Re: Coming soon to gaming: rewards for playing

On Wed, 29 Jan 2025 08:20:36 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 28/01/2025 17:25, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Which just makes me sad for where our hobby is going. Remember when
just  ENJOYING the game was enough to keep us playing? Or when we got
games that were PROGRAMMED to be enjoyable? Now it's all about the
bottom line, and rewards-based strategies like the above are only
going to make our games more predacious and tedious as they struggle
to claw back the cost of those rewards.

>
I've said it many times but one of my biggest gripes is the number of
games where the model off give us money as you'll enjoy playing this
game has been replaced by we'll use ever trick in the book for 'player
engagement' even if you're not really enjoying it that much. Oh you
don't feel like playing today, well you wouldn't want to miss out on the
daily rewards would you. That battle pass you just bought, it would be a
shame to waste it.

It's almost understandable with triple-A games that cost hundreds of
millions of dollars. Just selling the game for $70USD per game, you'd
need to sell tens of millions of copies to break even.

    [Some quick back-of-the-napkin math: assuming $500 million
     development costs and the same for marketing and
     production, and a 50% cut goes to the marketplaces
     (Walmart,  Steam) and for returns, etc, a $70USD game
     would have to sell 28.5 million copies to break even.
     Since you generally want to make at least 150% cost so you
     have cash-in-bank for future products (and to smooth over
     any flops), actual expected sales would be 42 million.
     According to Wikipedia, only 15 video games ever have sold
     this many copies.

     It's estimated 100,000 video games have been developed. This
     means you'd have to be as popular as the top 0.015% of all
     video games. That's not a very practical business model.]

Of course, this is a self-inflicted wound by the triple-A publishers.
There's no real reason games have to cost this must. But from an
accounting perspective, it's no surprise that publishers look to
alternate methods of income. But it feels very much like applying
bandages to your wounds with one hand whilst stabbing yourself in the
leg with the other.

Meanwhile, there are suggestions that GTA6 may sell with a retail cost
of $100USD, and that this will trigger other games to up the price to
a similar level. Again, an understandable reaction but not one, I
think, that will work out the way they hope. People are getting
squeezed financially, and that price jump will probably mean they'll
just buy fewer games.