Genuine Question: Why do mobile games need to be pay to win?

[Ghost of Cow]

You can't provide an single example to prove your point?

Look at your TV, at your social media, at your phone. Do you understand that the images and people shown in commercials aren't just chosen at random? That the impressions you're given about certain things are carefully crafted and chosen? Why commercials are made by literal production companies in a similar fashion to movies? Why corporations pay millions for studies and focus groups and data harvesting?

Why the people in McDonalds ads scarfing hamburgers are never fat, why the models in hair product commercials are always young and pretty, why the actors chosen to market to a particular demographic are chosen based on the pop culture references relevant to that age group when they were younger? Why there are logos that you recognize at a glance no matter how much you think you're not noticing them and why you use brand names to refer to products even when a particular item might not be of that brand?

Why everything on the internet has a "share on social media" button now, and why people have such a hard time telling legitimate information from advertising or propaganda. And most of all, why you believe that spending on certain things is "right" and "acceptable".

Hell, many of the impressions about this very topic have come from "influencers" using very specific language that you see repeated over and over. ("Influencers" are actually a really great tool for pushing exposure and impressions while making audiences believe that they're more savvy and intelligent for getting their information from a smaller, more trusted source instead of "the mainstream".)

I didn't think I needed to explain to another grown adult that "marketing exists". Do I have video footage of other meetings right here at my fingertips to link some random person on a message board? Of course not.

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Fine. Boon of plenty staggers real rewards until the very end, forcing you to log in every day or buy another boon of plenty if you missed a single day. Go.

That's not even a particularly hard one. Companies - and games, especially - use similar tactics to encourage constant engagement all the time. Concepts like flash sales to make you worry that you're missing something if you're not constantly engaging with a seller, for example.

Or for more gaming-related angles: daily quests, time-gating and content lockouts in MMOs. "Battle passes" with progression limited daily are also a way to get you to engage constantly because you paid up-front and therefore will feel loss aversion at the idea of missing the end rewards.

This shit is everywhere, it's just so ubiquitous that you don't notice it. Yes, it often feels scummy, and if you want to talk about that I'm all for it. But don't pretend as if mobile games just now invented these concepts. Are they perhaps scummier than the average seller? Perhaps. I really don't want to get into a debate about degrees, so I'd concede that right off the bat.

[Elim Garak]

Fine. Boon of plenty staggers real rewards until the very end, forcing you to log in every day or buy another boon of plenty if you missed a single day. Go.

You mean FOMO?

Every bonus points system in retail? Buy more to get more points, but only SELECT goods? And the points expire and most of the time you don't know when. And the only reason you collect the points is to buy that expensive item with them. Sure they don't actually tell you to buy every day. But the technique is the same. FOMO.

Also the prices on SELECT items are increased so any points earned is actually YOUR money that you will then spend on the expensive item, at the end.

Sometimes they also give you special sticker. And you collect them. And there's a menu with the items with prices in stickers (and real value with a discount because you pay with stickers) - but if you look at the store and find those items you would find that the discounted price is actually the actual price.

Gamepass works in the same way and PS plus. They give free games to subscribers. A month. You don't know what they would be but you are hoping for a big title you want. So you stay subscribed.

[Fencers]

So swindling people out of their money is fine as long as they're having fun maxing out their credit cards and ruining their lives. That's certainly a take.

The assumption this is even close to the majority of players is a leap of Icarus portions.

Clash of Clans isn't swindling you out of money any more than Call of Duty is swindling players. Any more than Games Workshop, LEGO, Tony Bianco. Any more than the bar up the street or the opera house downtown.

Because mobile games use psychological tricks to part you with your money. It's not a "choice" people make most of the time.

I got news for you, brother. Every piece of media sold uses psychological tricks to get you to spend money on it.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You are acting like that video is a REVELATION from Christ.

The poster I'm responding to with this video pretends this stuff isn't real, so for them it is a huge revelation. Of course they'll probably deny it.

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I got news for you, brother. Every piece of media sold uses psychological tricks to get you to spend money on it.

Yes, stores price their goods at 9.99 instead of $10 as a subconscious psychological trick.

But let's not pretend all forms of subconscious manipulation to get people to buy things are equal. They aren't. And it's both stupid and ignorant to claim so. Diablo Immortal has the scummiest marketing manipulation the west has seen yet.

Yes, I get it, you work as a mobile game analyst or whatever you once claimed you did. You yourself should know that some tactics are more effective than others, and some practices are more deceptive than others.

And I will remind you, back in the early industrial revolution, there were carpet baggers selling snake oil. The people who bought it often genuinely believed it was doing good for them. So by your logic, we shouldn't regulate sales of goods because as long as people enjoy/appreciate the product it's fine, right?

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It's fine to not like it - plenty of people don't - but to claim that it's a unique, evil creation of mobile games is just incorrect.

The premise of my OP is to ask why we as gamers should accept pay to win garbage invading and proliferating as much as it has into the entire gaming market. At this point it really does feel like the indie game market is one of the few bastions left that's mostly safe from predatory microtransactions.

But I really don't have much hope for the future of big dev gaming. Us older millennials generally reject these predatory monetization models, but boomers and zoomers seem perfectly fine with it, one because "It's a free game and I'm having fun!" and the other because "lol I get to beat up scrubs in PvP with my whale gear," it's going to keep making tons of money and people will willingly drop tens of thousands of dollars on a game they'll play for a month.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Because people who have fuck money to spend like to spend it on things they have fun doing.

[Ghost of Cow]

And I will remind you, back in the early industrial revolution, there were carpet baggers selling snake oil. The people who bought it often genuinely believed it was doing good for them. So by your logic, we shouldn't regulate sales of goods because as long as people enjoy/appreciate the product it's fine, right?

The problem with these analogies is that these games aren't lying about what they're selling. You might believe that what they're selling sucks - and that's totally ok - but they're not selling you a bottle of formaldehyde and telling you it's a cure for bad humors.

The premise of my OP is to ask why we as gamers should accept pay to win garbage invading and proliferating as much as it has into the entire gaming market. At this point it really does feel like the indie game market is one of the few bastions left that's mostly safe from predatory microtransactions.

But I really don't have much hope for the future of big dev gaming. Us older millennials generally reject these predatory monetization models, but boomers and zoomers seem perfectly fine with it, one because "It's a free game and I'm having fun!" and the other because "lol I get to beat up scrubs in PvP with my whale gear," it's going to keep making tons of money and people will willingly drop tens of thousands of dollars on a game they'll play for a month.

Indie - however it's defined now - is a great way to go, certainly. Lots of great games out there that don't get the same exposure that the big-name stuff gets. But even in the big AAA circles, there's still plenty of room for games that aren't P2W.

I do believe that the market that will continue to shape itself in strange ways are the game-as-a-service products. However, I don't believe it was the mobile games that initially started us down this path.

The expectation that a game will dominate our time. The willingness to pay a AAA box price and an ongoing subscription fee. The acceptance of development that bends itself around that subscription. Time gates, grinds, lockouts, feature trickle, and so on. If any genre showed companies that PC gamers were willing to accept that style of development and keep paying for it, it was the MMO.

If we really wanted to nip this shit in the bud and tell companies that we just wanted to buy and play a game without money-grubbing fees and development practices designed to milk the players, we needed to do it back in 1999.

[cparle87]

I'm not specifically talking about a specific dumpster fire that recently launched.

Stopped reading here. Can figure the rest of the post simply from this line. You're just here to bitch about mobile games.

[uuuhname]

well, I could certainly bring up a fairly reductionist argument that gamers, being the reactionary, capitalist consuuumers that they are, simply don't care as long as they get their toy to play with. and if we dared to use a recent game launch as any example that's exactly what it is.

[Tikishock]

Because it works.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Indie - however it's defined now - is a great way to go, certainly. Lots of great games out there that don't get the same exposure that the big-name stuff gets. But even in the big AAA circles, there's still plenty of room for games that aren't P2W.

I do believe that the market that will continue to shape itself in strange ways are the game-as-a-service products. However, I don't believe it was the mobile games that initially started us down this path.

My statement wasn't just that AAA titles are pay to win, I know most aren't, but they're still infected with microtransactions and pseudo round-about pay to win mechanics (WoW token).

Assassin's Creed, Fallout, GTA, just to name a small number of series that were once just games are now riddled with giant microtransaction stores. I'm "more fine" with cosmetic stores than pay to win garbage, but it still makes me think twice. And I realize many franchises are turning into games as a service, but I'd be more willing to buy AC:Valhalla content DLC if it wasn't also trying to sell me 500 other things.

[Paperfox]

Could you imagine if you're working on an Excel spreadsheet and you decide to name a few cells (or something equally minor), and you get a popup saying that you need to purchase that functionality.

Joshua Strife Hays has a great video on play to win games.

[Mysterymask]

My statement wasn't just that AAA titles are pay to win, I know most aren't, but they're still infected with microtransactions and pseudo round-about pay to win mechanics (WoW token).

Assassin's Creed, Fallout, GTA, just to name a small number of series that were once just games are now riddled with giant microtransaction stores. I'm "more fine" with cosmetic stores than pay to win garbage, but it still makes me think twice. And I realize many franchises are turning into games as a service, but I'd be more willing to buy AC:Valhalla content DLC if it wasn't also trying to sell me 500 other things.

I mean a lot of those are either pretty easily ignorable or basically the same as an expansion pack from back in the day..

All of GTAs is basically part of the online experience which in a weird way is a F2P game...you didn't buy GTA5 for the online portion everyone bought it for the single player campaign the online was a bonus and the microtransactions are for this bonus feature...never touch online never gotta deal with transactions

The AC Valhalla ones seem to most be expansions...my question is how is WC3s back in the day ok but this isn't? Hell if memory serves Frozen Throne was fucking $40. I see they have currency packs too not that keen into how it plays but I feel they are mostly ignorable

Fallout..I mean 76s we knew about from the get go and that game has issues WAAAAY beyond the DLC I'm assuming your talking about 76 since 4s mod support rivals Skyrim

[Trifle]

Could you imagine if you're working on an Excel spreadsheet and you decide to name a few cells (or something equally minor), and you get a popup saying that you need to purchase that functionality.

Hey, that business model works for Oracle !

[Cthulhu 2020]

Stopped reading here. Can figure the rest of the post simply from this line. You're just here to bitch about mobile games.

Watch that video, and look at how fondly he talks about his time during the alpha test of D:I before the cash shop was put into the game.

Once again, here is the core question of my OP: Why is something being a mobile game an excuse for it being 1. bad 2. pay to win. Because D:I in alpha and beta before the cash shop sounded like an extremely fun game.

"Well because it needs to make money!"

Mobile games can make money without being pay to win. They make more money if they're pay to win, sure. But they can still make money. So why do players polish Blizzard's knob for what happened with this game? Why are gaming companies conditioning players to think this sort of thing is okay?

Yes, I realize it all comes down to money. My question is why should we tolerate it? Because boomers with too much money and zoomers with no money are "having fun"?

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I mean a lot of those are either pretty easily ignorable or basically the same as an expansion pack from back in the day..

All of GTAs is basically part of the online experience which in a weird way is a F2P game...you didn't buy GTA5 for the online portion everyone bought it for the single player campaign the online was a bonus and the microtransactions are for this bonus feature...never touch online never gotta deal with transactions

The AC Valhalla ones seem to most be expansions...my question is how is WC3s back in the day ok but this isn't? Hell if memory serves Frozen Throne was fucking $40. I see they have currency packs too not that keen into how it plays but I feel they are mostly ignorable

Fallout..I mean 76s we knew about from the get go and that game has issues WAAAAY beyond the DLC I'm assuming your talking about 76 since 4s mod support rivals Skyrim

Those were just a few examples. The big studios of the world are moving more and more into cash shops.

And also, you seem to try to be catching this statement in some kind of "hah, gotcha hypocrite" with the whole WC3 thing. I said I'd be fine with content focused DLC. An Assassin's Creed: Valhalla DC of a new continent that gives me 40 hours of gameplay is perfectly acceptable in the same veing that WC3 The Frozen Throne was acceptable as a WC3 expansion. I don't care if I have to pay for more actual content that includes fun gameplay. My problem with AC:Valhalla is the enormous amounts of cosmetics they shove in there as well.

Also "Nobody bought GTA V for the online play" uhhhhh my bro, nobody has exact numbers on this, but almost every source I found says that the revenue from GTA Online (which is just GTA V turned into a pseudo MMO) surpasses that of GTA V. GTA Online has an enormous market of players who use it as a second life.

[kieraTM]

To quote the guy at Blizzcon 'don't you guys have mobiles?'. I would say a big reason is that mobile games are very restricted in 3 main ways: literal size (small screen), performance power of the mobile itself (have to keep it plugged in charging or bye bye battery) and very basic controls. Why would you want to play a proper, one-time purchase game on a mobile? It's probably going to be bad, compared to what one can achieve on a PC or a console. This is one of the reasons people hated Immortal on release: yeah, we have phones, but we also have powerful PCs and large monitors which makes for a much more comfortable, immersive game experience

Therefore, I believe mobile gaming caters to a different demographic than 'main' PC/console gamers, and as such the games tend to be much more simplistic and designed around MTXs to give you a feeling of superiority. I don't know about you all, but I still don't consider someone a 'gamer' if they just play a mobile game. To me, I will always consider mobile 'games' to be interactive apps

[cocomen2]

To quote the guy at Blizzcon 'don't you guys have mobiles?'. I would say a big reason is that mobile games are very restricted in 3 main ways: literal size (small screen), performance power of the mobile itself (have to keep it plugged in charging or bye bye battery) and very basic controls. Why would you want to play a proper, one-time purchase game on a mobile? It's probably going to be bad, compared to what one can achieve on a PC or a console. This is one of the reasons people hated Immortal on release: yeah, we have phones, but we also have powerful PCs and large monitors which makes for a much more comfortable, immersive game experience

Therefore, I believe mobile gaming caters to a different demographic than 'main' PC/console gamers, and as such the games tend to be much more simplistic and designed around MTXs to give you a feeling of superiority. I don't know about you all, but I still don't consider someone a 'gamer' if they just play a mobile game. To me, I will always consider mobile 'games' to be interactive apps

Then you sure didn't played Korean MMOs on PC, lets say L2, that game has very "realistic" evil rules for economy and PK and does its best in trying to force you to hate other players that play with you. There was little sad moment with friend irl, guy got mad at me when i didn't go along with his scheme robbery of items from other players "If other people stealing, why i must be different?" ye sad logic just like in "Silent war"... to beat rapist-> main character becomes more powerful rapist...

And yet C1 of said Lineage2.... was one of best mmorpg for me, people were "new" to mmo feeling, nowdays its just lobby with ton rich kids, 200 000$ .... "hell yeah p2w to ruin gaming!" lmao

[cparle87]

Once again, here is the core question of my OP: Why is something being a mobile game an excuse for it being 1. bad 2. pay to win. Because D:I in alpha and beta before the cash shop sounded like an extremely fun game.

1, cited for opinion. 2, see logical fallacy called "Argument from ignorance".

[qwerty123456]

1. Because they wanna make as much money as possible.

2. Because the gameplay isn't compelling enough to play for long periods of time without gating (like through energy) and by adding new characters/units to collect and since big ol' titties wont get everyone to whale and they can't make every unit hot/cool as fuck they add new units with new powers to get you through the new content they made nearly impossible without at least 1 new character so you will continue to play and buy.

[Cthulhu 2020]

1, cited for opinion. 2, see logical fallacy called "Argument from ignorance".

1.

"Opinion"



It may have better scores on the android/apple store, but I urge you to go actually look at those reviews. Thousands and thousands of people have upvoted most 1 and 2 star ratings saying the game has fun combat and is otherwise a pay to win mess. You know, ratings that look like they're from real people. Meanwhile the 5 star reviews all have the same wording as 5 star reviews on other heavily monetized games, copy pasted. It's almost like companies buy good reviews where they can. If the great majority of players of hate it, like literally over 95% of people who try it, it's a bad game. The one single thing it has going for it is combat, and that's it. People have already started quitting en masse.

2. If by ignorance you mean D:I isn't P2W then ROFLMAOLOLOLOLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL


But this isn't a thread about D:I, only tangentially.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ox-regulations

The Norwegian Consumer Council has released a new report on the ongoing impact of loot boxes on the games industry, backed by 20 consumer groups in 18 European countries.

The report gives an outline of the history of monetisation in games, and how practices around loot boxes and in-game currency have evolved to "exploit consumers."

It highlights "deceptive design" in games, tricks that "exploit cognitive or behavioural biases to incentivise spending." Loot boxes are also frequently marketed aggressively by "advertising the possible rewards," which is also considered deceptive by the report.

Two case studies of particularly predatory practices are also included in the document -- it details how loot boxes are implemented in FIFA 22 and Raid: Shadow Legends, and the problems it presents.

The report rounds up by listing several actions that the industry and its regulators can take to improve the landscape around loot boxes. This includes:

Banning the aforementioned "deceptive design"
Denoting all in-game purchases in real-world currency
Not implementing loot boxes in games aimed at minors
More transparency around algorithms that determine the outcome of a purchase
More enforcement around consumer rights in games
It adds that if these remedies do not alleviate the issues, the industry should consider a ban of paid loot boxes in games altogether.

Conversations around loot boxes and legality have been ongoing. In 2018, the Belgian Gaming Commission ruled that the implementation of them in games breached multiple gambling laws in the country.

That same year, EA found itself embroiled in a four-year long discussion on whether FIFA's card packs should be seen as gambling under Dutch legislation. In the end it was decided that loot boxes are not subject to gambling laws if they follow a certain criteria.

Since then, handfuls of publishers including Nintendo, Blizzard, and Konami have stopped sales of loot boxes in Belgium, as well as other territories that no longer permit it under law.

Last year, a UK report also dubbed loot boxes "structurally and psychologically akin to gambling," and called for new policies to be put in place, including a clear definition of what a loot box is, full disclosure of the odds when purchasing them, and spending limits.

The UK government also called for evidence on loot boxes ahead of a potential review of gambling laws in the country, the results of which should be revealed later this year.

A similar proposal was put forward in Australia in 2021, that would see loot boxes banned from games targeted at children.

I'm glad that countries are looking to ban this shit. If loot boxes and predatory microtransactions became illegal tomorrow, I wouldn't shed a single tear. I'd celebrate.

[Elim Garak]

Bombed ratings mean nothing, and people who want to play Diablo Immortal - know that.

It's very easy to download a free app on any store and leave a 1-2 star rating, without even playing the game.
Metacritic user rating - you don't even need to download anything.