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[Zyxl]

So I'm a bit behind on the curve given Halo 4 came out in November, but I just learned the hard way that Firefight is locked behind a paywall. So any time you don't have enough friends around for a vs match, the only content is the campaign, and it's possibly the crappiest and shortest Halo campaign yet. The pleas to 343 are met with 12 year olds who don't pay for their own gold account and actually defend this, and the only "explanation" I can get from anyone is that an online connection is required for the continued updates and releases to it they plan... because a Gold account is the only one that can connect for updates or stat tracking and you require the latest version to play locally? There is no god damned reason I should have to shill out an online subscription fee for a local-play feature. Imagine if LAN/local Slayer matches required a Gold subscription. I suspect that is in plan for Halo 5. The whole thing stinks of some executive meddling to bolster subscriptions.

I feel like the world has gone mad. Free2Play can no longer exist without Pay2Win. Absurdly large upfront payments still entail monthly fees. Excessive subscription fees just to look at sponsored advertisements. Content on a disk I paid for is behind a paywall, and much of the content I can access was sacrificed for locked content making the meat of the content I can access rather miserable in comparison to the prior games. Microfuckingpayments that cost more than the base game and entail a fraction of the content in the base game. Hundreds of dollars of DLC that even all together still pale to the predecessor game you can get at a fraction of the price.

I feel like we're in that transition from cable to cable-is-the-only-real-option-and-is-now-as-shitty-as-the-old-TV-that-made-you-pay-for-cable-in-the-first-place. I have a sneaking suspicion the Xbox 720 will have a credit card reader that operates like a Pay2Play coinslot. Not that this would be a very big change from where things are now.

Anyone else have some crap experiences with monetization of the gaming industry? Ruining a favorite series of yours? Or just a pessimistic outlook perhaps?

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Sadly, I would have to agree with you. I have been gaming for 20 years (PC exclusively, no consoles) and the trend these days are:
1. Publisher blows lotsa money on hypes
2. Release basic game, often riddled with bugs and glitches
3. Release DLCs
4. Later found out the game would need always-on Internet connection and if the server was shut down, bye bye game.

Long gone the days when we had update patches (not bugfixes) as part of the offering of buying a game.

I would consider these factors:
1. Game publishers/developers would not behave this way if there was no demand; so our tendency to buy hyped up games (Spore, everyone?) led them to capitalise on it.
2. The advent of credit cards means we tend to purchase now and pay later and this leads to very consumeristic lifestyle that encourages people to spend without considering whether it's a good buy or not. Gamers are no exception to this shift.

[Levi]

I hate it too.  Especially F2P.  Its a business model that preys on the mentally ill.

[aristabulus]

+1 all that BuriBuri said.  (pure PC for ~17 years here)

The solution is simple, really...  If you don't like what they are doing, vote with your wallet (staying closed).  Don't pirate it, either.  Find a truly free alternate, or go without.  I hear there's a thread around these parts for such things. 

I hate it too.  Especially F2P.  Its a business model that preys on the mentally ill.

As with many things, the devil is in the details.  Some games are doin' it right, such as LoL's visual-only purchases, or Path of Exile's planned system.  Many more are doin' it wrong, *ville and all its clones, Entropia Universe, any game with lockboxes, etc.  Many more still fall in between.  In the grand scheme of things, F2P is still a really new idea.  It's gonna take a while before a happy balance is found.

[Leatra]

I agree. But it's not like complaining is going to change it. If people are buying, corporate whores will just keep pushing it. They only care about money and if they are getting money, everything is just peachy.

We should take a look at ourselves. We can't keep buying over-hyped same old bullshit and then complain about it or things will just get worse.

EA CEO John Riccitiello (while in shareholders meeting) - "When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time."

    "A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10,20,30,50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in in. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

    "But it is a great model and I think it represents a substantially better future for the industry.""

You can listen it from the mouth of John Riccitiello with a more comedic effect here. Remember the background music from somewhere?

Also, watch this to see what I'm talking about when I say we should take a look at ourselves as gamers.

Me? I hate EA for ruining Bioware. Future of gaming is not looking bright.

[Euld]

Bioware   *sniff*  If EA hadn't utterly destroyed them, I would have planned to end up working there someday.  EA even drove the main leaders in Bioware so crazy, they even quit designing games altogether.  One of them even went into brewing beer, he was that disillusioned.

Star Trek Online recently had a lockbox event, and good god I spent $40 bucks on it.  The box was supposed to have a rare high level spaceship as one of the rewards, and the system announces every time somebody gets one.  In other words?  You're being reminded every few minutes that someone just won the jackpot, and the game is practically showering you with these lockboxes, reminding you every time that it only takes a few measily dollars for your own chance...

Sure, I ended up with one spaceship.  A science one, and I'm tactical ._.  Nearly overdrew my account this month, it was that bad.

[Azated]

Yet another agreement.

I have no problem with companies making a little extra money off their games, even if they're not free to start with. However, if paying that money gains you any sort of advantage over other players, regardless of the rate, the game is instantly off my computer and into the 'give to my grandkids when they feel retro' box.


And then comes DLC. Once again, I'm fine with developers charging a few bucks for a large amount of additional content (like the expansion packs of old. I remember paying a quarter the price of base games and feeling like I should donate some money to make up for all the cool new stuff I get to play around with). But if it's content that should have been in the game in the first place, I become rage incarnate. Some games take this to extremes, with the Sims series coming to mind. Seriously, what the crap? There's something like 15 DLC packs coming up to nearly double the price of the base Sims 3 game, and it's either content you'd expect to see in a life simulation or some sort of celebrity sponsorship. That sort of thing is why I can't stand EA, or anything they're involved it.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Star Trek Online recently had a lockbox event, and good god I spent $40 bucks on it. 

Star Trek Online has a great concept but this was exactly why I stopped playing it and other games released by the same publisher.

[Ozyton]

If only Tribes Ascend was an actual proper game *sigh*
...
Anyways, yes, people who make video games are a business, and the goal of most businesses is to get more money... from what I understand. If people are willing to pay money for something they will make it for profit.

My problem with F2P is that it seems that they make a game that has less than what you would get on a disc, and it's a very closed game as well (no modding). If people could just mod in something that would otherwise cost money they wouldn't allow that. Same goes with DLC for the most part. Can't really sell DLC with new weapons or something if some guy can just make it for free. DLC needs to be more than just a few little additions, it needs to be real quality worthwhile content you are willing to spend more money on. Possibly it's better to do it this way rather than create full expansion packs or even sequels in some cases. But, if you have a closed game only you can control, you can release all the crappy DLC you want and people will buy it because they want more content for their game and buying it is the only solution.

Also, this post got ninja'd a bit, but whatever.

[aristabulus]

...
Also, watch this to see what I'm talking about when I say we should take a look at ourselves as gamers.

That was *_hilarious_*. 

...
Star Trek Online recently had a lockbox event...

It's not quite complete gacha, but just as unethical.  I mean, nothing else could really be expected when Perfect World took the reins.

[Leatra]

...
Also, watch this to see what I'm talking about when I say we should take a look at ourselves as gamers.

That was *_hilarious_*. 

That other video is funny too, in a dark way

The music makes the guy seem so evil, it becomes unbelievably funny. Man, imagine how it would be if it was real. We would end up paying money for bullets we use in the game. It would stop people going all-auto until they run out of ammo and people would start going for very careful shots.

Hey, it doesn't sound so bad when I say it like that. Maybe they'll give us DLCs to unlock frag grenades.

[aristabulus]

That other video is funny too, in a dark way

The music makes the guy seem so evil, it becomes unbelievably funny. Man, imagine how it would be if it was real. We would end up paying money for bullets we use in the game. It would stop people going all-auto until they run out of ammo and people would start going for very careful shots.

Hey, it doesn't sound so bad when I say it like that. Maybe they'll give us DLCs to unlock frag grenades.

I did listen to the other one, just nothing new to be said about it.  Makes me glad I gave up on EA long before they swallowed Bioware.

Ernest Cline trotted out the specter of paying for digital ammo in Ready Player One, the hardcover release predating Riccitiello's utterances by about two months.  The protagonist even had teleport windows in his clips so he never had to stop to reload (he internally winced at what that month's ammo bill would be).  I wonder if Riccitiello read the book, and lifted the idea.... hmm.

To the actual game mechanic part of the paying for BF3 ammo, that seems like a contrived design flaw, paralleling the energy gates in *ville-type games.  Fostering a system that promotes certain behaviours and then putting a price tag on continuing that behaviour is bullshit, whether it's measured in ammo, or energy, or thneeds.  If people have access to full-auto weapons, they will use them.  If ammo isn't constrained by something approaching the laws of reality, they will use full-auto more.  People that actually want to use an M1 Garand or similar are playing a different game.

If such a thing actually takes hold in FPS, it won't affect me personally, as I was done with FPS around Doom2/Quake1...  but it'll set a horrible precedent.  The greedy execs will try to shoehorn it into anything and everything.  >_<

[Majestic7]

There is a simple reason for this. Once a game company grows large and popular enough, it gets bought. Either that or it hires outsiders from the business sphere of things. Untill the company grows large enough, it tends to be ran by gamers for gamers. They do the games out of passion. Sure, they have a profit motive - they want to do this for a living - but it is tempered with the drive to create games. When the leadership changes, the motive changes. People taken in from the general business sphere have no emotional sentiment attached to gaming. They are in to make a killing and they'll do everything possible to do so. As long as there are fans willing to be fleeced, they will be fleeced. Such is corporate logic - maximum profit at minimum involvement, a dream come true.

Industries, corporations, businesses tend to go rotten when they grow large enough. That's when you stop supporting them and turn to the next new guy.

[itisnotlogical]

I really have lost a lot of faith in the game industry recently. DRM scandals on top of Pay2Win on top of the umpteenth World of Call of Gears of New Super Mario Battleduty: ZombieHalo on top of on-disc DLC have all but ruined this last generation for me, and I'm not that excited about the next one either.

Gaming is still a very expensive hobby, and the products are rapidly losing their longevity. Rare though they are, some Magnavox Odyssey consoles from the pre-NES days still work just fine. Meanwhile, all my old Xbox games are now effectively cut in half due to the disconnection of the original Xbox Live service, and there's rumblings about DRM technology that intentionally disables games in various ways, such as locking it to a specific console.

If I could make a wish, I'd wish for all gamers of every region to abstain from mainstream developers. There would be a mail campaign to each, stating that gamers are tired of on-disc DLC, tired of DRM and tired of the same games each year.

However, it seems that gamers are not tired of on-disc DLC or Call of Gears of BattleHalo 5 thru 12. The Xbox Live generation has bred a legion of gamers who will blindly lap up whatever steaming load the big developers push out. I don't know how or why, but that seems to be the situation and it makes me sad.

[Majestic7]

However, it seems that gamers are not tired of on-disc DLC or Call of Gears of BattleHalo 5 thru 12. The Xbox Live generation has bred a legion of gamers who will blindly lap up whatever steaming load the big developers push out. I don't know how or why, but that seems to be the situation and it makes me sad.

Simple. They don't know about anything better.

The way people evaluate products is based on their experiences with the said type of products. If you don't know about better games, if you were not a gamer during a better gaming culture and so forth, you don't know it could be better.

Besides, the majority of people buying games are casual and/or social gamers. Do they even want games that take 30 hours to play through in singleplayer? I doubt it. People here are Dwarf Fortress fans, we are as niche as it goes, pretty much. I'm not condescending towards casual gamers, I'm just saying they are a different demographic compared to people reading this thread.