BioShock creator says "audiences reward" single-player games that don't have "other methods of monetization," like Baldur's Gate 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
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He’s right
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The type of monetisation that especially confuses me as a guy brought up on pre-internet era gaming is any kind of pay to win. You’re buying a game then paying extra money so you don’t have to then go through the tedious task of actually playing the game.
The same thing has always confused me about CCGs. Why spend hundreds of dollars to be able to play them at all, when you can just get Dominion and know that the game is both fair and varied?
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At the very least, you can still pirate it and play cracked multiplayer with friends.
I made the mistake of buying the game year ago, and bought a bunch of DLC at 50% or greater sales, and now the sunken cost fallacy has taken hold on me, and I still want to buy more . . . . (at least I’m broke so I can’t right now hehehaha)
The game files are already downloaded in the steam version at least. One could, hypothetically, unlock those dlcs even on a normal copy. Steam would have no way too detect that either. Supposedly. In Minecraft.
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I will point out that this is mainly just a way to get the free preorder bonus though, and has no real gameplay effects. The dlc also contains a digital artbook, digital soundtrack and some character sheets. I feel like that is quite a bit more than the normal micro transactions, though I still somewhat see your point
Let’s not forget about the two extra bard songs, which was the only reason I got it lol.
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I miss EverCrack.
Not the actual mechanics, things have come a long way since then. But the concepts. No end game. Mobs that take 100+ people all day to take down. And that last piece of armor you want, has a 2% drop rate off them. And even when it does drop, there are 10 of your class who wants it, and you have to work out who gets it. Levels took so long nobody worried about getting to cap, and just hung out. The grind and the community were the point. Not the next piece of gear.Every few years I fire up project99 and it’s glorious. I’ve been resisting simply because I want to get real life stuff done.
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The thing about Warframe is it tempts you but doesn’t force you to buy. You can sell your time to people who paid actual money, and then buy things you want for that money. The only issue with Warframe is the fomo - them locking warframes behind relics that are “deprecated”. Sometimes they unearth them again, but it’s an artificial attempt at “I need to buy this or it is gone”.
Also the process of getting parts is 100% gambling on low odds. You can get lucky immediately or have to “reroll” by running the same relic over and over and over again. It sucks if you want a very specific thing and often leads to people just buying it outright.
There is very little FOMO in warframe. The unsealing you speak of is a rotation due to the game having over a thousand of things to unlock so farming specific weapon part when you need 5 parts would be very difficult. It’s there to limit the pool. If you want something specific? That’s what trade is for.
Relic system is quite fair but you do need to somewhat understand the full system to see it.
The one thing that WF does fairly annoyingly are weapon slots. You have to buy them off the market with platinum so either you buy it at 75% discount or trade prime parts to get it. A single gold part will be worth more than the 2 weapon slot but it’s the one example that makes you “spend money”.
I’m playing since closed beta and have thousands of hours, got my wife and son into it. I must’ve spent maybe £300 in total (maybe more) to show my support, but I could’ve easily just done trading and bought all the cosmetics I wanted that way too.
WF makes you spend money on things you want to, not need to. No bullshit paid for battle pass or battle pass paid for skips etc.
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Gamers reward good games
Exactly. You make good MMORPG and money will come in droves too. Same for RPG or fuck it, even poker game on crack. Just make good games, but it’s not as easy as it sounds… No one just clicks “make game bad” and often the Microtransactions are dictated by whatever publishing deal they have.
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I think it’s a bit more nuanced - for example MMOs. But for the most part yeah.
Exactly. With my FFXIV subscription, I’m storing actual data that can be accessed any time (houses/rooms/apartments), and they provide quarterly updates and events.
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There is very little FOMO in warframe. The unsealing you speak of is a rotation due to the game having over a thousand of things to unlock so farming specific weapon part when you need 5 parts would be very difficult. It’s there to limit the pool. If you want something specific? That’s what trade is for.
Relic system is quite fair but you do need to somewhat understand the full system to see it.
The one thing that WF does fairly annoyingly are weapon slots. You have to buy them off the market with platinum so either you buy it at 75% discount or trade prime parts to get it. A single gold part will be worth more than the 2 weapon slot but it’s the one example that makes you “spend money”.
I’m playing since closed beta and have thousands of hours, got my wife and son into it. I must’ve spent maybe £300 in total (maybe more) to show my support, but I could’ve easily just done trading and bought all the cosmetics I wanted that way too.
WF makes you spend money on things you want to, not need to. No bullshit paid for battle pass or battle pass paid for skips etc.
Sealing / unsealing is 100% FOMO and I have seen people go “Ivara Prime is out now I need to play Warframe”. You can easily setup a system where you choose a rotation to go for when choosing a mission. It wouldn’t even split the playerbase since it only affects the rewards at the end. But they don’t, they do this song and dance about removing and bringing back specific weapons and warframes.
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This is because we feel we paid for something that expects nothing in return.
When you pay for a game that includes add ons and microtransactions, all of a sudden we‘re back to being a marketing target, and we implicitly know we‘re pushed to spend money.
We play games to escape the real world…
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Gamers reward good games
Unfortunately, they also reward bad games.
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This is because we feel we paid for something that expects nothing in return.
When you pay for a game that includes add ons and microtransactions, all of a sudden we‘re back to being a marketing target, and we implicitly know we‘re pushed to spend money.
We play games to escape the real world…
More than that. When you buy a game with microtransactions in it, you’re volunteering to be a marketing target and paying for the privilege. Publishers aren’t trying to get everyone to buy mtx, only the people who bought the game. You’re giving them money and saying, “yes, I want to be targeted, please.”
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There’s a difference between a game made with passion and a game by EA/Ubisoft.
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The type of monetisation that especially confuses me as a guy brought up on pre-internet era gaming is any kind of pay to win. You’re buying a game then paying extra money so you don’t have to then go through the tedious task of actually playing the game.
I’ve had a few games come with a handful of items for some reason, and very quickly learned to never use them.
Pre order now and ruin the game!
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Sealing / unsealing is 100% FOMO and I have seen people go “Ivara Prime is out now I need to play Warframe”. You can easily setup a system where you choose a rotation to go for when choosing a mission. It wouldn’t even split the playerbase since it only affects the rewards at the end. But they don’t, they do this song and dance about removing and bringing back specific weapons and warframes.
They already split it in 4 ways with lith neo meso and axi.
I see your point, but missing out and the fear of it? I’m not sure. But maybe it’s because I’ve played for longer than some of these players have been alive for… There’s just so much that the whole “OMG I need this specific thing!!!” Doesn’t add up as there’s just so much good stuff in there and power creep has been insane prioritising new things or ever green items.
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They already split it in 4 ways with lith neo meso and axi.
I see your point, but missing out and the fear of it? I’m not sure. But maybe it’s because I’ve played for longer than some of these players have been alive for… There’s just so much that the whole “OMG I need this specific thing!!!” Doesn’t add up as there’s just so much good stuff in there and power creep has been insane prioritising new things or ever green items.
There are various warframes that work completely different when they are prime. And yeah, you spending so much time with the game makes it that the things that it does bad seem normal to you.
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This is because we feel we paid for something that expects nothing in return.
When you pay for a game that includes add ons and microtransactions, all of a sudden we‘re back to being a marketing target, and we implicitly know we‘re pushed to spend money.
We play games to escape the real world…
I think it is okay to have a dlc IF it is fairly priced, there is proper content included and the base wasn’t gutted for it.
Positiv example would be Factorio. Negative example is Stellaris.
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I think it is okay to have a dlc IF it is fairly priced, there is proper content included and the base wasn’t gutted for it.
Positiv example would be Factorio. Negative example is Stellaris.
I feel like owlcat has done a good job with this in their games. They feel complete and if you like the game there are DLCs with decent amounts of extra content. Also really like that the DLCs are integrated into the game (usually) and not just an extra chunk tacked on
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I feel like owlcat has done a good job with this in their games. They feel complete and if you like the game there are DLCs with decent amounts of extra content. Also really like that the DLCs are integrated into the game (usually) and not just an extra chunk tacked on
I feel like RimWorld has also done well with this
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I think it is okay to have a dlc IF it is fairly priced, there is proper content included and the base wasn’t gutted for it.
Positiv example would be Factorio. Negative example is Stellaris.
Tend to agree about DLC - Some times the Devs have too many ideas - DLC is way to manage costs. But only if it expands the game
