Category: video games

The Many Curious Ways for Developers to Siphon Your Money

DryadLeave a comment

Battle Passing the Baton

Okay, I know that a lot of the actual developers are not trying to siphon your money…it’s the people at the top.

Remarks aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the gaming world has changed the way we approach our video games monetarily.  I grew up seeing nearly the entire spectrum of what it is like paying for your games, and it’s very interesting to see younger gamers and their perspectives when they’re born into, or at least in the changing tides of it, things like live service games and DLC.  So let’s take a trip through time and see how gaming has set up the ways that they determine how much our money will be worth.  Just to let you know now, it’s a long trip.

Classic Retail

A long, long time ago games were just bought as physical productions.  Oh wait!  If you’re a console gamer this is probably still the case (mostly)!  Get it, the case?  I remember the era of the SNES and N64 where we had definite boxes with games, manuals, and sometimes other goodies inside.  I loved the flavor of the manuals and how some of them are written in ways that already feel like the game itself.  I miss manuals sometimes.  While classic retail style games did feel great, remember that if we head way back the prices adjusted for inflation would be really high.  And all of that for a pixelated Atari.  Well, graphics always seemed great for whatever generation they’re in, so I can’t really blame us there!

I think there seems to be a lot of gamers (or perhaps just loud gamers) who whinge about how games were already complete back then, and that is mostly valid.  Some games even in this age did need day one fixes.  This might’ve been worse, because then you’d have to physically send in your game for rewriting, and that would take a while.  Or worse, you just got a broken version of the game.  For glitchers and speedrunners, maybe this was alright, but if a game was bad back then, it had a very small chance of actually getting fixed.  However, the pressure of getting it right the first time is a very good thing to have on the companies, but remember that this didn’t solve everything.  We still had a ton of janky releases by developers who didn’t know what they were doing or were just seeking to nab the cash in your wallet.  Oh man, the transition to 3D.  Remember that?  *shudders*

Expansions and Level Packs

Expansions are still some of my favorite forms of continued development.  In a way, you can say these were the first DLCs, but expansions were consistently large chunks of content that tended to change the way the game was played.  I’m talking about things like Starcraft: Brood War, Medal of Honor: Spearhead, and any of the Guild Wars 1 expansions.  These were exciting bundles where you knew there was a good amount of content in them. 

But again, we can’t assume that this didn’t all just feel like DLC.  There were some things like Level Packs that really felt like DLC.  New levels are great, but these tended to not add any brand new content to the games.  Back then this could’ve been enough though, especially for those who were solely focused on those games.  Speaking of which, id just updated their level packs for their old series like DOOM and Quake, so that the games come bundled with them in a less confusing way.  Now they’re, like, giant versions of their old selves!  An old family photo if you will.

Mods and Indie Games

Let’s take a detour to mods and indie games.  I’m going to just put these here.  Even though these are free, they were a huge way to access new content for those who didn’t have the money, also known as me.  Mods are the way some games are born like Counter-Strike and sometimes entire genres like DayZ.  Modding your games, especially those from Source engine games, are good fun.  I mean, as long as no one is just using it as a way to steal content.  That’s…  yeah.

Indie games were my jam.  After taking an oath to solidify my approach to video games and also being poor, I turned to indie games.  I remember back then when indie games were super shaky.  The quality was usually not the best and you had to really search for good stuff.  I talked about some of this in my Celeste article.  Indie games taught me how to look for information about games on the web.  Now indie games are usually like normal games, but bite-sized.  

One more thing is a shout out to flash games on all those websites.  Mmm, some good times there.  Some of them have evolved and are now continued as normal games on Steam, like the Bloons TD series.  There are a ton of free games out there to play, and with things like Epic Games giving games out every week and free services such as Fall Guys, you don’t even have to pay any money to be a gamer at all!  Except for the gaming device. Which is a lot.  Sorry, I lied there.

Digital Storefront

Steam was slow to go into the household.  I was still young-ish and my parents did not trust these digital stores.  But I still somehow remember the old, super chunky, off-green UI.  Now, digital is like one of the main, if not the main storefront for gamers.  It’s so strange that it has been entirely converted in the past few decades.  Waaaait a minute, did I just say past few decades?  That makes me feel old.

Downloadable Content/DLC, and Cosmetics

This is the one I remember the huge controversy about.  Two words: Horse Armor.  Back in 2006 when one of the first major DLCs came out for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion people were not happy.  I’m sure there is something out there that already had DLC, but this was the big one that really pushed DLC to be real.  Now DLC is everywhere.  It can be content that is as small as a new shirt for your character to wear, to something as big as an expansion.

Kind of in a similar way, cosmetics have also taken over the games industry.  I mean, we even have cosmetics for single player games.  Do I totally fall for these kinds of things?  Yes.  This is how I dress up since I don’t go outside and am a pale vampire.  I won’t really argue that cosmetics and DLC are evil or anything.  Some people are really happy with their purchases.  Which brings me to something a bit more …questionable.

Lootboxes, Mobile Game Leeches

Remember when lootboxes were actual, like, treasure chests in a game?  And now when you say lootbox people think of the gambling thing.  Lootboxes are a problem because they are predatory.  A lot of games set it up in that way, and let’s be honest not all gamers are ready or able to fight against that dope rush of opening this thing only to get…that duplicate item you already have.  I don’t really feel like lootboxes that are unbuyable are bad.  Those are no different from normal boxes.  They’re just presented differently.  But nowadays it’s always buyable stuff.  

Some people say that cosmetic only, buyable lootboxes are fine, but remember that it still involves the buyable gambling aspect and that can pose a risk for some gamers.  As long as we can feed money into the loop, it can be harmful.  I don’t care that I have worked on myself enough to the point where I don’t do that stuff anymore.  I don’t care that I can work myself to that point.  It’s the fact that there are some people still within that struggle who may not be successful.  We don’t know what is going on in their lives that is leading them to that, and I don’t want people to have to struggle with those unhealthy situations.  

Mobile games also prey in the same way.  They want you to just try one more time.  They want you to have to use that one cash item that will let you beat the level, or even…might beat the level.  I’m looking at you Candy Crush and all related situations.  These kinds of things can lead to insane amounts of profits, but it’s all feeding on people who shouldn’t have to suffer those kinds of things.  

It’s possible to argue otherwise, but I think these two things should go away.  I mean, lootboxes in their original forms of just treasure boxes in games can stay, but goodness, some of these things are horrifying.

Subscriptions and Game/Battle Passes

I put these two in the same category because they feast on the same thing: time.  You have already paid for your content and now it’s up to you to make use of it.  It’s almost like a, “it’s out of our hands” kind of approach.  I think these kinds of payments are great for those who focus solely on one game.  Those people will likely get the things they want out of it.  Let’s be honest, those free tiers on the battle pass are way less exciting though.  

I have some negative feelings about these because time is not something I have.  I’m always jumping around to different games and it’s hard to make me feel like I’m making good time.  Battle passes are cruel for me because they usually have such shiny, beautiful cosmetics.  There are some Battle Passes where you can earn some of the payment back in some…non-cash form such as getting the next pass free.  I think Warzone and Fortnite do this.  But that usually obliges you further to need to play the game.  And when playing becomes something that is against your choice, it’s very easy for the game to feel like a chore.  

It’s a weird thing when the company wants you to pay so that you might like their game less.  It’s even more awkward when people who play games for a living through things like Twitch show off the battle pass, because they play games for a living.  Of course the battle pass will be worth it for them.  But what about that woman who is working in the office and comes home exhausted some days because people are sexist and they really just want to be a blob on the couch?  Or a stay-at-home dad who is helping out the kids with…oh my goodness, whatever apocalypses kids create.  Maybe they can’t even play the game when kids are around because it’s too violent.  I mean, I’m kind of just spouting stuff, but these are also real situations for people where time consuming things like this just don’t feel as worth it.  And I would say that if we can’t pay with time we can pay with cash, but we’re literally paying with both of these things in this situation, so…  yeah.

And that’s it.  Well, I’m sure there are other things out there, but that’s most of it.  Thanks for taking this exhausting trip with me.  I like to be all happy and chummy with video games and the industry, but I have to also remember that sometimes the people leading the charge, like the execs, just want to make money.  And here we see the river of pain that flows through developers, artists, and then to the gamers.

I think in some ways, we’ve got a lot of good stuff going now.  Live service means a lot of free and fixed content.  It also means content can eventually feel ruined by a developer’s changing ideals. We get some really good deals on digital storefronts today that no one would’ve even dreamed of with physical stores, but a lot of the novelty is gone and now we have some suspicious ways of companies setting things up for money.  

I hope that didn’t make you feel too depressed!  Sometimes you have to take care of real life, your real self.  We’re gonna get through whatever else they throw at us (and maybe throw some things back).  So keep that money secure.  Take a deep breath and a step back.  Let’s focus on enjoying the game for ourselves.
I’ll see you again soon!
Elise

Advanced Boredom

DryadLeave a comment

Forest of the Mind

I’ve been writing articles, and I will write the whole thing thinking it was great.  I do the proofreading and realize…this article is not great.  I’ve done that a couple times now, and I guess I’m just not feeling it.  All the articles I’ve written were not cutting it.

But I also want to post more, so I will probably be posting more personal, normal stuff like this.  And don’t worry, they’re still mostly related to video games.  And maybe some other media.  The more I think about it, the more I realize how much design works with all media.  The same choice and consequence in designing a film or video game works in other places as well.  So I may be writing a little more on that as well.

So, Advanced Boredom is a state I’m in where I’m so bored that I can’t even choose to do the thing I want to do for fun.  I will switch shows, games, or books that I’m consuming every ten minutes.  It’s the worst.  It may be related to guilt or it may be related to …guilt except from lack of productivity.  Actually, it’s probably related to guilt.  It is not ADD or ADHD, because that seems to have been ruled out by the psychiatrist.  I do have attention problems, but, curiously enough, it is neither of those.  

In the state of Advanced Boredom, I do not feel productive with my time, especially in the consumption of entertainment, and I seek this out by traveling through the different layers of games to try and fulfill that.  Not fulfilling that means continuing the cycle.  And I finally found one of the ways to break that.  It is not always successful, and that usually means that the current boredom or stillness I’m in is not from guilt.

Oh, which brings to mind a point: Advanced Boredom is more like stillness.  I do not mean peace.  I mean stillness.  Like…an empty indoor pool.  Maybe you can hear muffled cars honking outside, and also the dripping of some water from somewhere.  The dull lights humming just enough that you can notice it.  This isn’t a fancy pool.  There is cement everywhere and very little glass.  No jacuzzi.

What do I do to get myself out of advanced boredom?  I have to consume or study something that is new.  I have to play a game I haven’t played or read a book I haven’t read.  I can’t play that MMO that I have a thousand hours in.  I can’t play the game I want to play for the 24th time.  I need to play something new.  I think part of it is bringing myself to focus on something that isn’t myself.  Not that I am thinking about myself all the time, but because the guilt is associated with myself.  It is getting into that flow of something I don’t know.

And that’s difficult.  It is so easy to pop back into an old game.  It is so easy to let the guilt consume me as I play Hearthstone even though I know I don’t want to be doing that.  It is a dangerous spiral.  I think this is a remnant from the productivity thing.  I still feel guilt over things like that.  I still don’t feel like I’ve succeeded in life to demand any sort of relief.  I feel guilty for being allowed to do the things that I want.  

Ultimately, I feel that perhaps this isn’t as healthy as I think.  I am still satisfying that guilt.  And while I really do feel great for doing something new, I need myself to come to terms with the fact that I should not be consuming any media out of guilt.  I should not be doing things because of guilt.  Guilt can be used as a way to motivate myself, but I feel like it’s doing harm in the realm of how “productive” my fun time can be.  Maybe if I’m at work, but not here.  I don’t think it’s healthy if it’s here in my entertainment space.

The mind is a forest that is extremely difficult to understand.  We can map it out, but becoming a navigator is much more difficult.  I never thought that playing games would be so complicated and mentally exhausting, but this is reality.  I want to grow as a person, as a video gamer, and I will need to manage these things if I am to do so.  Although I long for the simpler times of just playing games because I love games, I also enjoy this exploration of the self that helps me be a healthier me. 

Thanks for listening to my ramblings, and I hope that you can find healthy ways to navigate the forest of the mind.   

If all goes as planned, I will see you again later this week!

Elise

Why I Love: Subnautica

DryadLeave a comment

Fear and Fun

Subnautica is sci-fi, exploration-survival at its best.  Let’s dive right into it.  Er… sorry.

Subnautica is a survival game where you crash land on an ocean planet.  The normal survival mechanics exist where you have to manage hunger and thirst.  You’ll have to manage your oxygen as you dive into the depths.  You can scan objects and creatures to learn more about them and the absolutely rich ecosystem in the game.  You can build bases to expand your exploration prowess.  Subnautica excels at providing a beautiful ocean of creatures that gives you an amazing sense of wonder.  

I’m not exactly the keenest on survival mechanics.  They tend to get really annoying at some point.  I don’t want to have to find more food to eat.  I just want to explore, and while that option is available as a way to play the game, I definitely would not recommend it.  One of the difficult things about survival games is designing how the player manages their progression.  How do we make it so food is a challenge, but not annoying?  Should we make it so tools break?  And how do we design tiered tools?  Subnautica smooths out those experiences so these things rarely are an issue.  If you’re continuously doing your gameplay loop of survival, I feel like these things don’t ever feel like much of a problem in this game, but they receive just enough attention to make it still feel like you’re surviving on an alien planet.

This brings me to the thing that I enjoy so much: you don’t really have a weapon.  Okay, you get a knife early on, but that thing is puny.  It is clear in the game that you are a guest in a foreign world.  Creature designs are beautiful, strange, and sometimes dangerous.  The world is hand-crafted, so everything has its set place and I think that was the better way to go here.  Every time I stumble on a new area my mouth is agape.  I’ve really never felt such excitement and joy from exploring a new world as I do in Subnautica.  However, this may be a bit of a bias having studied biology as a focus in school.  I love learning about the physiological properties of creatures when I scan them.  I just…I need to scan them.  I need to know more.  If biological lore is a thing for you, then you’re playing the right game.  Or maybe you just like codices.

I’m also…incredibly scared of this game.  There is a story in the game and it is a game you can finish.  I love stories in games, but it’s also frightening that, in order to progress, sometimes you have to go into huge spaces of open water.  Maybe that’s also what makes Subnautica exploration so invigorating is that while there is a sense of awe upon finding a new biome or area, there is also fear.  You are a small human in a big ocean.  Sometimes all you can see is darkness or foggy water.  The fear is so natural.  It’s not like there is going to be a person with a pyramid head or a zombie leaping at you.  It is just…water.  I admit it, there have been times I swam forward and had my eyes half closed…maybe, maybe fully closed.  But I think this fear of the unknown is done very well here and is a core part of Subnautica.

Oxygen.  I’m going to say one thing that I think is both frightening and so visceral that I really love in Subnautica.  It’s getting lost in an underwater cave.  Perhaps you’ve heard this from divers or instructors before.  In real life, underwater caves are extremely dangerous to dive in.  If you don’t have a guide or a line to keep yourself in check, even experienced divers can die from lack of oxygen.  And all these things are definitely felt in Subnautica.  I think the intense panic I’ve had knowing my oxygen was running out and being completely disoriented from the multiple dimensions of being underwater is some of the best panic I’ve felt in video games.  Frantically and desperately swimming around hoping that I remembered things right.  It’s a rush.  I know I’ve run out of oxygen before in video games, but I think it’s the whole mise en scène and maybe claustrophobia of it all that makes it such a great underwater experience.  I mean, it is called Subnautica after all.

I hate spoilers, and definitely won’t ruin the game’s story here.  It is a good story though, and it is well worth your time, or at least I like it.  But like most things as games, it has to hold up well as an experience, and I don’t know if I’d play through the story if the way you move through the story wasn’t as well done.  I think in survival games, story tends to be pretty minimal.  I mean, actual survival games, I don’t mean open world games with survival elements.  Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are open world games with survival elements.  You do have to “survive”, but you can also get stronger and survival kind of gets cast to the wayside.  That first area with the plateau in Breath of the Wild is the survival part, the rest is exploration.  Mostly.  In Subnautica, you’re always just trying to survive.

I think the biggest factor of all these things is just awe.  It is a game that puts my feeling of how much I love exploring the world of video games into overdrive.  But even if this is so great, don’t go forcing yourself to like something if exploration is not your thing.  Perhaps you may find a certain aspect of it exciting enough, like creature design.  No matter how much I can praise a game on its strengths, if they’re not to your liking, it may be an unnecessary playthrough.  While I won’t deny those strengths are there, I would like to remind everyone that your opinions on what games to play are always valid.  Just remember that there may also be a new thing to love if you’re willing to give it a go.

Subnautica is a game that brings me back to childhood exploring Super Mario 64’s levels again.  And for a game that is good enough for making me want to keep playing even though I’m so scared of open water, it is #29 on the ULTRA.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you again!
Elise

Note: If you’re feeling woozy because of being in the water and going around disorienting caves, try adjusting things like motion blur (…if the game has them I don’t remember because I always go straight to options to turn this off) and the field of view.  If you feel like puking, adjusting the field of view almost always seems to do the trick.

Slave to the Game

Dryad1 Comment

Deadly Dailies

I find it very interesting that the format that most mobile games use is that you have to come back every day.  They usually also give you a daily thing to do as well, to keep you there so that you’ll hopefully spend money on stuff that you want.  Now, you likely already know that I am one of those people that like to spend money on random stuff I want in a game.  So…this isn’t great.

It’s different when something is subscription based, and that’s all there is to it.  Ultimately, if I cannot play for the day, that is fine.  Sure, I didn’t use that one day I paid for a subscription, but I’m not going to tear myself apart for it.  There are also weekly dungeons and stuff in games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, or Final Fantasy XIV.  But again, less pressure because it’s a weekly thing.  

Games that are free like Genshin Impact or Hearthstone have dailies that they give you.  And while Hearthstone’s piles up to three at a time, Genshin’s dailies are extremely important.  I’ve actually decided to stop playing Genshin, which is a huge thing for me, because it has a strong cultural impact and I want to support Chinese games.  They deserve better love.  But all these games that want daily things done for them are starting to eat into my time.  By the time I have finished all the dailies for my games, I have no free time left.  That’s just it.  There’s no more of the day left after I get back from work, and it’s really cutting into my single player gaming time.

Not to mention the stress of it all.  Knowing that primogems from the dailies in Genshin were my only access to getting more characters, going in every day was a must.  Guild Wars 2 gives you two pieces of gold and achievement points, of which the latter is harder to come by.  However, both of those are still not a huge deal.  They’re important, but I’m not kicking myself for missing a day or three.  I think part of the stress of Genshin was that I started on Day 1 and I didn’t want to lose that streak.  

And now that I’ve stopped…it’s been extremely relieving.  This actually happened with Fire Emblem Heroes as well.  I don’t regret any of my time in both games.  I enjoyed them a lot, especially Genshin Impact.  But I can’t keep up with the time I have left in my day.  I spread myself thin trying to go to work, practice art, keep up with entertainment media, and do chores.  I usually paraphrase the line from Bill Watterson: “There’s not enough time to do all the nothing in the world.”  

I get myself so worked up about getting skins in games where I don’t play with people.  I usually play solo, even in multiplayer games.  I think for me it’s more of a “dress up” thing than it is presenting myself to people.  This means I still care about doing the time-limited stuff.  It still eats at me now, that I’m missing out on stuff in Genshin Impact and I have to push myself out of that mindset.  I guess the feeling of missing out is very real.  Worse even, Genshin Impact’s events also include lore and story elements, so if you miss out on that, you’ll never get to play that story.

However, I just can’t commit to this sort of binding anymore (says the person who plays Final Fantasy XIV).  I think it really started eating at me when I was looking at my subscriptions for streaming services and realizing how unsustainable it was getting.  I’m not “financially successful”, so I probably shouldn’t be writing about video games or something.  I’m starting to cut down on streaming services and other subscriptions because I can’t afford it anymore.  It goes both ways.  In a way, subscriptions really aren’t that much money.  Like, an hour’s worth of work, but many subscriptions start piling quick.  Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Discovery+, HBOMax, Humble Bundle, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and so many other possibilities almost without notice.  It ends up becoming several days worth of work.  I don’t have all those, thank goodness, but look how fast it happens.  And don’t forget the subscription to life, like food and other monthly paid services.  Even if some streaming services are shared in a group it still is so much money in the long run.

It really is that feeling that I might not have the means to play catch up and be with the crowd, but I also would like to not be homeless.  Also, ironically, all this talk about subscription and demanded time makes me realize mobile games really should not be isolated for this.  Many games are like this and we should stop stigmatizing that only to mobile/free-to-play games.  I always mention how we should be healthy about our approach to video games and life, and yet here I was slaving away my time.  I’m glad I noticed, because the stress relief has been very helpful during a stressful time outside of video gaming.  Playing what I want to play has been so cathartic, and it makes me wonder what other underlying stress comes from me restricting myself.

I feel like all this focus on fomo really diverts people’s gaming away from fun.  Fun almost always requires that you’re not worried about time and meta-efficiency.  Until time begins its stretch into the eternities, we mortals have to make sure that we’re not burying ourselves in the chains that we believed bound us to our passions.  

Stay safe out there, I’ll see you next time!
Elise