Jump to content

The state of gaming lately


Diddums

Recommended Posts

I've been following the gaming industry rather closely lately, and there are many things happening. Bungie ditched Activision, BF5 launched with almost no promo and no fanfare, which then proceeded to get smashed to pieces because of the SJW bullshit. It's now full of cheaters and support is lacking. 

 

Blizzard, another company which is involved with Activision, paid its staff to leave. Blizzard can't split from Activision as they're a merged entity but it seems that some of those within have decided enough is enough too and will probably start up a new company free of the shackles of Activision. As a die hard Blizzard fan, this makes me happy.

 

Loot boxes have been banned in Belgium, Holland has made the RNG element of loot boxes illegal and two states in Murica (Washington and Hawaii) are reviewing them too, EA lost their lawsuit quite spectacularly which resulted in the removal of loot boxes and the whole Ultimate Team gimmick in Belgium at least with hopefully more countries to follow. Australia is also weighing in on the matter. As someone said in an article I read, this is merely the beginning. The wheels of legislation turn slowly but once its claws start taking hold, we're going to see the whole loot box scene collapse overnight. 

 

Black Ops 4's black market only showed its face once the reviews were all in and settled, showing that Activision knows that gamers hate that shit, so they've shown their hand and are probably milking their games for all they can at the moment. On Black Ops 4 you can buy a red dot reticle for a dollar. Yes, a dollar for a red dot, in a game which you've already paid $60 for and will have to pay for all the DLCs as well. 

 

Another one of CoD's amazing moves was in WW2 you could only open crates in the social space which meant everyone could see it. Why? So that little Jonny can go running to mommy and ask her for $5 for a loot box. There literally is no other reason, and it's become part of this movement which is slowly forming against this kind of bullshit. (I can't find a source for this atm, saw it in a vid)

 

Looking further back we have more incidents like the Battlefront 2 debacle in which EA managed to piss off two of the most passionate fan clubs in the world: gamers and Star Wars fans. It got to the point where Disney got involved and told EA to wind their neck in (Disney being a whole different bag of evil but that's a thread for another day).

 

Destiny 2's reliance on Eververse when it first released again showed Activision's true face, yet another instance where gamers saw straight through the cloth and got pissed off. Bungie has now parted ways with Activision and naturally the internet is full of theories and bullshit but I personally think that they just got fed up with being squeezed for everything they had and had enough cash to be in the position to tell Activision to fuck off.

 

Over the last few years there's certainly a trend developing towards people getting fed up with microtransactions and loot boxes. Some games do it right, like Fortnite which is free and doesn't restrict anything from the game by not having a season pass or spending any money, yet shows you exactly what you'll earn by buying the season pass. Overwatch treads a fine line for me, in that the limited time events encourage people to buy loot boxes otherwise they'll miss out permanently but then this is a game which gives all its DLC away for free. You can also earn the loot boxes through normal gameplay so it's not all bad.

 

As a whole I think the writing is on the wall. We've hit a turning point in gaming history and crossed a line which can no longer be uncrossed and the big guns know it. It's for this reason we have £20 skins. Not because these devs or publishers think it's worth £20, but because they know their days are numbered and need to eke out every penny they can before their little game collapses like a house of cards. I think what we're seeing with triple A titles at the moment isn't "'let's make a game and make some good money, and fuck all the gamers" like we have seen for the last decade or so, but rather "shit, the're waking up, stop investing anything, make a few shiny bits and charge extra for them, we're getting fucked anyway so we may as well squeeze what we can out of the ones that are still asleep on the way down". 

 

For me it's not even the amounts, it's not even the half assed launches, the lack of support or their absolutely spectacular inability to manage damage control, it's the sheer blatantness of it all. The lies, the deceit, the incessant bullshit and straight faces. To gamers, to shareholders, to anyone who looks at them, they just don't give a shit and it's really starting to show. 

 

 

I just hope these guys have enough of a nest egg saved up for when this shit really goes mental, or their kids will be eating loot boxes for Christmas.

 

 

 

This channel is pretty good. The guy waffles on a lot and repeats himself in all his vids but this one is worth a watch if you haven't see any of his stuff yet.

 

 

banlol.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Instead of posting from scratch, I'll use a couple of thoughts I had yesterday from a different thread that might be relevant here

 

The fact that $BILLIONS of stock have been wiped off shareholder values just show that even with the lavish revenues the industry has made; all the big publishers have failed and that's purely down to past greed and not being able to keep up growth because of their reliance of previous practices which are now becoming obsolete or illegal like supply drops. 

 

I also don't understand why publishers are trying to pay off shareholders at the end of each year or ASAP - if you have a live service for a game or platform, why not make it a long term investment instead of a small annual payoff? GTA V made something like $6bn in 5 years making it the biggest entertainment product in history.  

 

It speaks volumes when the only stable AAA publisher left in the industry is UBISOFT of all people - they were lambasted back in 2013-14 for their dishonesty and poor quality products but after many years of brand establishment,. technological improvements and financial growth; they are the only ones who are in a strong position and their business practices aren't half as scummy as others. Rainbow Six Siege has been a tremendous success - under any other publisher, that game would've died after 6 months. When Ubi are the market leaders, that doesn't reflect well on others and companies like EA and Activision are desperately running out of revenue streams and have little to fall back on which could have dire consequences and deservedly so. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The issue is people are dumb.  No-one I know or ever seen has said they like loot boxes or ever come up with a succesful arguement for why they’re good.  Every discussion is around this games loot boxes are terrible, this other game does it better for whatever reason.  Like battlefront loot boxes were terrible and OW do them better.  So what? that’s like saying crabs is better the chlamydia - you still want neither.

 

It is simple marketing, if no-one bought them then they wouldn’t be in the game.  So if no-one likes them why is anyone buying them!?  The only reason I’ve come up with is people are dumb.

 

The same applies to F2P games - look how much games like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans made/make by people playing a ‘free’ game.

1103954298_AmosSignature.png.04556f304072cd09783cc1fdfec8fe9f.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Greboth said:

The issue is people are dumb.  No-one I know or ever seen has said they like loot boxes or ever come up with a succesful arguement for why they’re good.  Every discussion is around this games loot boxes are terrible, this other game does it better for whatever reason.  Like battlefront loot boxes were terrible and OW do them better.  So what? that’s like saying crabs is better the chlamydia - you still want neither.

 

It is simple marketing, if no-one bought them then they wouldn’t be in the game.  So if no-one likes them why is anyone buying them!?  The only reason I’ve come up with is people are dumb.

 

The same applies to F2P games - look how much games like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans made/make by people playing a ‘free’ game.

 

I'm not dumb your dumb

 

No im not

 

Yes you are

 

Shut up

banlol.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think we're all dumb if we think that when video games were suddenly made it was for the pure fun of the gamer. Their business that want to make profit and some companies also want to make fun awesome video games to be remembered. It's never not without profit in mind.

 

The consumer now has super high unrealistic expectations in my eyes for the most part. We want an incredible amount of content for a AAA title, that we pay once and thats it - that demand is really hard to find.

 

At the same time, game companies know that gamers will keep buying games regardless as they want to be entertained. It also works off a lot of nostalgia and routine. A lot of simple game folk are happy with their yearly FIFA and CoD titles.

 

Look, if microtransactions goal was to help pay for developers and new content within the game in cool with that. I think some games do that, some others don't. We'll never know if we don't see their finer details on how they spend money.

 

However, buying cosmetic shit is just dumb. I enjoy emotes and shit like that but the models that pay off are ones that you don't have to spend a penny but if you choose to, you can buy early an emote or skin. No random RNG shit though. That's where Overwatch annoy the crap out of me. Most people let them pass as you never pay for anything in that game....but you don't get DLC. You get a new character very rarely and a new map sometimes. Woop. The PvE shit for 3 years has been the exactly the same. At least some others recycle content and try to make it a little more interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Greboth said:

The issue is people are dumb

I actually think Publishers are just as dumb these days and they are more out of touch with their audiences than ever. So many iconic brands and so many legendary studios ruined overnight all for the sake of making a quick buck for that year end and to hell with any long-term consequences. Activision, EA, Blizzard and Bethesda have all had a miserable year attributed to quickfire greed and some other terrible business decisions. that will impact their future titles also. 

 

Thankfully more and more people are wising up to these miserable practices and finally it's began to hit the companies where it hurts. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We could have a little lul in the market for a year or so until companies start to change their business models.

 

We are definitely gonna see the F2P market go nuts although I think it'll quickly fade (hoping) as it's a discrete business model that is more about money than meets the eye.

 

I think it could be the case of gamers to reinvest time in games that are fully matured in the market with content and get their satisfaction from then and their content drops until a time a game can blow the market up in a few years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This trend in video gaming was made popular thanks to mobile games. The 5% of a player base considered whales makes micro-transactions profitable enough that the other 95% of the community doesn't matter to them outside of the initial sale of the game. Unfortunately without legal intervention that loot boxes are tied to gambling there's no reason to remove them; they print money which is bad for us who care about video games. 

 

The total monies I have spent as the years go on in video games continue to decline. I will never pre-order a game again unless there's a nostalgic value to me personally. While I do not care about micro-transactions that are purely cosmetic, I can't ignore that it's a Pandora's box.  I personally am not a fan of the Fortnite seasons methodology, but I can admit it's the best form of a lootbox, showing what's inside and the clear progress to achieve everything; I just don't like to be nickle and dimed. The gimmick that these micro-transactions fund future content has been proven to be absolute bullshit time and time again by everyone minus Digital Extremes (Warframe). Destiny Eververse got us nowhere, nothing. I could potentially make a case for Epic Games & Fortnite because of the rotating game modes and game updates. 

 

As always, vote with your wallet, cause a stink and denounce shady business practices online. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel until famous game studios break apart and form their own grassroots, make one or two amazing games, only to sell out and repeat the cycle. When a game studio is controlled by a board of executives rather than the developers and passionate staff it's doomed; all about counting beans. 

 

The next step we are seeing is game launchers. I am still an avid fan of Steam only because their 30% reduces to 20% based on milestones of units sold. (Epic takes a 15% cut, so really that 5% to me as a consumer is not worth it as I now have to deal with a subpar game launcher) But that 5% means something to the c-suite. 

i7 7700k, 16GB RAM, GEFORCE 1080, 240GB SSHD, 2TB SSD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel quite glad to have bought a PC so i can buy small indie games off steam that are freaking brilliant and cost about 9 quid.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 
 

Ri855cK.gif


 

 

 

 

Chookes said:

I absoloutely prefer it this way. You have overall more control. You can finish one guy off first, or all ten

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy