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Comment by _bfhp | Hacker News Reader

This sort of story just happened en masse with Destiny 2 players. The game ($60) as a social multiplayer space kind of hit a dead end after everyone beat the campaign, with further milquetoast content gated behind DLC and loot boxes (all paid of course)

The whole thing of children being socially incentivized to invest huge amounts of money in devices that might fail for fear they'll be out of the loop with children slightly richer than them is a huge bummer. This problem doesn't really exist for TV, movies, books, and card and board games. I'm starting to wonder if PC and mobile gaming really should win out against Nintendo and Sony, morally...

Another good personal story about how we interface with videogame: https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/12/15958318/the-5000-decision...

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There was a time when card games were about how much money you had rather than how good you were. Many games have introduced rotation, which has helped, but it's still an ongoing investment in the game and it's still a few hundred just to be competitive on Magic night at your local shop. But they did find the balance point that seems fair. I think video games haven't found that yet.

I'm really torn on DLC, game expansions and the like. On one hand, $60 for a new game every year is lots when I could spend $25 on a game I already enjoy. But on the other, it's an excuse to limit content up front in order to milk users. I think it's a matter of perception and companies that find a fair balance will be successful.

Continuously buying booster packs is only a problem only with games like Magic.

There are lots of card games where you just buy a base set and an expansion now and again. And the vast majority of board games don’t require constant investment.

I bought Dropmix for my niece for Christmas. It's an NFC-based card game made by Harmonix and Hasbro. It's actually an interesting music mixing game that works really well... but..

While it comes with 60 cards, the biggest criticism that I've seen about the game is how expensive the booster kits are and how they are packaged. To get all aspects of a song, you may have to buy multiple booster packs. I get that the song rights are built into the cost, but they cost as much or more than individual songs do off iTunes, and one card usually has only one part of a song (i.e. vocals, guitar, percussion, etc).

I was thinking more like Arkham Horror, or Android: NetRunner.

Not to be gender normative, but that probably doesn’t help you.

With netrunner I'm not continually buying packs, but rather data sets and expansions. Plus with rotation I need to keep that up. There's no randomness, but there is ongoing cost.

A chess set goes a long way further than any crappy videogame, and plays well around a campfire too. </bias>

Magic's price point, for Modern and especially Standard, is still a bit too high for most people...the most popular MTG YouTuber (Tolarian Community College) firmly believes current entry prices for all the popular formats should be lower (except Pauper) and has been talking about it for months or years now.

I love the idea of LCGs; I thought Epic or Ashes: Rise of the Pheonixborn could be new Netrunners (which I missed completely) but they didn't end up getting popular. So lately I am more interested in trying standalone board games, and MTG draft/cube.

I think Blizzard has a userbase satisfied with their DLC/loot box systems and the industry should learn from them

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