the dlc/microtransaction/lootbox fuckfest is the greatest thing to happen to gaming

Yung Dramps

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
What's that? You thought this was some kind of sarcastic inflection? Nope, I'm dead serious. I truly believe AAA corporate greed has advanced gaming as a whole in an incredible direction. Why do I think this?

Hollow Knight. A Hat in Time. Rivals of Aether. Cuphead. Papers, Please. Shovel Knight. Rogue Legacy. Hellblade. So much more on top of these. What do all these amazing games have in common? Lemme tell you: They're all made by indies or smaller developers. These fine fellows have put so much love and soul into their work to give us amazing experiences that we will cherish for many years to come, and even now, for some of these developers, we await their next releases.

And you know why these amazing games got the sales and audiences they did get? Because of the AAA industry. You see, as companies like EA and Activision continue to cram anti-consumer practices and shitty microtransactions into their half-baked messes of "games", more and more people become increasingly fed up. And when that happens, a market for games made with love and care like back in the old days developed. And that's when the indie boom happened.

All those titles I mentioned earlier may have never been as successful as they were if it weren't for the bloated and greedy AAA industry driving away customers. Hell, they may have never even been made if the developers didn't see a growing market for these types of games and decided to capitalize on it. And as AAA continues to stagnate and succumb to corporate greed, the indie/AA market will only become more populated by discontent players and aspiring devs willing to make a good title, free from inference from the suits.

I feel like this mini-PSA is needed. As big companies figure out ways to screw over customers, there is more and more discussion surfacing on the ethics on these practices (e.g. lootboxes), with some fearing that things are just going to get worse. This post is to keep people optimistic, and to make them realize that while there are plenty of greedy hacks out there who will do anything to make a quick buck, there are just as many talented small developers out there who are willing to put the consumer first. And that group will only continue to grow and prosper as the average consumer grows more unhappy with industrial gaming. A shortage of talent and quality games is not going to happen anytime soon. You just need to look harder! :]
 
You can group all AAA Devs/Publishers with this issue. It's mainly Activation and EA. Blizzard recently spoke out about how their "Loot Box" system is how everyone should do "Loot Boxes", IE You buy something for a reasonable in game price OR more for the same IRL currency and you're rewarded with cosmetics and nothing else. Hearthstone being an exception because it's established as a product / TCG, you're buying pack expansions, just like normal Blizzard DLC. Essentially the problem comes down to Publisher's wanting to get as MUCH profit from a game as possible to ensure success. Look at Destiny 2. Activision filled the game with insanely pointless Microstransations because Bungie (being against Micro-sales) had to make a sacrifice by pairing up with Blizzard for a PC Release, despite being done through their parent company Activision Bungie still got forced into exclusive deals with Sony while the PC version of the game is being held to lower standards in terms of content flow.

My thoughts are that this comes down to specifically EA and Activision, I don't think it's a video game issue as much as it is Developers and Gamers letting EA and Activision bully them for lunch money.
 
Tera Melos said:
You can group all AAA Devs/Publishers with this issue. It's mainly Activation and EA. Blizzard recently spoke out about how their "Loot Box" system is how everyone should do "Loot Boxes", IE You buy something for a reasonable in game price OR more for the same IRL currency and you're rewarded with cosmetics and nothing else. Hearthstone being an exception because it's established as a product / TCG, you're buying pack expansions, just like normal Blizzard DLC. Essentially the problem comes down to Publisher's wanting to get as MUCH profit from a game as possible to ensure success. Look at Destiny 2. Activision filled the game with insanely pointless Microstransations because Bungie (being against Micro-sales) had to make a sacrifice by pairing up with Blizzard for a PC Release, despite being done through their parent company Activision Bungie still got forced into exclusive deals with Sony while the PC version of the game is being held to lower standards in terms of content flow.

My thoughts are that this comes down to specifically EA and Activision, I don't think it's a video game issue as much as it is Developers and Gamers letting EA and Activision bully them for lunch money.
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I'm in the camp that all loot boxes, even if not p2w, are bad: Unless they CANNOT be purchased with real money and only via in-game means, they are practically the same as gambling to me. I also think the unholy trifecta of AAA douchebaggery in the industry is EA, Activision and WB Games. But hey, as I said, as long as their shitty behavior continues to enable the rise of indies and the resurgence of AA games, then they can go right ahead.
 
Yung Dramps said:
I'm in the camp that all loot boxes, even if not p2w, are bad: Unless they CANNOT be purchased with real money and only via in-game means, they are practically the same as gambling to me. I also think the unholy trifecta of AAA douchebaggery in the industry is EA, Activision and WB Games. But hey, as I said, as long as their shitty behavior continues to enable the rise of indies and the resurgence of AA games, then they can go right ahead.
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So even in the case of Overwatch...where lootboxes are rewarded in game for leveling up and three boxes free per week through in game playing...also free boxes during events..also not to mention everything in loot boxes are things you can buy in game? That's bad to you?
 
Tera Melos said:
So even in the case of Overwatch...where lootboxes are rewarded in game for leveling up and three boxes free per week through in game playing...also free boxes during events..also not to mention everything in loot boxes are things you can buy in game? That's bad to you?
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Eh. That is all true, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, buying loot boxes with $ is still an option, and that's no good.

It's also important to note that Overwatch was the game that kicked off the lootbox craze. Games like CS:GO and TF2 already had them, but Overwatch popularized them.
 
People have perfected the math on clickbait smartphone gaming to a point where it's ridiculously easy to scrape tons of money off people, mostly because they don't know or think about the chance of something good dropping out of a loot box. The model where you can buy something with ingame currency or real money is perfectly fine but I wish people wouldn't be such fucking scumbags about it.

Also let's talk about indie games. I'm a retro gamer who misses the good old days, crisp platforming and adventure games and barebones mechanics driven JRPGs. These things are more difficult to find in newer games as with the boost in graphics and a change in mainstream gaming culture, design seems to gear more towards providing an experience instead of offering a puzzle. This is NOT true in general, but it makes a niche for indie games created by people who know exactly what I'm talking about. But just about every time I pick up an indie game, I hate it, and it's difficult to explain why. I think it's comparable to how I felt when I watched Frozen for the first time and couldn't really get why all my friends seemed to be really drawn in by the whole phenomenon. Was it the slight inversion on normal Disney fantasy tropes? Was it culturally resonant? It felt like it had done just enough to speak to what people wanted without actually changing anything, and someone was telling a joke I wasn't getting.

With indie games I typically can't decide if it's the often short length, horrendous art style (which either comes off as overblown and pretentious or by contrast outright inspired by bottom of the barrel internet memes), or uninspired mechanics which are explored in the most clinical way possible which pisses me off the most, and each game tends to have its own quirks to add flavor to these complaints. Don't get me wrong, I've played indie games worth my money, and that money was usually $5-10, but we deserve better and developers are capable of better:

-The 3DS is still an acceptable platform to develop an old school RPG for, and we've seen the occasional gem in games such as Radiant Historia and (though I personally hate this game it's at least got a real production behind it) Bravely Default
-In the Xbox live arcade type stores we've seen some examples of new retro style titles marketed at lower price points, like Mega Man 9-10 and Geometry Wars: Dimensions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish bigger developers would pick up the niche indie games seem to have carved out a little more often, because they tend to do a cleaner job of it.
 
As someone with a pretentious indie game avatar, it can be argued that the indie scene also has its far share of issues. Firstly, pixel art is grossly overused and doesn't offer much outside of being cheaper and better looking than cheap flash animation (most of the time). It has to have a style outside of "retro" nowadays (like why the fuck is Binding of Isaac Rebirth pixel art?) While isn't as bad now, the mid 2010s had a disgusting amount of "rogue-lites" flood the market and really just killed a genre that was pretty fun in moderation (IE 100+ hours for one game, when there's 2 a month thats no good). I feel that the indie scene fixates on a genre or two (and Youtube bait games with "Simulator" in the name or really bad quality for the "lulz") at a time and buries the ones that aren't in those genres. It's still better compared to most AAA nowadays though. Destiny 2 had me wanting to drive an icepick through my skull and hour in. I have no clue how people can spend more then 10 hours on that shooting simulator

But seriously Hyper Light Drifter is about as snobbish as an indie game can get and I still love it
 
Earlio said:
As someone with a pretentious indie game avatar, it can be argued that the indie scene also has its far share of issues. Firstly, pixel art is grossly overused and doesn't offer much outside of being cheaper and better looking than cheap flash animation (most of the time). It has to have a style outside of "retro" nowadays (like why the fuck is Binding of Isaac Rebirth pixel art?) While isn't as bad now, the mid 2010s had a disgusting amount of "rogue-lites" flood the market and really just killed a genre that was pretty fun in moderation (IE 100+ hours for one game, when there's 2 a month thats no good). I feel that the indie scene fixates on a genre or two (and Youtube bait games with "Simulator" in the name or really bad quality for the "lulz") at a time and buries the ones that aren't in those genres. It's still better compared to most AAA nowadays though. Destiny 2 had me wanting to drive an icepick through my skull and hour in. I have no clue how people can spend more then 10 hours on that shooting simulator

But seriously Hyper Light Drifter is about as snobbish as an indie game can get and I still love it
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All valid complaints, yes. Never had a real issue with the excessive use of sprite art. To me, it's a nice style not just for retro throwback stuff, but also in general because it's fairly cheap while easy to make very visually appealing. I definitely agree that indie devs need to branch out and explore new genres. Platformers are fun, yes, but variety is also fun. Intentionally bad games/simulator games seem to be dying out, or at least aren't as common nor as popular as they used to be.
 
Yung Dramps said:
All valid complaints, yes. Never had a real issue with the excessive use of sprite art. To me, it's a nice style not just for retro throwback stuff, but also in general because it's fairly cheap while easy to make very visually appealing. I definitely agree that indie devs need to branch out and explore new genres. Platformers are fun, yes, but variety is also fun.
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The issue I have with sprite art as that it's on games that have no reason being a "throwback" and would be much better off with their own art style. Imagine if a game such as Enter The Gungeon has an artstyle akin to its promotional art. That would be much more memorable than its very plain and generic (albeit functional and fine to look at) pixel art. I feel that it's just kind of hobbling the artistic side of indie games.
 
Yung Dramps said:
Eh. That is all true, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, buying loot boxes with $ is still an option, and that's no good.

It's also important to note that Overwatch was the game that kicked off the lootbox craze. Games like CS:GO and TF2 already had them, but Overwatch popularized them.
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If you think Overwatch made lootboxes popular than you're to young for this argument/debate.

CSGO, LotR:Online, TF2, Battlefield 4, Gears of War, Mass Effect 3. There's a list of games that had people arguing the argument that you claim Overwatch popularized. For Christ Sake Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was Pay to Win to the extreme...
 
Tera Melos said:
If you think Overwatch made lootboxes popular than you're to young for this argument/debate.

CSGO, LotR:Online, TF2, Battlefield 4, Gears of War, Mass Effect 3. There's a list of games that had people arguing the argument that you claim Overwatch popularized. For Christ Sake Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was Pay to Win to the extreme...
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People quickly forgot just how influential TF2 has been. One of the most important multiplayer games of the last decade.
 
Aladyyn said:
People quickly forgot just how influential TF2 has been. One of the most important multiplayer games of the last decade.
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People were dropping hundreds of bucks for cosmetics in CSGO and TF2 for the longest time...not so much TF2 but still CSGO
 
Tera Melos said:
You still don't hear about it as much as CSGO, CSGO had an entire Gambling infraction against them after all those gambling sites went up. Valve was so irresponsible with that.
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I'm pretty sure CSGO is a religion at this point
 
Asek said:
these lootboxes are only massive in big FPS titles because the companies that make those games know the people who play fps religiously are retarded enough to buy that stupid crap
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Don't forget sports titles! Sports fans are arguably even more retarded than the FPS crowd.
 
RODAN said:
i mean they release the same game every year ie; fifa, madden, 2k etc
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That's just the AAA Cycle. Yearly franchises are a thing. CoD, Fifa, Madden, Assassin's Creed, Hell even Bethesda and Sony love pushing out their "remakes"/rereleases.
 
i'm not a console gamer, i just have my 3ds and play games on my iphone. so my rule for mobile games i genuinely enjoy are that i'd only pay the value of what i think the game is worth (so generally $10-$20). i don't mind paying for extras especially in mobile games where it's free to start, but now EA is trying to get players to drop anywhere between $20-$300 for a single card in-game which is absolutely ridiculous. and to me, the stuff they do on consoles should be criminal. you have to drop like $60 for the game and then constantly pay more money just to play one of the literal features you're paying for in the game.

if you're paying for a game, you should 100% be able to do whatever in that game. asking people to pay additional money in the game in order to unlock certain features and functionalities is ridiculous lmao... i can see how indie games have benefited from this, since people just want to play a damn game and not basically partake in pseudo-gambling.
 
I don't really think the two things (the popularity of indie games and the rising quantity of gambling / microtransactions in video games) are correlated - more just coincidental as well as part of a continuous trend towards increasing accessibility of (PC) games as a result of steam existing since like 2010ish.

Worth noting that microtransactions are not particularly new to gaming (I remember being really struck by the business model of candy crush like...5 or 6 years ago?) and it's kind of natural that money-grubbing would leak its way outside of mobile gaming if it makes money.
 
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