Here’s the thing though, these games are highly reviewed and played but it may still in fact be more profitable to keep pumping out mid tier trash. For companies that have long forgotten the time when they had a soul and were a group of passionate gamers, that’s all that matters.
Im starting to believe the big triple A game industry is starting to collapse, not the gaming industry it self, but the big companies that make generic after generic blockbuster kind of games. They keep getting more and more desperate and predatory in order to appeal to the share holders and maximize profits because their type of games have become so expensive to produce.
Remember when games didnt have to put the same amount (or even more) of the development cost into marketing? Good games sells themselves, every gamer knows it, but the monkeys with suits who run the companies nowdays cant compute that. Instead they keep coming with more and more shitty ways to steal our money. They will try anything instead of listening to their developers ( who are the actual gamers that know what works and what dosnt).
And so here we are. Just in this year I have seen a single player game put a mechanic like the NG+ mode only availible for the deluxe edition (yakuza), an extra save game file or fast travels as microtransactions (dragon dogmas 2), extra missions and a 3 days early launch acces for single player game only allowed in the 110$ edition (star wars outlaws), and a company literally changing their former terms and conditions in order to sell a 250$ p2w pack and killing it self and the work of the last 5 years? in less than 24h (tarkov)
Im starting to believe the big triple A game industry is starting to collapse, not the gaming industry it self, but the big companies that make generic after generic blockbuster kind of games.
I’m not that hopeful, casual gamers keep buying the same low effort games like Fifa, NBA, Pokemon every year even though they got enshitified 10 years ago. The opinion of game-educated and demanding people that represent a minority of their market will not change those game companies. It’s like asking fat food chains to get into Michelin ranking, they don’t care. All we can do is allow good quality independent game makers to exist by giving our money to them instead of the fast food games companies.
When i was a kid we made fun of hipsters, but as I’ve matured and examined the world with a critical eye, I’ve realized that hipsters are entirely correct. Popularity is a bad thing for the health of anything you’re into. It’s a very rare creator that can become as big as Tolkien or Larian and not go to the dogs.
Exactly. Ubisoft is the perfect example of this. Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, R6. They used to take risks and try to push gaming forward with amazing ideas and design that made my kid brain explode.
Now those IPs are dead or extremely stale. And it’s because releasing an AC with microtransactions makes them more money than making an offline single player Splinter Cell. Or releasing a skin for 20 euros for R6 siege makes them a huge profit for the time invested in creating it.
God I wish we’d get a new single player Splinter Cell. Some of my best memories I have as a kid are playing the original Splinter Cell. Even if we do, it’ll be riddled with microtransactions and will fail to capture the magic of the original games.
Yup. The go-to example is that Blizzard made more money off of a single $5 mount in World of Warcraft, than it made on the release of Diablo 3. An entire fucking game launch made less money than a $5 microtransaction. Why would a publishing company bother with creating solid self-contained games, when a single micro transaction can make more money for far less dev time?
Players need to stop purchasing shitty games and shitty microtransactions, because it only encourages devs to keep making them.
It’s strange though, because Ubisoft on paper should be something I hate, but when I actually play one (and I’m a single player gamer), they’ve got fun gameplay, and the store, although it is there, generally keeps out the way and when I accidentally press the button in the menu that goes into it, there’s nothing I’d ever consider handing over actual money for. The game never points you at it, or makes you feel it’s needed.
I don’t even know who it’s for. Who buys cosmetics in a single player game? It genuinely feels like it’s just been put in to appease the beancounters.
That said I don’t get excited enough to buy them at full price, and normally wait until they’re on PSPlus or something. There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.
There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.
But why bother with alright when there’s thousands of highly regarded indie games out there for a quarter of the price?
Character creation in single player games is often a big thing and considered in a lot of reviews. I played a lot of midnight suns, and while I would never actually buy any cosmetic stuff, I definitely liked unlocking the skins and had ones I particularly liked. I even changed up once in a while. I would think even in multiplayer games, people aren’t generally buying the skins for other people, but because they like to look that way.
It comes as no surprise that single player cosmetics is a source of revenue.
To be honest, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was the most mid, regular, non-surprising game I’ve played in years. I know they tried later to make it better, but it was just so empty and repetitive, like The Division 2.
Wildlands surprised me multiple times, Breakpoint only made me ask myself multiple times: why is this not possible?, why do I have to do this all over again?, why do we have vehicles if most of the places can’t be reached normally?
Also, The Division 2 was incredibly boring. I really want to like it, but I have to repeat the same things over and over, and you don’t even get good rewards, farming is boring and doesn’t compensate the time spent, at least not like in The Division 1 and its incursions, you were at least guaranteed something.
I haven’t bought any game from Ubisoft after TD2 and Breakpoint. I can already spend time in those games if I want the ubisoft experience. I
Principal Skinner = no. The children yearn for the microtransactions
Helldivers’ business model is primarily microtransactions. The microtransactions affect gameplay, so it’s in the direction of “pay to win”. It’s not the paragon of non-predatory monetization that people make it out to be.
(Baldurs Gate 3 and Palworld both are good examples of a healthy pay once and actually own a copy games)
Also none of these games released without serious bugs.
It’s not “pay to win” exactly, but it’s only a matter of time until an important “meta” weapon is locked behind a warbond.
The fuck are you talking about, you can unlock everything without ever once spending money. Even if you DID drop thousands that would only give you more bonds and some cosmetics you can’t buy medals. You have to play to unlock things
This is how microtransaction driven games typically work.
You technically never need to pay, but they keep adding more content locked behind 1000 credit warbonds, and some of that content is very useful, and getting to 1000 medals takes a while if you aren’t specifically trying for it.
If you actually want all of the gameplay affecting content (war bonds) you either need to grind specifically for medals for a long time or you need to pay.
Other games that use a similar business model:
- League of Legends
- “Gacha” games like Genshin Impact and a lot of mobile-only games
- Fortnite
- typical digital TCGs
(Also note all of these are free to play and only make money off microtransactions, which IMO makes Helldivers more predatory for double dipping)
TL;DR:
It’s not hard to earn the ingame currency. No FOMO. Definetly not pay to win, since you get decent equipment, can unlock everything else with little time, it’s a PvE Co-Op game with many difficulty levels to serve most player tastes. Buying ingame currency has some dark patterns though, but it’s extremely better in comparison to other games with microtransactions.
Long version:
You can earn the paid (and sadly obfuscated) currency by playing the game and collecting some stuff. You don’t need to pay at all despite the game’s price initially.
It takes me about 15 to 30 hours to get enough of the paid currency in order to buy a warbond (the “battlepass”, basically a package of weapons, tools and skins you get access to by buying such a warbond once). And that’s me not even trying to farm the currency. I’m sure you can get there a lot faster if you’re aiming for farming it.
It’s also not pay to win. I understand the first impression, since it’s actual different sets of weapons and armour which are locked behind it. But: on the one hand, you still have the standard warbonds which you don’t need to unlock using that special currency; there, a decent collection of items is already present in order to find a style with which you can beat the game. On the other hand, it’s a PvE Co-Op game with a lot of different difficulties to choose from. You can play it from extremely easy to very hard. It’s not intended to be played solo. Although you absolutely can if you’re good. That means: winning is easy. Even with equipment you don’t like as much.
And let’s not forget that it isn’t that hard to earn the paid currency by playing the game. Unlocking the paid warbonds that way can be another incentive to play and get a feeling of progression.
What’s also very important:
There is no FOMO. The warbonds stay where they are. You can complete any of them at any time in any order you like. Also, even in the ingame shop, there is not really FOMO: there are literally just four items: two helmets and two armours. Those switch every couple of days. But that switch is a cycle. Meaning, after some days those, you’ve seen on one day, are back.
The devs also made clear in a statement that they explicitly don’t want that FOMO stuff and don’t want it to be pay to win.
I have more than 200 h in the game and have unlocked every item in every warbond earlier than that. Never paid a cent. Not even for the game itself since I got it as a gift, lol. Also several of the shop items. (That depends on difficulty though. With lower difficulties might take longer.)
Yes, they are not “the paragon of microtransactions”. First, because they still have microtransactions at all. Secondly, because it’s obfuscated and superlinear (ratio between spent money and amount of received currency is not the same between the packages: you get much more if you spend a bit more). But if you compare that to other games, which employ microtransaction shit, it’s waaaaay better and right at the top, after Deep Rock Galactic.
microtransactions isn’t relayed to this at all though… I hate them as much as anyone else but this is about giving the devs the time they need.
Your reply is basically “I know buzzwords but don’t know what they really mean so I’ll just reply with whatever comes to mind about games nowadays being bad”.
Crazy, if you make good games, people will buy them and pay for them.
Naw, the companies will miss the point and demand studios go as cheap and dirty as they want for Helldivers 3 and Baldur’s Gate 4
I suspect that may be part of the reason Larian isn’t making a Baldur’s Gate 4. At the very least, they probably realize that lightning is very unlikely to strike twice, so why tempt fate? Get out of the series while everyone still loves you. They probably also recognize that they would face a Knights of the Old Republic 2 situation where the IP owner will want more profit faster, and so they will set deadlines which don’t fit with Larian’s design model. At best, BG4 would be a rushed mess, with Larian struggling for years afterwards trying to deliver the game they wanted to deliver and burning down all of the goodwill they have built up with gamers. It’s just not worth it. If they walk away and stand up their own IP, they get complete control and can take the time to deliver what they want to deliver. Sure, they don’t have the built in fanbase that a D&D title would have; but, I suspect they are going to have a lot of that fanbase follow them anyway.
Sadly, Hasbro absolutely will be willing to burn down any and all goodwill BG3 has built up. I expect we’ll see some smaller developer handed BG4, put under unrealisting timelines and the result will be a disaster. It will not be the fault of the development team. I suspect any dev team is going to be salivating at the prospect of making a D&D title. It’s a dream project and they will bend over backwards to get it. They just won’t realize, or hope they can avoid, Hasbro breaking their back in the quest for short term profit.
If Larian released mod tools, hasbro will watch the community build an open source of the paid model they were trying to force on everyone
Your comment just says that you don’t know anything about Larian, so don’t slander them for no reason at all
also no rebalancing the games progression so you can shoehorn mtx into it helps a lot too