• mindbleach
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    5 months ago

    It’s a charge. It’s neither a product nor a service. The game is a product. Connectivity is a service. Charging an actual dollar for imaginary gems is a scam.

    Stop using this industry-wide problem as an excuse for personal insults.

    PoE is mainly financed by purely cosmetic supporter packs and whales.

    And what? Oh right, the victims being taken for thousands of dollars, each, for a game that’s allegedly free. Mostly over the thing people insist nobody is interested in, so it’s fine if each thing costs as much as a whole-ass indie game, and there’s ten thousand.

    Withholding that is frustration. You are made to want it. Once upon a time, choosing how you looked in a video game was just part of the fucking game.

    Withholding quality-of-life is obviously frustration. There is a better version of the game, dangled in front of you, constantly. The entire rest of the game exists to nudge you against that grindstone.

    CS is a hilarious example because of how insane the market is for shit you helpfully point out has no gameplay value. It’s almost like there’s other levers for influencing player desires! Jealousy, fear of missing out, basic peacocking - all of these things are exploited to maximum effect. Tweaking people’s brains is how games work, and this business model is slapping a price tag on that direct manipulation.

    • Beemo Dinosaurierfuß@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      You comment and comment and explain and explain shit that everyone already knows.

      It is like you just recently learned what marketing is and now you feel like you know some big secret.

      Just to make it short.
      Every product in the world is marketed in a way to motivate consumers to buy.
      That is not inherently immoral.

      You said every successful game monetizes by maximizing addiction and frustration.

      I have proven you wrong by naming games that just DO NOT MAXIMIZE FRUSTRATION.

      Yeah off course even those games dangle stuff in front of you that you are supposed to buy.
      That’s the whole business model of f2p games.

      But there are different ways to get to the players money.

      There are those that indeed trigger responses to frustration.
      This is absolutely prevalent in mobile games or even those million deckbuilder games.

      But there just are also games that use other ways to make players buy mtx.
      Again, you can play PoE, LoL, CS and many other games for literal thousands of hours without ever getting coaxed into frustrating barriers like a Diablo Immortals would do to players.

      You said there aren’t. So you were wrong.

      So have fun running around with a goalpost in your hand, I am done.

      • mindbleach
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        5 months ago

        As if frustration can only mean getting big mad at gameplay. Not, I dunno, the constant dissatisfaction and denial I’ve consistently described at such length that you roll your eyes at how often I keep explaining what I fucking meant the entire time.

        You might as well fixate on “addiction” by saying video games can’t cause chemical withdrawal.

        Your efforts in these games are ineffectual and discouraging toward the parts that cost money. Doesn’t matter how the game plays - it only exists to keep you looking at those things you don’t have. Yes - that is the whole business model of these games. That’s why they need to die.