Comparing loot boxes to end-of-tv-episode cliffhangers is some galaxy brain level of complete fucking idiocy, only topped by thinking loot box regulation = censorship.
It's amazing how some devs cling to lootboxes like some sort of battered housewife
Gotta appease their corporate overlords
Whoever came up with that nonsensical argument needs to pipe down before the rest of the gambling industry adopts it.
Jim Sterling, as always, not knowing that video games are products designed foremost to make money.
So I'm a very avid Call of Duty player, right? A series of games in recent history known for in-game monetization? You wanna know how I outsmart Activision's crap skinner boxes?
I don't buy them. I haven't bought any for either BO4, WW2 or Infinite Warfare (mostly cuz that games shit) and while I understand this is an alien concept for some, bear with me. Nearly every item in the game is cosmetic which while certainly important (I want my solider duders to stand out!) isn't important enough for me to decide to drop ten bucks on a skin. Now if a game relies heavily on them as a gameplay feature, like it's some kind of arms race that requires you to have the best gear that you can only get from microtransactions? I'm sorry but there's no polite way to put this... That game is simply shit and you should find something better.
He is beating a dead horse, but he's also the guy who said that games should be free because "They're just skinner boxes anyways". Because that's what I want. Finding a Domination or Zombies match anytime I want to blow off some steam? Fuck that noise! What the game industry needs is a return to those wait timers popularized by mobile and facebook games. Just tack on a 2 hour wait timer between the ten minute or so matches which you can totally skip by buying a .99c item of rations!
I think I'll take the lootboxes.
Randomized rewards have plenty of utility in game design space, but it isn't something you want as basis of commerce. To gamify is to manipulate, and that opens itself to regulations.
I have no clue what you're even on about.
Loot boxes are a predatory system that manipulates people into buying them. Just because you don't buy them doesn't mean others don't. That's simple, yes?
That doesn't mean that they should stay, just because you don't buy them. In the UK currently, underage gambling is a serious problem. Loot boxes have gone around regulations, and are easily accessible for young kids. Young kids are extremely easy to manipulate.
If companies want more money, create more content. It's as simple as that. But they'd prefer the easy way out and bank on loot boxes.
Ah, the old "It doesn't affect me directly, so I shouldn't care" argument. You fail to see the bigger picture in what accepting these kinds of predatory practices does for the games industry.
First of all, "video games are products designed foremost to make money". Nope. This is entirely based on the creators who develop the game. Thousands of games just exist as a means of a creative device. Can they make money? Ofcourse! So can any piece of art! Is it always the primary reason for it being created? Absolutely not.
Now, how does Lootboxes fit into this? Well, say on one side you have the games created purely for artistic expression, the other side purely for profit. For a long time the majority of big and small titles were sitting around the middle of these two driving forces. The golden age of videogames were around the time where these two driving forces could barely be recognized from each other. People paid for a product, and they got what they paid for, pure and simple. Once Downloadable content came in, profit driven games were more of a focus, with multiple external content purchases. I'm sure we all remember the old images of the mona lisa sectioned off into small parts to describe what dlc was doing to game development at EA. Downloadable content became a new way of gaining profit, but also a way to provide more creative work to consumers. It was also mostly external from the main product and so didn't really affect its development, so it was eventually accepted as a system by the consumers and more and more games took on this system. Once this was accepted in the games industry, the profit driven developers implemented microtransactions, a more profitable system than the current tried and true concept of dlc, with less of the creative work involved. Again, another decision that would further split consumers and developers alike to either the artistic driven side or the profit driven one. This one would have a bigger impact on the development of the core of the game. Games that were more profit driven would maximize the chances the player would buy microtransactions by adjusting the systems in the game to make it more attractive to buy.
And now finally we are here at lootboxes, probably the biggest divider in the videogame community currently. If we decide to accept this system that the profit driven videogame creators present, we're going to see an even bigger gap between these two. Publishers wont look in the direction of a game that wants to be more than an indie title if it does not have lootboxes implemented. Downloadable content allowed the concept to dividing existing game assets that could have been part of the main product to be sold again for profit. Microtransactions allowed game mechanic balance to be shifted for profit. And now Lootboxes will allow gambling tenancies to thrive and further change the scope of a creative product for, yep, profit.
I don't want to see an even bigger gap between these two driving forces for game development, because I know the best games came from the ones that were able to stay in the middle. God of War is a prime example of what a game can pull off these days without microtransactions or lootboxes, while still being for profit and being artistic. I want to see more games like that.
First line and you're wrong. It does effect me directly. I actually have severe OCD. I'm the kind of person these predatory practices are designed to target. Now I'm going to have to come clean here, I do see a bit of karmanic retribution here. So people would make fun of me for being obsessive, right? Oh, just get over your obsessions, they'd say. Then it creeps over to video games. Now it's a big issue! Suddenly, we're foaming at the mouth that gambling has infested our video games oh no!
Now you're saying that there's this huge divide between Indie and those gosh-darn greedy triple-a (or as Jim keeps mockingly pronouncing them, "Triple Ayy") publishers. I have some news for you about this. First of all, yeah there's a gap but so what? Steam has made it easier then ever to put something on the marketplace. Perhaps too easy, but that's another topic entirely. Secondly unless you work on stuff for a living then you have no idea how expensive it is (chronologically and monetarily) to refine everything from art assets to level layouts. The cost balloons. And it's going to keep ballooning. You place the newest God of War as an example of triple-ayy done right. Now I don't know if it's development was particularly turbulent, but I can imagine trying to pitch a pure-singleplayer experience in this day and age was an uphill battle. It's fortunate that the game was both a success financially and critically - if it only got average scores then I'd imagine the series would have been shelved, not seen again until... ever.
Battlefront 2 was the best thing to happen to the games industry in quite a long time. No seriously, it got the message across that these things are unpopular, and that once you go past a certain level of greediness then people are going to see right through it. Combined with being a talking point for politicians looking for a hot new issue to appease voters, we're starting to see blatent lootboxery go away less and less. CoD dropped it in favor of just ripping off Fortnite's tier system, which I have honestly yet to see any serious flak about. Yeah, just because I defend the existance of these 99cent skinner boxes doesn't mean I want to see them.
I should also note that I don't have a problem with gambling. I know about that study about more underage gamblers, I dont know if they count buying Fortnite tiers as gambling or actual slot machines and poker and junk, but either way it's clear that Europe has a parenting problem as well as a gambling problem
"I don't buy hard drugs, therefore why would we need to pass laws against them?"
First line and you're stating that you are an individual in a massive group, so don't go claiming it's personal. Gambling has always been a serious issue. Well at least for the past half a century or so.
Do you know how much profit these same triple ayy games make without mtx of any sort added?
They're already breaking profit margins by a landslide. Mostly because usually the majority of the games' budget goes to marketing which the publisher does.
And who the hell said it's hard to make a fun singleplayer experience in the current year. GoW wouldn't have sold as much if it didn't have all the marketing around it to go with it, even regardless of what scores it got. In fact, marketing is key for AAA games. Why did Fallout 76, of all things, be so massively popular before it even launched? Marketing. Same goes for pretty much all Bethesda games in the past decade or so. Despite their massive jankiness, they sold a shitton because they have some goddamn marketing geniuses working at Bethesda-Zenimax.
Development is relatively cheap for these big companies as they can just hire more people to make their games instead of overworking less people (except apparently in the case of RDR2 where they did both), and that leaves them with selling the game itself to the wider populace of this earth. The more reach a game has, the more money it's going to make, and the more likely it's also going to find its way to the hands of someone with gambling problems and unhealthy spending habits. Do you now see why games shouldn't be having lootboxes in the first place, cosmetic or not?
sick projection there though.
Europe hasn't, it's just that we're not as corrupted or uncaring as America.
Bethesda/Zenimax's games sold a lot because they were good. Hell, before Morrowind, Bethesda actually went bankrupt and had investors bail them out. Battlefront 2 had great marketing too. Except the game was sorta... shit? I mean asides (but not forgetting) the lootboxes.
Game development isn't getting cheaper, where are you getting this from? Actually, I think things are hitting the critical mass point. Quite a few big-budget games late last year failed to hit projections. People have been speculating about a video game crash for some time and I don't think things will actually crash but people are moving away from some big budget releases in favor of smaller titles...
But maybe it's that I don't see how loot boxes are any different from trading card splinter packs. "You can trade/sell them" is usually what I hear. So... if more publishers opted for the mannconemy and steam marketplace that TF2 had then what, things would be perfect? I actually lost a lot of interest in the game when it went hat-simulator. Shocking, I know.
https://youtu.be/SFKnv1YzI3k
Also if it's reaching a "critical mass" how are they still able to afford to do something like this:
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1084608920340086784
If anything, lootboxes are a form of censorship, we're unable to view content because it's locked behind an RNG paywall.
They fail to meet expectations because over half the budget is a marketting budget.
That combined with a market saturated with high quality all the way to low quality titles makes it harder to make profits back.
There's also the element that many games are no longer being sold as "products" but as "services". Destiny 2 is an example of this, and why it's dis-satisyfing.
Game development costs have stagnated in a lot of ways. While games cost more to make from a production perspective, there are also numerous things that can be done to change that process to make it either more efficient or quicker. Point is, game design is in an infant like state compared to that of Film and TV. Things can cost more to make, or different decisions can be made that would reduce costs and still show off a good product.
This idea that "Games only exist to make money" isn't news to literally anyone here. It would be news to anyone, that this is a good thing though.
Way more accurate than you'd surmise, because in many cases especially over the last two years, this is literally the case. Contrary to Ubi$haft marketing pushes, both internal and external, making AAA games is hard, made harder by political wrangling and the now completely entrenched and completely false notion that games need to made like movies cause they make similar money.
Your literal Voodoo Economics premise has already failed twenty years ago. You might need to educate yourself better.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/270762/d37eed48-9967-4562-ac93-de2f7e7d1f51/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/270762/368c63dc-76cc-4645-a258-616b62a669bd/image.png
You see your Honor it's actually an "Art Wheel" and an "Art Table".
First off you straight up dismissed how I said "in the past decade and so" because around the time Oblivion hit the shelves they really started making bank. And do you think that EA BF2 was shit because you've tried it, or because you heard it was shit? Their lootbox scandal was only fueled more by the free-to-play tier grind it has.
And you so obviously missed how I said in relation, not "straight up being much cheaper". Failing to hit projections also does not equal breaking gross margin. They sure as HELL have made their money back and more, even if their predictions didn't go as they planned.
They very well might have expected to sell at least in higher 9 figures, probably higher, but only got maybe half of that. See Black Ops 4 with it's "measly 500mil launch". Consider that Black Ops 2 sold over $1b in the first two weeks, and how "the most expensive video game to develop" that I can find on Wikipedia is MW2 with 250 million USD with 50mil of those being development and the other 200mil is MARKETING (adjusted for inflation in 2019 it's $292mil total).
Aaaaand no, marketplace kind of shit would be very much player regulated, and the big corporations probably don't want that. They'd rather nickle and dime you for everything you have instead, while stripping away as many rights from you as they possibly can. And that can be seen with BO4 as well with this whole red dot reticle scandal.
Well I mean you know what they say, the rich get richer and all. I suppose these scummy (and borderline illegal) practices means that Activision and EA's practices are here to stay for decades to come as peons continue to buy -
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/259570/36aa3aa8-e0a1-42bc-a496-fc51aaa5a770/activision.png
The fuck? Why... why is it going down like that? I mean yeah, the Bungie split prob has a lot to do with it but it starts going down by October.
Well, EA surely has to be doing better, right?
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/259570/505787cf-bd43-480a-8e7f-7c71e774cc4c/EAgamiz.png
Er… I mean the price per share is higher, but that's quite a steep drop. Like, very steep. Small bump at the end, but to compare the drop from the Battlefront-lootbox fiasco is much smaller then the more recent one. I don't think things are looking promising for either.
(I can't find Bethesdas stock, and Take-Two seems to be doing well for itself. Really wish I bought stock of them back in 2014. Or 2016/2017 even)
Turning this back towards the topic, this likely means we'll see either a double down on lootboxes (EA is likely doing this) or a focus towards ways that are less outright aggressive (Black Ops 4 tier rewards). Unless people have a problem with those too, I mean. Jim's the kind of guy who complains that Assassins Creed Odyssee had a promotion with pizza rolls for some dumb ingame spear. I used to love the guy, but over the years I've been finding his complaints to be annoyingly repetitive and his humor to be simply crass and obnoxious.
Or maybe people don't all work just like you, and some find the things offered by loot boxes tantalizing enough to fall into the scheme.
Now there's part of me that does want to laugh at them as people have laughed at me for my obsessive tendencies. Like I really don't want to get into it but for me personally it's pretty bad. But... I mean I sympathize, I really do. Just because I am defending the existence of such things does not mean I am clutching onto the boxes of immaterial trash like a beaten wife. I'd rather not see them, but if they must exist - and you have the same obsessive tics like I do - then I do have some advice. Like, legitament advice.
First, don't save payment info. This would make it so you would have to go through an extra step to make sure you REALLY want that skinner box. Second, experiment with the gear/outfits you have. Third, if the game actively relies on them as a form of player progression then it's a shit game that does not even deserve your time. Fourth, if things are really bad, get medicated and probably find a therapist. It may sound like I'm being all cackly here but no, I had to do this myself.
Fight smarter, not harder.
"Let's not regulate casinos either! Just tell people to get therapists! Why do we need regulation anyways?"
Funny, that was the same response and tone that was thrown my way about half a decade ago when my obsessive-compulsive personality defect was impacting me on a daily basis. And so I'd snap back because this is unfair. Then they'd blow a ring of smoke in my face and ask me why everyone deserves to be punished just because I'm a compulsive nutjob. You hear it enough and you tend to agree with them.
But there's something else which the video rubs shoulders with. This David guy transparently is defending them because he wants to put them in his game I imagine. I'm defending them because I really, REALLY do not trust some old 50 year old washup political dude who barely knows what one of these "video games" are to write some "Ban all lootbox" legislature that (assuming it even goes through) either is ridiculously overburdening (to the point where it possibly ends up restricting plain microtransactions or DLC too) or worse, completely ineffectual allowing more devious ones to pass by some crap technicality because, shock of all shock, the bill writers don't play video games.
Dude the problem is that you're peddling it onto people that aren't adults yet.
Imagine defending fucking lootboxes in any capacity in 2019.
Man, you still behave like you did a few months ago in the political threads.
People are actively proving all of your crap wrong in this thread post by post as it relates to lootboxes, but you double down on it every time. Why?
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