Looty & "Keep"? - The Bear and Badger

Brooks

Seems bad.

Diluted Dante

Yossarian wrote:

At Gav: Not googling all of those, but Nier has apparently sold 1.5m copies according to Wikipedia, which doesn’t sound like a lot to me. Perhaps it has been profitable, perhaps not, but it is published by Squeenix who are getting money from MTs in a FF online game if I’m not mistaken?

The cash shop in FF XIV is quite limited iirc. Seasonal items that can be got if you wait for the event, the ability to change your appearance including race, one of which you get for free at the start, and everything but race can be changed with in gil, a mount (might be the collectors edition one) and leel boosts so you can play new expansions straight away.

Its main revenue is the subscription.

Brooks

In a contest between videogames with this shit and no videogames, I'd prefer the latter.

Yossarian

I thought you’d prefer no games either way around?

mk64

Clash has lots of loot boxes. Paid for are transparent and tell you what’s in them. Free ones are blind.

Brooks

Yossarian wrote:

I thought you’d prefer no games either way around?

In most cases that is accurate yeah.

g.man

afgavinstan wrote:

trippy wrote:

MoesTavern

Yossarian wrote:

Thought I’d move this here:

poprock wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

There’s a reason why they were searching for extra revenue streams in the first place.

Yes, because we live in a capitalist society. I get where you’re coming from, but correlation is not causation in this case. Businesses are always looking for more ways to make more profit, especially large ones and ones with shareholders.

Yes and no. We’re all aware of the fact that budgets for games these days are huge compared to what they were 30 years ago, we’re also aware that the sticker price on new games has barely shifted in those 30 years, failing to even move with inflation. Obviously there’s a larger market now, but I’m not sure that it’s increased by enough to offset the above. Devs have got to eat.

Jim Sterling has a recent vid on this very point

afgavinstan

Yaaaaahhh, he's had a lot of loot box content recently. Dunno where I stand with him. Makes good points, but then sometimes just comes across as moaning for moanings sake.

That's his shtick though, fair play to him.

Yossarian

If anyone can find a transcript of that Sterling vid, I’ll give it a read.

JonB

The whole raises money to fund other projects doesn't make sense to me. If people are pumping all their money into the massive releases and extra content, they aren't going to have any left for other games. In the past someone may have spent £50 on FIFA every year and bought something else a while later. Now they might spend £100+ and not buy anything else. More money is being hoovered up by the big name franchises. It's not an infinite supply.

Yossarian

Alternatively, there are a shitload of people who only buy FIFA each year and are willing to spend a bit more on FIFA each year, but would spend that money on meals or drinks or cinema were they not spending it on FIFA.

I’m probably closer to that end of the scale than I am at the end where a spare £50 means a new game. I hardly ever buy games at release, but I am happy to chuck a bit more money towards games I like (although not via lootboxes).

monkey

The market has grown. So has the number of developers. Dev tool costs have gone down. Competition has gone up. There's more platforms than ever. More chance to get lost in the crowd. Digital has reduced distribution costs but second-hand has impacted physical and on and on. It would probably be a phd project for someone to get to the bottom of it all. But it's really not as black and white as 'game prices haven't moved but production costs have'.

Really, if games are only in a position to make money by injecting gambling into their product, the market needs a realignment (or crash) to sort it out. That's an extreme solution but I didn't invent the capitalist economy these things are produced in. That's just the way the way it works.

If EA weren't EA and were nice guys, someone else would be EA and they'd be doing what EA does. They just operate in a different world. They've got to show growth, and future revenue potential from exploiting new markets. If someone took over and didn't do that, they'd be sacked and someone else would get the job. So where do they go in an over-crowded market?

monkey

Yossarian wrote:

If anyone can find a transcript of that Sterling vid, I’ll give it a read.

Not a transcript but I watched it.
Summary:The $60 price is a myth as games now typically have standard, silver and gold editions, season passes, DLC outside the season passes, and IAP / loot box mechanics. They also make money through sponsorship deals and merchandising. $60 should just be seen as the entry price for a game, not the full cost. It's usually the biggest and most successful games that have the highest concentration of these price multipliers. Additionally, the most popular games in the world don't have fancy graphics and eye-watering production costs eg Minecraft. The industry pushed itself into a situation of ever increasing production costs through things such as graphical awesomeness and Hollywood style cut-scenes.

Yossarian

That’s all fair, but let’s not pretend that all of the other stuff that’s added on isn’t a response to the same issue: users not wanting a higher sticker price, nor should we pretend that people don’t complain about those things either.

And yes, the technological arms race is a thing, but arguably we wouldn’t be looking at a billion dollar industry without it. If games still looked like they did back in the 16 bit era, I can’t imagine them gaining the sort of mainstream acceptance that they have.

Plus, I like the shinies.

afgavinstan

Definitely a whiff of "well, y'asked for it" about it all. The majority are never satisfied.

nick_md

So has anyone here actually used gacha/loot boxes at all?

I don't have any real problem with gacha tbh, the conversation should be around how it is implemented as part of a balanced economy.

Verecocha

I love the whole nice guys vs bad guys in game dev world. If EA are the bad guys, out of interest who are the perceived good?

There isn’t a single game yet that I’ve fekt limited in any way because of the implementation of loot boxes. As long as this continues they can carry on entirely as they are. If it impacts me I’ll change my mind, to this point it hasn’t at all.

bad_hair_day

Loot crates.

Cosmetic = right way.
Abilities = wrong way.

monkey

Yossarian wrote:

That’s all fair, but let’s not pretend that all of the other stuff that’s added on isn’t a response to the same issue: users not wanting a higher sticker price, nor should we pretend that people don’t complain about those things either. And yes, the technological arms race is a thing, but arguably we wouldn’t be looking at a billion dollar industry without it. If games still looked like they did back in the 16 bit era, I can’t imagine them gaining the sort of mainstream acceptance that they have. Plus, I like the shinies.

There's no point where a company that makes money (particularly Bad Guy EA) looks at its revenues and thinks 'ok that's enough'. Being the most successful company in the world didn't stop MS nickel and diming in the 90s or Apple doing similar today.

And there's a mid point between no graphical evolution since the early 90s at all and the ultra-high fidelity, budget-inflating, cut-scene laden Triple A games of today (although again Minecraft and WoW aren't exactly pushing the envelope). If the cost of shininess is the game is now rancid with gambling mechanics, it's not worth it.

Yossarian

There’s truth to the point about companies wanting to make more money, but the fact is that the impetus to start exploring these have come because of the need to cover bigger budgets. I don’t believe that there are dev teams out there who would rather be spending their time working on MT economies than improving the game. People aren’t drawn into the industry due to that. Clearly, there might be pressure being put on by publishers, but the dev team need only look at all the mid to large studios that have shuttered over the past few years to see the strength of the argument.

And if you think that the existence of lootboxes in triple A games are so egregious that you would rather not buy the game than simply ignore the MTs, that’s entirely up to you. I’m with you as far as something being pay to play goes, but that’s not been my experience of MTs in the games I’ve been playing, they’ve been optional extras which I’ve opted not to pay for. It hasn’t affected my gaming, and it seems like I’m not alone looking at how these things have been selling.

monkey

Verecocha wrote:

I love the whole nice guys vs bad guys in game dev world. If EA are the bad guys, out of interest who are the perceived good?

It's a dirty business. Maybe there isn't room for any. In my book, devs that just get on and make a good game as a complete experience, release it and then get on with the next one. The player just buys it once and their level of enjoyment is completely dependent on the talent and hard work of the devs.
Platinum maybe? That they aren't very financially successful sort of proves my point.

monkey

Yossarian wrote:

There’s truth to the point about companies wanting to make more money, but the fact is that the impetus to start exploring these have come because of the need to cover bigger budgets. I don’t believe that there are dev teams out there who would rather be spending their time working on MT economies than improving the game. People aren’t drawn into the industry due to that. Clearly, there might be pressure being put on by publishers, but the dev team need only look at all the mid to large studios that have shuttered over the past few years to see the strength of the argument. And if you think that the existence of lootboxes in triple A games are so egregious that you would rather not buy the game than simply ignore the MTs, that’s entirely up to you. I’m with you as far as something being pay to play goes, but that’s not been my experience of MTs in the games I’ve been playing, they’ve been optional extras which I’ve opted not to pay for. It hasn’t affected my gaming, and it seems like I’m not alone looking at how these things have been selling.

This isn't fact. It came from low-budget mobile games. Production costs have been used to defend every bit of money-grubbing behaviour going back to horse amour. It's got to be greed sometimes hasn't it? Or just wrong priorities. Don't put Kevin Spacey in your game if it means I have to pay for more maps.

Yossarian

It could be greed, certainly, but jumping straight to that rather than acknowledging the increasing cost pressures seems off to me.

Furthermore, the idea may have started in mobile games, but that doesn’t matter. Businesses in need of new revenue streams will often look at which things are working in other parts of their industry for inspiration as to where those streams may be found.

And just because Kevin Spacey isn’t your priority doesn’t make it wrong. There was a huge amount of publicity around his appearance in a game, it almost certainly drove sales.

monkey

If high production costs drive revuenue by making the game more marketable, why do the costs need to be covered by in-game slot machines?

cockbeard

Freemium I understand, I don't massively like it, but I get it

Game breaking upgrades being available toi the highest bidder in games with a premium price tag can take several full blooded punches in the fuck

Yossarian

monkey wrote:

If high production costs drive revuenue by making the game more marketable, why do the costs need to be covered by in-game slot machines?

Because the revenue isn’t necessarily enough to cover losses from other parts of the business. It’s a high risk industry, videogames, with most new franchises failing to gain a following and sinking without trace, potentially taking tens of millions of dollars with it.

If you want publishers to take a punt on new IPs, they need to know that they can weather the loss should they flop.

poprock

So what we’re saying then is that the industry is broken because it can’t support itself without shrinking ambitions … and introducing in-game paid gambling is a desperate sticking plaster of a fix that can’t possibly be sustainable?

Yossarian

It’s broken until it isn’t. The hits can be huge, and some companies are sustaining themselves very nicely from these.

It would also be fixable were consumers willing to pay more for their games.

afgavinstan

Would like to see how that new Ninja Theory game did in amongst all this.

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