X Box Series S and X thread of MS DOING IT BETTER - The Bear and Badger

poprock

GamePass is a lot like when I was a teenager and picked up pirate disks for my Atari ST every single week. All the games. More than you could ever play. All just sitting there, for free.

Escape

And they all clicked.

mrsmr2

Hitman stores all your saves online, resulting in you having to be online or you get a substantially gimped experience - content not available and no unlocks, for example.

Means they can track your actions and tough luck when they turn off the servers.

That starts off at 75% on the hate it meter.

GurtTractor

I remember watching streams of people playing it and the server issues constantly stopping the gameplay. Absolutely 100% fuck that shit.

EvilRedEye

That sounds really irritating for a single-player boxed game but at least on Game Pass there's no expectation of digital ownership and it'll disappear after a fixed period anyway.

poprock

mrsmr2 wrote:

Means they can track your actions …

I might be missing something here, but why is that a bad thing?

Minnesänger

poprock wrote:

mrsmr2 wrote:

Means they can track your actions …

I might be missing something here, but why is that a bad thing?

It might not be, but your score / end of mission points are tied to server connection. That means any blips and none of your progress counts. I had a horrid time trying to play the newer hitman games because of that, and didn’t even bother trying 3. The always online requirements for the new trilogy absolutely blow.

Yossarian

I’d be amazed if most games these days can’t track your actions without storing saves on the cloud.

poprock

I understand being annoyed by the rest. I was just confused by that one statement. I can’t see why ‘tracking your actions in the game’ would be an issue.

GurtTractor

The dangers of in-game data collection

poprock

GurtTractor wrote:

The dangers of in-game data collection

Nah, that all lands on the tinfoil hat spectrum for me. You have chosen to play a Hitman game. Of course you’ll be making choices in that game about killing people etc. You’re playing the character of a bad man. Beyond that initial choice to play the game … there’s nothing of any value that can be learned from ‘how you play it’.

GurtTractor

In this case it may or may not be harmful in the end, but there is always a concern about data collection in general, no matter how seemingly benign. At the very least the idea of more data making its way into the hands of marketing companies should give some pause.

mrsmr2

It's not necesarily a bad thing but I don't like the idea of Sony and the game devs knowing when I play their game and where I am located when playing. Most people won't be bothered at all by this - but I am.

In general, the more data people have, the more they know our behaviours, the more they can 'tune' the experience (and potentially sell us stuff).

And yes, I'd forgotten about Hitman's lack of scoring if you are off-line. I connected on-line once just to see and then deleted it.

poprock

Okay, thanks. Now I understand what you meant, even if I still disagree/dismiss it. Cool.

GurtTractor

mrsmr2 wrote:

In general, the more data people have, the more they know our behaviours, the more they can 'tune' the experience (and potentially sell us stuff).

Yeah this is a big worry, telemetry in the right hands can help devs make amazing experiences, but it can also be used in very nefarious ways. From that article -

“The privacy side doesn’t worry me so much,” Champandard says. “The big risk is that it becomes weaponized addiction, that you design a game to manipulate someone’s physiology and dopamine responses with content.”

and

Even the tiniest interactions with an app or service give it useful data in building a simulation of you. “Imagine it’s a stick figure at first, and as you use the system, it’s collecting fingernail scraps and bits of hair,” Raskin told NBC News. "What do you care that you lost a fingernail scrap? But they’re putting it together into a model of you."

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/why-data-not-privacy-real-danger-n966621

I think user telemetry in games is only ok if there's some strict rules on how the data can be used and who can use it. As long as a dev is being responsible and not giving it to third parties which would flow into personal profiles of you then it's probably fine.

Yossarian

Where things get a bit murky with games is this idea that somehow games aren’t designed to be addictive and compelling and to tickle our dopamine receptors anyway. That’s exactly why we play games in the first place, and we praise games that do this well for the very fact that they’re doing it.

poprock

Indeed.

Gamer: “Please make games that I personally enjoy more.”

Developers/publishers: “Okay, tell us what you enjoy.”

Gamer: “But my privacy!”

GurtTractor

I know you both must be aware of exploitative bullshit in games, microtransactions etc.

Yossarian

Of course, but that’s only one small part of it. The very foundation of videogames, before anyone has ever even conceived of a microtransaction*, is about making games that make you feel good for playing them and that make you want to keep playing them.

*I suppose that arguably arcade machines were the very first microtransaction, but I’m not sure that argument is relevant here.

poprock

I now regret starting this digression, but the genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

RamSteelwood

Yossarian wrote:

I’d be amazed if most games these days can’t track your actions without storing saves on the cloud.

They can, but not if they want to be able to access that data. It won't just be saving progress, but tracking analytics of how people play. i guess for a game like this they'll use it to look for how people complete missions, if they've found glitches and shortcuts or get stuck in dead ends etc. that they can patch and fix.

and also finding out where mrsmr2 lives

RamSteelwood

also just reread Yoss's post and realise he prob meant separate that data from the need to cloud save

Yossarian

RamSteelwood wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I’d be amazed if most games these days can’t track your actions without storing saves on the cloud.

They can, but not if they want to be able to access that data.

Why not? I’ve seen the analytics dashboards that Apple and Google offer to app developers, there’s a shit-ton of information there, including live, global heat maps of where people are using the app. That doesn’t require anything to be saved to the cloud to display.

Edit: yeah, that ^

GurtTractor

There's also obviously quite a lot more to games than just dopamine drips, if you aspire to be more than just a rat in a cage. When I think about the best gaming experiences I've had, how addictive they are or how high on dopamine they get me doesn't actually factor in that much, but everyone likes different aspects about the medium.

If developers are putting a heavy focus on trying to make their games more addicting and hard to put down, I don't necesserily think that's a good thing.

As usual; I'm not saying down with this sort of thing, just... careful now.

RedDave2

GurtTractor wrote:

There's also obviously quite a lot more to games than just dopamine drips, if you aspire to be more than just a rat in a cage. When I think about the best gaming experiences I've had, how addictive they are or how high on dopamine they get me doesn't actually factor in that much, but everyone likes different aspects about the medium.

The obvious point is people not liking a game purely for its aesthetics. There's lots that fill into what makes a game enticing (or off putting)

Diluted Dante

poprock wrote:

I now regret starting this digression, but the genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

Not since I rubbed it the right way.

DrewMerson

Diluted Dante

$7 a month is pretty decent.

GurtTractor

Common use of machine learning techniques to actually process the data in a useful way are a relatively recent development, and will only become more prevalent.

The fact that you personally haven't noticed any improvement in companies' ability to know things about you doesn't amount to much tbh, and anyway the real concern is not so much about targeted advertising and more about subtler things that won't be immediately obvious. Think maniplation and propaganda by media, goverment, powerful entities that would like to maintain control etc. This kind of stuff has always happened, modern always-connected technology just makes it easier.

LivDiv

When I was freelance one of my main clients worked with brands and supermarkets pulling this data together which I would then turn into a glossy video.
I couldn't give two fucks about the data but naturally was reading it via osmosis through having to animate it or pretty it up.

They do use demographics but they are broad and it tends to be a bit old school. We are talking 5 or 6 groups. Andy will get hamster adverts probably because people his age on average have kids the right age to be getting their first pet which is often a hamster. Its that broad.

Where they really deep dive is on what people buy, when, what with, how often etc. A membership card like a Tesco Clubcard means they can link those transaction together. They can find that people who do a big shop Tuesday night come back Friday for pizza and beer. Or people who buy Pringles at 11pm will also buy soft drinks. (Pretty basic examples). That then informs store layout, shelf layout, cross promotion and so on.

If i was to translate that into what games are doing I would guess they are gathering data to see what type of person buys their games, how many hours they put in, what aspects of the game do they put the time into, how many purchases that type of person makes per year. Use that data to inform 'People who buy microtransactions tend to prefer assualt rifles, make more assault rifle skins'.
'People who play rpgs complete them before playing other games, break down long rpg into purchasable chapters'.

That all may sound a bit grubby which is fine but they don't care about you the individual.

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