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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I grew up when games were entire games. I very much hope that this whole microtransaction racket will be over by the time my kids are big enough to get their own console (or whatever people game on by then). What a customer-hostile clusterfuck, these people ruined a totally good industry.

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After a long-ish hiatus I picked up a Wii U two years ago for Mario Kart 8 and BOTW. And then last year grabbed a PS4 for Horizon, God of War, Spider-Man, RDR2, Gravity Rush, Uncharted 4, The Last of Us, Journey, and others.

Basically, there are a lot of high quality single player adventures to be had out there, and if you're patient enough to wait 1-2 years after release, you can a) focus on just the good stuff, avoiding duds, and b) snag complete/goty editions for very inexpensive, which will have all the DLC included. See the the price trajectory for Horizon Zero Dawn, for example:

https://psprices.com/region-us/game/1838981/horizon-zero-daw...

(And yes, I'm a grown-up with three kids; this is gaming done an hour or two at a time a few evenings a week— gone are the days of pre-ordering a new release and then pouring an entire weekend into it when it comes out.)

This is exactly right. Per-capita, gaming is terrible these days. But, most of the games that come out can be ignored. Articles like this one aren't necessarily wrong, but they forget that a user can simply ignore most of the releases out there and play the 1% that are worth their time.

It seems to be a necessary choice these days as media continues to be pumped out at historic levels. Ignore most of it, even if it's pretty good.

I wait more than 1-2 years after release, simply because my backlog is too long. Same for books. Not so much for movies because there are a bunch I prefer to see in theatres. As you note, this strategy is definitely cheaper on the wallet as well.

https://xkcd.com/606/

A side benefit of paying less is that I don't feel the same pressure to get my money's worth out of everything. Or, I suppose, I can get my money's worth out of a $10-20 purchase in only a few hours and not feel that I need to complete something I'm just not enjoying.

There's a community devoted to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers

I usually wait for most games to go on a Steam sale, unless it's Bethesda or a game that just looks exciting.

Yeah, some people there are really patient. You have to find the right balance. For me, I'm patient in the sense that I didn't get my PS4 until late in the generation, and probably won't get the PS5 on launch, but I also have some interest in industry trends and the spectacle of the latest-ish graphics. I also have limited time, so I'm not going to spend a ton of it digging through the game catalogues from last-gen systems (especially if the cream of the crop is available remastered for the current generation).

One interesting note particular to Nintendo is that other than the very limited "Nintendo Selects", their first party games basically never go on special. This means that if you want a deal on an older game, you have to buy second-hand physical, because the digital game is still $60. (Don't believe me? Twilight Princess HD, a 2016 remaster of a 2006 game, still retails for full price: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-legend-of-zelda-tw...) Anyway, the consequence of this is that in general you just want to buy physical regardless for a Nintendo system because the retained-value means you'll have the option to trade it in for much longer than you would any other game.

This is in contrast to the PlayStation store, where there are weekly Steam-like sales with loads of great games always available at the click of a button for sub-$20. So much so that there are entire websites and subreddits that track these things and trade recommendations around, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4Deals/comments/axn3f7/ubisoft_pu...

> One interesting note particular to Nintendo is that other than the very limited "Nintendo Selects", their first party games basically never go on special. This means that if you want a deal on an older game, you have to buy second-hand physical, because the digital game is still $60. (Don't believe me? Twilight Princess HD, a 2016 remaster of a 2006 game, still retails for full price: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-legend-of-zelda-tw...)

Actually, this is not particular to Nintendo if you extend it a little bit. Disney does the same thing with their classic animated movies. It's a statement from the company about the quality of their brand.

Yes, Nintento has always refused to dilute their brand value/cast doubt on their quality by lowering the pricing. You can see this all the way back in the NES with the "seal of quality," and how rare it was to find games for the system that released without that seal. They legitimately felt like bootleg releases even if they were from Capcom or something.

The games you've listed are (with the exception of RDR2) ones which are able to be loss leaders. With Nintendo and Sony owning them, they're guaranteed exclusives for life and will therefore be key in shifting consoles.

As horrible as companies like Activision are these days, they don't have the same options in this regard.

Yes you're right, those are first party games and then are here to sell hardware.

I remembered enjoying Kingdom Hearts as a kid so I recently bought a mega Kingdom Hearts bundle for ps4, which includes 2 separate bundles (I.5 and II.5 ReMix and 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue) as well as the brand new Kingdom Hearts III, all for $100.

I have so much content to work my way through at my own pace, I probably won't even make it to Kingdom Hearts III this year, much less need to buy any other RPGs.

It depends on the game I guess. I'm also an old-timer (39yo, started on C64), but there are some in-app purchase games that I like(d).

Team Fortress 2 was one of them. Even if you didn't pay, it was still fun and free. In the end, I did pay for a few things, so the business model seemed to work.

Now I'm hooked on Crossout, which is also free to play. Basically you can grind your way through it, or speed up the process by buying packages. The packages are extremely expensive though.

When you hear microtransactions, you (and I) immediately think of those nasty Facebook games, or annoying mobile games. EA pulling some nasty tricks is also part of that (Pay extra to play Darth Vader).

But there are games out there that are able to pull it off decently.

The real problem is that the original model was simpler: Pay X, you get the game.

Now the model is more complex, and you never know what you are going to get: Pay X, and maybe the game will be fun up to a certain point, where you have to pay again. But then again maybe not. You will find out once you sunk in a lot of money already.

So in the end, you will never know how much the experience will cost, and that is the real issue.

You are 10 years my elder.

If you programmed on the C64, is there any lessons/insights that you would teach to someone 10 years younger than you are?

I have heard cool things, like an actual complete user manual, including how to program registers.

I don't think I would download a C64 emulator in my spare time and actually see how it worked for myself.

> I have heard cool things, like an actual complete user manual, including how to program registers.

I think that was the Apple II.

I should still have the C64's user manual tucked somewhere, but it didn't described the internal architecture. I recall there were a couple of examples in Basic to move sprites and to produce sound from the SID "poking" (the PEEK and POKE Basic instruction) values to a few registers.

ISTR there was a complete programmer's guide available from Commodore, but it was a separate purchase.

Indeed, the programmer's reference guide was needed if you really wanted to understand the machine. The user manual had an introduction to basic as far as I can remember :)

Some kind soul has scanned it: http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme...

I played games on the C64, but never programmed it. I started with GW-BASIC.

I guess it depends on the kind of programmer you are. I consider myself a top-down programmer, where I try to get functionality as easy as possible. If there is a lib, I will use it, and don't need to know what's inside. So for me, these times are way better where you can get crazy amount of functionality in a few lines of code.

But I know plenty of programmers that I label as bottom-up programmers. They love the technology first, and functionality comes second. So for these people, they were able to fully understand a system back then. I worked with plenty of such people in the embedded world.

So if you are into that stuff, I wouldn't waste my time with old systems, but get your hands on something new, but still simple enough to fully comprehend. Such as an Arduino.

But maybe better ask a "bottom-up" developer what they enjoy nowadays.

Cool advice, for me the analogue would be Raspberry Pi's. And indeed, I find it a great way of understanding most parts of the system.

I paid for TF2 when it came out, and then they added micro transactions later. I wouldn't mind if I could still play the game that I paid for. For the first few years, TF2 had beautiful art direction; if you've launched it any time in the past several years all the cosmetics items are garish and clash with the original designs.

That's not even to mention the crate and key model introducing the lootbox garbage that has infested games today. I've paid money for cosmetic items I want in other games, but I'll never pay $2.50 for a 1% chance, or even 80% chance of getting what I want.

> if you've launched it any time in the past several years all the cosmetics items are garish and clash with the original designs.

True, there are quite a few items that do not fit in well the original aesthetic.

But nearly all of the items introduced into TF2 are designed by solo creators who get a percentage of the profits for any of their items sold on the store.

So yes, you now have a visually (not functionally) different game, but the upside is that talented designers from all walks of like can make a good living from the profit sharing model Valve has set up.

I'm 40 and likely same gaming history, however I'll disagree with you on TF2 and, while I have not heard of it, Crossout

I played the original QWTF very competitively. It was simply a mod for a Quake. Man, already I want to swoon about mods and how they brought so much life to games (Counterstrike for Halflife anyone?), but I digress! I loved TF2 originally, however once they started adding all of those items it drove me nuts. Now if you wanted to be competitive you had to grind out or buy some of the weapons. These things changed the game. Not in a dramatic way, but enough. If they had just stuck to cosmetic hats I wouldnt have cared at all. Those are just for looks/fun and do not change the game.

As for games like Crossout where you can either grind or buy to speed things up, those are the epitomy of how evil micro transactions are. It is preying on peoples addiction or lack of patience. Any game that has things you can buy to speed up the playing of the game is one I will never play.

Then you have loot box games, where they prey on gambling like addictions. Until I started reading about loot box laws and stuff I never really gave it much thought. I have purchased loot boxes in the past, but I did so out of support for the developers. Overwatch came out and I loved that to death. When they released some new content for free, I was like "here this is my support for your continued efforts".

The Darth Vader trick EA pulled was pretty terrible too. That would be akin to Overwatch releasing a character behind $.

The only kind of micro transaction I like/approve of are cosmetic ones where they do not change how you play the game. You are just buying stuff to look different/"cooler". Fortnite is a successful example of this. Tons of people play for free and are no worse off than those who purchase the Battle Pass.

EA & Apex Legends are crossing the line ever so slightly with the "Free Game" but having other characters be unlockable. So far, if you play just a little bit, you can unlock one for free using the tokens you receive, however many people will just buy to unlock. Also it is rumored their batttle pass will bring another character. I say ever so slightly since, for now, this is a team only game and neither of the unlockable characters are game breaking like a Darth Vader would be all powerful.

Every other kind of micro transaction is essentially a pay to win mechanic, and why play games if you aren't trying to win?

We're at the forefront of "pay to skip the grind" in AAA single player games as well. The YouTube reviewer Skill Up has some really thoughtful commentary on this as pertains to AC: Odyssey in particular:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOrKtZsoy30

Basically, he argues that the game has a really strong start, and an excellent climactic chapter, but the enormously bloated midgame is full of arbitrary level-gates and other nuisances which force you to grind on cookie-cutter side quests. The concern is that this is an attempt to sell impatient players a real-money XP booster. And if it works out for Ubisoft and isn't adequately called out, that we'll see a lot more of this kind of thing going forward.

Yup, thankfully DOTA 2 only sells cosmetic items. I was also pretty disappointed in all of the new tf2 weapons... especially the phlog

The concern with pay-to-skip-grind revenue models isn't so much with any notion of "fairness" or "integrity" as much as the fact that it greatly incentivizes asshole progression design which typically manifests itself in the form of intentionally-way-more-grindy-than-necessary midgame/lategame progression pathways.

Designing the ideal rate of progression to keep a given game engaging is difficult enough as-is. Too little content gating and you risk burning through all the content too quickly and players getting bored. Too much content gating and the grind begins to feel punitive.

In this context, muddling the mixture further by throwing in this kind of incentive just feels like a recipe for shit-tastic UX/CX.

Its not like all microtransactions are equal. In Hearthstone this becomes very much a pay to win scheme, but in games like Rocket League microtransactions are optional, cosmetic and do not bring any real advantage.

In the end of the day, how you do microtransactions matter, its not an evil thing by definition.

You right of course, but Hearthstone is a card game. If it were an actual card game you would buy packs just like people did thirty years ago. There's not much to do in the way of cosmetics in a game like that.

Unfortunately, barring some major unforeseen cultural and/or technological changes, I don't see those days coming back. The issue is that back in the late 80s/early 90s the cost of a new game was $60, and the cost of a new game today is... $60. That is, despite decades of inflation and an increased amount of development cost/time, that price point is stuck. I am not in the game dev industry, but I'm guessing they have loads of market research data explaining why that is that have to do with consumer psychology. While the industry is in a big growth phase that fixed price point isn't an issue because you make it up with an increased volume in sales. Now that the industry is more mature and saturated however, and so one response to the fact that $60 isn't what it used to be is micro-transactions, seasonal DLC passes, and anything else some suits can dream up to get a couple of extra bucks. The other response is indie game development, a back to basics approach where you make a game with a handful of people instead of 60+, and with a clever design and a lot of luck you can have a game that gets a lot of attention and do well for yourself even if your game only costs $30 or $15. Unfortunately, indie games are also saturated at this point, so standing out in the crowd gets harder and harder as time goes by.

The micro-transaction thing really is a sad turn of events though because it is not a content neutral change to games. Certain types of game mechanics are more amenable to to micro-transactions, and it creates an incentive to create artificial difficulty spikes in a game.

> The issue is that back in the late 80s/early 90s the cost of a new game was $60, and the cost of a new game today is... $60

You also mention in your comment that this is not an issue because sales volume has more than made up for it.

If the industry is just now becoming more mature and saturated, "inflation over decades" is not relevant.

Companies are moving to micro-transactions simply because it is now very easy to setup and a guaranteed way to increase revenue. And that's what companies do (optimize for revenue/profit), regardless of inflation.

I think it's important to distinguish between types of microtransactions. For me, where I draw the line between ethical and unethical is when the microtransaction is built to act like a slot machine, with variable ratio schedule rewards.

If a microtransaction provides a clear indicator of exactly what you're buying and its cost - or even if it doesn't but provides an honest and upfront maximum ceiling for how much you will have to pay to get the item(s) you want - then a consumer can make an honest cost-to-value analysis and decide whether or not to buy the product. And I'm fine with that - though the latter example I'm less fine with, it at least provides a mitigation: an avenue for doing that analysis in a rational way and creating a maximum amount of spend that prevents open-ended cycles of addiction and spending.

A loot box or other fully randomized model has no such financial ceiling, and calculations of expected value have to be performed by users entirely like measuring odds in a casino. And casinos, like video game companies, take advantage of the fact that humans are intrinsically bad at that: and that people can easily become addicted to systems that provide rewards randomly and intermittently. And unlike a casino, we ask both children and adults to try to make that on-the-spot assessment when we talk about loot boxes, which as a society we have found unacceptable for other forms of variable ratio schedule-based transactions.

My thought process is pretty straightforward. If, in order for a product to survive, it has to/tries to trick a user into misunderstanding the cost-to-value of their financial transaction, then the product can't actually stand on its own merits and doesn't deserve to exist. Or the product should admit that it is a casino game: and as such it should be heavily regulated, kept out of the hands of children, and I want nothing to do with it.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s the cost of a new game was only $40, if you were part of the glorious PCMR. Now we're just subsidizing the console plebs.

Throw DLC's in there too. I liked Expansion Packs that are worthwhile, but they've been replaced by DLC's. If your game's not yet ready please, please, just delay the release. I want to see a good game. I prefer to pay good money for good games. I don't mind Bethesda doing DLCs cause they're usually fun little expansion packs, not... in game items (with some exceptions like preordering). In game items shouldn't be the only part of a DLC.

I've made a promise to myself that I will never buy any game with microtransaction. If that means never buying another game, that's fine. I've got like 600+ games on my Steam account, I'll live.

Some games do get microtransactions added after the fact, but that's mostly in multiplayer modes (like GTA Online vs GTA V), and thankfully I've never been much of a multiplayer fan.

As someone who has bought all of GTA games and the extra episodes and add-ons over the years it saddens me that there hasn't been at least one single player expansion for GTA V. I have absolutely zero interest in GTA Online but have completed the single player story multiple times both on Xbox 360 and PC.

I imagine it's far too late in GTA V's lifecycle for them to announce something now, and it's a real shame.

> I grew up when games were entire games.

And they were usually mostly made by one individual. Now, the expectation for larger AAA games is much, much more. People expect more out of graphics, voice acting, and music. Games have budgets greater than many movies. And this is expected.

Micro-transactions aren't unique to games. They come from normal business, so hoping they go away is hoping for businesses to pass on making money. That's not going to happen.

>I very much hope that this whole microtransaction racket will be over by the time my kids are big enough to get their own console (or whatever people game on by then).

I wouldn't count on it. Look at the "gacha" market on mobile. These are fairly simple games with relatively small budgets and some of them are pulling in near $100 million per month on microtransactions.

> I very much hope that this whole microtransaction racket will be over by the time my kids are big enough to get their own console

On mobile that will never happened. Consoles are becoming a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. If anyone can hold back the wall it is Nintendo. The mobile market is just insane and has been for over 10 years now.

>What a customer-hostile clusterfuck, these people ruined a totally good industry.

Don't be fooled. Most software is made this way now. Everything from upsells in apps to web services is the pay as you go model.

Racket or not, there's obvious economic reasons everything has been pushed this way and games did not lead the charge.

Some games still do give you the full game, and even for free but still have microtransactions to support. With them using the microtransactions for only cosmetic stuff and not to change the game itself. That's a model that's appearing for some games now.

Games now with MTX are bigger than your games from 15 years ago.

I would appreciate the Netflix model. 10 dollars per month to have the latest and greatest experience. No ads, no extra costs.

Doesn't work for most games though. Nearly every "WoW killer" in the last decade has gone free to play because subs couldn't sustain them.

Nes / Snes mini?

Well I got one with that intention, (not for myself at all).

Or a Switch. My five year old loves Mario U on mine. I also built him a raspberry pi console with NES, SNES, SG, and PS1.

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