Poll of the Day > "Respect for the Player"

(+) Yeah! (+)

One of the things I have been mulling over the past couple of weeks (but in reality, it's been much longer than that) is the concept of games "respecting the player", and the total lack of respect that the game has for players in many games these days. Keep in mind this is mainly targeted towards the type of game I play (long running service-based games), and I understand the majority of you don't play or care about these types of games, and like different kinds of games.

This type of game I play basically exists to manipulate the player. How does the game manipulate the player? Well there are a few ways. The player could be manipulated into logging in every day to keep metrics high. This is usually done by FOMO (also known as "Banner") events. Get this thing now, or you may never have the chance to get it again. Games I play heavily revolve around this concept.

Another manipulation tactic is a bit more harder to explain. It usually involves the marketing content updates with product placement, to get the most people interested in buying content. This is usually driven by the "hype train" and paid twitch sponsorships. The goal is to condition players to playing a game for one day, or one week every few months (Usually quarterly) such that you create a conditioning cycle where players will spend $60 or more on your product every "release". The goal here isn't to keep day to day player retention high (it could actually be detrimental to long term success) but to keep release to release player retention high. This is highly deceptive as players are less likely to see this cycle happening.

I have also noticed another trend, where game developers rarely, if ever go back and "update their game", as updates aren't really marketable with either of the tactics above (especially not on the second one). This results in feature creep, and ultimately feature bloat which burns people out of your game much sooner. This kind of bloat doesn't actually hurt player retention, if you're investing in the "release to release player retention" model I mentioned above, but it absolutely destroys player retention for any player or community who wants to play your game over a long period of time.

The second point there - community. Has anyone else noticed that player communities no longer exist for these types of games? It is becoming more and more obvious that reddit is the main gaming community and usually a game's subreddit is run by the game developers themselves (or highly manipulated by those developers). Another thing I have seen is twtich streamers being bought/sponsored by game developers, to influence the game's community. These types of things are quite frankly disturbing.

Thank you for reading my ted talk for this Sunday. Its not like any of you will actually read this entire thing, and it's not like this is going to return to the aether in less than 24 hours. Why did I spend 15 minutes writing this?

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Also here's a link to my patreon

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That kind of game style is kind of predatory by nature, so it's not too much surprise when developers seem to put profit above all else.

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Why would I respect a gamer

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Blightzkrieg posted...

Also here's a link to my patreon

No, because I'm not a grifter and I don't think anything I could say is really worth putting that much effort into.

PunishedOni posted...

Why would I respect a gamer

ikr? They just exist to manipulate and exploit.

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oh look, it's the guy who doesn't like video games complaining about video games, ok?

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Aculo posted...

oh look, it's the guy who doesn't like video games complaining about video games, ok?

I like video games, ok?

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Of course long-running service games are going to include incentives to retain players and manipulate them into coming back. As a business model, they rely on recurrent spending, and that requires players to keep coming back as much as possible. If you don't want that, don't play games that fit that model.

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Oh, thought this was about sports at first >_>

Online games kinda see their customers as cash-cows and try to find ways to monetize as much as they can from them rather than simply relying on a modest subscription or one-time purchase. The higher the monetization is within a game, the less likely I am to start it.

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These game developers need to come to my house and suck my dick if they even want me to try out a demo

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