Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

Video games are like this because people pay for it. It didn’t start like this. Back when packaged games (i.e. shrink-wrapped cd/dvd cases) were the way games were delivered we had “online” modes that generally cost a fixed amount (including $0) to access. Then someone would experiment with something like a power up or level up for some tiny cost, or a “bundle” of them, etc. and guess what: the market overwhelmingly went for it. It made more money because it both had higher per-transaction revenue and more people converting to pay it. Then came the whales (things like Saudi princes blowing $10s or $100s of thousands on FIFA cards or whatever) and the industry never looked back.

Video games are what they are for the same reason Marvel Character CGI-fest Sequel/Spinoff X blows away the box office every summer.

View on HN

Actually there's a strong power law going on with microtransactions. Most players don't spend any money at all on them; some spend a couple bucks on an item or two. The model becomes profitable because of the top 1% of spenders — "whales," in industry parlance — some of whom have deeply unhealthy relationships to the gambling mechanics and social pressures underlying microtransaction economies.

So it's not exactly true that the public are voting with their wallets here. It's a profitable business model, but the majority of people do not engage with it, and consumers as a whole would be better-off if it died out.

They are voting with their wallets. It's just that not every vote has a value of 1; their vote is the number of dollars they spend.

Right, so the market is being disproportionately swayed by gambling addicts and the experiences which appeal to them. This is not a healthy state of affairs.

Perhaps. There are a lot of games that are not like that though, catering to gambling, and I presume even in the future many games will not as well. There is always a group of people who like games without stuff like that in there, and it seems like at least some of these game creators do quite well, such as CDPR with their Witcher and Cyberpunk series.

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that developers have discovered it is best to offer an amazing free product to the whole world in order to get them involved in the game, and then this attracts rich people, who then go ahead and pay for the whole things themselves. But if you don't attract the little guy with free stuff, you don't get a great game, and so you don't attract the rich people.

Seems like a good system that everyone happy with. If they weren't happy they would go play other games that aren't free.

Gambling addicts are financing these games. Most of them are not rich at all.

It's not attracting rich people, it's attracting addicts.

They don’t attract rich people, they attract gamblers. And they are incentivized to convert more people into becoming gamblers.

Some games are starting to remove the gambling. The article's author is outdated on Rocket League which has since removed the lootboxes. Valorant never had any.

In all fairness, Rocket League may be the only "free to play" game that warrants the term "amazing". I'm glad it keeps something like RL around, but let's be real: this game model tends to rake in the cash even with the most generic games.

Frankly I'm torn: people can buy digital stickerbomb skins if they want, but it's obviously a bit of a "cheat code" to a profitable game and probably takes a lot of developers/money away from more interesting parts of the industry.

It'd also be more forgivable if it didn't seem popularity creates nearly immortal games that too often become stagnant and overrun with toxic players despite still being profitable enough to "keep alive", i.e. payday 2, planetside 2

Reminds me again of "when you don't have to pay for it, you're the product, not the customer". Here, all the free players are opponents necessary to attract the whales.

But that applies even to paid games. It's very hard to attract players to games if it's mainly multiplayer and there's no one to play against. Both players and developers do want an active playerbase, and free to play significantly lowers the barrier of entry for potential players.

So maybe free-to-play simply has to be the future of multiplayer games?

And yet they put me off because you're constantly confronted with mechanisms designed to make you pay. I don't mind paying for a game, but once I'm playing, I want to focus on the game, not the payment.

Hardly. The whales are not always rich: often they’re just addict-type personalities who are extremely irresponsible with their money.

It’s not a healthy business model for consumers, but ever since I saw the start of this industry trend I’ve come to view consumers of it (in aggregate) as being of poor judgement if not outright stupid. So they kind of reap what they sew, and the rest of us must work harder to find quality. Just like in everything else really.

It is almost like the business models are adjusting to the reality of the world. With massive inequality, especially in a global market. And an "entitlement" that digital products should be free or dirt cheap. If you think about it it's sort of a wealth redestribution. One extreme example was that Movie ticket business, that basically paid movie tickets with investor money.

This presumes the whales can afford to spend the way they do. Which isn’t true for gambling addicts either. And that the profits end up in the hands of workers rather than in the pockets of investors.

The megawhale point is a bit overmade. F2p games have vastly different payer distributions by genre, platform, business model, monetization strategy and other factors.

Addictiveness and addiction are issues with and around gaming, for sure. But the reliance of f2p games on entranced, pixel-charmed addicts is also overstated. A good number of free to play games have lifespans measured in decades, they can function like a highly social, off-and-on hobby. People are willing to spend $20 to go to the movies a few times per year. How’s it different to spend that on a game you get hundreds of hours of entertainment from?

It's not always gambling. There are also collectors and people who just like to show off. Also, the usually f*ing rich dude who has no understanding on the difference between $2 and $20k. Games today are the new social club, where you go and meet and show off your life. And as there are corners for the average people, there are also corners for the rich and powerful. There are some games which really just exist so rich dudes can casually meet and show off how much money they spend on some stupid skin. Similar, some other games have pay2win, because enough rich people live by the philosophy that money can buy you anything, including an easy win.

The gambling-games are only the most obvious whale-traps, and they usually not even aim for the filthy rich, but the middle class rich. The rich rich-games are less obvious, because the casuals are not rich enough to even get high enough in that game to gain access to the juicy parts.

> There are some games which really just exist so rich dudes can casually meet and show off how much money they spend on some stupid skin.

Possibly, but not in the mainstream market. I'm not concerned with some weird niche luxury thing that 8 rich guys are doing. And as far as the mainstream market goes, the "rich guy to whom money means nothing" is not the average whale. Most whales (as I recall) are of fairly average means.

Whales are outsized in many games, but non-whales contribute substantially to this model.

>Video games are like this because people pay for it.

I hate this argument because it implies you have any power in this situation. They don't do this because the majority likes it, they do it because there's a select group of whales that are willing to spend ungodly amounts of money on this crap. They're the ones who dictate how these games operate and no amount of "vote with your wallet" would change it.

Yeah no. There are still plenty of games, both indie and non-indie, which millions of players who don't whale can play, containing at most DLC which is effectively an expansion on top of an otherwise complete base game. If you don't want to play these games, there are still plenty of options. Enough developers haven't sold their souls yet, either.

Reality is, the market meets a demand where there is a demand. The developers are not the sole responsible people for choosing to put in gambling gimmicks, incomplete games for 25-60 bucks, DLC which should've been base, P2W, etc. There is just as much of a responsibility on customers to vote with their money, or vote for laws to ban this shit if it becomes evident people can't control themselves as a whole. We haven't reached the critical mass where you don't have other options yet, and it looks like we won't for quite some time.

Meanwhile almost every indie trying to fit in the market and come with their passionate solution is met with a dire reality that selling games takes a tremendous amount of effort for anyone who doesn't have a giant brand behind them.

> I hate this argument because it implies you have any power in this situation.

Yes you do. While there is little we actually control in our complex world, we are at least in control of our discretionary purchasing decisions. Sure, you as an individual might not make a dent in the company's profits but thats not the point. You are making a decision on principle, thats all that matters.

If we cant get this part right, what hope do we have for more important stuff like voting in actual elections?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com