Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
I beat FarCry 3 on Sunday. I have to say, it's rather compelling and kinda insane. I think Ubisoft essentially looked at FarCry 2 and decided to ditch what didn't work there and add new stuff in, which I think worked well.
I don't understand the problem. It's all aesthetic shit aside from the extra loadout slot isn't it? (disclaimer: I don't play CoD, and I never will).
I am honestly kinda tired of hearing about how microtransactions are the death of gaming, because I really just don't see anything to justify the paranoia. It's more understandable when things actually affect gameplay, but none of this seems to.
As the article itself says:
Because, see, the game didn't need any of that. At all.
It'd be fine if the game came with those options, but as is, it's a pretty blatant cash grab.
^^I mostly just think it's really silly.
...and?
It's aesthetic stuff for the people who are in to aesthetic stuff. I don't buy the doomsaying in that paragraph you quoted, frankly. Is Call of Duty the first series that springs to mind when I think of microtransaction-fueled character flashies? Not necessarily, but it doesn't strike me as that weird either, and frankly in an era where it is increasingly hard to actually sell games, microtransactions like these strike me as a decent way to make revenue.
Again it'd be different if any of these actually gave the people buying them an advantage (which is a common and deplorable tactic used by MMOs) but it doesn't really seem like any of it does.
And it's speaking terribly of a recent trend towards making blatant cash grabs after a game has been released. It's like DLC, except with less content.
If you can't see why it's a problem, well then, okay.
Okay you keep saying "blatant cash grab" without saying why I should care about it being such.
I'm not really even sure why you keep phrasing it that way. Most products are made to be sold and yeah, are thus a cash grab, in a loose sense.
I'm also gonna go out on a limb here and say that DLC and aesthetic microtransactions are pretty different. The former is essentially an expansion pack, the latter's just a flashy. I don't necessarily find either of them morally reprehensible (on-disc stuff aside, that shit can go die), and am not entirely sure what the big deal is, to be totally honest.
Just looking at the phrase analytically, it seems that "cash grab" implies that the producer is not being fair to the consumer in some way, likely in the sense of giving the consumer too little gaming value for the amount of money paid to acquire it.
Blatant implies shamelessness, and the idea that this goes beyond what is already a baseline amount of unfairness, and thus implies that there exists such a baseline in the first place.
Edit: Crap, I'm not in class anymore. Whoops.
Speaking as a programmer in the industry, it's pretty worrying in a sense of artistic honesty when your publisher's priority slowly shifts from "make a fun game" to "piecemeal off as many premium features as possible".
It's an extremely profitable business model that's a) only viable in so many types of games, and b) kind of abusive to the player. Neither is too friendly in the long term.
Because game companies are attempting to make more money with less content. Which means worse games that cost more.
But like, these don't really strike me as premium features. Again, they don't actually change the game in any meaningful way. There's no additional content, no new features, just....skins, emblem slots, custom target reticules (who besides you would even see that?) and a custom "calling card", which I assume is an in-game player ID. The only one that seems to have any real impact is the extra loadout slots. Even then, unless being able to change loadouts really, really quickly matters way more in CoD than it does in any other shooter, I can't really see what that does to the game.
As far as a lack of value...I don't really know what to say to that, I mean, you can buy all of them, together, for five dollars. Now, would I spend five dollars on that? Not normally, but if I had some MS points left over after buying something off of XBLA, maybe (this'd be if I cared about CoD, mind). I'm just not understanding the utter bile this is getting as a concept. Granted, if they tried to farm this out forever in lieu of developing a new game, I could see that causing understandable frustration, but I don't really think that's what they're doing.
bustid
I'm willing to admit that this is a considerably less egregious use of this than in most cases that already happen.
The microtransaction model as used by big-name publishers for AAA games like Dead Space 3 is far removed from the essential, original intent of the idea. Initially, microtransactions were a payment model used to replace the purchasing cost of the game, and/or monthly fees. This is beneficial to the consumer, because they get to pay for whatever the game "deserves" in their mind. Many players who play microtransactional games don't pay anything, but those that do pay tend to pay regularly for whatever content is on offer.
In the case of game like Dead Space 3, though, it's a blatant cashgrab because it was a game designed and funded under the standard payment model -- $60 for a complete game. Adding microtransactions to that isn't using a different payment model for mutual consumer-producer benefit, but giving players the opportunity to spend additional money for very little development cost. That they're adding microtransactions retroactively to a game tells us exactly how they see the payment model -- not as an opportunity to publish games under a different model, but to squeeze more money out of consumers.
It's kind of like if Activision started a Kickstarter for Black Ops III. There's absolutely no reason for them to do so, and if they did, it would be a fundamental misunderstanding (or abuse) of the production model in question.
I'm in agreement there. I only posted it because it's silly that instead of announcing that the next game in the series would have microtransactions, they announced that the previous game in the series would have microtransactions. On its own, it's fairly minor, but it's indicative of the general trend found in other stuff like the SimCity thing, Dead Space 3 making the shift to a multiplayer game for little reason (and given that portions of the campaign are unavailable in single-player, it is a multiplayer game).
Essentially, the big game publishers don't want games to be products any more, because once you pay for a product, you're done giving them money. Instead, they want games to be a service, which is kind of like a product, except you don't actually own it and you pay more than once.
This in and of itself is bad enough, but as the SimCity thing shows, these companies are astoundingly bad at running games as services.
I just feel that a distinction needs to be made between relatively harmless cases like this one and ones where the actual playing of the game is affected severely. I don't think this actually changes how anyone will play Call of Duty.
How long until it gets like that, though? We're talking about the likes of EA and Activision here; the people who run those companies aren't particularly interested in games, they're businessmen. This is the latest in a long line of changes to game-related monetary transactions that are less and less favouring the experience of the consumer. On-disc and day one DLC, DRM, the raising of physical game prices and so on and so forth.
The last time I saw this kind of thing underway was back when I played Warhammer. Games Workshop, the company that produces the rulebooks and figurines, is notorious amongst tabletop gaming circles for anti-consumer business practices. Unfortunately, they have a near-monopoly on the fantasy tabletop wargames market. Their products are excellent, but it's no excuse for what has gone on, like prices inflating and set contents being reduced. These days, the (initially overpriced) paints are even being sold for the same price in smaller quantities. Lots of things have changed since I started, over ten years ago, and it was pretty steep back then.
Now video games are clearly undergoing the same process of anti-consumer business policy, and much like in the case of Games Workshop's alterations, gamers continue to keep buying. After all, if the EA and Activision AAA titles are the most widely marketed games, and most gamers (even "core" gamers) don't spend much time reading up on games or gaming websites, then it follows that games with lots of advertising will get sales. EA, for instance, has been selling the same Madden game for years and years, with aesthetic and roster updates. None of us care, because we're not the kind of people who generally play Madden, but EA have been successfully squeezing blood out of that rock for ages.
There's just way too much AAA publishers are doing that reeks of anti-consumer business policy, and the recent microtransaction debacle (along with SimCity's policy of always being online) has soured relations further. We shouldn't just let this kind of thing slide, because we can see their intentions from a mile away. And their intention isn't simply "to make money" -- it's to rip consumers off by cutting as many corners as possible while charging as much as they can get away with.
Well I'd say that your best option in that case is to not buy games made by companies whose business policies you disagree with.
Furthermore, a company-wide boycott is a bad idea because it just removes you from that company's market rather than sending a message about what is or isn't okay. Better to judge each game individually.
Well that's what I've been advocating, but Alex has a different perspective.
I should note that my opinion here is possibly a little skewed since I'm rather far removed from the mainstream gaming scene--my recent obsession with Borderlands 2 notwithstanding.
Amazing new Pikmin 3 screenshots show new level and characters
Pikmin cartoon series coming to 3DS
What will happen when Miyamoto does retire?
http://www.gog.com/pick_5 Pick 5 games from GOG.com and save 80%!
On that note, which games should people get from this page?
So Extra Credits have released what may be their most important episode when it comes to game design.
I've been in support of intrinsic rewards for quite some time now. What that means is that the game experience itself ought to be rewarding; a combat system should be engaging in its own right, dialogue should be interesting to listen to, puzzles should be welcomed and so on. But a lot of games thrive on extrinsic rewards, which are rewards external to a particular gameplay system. A classic example is a lot of traditional JRPGs, where the lackluster combat is an obstacle between yourself and the more satisfying narrative reward.
Extrinsic rewards aren't necessarily bad in their own right, but they're shallow without being supported by intrinsic rewards as well. A good recent example of a game that is made almost entirely of extrinsic rewards is Heavy Rain. It doesn't have much in the way of a consistent gameplay system, instead opting to place its experience entirely in its narrative beats. Without a system of play, where a consistent set of logical rules can be used to overcome obstacles, rewards have to be extrinsic almost by definition.
Both kinds of rewards have their place, but extrinsic rewards are really limited without intrinsic rewards to contextualise them, and it's the intrinsic rewards that define the actual gameplay experience. Mastering both kinds of rewards is the hallmark of a great game, but failing that, it's the intrinsic rewards that make something truly worth playing.
So, defeated the twelve shadows in Persona 3 and now the plot has finally started.
Kinda got annoyed at the rather obvious twist, but at that point, it was pretty obvious I liked that cast full of shitheads so uh yeah, it's been good.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122673-The-Witcher-3-Exterminates-Loading-Screens
The Witcher 3, an open-world game, will have no loading screens.
That's very impressive from a technical standpoint, but it also indicates that there will be no fast-travel system.
http://www.destructoid.com/seven-different-studios-working-on-assassin-s-creed-iv-248626.phtml
Okay, so I still don't actually know if ACIII was any good, because I'd want to finish Revelations first and I would really rather light myself on fire than finish Revelations.
But ACIV is being developed by seven studios, so regardless of whether III was better than Revelations, I sincerely doubt IV will be.
^^ They could get around most of it. If fast-travel locations are indoors, you can just have the screen lock up for a couple seconds while you load priority assets and deposit the player, then load as much as you can of outside as you make your way to the door.
Hell, if the fast-travel points are same-structured teleport rooms of some sort, you can just have them loaded all the time.
Ooh, that would work. Objection withdrawn.
There are further steps you could take, of course. Teleport facilities could be designed to use a minimum of computing assets (clean sterile room with no particle effects or active lighting), and make you go through some kind of corridor and up a set of stairs to get out, to give the console as much computing time as possible to load whatever's outside.
Something Assassin's Creed did that I liked was the idea of the world actually loading around you. Witcher doesn't exactly have that sort of setting, but if fast-travel rooms aren't used, teleportation could have some kind of disorienting "world fills in around you" effect that reflects what's actually loading. Hell, even just having an expanding fog effect that blooms out from you.
I don't know the extent to which the setting would support magical teleportation points, but if they opted for horse travel or something, they could just have the stables all look the same.