It's a standard business practice to implement a new policy or change by first introducing a much more severe version, then releasing a statement about how you "listened" and roll it back...part way. Which was the whole plan all along...
HR departments do the same thing. Cut or drastically change a benefit; there's an uproar, management "listens" and a few days later announces a revised policy which is still a cut, and the level which they'd planned all along, but now people feel like they had some say in it.
And when HR departments start pulling crap like this, your best X% of people jump ship and the rest of them stop giving whatever amount of craps they already nominally gave.
I honestly don't know which is more damaging but it's the ole 1-2 of company death. Luckily when managers then backfill the holes left by the top-N and things "keep working" they pat themselves on the back and say "see they weren't so important after all!" And then get perplexed when things are going slower at a macro level because everyone is sad and either literally or mentally out the door.
I remember I Fell into this trap when I was 16 and we were on a 3 day school trip. Teachers said we had to be back in the dorm by 11, everyone complained so they said 11:30. It didn't work on 16 year olds back then (except me who was very stupid at that age) and it's pretty obvious it's not tricking people today either. People just don't care enough to be outraged about it that's why this strategy works.
I'd say it's first and foremost a political tool. Pseudo dictators especially love it.
Let's say you're a mayor who needs to increase the price of a public utility by 10%, what do you do? You announce that this price will be increased by 30%. People get furious, protests ensue (sometimes, it's even desirable if riots start) against such an outrageous increase! What to do? You should be as invisible as possible during this turbulent period and let others take all the heat, only to come out at the end announcing that yes, the people have spoken, and as a result the increase will be limited to 10%. Now, the people are happy; it's democracy in action, they have the power! The mayor is happy; he's got his increase happen. Happy ending.
I've seen this done, but I'm not sure if it's the strategy or a panic response. It's possible it drives away customers rather than them feeling "appreciative."
Bunch of lying management people. It shows how this company is controlled and by what kind of people. People without passion for gaming. The only thing they can is lying and focusing on short term money. Any good human would just tell the truth. Of course this was planned. The reaction of gamers was not predicted and now they blame it because of a technical issue. Yeah right. Uninstall Ubisoft.
The statement from Ubisoft is that the advertisement was only supposed to show when the game was first started, not when any other menu was opened. I know Ubisoft often does not deserve the benefit of the doubt but I find this explanation very plausible. A lot of games these days do this, even ones from much more “trusted” developers and publishers like Nintendo.
I recall lots of game manuals including advertisements for other games, and not having manuals anymore, the main menu is fair enough. Some PS1 demos in particular had ads for other games in the games themselves too I think.
Yeah I play most of the AC games but I typically play them a few years behind release. Ubisoft games, especially the Assassin's creed franchise, have been getting incrementally more aggressive in pushing ads for the latest release backward into the previous games. To me it seems far more likely than not that this one just had more pushback than they were expecting so they're backpedaling on it.
This describes basically every AAA studio. Yet another industry taken over by nickel-and-dime enshittification coupled with a commons that allows the tragedies to occur.
Games are already working on putting realtime ads in your game menus and signs. Most games are gatcha games and introduce children to gambling and financial transactions.
This is just what always on connectivity does to the media.
No they're not - if you include mobile games, sure but they're not really the same thing as PC/Console games. It's good to criticize this stuff but the hn crowd seems to go into full moral panic mode when discussing video games.
It's really easy to find hundreds of really good games that don't have predatory microtransactions, just download steam and pay attention to reviews.
Most PC and console games people play have gatcha mechanics and by having gatcha makes them gatcha games. If it has any gatcha mechanics it's a gatcha funnel.
it changes from a static object that can be vetted for fit and finish within the game world to a dynamic object chosen at the behest of a third party that can now optionally transmit malware.
I don't understand why you people use 'games' when referring to free to play gacha. Cosmetic or not. Hint: if it's cosmetic only the game is designed to get you to buy cosmetics. It's still not designed to entertain you.
It's simple: there are games and gacha. Mobiles mostly don't have games, only gacha.
They’re still games. It doesn’t matter that they’re designed to get you to buy cosmetics. Even in full-on gambling they’re called games. Blackjack and video poker are games.
There used to be a clear separation between gambling and other gaming. No one's going to get fooled by blackjack. On the 'video game' scene we're muddling the waters by allowing gambling (lootboxes) and other gacha to be called video games.
Take your least favorite politician. They probably say they're the saviour of the nation. Do you call them that just because that's what they call themselves?
No, but I call them politicians. You’re using gacha in a way very different from other folks, a disjoint set noun from games versus a modifier. I don’t think it’s going to be successful.
Its history is kinda fuzzy. Poker as it is played probably isn’t quite 200 years old. But it always has been a gambling game, at least for it’s known history. Same with blackjack.
I think it's fair to distinguish gatcha for cosmetics from gatcha for game mechanics - the later is a far worse user experience than the former. But, otherwise, yea I think that's an extremely fair statement - a whole lot of games remain gatcha free but by player volume the vast majority of games incorporate some sort of gatcha (even if it's just cosmetic stuff).
I disagree. They're both gatcha. CS may not be pay to win the way a gatcha added mechanism works but aesthetics matter and still are designed for extraction. Any gatcha in a game is designed to extract money. The purpose isn't how fun the game is with or without it, it's the fact that it's normalized in all games.
It's an industry standard to have some sort of gambling with real world money for extraction and all gatcha games are used as a funnel for this extraction, therefore I don't see a reason to distinguish them. There isn't a 'fun first' gatcha game, since they're designed to make you buy at the core of their existence.
I think it's good to distinguish them because there are games like Genshin Impact that have literally no accessible gameplay without constantly feeding money into the machine. I am also disappointed in the fact that Valve has started bundling in loot boxes for cosmetics - but games with cosmetic only gambling actually have a gameplay loop that's accessible and equal for everyone. Games that have gatcha centric gameplay are literally just clout games where you can waste money so that everyone knows how wealthy you are.
> Genshin Impact that have literally no accessible gameplay without constantly feeding money into the machine
is completely false. By even a conservative estimate 80% of the game can be played for free. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a worse example to try to make your point.
Skins are more nefarious. They make you think it's ok, and you can still play a full game, only the full game isn't the game you wanted to play anymore, it's just a giant ad for the gatcha. You win to get gatcha. Gameplay just tells you to either pirate it, accept it or don't bother, it's much more honest.
It may be true, if we go by simple quantity of games. Low-quality mobile games with gambling mechanics get churned out at very high rates, especially compared to AAA titles. I wouldn't be surprised if most games are gacha by volume, but probably not when adjusted for number of players or total number of player-hours.
There are some "real" games which started with the intention of being fun and then added some in-app purchases to make money. (Angry Birds, Plants Vs Zombies, etc). Then, there are bare-minimum games which basically only exist as a shell for gambling mechanics. Endless Candy Crush clones, incremental / idle games, and so on.
The first type are, indeed, not easy to churn out (at least no easier than any other game). The second, though, are the sort that most third-year CS students could make in a few days of concentrated effort, and individual companies often make many, many games that are basically the same but with different assets. They're then sold with misleading ads in the hopes that a few whales will get addicted. The cost to produce them is so low that even single digits of whales buying lots of in-app-purchases can result in profit.
(There's also a third category: terrible games with a license to beloved franchises, with E.T. being the canonical example. Many of them are microtransaction hell, but more often they take advantage of the brand to sell them for an up-front price. Same strategy, though: minimize production values, market as aggressively as possible within budget, accept a relatively low return which is still net-profitable.)
Do you have any stats though? Because I don’t believe that.
It seems unlikely that you’re going to have people whaling for rare drops in a trash game with no social network. Whaling is often a status thing and benefits from network effects.
I played some Nintendo’s / Cygames gacha from a while back and its revenue numbers were pretty middling despite being pretty darn high end. Are people really making money on games that are just barely serviceable with no fan base but a slot machine in them? I find that hard to square.
Similarly, it's a technical error when I accidentally send Ubisoft executives a picture of my middle finger. Sorry guys, that wasn't supposed to make it into the email!
What's to stop game publishers from creating a tier-based system a la streaming services? Want to buy this brand new AAA game but don't have $60-70? You can pay $30-40 for it with ads!
I assume this would actually not work out that well since games go on sale so soon.. so it will probably end up being the case for a streaming service like PS NOW or whatever.
In reality, though, pirates are gonna pirate and paycucks are gonna pay, they're not suddenly gonna find their balls because of some ad after paying to win the pay-to-win crap that is modern games for so long.
> What's to stop game publishers from creating a tier-based system a la streaming services? Want to buy this brand new AAA game but don't have $60-70? You can pay $30-40 for it with ads!
What will stop them from doing that will be the success of selling the game for $60-$70 with ads and a premium version without ads for $90-$100.
EDIT: disregard, I am an idiot, got my U-gaming companies confused
This is the same Ubisoft that recently tried altering the deal with developers. They are exploring new revenue streams, and I think this is just a preview of what is to come everywhere.
I think they're raking in enough cash from loot boxes and swappable skins on AAA free-to-play games that this just might not be that profitable.
Mobile is another story. There's so much crap shovelware out there with ads that you can almost forget the idea of a free game anymore. Video ads can run minutes in length or even be playable demos of other games, usually with the same braindead mechanic as the rest.
Steve Jobs was right, don't give your kid an ipad.
Game quality today just doesn’t support such a system. The only strong aspect of design these days is the art which, ironically, is often the quickest to seem dated.
AAA studios are probably working on platforms for this as we speak. Gamers are a gullible bunch - preorders, microtransactions, special editions, remasters. They tolerate it all. Gaming has to be one of the most rich sectors of consumerism out there. Kinda pathetic actually.
Until retroactive DRM is injected into old titles and we can't play single player games w/o verification. Brought to us via Microsoft (after they buy Valve).
DRM does not prevent you from still playing the games. If anything single player games need the verification more because multiplayer games can just prevent pirated copies from connecting to game servers.
Couldn't be worse than randy pitchford working character dialogue lines into bl3 shilling the player to buy dlc every single time they travel back to the ship..
