her dream in spite of limited time, limited motivation, and spiteful software patents. Those are the games we remember.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Darinbob]

This has been done in MMOs since the very start. Companies have evolved this over time but from the beginning there have been micro-managed quests doled out in bite sized pieces to provide quick periodic positive feedback.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[TechLA]

It has always been popular model in Asia.

And I don't really agree about achievements.. I think they're nice addition to games, if well done. For example in TF2 the achievements grant you items which you can then use in gameplay, so they're a bit like quests. It also provides more objectives in games - Defense Grid is awesome tower defense game, but I've finished it long time ago. I am, however, still playing it to finish all the missions to get gold medals out of them, or play with specific style (no upgradable towers, use only laser guns etc..) to unlock achievements. Sure, it may be artificial, but in the end what game objectives or quests aren't? They still provide extra value and I actually enjoy doing them, and that's what count. Of course it wont help if the game itself is bad, but it provides nice amount of extra stuff to do.

The Buggles killed them

[Tablizer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ

I think Quake modders hit all the potential games

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a bunch of the various, popular genres were hit within a few years by Quake modders. Carmack and company selling the technology, and many semi skilled modders, making the simple gameplay types, worked very well. I miss the days of the various quake mods, and the full servers. I think I'll play some unreal right now :)

A fool and his money...

[bashibazouk]

A fool and his/her money are easily parted.

The rest of us get a surprisingly good entertainment return on video games compared to movies/cable/clubs/whatever even with DLC...

Ah, the $0.25 micropayment

[msobkow]

I shudder to think how much money I actually fed those old machines, a quarter at a time.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[TechLA]

How does work mean it can't be fun? I enjoy both games and my work. In fact, I kind of take my work as a competitive game, and I'm satisfied when I beat my competitors. There's real world rewards too.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Working in the industry, achievements and trophies can actually be really useful for encouraging fun things or different playstyles. People could always try to play through a game while killing minimal opponents, or without using a certain weapon, or finding every useless T.A.C.O.. Now there's a tour-guide for this kind of thing, with tangible (though fairly worthless) rewards for completing them.

This has nothing to do with piracy.

[raehl]

It's not like these "social" games would go away if someone invented effective, unobtrusive copy protection tomorrow.

As a former Facebook game addict, I can tell you that the "social" games speak to the completion/builder/collector in many people. What's really the difference between building a model replica ship and building a model farm? Or collecting something as meaningless as beanie babies vs. collecting something as meaningless as digital tokens? Or needing to finish, well, any task, and needing to master all your character's jobs?

The social games offer a very powerful thing: Constant progress. No matter what you do, you will progress, but you will never win. There are lots and lots of people who want constant progress. There's also people who feel compelled to complete things (I was one of them).

The other problem with blaming this on piracy is that you can absolutely pirate these games! Most of where the publisher gets their money is getting you to pay to remove obstacles to your progress, like timers or "X friends must "help" you" stuff where X is more people than you want to annoy. So you can "pirate" by simply making fake accounts or finding a group of people who are die-hard players like you are but who you don't actually know to add as fake friends, effectively "robbing" the publisher of their revenue. So just like traditional games, you can, with some effort, get the stuff for free, but many people will still pay for it for the convenience. Actually, were piracy the issue, MMORPGs are the solution, as it's pretty much impossible to pirate a monthly subscription.

The problem with the social games though, like any drug dealer, is these game publishers have gotten too greedy. They have cut the product too many times so it is no longer any good. I USED to mostly have fun playing, but then the bean counters got too much control over the game development and it became impossible to progress without either annoying the piss out of my friends (or finding a pile of fake friends) or paying cash. And if you're trying to play for "free", you wouldn't be able to get most things unless you're devoting lots of time to the effort (complete task now, 8-hour timer starts. Are you going to be near a computer in 8 hours? Well, if not, you can accelerate the timer for only XX tokens!

Anyway, they've made it not fun. People don't pay for not fun. I suspect Zynga will ultimately go the way of Groupon.

Re:This has nothing to do with piracy.

[Lord_Jeremy]

That reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite south park episodes, about a game called Heroin Hero.

Re:This reminds me vaguely of Graham Watkins' Viru

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, Space Invaders, Pac-Man and such, are games you can still play nowadays and enjoy. In a few years nobody will remember farmville or doing speedruns or TAS of them.

Progress Quest

[turing_m]

Progress Quest is one of the best antidotes to gaming. Because it shows how robotic and mindless the whole process is, you can start to see games for what they are in many cases - different values of the same variables designed to suck you in, exercise your pleasure centers and part you from your money. Seeing the process from the PQ perspective is like swallowing the red pill.

Gaming in terms of money is relatively cheap. In terms of opportunity cost, it's very expensive. The time that could be spent on what used to be life is now sucked away in some fake universe. Sampling some of the highest art of gaming can be beneficial, but too much of a good thing is a definite vice.

That's one of the reasons I would have ethical qualms about creating a mindless, addictive game - doing such is all too similar to manufacturing or growing drugs.

Easy differentiator

[sjames]

There seems to be a confusion about the games. TFA is talking about the games that have been distilled down to discard all elements of skill or even luck. All that's left is the Skinner conditioning, mechanical grinding and an offer to skip the grind in exchange for real world cash.

Re:Easy differentiator

[Xyrus]

Those are P2W games (pay to win), and a number of F2P (free to play) games follow that strategy where in order to have any hope of reaching high level content within a reasonable time frame (or any time frame at all) you have to fork over the cash. They also end up destroying their in game economies by allowing players to sell "store" bought items in-game (items are not bound to character or bound to account), which usually ends up inflating the in game currency to the point of worthlessness.

There are F2P games that don't follow this design (Dungeons and Dragons Online, for example), but they are in the minority.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...I'm pretty sure based on the numbers they aren't driving gamers away (at least not on the whole). I get what you're saying and in fact I don't play games anymore for some of the same reasons (and just a general waning of interest). Even though I agree, however, you and I aren't the market as a whole.

In fact, I would posit that this is exactly what game developers used to do only now it is in real time and hence much more intrusive. The whole goal of creating a game was to sell a bazillion of them and get people so hooked that they'd buy your next title as well. Unfortunately for the developers this meant huge amounts of capital at risk without any feedback. Now they've figured out a way to get more money faster but closing that feedback loop sooner. I hate it but it's effective.

Additionally, they don't have to create whole new titles to cash in on your addiction as they can just sell content (or shortcuts). You may be unhappy that your ability to spend 12 hours a day (man I miss college ;) gaming no longer makes you better or a higher value customer but the casual gamers love it and like any human endeavor the casual participants out number the hardcore folks by a fair margin.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[blackraven14250]

Even though they milked franchises, like you said, they kept providing games rather than moneymaking manipulation applications. I'd far rather a franchise be milked to death than have an original manipulation game around for each of those sequels.

Art and Business

[jjp9999]

What's happening with games is similar to what has happened to music. There are manufactured bands who don't write their own songs and have every part of their image created to get an intended response from people. There are also people who create music because they're talented and they enjoy music. Now, artists in both of these categories sell their music (usually). The difference is the starting point. Anyone who knows good music knows the manufactured bands are hollow and are designed to play on your mind. It's a very soulless approach that ruins art. Yes, games have always been partly about making money, but there are still people who put work into creating games they enjoy and they want people to enjoy. The other side of this creates games that people won't enjoy, but that keep people playing to make money. This has always existed, of course -- there have been plenty of barely playable games made after popular films, and there have been plenty of games meant to rob you of quarters in the arcades. I think the value in this article is that it helps people recognize what's going on. If they still want to play games that do this, that's fine, of course, but it's good to let them know what's behind it.

Re:Art and Business

[jjp9999]

Just adding to this. I think the fundamental issue is whether people are actually creating a quality product. Yes, business is business, but when people stop giving weight to quality and just want to rip people off, things start sliding downhill.

Opt out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just refuse to play any game that even has in game purchases using real money. I'll buy a game, as long as it is all there. But not a hard core gamers, for example all our XBox games are kinect only.

The Fair use of a Single game.

[Zombie Ryushu]

The best games in my opinion on fair use are as follows:

The game as a Static beginning, and ending. When you defeat the Final boss of a game, the game should end with one of many multiple programmed endings. The game should support Multiplayer, either by multiple controllers in the case of a Console oriented game, or LAN/Peer to Peer Internet play possibly with Lobby servers But if you shouldn't have to use Lobby servers if you don't wish too. There should be no currency that can be exchanged for real money. Real money should not be used to inflate the abilities of the players. Unlockable characters, and secret levels should be in the game at the start. They should not be something you pay for. Patches should be freely available.

Prior to the PS3/360/Wii era, when I bought a game it was a complete game. There was no online pass, there was no DLC, and there shouldn't be.

Re:The Fair use of a Single game.

[Marurun]

This is all so true. I remember finding out about DLC for certain Xbox games, such as Super Street Fighter IV and Raiden IV, where the extra data was on the disc, yet the game indicated you had to pay $1-$5 for each extra add-on already on the disc? That would be like if back when the SNES was being sold you went and bought Street Fighter II Turbo for $90 and then had the sale's clerk tell you that to get the extra characters on the game you would have to pay $5 for each character to have them unlock it on the cart. Back then I didn't know of anybody(other than rich brats) who would have put up with anything like that, yet now it's considered normal.

I don't beleive it.

[Pence128]

I'll wait to see what Netcraft has to say about this.

Oblig.

[mandelbr0t]

Lisa Simpson: and when you're trying to be good, you're even more evil!

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all news to me. I bet when this information gets out, a lot of things are going to change for the better.

People were hooked on SPACE INVADERS

[rbanzai]

If you expose a product to at least 100 million people you're going to collect some of those who have addictive personalities. If you think it requires modern marketing analysis to create an addictive game, replacing "real" content with material designed to addict then you must have missed out on the late 1970s/early 1980s when kids were glued to arcade games. Space Invaders, Pac-Man et al were drawing children intro scrounging for every last quarter just for one more play. This happened worldwide, with none of the benefit of the cold, computer-aided fine-tuning that we're told is luring people in.

Can they make a video game more addictive? Possibly, but the idea that only specialized work on a title is what makes people addicted to it is not accurate.

Re:People were hooked on SPACE INVADERS

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to go to the arcade a lot in the late 80s and 90s, but I did it because it was fun. I enjoyed playing the games, I liked it when I was challenged to a game by a random person and I enjoyed the atmosphere and social side. While it was fairly expensive, I was happy to spend my money, just as I'm happy to spend money on any other sort of entertainment I enjoy.

These grinding style games are something completely different. They're not designed for fun, they're designed purely to addict you. I played one and I can't explain why, but I felt compelled to level up even though I thought the game was dreadful and I wasn't having any fun at all. I ended up paying money to get items faster, purely because I wanted to reach a target level and then stop playing.

In actual fact I did stop playing after two days and wrote something to play the game for me, which I ran 24/7. Even then I remained hooked and would find myself watching the game being played and would find myself thinking constantly about how far I was from my goal. Trading items on the forum as also fairly time consuming. It was bad enough to level up even with automation, and I can't imagine how much time it must have sucked away from the people who were playing it manually.

I would strongly advise people to stay well away from this sort of game, regardless of whether it's funded by micro-transactions, monthly subscriptions or even if it's completely free.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Z8]

Apart from the occasional idiot who never learns, you can only take people for a ride so often. Eventually people are going to get a feel for these cash-sucking parasites

Yep, that's why no one does hard drugs today.

Obviously this is how it works

[mematron]

Videogames are supposed to be this way. The person who wrote this is obviously a friggin n00b. I have been playing games since the 1970's and it's the way it is. This is business as usual and writing an article that is contrary to it is just plain dumb. Videogames make more money than the movie industry. I play and make video games and if the game suck then don't give me money. If it rocks please give me my money beeeechaz. Not half not some but all my cash. end of line...

When do we see child health warnings on games?

[AlexDomo]

Because games such as OG Planet's Lost Saga are using techniques to make them addictive to children and teenagers. There is no way to pause/suspend the game when playing - kids end up hungry and dehydrated if left to their own devices for any extended period of time... it totally disgusts me.

So far off the mark.

[Anonymous Coward]

So far off the mark...

First start with the piracy argument. People demanded free, people got free, but the price is either TIME or MONEY, either you have a lot of TIME to grind in the game to make the game's money to trade with someone (there's your social aspect) and engage in the free-market principles, or you spend real MONEY and skip the social and free-market and induce inflation into the game.

Needless to say, players of free-to-play games don't care about the health of the game, so inflation, hacks and anti-social behavior be damned, they just want to be #1... at something. When I quit playing my MMORPG, it was only after I lost my #1 position in something by apathy (it took 3 months, whereby I wasn't playing the game, just logging in and sitting in a corner of the game waiting to see if I lose that position that day.) I haven't logged back in since. My motive for quitting the game was more about the rampant hacking (real-time action MMO's regardless of them being RPG or FPS games, the person with the lowest latency wins. There is no skill) and people hacking their way into places where they can just bot grinding. Hence for people who don't want to pay MONEY but don't want to spend TIME, they resort to hacking/robotplay.

Most of the problems with hacking/robotplay have more to do with poor game design aspects. The game's internal 'gold' system and items should be based on something like bitcoin at the transaction level, so it can't be duplicated, and is easily traced back. The hacking to gain speed advantages or use skills that the player doesn't actually have requires better validation (eg verify that the player has the skill, has the points to use the skill, and was fired no less than the cooldown time.)

But it doesn't change the fact it's all about monetization, so when not enough players are paying MONEY for things, they introduce gradually less fun into the game where you can only restore the fun by paying MONEY.

Case in point, the MMORPG I played took away a "do-over" system where you were allowed one free do-over per hour, in favor of charging 25 cents per do-over and no free do-overs at all. Because all the games quests up to that point were designed with the free do-over's in mind, this instantly made it impossible to play the game for free anymore because the quests were too hard to do. They also made it so that once you were past a certain level, all storyline quests had to be played at the hardest difficulty, resulting in ... yes... having to spend upwards of 20$ on some missions that were solo-only and have time limits. Way to suck the fun out of the game Nexon.

So between the rampant hacking (hackers could do all the quests easily by making it so they can spam attacks before monsters react.) Poor server performance (on event days, monsters would stop spawning, or rapidly respawn, it was so inconsistent that again, some quests became impossible because of the time limits.) And the monetization of gameplay (player storage was an expiring pay feature) made it impossible to play the game for free.

Then there's the robot play that ruins all MMO games, in FPS games you have aim-bots, in MMORPG's you have... aim and range-hacking on ranged weapons, firing rate hacking on all weapons, robotic resource harvesting (game design flaws, in that the resources are either unlimited or not dangerous), inflation of resource prices (where a player buys all of one resource and sets the price high using multiple "free" accounts) or resource price deflation (when robots compete with each other, they usually don't, it often takes a player to sell below the bot's price for the price to drop.) Free-market only works when resources aren't cheap and easy to acquire. The game developers unfortunately make it so that even premium items paid for with MONEY become worthless by deflation (everyone buying the premium item and attempting to sell it in the game's gold), or by inflation of the game currency caused by the unlimited resources.

So to play said game for

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't understand complaining about achievements. If they're done well, it adds a bit of variety, a challenge, and/or encourages trying a new playstyle that the player may not have tried by himself. If done poorly, turn off notifications and they effectively cease to exist.

piracy = red herring

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is this has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. How do you pirate a free game? Why do you raise a red herring?

This is more about unethical user tracking to make a buck, in any form possible. Every second of data on users is used to make more money off the users, and "adding value to the user" is merely an afterthought. This applies to far more than just gaming. It's just become more obvious as people are realizing what has been going on for the last 20 years with "affiliate tracking"/"third party tracking", which they've simply become more honest about. It's not like it didn't exist before.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

video games are whimpy.... if you want REAL gaming crack look at Warhammer 40K or Magic: the Gathering. New product every quarter, rotates yearly if you want to stay competitive. Dropping $100+ a month easily. $60 xbox games or $15 for WoW is a friggin bargin kids.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[EdgeCreeper]

Portal and Portal 2. OK, GLaDOS literally insults you, but the game design itself doesn't. It's excellent.

Re:Capitalism == Greed

[Phrogman]

The core of Capitalism is the making of profit above all else. It has no morals, no restraints, and no humanity. The reason companies try to avoid major industrial accidents like Bhopal has nothing to do with not causing harm or death, it has to do with avoiding profit loss. If something improves profits it must be done, to not do it would be to fail those who own the capital. The reason for maximizing profits, is and can only be Greed.

Well, stupid people demanded it

[SmallFurryCreature]

A while ago I had a rather depressing exchange with one of those "14 dollars per months is WAAAAAY to expensive" people who believes that servers are free. Free2Play is everything but.

A good example if Lotro, it has gone F2P and this means you gotta buy expansions not with hard cash but with points. The latest one is 3250 points which comes to about 40 euro's. The last expansion when it was still pay to play was 24 euro's for a physical copy... so... F2P costs more.

It is even weirder that F2P people then buy items that have no value in the game anymore. Dyes for instance, my scholar still has stacks from levelling up, yet they sell for hard cash. It seems to be a certain type of person why falls for this and a game company has to make a decision about who they want to cater for. I have played some of the F2P games from asia and the money squeeze is just ruining the entire experience for me. As a cheap westerner I prefer to simply pay a trivial amount per month and be done with it then "play for free" but have the game try to squeeze way more money out of me at every turn. Again Lotro is an example, almost every screen has a huge golden coin on it to link to the store. Which is a disaster in website design.

But I don't think this is anything really new. We had licenses being squeezed near the end of their life or "me too" games that were clearly designed to have broad low reaching appeal with minimum investment for maximum returns.

It only gets depressing when regular game companies start to believe that catering for the losers who have nothing to do but to whine endlessly on the forum about how they don't want to pay 14 bucks is a way forward. Here is a hint, if someone is going to bitch about such a tiny amount, they probably can't afford to buy all the optional extra's either. What you will be left with is a game deserted by the regular players and free players trying to limit their spending while dealing with complaints from lawyers about how you ruined their clients life by taking all their money.

Oh, didn't think of that? Well, it is a concern, it is hard to get into debt playing WoW. But what is to stop me from spending my rent money on a free2play game? And there are a LOT of countries with rather severe rules to protect the stupid from themselves. Do you want to deal with those laws as a game company?

Just take 14 bucks from ten million individuals each and every month. That should be enough to satisfy anyone.

so wucking phut

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course game company folks make money, how would there be games, otherwise. Of course they hire ninjas in ties when they can. Of course it’s addictive, that’s the point of anything economic, provide something lacking and desired to the extent that customers return the favor, forking over something desired and not available in satisfactory quantity. I play one myself, and decades ago helped write the first one AFAIK, space war at MIT.

So wucking phut.

Sounds like an ideological complaint to me, or sour grapes maybe.

I don’t spend the time and money I do with the game I like best because they have gotten over, although AFAIK everyone else on Earth is likely to think just that. What do I care what anyone else wants thinks says or does, not one bit. If I can’t take on all the rest of you anymore I’ll just hang it up.
No I love that one as buggy screwed up and irritating as it may be (it is all of that) because I want to. It’s a nice mixture of puzzle, of competition, and of socializingmy favorite things. And I can do as much it as I like as well as I like, but to do both requires either a great deal of my time or some of my money (not necessarily both), giving me choice and control over my own behavior. As if anything else is even conceivable lol.

Once again, the Slashdot mods

[Anonymous Coward]

have abused their power to silence intelligent dissent, out of lack of confidence in the intellectual soundness of their own position regarding digital piracy.

If you move the slider to view comments to -1 you'll see a pretty decent hidden discussion in this thread. But, chances are they'll tag this comment as -1 as well.

It matters to the fish

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are the fish, the game company is the fisher and the difference is between how noticable the hook is versus the bait. But with many F2P games they don't even bother with bait anymore, they just throw in a stick of dynamite and scoop up your carcass.

A game costs money, fine, I can deal with that. But when I pay 40 for a full price game and you then try to charge me 6 for a saddle.... I feel ripped off.

EA is very bad at this, it has always been the case with DRM that the pirate got the smoother gaming experience in not just having to deal with Discs and activation but also not needing the CPU sucking DRM code.

But with DLC and even worse, exclusive packs, the pirate gets EVERYTHING where as the regular consumer often can't even get the full package even if he could afford to pay for each and every one of them. A US only pack? Nice way to turn the EU gamer to the pirate website that has said package available.

Take a look at games like Dragon Age, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. Loads of "extra's" either paid or promotional that a pirate gets for free while a paying customer can't get them all and will need to spend well over a hundred euro's for a single game.

These game companies are actively loosing sales from me. I used to buy when it was still a single game you bought and that was it. Hell, with a game with so many boring elements as Mass Effect what is even the point in buying it before all the DLC is done since it has zero replay value. Or do they think I had so much fun scanning planets and opening endless containers that I want to do it all again?

If you want my money make clear to me that I know EXACTLY in advance how much I am going to end up paying. And then STOP trying to hit me up for more money. There are LAWS for other industries to prevent exactly this. It is NOT allowed for travel companies to keep hitting you up with extra fees. Hidden service fees are outlawed. But game companies are happily trying all the scum bag methods that other industries have been sentenced for in court.

oh so cruel

[Anonymous Coward]

these vile men are out for the honest few like EA etc who just want to sell you $60 games worth $10, and insist on underpaying developers and sucking the life out of them, because obviously those at EA etc do not wear suits, they wear crotch protectors made from skulls of those that invest their time in the company.

Quick someone call Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick someone call Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, and give them the news!

Actually read the article

[cowtamer]

Very interesting, and worth the read -- I think.

I'm afraid the author used the same sleazy addiction strategies he discusses on his five-page article with hard-coded returns (preventing me from zooming in too much, causing me to squint and pay more attention) to force me to somehow keep reading to the wishy-washy end.

The gist of the article: such strategies exist, and we (designers of such games, including the author) use them mercilessly to suck away your time/money. This was inevitable because of the gamer behavior data left behind by several generations of hard-core gamers.

That, and the fact that "social game designers" do not touch their products any more than heroin dealers :)

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[houghi]

Yeah. It will extinguish itself, just like spam does not exist anymore. Or like the music industry.
In the first there are enough suckers to keep using it. In the second they change the laws AND enough users keep using it.

It is a nice explanation of how capitalism should work, but just like communism, it only works in theory, not in the real world.

Rule #1

[mseeger]

A game company has to make sure you pay for the game. Playing (or enjoying) it, is secondary....

Sounds Familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does this seem so familiar, Oh yeah, because it is a microcosm of the consumeristic "time is money" themed capitalist society in which we currently reside. WAKE UP!

Summary for true /.ers

[billcopc]

Since you won't RTFA, here's my summary and digest for y'all:

Tim Rogers is a self-proclaimed game designer who has never worked on any actual game in his whole life. He is butthurt because F2P games make money and he does not.

And that's all you'll ever need to know about Tim Rogers.

You're welcome.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Opportunist]

In other words, when I'm done playing the game, start playing it with a hand tied behind your back and see if you can still do it? Look, mom, I can ride my bike without hands was already not really rewarding back when I was a kid. Not only for the recovery period.

I see it as a cheap attempt to squeeze more play time out of a game that has limited replay value. You know what would make me play a game again? If playing it again gives me a new experience. I still play games like Sins of a solar empire, over and over, not for some "trophy" or "achivement" but simply because every single game is still fun and challenging, despite the rules not changing and me knowing every possible technology to be unlocked. But depending on how the game runs, you have many different options which you have to take into account to win, the approach you took last time won't work this time because you're dealing with different planets and different opponents, spread out differently and picking on different targets.

In other words, give me a game with replay value and you can keep all those achievements, trophies and other crap I don't give half a shit about.

Nobody "killed" videogames, idiot

[Zorque]

So... because a type of game with a small portion of the market engages in some sleazy business practices, an entire multi-billion dollar industry is dead? What a shitty article.

LoTRO, no additional cost for the last 4yrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played Lord of the Rings Online(LoTRO) since its launch in 2007. It's never cost me an additional fee since launch, even when it went free to play. LoTRO has a great online community and if you are not experiencing any social interaction that is not the fault of everyone else.

The solution for addicts: Play all of them

[Opportunist]

Yes, the solution to that "addiction" is more of the drug. No, I'm not kidding. Play them all. And just play the one that has that double-xp-weekend, that "get for free what you'd have to pay for" week or whatever other promotion running.

That way you get the same out of the game as everyone who drops money on them, for free, and you also only have to play them 'til you're bored by them.

Re:The solution for addicts: Play all of them

[MrNthDegree]

just play the one that has that double-xp-weekend, that "get for free what you'd have to pay for" week or whatever other promotion running.

Buy one 10-bit get another absolutely free!

Look at PS3 games for evidence of not being cheap!

[MrNthDegree]

Until you look outside of the USA.

In the UK, there are £79.99 PS3 titles, something unheard of in past generations[1]. People are paying more than ever for games and publishers blame it on piracy, despite many of the expensive titles not being available on PC till years later. For many years, PlayStation games had a simple system, casual games were £33-£36, "real" games were £40 and both categories having sold enough would gain a "platinum" status and become £20, so no-one had to buy used games if the title is popular because the sales would become Sony-subsidised to benefit gamers, publishers and Sony themselves (same games, only cheaper? Why go anywhere else!?).

Now, we even suffer in the PC market, as companies like Blizzard charge for the installation media plus a subscription, plus costs for expansion packs, plus more subscription costs. Steam makes some games cheaper which are on promotion but promos are not guaranteed, waiting for them is a painful process if you really want a specific title; if you're a casual gamer you'll "just pick up" whatever games are cheap and play for a few hours to kill time - that's not the same thing...

Free-to-Play games are a dangerous business, because not only are you paying for a couple of variable changes in your game, you're paying for something that could just disappear, unlike traditional physical-media based games which you can install and play to your hearts content. However, if you only give time to those games, it's no more wasted time than playing any other game. Hint: Don't wanna get ripped off? Don't pay to play, stick to free areas.

DLC is another cancer, which could leave your game crippled if you reinstall, unless there's a way to burn to disc (90% of the time there isn't). Best hint there is only to pay if there's no DRM, a way to keep the DLC packs permanently on a form of backup media that works when reinstalling or if someone has pirated the DLCs for easy reinstalls. In short: Don't pay for crap! Pay for things you may keep even if the company goes bust!

[1] http://www.game.co.uk/en/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-hardened-edition-149234?pageSize=20&categoryIdentifier=10225

Who killed Slashdot?

[jirikivaari]

Why are people posting articles with provoking headlines exaggerating the issue at hand? I understand this from tabloids but I would rather not have it in Slashdot. Nobody "killed" video games, its complete opposite, gaming industry is doing better than ever. When it becomes multi-billion business, lots of different kind of games show up. When web was invented, you didn't have many scam sites either. Don't visit them.

As an avid gamer, the unfortunate thing that has happened in video games has not much to do with greed. It has to do with facts that everyone's playing games nowadays. Hardcore games (like Q3, SC1) are not popular because they take effort to learn and consumers don't want to do that. Its not fault of the companies who make games. Same happened when music as art (classical) music's golden age ended. Maybe same will or has happened to Slashdot too as it will get more mainstream and all kinds provoking low-quality articles get posted.

Previously, I just responded to another post where someone blamed the "downhill of gaming" on DRM. Next article will probably blame it on climate change, who knows. Populism is annoying.

Re:Who killed Slashdot?

[znrt]

It has to do with facts that everyone's playing games nowadays.

hit the nail. it's called massification.

Next article will probably blame it on climate change, who knows. Populism is annoying.

populism bloomed with massification of speech, too

Why are people posting articles with provoking headlines exaggerating the issue at hand?

well ...eeeer ... because of massification? :D

but greed is still a substantial factor. it's an old story: corporate greed exploiting the masses' greed, trading money for whatever, short brain pleasure center stimulus in this case. in this sense, the article just points out the obvious: that the industry concentrates in milking consumers. wow, really?? and this is "killing videogames"? no shit? well, there's diversification too: music got massive but still very fine music is being created every day, probably more than ever, for those who care to listen. same with games.

Nice reference

[KingAlanI]

Let's face it, no game is going to give out a real reward like a space alien coming to recruit you to be a starfighter in a great galactic battle.

Ah, The Last Starfighter - one of the first DVDs in my collection. I did eventually watch it - a Star Wars knockoff perhaps, but a well-made one at that.

Re:Nice reference

[CronoCloud]

Greetings Starfighter, you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.

Not a knockoff, per se, and that Gunstar was a fairly realistic space fighter, being able to fire in MANY directions (due to the mini turrets it has), not just forward.

MtG, that's for sure

[KingAlanI]

I've heard MtG referred to as "cardboard crack" on a regular basis, and for good reason.

I spent way more on MtG than I have on computer games. I do my computer gaming on the cheap, and I have some other expensive hobbies, but MtG is still in the lead.

I stayed away from the rotating competitive formats though - I went for non-rotating formats and/or casual instead.
I at least didn't add Warhammer to the pile though.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Kjella]

I liked achievements to begin with, they gave you a reason to do more than just min-maxing and try out different strategies. But there's become so many of them it's like having banner, interstitial, pop-up, pop-under and ajax ads all at once. I'm completely desensitized to them now because there's hundreds of them and I get awarded one every two minutes. It reminds me of the time when banner ads were supposed to be epilepsy inducing flashing red and yellow. I just hope it gets dialed back to being, well, achievements.

come on /. - post alternatives

[Tom]

Usually, when someone decries the situation, /. is the place to find comments who point out the exceptions, the good alternatives, the ones that don't fit the formula.

So, where are they? Which Freemium games aren't part of the Zynga conspiracy, are being made by actual game designers, and aren't designed as drugs, but as games?

I'd really, really love to hear about them. As a gamer with dramatically changing amounts of spare time, I don't do subscription-based games anymore, because I know there are long periods of time, as long as a month or two, during which I won't be able to play at all, or maybe an hour a month. So Freemium games are a real alternative for me, and I don't mind paying here and there, as long as it's still a game I'm paying for.

Re:come on /. - post alternatives

[Targon]

Dungeons and Dragons Online(http://www.ddo.com) is a good game that allows you to play for free, and potentially earn extra content for free, or pay monthly to unlock all content. For every 100 favor your earn, you get 25 Turbine Points. These points stay, even if you delete your character and start fresh again. Extra content for your account can be bought with those turbine points. A positive is that there is enough unlocked content even without spending points to play for a while. Those who pay monthly(which unlocks all content) also get 500 Turbine Points per month that they are paying to play, and that is in addition to the favor points you earn, so you can pay for a while, unlock content/features, then go back to free to play and stick to the free stuff plus what you unlocked already.

No, I don't work for Turbine, but I know the game, and the model has allowed free to play people to play for a long time alongside those who are paying monthly.

Re:come on /. - post alternatives

[neminem]

Kingdom of Loathing is entirely free to play, and is my obsession. It is my strongly-held opinion that they do the "freemium" thing exactly right, and are quite possibly the only game developers who ever have done it quite so perfectly (they've been doing it since before there was a word for it ;)). There's stuff you can buy with cash, but it was an explicit design decision when they first started the experiment years ago (having realized that, if they wanted to quit their day job, they needed to actually find a way to make some money off the project) that everything you could buy with cash, you could also play with by purchasing it in-game. Nothing ever -forces- you to pay for anything with cash.

Though, amusingly enough, it wasn't originally designed as a game at all. It was designed as a cross between a joke, and the original two developers wanting a project to work on their PHP skills. Then it got fairly popular, and now it's been going for like 7 years, getting gradually more robust, more actual-game-like.

It does exist in the same rough genre as others of its ilk (you have to do a bunch of stuff every day if you want to get the most out of it, there are buttloads of various things you can collect, many of them forcibly extended over a period of days/weeks/months, etc.), but if you told the developers that their goals were getting you hooked and making money off you, they would be extremely sad. And probably unleash snark at you on the forums.

If you decide to try it out, let me know; I'm neminem there like everywhere else. ;)

Re:come on /. - post alternatives

[CodeHxr]

As already mentioned in earlier comments, League of Legends is another good one. The game play is based in strategy and teamwork and they have a strict "do not sell power" policy. While they are a for-profit company, real money is not required at all. In fact, nothing that gives you an in-game advantage can even be purchased with real money - only with points earned through game play.

sequels too.

[KingAlanI]

It helps to have a sequel that improves upon an already great concept.

Civilization II was definitely this. haven't played III, IV or V
SimCity - 2000 definitely, not so much 3000, and I didn't try 4.
Age Of Empires II added some things, but mainly just changed the setting from the ancient world to the Middle Ages

I haven't gotten into Starcraft 2 because my computer isn't really powerful enough to run it.

I don't get that for AoE. The Sims, maybe.

[KingAlanI]

I'm sure some females play it, but I don't see the particularly female appeal of yet another wargame (even one as good as AoE)

I figure The Sims was successful in large part because it appealed to both genders.

Re:I don't get that for AoE. The Sims, maybe.

[hairyfeet]

Actually that was the weird thing...they didn't actually fight in it! They would just build, in AoE I you could win the game without fighting anyone and THAT was what the females did, at least every female that came into the shop and bought one. They would wall off the city and build monuments, they would build priests and convert the enemy, or they would simply buy them off with trade and let them kill each other, but never did I see them fight. Weird.

Yellow on the title, yellow inside

[Tei]

Videogames have not died. what has happened, is that nowdays much more people play videogames, and some of these people play things like FarmVille, that are more a addiction than a hobby. You still have a amazing rich variety of videogames, with styles from all eras and tastes. Even if you thing is Street Sweeper Simulators.

My problem is... if the title IS STUPID, sould I ignore the whole article? probably, if only to avoid feeding atention whores that must use alarmist and false claims in titles.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[i.r.id10t]

But the original TF was a Quake(World) mod, so it had a very large fan base before going commercial ....

You're confusing Poker with Blackjack

[sirwired]

Yes, the House always makes money with poker. But that's like saying that the "winner" at a car race is the guy that sells the racing fuel. Yeah, he makes money, but he's also not playing the game.

Poker is a game played with other players. The actions of the other players inform and modify your own actions. Only games where it's just you vs. the house, where you can predict exactly what your opponents odds are and actions will be, at any given moment, are that predictable (and therefore almost always unwinnable, since the house hates to lose.) There are very well-defined strategies for losing the least amount of money at fully-randomized blackjack. Over an infinite amount of time, you will lose money at exactly the rate the rules predict.

No such strategy exists with Poker when applied to a single player in a game with several of them. Certainly, the group of players will lose a fixed amount of money to the rake, but more often than not, one player will walk away with more money (and more than he started with), at the expense of the others.

Poker is a game where a machine algorithm based only on card probabilities can certainly handily beat players that do not understand the probabilities involved in the game. Once your the player has acquired the same readily obtainable mathematical game knowledge that was programmed into the machine, the player will wipe the floor with the robot. Unless, of course, the robot starts to be programmed with something that will analyze the betting behaviors of the player, but at that point you've passed out of the realm of pure math and are well into psychology, and the programmer is essentially back to playing other players.

If the game was pure probability where only the House wins, there wouldn't be Poker Bot tournaments, now would there?

Re:So they are making there game fun and engrossin

[grumbel]

So they are making there game fun and engrossing in the hope that, upon playing it, you will decide that it is so much fun and engrossing that you are willing to part with some real world money for some additional perks- rewards as it were for keeping the game going.

They are not making them more fun and engrossing, quite the opposite, they are optimizing things like random-loot drops and level up intervals to maximize your exchange from real world money into in-game currency. Essentially they are trying to maximize the amount of annoyance the player can take, so that he doesn't outright quits the game, but instead uses his cash to buy game progress to speed up the slow gameplay up. And the evil part with cash: Once the player has invested money into the game, he will have an even harder time to give up on it, he has after all to justify the purchase to himself thanks to cognitive-dissonance.

Finally the large studios may, possibly, see new game markets and FINALLY make something that is not 'FPS game with narrow boxy corridors #X'

Well, the good part is, yes, you will totally see more non-FPS games, the bad part is that those will be variants of FarmVille and grind heavy things that require no skill other then time and money.

Re:Look at PS3 games for evidence of not being che

[jkcity]

thats a speciel edition of the game, so no wonder it costs more.

Sturgeon's Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Killing Videogames?Nah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing TF2 from the start. Now it's free to play and it's not crapped up. I haven't put another cent into the game above it's initial purchase price in 2007. If I can't trade for it or craft it, it's tough crap. F2P works for me.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[CronoCloud]

Oh there's trouble right here in the Galaxy, Trouble with a capital T that doesn't rhyme with K that stands for Ko-Dan!

So what's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's new?

People have been making video games for years to be addictive. So they track you more now than they used to. Know how long players play their games etc etc.

If you don't like the big games, go for the indie developers instead. You know like it used to be ? The dev doing most of the artwork code and most other areas of the game.

Damn, buy Minecraft instead. Buy something that supports the indie developer and that is fun.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Dunbal]

You are seriously comparing a video game to drugs?

No

[Anonymous Coward]

With graphics that poor, they are bound to fail! :0)

"how to serve man" is a cook book

[Anonymous Coward]

Really it is that simple. Those little "social" game are in reality based on skinner box, and related psychological effects on reward & efforts. See, ask yourself WHY those "Freemium" game are hired, not scenario writer, not game designer, but psychologist. Think deeply on that.

Kids in a Video Arcade

[Doc Ruby]

I read that summary twice before I realize they weren't talking about coin-op video arcades. When they were common, I was a kid, and though they used real world currency (quarters), it wasn't my money - so they were "free-to-play".

And everything the summary said was true about those old arcade machines. I'm sure it was true about the mechanical arcade machines before that - if you could get the coins from someone else.

For parents, it's never been "free-to-play". Except maybe when the games are played in just trees in a backyard.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.. so I guess pro gamers (note the lack of "video" here) that a whole lot of people watch don't go to work when they play?

American football, association football, ice hockey, tennis, basketball... all games. All work for the people at the top of them. In fact.. its work for people not anywhere near the top of the game, too. Semi-pros making next to no money are still spending 15-20 hours a week training to play in leagues that get little fan appreciation. But they do it because they love the game that much ... or they hope to move up.

Do the people at the bottom of the skill pool in those games expect to get shit for sucking? No. So when a video game developer does essentially that, it pisses off the gamers at many levels of skill. Its probably profitable, but corporate profits have a funny way of not dissipating customer rage.

That's why I wait for "Game of the Year" editions

[HalAtWork]

Consider Fallout 3: GotY edition. Costs less than the full product at launch, includes all the DLC. I get twice the game at half the price. I don't give a fuck if I get it two years late. Anything I buy is at least two years old for that reason, movies, games, etc. Gives enough time for the hype to die down too, so I can make a more reasonable decision. Caveat: I don't play multiplayer, don't care for competition.

Insane Ian

[KingAlanI]

Reminds me of Insane Ian's song about Dig Dug:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARX9vleIfs8

Shareware was different...

[HalAtWork]

Shareware was more akin to receiving the first actual complete game for free, and required you to pay for the sequels. Consider Doom, Keen, Duke Nukem, etc.

MC Frontalot reference?

[KingAlanI]

Reminds me of the "Frontalot needs food. Badly." line from the song Charity Case

Re:Capitalism == Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

The core of Capitalism is the making of profit above all else...The reason for maximizing profits, is and can only be Greed.

Uh, no. The core of capitalism is that the means of production are owned by those who invest capital (money) in them. As opposed to communism, where the means of production are owned by the community (of workers). Being an asshole or greedy or whatever does not come into play unless you were an asshole to start with.

Re:Capitalism == Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

== is a comparison operator.
So I'll help you out and resolve the comparison"

False

Glad I could help.

Re:Capitalism == Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

The desire for profit is NOT the same as greed. Greed is to making a profit as gluttony is to eating. Both eating and making a profit are good. Both gluttony and greed are not.

There is a difference.

www.theclassicalliberal.com

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[sonicmerlin]

What's artificial about helping the NCR beat the Legion?

SHUTUP IT'S REAL!

This dude kills arcade games.

[jipjoy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mxX7SRuU0ho

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[ildon]

Call of Duty games are generally 90% skill/teamwork/strategy and 10% whatever garbage you unlock by leveling. People who were upset by the promotion are dumb.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Richy_T]

Yeah, seriously. Doing drugs is cool.

So many comments, and so many misconceptions

[Targon]

For any commercial developer, which means those that at least try to break even and are not a community project that is driven by volunteers, there MUST be a focus on trying to make money. In some cases, this means just selling the game, with the hopes that there will be enough sales to at least pay the employees for the expense that went into the development process. In others, the base game is free, so income has to come from some other source.

The article is primarily about "free to play" games, and the effort to get players to pay for content. Many of these really do act as a bait and switch type game, where there is just enough "free" content to really show up as a "trial", but not enough to let you continue to play for free without spending money. Others put enough into the game where players really do have the potential to play for years without spending a penny, though making the spending of real money a real time saver. In many cases, there really is a design that focuses on addiction and using addiction to encourage the spending of real money.

Now, for what has really killed the game industry, the cost of development is VERY high, and this encourages developers to try cutting many corners, which tends to lower the quality of the product. In others, you see an endless supply of "clones", where most developers could not come up with a NEW game design, and they just follow the pack in the same genre. How many first person shooters does a person need to play before he/she/it figures out that it is the same game with some new bells and whistles? A good story is always good, but in general, deathmatch, or team vs. team multi-player with no significant change to the game concept does not advance the overall state of the industry.

So, you really have a big problem, how many millions of Dollars(or Euros) does it cost to make a game that will sell enough to at least cover the development costs? Good music, sound effects, and graphics are not enough, you also need a good story that people feel is worth paying to play to see how it plays out, and you need game play that does not feel like the game design was handled by someone doing serious amounts of drugs. That isn't cheap when you put it all together.

Going for a "lowest common denominator" when it comes to game DESIGN is also a killer. If your graphics are limited to what can be put on a Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360 and does not scale up for what modern PCs can handle(so the game improves on better equipment), those with better equipment will feel like the games are not worth paying as much for. Games should aim for MUCH higher specs than the projected highest end PCs at time of launch, and then scale down for systems that are more mid-range at the time that development starts(since those systems would be the low end after four years of development).

Then again, developers that can't come up with a new game engine that can be re-used for future titles are also looking short term. If a developer comes up with a new game engine for EVERY new title, then that is a waste of development money, so either license an existing game engine, or really focus on making a great game engine that can be licensed to others, and make your own game just be a great example of what can be done with that engine. Bioware didn't become a success just because of a few great games, it was being able to use the Infinity engine from Baldur's Gate in a good number of games, and having Interplay also picking it up for several Black Isle titles, which helped fund future games.

So, pick your reasons why the games industry has faded over the years, but people who don't understand these things really should not be in charge of game development companies.

Re:Capitalism == Greed

[martyros]

The core of Capitalism is the making of profit above all else.

The core of economics is people doing valuable for things for other people -- "creating value", to use a PHB word. I've had a bit of exposure to the business world, and discovered that there are basically two kinds of businessmen: People who want to get your money by giving you something valuable (i.e, worth the money), and people who just want to make money whatever way they can, preferably with the minimal effort (i.e., generally giving you nothing really valuable, or by causing damage in the production so that the net effect on society is negative). The first kind of businessman actually makes the world a better place; the second generally makes it a worse place.

Our system generally rewards the first kind, and we do have some systems in place to limit the effect of the second kind. But we need to be always on guard against the second kind, and continually trying to put in laws which restrict the second kind while allowing the first kind to thrive.

"Sensors detect another quarter in your pocket"

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't remember the name of the game that used to say this to you, but the internets tell me it was a message from the game "Starship 1".

Though I swear there was one game that actually *said* so using voice synthesis, however, not just a message on the screen...

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[Anonymous Coward]

I have stopped playing any game that has a double XP promotion (or equivalent). The existence of this mechanic proves that the game is designed with the primary target of addiction and monetisation, instead of fun.

After all, a good game would use exactly one time frame to earn XP which leads to the most fun, and not a "reward" for playing at a certain time. You cannot improve my experience by changing the mechanics, if they weren't worse to begin with.

you were born yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you remember all the posts on Slashdot...

What the fuck are you talking about, n00b?

For the win by Cory Doctorow

[Buzz_Litebeer]

If you ever want to read an interesting book on this subject, For The Win by Cory Doctorow.

XP in shooters?

[phorm]

Double XP for mountain-dew in shooters is not nearly as lame as the concept of XP in general. Who the hell thought to move XP from RPG's (Role Playing Games, not Rocket Propelled Grenades) to shooters?

It used to be that one could sit down with a bunch of friends, start up 1942 (or something similar), and just play. Obviously there were good and bad players - so normally we adjusted teams accordingly - but there was no advantage to the guy who has oodles of free time and tons of XP vs those that hasn't played the game before and were just starting out.

Add to that the lack of local LAN capabilities in most modern shooters (MW3 being an exemption it seems), and they're just NOT FUN anymore.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[J-1000]

What really pisses off CoD gamers who haven't drunk the Koolaid is prestige itself; a merit badge for grinding that encourages 75% of the Black Ops servers to run the tiniest map on infinite repeat, to help people level up faster.

Re:I haven't read the article, but hear me out her

[mcmonkey]

I was actually about to comment on how surprising it is that it took this long for the games industry to mutate to this model.

Yeah, it wasn't like the games industry figured out they could put games in public spaces where teens congregate and milk them for quarters.

Oh, wait they did.

Old news is 30 years old.

Interesting strategy

[KingAlanI]

I give them credit for an interesting alternate strategy. Maybe a different way to play the game, or a way to use the game for another purpose.

In various strategy games, I lean toward a defensive strategy myself, though I sometimes get screwed for not expanding enough and/or acting quickly enough.

Re:Interesting strategy

[hairyfeet]

I just think females have a thing for building stuff. Hell look at the Sims, it is basically AoE I without any actual battles, just the building stuff. And I swear that farmville...man females even base their PC choices around how well it will play that thing and it is NOTHING but building!

Personally I don't get it, but then again i have a penis. me give me a good Diablo clone like Torchlight or my current favorite Titan Quest Immortal throne, or give me a good FPS so I can get me some head shots. My ex GF looked at me like I was nuts when i played, but then again I'd watch her play farmville every morning and have a serious WTF? face my own self. Maybe what my eldest said when he was 7 is true, girls are just...weird is all.

Answer to the title

[MemoryDragon]

Question: Who killed video games
Answer: The Beancounters

OT: Legal obligation

[ckaminski]

an executive usually has the legal obligation (towards shareholders) to do exactly that.

False. And demonstrably so. Otherwise every CEO/VP/EVP/SVP of a bankrupt business would be in fucking pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

This is an urban legend - stop promulgating it.

Re:OT: Legal obligation

[orasio]

They represent the interest of shareholders.
The interest of shareholders is profit.

They would be in FPMITA prison if they failed to take action toward maximizing profit. Of course, you can't send someone to jail based on failure, but you can based on their actions.

Re:Look at PS3 games for evidence of not being che

[MrNthDegree]

Which would have cost £40 or so if this was a few years ago. I brought MGS2 Substance and MGS3 Subsistance (which are both "special editions" of MGS2 SoL and MGS3 Snake Eater respectively) for £40 new in GAME.

I think it's ridiculous to pay £80 for a single game.

bring back old school

[mollyminks]

I miss my original nintendo, bring it back and start from scratch. http://www.thecribhub.com/