TwilightVulpine @ TwilightVulpine @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Putting it like that makes it sound that this is incidental, but the conditioning techniques baked into the design of these games are included for the sake of selling battle passes and virtual items. If they didn't have subscriptions and virtual currency, they would have been built entirely differently.

Both of you had too lofty dreams for social media. Reddit itself used to be like that too, by convincing themselves that this sort of idealistic attitude could last, or that "circlejerk", that is, the influence of majority opinion, was ever not present. This is a place for discussion among regular people, not a philosophical symposium of specialists, as if those environments were truly neutral and universally accepting either.

As platforms grow beyond the most invested niche users, most people will not put more energy into any discussion than a general agree or disagree. The tendency of downvotes is always to become a disagree button, no matter how much one might insist otherwise. In such a semi-anonymous platform, a modicum of politeness is already an achievement.

Really, if you do want to have such a perfectly open and supportive discussion group you might want to select particular people to create a small forum. But by doing that, it's pretty much guaranteed that you won't escape some form of circlejerk.

It's not about holding up, it's about playing pretty much the same, while mostly just looking prettier.

While lines are never quite so clear cut, from SNES to N64/PS1 we unlocked a whole variety of 3D games, and by PS3/XB360 we added open-world games, immersive sims and console MMOs to our repertoire. But what new horizons were unlocked by technological advancements since? Only battle royales come to mind.

Surely today's games are larger, more beautiful and have embraced QoL aspects that we discovered along the way. But today's games don't feel as markedly different as any previous leaps.

It doesn't feel right to count that generation as retro, for reasons like GTA 5, which was initially released for those consoles, yet it's still considered a current game, with no significant overhaul beyond graphical fidelity. It's the greatest example of how games haven't drastically evolved since then.

Compared to the jump from SNES to N64 and PS1, or from PS1 to PS3, we haven't had any major breakthrough, just moderate incremental improvement.

This is already a concerning power to hand to a government, which could cause issues regarding the right of freedom of movement. But even if we assume an ideal and responsible government that never misuses their powers, can we be sure such a backdoor would be secure enough not to be exploited by other parties?

You know, I'm not the biggest fan of personal vehicles, but if you want to talk about "death machines", you might also spare some thoughts towards police brutality and whether cops can really be trusted to hijack people's vehicles at will.

...nevermind that such a backdoor could be exploited by other parties also.

Hype is an effective marketing tool, If not for that many current triple-A games would sell less, and indies would sell more.

They are just willing to ride or die with fossil fuels as the status quo and the Economy as the most important measure of anything.

Did you miss the part that paying subscriptions now provides less and less guarantee of remaining ad free? Don't take for granted that paying will keep that from you.

If it was about being fair, they would be fine with just keeping a moderate amount of ads. I didn't start blocking until they started to push multiple pre-roll ads and then several more every 10 minutes. Time does not suffer inflation, much on the contrary. If they try to take more and more of our time as payment, that's proof of their greed and disregard towards their users.

I dunno, given how bad and buggy games are at release these days, seems more like the ones paying more are getting punished.

Remember when Cable TV was supposed to be ad-free? That's happening to Streaming now too.

The some way people are getting all "just buy Premium" at YouTube's ever increasing amount of ads is getting so annoying.

When they inevitably introduce Premium Plus and put ads in paid users' content, you know, like many streaming services are doing now, maybe they will realize that there is no reasonable deal that sates these corporations.

This is such transparent bulshit excuse. Who wants their playtime to be more grind? But it's probably why Assassins' Creed even adopted XP systems at all.

If anything I want to go back to the days games had baked in cheats to become invincible and unlock everything so we can fuck around when we feel like it.

They don't give a shit but if everyone rejects their bulshit, like that NFT nonsense, they will back off (and try again later)

I'm not american. This is not an US-only problem, this is a problem of our wider economic system and corporate influence. Even countries that used to have better conditions are increasingly pressured to exploit their people in the same way.

We are very broken. Rather than improving, the working conditions of most people are declining, and pay isn't keeping up with living costs.

I believe at some point people won't take it, but right now I wouldn't be surprised if people took two job rather than enjoy their free time. Many already do, because they need to.

Absolutely. This isn't just that kids like games and that's bad, it's that games are literally being made with conditioning tactics to get people playing them as a habit and paying. Not only they have loot boxes that are psychologically identical to a slot machine, but games as a service have mission and reward structures designed to get people returning as a habit, not because it's fun. Look how many games have players going "I need to do my daily missions", not because that's fun, but because of a sense of obligation and Fear of Missing Out over trickling rewards.

As much as I see what a pointless move this is from the parents, we should acknowledge the alcohol industry and retailers have to take more responsibility to keep it away from children than game companies do. Stores can be punished if a kid goes there saying "I'm definitely 21" and they sell without checking.

There is some neglect from parents, there is the way how our society is overworked gets in the way of parents who want to do better, but a fraction of the blame can be put on game companies that sell games with gambling-like monetization without even rating it properly. They are not wrong about there being "addictive features" and "predatory monetization aimed at minors". Even Mario Kart World Tour has these, and it's rated E

Clearly there's no conversation to be had, but because you want to pretend whatever you don't like to hear is false and stupid, without even trying to offer any reason for it.

Consistently groups that do horrible, entirely excessive atrocities insist that they are necessary and vital. It does not mean that they are, and it's definitely something you should not assume blindly, or at all.

There needs a lot more than "might" to even begin to justify it. Then again, might alone is often used to get away with it.