[HN Gopher] Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-01 23:01 UTC)