Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned loot boxes and gacha systems
Did they really? I certainly know that the lootboxes aren’t allowed here (rip my TF2 weapon paints), but I still could spend 10 euros on Genshin Impact, even if I had to use MasterCard.
I have zero interest in paying for lootboxes or other gambling crap paid with real money in games.
But games like Lost Ark were banned in The Netherlands and it took me a while to figure out why it didn’t show in my Steam store.
I wish there were other means instead of just outright banning games from stores (like Diablo Immortal for mobile also isn’t available in The Netherlands). It didn’t take me much to get around the ban and install Lost Ark anyway, so I figured if I can do that, then what’s stopping people with gambling problems from doing the same as well.
Also it seems wildly inconsistent when games are and aren’t allowed for us to download. Why should I be limited to the regulated games accessible because of other people’s gambling addictions? Feels like half the Steam library could be Thanos-snapped if it were just for lootboxes and transactions being present in games.
It’s time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.
They’re making fucking bank with these practices. It will have to be stopped by government regulation. Self-regulation of industries has literally never fucking worked once in history. Look at Boeing, which has had the FAA basically glad-handing it for 50 years and it’s falling apart at the seams (sometimes literally).
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
I wouldn't say self-regulation has "literally never worked once in history", but yes, not often. I would point to the ESRB as an example of self-regulation working in the games industry and being a positive for both the industry itself avoiding government regulation and for players. There are other examples too, but yes, they would be rare wins in general.
Anyone saying it works is lieing. Even if they have examples. Most of the time when companies self regulate it is to maintain control and avoid regulation. It’s a delaying tactic that allows them to exploit the mechanisms longer and minisme the impact that proper accountability would bring.
If self regulation was feasible we would never even be discussing it. It wouldn’t be a concept we would have to think about. It would just be the way things work and have always worked.
The ESRB didn't require any developers to abandon their business model though. It was created so that the industry could continue doing what it was doing.
It was also created long long before developers had these predatory business models, where it basically shielded the industry from having goverment oversight on violence in games back in the 90s and such.
Working? They just put a small print about lootboxes, they don’t even raise the game’s rating to AO for having this literal gambling with money, they are useless.
I mean, look how fast the ENTIRE industry shifted to battle passes (and still gacha) and away from “loot boxes” the very moment the first country said they’d consider regulation.
Even the ESRB, another example of gaming industry self-regulation, hasn’t stopped gaming companies marketing M-rated games to kids or really slowed down sales or access to such games to underage players at all. If anything, they use the M rating as a direct marketing tool to kids: “your parents wouldn’t want you to play this so you totally should”.
Ah yes, the ESRB, the group built to avoid actual regulation.
I mean, I get it, to an extent, the MPAA was and is absolute dogshit and filled with weird right-wing Christians who don’t like things that show women’s sexual pleasure and a lot of other weird censorial decisions.
Like how Hillary Clinton wanted to ban GTA because of the Hot Coffee mod, when the actual “Hot Coffee” minigame wasn’t available in an easily accessible way.
So, to that extent, I can understand why they built that system to avoid idiot fucking puritans taking over the ratings sytem, but I generally agree, it’s become more of a taboo thing just like the “PARENTAL WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS” just made people want that version more. (That really worked out, huh, Tipper Gore?)
Without actual enforcement, it becomes something cool for kids to get.
The AO rating is still the kiss-of-death for game content in North America, enforced by retailers. Even still, the ESRB only came about because the political climate at the time was very much “clean up your shit or we’ll do it for you.”
Then they come up with the rating system whose only enforcement is on the AO rating, and don’t bother to actually clean up their shit. As the post above yours mentioned, the problem is lack of enforcement anywhere outside the AO rating or even anyone involved actually caring. Devs and marketing teams push for M if they want to actually sell a game to kids above 7 years old, retailers will sell anything to anyone lest they lose out on the money, and parents who ask about it will just ask the kid who wants to buy the game and will lie about what the rating means. We can crab about movie ratings all we want, but at least most studios and theaters actually enforce the MPAA’s rating and parents know what movie ratings mean. Game ratings are basically like TV ratings, so irrelevant you wonder why they even bother.
I don’t know where you’re hearing retailers don’t enforce ratings. Yes, it happens uncommonly, but the FTC previously found ratings compliance was higher among video game retailers than at the box office, and not much has changed in the culture since then. I’ve worked at multiple retailers that sold video games, and the training for video games enforcement was always taken just as seriously as with alcohol sales.
Being the largest entertainment industry in the world now, video game publishers are serious about this stuff. Developers also still take steps to avoid a Hot Coffee situation from occurring again.
How about both? Writing your elected reps is definitely smart, but will be much more effective if there are numerous people calling for the same. I appreciate OP sharing their views, and catloaf sharing a specific action step all of us can do it we are concerned about this matter.
I worked for a few years as a gambling addiction counselor, and these types of games definitely prime people for addiction to gambling. Also, it’s worth noting that the demographic with the highest rates of gambling addiction are young men, aged 18-24.
Anyone that’s been to a casino can attest that major video game companies also make slot machines. The industry are aware of what they’re doing.
Companies aren’t innovative. Once they land on a formula they just keep using it. Eventually it gets stale and the company crashes or buys another company that had a good idea and runs it into the ground. Innovative games happen when a AAA company happens to acquire an indie studio at the right time to give them runway to properly polish their game.
How much innovation can you get when you have to spend millions of dollars on large teams to develop games now, compared to even 10 years ago? It’s not really all that surprising that companies want to play it safe. It’s a large investment, and they don’t know if there will be a return on it.
That doesn’t even get into the fact that there’s only so many combinations of things you can do in a video game.
If the intent here is to discuss games that are actually doing something new and different, Space Marine 2 really needs to be in this conversation.
At first glance it’s just a very, very polished third person action game, but the more you pay attention the more you’ll notice the excellent mechanical design of the combat. There are some very smart, very subtle choices that have been made in the gameplay mechanics that affect the dramatic flow and tension of combat in surprising ways. Someone designing this game actually thought about the pacing of fights, and that’s something you just don’t see in games all that often.
Also on a purely technical level there’s the extremely smart bit of coding that allows them to render ungodly numbers of enemies in screen at once, behaving as coherent swarms that move and flow together, and dear God is it incredible to watch.
The first game was a great Warhammer game (for the time). This one is just a great game, no qualification needed.
Ogólnie w kwestii Dolnego Śląska polecam zarówno przeglądanie strony Radia Wrocław, a jak ktoś jest lokalnie to ogarnięcie radioodbiornika (najlepiej na baterie, jeśli zabraknie prądu) i słuchanie na częstotliwościach:
As I see it, the difference is that we now have capable game engines freely available. Indie studios can, for the most part, offer the same quality of gameplay. AAA studios can only really differentiate themselves by how much content they shove into a game.
In particular, this also somewhat limits creativity of AAA games. In order to shove tons of content into there, the player character has to be a human, the gameplay has to involve an open world, there has to be a quest system etc…
I suspect a big part of the process has shifted focus from making an enjoyable experience to how we can milk this for every dollar it’s worth and then some.
It’s risky trying to explore new avenues as a large company you’re expected to deliver unimaginable returns on your investment. So copying the games that did well will hopefully perform better that quarter. As opposed to spending resources on expanding the engine or trying out a novel idea.
On top of that I suspect the executives are envious of the addictive cash burning cycle that gacha games provide.
I feel like too many games have and continue to copy the formula established by Minecraft and Far Cry 3. I find the experience of exploring a new zone, climbing a tower, unlocking material xyz then rinse and repeat. To be boring and unimaginative. But it seems like I’m the weird one here and people seemingly adore it.
I thought the inventory management of BoTW was awful. It’s not fun to complete a cool quest line get a cool item and for it to break forever after two fights. Wtf
Crafting games such as Valheim have nothing to do aside from grinding for the sake of grinding. Sure building a cool house had some appeal but it’s overall just intentionally tedious.
Baldur’s Gate III was a breath of fresh air. I actually have been thinking for a while that maybe I just didn’t like games anymore until it came out.
I’m also about to start my first Elden Ring run with a group of friends for the first time soon. Excited for that.
The Dark Pictures Anthology has some fantastic stories if anyone is interested.
I’m legitimately having difficulty following the flow of this question. The formatting vacillates between question and statement, and I am sincerely having trouble fully discerning the connection between points.
I think this post comes from disappointment with Star Wars Outlaws, which by all reports largely follows the Ubisoft formula for open world games. For this, yes Ubisoft has struck upon a formula that is applied to seemingly all of their open world games, which is indeed overly predictable. For that, I do agree that the rote steps of a collectation heavy game where the player secures territory of the game in order to advance the story is overplayed.
Otherwise, I am stuck trying to tease out the rest of the post’s intention.
Recently the 2 “highly praised” Star Wars “open world” games
I don’t know what the other Star Wars game referred to is supposed to be. Is this referring to Jedi Survivor? That game did have a number of technical problems, but it wasn’t ever intended or marketed as an open world game. Putting even that aside, why are two Star Wars games used as the pillars of western AAA games? What is the point or critique here?
To add to your point, Jedi Survivor was a huge improvement over Fallen Survivor. I’m not sure how you could look at that game and say that there hasn’t been any improvement at all.
Honestly I’ve I did jot know how survivor improved upon the first part since the pc version was so overshadowed by it’s technical problems. Tho I’ve heard the patch yesterday improved the performance massively
I did play months after release and I have a pretty beefy PC so it was fine for me. I did only encounter stutters at one specific area halfway through the game but other than that, it was really smooth for me.
Survivor improve Don the first one by expanding on the stances you had in the first game, a much larger world with a larger variety of enemies and tools you can use in combat. There’s a hub area which is kind of cool but I honestly didn’t really get the appeal of that. There’s also quite a bit of cool moments in the story that were really neat but I won’t talk about it because it’s a spoiler. I liked it a lot actually and it’s a shame all of it was overshadowed by the awful performance on launch.
Ubi actually has 2 kinds of open world games… Assassin’s Creed Style and Far Cry Style. I prefer the former, I was disappointed to see the Avatar game was the latter
I just want to say I was really disappointed when Far Cry 3 basically became the template for Far Cry games.
The main thing I hate is the “observe this outpost from a distance then permatag all the enemies so they’re visible through walls, then take them out” mechanic.
It has elements like both, but it doesn’t do exploration towers that unlock areas. It feels more like a third option between the two, which makes most sense because it comes from the devs that did both The Division and Avatar.
I enjoyed Outlaws open world gameplay, even though it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It was still an enjoyable experience that felt like discovering the worlds on your own, instead of being guided and follow a checklist of stuff to do, despite having a list to get upgrades and do story and missions. It felt a bit more like Rockstar style open-world, where you just go about your business and run into encounters, instead of going from A to B all the time.
I’m right in the middle of this game currently, and I do fully see some of the jank that shows up in this game. And it does have some issues (I couldn’t land my ship on the starting planet until I finished a specific quest, but the game doesn’t tell you this).
However, I’m finding the game pretty fun overall and kinda hope they iterate on this scoundrel idea and make sequel. I’m having fun sneaking in and looting all these places.
I really hope they make a sequel game, or maybe a similar game based on a different character that would allow for a bit of a wider range of gameplay. But I wouldn’t mind if they kept going with Kay, she’s a likeable protagonist to me and I just love Nix.
Have to say I ran into very few bugs and I wrapped up the main story and loads of extras after about 45 hours. Funnily I ran into only one bug after finishing the main story, getting stuck in ingame cutscene-camera that prevented me from doing anything else, including being able to reload the game lol.
There’s definitely been some minor goofy and janky stuff throughout the game, but nothing that ended up gamebreaking. I think the most un-finished part of the game that I wish they’d fixed up before launch is the lipsync issues. It just looks so bad in some scenes and takes away from the otherwise great immersive experience.
Yeah other than this weird thing where the quest made landing the ship weird, I have had anything totally break the game — though it did crash on me once. But the autosave got me maybe ten seconds before that so I loaded right back where I was.
Mostly I’ve just seen little graphical bugs. Like when you fly off world and the “loading clouds” show up. Sometimes there will be a flash of a big, black chunk of the screen that shows up for a split second. Stuff like that.
I wouldn’t mind if Kay got her own little series out this. She’s cool, and Nix is cool. I like them both.
bin.pol.social
Gorące