(Jim Sterling) NBA 2K18 Pulls A Microtransaction Slam Dunk - General

[QUOTE=simzboy;52700412]Who the fuck is going to pay $150+ for a game that will be replaced within a year? Also, apparently MyCareer has 2 hours worth of unskippable shit at the start. Meaning that players couldn't refund once they were allowed to actually play.[/QUOTE] I work in a game store, and we have guys who only come in once a year to buy the biggest version of NBA, Madden, WWE, Fifa whatever. These same people are always so elated to see we have the $150 versions of these games, and every time I just feel so confused.

honestly wouldn't mind a bubble pop in the game industry right now thanks

[QUOTE=Wii60;52702431]honestly wouldn't mind a bubble pop in the game industry right now thanks[/QUOTE] Honestly if video-games stopped being made, there are still more good games to play than I ever will find the time for.

Truly a shame on what games are starting to become for the home consoles. Completely unnecessary bullshit that people still sadly accepts it. I'm glad Nintendo haven't been infested with this micro-transaction bullshit.

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;52702446]Honestly if video-games stopped being made, there are still more good games to play than I ever will find the time for.[/QUOTE] i dont think video games would ever stop being made but a bubble pop would basically shake up the big companies and let the smaller players get a chance at glory, resetting the standard for alot of gaming stuff.

[QUOTE=Wii60;52703162]i dont think video games would ever stop being made but a bubble pop would basically shake up the big companies and let the smaller players get a chance at glory, resetting the standard for alot of gaming stuff.[/QUOTE] Yeah, what's most realistic is the AAA industry either collapsing as a whole or going through some major reformation. Video games aren't going to "stop being made", that's an unrealistic assumption especially since there are still many things that can be made now. It's just that right now we're going through a particularly rough patch in the industry, particularly relating to AAA games. I'd say within the next decade we're going to start seeing companies like 2K, Atari, EA, Activision, Konami, and Ubisoft either evolve and adapt to a changing market that [I]doesn't[/I] want to spend thousands of dollars on stupid microtransactions, or disappear into irrelevance where their IP's will live on being sold off to other, better hands. And in the mean time, Indie devs are still making good games and [I]I think[/I] there's a growing "Double A" scene that will become more relevant in time.

i cant wait for f2p to become unpopular, ive always preferred paying a straight up £60 so i dont have to get micro transactions for characters levels customisation ect, or pay to make the game the length it was intended to be not some super slow grind. Season pass dlc that comes out under a month after the games release can fuck off too.

With the way sports games work these days EA, 2K, and the other publishers that hoard licenses for big sports brands can probably subsist on them alone for quite some time. Almost every sport is its own monopolized genre, and the people who buy sports games have a bit of a reputation for being unusually complacent, which is saying something in this industry.

[QUOTE=Wii60;52703162]i dont think video games would ever stop being made but a bubble pop would basically shake up the big companies and let the smaller players get a chance at glory, resetting the standard for alot of gaming stuff.[/QUOTE] I don't even think a video game crash is gonna happen. Like I said before, I think governing authorities are gonna step in and start regulating the industry more, sort of like what's currently happening with the whole gambling thing. I was really just making the point that there's a shitton of good games on the market, even if you only wanna play games that are no older than 5 years or even 1 year.

I see this shit and I say that piracy is justified. And look at it; it's not even getting better over the years. It just keeps getting worse instead. Game companies pull off the most evil shit and yet they somehow become standards. Just like micro-transactions when they started 10 years ago.

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;52704786]I don't even think a video game crash is gonna happen. Like I said before, I think governing authorities are gonna step in and start regulating the industry more, sort of like what's currently happening with the whole gambling thing. I was really just making the point that there's a shitton of good games on the market, even if you only wanna play games that are no older than 5 years or even 1 year.[/QUOTE] Im questioning whether to let the state of Florida know about this because they have the worst gambling law in the United States. Anything that offers a chance to win a prize is banned p much

[QUOTE=Wii60;52705394]Im questioning whether to let the state of Florida know about this because they have the worst gambling law in the United States. Anything that offers a chance to win a prize is banned p much[/QUOTE] Keep questioning that. There's definitely a lot of shady business practices in the gaming industry that the market doesn't react properly to and it's a lot like gambling because of the way these companies play around with addictive tendencies and other psychological weaknesses in people in order to make money. Laws are backwards or simply don't apply, and they need to catch up, for the sake of consumer rights.

[QUOTE=Loadingue;52704912]I see this shit and I say that piracy is justified. And look at it; it's not even getting better over the years. It just keeps getting worse instead. Game companies pull off the most evil shit and yet they somehow become standards. [B]Just like micro-transactions when they started 10 years ago[/B].[/QUOTE] I think Micro-transactions are older than that in terms of their function and governing principle. I'd consider them an evolution of Arcade money-making tactics Arcade machines all aimed to achieve a similar goal: to make the player pay more money than a game is truly worth. This was achieved with a trifecta that hasn't exactly changed: - Frustrate the player with artificial, unfair, cheap difficulty. - Promise more with looping demos (and the ability to keep playing the game). - Give the illusion of value (a quarter seems like a cheap barrier of entry, but due to the difficulty you actually get very little bang for your buck). At the time, the primary advantage of home consoles and PCs was to dodge this issue at least to a certain extent, but it would come at a higher immediate price and with significant drawbacks (data storage and hardware limitations being two of them). This did mean however that, for a time, the arcade strategy did not transition over. Not until Arcades had all but faded away and home consoles/PCs became the true standard at least in the western world. My guess is that smartphone apps kind of rejuvenated the arcade strategy and publishers didn't take long to bring it into the premium market, but the trifecta is still here and very much the same: - Frustrate the player with grinding, the visual interface of loot boxes, time gated content - Promise more content with pre-order bonuses, season pass content, loot-boxes - Give the illusion of value by making the player pay for content they already have, or by creating an inflated virtual currency (get 10,000 funbux for 1 real dollar! etc) And as you may expect, the "they could just make good games and they'd sell" argument worked then and it works now. Things haven't changed all that much, they've simply evolved.