are you suggesting that game dev labor should be valued by society in other ways than via the market? the market finds that this type of monetization is more profitable. why does HN turn anti-capitalism when it comes to games?
I don't advocate for killing this new gaming industry, just as I don't advocate for killing the more traditional gambling industry, but both need much stricter supervision than most markets because they attack a weak point in human psychology, and taken too far, they harm humanity more than they generate value.
In the end any "distortion" of the market requires a strong justification, but I think the justifications used against the gambling industry have always been pretty compelling, and they appear to apply just as well to modern games industry techniques.
Another way to put it is that the "value to society" of modern games techniques contains a negative externality: damage to the players comparable to that of gambling addictions. You could solve it with the equivalent of a carbon tax, though defining the cost of different tactics feels impossible, so I'd argue that the traditional gambling restrictions are a better fit (illegal in many places, illegal for children, legal limits, requiring various warnings and protections to discourage extreme behaviours, high taxes, etc).
Many families play boardgames with their children at home. Fewer visit blackjack tables. I think theres a fair argument that these broadly match the different financial strategies in the games industry. How much of this behaviour is parental wisdom and how much is limited accessibility thanks to legal restrictions is a hard question to answer, but I have a suspicion that the world would be a worse place with unrestricted gambling. But kids _do_ sit at home opening lootboxes as their parents watch tv, I'm not sure if the effects are much different.
I'm sick and tired of dark patterns winding their tentacles into every aspect of our digital lives - it's tiring, and predatory on the little self-control and attention that I have remaining. We didn't need casino-isation of our games before, so we don't need it now.
However, there's what the market will bear, and what the market can be coerced into paying. The latter is definitely more money than the former. The point at which you step into a game and then are psychologically manipulated into spending more than you otherwise would have, that isn't right. Building out gameplay loops that are only fun if you fork over more cash after you've invested considerable time into the application and leveraging the sunk cost fallacy to pull more cash out of your user, do you really respect your consumer at that point, or their wallet?
People are free to build what they want. I'm allowed to call it gross. I'm also allowed to say that those gameplay mechanics feel broken and not fun.
Run a thought experiment next time you play a game. If money was no object, and you were able to pay the developer the average value of their customer (total revenue divided by their total downloads), and in return, all purchase screens are removed, would that game be even more fun? In my experience, they'd usually wind up being a husk, a very generic, boring gameplay loop with nothing enticing. That's how you know that the enticement is actually manipulation.
If you could somehow turn back the clock, you could go back to this tolerable trade-off, but you never twice step into the same river. The only options available now are to either find another set of parameters of capitalism enabling this trade-off, or to avoid most mainstream gaming.
vv bingo
I am far from advocating for a minor reform. MTX, subscriptions, and basically anything designed to extract money from a customer's pocket after a one-time initial purchase should be very heavily restricted. "Compulsion loops" and dirty tricks used to create artificial addiction should be made outright illegal. In effect, companies that rely on these techniques to survive would struggle, but IMO nothing of value would be lost. Short of establishing a parallel system of funding video game development (such as patronage), that's all we can do.
And yes, the games market was smaller back then. Yet, it still produced quality games. So we need to cut back those actors who grew big by employing toxic product techniques, not "solutions for growing the game industry beyond its current size".
exactly (tho I wouldn't say in parallel)
>Please don't completely edit your comment after someone replies, it makes it hard to keep track of the discussion.
HN disables replies, or I expanded what I wrote as you were writing yours - I'll just disengage instead, bye
Besides, people seem to call "capitalism" a set of laws and regulations that are good for current large capital holders, and freely extracting money from people if you have superior psycho/marketing and lawyer power. But there is a vast, vast space of possible regulatory conditions that would still be essentially capitalist in how economy functions.
There's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks.
So careful what you ask for. Even an indie developer needs to pay bills and put food on the table somehow. Very very few game developers got rich developing games, in most of the studios burnout and attrition because of the extremely toxic work environments are common too.
That doesn't mean that stuffing ads, subscriptions and microtransactions everywhere is the only way forward. However, saying that "there's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks." sounds like you are suggesting that the developer of the next Call of Duty sequel should be working those 60-80 hour weeks only for their personal enjoyment from delivering something for the gamer to play (and then loudly complain online and demand this or that - or else!) and sense of dedication to their fanbase.
That really doesn't work like that.
However they eventually added overpowered weapons that could only be unlocked via expensive rng loot boxes and that's when I stopped playing.
I question this premise. Do people demand the production values of AAA games, or are they just used to expecting it? I remember reading some article about how much more expensive it is to build photorealistic games now that you need to add so many more details to everything, and it makes sense. Maybe the fix is not to keep the current unsustainable system, but to readjust people's expectations and downgrade production budgets. Indie games are already doing this, because they cannot compete on production value.
Well, look at what sells most e.g. on Steam or Epic's store, etc.
No, those aren't indies with "Minecraft" or "Nintendo" graphics. Ultimately it doesn't matter at all whether people "demand it" or "are used to expecting it" when it is what they are putting their money into.
And it isn't for lack of other choices.