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MJBuddy posted:And a lot of licensed games have moved off of AAA and into mid level development. Outright Games basically does everything Activision and EA used to do for movie and TV show tie ins, and there's 10 companies most of have never heard of doing the same on mobile to directly hit kids markets. Budge even had a metaverse built around all of their kids tie in games to push them from one licensed IP to another.   
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Jun 24, 2022 12:12
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Learning about the kind of poo poo Nintendo of America was pulling in the late 80's / Early 90s such as denying the Super Famicom's existence when it was already out in Japan has shown the industry wasn't any less exploitative in the past, it was just a different kind of exploitative because the technology for microtransactions wasn't there yet
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Jun 24, 2022 13:01
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shame on an IGA posted:Learning about the kind of poo poo Nintendo of America was pulling in the late 80's / Early 90s such as denying the Super Famicom's existence when it was already out in Japan has shown the industry wasn't any less exploitative in the past, it was just a different kind of exploitative because the technology for microtransactions wasn't there yet Yeah, I'm not so sure I'm willing to put, 'lies about the existence of hardware' and 'Diablo Immortal is a thing that exists' on the same tier of exploitation. E: And I know Nintendo was pretty lovely to people in the NES/SNES days, but it does not hold a candle to an $80B industry where the vast majority of that income is derived from designed exploitation where the 'game' on top of it is just pretty coat of paint over something that is rotten to the core. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jun 24, 2022 |
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Jun 24, 2022 18:53
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What were arcades again?
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Jun 24, 2022 22:39
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Yeah, a whole chunk of 'difficulty' and insta death/three lives were based more around encouraging you to feed more coins in the machine than having 'fun'
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Jun 25, 2022 09:57
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Better not go into this. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jun 25, 2022 |
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Jun 25, 2022 16:31
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Chernabog posted:What are the "ET"s and "Superman 64"s of today? Fallout 76? Cyberpunk 2077? Maybe don't end your game with numbers...
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Jun 25, 2022 16:42
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I don't really see a way to address this that won't turn into an argument about which games are bad. Which is something that I'm generally loathe to do.
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Jun 25, 2022 16:44
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I don't really see a way to address this that won't turn into an argument about which games are bad. Which is something that I'm generally loathe to do. I also don't like talking about these massive projects that people like me spend years of their lives working on just to poo poo on them. Every game I'd bring up has immense care and attention from dedication and it's a tragedy when it didn't work. I don't think the games mentioned above were made in less than a week by one person and then more copies produced than consoles exist, for instance. No one is insulted or demeaned by the failure of ET.
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Jun 25, 2022 16:52
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Fair enough, didn't think about that.
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Jun 25, 2022 17:13
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The difference between RDR2 and Cyberpunk 2077 is management listening to the dev team about when they can realistically ship.
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Jun 25, 2022 17:49
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SM64 was barely functional and ET was barely a game. Nowadays there are occasional Really Weird games (Quiet Man), and Not Very Good games (Balan Wonderland), but nothing on the scale of SM64... for major publishers. Indies are the wild west. Like, the Popeye Switch game might be a good comparison. Even then, it's still more functional than SM64.
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Jun 25, 2022 18:23
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I'm really sympathetic to the creative process, and avoid speaking ills of games borne from the desire to deliver a world or experience that is definitely a game. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 are a bummer (on release anyway, I think it's pretty good now?) - it's plainly obvious that the team had great ambitions and wanted to deliver this massive world with massive ideas -- They wanted to deliver a Great Game and I respect the effort. As is obvious in this thread though, my patience goes to zero when you are using the dressings of a game to deliver something predatory. If you are using what should be a creative space to deliver a glorified slot machine, or a something equally disgusting; if your business model is to generate revenue from FoMo or inconvenience or gambling, then gently caress those 'games'. To that end, I have infinite patience for the Balans and Cyperpunks et. al of the the world, but I'll happily trash Fallout 76, Diablo Immortal, etc.
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Jun 25, 2022 19:17
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:I'm really sympathetic to the creative process, and avoid speaking ills of games borne from the desire to deliver a world or experience that is definitely a game. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 are a bummer (on release anyway, I think it's pretty good now?) - it's plainly obvious that the team had great ambitions and wanted to deliver this massive world with massive ideas -- They wanted to deliver a Great Game and I respect the effort. Have you considered that these experiences may have different audiences? And that you aren't necessarily the target customer? Diablo immortal is a fine game. I'm not going to whale on it, but it's competently built and a fine experience even at the free level for several hours.
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Jun 25, 2022 20:44
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leper khan posted:Have you considered that these experiences may have different audiences? And that you aren't necessarily the target customer? Suggesting people should just be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy does not give you carte blanche to prey on people's addictions and inhibitions. This would be giving the same license for people to sell snake oil to a vulnerable population because, 'it makes them feel good'. It has more in common with prosperity gospel mega churches then it does anything 'art'. It is a scam heavily levering psychological tricks. It's morally indefensible. Diablo Immortal is creatively bankrupt and is designed at every turn to extract money out of the player and is expertly designed to leverage as my mental tricks as possible to achieve that goal. It's a pathetic and embarrassing blight on my hobby and industry.
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Jun 25, 2022 20:54
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All the gambling poo poo is bad because it preys on people's addictions and it's horrifyingly effective. The more it works the more they'll do it, and those strategies and tactics bleed out into the rest of the industry. It loving sucks and I don't see a solution except making it illegal, but that'll never happen
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Jun 25, 2022 20:57
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Lemming posted:All the gambling poo poo is bad because it preys on people's addictions and it's horrifyingly effective. The more it works the more they'll do it, and those strategies and tactics bleed out into the rest of the industry. It loving sucks and I don't see a solution except making it illegal, but that'll never happen Diablo Immortal is already not launching in Belgium and IIRC one other country because of strict gambling laws. It's possible but it requires a lot of powerful people to care a lot about the issue consistently for a long time
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Jun 25, 2022 21:04
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:Suggesting people should just be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy does not give you carte blanche to prey on people's addictions and inhibitions. This would be giving the same license for people to sell snake oil to a vulnerable population because, 'it makes them feel good'. It has more in common with prosperity gospel mega churches then it does anything 'art'. It is a scam heavily levering psychological tricks. It's morally indefensible. Don't know what to tell you, but I could go buy some crystals or supplements right now if I wanted to. Also free to praise Satan. Sorry you're just now coming to the realization that the world isn't built for you. Or that people build things, often, with financial motives. It'd be cool if we lived in the stat trek future you think we should, but we're in the bad timeline if you hadn't heard. Talk to your legislators or run for office if you care about regulating it.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:11
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leper khan posted:Don't know what to tell you, but I could go buy some crystals or supplements right now if I wanted to. Also free to praise Satan. I'm not sure where you think you are, but this is a video game forum. It's actually perfectly fine to complain here about horrible gambling poo poo that sucks rear end and is spreading like a virus in gaming.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:19
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I used to thumb my nose at most/all free to play games until I started talking to east Asian game devs on a regular basis and they talked about how kids over there with no expendable income get to play big, quality, fun games; the same ones the west is playing even; for free thanks to the F2P model in general. Nothing is a monolith, and execution is everything, obviously, but also things are complex and have multiple facets.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:39
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I worked on a Toys2Life game. Am I also scum devoid of all ethics and morality?
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Jun 25, 2022 21:39
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mutata posted:I worked on a Toys2Life game. Am I also scum devoid of all ethics and morality? Yes, but for entirely different reasons. I will not be elaborating further.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:49
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mutata posted:I used to thumb my nose at most/all free to play games until I started talking to east Asian game devs on a regular basis and they talked about how kids over there with no expendable income get to play big, quality, fun games; the same ones the west is playing even; for free thanks to the F2P model in general. And eastern EU markets embrace F2P for similar reasons. You're not going to sell a $60 game that requires a $2000 PC in Russia but you can sell World of Tanks.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:55
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mutata posted:I worked on a Toys2Life game. Am I also scum devoid of all ethics and morality? The punch line of my rant about D:I is that I contributed (minor) effort to that project. It's not the first thing I worked on that I'm not proud of, and I'd be immensely lucky if it's my last. I'm tolerant if an individuals need to pay bills and whatever, but I'm not at all sympathetic when those individuals start to insist that their poo poo don't stink on social media.
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Jun 25, 2022 21:58
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I see. So your answer is pretty much "Yes." Well thanks, man!
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Jun 25, 2022 22:20
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I don't think "free to play" and "horribly exploitative gambling trash" are the same thing at all, despite lots of gambling things being free to play. There's also of plenty bad degenerative paid gambling things in non free games, and it's definitely important not to throw the baby out with the bath water Loot boxes where you have to gamble to get what you want instead of being able to directly buy the thing you want is pretty transparently bad
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Jun 25, 2022 22:24
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Lemming posted:I'm not sure where you think you are, but this is a video game forum. It's actually perfectly fine to complain here about horrible gambling poo poo that sucks rear end and is spreading like a virus in gaming. This is the thread for people who earn their keep in this industry. If you don't like a game, vote with your wallet. There are plenty of art games being made, and games by small teams not equipped for the content grinder of live services. Large commercial organizations will maximize revenues. They always have. If your problem is you want the bombast of large budgets but don't like the monetization practices associated, you've regrettably been left behind. Until something more effective comes along, more of the larger experiences will trend toward social and micro transactions. Because these are effective in the market today. This transition isn't really any different from pinball, coin op arcades, subscription mmos, or any of the other business model trends that have come and gone in the industry. If you wait long enough, something worse will come along. But there's some quality products (among mountains of rubbish) across business models and throughout time. The profit motive isn't new, and it will not go away.
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Jun 25, 2022 22:42
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Lemming posted:I don't think "free to play" and "horribly exploitative gambling trash" are the same thing at all, despite lots of gambling things being free to play. There's also of plenty bad degenerative paid gambling things in non free games, and it's definitely important not to throw the baby out with the bath water Was it bad in Mass Effect 3? Like I really enjoyed the era in loot box systems where you were guaranteed no shoes and such. I didn't have any problem with Halo 5's cosmetic unlocks through boxes or ME3 locking all progression behind them. Frankly I personally have a bigger issue with the impulse behind subscription services to play nothing but the thing I've paid for to feel like I'm getting my money's worth (which is less of a problem now that I have some more income to work with). I spent more on WoW than on any F2P game in both time and money and at the end of it I was still rolling for loot from raid bosses. Halo Infinite has no loot boxes and a cash shop and people absolutely lost their poo poo over the their pricing model and called it FOMO. If you release a $60 boxed game with a little bit of progression and unlocks and stop updating it, your fans will absolutely show up and complain about how they've been abandoned and how the devs stopped supporting them. There's absolutely nothing you can do in this industry that involves money changing hands that won't get poo poo on. That doesn't mean that one method isn't worse in some ways than others or that people should say gently caress it and just go all in on brain hacking monetization (though a bunch of people absolutely will). I've said before, probably here, that the finest line I can draw is that kids should not be exposed to RNG monetization. My 5 year old cannot do probability. He can't understand "value". It's unethical to attempt to sell to him something that he cannot comprehend what it is worth. But selling dumb poo poo to kids with lies is older than videogames and barely anything has been done to protect them there other than toys not being allowed to be literally weapons or poison (and they gently caress this up constantly!).
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Jun 25, 2022 22:45
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leper khan posted:This is the thread for people who earn their keep in this industry. Thanks, I know, that's why I'm here leper khan posted:If you don't like a game, vote with your wallet. There are plenty of art games being made, and games by small teams not equipped for the content grinder of live services. Again, yeah, I know. As I posted earlier, I don't think any of this will change unless it just becomes straight up illegal, because it's the best path for any individual company to maximize revenue for their games. It still sucks, regardless of how much market forces causes it to be the status quo MJBuddy posted:Was it bad in Mass Effect 3? Honestly, like everything, I think there are degrees, and while Mass Effect 3 was less exploitative than lots of other implementations (in that you can earn pretty much everything relevant for free just by playing more, unlike lots of games where you literally have to pay to gamble or you can't reasonably progress), it's still going to prey on the people who are weak to that kind of thing, and there will be lots of people who dump in more money than they can afford because they can't stop gambling. If you couldn't buy more lootboxes directly, but could do something like pay for xp multiplier or that kind of thing, that would be a soft cap on how much money you could spend and ensure that swiping your credit card wasn't a direct pull on the lever, I think you could create a system where there's still randomness, but it's not directly exploitative WoW, as you brought up, is a good example of that - no matter how much money you pay, you don't get more rolls. You need to actually play to get those rolls, and even if you wanted to, the game physically does not let you gamble tens of thousands of dollars at rolls for better loot. And I agree that people are going to be unhappy no matter what. For my part, I've had players directly ask me to add loot boxes, which seems like complete insanity, but obviously people go for that kind of thing to some degree because they genuinely like it. People want things that are bad for them all the time. Ultimately, I'm mostly talking about game patterns that target the gambling portion of your brain, it's something that not everyone is weak to, but a significant portion of people are, and it's so insanely lucrative to just farm those players for cash that it pushes out doing other things just because that works so well. I'd disagree with your point about children only because I don't think many adults are actually that much better off in terms of understanding risk/reward/value, I think the problem with gambling is it just comes down fundamentally to a part of your brain that just loves pulling the lever and going through that action itself, I don't even think it's about the possibility of a good reward or whatever. It's why so many people who win big gambling eventually lose it all; even though they've already won, all they really *want* is to gamble, so the gambling doesn't need to be with real money to be destructive
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Jun 26, 2022 00:09
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Not disregarding or ignoring your post, but don't want to quote it all because text blocks are getting quite big. Lemming posted:
I don't think it's in the wheelhouse of people who make entertainment to be cognizant of if they're making things that are bad for individual people. All the usual suspect monetization strategies are benign to over 99% of people, and unclear beyond that. It's absolutely true that gambling addiction exists, and games sometimes implicitly or explicitly set themselves up to directly feedback that. But (as a typical example), I enjoy light gambling in a healthy capacity and I like that games have those features. My point about kids vs adults is that kids are not responsible for themselves and adults are. If someone has a problem with addiction, that's not going to be solved by hardening targets at an individual product level, and extrapolating out to other addiction criteria, games of all kinds and sorts are ripe as an addictive media. Following on my earlier comment: a blanket move by the ESRB to trigger any title that had RNG based MTX as a Mature title would be the absolute lowest bar that could easily be crossed. Beyond that, mandatory purchase confirmations in games with loot boxes (diminish impulsivity or children using saved CCs) enforced by full refunds if developers do not list correctly. I'm not a fan of trusting legislation to the Hawley's of the world, but if something got broached, I think a good idea would be certain % of revenue held in escrow for games that used RNG MTX in order to provide refunds to customers who have shown they've entered treatment for gambling or behavioral addictions. Obviously experts in those areas would know more about how to tune that, but ideally this would have a nice alignment of disincentivize pushing impulsivity, have an obvious cost to courting addicts (like Big Fish was accused of), and probably most importantly provides some support for addicts to seek help. Addiction is typically embarrassing and difficult to seek help for, but in more cognizant moments having it clear that you can at least get "some of it back" if you also get help can nudge folks in that way.
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Jun 26, 2022 04:37
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mutata posted:I used to thumb my nose at most/all free to play games until I started talking to east Asian game devs on a regular basis and they talked about how kids over there with no expendable income get to play big, quality, fun games; the same ones the west is playing even; for free thanks to the F2P model in general. The insane profits companies make off of the most successful and exploitative titles tell us that there's plenty of slack for them to be less exploitative and still provide free to play games for people who want them. If you're sustainable on your free to play model then you can point to it and say hey we have to do this and that's fair enough. If you're raking it in off your exploitation then you don't get to pretend that your hands are tied or that you're providing games for the poor children. And that's definitely a very distinct line that can be drawn. If you need a model for the game to exist then you can say that players are making a choice to have your game exist as it is over the alternative of it not existing. So it's more a symbiotic relationship than pure exploitation. But if you're making well above that point then you're just choosing to exploit players.
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Jun 26, 2022 07:10
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As I said, I agree that it is a complex topic made up of mostly grey areas, and it depends very much on execution.
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Jun 26, 2022 14:22
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nintendo
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Jun 26, 2022 16:49
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I know we're way past it but thanks for everyone that gave me advice. I've been applying to companies that I can morally work for (no web3, no abk). It's funny but what broke the mental block was a recruiter emailing me a list of positions open. It turns out that they didn't even read my resume and just saw that I worked at Mozilla and not what I did at Mozilla (Exhibitor). Either way, it stopped me from wanting to craft the "perfect resume" and just turn it in.
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Jun 27, 2022 20:20
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I'm investigating getting my game ported to Switch. Nintendo wants nothing to do with me personally because I don't have an established track record, so I'd have to go through a porting company. That means a fairly substantial capital outlay, i.e. I'm paying other people for their time instead of spending my own time. When it comes to negotiating over price, what levers can y'all think of that can be tweaked? For example, I can ask for less cash in exchange for them getting a cut of the game's sales -- though I have little idea how much the game's going to sell, so that's hard to value. What other things might I offer to help bring the price down? Might your average porting house value me offering a more active hand in helping with the porting work? They'll have a pretty good idea of both what the code looks like and therefore what my own skill level is -- and of course, I'm the expert on the thing since I wrote it all.
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Jun 29, 2022 04:24
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm investigating getting my game ported to Switch. Nintendo wants nothing to do with me personally because I don't have an established track record, so I'd have to go through a porting company. That means a fairly substantial capital outlay, i.e. I'm paying other people for their time instead of spending my own time. When it comes to negotiating over price, what levers can y'all think of that can be tweaked? For example, I can ask for less cash in exchange for them getting a cut of the game's sales -- though I have little idea how much the game's going to sell, so that's hard to value. What other things might I offer to help bring the price down? Are you paying for QA? Are you paying for a producer? In contracts I negotiate it's basically X/mo/engineer where qa/producer are 1/2 engineers. (We'll get spend for 9 man months this month and get a 10 per squad.)
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Jun 29, 2022 04:31
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm investigating getting my game ported to Switch. Nintendo wants nothing to do with me personally because I don't have an established track record, so I'd have to go through a porting company. That means a fairly substantial capital outlay, i.e. I'm paying other people for their time instead of spending my own time. When it comes to negotiating over price, what levers can y'all think of that can be tweaked? For example, I can ask for less cash in exchange for them getting a cut of the game's sales -- though I have little idea how much the game's going to sell, so that's hard to value. What other things might I offer to help bring the price down? Who is going to own the access to the title through the store, the light marketing, etc? Are they going to handle cert and QA for your build as well? Are you going to need to procure your own dev kits? I don't have a lot of experience messing around with dev in switch, but most platform stuff vexes me.
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Jun 29, 2022 04:31
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Hughlander posted:Are you paying for QA? Are you paying for a producer? In contracts I negotiate it's basically X/mo/engineer where qa/producer are 1/2 engineers. (We'll get spend for 9 man months this month and get a 10 per squad.) MJBuddy posted:Who is going to own the access to the title through the store, the light marketing, etc? This would be basically them handling the entire process: dev time to do the port, QA (of the port, not of the game in general), certification, uploading, etc. I would presumably be involved in providing assets and copy for the store page, and need to be available to answer questions during the development process, but otherwise my involvement would be via my checkbook, so to speak. Ownership of the store page is a good question, and something I'd want to clarify. But I'm pretty confident that as far as Nintendo would be concerned, they're the company to talk to and I don't even really exist except as a name in the "publisher" field. I have a separate PR team, which would handle press outreach. One of the big reasons I'm even considering the expense of the port is because I understand that press pays a lot more attention to games that have console ports, as opposed to PC-only games. Presumably because only Serious, Important Games (or at least games backed by companies with comparatively big wallets) can get console access. I have what I think is a reasonable amount of faith that Waves of Steel is a good game, whose primary issue is that people mostly don't know it exists. Getting a console port then might be a way to help solve that problem. But it sure is expensive, and I don't have any way of estimating what the expected return on that investment would be.
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Jun 29, 2022 04:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:because I understand that press pays a lot more attention to games that have console ports, as opposed to PC-only games. Presumably because only Serious, Important Games (or at least games backed by companies with comparatively big wallets) can get console access. Wow, the press should really look at the Nintendo eShop sometime
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Jun 29, 2022 05:08
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I have what I think is a reasonable amount of faith that Waves of Steel is a good game, whose primary issue is that people mostly don't know it exists. Getting a console port then might be a way to help solve that problem. But it sure is expensive, and I don't have any way of estimating what the expected return on that investment would be. Have you done any targeted marketing? It's another expense but if your goal is expanding awareness, why not drop ads in like Facebook's ad space for hyperfans of world of warships or some other thematically shared title?
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Jun 29, 2022 05:25
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