Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?

Anything to do with games at all.

Is gaming in a better place now?

Yes
15
52%
No
14
48%
 
Total votes: 29
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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by OrangeRKN » Thu May 09, 2019 4:39 pm

Indie gaming has never been better as far as I'm concerned and in its modern form was in its infancy at the start of the last generation, so that's a huge plus for gaming.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Gemini73 » Thu May 09, 2019 4:41 pm

The aggressive application of loot boxes et al followed by empty apologies from publishers for including them in the first place only for said same publishers to then repackage loot boxes and do it all over again under a different name with their next new release is certainly this generations low point.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Green Gecko » Thu May 09, 2019 4:48 pm

More like this please ;)

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Tafdolphin » Thu May 09, 2019 4:50 pm

Still not home, but 2 quick things;

Indie games have gone from an interesting industry trend to my preferred games full stop. The creativity and variety of independently produced games far outstrips most of what the big boys are putting out.

Nintendo's full fledged support of this side of the industry means I consider the Switch one of the best consoles ever made, and certainly the best I've ever owned.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Trelliz » Thu May 09, 2019 5:57 pm

Categorically worse, but i'm leaving identity and right/left politics out of this and stick to the business model or else this thread will crash with no survivors.

Games publishers make billions of dollars from unregulated gambling, pay effectively zero tax (and in many cases get rebates) and yet when a game fails to somehow make the astronomical sales expectations driven by massive growth and shareholder interests it is not the ludicrously wealthy executives who take a hit or have to face the consequences, but the rank-and-file staff who are worked to breaking point and fired in the same breath as the jubilant announcement of said massive profits.

"Live service" games provide a Pavlovian drip-feed of addictive mediocrity to drive "engagement", keeping people plugging away for the shiny shinys while sauntering up next to them and offering a way to pay out of the grinds that were deliberately created for that purpose, all to make sure the numbers go up somehow - it doesn't matter how, but the sales numbers have to be bigger than last year, no matter how mind-bogglingly big those numbers are on their own. Oh, and next year's game will wipe all that so you can start again once we shut the servers down.

Certainly among the TRIPLE AAAAYYYYYYY spectrum games appear to no longer be designed for player enjoyment but as a vector for selling you more intangible and random shite, and without them the games are hollow shells. Forza Horizon 4 was the breaking point for me; even though it had no microtransactions in it, you could tell that they were going in that direction until the Battlefront 2 debacle forced them to cut that out to save face. It's a stunningly beautiful game yet utterly inconsequential treadmill which seems to be more about dressing up your character in hipster clothes and making them dab at the start of a race than anything else. I ended up playing it for hours in this semi-alert state, doing races where winning was utterly irrelevant (you made more money coming last on the hardest difficulty than 1st on the second-hardest) and it was all about doing daily/weekly/monthly challenges for exclusive baubles and getting lost in the wash of numbers and meters going up than anything else.

This all probably reads like "old man yells at cloud" but at this point I am clearly no longer the target audience for the vast majority of the games industry. I'll keep plugging away at an ever decreasing selection of game series, probably end up going back into retro/emulation to play stuff that's free from all of these things I can't abide.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Green Gecko » Thu May 09, 2019 6:36 pm

You guys are welcome to talk about identity politics and whatever is deemed "progressive" provided it doesn't skirt breaking the law by denigrating minority individuals via implying their inclusion within games as a medium is somehow offensive or harmful to "ordinary" people/"gamers", or ram the same point into the thread over and over again by refusing to engage in other's views or wilfully misconstruing their arguments, because that is gooseberry fool and boring and a method typically employed deliberately to silence other people's views. If you want to do that, post once and move on with your life.

Not very complicated rule to follow and it is not difficult to avoid hatred in this context.

Remember: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism, or that nobody is allowed to be pissed off by stupid gooseberry fool you say. Moderating or otherwise attempting to mediate your views for the benefit of an enjoyable discussion for more than one person does not construe a breach of your freedom of speech, because nobody owes you a theatre for your views, and we are not obligated to host them. You are responsible for making one if you want that, not a tiny forum on the Internet. GRcade does not equal your rights as a Citizen of the UK / the world, and we are not the government, or a court of law. And that's fine. You're more than welcome to push reasonable etiquette far enough to find out the difference, just do it somewhere else. Freedom of speech means you won't be fined or imprisoned for saying things, provided it isn't targeted at another individual or group i.e. hate speech.

(i.e. go outside and picket black or trans people existing as NPCs, try not to be arrested.)

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Balladeer » Thu May 09, 2019 6:40 pm

Trelliz wrote:Categorically worse, but i'm leaving identity and right/left politics out of this and stick to the business model or else this thread will crash with no survivors.

Jim, is that you!? ;)

To everyone saying how sick they are of TRIPLE AAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEE gubbins, which is more than fair enough and which I agree with, I would agree with the top comments on this page: indies. Also, first and second-party exclusives. Nintendonysoft are invested in creating games that make you want you to buy their machines, not pump money into their games but into the machines that play them; so while you may see some microtransactions, they're on the most part a damn sight better than your EAs Activisions et al.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Winckle » Thu May 09, 2019 7:32 pm

Balladeer wrote:
Trelliz wrote:Categorically worse, but i'm leaving identity and right/left politics out of this and stick to the business model or else this thread will crash with no survivors.

Jim, is that you!? ;)

To everyone saying how sick they are of TRIPLE AAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEE gubbins, which is more than fair enough and which I agree with, I would agree with the top comments on this page: indies. Also, first and second-party exclusives. Nintendonysoft are invested in creating games that make you want you to buy their machines, not pump money into their games but into the machines that play them; so while you may see some microtransactions, they're on the most part a damn sight better than your EAs Activisions et al.

I used to be categorically against platform exclusives, but Jim Sterling makes the point as you do, that because they want to have good quality games to sell their hardware, they don't need lootboxes/live services/microtransactions etc.

We should migrate GRcade to Flarum. :toot:
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by VlaSoul » Thu May 09, 2019 7:39 pm

In terms of the tech, games and hardware; yeah I'd say gaming is in a better place than ten years ago and can only go up from here. There's always a huge amount of quality titles to play, even if there is a lot of gooseberry fool in the mix.

Business practices are worse tho, as the industry has grown the major corporations have found some fantastic and novel ways to really strawberry float the consumer, and they work cuz most people dont care.
In terms of the consumers themselves; idk man. I've seen a lot of opposition recently to devs injecting their own personal politics and views into vidya, but surely that's par for the course for any art form? What's the point if you can't express ideas in your work (not to say it often works out well; diversity in triple A games often comes off as very patronising and heavy handed, probably cuz it's still a white male dominated industry and a lot of people involved don't truly care about the whole thing). In addition the state of video games journalism (lol) is strawberry floating dire atm and so many writers will come up with the absolute dumbest gooseberry fool possible just for views. As a final thought to balance out the negativity, the average consumer is also much more informed now than they were as information is much more readily available, so at least there's more hope now for publishers to understand what we all like and don't like.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Mafro » Thu May 09, 2019 7:43 pm

The Wii was two gens ago, Nick.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Cal » Thu May 09, 2019 8:40 pm

I do have to say that I don't generally share the cynicism or even outright hatred for microtransactions and paid DLC that someone like Jim Sterling regularly exercises in his increasingly one-note videos. My view is that if you, as the customer, want to buy into extra content for a game you might particularly enjoy I have no issues with that (I do it myself, god knows). I understand that 'hiding content behind a paywall' is a thing, but it's a nuanced thing and often hard to discern clearly.

Game developers have to earn a living, too - I know; that's an unpopular argument, but I do think it's incumbent upon an employer (and these are often very large businesses) to maximize revenue and profit. A successful game, including its multifarious revenue streams, keeps people in jobs for longer and might even mitigate some of the chronic short-termism present in the modern games industry (where increasingly it seems one might only have 'a chair' in a company for the average life cycle of the game you're working on - especially if the metacritic is sub-par).

So, in principle, I'm not averse to the business of microtransactions and paid DLC - I actually think that for many they add value to a beloved game. Not always, but often.

Last edited by Cal on Fri May 10, 2019 7:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Balladeer » Thu May 09, 2019 8:59 pm

Winckle wrote:I used to be categorically against platform exclusives, but Jim Sterling makes the point as you do, that because they want to have good quality games to sell their hardware, they don't need lootboxes/live services/microtransactions etc.

I won't lie, I nicked it off the man. He makes a lot of good points and he makes them well.

I should say that I'm largely fairly happy with the way that Nintendo has approached DLC. They'll release big full games and then drop a decent amount of extra content for what seems to me like a decent price (or free); or they'll release a 'game as a service' where basically all new additions are free. I'm okay with that. I'm just aware of slopes with low friction...

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Tafdolphin » Thu May 09, 2019 9:40 pm

So, again before I go into my full reply to the topic, I want to address Cal's latest post. Specifically this part

Cal wrote:Game developers have to earn a living, too - I know; that's an unpopular argument, but I do think it's incumbent upon an employer (and these are often very large businesses) to maximize revenue and profit. A successful game, including it's multifarious revenue streams, keeps people in jobs for longer and might even mitigate some of the chronic short-termism present in the modern games industry (where increasingly it seems one might only have 'a chair' in a company for the average life cycle of the game you're working on - especially if the metacritic is sub-par).


This appears to be a defence of the current capitalist market related specifically to gaming. Essentially, more money for game makers = better job security. In response, I'll just post a couple of links and allow people (ie Cal) to make up their mind just how valid this argument is.

The first is Activision Blizzard's Fourth Quarter and 2018 Fiscal Results announcement (a huge portion of Activison-Blizzard's revenue comes from loot boxes and microtransactions)

https://investor.activision.com/news-re ... -financial

GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $2.35, as compared with $0.36 for 2017. On a non-GAAP basis, Activision Blizzard’s operating margin was 34% and earnings per diluted share were a record $2.72, as compared with $2.21 for 2017.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2018, Activision Blizzard’s net revenues presented in accordance with GAAP were a record $2.38 billion, as compared with $2.04 billion for the fourth quarter of 2017. GAAP net revenues from digital channels were a record $1.79 billion. GAAP operating margin was a Q4 record of 29%. GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $0.84, as compared with loss per share of $0.77 for the fourth quarter of 2017. On a non-GAAP basis, Activision Blizzard’s operating margin was a Q4 record of 35% and earnings per diluted share were a record $0.90, as compared with $0.49 for the fourth quarter of 2017.

Activision Blizzard generated $1.79 billion in operating cash flow for the year ended December 31, 2018, as compared to $2.21 billion for 2017. For the quarter, operating cash flow was $999 million.


Emphases mine.

“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential." Bobby Kotick


Of course, you all know what's coming next.

https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard- ... 1832571288

Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees, which would mean nearly 800 people are now out of work.

This afternoon, the mega-publisher began notifying those who are being laid off across its various organizations, which include Activision, Blizzard, and King.


Cal theorises a system where the dividends from massive leaps in profit is shared by everyone involved in that company's activities, that the game developers themselves will reap the financial benefits as much as the shareholders.

This simply isn't true.

The new Blizzard CFO received a $3.75 million signing on bonus with an extra £11 million in stock. CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly made close to $30 million last year in salary and stock options. As shown above, A-B made a record profit.

But the capitalist system is based on constant growth. More profit, less overheads. 800 people had to go. Because although A-B made more money than ever before, it wasn't enough. It never is. The shareholders and Executives reaped the benefit and the workers suffer.

Cal, as usual, is peddling a lie and trying to do it in a way that presents his view as the only rational one amongst the screaming bellows of the loony left. I haven't even gone into the courting of addictive behaviour common in service games that he completely ignored, mainly because Trelliz has already done the subject justice with his excellent post above. Cal is spouting bullshit, and I know everyone knows it's bullshit, but I couldn't let it pass unremarked.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Green Gecko » Thu May 09, 2019 11:01 pm

Tafdolphin wrote:So, again before I go into my full reply to the topic, I want to address Cal's latest post. Specifically this part

Cal wrote:Game developers have to earn a living, too - I know; that's an unpopular argument, but I do think it's incumbent upon an employer (and these are often very large businesses) to maximize revenue and profit. A successful game, including it's multifarious revenue streams, keeps people in jobs for longer and might even mitigate some of the chronic short-termism present in the modern games industry (where increasingly it seems one might only have 'a chair' in a company for the average life cycle of the game you're working on - especially if the metacritic is sub-par).


This appears to be a defence of the current capitalist market related specifically to gaming. Essentially, more money for game makers = better job security. In response, I'll just post a couple of links and allow people (ie Cal) to make up their mind just how valid this argument is.

The first is Activision Blizzard's Fourth Quarter and 2018 Fiscal Results announcement (a huge portion of Activison-Blizzard's revenue comes from loot boxes and microtransactions)

https://investor.activision.com/news-re ... -financial

GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $2.35, as compared with $0.36 for 2017. On a non-GAAP basis, Activision Blizzard’s operating margin was 34% and earnings per diluted share were a record $2.72, as compared with $2.21 for 2017.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2018, Activision Blizzard’s net revenues presented in accordance with GAAP were a record $2.38 billion, as compared with $2.04 billion for the fourth quarter of 2017. GAAP net revenues from digital channels were a record $1.79 billion. GAAP operating margin was a Q4 record of 29%. GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $0.84, as compared with loss per share of $0.77 for the fourth quarter of 2017. On a non-GAAP basis, Activision Blizzard’s operating margin was a Q4 record of 35% and earnings per diluted share were a record $0.90, as compared with $0.49 for the fourth quarter of 2017.

Activision Blizzard generated $1.79 billion in operating cash flow for the year ended December 31, 2018, as compared to $2.21 billion for 2017. For the quarter, operating cash flow was $999 million.


Emphases mine.

“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential." Bobby Kotick


Of course, you all know what's coming next.

https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard- ... 1832571288

Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees, which would mean nearly 800 people are now out of work.

This afternoon, the mega-publisher began notifying those who are being laid off across its various organizations, which include Activision, Blizzard, and King.


Cal theorises a system where the dividends from massive leaps in profit is shared by everyone involved in that company's activities, that the game developers themselves will reap the financial benefits as much as the shareholders.

This simply isn't true.

The new Blizzard CFO received a $3.75 million signing on bonus with an extra £11 million in stock. CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly made close to $30 million last year in salary and stock options. As shown above, A-B made a record profit.

But the capitalist system is based on constant growth. More profit, less overheads. 800 people had to go. Because although A-B made more money than ever before, it wasn't enough. It never is. The shareholders and Executives reaped the benefit and the workers suffer.

Cal, as usual, is peddling a lie and trying to do it in a way that presents his view as the only rational one amongst the screaming bellows of the loony left. I haven't even gone into the courting of addictive behaviour common in service games that he completely ignored, mainly because Trelliz has already done the subject justice with his excellent post above. Cal is spouting bullshit, and I know everyone knows it's bullshit, but I couldn't let it pass unremarked.

Actually I think that's unfair and an overreaction, but it's satisfying to have a dig anyway isn't it? Cal posted cordially with his views and explained why he has them. He has only posted once about DLC and so isn't peddling anything. And he didn't immediately turn it into a personal attack or insist what someone else yet to even post how you describe was really doing.

I think he's right in theory but unfortunately the results are probably not good for customers. DLC and micro transactions can be exploitative and anti-consumer. They may however reduce risk in making investments or recoup high development costs which could arguably mean more original content because games are making money for longer, but it could just as easily have the opposite effect of doubling down on "safe" styles/franchises of game. Nintendo handle something like this well as do a lot of developers. Activision and EA are just the worst of them.

In the case of Activision, as brutal as it is, if a company like that identifies unneeded labour brought on to, for example, handle tech support or localisation (disciplines that tend to scale up and down much more dramatically than, for example, programming, because they are manual work) for a specific game or service that is then launched or run its course, the workforce can be considered surplus to requirements and laid off, hopefully with redundancy packages, relocation offers or other industry networks for re-employment. That's just how corporations work, no matter how much money they have or make, if hires are taken on for a task that no longer exists they will get fired when for example their contracts are due to terminate. A company no matter how rich it is isn't obligated to employ someone forever; it's more obligated in terms of its beneficiaries to (a) spend less or (b) make more money, preferably both.

Every company ever has a seasonal or growth-linked variation in employment, a cycle called hiring and firing. A small company might have a core team of ten with some overload of work or special project requiring one or two extra hires a year to handle the extra work, but it might not last forever or efficiencies discovered in the meantime make them redundant, whether that's automation or employee productivity overall going up. At the scale of a huge international conglomerate that 1 to 10 ratio of fluctuating staff requirements is going to involve potentially thousands of extra hires, so when they get laid off it looks punishing but it's relatively normal. The same surge in HR will probably re-occur at some other point. You just don't have 100% the same staff all the time no matter what size company or how rich it is.

When I was following these layoffs, it was less production-oriented or marketing jobs (which are needed more around the announcement and launch of products, although that isn't really the case anymore outside of the traditional presentational marketing model) being sliced, more so than core development staff. That doesn't make it a good thing, but having administrative overhead ebb and slow in a seasonal manner is not an unusual thing. It does seem to be the case that increasingly some developers and art directors, to reference the recent For Honor documentary particularly, are only in the hot seat for the term of one or two games. I found that particularly sad, but to be fair he [For Honor guy] did come into the company to pitch a specific game which did get made largely by his design and was let go because he was "too intense". I'm not sure what they were expecting for a guy that literally looks and talks like a Viking but yeah, an observation.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Tafdolphin » Fri May 10, 2019 12:08 am

Green Gecko wrote:Actually I think that's unfair and an overreaction, but it's satisfying to have a dig anyway isn't it? Cal posted cordially with his views and explained why he has them. He has only posted once about DLC and so isn't peddling anything. And he didn't immediately turn it into a personal attack or insist what someone else yet to even post how you describe was really doing.


My response, including my tone, was based on a knowledge of who Cal is. Before being banned from off topic he was a constant bad-faith poster who refused to reason or respond to even pleasant-faced critiques and who consistently entered threads to sow his often offensive views and disappear when questioned. Most of his posts were cordial as strawberry float because when people got angry he'd appear the cool, calm and reasonable one. It's the same reason victims of Twitter harassment often get banned over their harassers.

Cordiality can be used as a shield and, knowing who Cal is, I refuse to deflect my response due to its presence. By responding with the above you've given Cal more ammunition to stoke his victim complex.

I think he's right in theory


But not in reality.

In the case of Activision, as brutal as it is, if a company like that identifies unneeded labour brought on to, for example, handle tech support or localisation (disciplines that tend to scale up and down much more dramatically than, for example, programming, because they are manual work) for a specific game or service that is then launched or run its course, the workforce can be considered surplus to requirements and laid off, hopefully with redundancy packages, relocation offers or other industry networks for re-employment. That's just how corporations work, no matter how much money they have or make, if hires are taken on for a task that no longer exists they will get fired when for example their contracts are due to terminate. A company no matter how rich it is isn't obligated to employ someone forever; it's more obligated in terms of its beneficiaries to (a) spend less or (b) make more money, preferably both.

Every company ever has a seasonal or growth-linked variation in employment, a cycle called hiring and firing. A small company might have a core team of ten with some overload of work or special project requiring one or two extra hires a year to handle the extra work, but it might not last forever or efficiencies discovered in the meantime make them redundant, whether that's automation or employee productivity overall going up. At the scale of a huge international conglomerate that 1 to 10 ratio of fluctuating staff requirements is going to involve potentially thousands of extra hires, so when they get laid off it looks punishing but it's relatively normal. The same surge in HR will probably re-occur at some other point. You just don't have 100% the same staff all the time no matter what size company or how rich it is.

When I was following these layoffs, it was less production-oriented or marketing jobs (which are needed more around the announcement and launch of products, although that isn't really the case anymore outside of the traditional presentational marketing model) being sliced, more so than core development staff. That doesn't make it a good thing, but having administrative overhead ebb and slow in a seasonal manner is not an unusual thing. It does seem to be the case that increasingly some developers and art directors, to reference the recent For Honor documentary particularly, are only in the hot seat for the term of one or two games. I found that particularly sad, but to be fair he [For Honor guy] did come into the company to pitch a specific game which did get made largely by his design and was let go because he was "too intense". I'm not sure what they were expecting for a guy that literally looks and talks like a Viking but yeah, an observation.


My point is that the system is broken and what you've done here is provide another example as to how. Calling the seasonal hiring and firing of developers 'not unusual' on one hand and 'brutal' on the other is exactly what I'm talking about; these companies engage in abusive hiring practices that benefit shareholders and the executive class. Stating 'that's just how a corporation works' does not alleviate the system that enables these practices from criticism, nor is it a counter to the worst example of said practice the games industry has seen.

My point remains that the system is one of inherent harm to game development workers, and that Cal's support of trickle down Reaganomics is based on proven fallacy.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Fri May 10, 2019 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Moggy » Fri May 10, 2019 7:46 am

Is gaming in a better place? Sure, we have flashier graphics now. :datass:

Is gaming culture in a better place? I have no idea, other than this place I don't really get involved with it. As has been mentioned it is hard to pin down exactly what gaming culture is but it seems to encompass the views of people like Taf and the views of people like Cal. So as much as one side might not like the word, it is pretty diverse. ;)

Are microtransactions fantastic? For purely cosmetic items I don't really care. "Pay to win" is the work of the devil though. But that was the same a decade ago, the infamous horse armour was released in 2006. Yes, we are old.

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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Cal » Fri May 10, 2019 8:13 am

Moggy wrote:Is gaming in a better place? Sure, we have flashier graphics now. :datass:

Is gaming culture in a better place? I have no idea, other than this place I don't really get involved with it. As has been mentioned it is hard to pin down exactly what gaming culture is but it seems to encompass the views of people like Taf and the views of people like Cal. So as much as one side might not like the word, it is pretty diverse. ;)


My views about gaming amount to 'do what you want, how you want and don't apologise for any of it to people who don't have your best interests at heart'. This is exactly why a game like Subverse gets my dollar. I don't care about the content (I doubt I'll ever play the game I paid for) and I doubt I'd agree with everything about the game or its developers, but I do care about the principle (in this case, consciously pushing back against pearl-clutching progressives who seem to want to stamp out all the fun and sexiness from gaming).

Moggy wrote:Are microtransactions fantastic? For purely cosmetic items I don't really care. "Pay to win" is the work of the devil though. But that was the same a decade ago, the infamous horse armour was released in 2006. Yes, we are old.


In online games Pay To Win must be some kind of willfully self-harming commercial decision - if it actually goes on in the way people seem to think it does. I mean, does it, though? Can anyone give an example of an online game where the developer/publisher has willfully implemented a deliberate and clear Pay To Win system designed directly to disproportionately advantage certain players against those who don't buy into the microtransactions/DLC? Have any such games doing this maintained their player base? Are they still around? If they are, might it not be reasonable to assume that although people grumble, the majority must - evidentially - be okay with it, or surely the player base would simply vanish in disgust?

And I'm totally fine with Pay To Win in offline or SP games ($5 for an infinite ammo gun in RE2 Remake seems like a good commercial offer if, like me, you'd rather not faff about in the zombie apocalypse).

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Moggy
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Moggy » Fri May 10, 2019 8:21 am

I am going to ignore the first part of the post as "pearl clutching progressives" is one of the most ridiculous phrases in existence. And buying a game you don't want to play just to own the libs is peak Cal.

Cal wrote:And I'm totally fine with Pay To Win in offline or SP games ($5 for an infinite ammo gun in RE2 Remake seems like a good commercial offer if, like me, you'd rather not faff about in the zombie apocalypse).


You are old enough to remember when infinite ammo, infinite lives etc was all done by a few button presses and cost you no extra. If you are happy paying $5 for that then that's fine, but let's not pretend it is a good commercial offer.

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Balladeer
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Balladeer » Fri May 10, 2019 8:24 am

This is going to become one of those threads isn’t it.

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Moggy
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PostRe: Is gaming in a better place than it was a decade ago?
by Moggy » Fri May 10, 2019 8:26 am

Balladeer wrote:This is going to become one of those threads isn’t it.


It's all Nick's fault. :x ;)


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