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.
This is just what always on connectivity does to the media.