I wonder what happens when the last whale has been milked dry. With the number of shitty cash grab games out there with heinous monetization, surely the ecosystem reaches a tipping point where there literally just isn’t enough money to go around, both because the whales themselves run out and the remaining number gets spread too thin among too many Clash of Clans, FIFAs and Diablo Immortals. Do you think we’re going to start seeing real effort in those spaces to appeal to players again, or do they just implode because nobody wants to serve a declining market?
I wonder what happens when the last whale has been milked dry.
I have some bad news for you friend.
I work at a casino. There is no end of whales. There are whales that are rich enough to sustain their habits and spend more than you or I could morally spend if we had the means. Then, there are whales that spend outside their means, burn out, and are replaced by a new person who does the same thing.
When a whale (highroller) stops coming, we usually assume they’ve gone to one of our competitor’s casinos.
I see no reason why this wouldn’t apply to real-money transactions in video games. It’s just another casino.
Marketing is far from dead. Larian themselves used it to great effect with BG3. Does no one remember the announcement trailer released for BG3 well in advance of any gameplay footage? That’s marketing, though and through. And yes, it worked plenty well on me. A D&D game based around Mind Flayers, made by the folks behind Divinity Original Sin? Shut up and take my money. Also, when I noticed the outline of a Nautiloid ship in the background, I may have needed a change of shorts.
The difference with BG3 was that Larian didn’t just pull an Edward Bernays style marketing as a con. They delivered a good product, worked with players to fix any issues and have gone above and beyond supporting the game after release. They have done everything right to build long term customer relationships. Maybe they don’t reach the same level of profits some other companies might, by stuffing microtransactions in every orifice. But, I suspect they are profitable and seem to be better built be continue long term and not have to tear the company up and saddle one of those pieces with insane amounts of debt.
While I can’t promise that I’ll buy their next game, I’ll undoubtedly keep an eye out for it. Larian puts out a quality product and doesn’t fuck their customers. That’s what makes their brand of marketing work.
Meanwhile, FIFA players: “when can I pre-order the next edition of my game, and could I just pay for the cards in advance, or do I have to wait until release?”
Sadly, bamboozling players, dark patterns and nickle-and-diming work, and work VERY well at that - if they didn’t, people would stop doing it a long time ago…
I wish that was actually the case but we all know marketing works like gang busters on gamers looking for their next fix. It it wasn’t they wouldn’t be hiring psychologists and paying them mid to high six figure starting salaries.
Edit: sales and marketing don’t exist to sell stuff that people want, they exists to sell stuff that people don’t want. If you sell something with a high demand then you’re not a salesman, you’re a glorified cashier. Salesmanship involves getting people to buy stuff they wouldn’t otherwise buy. Most companies don’t have anything special that everyone wants, so they have to resort to sales and marketing to stay in business.
Can they please not? I’d rather not have Blizzard stay Blizzard, seeing what they did to WoW, SC2, D3, D4, DI, Overwatch and worst of all, Heroes of the Storm.
He is the one that still wanted to make Project Titan work. Overwatch was the crawl, PvE was suppose to be the walk and then they’d have the run with the MMORPG.
Have they done something to SC2? I quit playing that game years ago, but it seemed like they were done touching it, and it was still in its original glory.
The most recent expansion for WoW has been really good. Blizzard has been transparent with their changes and have been listening to the community. Recently the alpha for the next expansion has released and seems very promising with positive response from the community.
So I disagree, I’m glad microsoft is letting blizzard developers do their own thing. After the tumultuous expansion Shadowlands, a lot of the old guard for blizzard were removed and the current executive producer Holly Longdale has been doing a great job.
Oh I had not yet heard that they’re turning the ship around. That’s really really cool. After all this time I just stopped following stuff around it since it got so depressing over the years.
She was working on classic before being promoted to her current position. Regardless, the entire wow dev team has been incredible these past few months. There has been such an influx of news of upcoming content these coming weeks its almost hard to keep up. Hoping that they can keep on the gas as The War Within comes out.
I can’t speak to your preferences as there are multiple different ways to play an mmo. I can, however, speak to the community’s perspective and I have not seen the wow community be more positive about the current expansion since modern wow.
Its hard to judge community response for wrath or vanilla for a game made 16+ years ago (lots of people tend to looks things back with rose-tinted glasses).
I’ve been playing since MoP and started doing high end content in WoD. So from this perspective, I can say that I haven’t seen a more community response for the game since then, including legion. No endless grind for power, blizz being transparent about changes, and they are also listening to feedback.
Additionally, Shadowlands did a number of Dragonflight’s sales but recent reports indicate that more subscribers are coming back to retail wow and the expansion does not have the post-expansion drought of subscribers.
Not Wrath or Legion good, if the numbers are any indication. While the community has generally been positive, Dragonflight simply hasn’t sold very well.
The expansion’s over, anyway. They have officially moved the expansion cadence to only two major patches from three.
Has anyone played it? I wonder if its any good… I always thought that N64 game was generally considered one of those awful 3d renditions of a 2d classic.
Castlevania 64 was clearly an unfinished game. The first couple levels make their ambitions clear, and the rest of the game is just sort of slapped together. Legacy of Darkness added the rest of the game.
Nobody really celebrates these games. I grew up with them and can appreciate the experience they were offering, but they weren’t exactly my favorites, and I don’t feel they aged particularly well. Maybe take a look through a long play video before committing any real time to it.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne