You can refund games for being buggy, you cannot however, play them for dozens of hours and then refund them. Steam’s limit is two hours and two weeks.
I think the “2 weeks” is the line for auto-refund, but they can and will refund you after that at their discretion. And they don’t seem to be jerks about it.
Yeah. I’ve definitely gotten refunds past those limits. But I’ve had a Steam account for like 16 years at this point, lots of games, and I’ve requested a refund maybe twice.
Steam is known to be more generous about the rule if you have few refunds on your profile and a decent amount of purchases. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for updates, even if the update makes the game unplayable.
Play Baldur's Gate 3, one of the two newest Zelda games, or Elden Ring without a walkthrough. You can still get this feeling, but due to economics, you're unlikely to find it in big expensive games anywhere near as often anymore. Smaller indie games can experiment more with this sort of thing. But basically, it's still out there.
BOTW was one of the first games in a while that hit me with that feeling. I had so much fun with it and I still haven’t beat it because I’ll be damned if I don’t 100% the game first. It was a little slow at first, but I came to appreciate the pacing more as I played it.
I’m also just getting back into Minecraft after not having played it consistently since 1.13, and I’m having so much fun with all the new shit.
For me I got the feeling from dark souls 1. I was exploring because it was such a beautiful and interesting world full of treasures to find. I loved the idea that at any point in game you could find or miss out on finding good gear.
Absolutely. A huge reason why soulslikes are so beloved. Through a huge combination of deliberate decisions touching nearly every facet of the game, an ethos is crafted all for the sake of intriguing the player, challenging the player's mind and physical execution, and then triumphing, with discovery of several forms peppered throughout the way.
The lack of a map, enabled by a well designed and memorable world is one of the best examples for me. Nothing else I've played quite matches navigating Dark Souls without a map. You're in one spot of this large, interconnected, seamless world. You just finished grinding an item in Darkroot Garden, and you want to return to Firelink.
Mentally, a collage of images appears in my mind, laying a pathway, a map of the world, the different paths and elevators I must take to get to where I need to go, and I begin walking, and I follow my own directions. That experience is all over the place in that game, and for all the obtuseness that's in there, it was still so worth it to commit to that design so hard.
Yeah I spent 60€ to get the avenger titan much later.
The bright side is, it is about as finished as No Man’s sky was. That is, buggy as hell game, but playable. It is fun to go in and fuck around in, but I definitely pity the people who have sunk hundreds or thousands into it.
That’s not an accurate comparison, The game breaking bugs in NMS on release were patched a day or two after release (I stupidly preorderd and experienced the hyperdrive blueprint issue). But the issue with NMS wasn’t really bugs, just over promises by the developers that didn’t match the final product. At least there was a few hundred hours of gameplay and complete gameplay loops.
Star Citizen, another game I stupidly preordered / Kickstarted (I’ma sucker for space games; kickstarted Elite Dangerous too) is a totally different kettle of fish. A decade later, there still isn’t a single, non-buggy / non-broken game loop in the entire game.
I so desperately want to like Star Citizen but for $600mil, having a few hours of “mucking about” with no real purpose nor way to achieve anything meaningful without experiencing migraine-inducing bugs, it’s pretty much unforgivable.
For the same money, I’ve been able to play Elite Dangerous for almost a decade and sink 1000s of hours, build a massive fleet of ships, and hang out with my buddies without screaming at the game. Sure, it’s shallower, but at least the loops are complete and the management were able to regularly make meaningful feature additions to the game over the years (although Odyssey was an utter shitshow at launch and took a year to patch into something stable and fun).
I’ve been playing it on the Steam Deck (haven’t had a chance to play on the desktop yet as it’s currently extremely hot where I live so I’m huddled next to the aircon). And yes, it actually plays. Low frames in big cities but otherwise seemingly playable!
I love it. It’s more Skyrim than No Man’s Sky but I’ I’ve been playing Bethesda games since Redguard so I’m biased and a fan of their jank.
Nice! That’s good to know. I was actually waiting for feedback on how it runs on the steam deck before taking the plunge (since that’s where I’m planning to play it most of the time). As long as it’s playable, I think it should be good.
You’ll be playing it on low settings for everything and there are major frame drops in the big cities. But I’ve sunk around 8h in on the Deck and so has my partner. So far, so good. Only crash to desktop happened after resuming the Deck from sleep mid play.
I kickstarted it 11 years ago, I'm sure squadron 42 will be out any day now, right?
Luckily, I really wanted a space sim, so I kickstarted elite too. It was far less hyped and star citizen fans always big up how they're not the same scope (which is true if you ignore everything else about SC), but at least it was released and very enjoyable.
I usually try star citizen out every time I get a new PC to see if it's any better just to make myself happy that I never sunk money into ship preorders etc
I mean...of course they have a roadmap. They had a roadmap well before the first unit. Their work and investment in Proton wasn't just for desktop Linux users.
There are a lot products from steam that got discontinued like the big predecesor, the steam machine. I think a commitment like that is something good.
True, but they got discontinued because they weren't selling, long after the market itself had given up on the product. It's not exactly like Sega where they came up with a bunch of platforms only to cancel them after a few years.
Steam Machines were more of a collaborative product, not something that Valve really put effort or resources into like Steam Deck. That said, I think a console-PC sold and sponsored primarily by Valve could work.
(After that, I think the initial Steam Machines project - which was imo intelligent - could have some value.)
If you check out The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, you can see a timeline of all the stuff Valve worked on since they started with hardware. Work on Proton started basically immediately after Steam Machines launched, in response to its library problem. So in a way, this is still that same commitment.
Yeah, I thought about getting the Ally, buying the Steam Deck’s the way to go. Now if only Linux get a bigger market share and more apps, that’d be great.
if you have modern hardware and newest nvidia GPU, just stay away from Linux. Windows is still best atm. But, if your newest hardware is ageing, then Linux is the best for that.
Not really true at all. If all you care about is raw performance, then that’s debatable, but if you’re talking ease of use then Linux is fine. Just grab a distro with an Nvidia ISO like pop_os and install, nothing else left to do.
My hardware is 2 years old (ryzen 5900HX and RTX 3070). I use manjaro/Ubuntu LTS and Non-LTS/PopOS/LinuxMint/Zorin/LMDE/Nobara and endeavour OS and it’s freezing quite often and I have to go back to Windows atm. I think Nvidia is main culprit here. If I move to Full AMD or the current nvidia hardware is getting older (more than 5 years old). I might try Linux again
Freezing doing what? I’ve got modern hardware and I’m running nobara and I don’t get any issues except my Taskbar freezes on Wayland. On x11 I have no issues
What nvidia drivers did you used? The open source one or the proprietary one? Because I have the rtx 3070, and I have not experience a problem using the proprietary drivers in plain old debian stable, using x11
tested with proprietary with 525,535,440. it’s awful. But, my other working laptop ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 (Intel) with Kubuntu 22.04 with Iris gpu is perfect without issues.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn’t sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you’d ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
I mean... if somebody has a gaming storefront monopoly in Windows it certainly isn't Microsoft. Concern about monopolistic practices is a great catch-22 between the OS dominance of Windows or the platform dominance of Steam, and I'm about as concerned about both.
FWIW, I have both a Steam Deck and a GPD Windows handheld and, being entirely agnostic about that entire conversation I default to my GPD Win 4, because of ergonomics, usability and compatibility concerns, in that order.
Avoiding the sites ads and other garbage, I fed the url through the Kagi summarizer (“key moments” mode); here’s the output, verbatim:
Shawn Layden, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, has concerns about rising costs, consolidation in the industry, and game preservation.
Consolidation through acquisitions can reduce creativity as studios are absorbed into larger companies and projects.
Blockbuster games requiring huge budgets and long development times are risky and could limit creativity.
The focus on only a few popular genres may prevent gaining new players who are not interested in those genres.
Preservation of older games is important culturally but the industry has no unified effort to make past games widely accessible.
Backwards compatibility has improved but many games from platforms like PS3 remain difficult to play on new consoles.
Layden worries large acquisitions could reduce the number of creative voices as smaller studios are absorbed.
The entry of tech giants like Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon could disrupt the game industry.
Layden believes companies need to take more risks, find broader appeal, and develop more sustainable business models.
While some acquisitions save studios, Layden remains concerned about the long-term impact on creativity within the industry.
I think as chairman of world wide studios beside shun yoshida, he hasn’t done a bad job. Game that came out that time were good and at least a bit more creative than at the moment. So i understanding to be more risky is a good point.
But he tells us now for years, that games get more and more expensive and i think he was as well responsible for very expensive games, like the naughty dog games. So does he think this popular games were a mistake?
No ads, ‘read this!’, ‘watch this video’, slide-out bullshit though. I got two paragraphs in and the text was like 1/4 of my phone screen, the rest were ads/links/slide-out offers. Fuck allllll that noise.
See, that’s the thing: I can’t install stuff for everyone’s phones. But I can offer a solution for others when I feel that it’s worth taking a minute of my day to do something for the benefit of many. So I did.
Or, more obviously: tf you complaining that I’m trying to help everyone? Lol
I have seen people post factually incorrect AI summaries often enough that I don't trust them by default. This one's crime was just not being a summary but a paraphrase, lol.
I asked it for key points though, as a wall of text seemed counter-intuitive. Out of curiosity, here’s the “summary” style:
Shawn Layden, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, has expressed concerns about consolidation in the video game industry leading to less creativity as large publishers acquire more studios. He worries that independent studios will lose their creative spark when absorbed into massive projects from big publishers. Layden also questioned if the industry can continue growing by relying only on the same popular genres. Additionally, he advocated for better preservation of older games, arguing publishers have an obligation to make their entire history accessible to new generations. However, game preservation often does not help the bottom line. In summary, Layden makes compelling points about the need for disruption, more risks with new IP, and greater access to gaming’s past to ensure its vibrant future.
I think you’ve done readers a service, I checked your comment before even looking at the article, as I’ve seen so many garbage articles posted here (no hate Lemmings, it’s not your garbage writing, it’s bad journos doing bad journo stuff).
I appreciate you fam, and those complaining of ads need (on Android at least) to use an ad blocking DNS (I use Adguard DNS) in conjunction with an actual ad blocker.
I find it laughable that there are people out there in 2023 not using some form of ad blocking.
Yeah, I roll with NextDNS + Iceraven with uB, and + (at home) I also run a secondary DNS check locally on my router for adverts (and other categories), in the unusual chance that either uB or ND let one through. I have built this dome around my/family’s devices, but I get that it’s tedious and many don’t understand how to do this, but want to get the benefit. Plus in this particular instance, I find it really cool how the Kagi ai tool works (I’ve used it a few times myself when I don’t want to read a novel-worth of an article) and I’m paying for the privilege anyway so why not share the output.
Cheers for the in depth response! I can’t decide if you’ve made my decision making harder, easier, or some combination of both.
In the rare occasions UBO/Adguard let one slip through, I find 99% of the time a refresh solves it (different ad it does pick up maybe?) Failing that, I just wait for an update and that process has yet to fail me.
I’ll have a look around, my server is not yet entered into service, but I am looking to run Pihole network wide, I have yet to decide on a DNS for it, but I will certainly give NextDNS a looksee as a starting point to see if it fits my use case.
The last time I played Cyberpunk, it was actually good fun. Game was a bit empty, and it was pretty obvious they'd been forced to cut a lot of stuff, but I played it for several hundred hours without too many bugs. Pretty and ran well on my budget pc too.
That was how I started. I played less than a couple hours and got pulled away by another game. I picked it up months later, made it through the prologue, get invested in the characters, and ended up really loving it.
Because it’s a tool, game development is a huge investment, there’s really not many alternatives, and if you think Godot is an alternative, you have zero gamedev experience. You have to be straight up ignorant to believe that completely unrelated game developers are somehow supporting this, and have zero basis in reality to think they can swap engines on the drop of a hat.
I don’t think anybody claimed they could do it “at the drop of a hat”. They’re saying it would be financially beneficial for these game developers to take the financial hit to jump ship from Unity because people will be less likely to buy Unity games
That’s not any less detached from reality. Like I said, you have no familiarity with these tools if you think it’s a simple choice to just not go with Unity. It’s also rarely obvious what engine a game is actually made in unless it’s a smaller indie game that still has the Unity stuff left in. Also if you think gamers actually have the ability to boycott games, then lol.
I’m not going to give any personal information about myself, but you are WAY off with your assumption about my knowledge regarding both the development side and business side of these kind of choices. It’s what I do
I don’t need to ask your personal info, I just need to ask how many actual medium+ budget (100k+) projects do you seen being worked on/ported into Godot?
This is precisely my point, and why the OC resorted to ad hominem almost out of the gate is beyond me. That said, I do have a bit of experience in game development, and I think the short term gains from Unity would be outweighed by the losses incurred through negative PR and Unity’s stunts.
Uh huh, Godot doesn’t have any texture/mesh/animation/audio streaming, has no access to low level rendering structures, lacks significant optimizations, lacks swarm logic, complete lack of mature tools, no paid asset/extension store, miles behind shader editing and vfx effects. Which part of these are wrong, and do you understand why these things are required for big games?
I didn’t say it was feature parity with Unity, 90% of Unity games don’t require most of the features Unity has that Godot lacks.
Streaming is not the only solution to efficiently loading assets
The VFX is not lacking from Unity in anyway other than not having Unity’s specific tools for organizing them, the Shader and VFX graph. It lacks access to the stencil buffer right now, but not much else. You can still make any shader in Godot that you can make in Unity.
W4 is opening a dedicated paid store.
Godot can run native C++, making it more optimized than Unity in several areas. DOTS can out do it in some areas, but again native C++ is still faster.
You have direct access to Godot’s render pipeline code so no idea what you mean by ‘low level’, no idea how’d you get lower level than direct access to the render pipeline itself.
Streaming is required for a lot of use cases, it’s probably the most important of everything I listed. Godot is miles behind even Unity in fidelity still. “Opening a paid store” still means it currently does not exist and also means there’s zero assets for actual purchase. Running native c++ has literally nothing to do with Engine optimization lol. That’s also just false, you don’t have access to the rendering server even from gdextension.
This isn’t coming from me btw, this is coming from the literal creator of Godot, so you’re disagreeing with him here. Really shows you how deep into the circlejerk we are here lol. godotengine.org/…/whats-missing-in-godot-for-aaa/
edit: nice the guy who calls me cringe blocks me after replying so he can’t be called out for being wrong. Maybe don’t be so argumentative when you reply and don’t know what you’re talking about. How toxic.
Edit, I didn’t block him, he’s being a troll I guess.
Firstly, I can tell you only skimmed that and haven’t actually read it because it contradicts multiple points you made in this and the previous comment. Like, actually read it before trying to use it as a source.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is circle jerking”
Lol, okay buddy. You’re a tad bit cringe
Like, “As such, this means that low level access to all the rendering server structures needs to be exposed via GDExtension.” Says it right there, in the page you linked. “Often developers need to implement rendering techniques, post processing effects, etc. that don’t come bundled with the engine.” You have to do some of it yourself, which means ITS VIABLE. Again, not on parity, but viable. Again, not feature complete, not as polished, but viable.
And on streaming “Of the above, most are relatively straightforward to implement”, meaning that users can already do this, the article even mentions how much of the ground work is just handed to you. I’m not arguing the point on if this should be fully implemented by the dev team to come fully prepackaged, im simply telling you that you’re wrong about godot not being viable. It should come by default, but it’s still easy to do. Again, if your point is it should come default, I agree with that.
I can tell you’re just being argumentive for the sake of it, so I’m just going to ignore you from here on out. You aren’t adding anything constructive and you’re not capable of reading something YOU linked, so you’re not worth the time or effort.
I remember when I first started using Unity years and years ago and people like you would just talk shit about it non stop. I remember when I started using blender in middle school and people like you should just talk shit about it.
Ugh, CAD. I thought that webcomic died a decade ago.
I’m surprised you can write a 14-year-old’s name on your crotch and send her a dick pic on your own forum, yet years later people still find your comics and share them.
This is the first I’ve heard of that, and after searching the most I found was “This was alleged on 4chan but that’s it,” without even a link to the archived 4chan conversation. It’s kinda hard to take a complaint seriously when 4chan is the primary source. Can you share anything more substantive?
Basically every complaint about him that I’ve read is summarized at …shoutwiki.com/…/Ctrl%2BAlt%2BDel, or on (choose your reddit mirror): r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3v3uau/what_exactly_did_tim_buckley_do_besides_make_a/ and tbh that should be enough on its own for most people to stop reading his webcomics
Aside from the alleged child abuse, which if true is horrid, I don’t really get people’s problems with content they don’t like. That wiki page is so overboard, it’s absurd. What exactly is it about the content that they can’t simply ignore it? Did Tim Buckley go to their home personally and Clockwork Orange every issue into their brain? Just let people make what they want (within reason), and if you (the figurative you) don’t like it, just ignore it and go find something you do. No need to add so much negativity into the world.
I agree with you, generally - so many people need to internalize “It’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a jerk about the things you don’t like.”
With Buckley in particular, much of the criticism is like that, but I think that due to particular things he’s allegedly done - the above sexual assault of a child, for one; the more verifiable (not that I’ve verified them, but I’m sure other people have) claims about him banning people from his own forums for various reasons, like providing (allegedly) constructive criticism of his comics; his generally being rude to many of his fans and critics, etc. - that almost everyone is less likely to defend someone from criticism they’d otherwise speak up about when that person has already earned their ire in some other way. As a result it kinda snowballs and you get pages like that one with almost nobody willing to speak in his defense.
To be clear, I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve criticism. I have no love for Buckley. He probably deserves most of it. But spending so much effort on wiki pages like that and on thinking about content you simply don’t like is so pointless. And it’s not just CAD hate. This kind of mentality permeates the internet and seems to latch onto everything. It’s so tiring to see.
90% of the badwebcomics wiki exists for no reason but to shit on someone for daring to put themselves out in public where others can see them. I completely agree. There’s the odd creator on there that fully deserves criticism for genuine assholery and abuse, but mostly it’s like “this guy makes a very cringy comic, jump him!” bullshit.
Yeah, I gathered it was edgy bs by the goatse logo. It’s just so dumb and disheartening to consider that nonsense like this could discourage someone from following their passion, just because sadsacks feel compelled to drag everyone down to their level.
Google is shit nowadays, sadly - it used to be you could Google “Tim Buckley Jackie” and see the picture yourself. A girl’s name written on his junk near his pubes.
It got out on his forum and he banned anyone who mentioned it. He wound up doing a complete purge of the CAD forums and got rid of half his mod staff. It’s not just a 4chan thing; it was all over the internet like… 15 years ago. (Maybe longer?)
I’ve had the unfortunate displeasure of having seen it one time, so I can vouch that it exists. I can’t find it nowadays, but I can find people referencing it:
If you do the search now you can see that Google removed some results “for legal reasons”, which is likely the EU “right to be forgotten” law being used to scrub it. But it used to exist and was well-known for anyone who was on the internet in the long long ago times…
But this will cut the Steam metrics in half and thus the Steam store algorithm will push the game to the Steam users less. Unless of course they both sell well then you get put in front of a user twice.
This is how we know they really nailed it on AC6, this is exactly the experience. Well, whenever I didn’t say FUCK IT, and equipped dual Zimmermans and the stun nail launcher.
Yup. Steam is my go-to because of easy game steaming, steam deck integration, etc. But I know what I’m sacrificing for that convenience. Luckily Valve is an incredibly customer focused company and I have a huge amount of (well deserved IMO) faith in. GOG however is definitely still the best way to own your games.
You do realize that’s the case for every form of IP, right?
“Man, I want to read the new Brandon Sanderson book, and eat food this month. But the publisher is asking $4,000 for a copy!! What theft!! I’m going to have to subsist on chewing dirt for the next few months!”
Or, sane response:
“Well, that price is ludicrous. I guess I’ll read other books” (and in this case, play other football games)
The argument that people „vote with their wallet“ is not new. But the fundamental problem is that you can’t make them. They have jobs, kids and might not be the most intelligent people. So if the kids ask for this game, they might get overwhelmed by life and make bad decisions. Welcome to being human.
The issue is that corporations are not subject to „life“ so they are able to shape the market as they pleased unless stopped. It has happened countless times. Mergers being stopped because it gave them too much power, predatory business practices leading to lawsuits because they keep competition away.
It’s all about power balance. They can employ psychologists to study our behavior, we can’t and the government can’t and is too slow.
So yes, the „game difficulty“ for large corporations needs to be upped significantly.
You voting with your wallet does not mean that your vote wins every time. Madden might still exist even if you don't buy it. But at least you can direct the money you would have spent on it elsewhere, to someone who needs it more.
I know and I didn’t say otherwise. But this only focuses on you and does not solve the underlying issue. I‘m not saying buy the game. I‘m saying the corporations have too much power.
You take that power away by voting with your wallet though. EA just had its ass handed to them via BattleBit, delivering the game that fans actually wanted, not to mention Baldur's Gate 3 outdoing the last number of efforts from EA's own BioWare. Voting with your wallet isn't an overnight process, and often enough, it brings corporations down.
I‘m not disagreeing that not buying stuff is good. I am saying that we are not bringing corporations down and we are not discouraging them from finding new ways to fuck with us.
Madden 22 raked in 4.4 billion usd. Apparently, typical AAA games take about 60 mil usd to make. That is a 6.666% margin.
Now make something and sell it on ebay, amazon or anywhere for that margin and people will cancel you in a heartbeat. In the country I live in, if you sell something for more than twice the original price, you can get sued.
But nobody has all the stuff required to make a competitor to madden. So you control the market. Pretty easy to grasp in my opinion. And games also are getting more and more convoluted with trash paid dlc, crypto, nfts. You can look at minecraft bedrock for example. Nobody is telling bill gates to stop because people have no choice but to miss out on the game, have their kid not participate in school buddies chit chat and so on. It’s an impossible situation to solve on a „vote with your wallet“ basis.
Apparently, typical AAA games take about 60 mil usd to make.
I don't know where you got that figure, but it sounds very outdated. I expect each iteration of Madden to cost several times that to produce. Video games are also a very scalable product to sell, so your margin comparison to a product sold on Amazon is not apt. Avengers and Forspoken had negative profit margins, for instance, because the economics of selling those things is very different than a product on Amazon.
And games also are getting more and more convoluted with trash paid dlc, crypto, nfts.
The business model has always affected the game design at every step in the medium's history. We used to have quarter-guzzling arcade games as the primary way games were made. Crypto and NFTs aren't taking; it was a bubble that burst just like tulip bulbs and beanie babies. Other business models have come and gone in games before, like subscription MMOs and "project $10" online passes.
Nobody is telling bill gates to stop because people have no choice but to miss out on the game, have their kid not participate in school buddies chit chat and so on.
I‘m tired of talking about this stuff today. It’s like going to a different planet and having to explain that there are other planets with life on them, what experience we made on them and still being „corrected“ at every step.
For the video game Marvel’s Avengers, that budget was more than $178 million. Though the film was a hit, remaining the 10th highest-grossing movie ever, this game was far less successful. It never became profitable, losing the developer and publisher tens of millions of dollars in all.
It’s very boring to have people „know“ everything. I‘ll just leave. You believe whatever you like.
You’re missing the point. This is not about the Madden. This is about the Not-Madden.
Voting with your wallet is not “Refusing to buy a media for several months until its publisher relents and cuts its price in half, meanwhile depositing your $60 in a jar for when the day the price falls”. Instead, it is “When you have money for entertainment, you use it for properties OTHER than the one you used to go for”.
So, to further my example; “Me/my kid really wants the new Brandon Sanderson book, but instead of chewing dirt to pay for it, we decided to vote with our wallets! …But, because Sanderson is a crazy eccentric billioinaire with a patience greater than 5 years, he just INCREASED the price in retaliation to $8 million! What are we to do? …Read OTHER books? HERESY!”
Blaming the subject on corporate psychology is a complete cop-out. They do not grab your wrist and force you to click the Buy button. I’ll make some allowances for instances of gambling addiction (and I would not try to apply this pricing logic to the housing market due to collusion and other factors) but otherwise, price acknowledgment is a very human thing people need to get used to considering, even when it comes to beloved IPs.
I can see your train of thought and it makes sense up to the last part.
As someone who has studied sales and marketing actively for nearly two decades, built rather large companies and happens to be very good at pattern recognition, I know that people don’t understand what is being done to them.
Psychology has been used for a long time to study how to make someone act against their best self interest. Putting this on people with addiction problems is both selling them short and underestimating the problem.
Sales people in certain companies (that I have been to) learn how to use body language, speech patterns, behavioral patterns and other things to manipulate people into buying a particular thing at a particular time. Keep in mind that there is a human in control in this situation and unless they have psychopathic tendencies, they will try to work with the customer instead of against them.
But this is also done in marketing. Best example is the facebook/instagram/youtube algorithm, where the goal is to keep you on the site. It is done (very simplified) with showing you everything that will or might interest, aggravate or otherwise trigger you to keep watching. I‘m not saying it is impossible to leave but especially the not so strong characters will comply. Again, this is the majority of people, not the minority.
From there it is only a small step to actually selling you stuff your don’t actually want/need by showing you price increases (urgency), many different products (availability), fitting videos on other sites (cross site tracking).
These are only the ones I have crossed in my career. It shows that the mentally vulnerable (especially kids) get blasted with this stuff and manipulated into thinking certain thoughts and wanting certain things.
So, while your extreme boom example does play out as you say, the overarching problem has a lot less remarkable features and is therefore harder to spot and harder to fight.
Combine that with giant companies that own 60% of popular sports games for example and you absolutely have a problem.
„Vote with your wallet“ only serves these corporations because nobody cares about 3 less sales if you can manipulate everyone to buying more of these.
This is why the only solution that will put an end to this is outlawing what we call „dark patterns“ (google it) and break up large corporations.
surprised how successful this was since it barely got a mention all the time it was in early access so thought it would have a relatively mild release but no the g*mers heard bear sex and everyone flooded in to buy it.
I think it’s more so that “bear sex” was just joke-worthy enough that people talked about the game that otherwise wouldn’t talk about it and news of the game spread beyond its usual corners of the internet. So more people heard of the game and I guess the openness that “bear sex” entails is pretty appealing for a CRPG.
Could it be that the hard core Baldur’s Gate fans are OG/serious Gamers and have learned to not pre-order? BG 1 & 2 were released way before gaming was mainstream. Most of the casual gamers probably only care about BG3 due to hype from other gamers who would also be “Never Pre-order” folk.
My wife found out BG was out. Saw it was a full release price and was kind of like, "meh I can wait". I joked about everyone playing just wanted to edit their character's genitals and she immediately put it on top of her Wishlist.
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