The current landscape of gaming is so foreign to me. Gaming for me has always been an experience to get lost in a fantasy world — something akin to reading. Nowadays everyone seems obsessed with the online and competitive sides of it. It feels like you can’t have a conversation about videogames without someone bringing up Fortnite and the new skins they unlocked by treating it as a job.
because that’s what the majority of people play.
the majority of people buy 1-2 games a year and play them all year. COD, sports games, the big popular shooters or whatever is trendy at the moment.
they are casual fans. they don’t give a shit about stuff like Expedition 33 and would be totally uninterested in a game like that as boring and stupid. these are the same people who only watch marvel movies or hollywood action crap.
all my friends/family who play games think I’m a gay weirdo for liking non sports, non military, non racing games.
Its partially lack of marketing. You have to have the time to be at least somewhat keyed into the gaming community to even know what exists and is good.
For example I don’t have a lot of time to play, so I am ideally looking for something like 15-30 minute increments. All the mass produced things marketed on tv or whatever are that type of game. God forbid I find a game and then realize it has some punishing save system.
If that ain’t proof microtransactions are a bane on society, then we’re already too corrupt to care.
Not to mention there’s hardly any micro transactions left, a lot of these micro transactions are the prices of full games or more!
This is what I don’t get, why would you get some in game currency or item that will help you for like five minutes for the same price as a game that will give you tens of hours of fun. Cosmetics I somewhat get, you wanna show off. Still think it’s kinda dumb but I get it since I’m tf2 player.
Nah it’s worse, because you can trade TF2/Steam items. You can’t do shit with games like Fortnite, Overwatch, Valorant, etc…
If it isn’t proof they target children, I don’t know what is.
Microtransctions prove they should be illegal every time I read any article about them
I see it as as much of a problem as cheap toys from Toys r’ us. The kids love them for about 30 minutes, then they break and that’s it (the toys that is). But does it really matter? Just because something is digital, does it really make it worth less to the children?
It’s less about the value to children and more about exploiting that to extract money without any regard to the children’s wellbeing. Crappy toys would be purged in a more ethical state of the world instead of being allowed to thrive and take over.
That’s just every single thing ever sold and marketed to children. No company has ever given half a shit about children’s wellbeing. With that said, what part about them buying a skin to show off to their friends hurts their wellbeing?
The part where they buy a skin to show off.
I would say ‘no’ on principle. No child of mine will EVER receive virtual currency as a present for Christmas. I would sooner buy them £120 worth of games than even £5 in Robux.
I mean I can understand it. What do kids have these days? Arcades died, malls died, “why won’t kids play outside?” the outside old people built
I mean.
Kids my age: Remember when you could just download a skin for Quake from a website, install it, and still have other players see it? And it was free?
I made my own Quake skin for my clan!
Remember the custom warehouse level filled with crates and everyone wearing a crate skin?
My brother got minecraft to play with my niece and there are two versions now, from what I can tell one that’s like what I was playing a decade ago but updated, and one that has microtransactions. The old one lets you download skins and mods for free. It seemed like a no brainer but he went with the microtransaction one, and now my niece keeps asking for cosmetics.
There must be a reason to yoke yourself to the pay-for-skins version, but I’m really not sure.
There must be a reason to yoke yourself to the pay-for-skins version, but I’m really not sure.
The MTX-filled version is the only thing you have on console.
There’s two editions of Minecraft, Java edition and Bedrock edition. Java is the original version that just gets updated with the new features, but is only available on PC. Bedrock edition is available everywhere but has microtransactions and bonus Microsoft garbage
You also learned some valuable PC navigation and troubleshooting skills in the process of adding the skin to your game.
Kids today: why wouldn’t I spend $20 to be able to dance the running-man as Goku in Fortnite?
Sold my (child’s) soul to the company store…
Hey I got an idea: what if we get all the kids addicted to smoking, gambling, and drinking!
Very environment friendly:)
Over half of us kids are really fucking dumb, so this tracks.
No different than buying a game if they get the same amount of playtime.
I get the old man sentiment. But I remember being excited for a gift card to the arcade. Is it very different? Is it bad?
It’s also no different than a RuneScape membership in the 2000s, or hell, Roblox Builder Club almost 20 years ago.
Both of those brought me an immense amount of joy and connection to others that I would never otherwise had gotten to experience living in an isolating rural area.
imo a subscription service is far more ethical than the current model. Its a very straightforward transaction. Now I have to convert real money to a fake currency (in set amounts of their choosing), purchase a pack of some kind, and gamble my way to a new pointless cosmetic item.
I didn’t see a link to the survey in the article so I found it on the ESA website.
The survey says that 58% of kids want games, but it doesn’t seem to specify what percentage of kids want in-game currency?; it simply says that in-game currency is one of the top five video-game related requests, at 43%. But 43% of what? 43% of kids who want games? It’s not specific, which would make the news article meaningless.
So…… when was it that all of the children in America were polled again?
With the power of math you don’t have to. I’m a data analyst by trade so I take offence to this question every time.
Yeah that’s insanely fucked.
It’s 43% of 60% of US kids. So more like 25%. Still pretty bad.
i have four nephews. 3 of them want fortnight/roblox money. the other one doesn’t care about games at all.
i try to get them into different games and they won’t have it. they are addicts for these freemium bullshit games. the concept of buying a game is weird to them. they expect them to be free, but they have normalized paying money for in game items.
and they have been playing these games for years now. 6+ years playing the same game. probably 10,000+ hours in them. but all they care about is playing with tehir friends and competing over who is best at fortnite.
Terrifying how when they grow up they will influence the gaming landscape to become even more hellish.
Ill go back to my games before 2008 now bye.
They probably won’t play games once they go to college. They are very concerned with popularity and being cool, and once playing games isn’t cool they will stop.
They don’t really care about video games as a genre/hobby anymore than they do about movies outside of Marvel films. They like what is popular because other people like it.
they are the epitome of filthy casuals, but that’s where the money is. they play games on mid level laptops and think i’m a weirdo nerd for having a ps5.
I stopped at consoles when they became another enshittified always online tool of theft.
I stick with pc, old consoles, or my old 360 as a new Gen console.
OK, must be nice? I don’t care about that. I just want to play games on my couch. PC gaming is a huge pain in the fucking ass so I stopped PC gaming like 5 years ago. I am too old to be spend hours try to fix broken games.
Video games aren’t a part of my political or moral beliefs. they are just entertainment.
Good for you! I find modern consoles to be a cesspool of data theft and annoying logins that I dont want (in, Microsoft account for xbox), plus not owning any of my actual games is a red flag, as well as needing internet to even play a single player game.
However I get it for ease of use if youre already in that space. I also enjoy making things much harder than they need to be, hence my 15 year old cpu linux gaming pc I keep hobbling along!
Help us European Union, you’re our only hope.
