Loot boxes, for example, aren’t inherently predatory; they can add an exciting and rewarding surprise element when balanced with noble intentions.
When you sell them, they’re unregulated gambling that children can access.
When designing a battle pass, a designer must answer questions like “How much faster should a premium player progress compared to a F2P player?” and “How long should it take for a player to finish the battle pass?” I’ve seen designers balance it fairly, like by requiring 30 minutes of daily play to complete the free track or $5 to unlock the premium pass.
I still don’t see a way that this could ever be anything other than creating an incentive to play the game for reasons beyond the game being fun, no matter how “fair” it is to the person needing to spend money or not. They’re still artificially creating another body in the matchmaking pool that creates value for someone more willing to part with their dollar. If your player base dries up when you stop offering your battle pass incentives, I’d say that was some artificial retention, and it’s kind of gross.
I definitely didn’t need more reasons to hate live services. The business model has always affected the game design, and a lot of the author’s bullet points could be seen as far back as the arcades, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a better business model for all parties than “sell a good product at a fair price”.
Well, the missing context is that this is how a lot of gaming is tuned regardless. It's pretty basic economy tuning to look at how long a task takes to complete and tune based on that (for games with grind, anyway, think RPGs).
So if you're playing "Perfectly Fair Single Player RPG 3" there's a more than fair chance that the developers looked at the expected completion time of a quest, plugged in that time into some spreadsheet and assigned XP and other rewards to the quest based on that, just to keep the XP curve of the game somewhat predictable. This is a big rabbit hole with a bunch of nuance, but for these purposes we can assume they at least started by doing that flat on all quests.
If you have a F2P game and you're charging for things you can also grind I frankly don't see a much better place to start.
Now, if your premise is that all design for engagement in F2P is gross because it's servicing your business and all design for engagement in paid games is fine because that's just seeking "fun"... well, I don't know that gets fixed. I agree that pay-up-front games can benefit from getting the ugly matter of getting money from players out of the way early, but these days even those games are trying to upsell you into later content, sequels and other stuff, so the difference is rarely that stark.
I think there's a conversation to be had about whether "good", "fun" and "makes people want to engage more" should be seen as the same thing and, if not, what the difference is. It's tricky and nuanced and I don't know that you can expect every game to be on one end of that conversation. Sometimes a person just wants to click on a thing to make number go up, and that's alright.
I think the incentives matter. Diablo II is about making number go up, but Diablo IV has an active incentive to slow you down and make that number go up at a certain rate so that they can upsell you again later. And rather than taking a hardline position, I’d at least ask the question out loud: Is it possible to have a business model for a game other than selling a good product at a fair price and not have it eventually evolve into something gross? Maybe the old shareware model, which is basically just a demo, but other than that, I’m not sure.
I guess it depends on where your line for "gross" happens to land. In my old age I tend to look at old arcades as being pretty gross. Certainly worse than I thought they were at the time.
I'm also not sure if I have a problem with Diablo IV. I think their incentive is for you not to run out of content and bounce all the way off before they can give you more, which is why they retuned it much more generously later. In this case the version of the game that people like more is also the one that did better for them financially. Is that more or less gross?
So I'm not sure I agree on whether the incentives matter. I think the experience I get matters. There is definitely a bad place there in the middle where you feel frustrated playing but won't stop playing, and that's a place where a bunch of the sloppier, grindier games make their money. And I'm not gonna stand here and say that all the upsells in games with a big live service don't make the experience worse. They do, in my book.
But those impacts to the experience are what matters to me, not that they are made as part of a business proposition. Full games in boxes were also sold for money. Live games I enjoy are made for money, too.
I'm more concerned at how live games get to vacuum up all players and keep them on lockdown forever than I am about their moneymaking practices, to be honest. People are worried about the wrong set of incentives here, if you ask me.
That being said... man, do I wish people would put their money where their mouth is. It's all well and good to complain about more expensive pay-up-front games or about overly intrusive microtransactions, but this conversation would be a lot smoother if people actively spending hundreds of hours on those weren't currently spending like 70% of the time and 50% of all the money in gaming. Voting with one's wallet rarely does much, in isolation, but there are absolutely tons of games out there. It'd be nice to see people flock towards the good ones, as per their own standards, and ideally spend some money on those.
I think there's an argument to be made that some level of retention strategy may be a necessary evil in today's market, especially when all your competitors are doing it. No developer wants to run the risk of letting that playerbase dry up. You can have the best multiplayer game in the world, but all the brownie points for playing fair wouldn't mean much if I'm sitting in an empty queue with no one to play with.
It's fine line to walk to make sure players are coming back for the right reasons, but you do want them to come back.
I think there’s also an argument to be made that all of this desire to suck up our attention has made it more difficult for the same developers to market their next game, since their potential customers are all preoccupied with something they haven’t stopped playing. It’s extremely natural for most people to fall off of a game after its initial release, and it’s definitely going to happen once they take their thumbs off the scales.
Now you have a prisoner's dilemma. A lot of studio's need to take their thumbs off the scale at the same time, or you're just sending your customers to someone else.
I’ve been looking for deathmatch shooters for a long time, like what we got from the late 90s to the mid 10s. There are very very few. I don’t care if I or anyone else move on quickly, because I primarily want to play with my friends, and the deathmatch mode typically came alongside a campaign and maybe co-op modes. That’s not a prisoner’s dilemma, and the market hasn’t really been making games like that anymore. Same for things like arcade racers akin to F-Zero or Burnout.
This would collapse the company instantly. They need to make sure a good followup is available. Because most are not and are even worse, either through greed or incompetence. And yes, it could be way worse than current leaders. Because if it was that easy to just fire them and replace them randomly with anyone and hope it does better, I am sure every company did that.
CEOs are extremely replacable. The one thing that differentiates a good CEO from a bad one is how much they STFU and let the actual workers do their job instead of shoving directives down everyones’ throat every time a shiny new waste of an ‘investment’ catches their eye like AI.
Not all CEOs are equally good or bad. Some help the company to be better, others are better at ruining it. Replaceable does not mean that ANYONE can do the job. You completely ignored my point.
So you’re saying Ubisoft execs aren’t inept morons seeking the latest money-grubbing trends?
I hate to break it to you, but yes: Anyone can replace that kind of executive.
Could a random Joe replace the “executive” in a five man team? Probably not. Though any other scenario, it becomes more and more plausible. The bigger a company gets, the less competent the suits are. It’s basically a law of capitalism these days.
I don’t think they’re talking about Ubi specifically. I agree that CEOs are “easily” replaceable but I also agree that some people would do a better job than others
The wildest thing to me about this whole thing is that the company says one of the three founders took company money to invest in a personal film project, but when you look into what film project they are referring to, it is an ad campaign for subnautica 2 that the company itself told him to make.
Counterpoint: both of those ideas being patented meant no competitor could use them while the ideas were relevant. And in both cases, the patenting company made like one promising example of the patented idea and then barely used it after that. Wouldn’t it have been better for consumers if we could have had loading screen minigames back when long loading screens were still relevant?
it’s like the first person invent a way to make the pop cap for your travel coffee mug. Like, anyone could have come up with that idea, right? compare to screw cap we used to have. We do have plenty of examples where the patent aren’t really popular until after it is expired or irrelevant.
Like, yeah, in a heatlhy competition env, it is way better for consumer in the beginning. But because of how capital works, eventually without patent it all goes to the bigger corps.
For the consumer, obviously.
Patents exist to protect the profit of the inventor, specifically because once you have spent the RnD money to make something, someone else can take your finished idea and create your thing without having to cover those costs. Their entire point is to make sure stuff stays more expensive and exclusive for longer.
But the issue isn’t that patents or even software patents exist as a thing, they are important to protect against copying, it’s that seemingly almost anything no matter how simple, vague or universal it is can apply and get patented, and whoever owns those patents then doesn’t have to use or license them, instead they just sit on them waiting to strike with a lawsuit.
I think software patents should really only apply to extremely tricky algorithmic “discoveries” (which I would consider inventions, as someone that’s written a SHA256 implementation from reference material, nobody is “just coming up with that”).
“Ingenuity patents” like that loading screen game are everything that’s wrong with software patents. It’s not all that crazy of an idea to add a game while waiting to play the main game. There’s no radical research required there, just an idea.
I don’t think vague ideas like “a game in a loading screen” are sufficiently creative to warrant a patent.
The thing is, many physical patents are also describing extremely simple mechanisms or mere ideas for them. I don’t think your criteria reflect reality, as much as I wish they did.
for practical physical good, some times a patent just means I did this first doesn’t mean it’s hard to do or replicate. ie. like the umbrella wedge/spring to make it open automatically. That’s the part of ingenuity. And why I think the mini game during loading screen worth the patent.
I don’t like algorithm patent because ultimately, it was there, if original sha hash wasn’t developed, someone would come up with a different method that doing roughly the same. It’s the math and other prior foundation in computer hasing/data processing provides the idea and how you can process and get the hash fast. so your newer arrangement of faster version(like different sorting algorithm) would not be possible without those other research.
ie. for my own example, my thesis involves doing polygon culling strategy, my base algorithm is totally base on math prediction as to what’s the optimum I can achieve minimum culling checks. BUT, that algorithm is actually slower than when you implement the checks base on how GPU is doing the render plus cache efficiency. If I did not know or not aware how computer works from prior study, I can’t figure out why my “optimum” algorithm is actually slower than sub-optimum checking strategy.
Say, what if SHA or whatever algorithms is implemented, and is actually very impactful to other application, which can be proven that anyone can naturally come to this conclusion by doing their own research, simply grant that patent impedes future development. Another computer graphic patent is the Joe Alter hair distribution, it has nothing to do with ingenuity and just because his dad is a good patent lawyer, it blocks any healthy competition from selling CG hair grooming product in US. If you check the patent itself, that was like trying to patent a math distribution over surface.
like the umbrella wedge/spring to make it open automatically.
That to me is a very specific algorithm. It’s a simple mechanism but putting it together might be a bit tricky.
That’s very similar to SHA, it’s a fairly simple set of mechanisms but the actual composure of those ideas into something that works as well as SHA does takes very specific research experience. It’s not at all an abstract idea, it’s a very concrete and specific set of operations that you invented first.
Imagine if the patent was “an umbrella can open itself with the push of button” no further details. That’s close to the level of detail some software patents are argued at and effectively what the “put a game in your loading screen” patent was awarded on.
You can’t patent the idea that “an umbrella should be able to open [somehow]” so I likewise think it’s ridiculous that someone was able to parent “your game [somehow] runs another simpler game before it runs.”
Patents should be to protect very specific research so that the private sector can do said research and profit from it. Patents should not block out broad concepts. The patent in the video game situation was and should’ve been ruled as bogus. It’s not the type of thing anyone needed to research or think about, you just literally go “what if I added a game to my loading screen” and you’re in violation.
The Namco(which I wrongly attribute to Konami) thing “is” very specific. Remember during that time there are not a lot multi core processors. It requires clever scheduling to allow running both the mini-game AND checking loading status to seamlessly transition into game. It’s really not just a simple “concept” but ingenuity to arrange your loading I/O wait time into running their past game at the same time. That’s in PS1 era where loading wait time because of CD-ROM and later DVD was very significant.
Algorithmic patents amount to patenting maths which, by very longstanding precedence, is not a thing, for good reason.
In the EU there’s only one way to patent software and that’s if you’re using it to achieve direct physical ends. E.g. you can patent washing machine firmware in so far as you patent a particular way to combine sensor data to achieve a particular washing result. Rule of thumb: If, 30 years ago, you’d have an electromechanical mechanism to do the task then you can patent the software that’s now replacing it.
Oh: It’s also possible to patent silicon, that is, you can patent your hardware acceleration methods for video decoding. That doesn’t extend to decoders running on general-purpose hardware, though.
If you want to monopolise your brand-new hash algorithm there’s a simple way: Don’t publish the source, use copyright to collect royalties… though that doesn’t mean that reverse engineering is outlawed, especially if necessary for interoperability. Practically speaking nope hash algorithms just can’t be protected which is fair and square because it’s academia who comes up with that kind of stuff and we paid for it with taxpayer money. Want to make money off it? Get tenure.
The problem is a hash algorithm is exactly the sort of thing that copyright would be horrible at protecting. The source code is hardly relevant at all, it’s the operations that matter.
A big part of patents is to allow private sector research to occur. RCA failed and maybe patents should just fail too.
Algorithmic patents amount to patenting maths which, by very longstanding precedence, is not a thing, for good reason.
You absolutely can patent “math” (well, more like physics) IRL. What matters though is that the invention actually has to be novel and non-obvious, and IMO it should also be harder to patent if it’s in a segment like software where costs of development, iteration and “research” are generally extremely cheap. Like, it should have a way higher bar for the “novelness”.
And I would not allow any kind of software design patent (use copyright or trademark to protect that).
I was part of the first big wave and they hard warned us maybe potentially there might perhaps be restructing and “resizing”. We agonized for months waiting to know if it was our teams or no, if we had to look (this was before Unity nosedived and buddy quit).
I’ve somehow survived all the firings and restructurings so far. It’s a shit show over here. I’m trying to get through a few more months then I’m off to another country to go back to school
The agonizing hasn’t stopped for me I’ve just gotten used to it as a part of my day to day. It’s wild what they’ve been putting us through we need to unionize
I mean, their requirements are still more strict than steam. GabeN basically says as long as you don’t break the law or cause us to lose significant business from bad press (aka “straight up trolling”) with your game, and have $100 cash handy, you are welcome to shill your school project quality, my first Unity game shovelware here
Galetti also espoused the benefits of AI in her message to employees, and claimed the oft-criticized technology is already allowing companies like Amazon to “innovate much faster than ever before.” She suggested it’s important for the company to reduce its headcount in order to take advantage of the perceived opportunity presented by the tech.
This screams of, we need to cut heads so we can pretend to be innovating with AI somehow
Most likely, they are just hiding all the sunken AI investment that has returned nothing in terms of revenue
I legit laughed out loud at that. That is hilarious. Of course it’ll bite them in the ass, but in the short term it’s literally more important that AI look like it’s cutting job than actually cutting jobs
Gee these men-children are going to be awfully sad when there’s no one left to make their games for them anymore and they have nothing left to do but face the shitty reality they’ve created.
All of those are due to the drastic increase in jobs during covid. This is happening in many, many tech related careers. It is not because of inclusivity. Get your head out of your ass.
That’s a factor, but it’s not the only reason, jackass. Look at the games that failed and how they were backed by activists, which led to studio closures.
Ubisoft is mostly subsidized in Quebec by taxpayers, and they have their lowest profits ever because of activists as well.
It’s because of their shitty horrible business practices, nobody wants to pay $100 for a rushed game and nobody wants to invest time into their 500th live service game that they’ll stop supporting in a year.
You would have to jump through a lot of hoops to conclude that activism makes you a bad game developer. If they’re exploiting their customers constantly to try to increase profit margins, they are more than likely exploiting their workers, who they have much more control over.
You’re telling me that a bland and generic Overwatch clone with character designs that were reductive to the groups they were supposed to represent failed because of activists? The games you listed didn’t fail because of activism, they failed because their “activism” was a marketing stunt instead of being actually progressive. There are plenty of games developed by people that care about those issues where they’re represented accurately and appropriately. Those games usually do well and win awards. Making a game where you meaninglessly and inaccurately pander to minority groups is not the result of activism, it’s trying to leech off of actual activism.
Um… Yes? You’re proving my own point based on what you just wrote.
The people that made Dustborn, Concord, etc, all wanted to push a narrative instead of making a good fun game.
Activists, woke people, etc, are more than welcome in the game industry… As long as they keep that shit to themselves. Leave that idiotic nonsense at home.
You get to work, you work to make a good product, and that’s it.
You’re missing the point of what I said. Concord and Dustborn did not try to send a message, they tried to get the profits they thought would come from associating with the message, and implemented it horribly. This is not activism. That would be like saying Instagram changing their logo to rainbow for a month is activism.
As for true activism, video games are both entertainment and an art form. Saying to “leave that shit at home” is missing the point of artistic mediums in their entirety.
Please point out where I implied that corporations got greedy “only now”. Hint: i said “since forever”, the implication is that they were always shit. Then again, can’t expect much from you.
It’s more about the messaging. The mere presence of a POC or trans character isn’t bothersome to most people. But when that character comes with dialogue lines that make the political messaging obvious, then they’re no longer a character that happens to be non-White or trans; they’re a political prop inserted into a game to send a political message, and that can be quite irksome when all you’re trying to do is play a fantasy RPG and escape from the world for a bit, even if you actually agree with the message.
Exactly. Don’t lecture us about being trans or etc.
We honestly don’t care. (Yes, a small percentage of people are actually bigots and hate gays/trans for being who they are). The rest of us just don’t want it shoved down our throats.
It’s like making a game and having the main character proclaiming: “look how straight I am! Wow I sure do love women! I’m so straight and anyone who isn’t should do pushups”.
And yet, from the downvoting here and everywhere else this comes up, it’s clear: some people can’t take nuanced opinions on topics like this. If you object in any capacity, you’re the worst possible objector.
A bad written character is a bad written character, their dialogue could be about candies and is still a bad written character. This argument is bullshit, bad case of confirmatory bias.
There are plenty of record breaking games that have released while the industry has been “filled with activists.” Many of them are even about politics, like Helldivers 2.
Just down vote and move on. She’s just a troll with no facts or figures, she just wants your attention that Daddy never gave her growing up. It was either the pole or the troll for her.
You don’t even want to look. You think games are failing just because or capitalism which is the dumbest, leftist excuse that you always all give when you don’t have the knowledge to see what’s truly happening.
Enjoy living in your angry little leftist bubble echo chamber.
Did you also know that marvel rivals, that somehow idiots think it’s woke earned 130 million in it’s first month. I mean that’s a whole other capitalism conversation but still.
The difference between each generation of consoles is getting less and less. The latest jump doesn’t really give you anything the previous gen didn’t give you, it just has sharper graphics. The graphics aren’t even that much better.
I felt that way going from a 360 to XB1. More of the same, just shinier. I don’t think I’ve used my XB1 for anything except Rock Band in over a year. And the only reason I felt the urge to get a Series is that so RB loads in less than 10 minutes. (Well, that and Flight Simulator.)
Nintendo and indies are the only things keeping my interest in console gaming.
Nothing will come of this unless it also concerns Republicans, but it doesn’t, because the President’s son-in-law helped make this deal happen and personally benefited from it.
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