Difference I can see with traditional gambling (e.g. Texas Hold’em) is that it’s not in the instant, they actually want you to speculate on virtual “ownership” and spend now while it’s “cheap” to earn later in a totally happening glorious metaverse future. Yes, it’s very pyramid-y in nature.
Some of these “games” are empty shells of of a virtual world where you buy plots of land and then expect it to become more valuable, maybe build a virtual store or boring asset-flipped “resort” on it, rent part of it to someone to do the same, etc. They’re landlord fantasy. Except some may really believe in it.
If you’ve got the time, Dan Olson made a pretty good video about that stuff :
A bunch of cryptobros who don’t really have an interest in playing video games started to think “what if everything in a game was a cryptocurrency, and what if instead of playing for fun, you invested in the game to earn more money?”
Seriously, “play-to-earn” is the thing they want to make happen. They took all those boring trends that make shitty microtransaction-fests feel like a job, and they saw a future where stuff like this would actually be your job.
Good news if you ever spend Thanksgiving in Hyrule, they have actually edible (and mostly harmless) birds, including big juicy Eldin and forest ostriches.
Also, if they’re not extinct and you’re looking for very big game, you could always try loftwing.
If it means that it’s talking about society, every story ever written is political in some way. But we all know in this context it means “stuff I don’t like”.
It was either in the first two or in the second one.
I am not sure because I know I got it from the second bundle, but that one included the games from the first humble bundle too.
Though I already had it on the Wii for quite some time at that point. I knew the original flash game, Tower of Goo, and I’d spent so much time messing around with that thing, I was pretty excited that they made a whole game around it.
Which version, PC? I did that one a while ago and I liked it. But then I was like “Wait, how?” when I saw it was being ported to Switch, because I am not sure how the weird stuff it does would work on it.
In any case it has interesting themes, and it’s very good at making the player connect with them.
So, they’re still using their own frankenstein monster reanimated from the corpse of Gamebryo I presume?
There are definitely more problems at Bethesda than their engine of choice, but yeah, it certainly still is a big one. It’s been creaking at the seams forever.
I’ve spent €45 for a Mario game yesterday. Last I’ve checked that game costs roughly the same for everyone (except understandable variations in regional pricing). Not €45 once for me and $2,000 per week for some guy with an addiction problem.
Yet that game was made, and thousands more that didn’t rely on gacha, lootboxes or whatever.
So, do you consider paying for more rolls part of the fun?
Because the rest, including the hit of endorphin you get for a stroke of luck, could very well exist without it. But of course on EA’s side getting people addicted has no point if they don’t pay virtually unlimited amounts of money for more.
This stuff is why “it’s optional” and “it’s just cosmetic” are bullshit arguments.
If you can resist the urge, you’re not the intended target. They don’t make record profits from people who can spend somewhat rationally, even though those are the vast majority of users their contribution to profits is a drop in an ocean.
No, the only reason this model works so well is because it’s exploiting the vulnerabilities of a small percent of big spenders.
Probably the least important of all these problems, but really, the publisher issuing a blanket chatGPT-generated apology, in the name of the studio without their knowledge, not even getting the name of the fucking game right.