[HN Gopher] Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation
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Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation
Author : ChrisWreck
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-02-28 07:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30497881
| cehrlich wrote:
| I agree with him completely.
|
| But I also wonder sometimes: Who is spending money on all of
| these awful games? There's so much good stuff on Steam, GOG, the
| Switch eStore, etc. Wonderful games made by people who care, for
| a fair price, without exploitative monetisation, that I don't
| feel even remotely tempted to play whatever Ubisoft is currently
| peddling.
|
| Some examples I've played in recent years are Celeste, Into the
| Breach, Hades, Slay the Spire, Ori and the Blind Forest, etc.
| These span every genre, and that's not even mentioning the PC
| back catalog which spans decades. What does it take for those
| games to win against the lootbox microtransaction garbage?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I think it is largely "casual" gamers and or gamers who can't
| afford the upfront $50 or $20 for a game and are lured in by
| the "Free" game and then of course addiction kicks in and they
| spend $100 or more on it. Sad state of affairs, and something
| that has only gotten worse with app stores. I don't know if it
| is causal but they certainly haven't helped stop it.
| paulmd wrote:
| a skin in some of these games is $10 or more. Even as someone
| who might conceivably be tempted (I've bought stuff for TF2
| before), there's a point where it's just an obviously bad use
| of your money. 20 bucks is a nice dinner out, I'm not
| spending that on a skin.
|
| Maybe I am just stuck in 2012 but $2-3 is about the limit for
| me for a skin. "Unusual" hats (particle effects) in TF2 are
| basically the original NFT, they are unique items with a very
| limited number in existence, and they are worth more, but I'm
| not going to pay $10-20 for the same skin as a million other
| players.
|
| Of course that's why they've started tying them to gameplay,
| like Rainbow 6 Siege and Battlefield 2042 "operators"... it's
| taken studios a long time but they've finally gotten us to
| bite on "pay to win" by framing it as player choice.
|
| (although I guess DLCs/expansions having OP weapons that beat
| the base game is nothing new, but charging $10 or $20 a pop
| for each unit is new.)
| kipchak wrote:
| I think the problem is these sorts of games are still
| relatively niche compared to most releases by the big shops,
| which appeal more to people with a passing interest in games as
| an occasional pastime versus a hobby. For example I knew
| someone who played a good bit of FIFA, but didn't really have
| any interest in other games, in the same way someone else might
| not be interested in Criterion collection movies but might put
| on a marvel movie.
|
| There are a few games that are popular in both camps like
| Tetris, but they're by and large the minority, though they also
| can be extremely successful as a result. Making a game
| approachable but deep is very tricky. Celeste for example isn't
| terribly approachable, which is appropriate given it's story
| and gameplay, which is likely to turn off most players who
| might try it casually.
| fattless wrote:
| The worst part of this trend to me is how many games sacrifice
| their identity to fit the mold that is now most profitable, it
| feels so soulless. This is all from my own experience/memory.
|
| Every game needs live service, seasons, and a battle pass. While
| I appreciate that it can keep the game fresh and evolving over
| time, I think a lot of times its harmful. Sometimes a relatively
| simple game is blown out of proportion over time and id almost
| rather a stagnant game. Furthermore, gameplay can suffer too. In
| my opinion R6 siege started really strong, but has gone downhill
| recently, most obviously in operator design. Real power creep is
| sometimes an issue as well, somewhat recently I remember there
| were one or two operators added that felt like almost direct
| upgrades to base game ones. In its case, both the art style and
| operator design suffered from being stretched out for so long. Or
| RDR2, who sells most of the content through their premium
| currency and whose movement between the single player and online
| is so drastically different that fights online look like smash
| bros melee matches with frantic strafing and rolling. Compare
| this to titanfall 2's design, which has remained stagnant
| (because it was killed a long time ago), but incredibly
| successful maintaining a large player base to this day.
|
| Cod and pubg have sacrificed their art style and aesthetic, MW
| went from "realistic" tactical characters to jigsaw puppets and
| neon, out of place outfits. It's like power creep, but for
| ridiculousness, skins have to get crazier and crazier because
| sometimes it keeps people buying them because its funny. It fit
| in fortnite because it was cartoonish and ridiculous from the
| beginning, but through MW and CW lifespan you can see the art
| style gradually decay. These game aren't really meant to be taken
| seriously, but it always kinda put me off. Not necessarily making
| an argument about my taste, but rather how the games stray more
| and more from their original vision, driven by micro
| transactions.
|
| Battlefield has thrown out their traditional classes for
| specialists following in r6 and other hero shooters footsteps,
| part of me always kinda felt like it was to sell skins for each
| specialist, but I might be wrong here.
|
| This isnt the biggest deal, especially not within the games
| industry, but frustrating to see innovation slowly be stamped
| back into the mold. There are many games that hold true to their
| visions or fill these voids, but the state of AAA gaming and how
| it molds to the market is a little disappointing to me.
| prox wrote:
| There are many great games coming out from smaller studios and
| still being maintained. Cases : Rimworld, Valheim, Police
| Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio.
|
| All off the games you mention seem to be FPS games, perhaps
| that segment and the sport games suffer segment the most from
| Pay to Keep Playing schemes.
| ranger207 wrote:
| I agree. At this point AAA games are a genera unto themselves,
| whether they're a shooter, adventure game, sports game,
| whatever. They all share the same elements you outlined:
| seasons, battlepass, in-game currency, microtransactions for
| the smallest items, and game design that puts the focus of the
| entire game on those elements. AAA games are made with massive
| budgets and are designed to be very attractive to play, to the
| point of addiction, but I simply can't get into them because of
| the genera elements.
| falcolas wrote:
| Imagine being a player who wants to collect new skins or looks
| in a modern game. In almost _any_ modern game that offers
| microtransactions. Even indie games are starting to sell
| cosmetics, so they aren 't left out of the feast, err, leaving
| money on the table.
|
| Your choice is usually limited to: 1) spend money, 2) be unable
| to get all cosmetics, and occasionally 3) spend hundreds to
| thousands of hours to obtain the skins.
|
| The worst part is that the average player seems to be fine with
| this, since it's not selling power - as if power's the only
| thing that matters in a game.
| donmcronald wrote:
| When I played WoW I liked collecting pets and old mounts that
| were dropped from raid bosses that became solo-able or duo-
| able. I can't imagine anyone building a modern game where
| collecting cosmetics is nothing more than a fun side game
| rather than a revenue stream.
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, the presence of a season pass means an automatic pass
| from me. I don't need any heavily monetized skinner boxes in my
| life, thanks.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I think the real issue is that we've just left a brief period
| where the best way to succeed in the market _was to make good
| games_.
|
| Anyone who grew up playing arcade games knows that, for the vast
| majority of cases, the pre-console arcade world was about finding
| the best way to keep you feeding quarters to a machine.
| Difficult, almost beating the boss, but ultimately simple games
| ruled the day. Some are classics now but many were very meh.
|
| The early home console years, when reviews were still hard to
| come by and rentals weren't a thing yet, were flooded with tons
| of pure trash games. Everyone knows how awful any licensed game
| was, but it didn't matter because all they had to do was to get
| you (or more often parents/grandparents) to buy the game. By the
| time you got home and realized the game was garbage it was
| already too late. I remember owning far more horrible games as a
| kid than good ones.
|
| The late 1990s and early 2000s were a great time for gaming
| because it was much easier to determine if a game was quality or
| not before buying, and for a brief window of time the only really
| great way to make money was to just make a compelling game that
| got good reviews.
|
| We've since seen gaming become a major industry, where heavy
| marketing can play just as big a factor as initial reviews. With
| the massive growth of online gaming and digital downloads it's
| much easier to make a game that is really about a million
| microtransaction (remember when people used to think that would
| _save_ the internet?)
|
| The truth is games have always been structured in a way to
| optimizer revenue, it's just that we remember a period when the
| best way to make money in a game was to actually make a game
| good.
| sstevenshang wrote:
| Excellent article, and the thing is that if you spend any time
| talking to gamers or on gaming platforms, there's a near
| consensus on this attitude against in-game purchases that
| contribute nothing to gameplay. Even though people still make
| these purchases, I'd say most of them are conscious of the fact
| that the current trend is detrimental to gamers.
|
| As a side note, the only people pushing for NTFs in games are
| crypto enthusiasts or profit-seeking actors who do not care about
| game experience at all. Even gamers who are also into crypto do
| not advocate for NTF in games. The whole thing is a shit show
| IMO.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I'd separate that into two categories: consensus that
| "withholding content, breaking games up, or locking devices to
| stores to artificially create redundant sales" and "abusive
| monetization design where the game is mostly a flimsy pretext
| for their real product, a gambling addiction simulator" are
| reviled industry practices.
|
| People like their stores and skins, they just don't want to
| have to gamble to get them or be tricked into pay-to-play.
|
| I tried a popular mobile game for the first time recently and
| almost immediately uninstalled it. As a new player I was
| overwhelmed with freebies, but every action funneled me back to
| the store or demanded some kind of worthless interaction. I was
| horrified at the thought that I might ever allow myself to get
| used to it and just how many people already had.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > People like their stores and skins
|
| Two types of people here, too.
|
| Those who bought "Horse Armor" and those who thought it was
| the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard of.
|
| Personally I dislike the move towards every game being a live
| service to justify the presence of a store with skins and
| emotes and such.
|
| I'm getting sick of always online, seasonal event driven live
| service games where the game balance constantly changes and
| new stuff is funnelled into it constantly. It is such a
| relief to me when a game just is released in a mostly final
| shape, with maybe some QoL patches and an expansion dlc or
| two.
|
| Destiny 2 ruined this for me in a big way with how they are
| not just introducing new content but also removing old
| content, content I paid for and now can never access again.
|
| It has set a terrible precedent and I'm just not going to use
| my money on games like that anymore.
| stemlord wrote:
| Do you mean "NFTs"?
| sstevenshang wrote:
| Yes NFT! I keep making the same typo everywhere.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I think the NFT thing should be illegal. It adds _nothing_
| beyond a false promise that you 're buying an "investment"
| instead of an in game item. IMO it's disgusting to see game
| companies targeting kids with a scam like that.
|
| As for the rest of the article, he could be talking about me.
| I've basically given up on PC gaming. I used to love gaming and
| now it feels like a second job. It feels like I'm being forced
| to "accomplish" a bunch of in game goals because the developer
| thinks "engaging" me like that is going to lead to a
| microtransaction.
|
| I thought I'm probably just getting older and grumpier, but I
| bought an Oculus Quest before Christmas and it's been a blast.
| Games like The Room had me feeling like a kid who just got
| their first PC game. I think a lot of it has to do with VR
| being a new platform and there's less focus on developers
| squeezing every penny out of you and more incentive for them to
| build small, fun games that help discover what makes sense in
| VR.
|
| The craziest part is that I've spent several hundred dollars on
| VR games in a few months which is more than I've spent on PC
| games in the last 5 years combined. I know it's popular to
| trash Meta/Facebook, but I think they did a really good job of
| pricing VR games. It's <$30 on the high end and they have
| frequent sales, but the sales aren't such deep discounts that I
| feel bad for buying something at full price.
|
| I also think microtransactions can make sense. GGG did a good
| job with Path of Exile. I've played that game on and off and
| every time I pick it back up I play for a bit and if my stash
| starts getting disorganized with items that have a convenience
| stash tab as a microtransaction I'll buy that stash tab. It's
| always after I've spent a weekend playing and it's only $20, so
| I don't feel like I've gotten ripped off or forced into buying
| something. I've probably spent twice as much on that game as
| any other in recent memory.
| prox wrote:
| I guess it very much depends what kind of games you play.
| These are the games I enjoy : Rimworld, Valheim, Police
| Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio,
| Skyrim, Mount and Blade 2 : Bannerlord.
|
| None of them have significant money sinks with add on
| purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and
| longevity.
| donmcronald wrote:
| You're right! Rimworld and Factorio have been on my Steam
| wishlist for a while.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| I think the idea of nfts is cool, imagine star citizen where
| everyone could model ships and sell them as nft and set a
| counter of how many they sell (are available) the market should
| then set the value between work put in to design the ship, sell
| it and how many are available.
|
| So juat like right now, you could buy a ship for 5 dollar,
| cheaply designed and thousands are available (or endless) or
| get a unique nice and good looking ship for ome thousand (or
| more?) because you need to pay the work of one guy for several
| days and its only one time available.
|
| What get right now: bullshit, scams and everything controlled
| by the company selling the game.
| fattless wrote:
| I've always said that something like this could be a cool
| idea, but I don't get why nft/blockchain is necessary.
| Speaking about the Ubisoft nft thing (because I understand it
| the best), Steam marketplace has been doing the same thing
| very well for years, offering a very similar expirence. Is
| there something I'm missing?
| kipchak wrote:
| The only downsides to to the Steam marketplace is it hasn't
| caught on very much outside of Valve's own titles, and you
| can only cash out to store credit, which has resulted in
| third party trading sites that run on top of the steam
| marketplace to emerge such as marketplace.tf, which relies
| on trusting the site not to swindle you. Both of those are
| fairly small issues, I think the trickier part is creating
| an environment/reason for anyone to care about the digital
| items that are for sale.
| nest0r wrote:
| But why would I need NFTs for that?
| saurik wrote:
| NFTs (as defined by ERC721 or whatever it is) by and large
| end up acting as an interoperable standard that allows the
| assets to be traded on unified exchanges with assets from
| other games in a way that doesn't require any of the game
| developers to have to deal with money transmission issues
| (as they would only ever sell, not buy or facilitate
| trade).
|
| Like in some sense all the NFT is to the game you develop
| is a minimal external yet-trustable representation of the
| existence of some in-game asset so people can then go and
| use all of these systems you don't have to worry about to
| trade it around and then anyone can provide the receipt
| back to your game later to be the potentially-new owner.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We can't agree on what file format to use most of the
| time, nobody is going to make interoperable
| textures/models/etc between games.
|
| NFTs would still be a "thing of value" and still be
| beholden to all the same rules as other things of value.
|
| You still have AML issues.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > nobody is going to make interoperable
| textures/models/etc between games
|
| Unity / Unreal Engine asset stores are just that aren't
| they?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| And how often do you import those assets to find they
| don't work correctly in your game? That they need a
| different shader, renderer, lighting or additional
| configuration? How often do they fail to blend in with
| other prefabs?
| thebean11 wrote:
| The cost to integrate them into a game certainly isn't
| zero, agree with you there
| nest0r wrote:
| Why would any publisher do that? They make their profit
| on ingame marketplaces by taking a cut of the transaction
| it just doesn't make any sense.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| The publisher can take a cut from minting (creating an
| nft) and taking a cut from every sale, for example 30
| percent first sale and then any other sale 10 percent.
| nest0r wrote:
| What would be difference between whaht they are doing now
| ie. Steam wihth cosmetics in csgo or tf2 and NFTs? It
| would only add overhead.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Wouldn't it remove overhead? They don't need to develop
| or host the "auction house" or whatever it is.
| verdverm wrote:
| The hard problem is how to use an asset in-game, beyond
| the visual aspect. What is the speed, rate of fire, etc.
|
| Each game does this differently, their code is not the
| same, their assets are managed in many ways. How do you
| propose to deal with this?
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Like any rpg, but not for character creation, but for
| whatever?
| verdverm wrote:
| That process is very different for each game. Do you make
| them all use the same rules and mechanisms? What
| differentiates games then?
|
| Have you tried to develop a game? It's much more complex
| than most applications. There are no standard libraries
| or APIs for this type of thing.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Nfts itself aren't the "game changer" the game changer is
| the combination of nfts and smart contracts, where various
| attributes are defined for the nfts, and they are not
| changeable.
|
| In the steam marketplace, the developer can change things
| easily, like changing a super rare card in a collectable
| card game to a common card.
| nest0r wrote:
| That doesn't sound like it would be an incentive for a
| publisher or developer.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It seems like all negatives IMO. How does a developer re-
| balance a game if they sold an NFT item that's game
| breaking? Do you upgrade every other NFT item to
| compensate? Who pays for that? Everything on the
| blockchain is a transaction, so who's going to pay for
| attribute changes? What if you want permanent damage on
| items so that pristine NFT items are more valuable? Who's
| going to pay the transaction fee to have their item
| tagged as damaged or destroyed or with any negative stat?
|
| We already know in game items that affect gameplay
| basically ruin the game for anyone that isn't a whale.
| The NFT proponents think they can get everyone
| emotionally invested like the whales are, but good luck
| catering to the masses to keep them happy. It's only
| possible with whales because there aren't many of them
| and they're the largest source of revenue.
|
| Once you realize that blockchain and NFTs are about
| charging processing fees for every single event that
| happens the whole thing looks terrible. Eventually you'll
| be paying fees to track your items stats, so every time
| you click or tap it costs money.
| imiric wrote:
| Sid is a few years too late with the warning.
|
| Gameplay and original game design have taken a backseat to
| increasingly hostile monetization schemes, lazy/safe/rehashed
| game loops and marketing/shareholder driven development for at
| least a decade now. The amount of AAA titles built on hype and
| released broken at launch, with promises of future patches, is
| too long to list. With some notable exceptions, most of the
| innovation and interesting game design is done by indie
| developers and smaller studios.
|
| This video sums it up nicely:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38fjcyP1IQ
| [deleted]
| 34679 wrote:
| If I understood Zuckerberg correctly during his Lex Fridman
| interview, he's trying to build an entire alternate reality
| based on this concept of monetizing in game items. He said
| something along the lines of, "People want to dress nice and
| look good in person, so why not in a VR meeting?" and then
| proceeded to talk about charging people for clothes and
| haircuts in the Metaverse. I have to wonder what sort of
| scenarios this might lead to, with all of Facebook's corporate
| partnerships. Are people going to end up having to pay Facebook
| in order to keep up with dress codes at company meetings? Will
| hair grow so anyone who doesn't pay Facebook for a haircut
| shows up looking like a bum? Will clothes become stained and
| ragged over time?
|
| Lex even proposed an alternative of a closet that you only pay
| for once, but updates with a basic style over time. The
| suggestion was mostly dismissed by Zuckerberg.
|
| Way too late to be talking about video games, this stuff is
| about to hit many other aspects of human interaction.
| lewispollard wrote:
| It's a bit rich, given there are 14 paid DLCs for the latest Civ
| game, and they all have pretty negative reviews for being too
| expensive while adding little to the gameplay.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Ironically, I'd rather play a game where the DLC didn't add
| much to gameplay. If I purchase a game, I want to be able to
| enjoy the full experience of that game without being forced to
| purchase DLC. If they release DLC that is little more than
| different skins or supplemental music, I don't feel I've lost
| out on anything by not purchasing it. On the contrary, if they
| release a DLC that substantively changes the game and, even
| worse, makes it incompatible with the original version for
| saved games or multiplayer, then I'm more or less obligated to
| purchase it if I want to keep enjoying the game to its full
| potential.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Is Sid actually involved in the Civ games anymore? As far as I
| know he hasn't been directly involved in that franchise for
| years.
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