In a way this is the same as money to them, just a new generation concept of money. Where older generations use money to buy physical items, they use simulated ingame currency to buy digital items.
In other news, people are dumb af for accepting subscription model gaming (and software in general). But thanks to apathy and ignorace it’s what we have.
I mean, fairly when I was young we had Neopets/Gaia and RuneScape.
I think this just shows that there are far more of these style of services that have become popular. You like a game, that game has a deep array of content, you spend money to “get it all”. It’s fucked up but it makes sense.
Every school-aged generation had at least one stupid thing that was the trendy, cool thing to be into, usually with with some collectible aspect designed to make your parents regret having kids. Collectible stickers and trading cards, pogs, spinning tops, Pokemon, tabletop minis... Game publishers have just lucked out that this time, it's their games and their skins.
Can't blame them for milking it dry, because just like the other trends, it's very probable that, at some point, this too will probably die.
My fear is over what it will take with it when it goes.
A lot of companies are so reliant on their current cash cow that... who knows how badly they would get hit to be honest. Like, does Epic have anything very successful going on besides Fortnite? The Epic Store was a clear attempt at creating a safety net in the event Fortnite dried out but that store hasn't caught on as much as it needed to. Well they have Unreal and the whole stack of game development related platforms, but it would still be a big hit.
But who knows, what comes next may be compatible with the video game industry in a way that it can profit from it.
If I had to guess, what comes next is either an insane evolution of Roblox-esque metaverse user community spaces (fortnite is already heading there after all) or a revolution of short form media that allows user generation, consumption and participation in a manner that we can't currently fathom.
So either "Roblox 3.0" or "TikTok 2.0 meets those-twitch-AI-shows-that-went-viral-for-a-minute 2.0".
But I'm probably waaayyyyy off the mark. But whatever it is, it will be setup around the idea that you are only cool if you have X and X costs stupid amounts of money.
My bet is on small indie devs making projects they’re passionate about. The last time I bought a AAA title I was sorely disappointed (yet again). Oh well, at least I don’t have to upgrade my gpu for a bit 😅
Oh indies will always always be there, even if the mainstream part of the industry collapsed on itself. Thank god for that because the independent and AA markets are more and more the only places in which you can find experiences that are substantial either at gameplay or narrative levels.
Yup Ubisoft, Epic, EA, Acti-Blizzard,etc and 99% of mobile game makers are decades into conditioning people to accept this shit.
First DLC, then microtransactions, in-game currencies, live service games, item shops, NFTs, ads, while releasing incomplete copy-paste games so now the apology letter, day 0 patch and promise of a roadmap for a shitty unoptimized new game is part of the experience.
Fuck these companies, we need to support the AA companies, the indie developers and a very few still decent studios who are against this bullshit.
Meanwhile you have MUCH smaller devs releasing awesome games and sometimes even free updates etc. Stuff like Stardew Valley has probably hundreds of hours of gameplay (and more if you install free fanmade mods)… the original game was released by one guy.
I do a little bit of napkin math and see that I’ve got 50+ hours of gameplay from Vampire Survivors which I paid $4 on sale. 200+ hours out of Stardew Valley which I paid $15 for. 500+ hours out of Caveblazers which I paid $1 for.
I’m to the point where I’m not going to fuck with AAA until it is on sale. I don’t see the value.
This seems pretty normal to me. I used to get a 6 month WoW sub for my birthday in summer and then again at Christmas and that was what, over 15 years ago. Also I was an adult, but still, hobby supplies are a great gift.
People also forget how prevalent games like Club Penguin and Wizard 101 were at the time. Kids wanting subscriptions and MTX may be more popular now but it’s not really a new phenomenon
Also yu gi oh and pokemon cards were literally gambling
Yep. I begged my parents for a RuneScape membership as a kid. Now I pay for my own subscriptions. If someone wanted to buy me a game time card for FFXIV though, I would be far from upset
Did the same for FFXI but game cards didn’t exist so I had to beg for my dad’s cc number which was a huge deal in 04.
I keep telling my family to just give me steam cards for Christmas but they don’t like giving gift cards cause there’s “no thought” but don’t understand that I don’t buy physical games anymore.
It’s also easier for kids who may pay for this stuff with their allowance. Telling them to save up $60 for a game is a harder sell for companies than just having them pay $10-$20 now on either in-game currency or a monthly subscription.
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