What Went Wrong With Gaming? | Asmongold Reacts

what went wrong with gaming they've been my main hobby for most of my life I love video games they've been my main hobby for most of my life and now I make videos about video games which is great but recently I've been analyzing new games and critiquing new systems and I've noticed a slow but Insidious Trend toward games becoming more and more monetized but not fairly monetized and of course not because if they were fairly monetized then people wouldn't want to buy them people want to buy the unfair advantage player monetized it's the feeling you get when you look at a battle pass in a game you've already paid full price for it's the tiny Slither of sadness when a game you want has different exclusive levels for different consoles and you'll know you'll never get to experience every part of that game now it's that they had the same thing I remember it was Soul Calibur in like the GameCube era like the GameCube version had a link and I think that the Xbox and PlayStation one had different exclusive characters too like this is not something that's new but it's something that's much more common cosmetic you want costing 1005 gems but the gems are sold in packs of 1004. it's the knowledge that year on year the micro transactions from FIFA Ultimate Team alone make more money than Elden Ring's entire sale run it's the unfortunate let's hear that again boys let's hear that one more time who [ __ ] wants to hear how gaming is nowadays let's go London IV it's the knowledge that year on year the micro transactions from FIFA Ultimate Team alone make more money than Elden Ring's entire sale run it's the man [ __ ] hell yeah I wow it's depressing yeah it is the unfortunate reality of gaming after the Marketing Executives took over and it's hard to explain exactly how or when it changed but explaining things is what I do so let's go back to the start of gaming and work out when this whole mess started and then I'll actually pinpoint the exact thing the specific design was it is it going to be the horse in Oblivion I bet it's gonna be the horse in Oblivion or something like that choice which makes new games we'll see wrong welcome I'm Josh dryface let's work out what the hell went wrong with the monetization of gaming as usual a massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon Twitch and YouTube who keep the channel alive more information on how you can support at the end for now let's begin let's go back to the 1980s and early 1990s the video game Revolution was kicking let's begin let's go back I had this game on my calculator and I would have people pay me because we had to clear our calculators every like Tuesday for tests and I had two calculators and I would have people pay me every Wednesday to re-copy asteroids and doom onto their TI-84 calculators and I would get like a quarter for it every single time man those were the those were the good days back to the 1980s and early 1990s the video game Revolution was kicking off but home consoles weren't yet mainstream it never stops that's right you put your money in and play the game effectively making arcades the socially accepted pay to play model there's no denying arcades were bloody expensive I remember dropping way more than I should have done to complete Time Crisis but while this was expensive there was a very simple relationship between the game the money and the player pay money get access to the whole game Victory depends on your skill game designers knew it was a simple transaction and they knew someone would simply play as long as they were able to so they had to make the game hard so you would die more and so pay more this is why the turtles this is the best example of this is The Lion King on Super Nintendo is that the the people that made it went on record and they said we're sorry we made this game so hard so you had to rent it twice okay I'm not kidding the water bit it's why House of the Dead bosses were damaged sponges it's why ghosts and goblins was everything that ghosts and gold this was brutal in the early days of Home consoles when people would rent games we even called difficult levels Blockbuster levels designed to make the rental period longer and so you'd have to keep renewing it so I don't remember that that term but okay games make us feel the same way as modern money hungry games well it's because the trade of money for game was simple and there was nothing I think another reason why it was okay is because we were kids and we didn't spend all of our time thinking about it like for example now we always think about like all this stuff it's like hyper analyzed and back then we never thought about this [ __ ] at all we were just like oh new game by game that's it there was no thinking whatsoever it's it's unironically ignorance is bliss Insidious about the transaction itself you knew what you were giving and you knew what you were getting and if you were to break down the design time of a game into a pie chart at that point it might look something like this story Graphics narrative connections between them mechanics marketing I'm gonna be honest like except for the [ __ ] squaresoft games this [ __ ] pie part is not there in any of the other games like there are so many of the games it's like you know [ __ ] like Duke Nukem the president's been kidnapped are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president let's find out there it is all right that that's it that's that's all there is to it and maybe you hook up with a girl in like the third uh the third level and and that's it was the first arcade game you ever played I played Gauntlet that was my first ever arcade game that I played I played it at uh Chuck E cheese and I was so young that I would shoot the food with other people that would play with my mom and I and I could use the excuse that I was so young that I didn't know what I was doing but I did well I knew exactly what I was doing testing and then how much a go at the arcade costs there was a lot going on in the development of a game at these times yeah the other ones I remember so well um I remember the the Jurassic Park the rail shooter I remember playing that for like an hour at Chuck E cheese I remember obviously The Simpsons game and then there was also uh the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and I always liked Galaga the one where you're like in the ship and you can like fly around Metal Slug yes yes I remember I played that a Blazer laser tag oh [ __ ] man yeah I think those were the ones that I really liked those are the ones I went hard as [ __ ] on but it's all focused on making a game good because at that time good games make the most money when a company discovered a successful game they couldn't just augment the original with downloadable content or extra levels because that technology didn't exist yet they'd have to make a complete Sequel and so Gamers got more games jump forward in the mid-1990s the Home console Market had taken off you buy console you buy a game and then you play that game now the whole lives mechanic in games at this time was a holdover from the arcade design space and wasn't actually needed in home consoles because you didn't need the player to put more money in dying when you have I think obviously there is a certain element of skill to it where like you get better at for example whenever you'd play Castlevania or you play Mario Brothers you lose all of your lives and then you get better at repeating the old levels but yeah definitely he's right it's then restarting from your last save or just dying and restarting from the save anyway with no arbitrary life limit was functionally the same thing but design moves slowly away from the arcade model you no longer paid per play and you now paid per game and you then played as much as you wanted games were expensive of course but when you bought a game it was complete if the games were actually quite expensive back in the day people might not remember this but like video games back in the 90s were like 40 and 50 dollars fifty dollars in 1999 was a lot of [ __ ] money man picked with bugs it would just have bugs forever if it's shipped with secret unlockable stuff it would have that forever when you owned the game you owned the ability to play as much as you want of the complete experience and this was a very simple and fair transaction while the arcade was here's a game pales to have a go the console was here's a game pay us to keep it and play it whenever but the home gaming scene wasn't just consoles it was also PCS now back then PC gaming wasn't as mainstream as it is today but it did come with one major advantage PC gaming was actually complete garbage back then I know people might reminisce on how great 90s games were yes you're right world of war or sorry Warcraft 2 tides of Darkness was [ __ ] amazing but you [ __ ] forget all of those games that were sitting there in the Circuit City Bargain Bin and they didn't even they should have been in the [ __ ] garbage they were so bad that like you would play them they wouldn't load my mom would always say like back in the 80s whenever she'd try to buy a new game it was like 50 50. if you buy the new software if it works or not then you have to call IBM and figure out what's going on and then it doesn't work and then it's like ah well you know it is what it is so that's what happens man like I've had I've had that happen with uh I think I had a Duke Nukem game had that but it's like before I think the turning point was whenever they started selling the games into big boxes like this that's whenever the games actually started being good but whenever they would sell them in like these little [ __ ] pieces of plastic like a rapper giving out their mixtape at like some party or something downtown like the mixtape rapper ones were [ __ ] garbage they were so bad which because the PC held a load of data files on its hard drive instead of just reading them from the disk or cart like a console developers could create additional content for a game and sell that like the incredible RPG baltus gate releasing in 1998 and then the multi-hour long expansion tales of the sword Coast in 1999. this was a time in gaming where developers could develop additional content but when they did it was usually a lot of content PC games saw expansion after expansion Morrowind CE tribunal and blood moon expansions Diablo 2 then the Lord Of Destruction expansion and all the extra modules for Neverwinter Nights This was additional content for a game without being I mean blizzard had this too right there was like beyond the dark portal for Warcraft 2 and there was uh uh brood War uh that brood war was an expansion pack right there for Starcraft but again Gamers didn't hate this because the transaction was very simple to understand and it felt Fair people would sometimes complain about an expansion because they just had to spend more money but I I think that comparatively yes it was received positively you gave them money you got an excuse design yes to be the most fun it could possibly be the biggest difference in this era is there's no trickery you're not being manipulated it's just a straight up understandable product if we again take the idea I think that people would complain about games being Incomplete Back Then or bad but it was less likely because you couldn't really patch things live after you ship them so there were less incomplete games that got shipped and the ones that were incomplete people don't remember them because they were garbage and nobody played them remember the free Cedar ROM games for magazines yeah you get them in the middle and you'd uh you could play the demo of a game yeah I remember that I got some of those for Xbox even they're a breaking down game development time into a pie chart you've probably got a few new bits to the pie by Now Magazine adverts and articles some TV ads and the arcade price replaced with a box price but it is still mostly make a good game and you will make good money yeah then in 2004 online gaming really started to keep World of Warcraft being released but blizzard oh that's bad guys in this story at least not yet but now we need to look to the east to another popular online game from Korea called MapleStory now oh my [ __ ] God I couldn't believe whenever people played this whenever I actually saw what this game looked like I thought everybody was joking I was like no you're not actually playing this though right I mean like this is all like a meme or something like no there's no way but no bro like people went hard on this there's even a maple story too now I can't believe it and these small toy capsules catch upon had been popular for years using money into a gachapon machine and get a random toy of varying Rarity systems appeal to people who like collecting things and people who like random chance or mystery it's basically gambling on a rather inconsequential it's gambling for children yeah it just gets them into it so they understand that they know how it works and they're ready for whenever they get older yeah like we had the same thing how many of you guys had those little [ __ ] things you put a quarter in or two quarters in and you turn it and then like something comes out you're like oh I really hope I get the car sticker and it comes out and it's oh it's a sticker of a banana again oh [ __ ] man mom could I have 50 cents yeah I understand this all too well to level but the psychology behind it is very very powerful so MapleStory introduced an in-game gachapon style system yeah 100 yen got you a ticket for a random in-game item and many people consider this to be the first example of a random loot box so this was it this piece of [ __ ] weeb game from the 2000s ruined video gaming it wasn't the horse armor it was this but more importantly this was the first moment in mainstream video games where you could pay money and not know what you were getting you were no longer paying for the game or my statement on this and my stance on this has always been very clear everything that you buy in a video game you should know exactly what you're buying you should not buy a chance at something you should not buy a roll at something you should not buy something that buys a chance at something you should spend money and get immediately exactly what you spent the money for established product you were paying for the mystery the ephemeral moment of what if between yeah I'm mad about the honing from yesterday yes I am it's [ __ ] [ __ ] and eventual prize and this system made a lot of money bills online and other people could see what you want so it was no longer about having the game and enjoying the game it was now about a sense of community and Prestige when you have something somebody else doesn't if you make oh that's the one thing that people love people love to be this special boy you know oh yeah I'm the special boy I have the cool item absolutely game multiplayer competition amongst players becomes a thing and there are a subset of players who enjoy being seen as the person with the best stuff and unlike real gachapon machines which were either a physical distance to travel to or had a cue by them or sometimes just sold out virtual gachapon tickets were unlimited entirely within the company's control and could be bought constantly MapleStory already had the EM items made so they were selling the excitement of chance and they were tapping into the collector and completionist mentality of many hardcore Gamers game developers began to see they didn't know you need to sell a gaming experience anymore they could instead sell these small adrenaline Spike of potential this was a turning point a moment in so maple story ruined gaming I think that's pretty fair yeah investors realized it was completely worthwhile to dedicate at least some game development time not to the game itself but to systems within the game designed simply to extract money from the player after they had started playing but without giving them a complete new game this is the first part of the puzzle for where we are today so let's put this idea of sell random chance into a little box a box of all the design tricks which don't favor the player or make the game necessarily any better a box of design tricks which don't make you think oh my God this is amazing I need to tell all my friends sounds like a gray box but instead use the game as a simple vehicle for additional monetization now the techniques in this box are not games themselves they cannot exist on their own they aren't symbiotic with a game because they don't enhance each other they are parasitic because they need the game to survive but don't necessarily improve it we'll call this box abusive monetization strategies yeah it's about right no I think it's very true is that a lot of these systems are designed in a way that they do make the game worse or not utilizing these systems makes the game worse that's like one of the worst things that pay for convenience in games has is that it makes it to where it is financially lucrative for a developer to make a game inconvenient because now they can sell the shortcut or for a more catchy title Pandora's box of bad design the main danger of this box is if we were to take the pie chart of game development time now knowing that this box exists and knowing the techniques inside it can make a decent amount of money the finance people know they need to find space for the techniques within this box somewhere on the pie chart which means something else must lose out jump forward two years to 2006 the Western gaming mark just like I said yep here we go it hasn't yet discovered the Mass Appeal and psychological dominance that loot boxes have but you have discovered something just as important Gamers will pay money to look different and it all kicks off with this stupid horse now what oh god there it is uh you know what I know it everybody knows it I've made a complete video on the history of this course but the short story is the Elder Scrolls Oblivion was a great game with some great DLC Knights of the nine and the Shivering Islands a few dollars to give your horse armor now it's important to understand this is completely cosmetic it doesn't actually make your horse any better in combat or defend it but you can buy it and people did in fact a lot of people bought it and this highlighted another thing making a game takes away well everybody was very upset about this and people would say like oh if you're if you buy this you're a loser or you're stupid or something like that right but yeah I know I never bought this [ __ ] like I at this point I have the strategy guide for Oblivion but I don't have the [ __ ] horse armor I don't know how to download that my mom was like bro she wouldn't even buy like she wouldn't put her credit card on the internet until like 2015. like we I would have to go to [ __ ] Target and buy those [ __ ] prepaid wow game cards for her because she would not want to have her card give that you you want me to give that to Blizzard what the hell are they going to do with that what are they gonna do with that but what are they gonna do with my card yeah dude she was she was not about that time but once the main game is made the development time it would take to make a cosmetic for that game is relatively short and that cosmetic can be sold for a small amount of money but it can be sold many many times the cost is more it's very simple right so like if you make something and you sell it for a dollar and you make Elven ring and you sell it for sixty dollars do you think that the thing that you made that you're selling for one dollar is only 1 60th easier than making Eldon ring no it's probably one ten thousandth easier than making Eldon rain so in terms of optimization and Min maxing you're gonna min max selling the thing that you make for a dollar a billion times since selling the thing that you sell for sixty dollars a hundred times or a thousand times correct but the sales volume is high hence micro transaction separate from the idea of a complete expansion I hate how people call them micro transactions but there's packages to buy it for a hundred dollars how the [ __ ] is that a micro transaction it's more than the game that's a [ __ ] that's a macro Transit I wish people would start saying that macro transactions every time there's more than like three dollars which would expand the game and make the game experience bigger a micro transaction adds hardly anything beyond the original experience it's almost inconsequential but it's not fridge so now developers know expansions are a bit risky but microtransactions are very safe and very small even if they don't sell it's not a great waste of developer time so the focus shifted away from selling a main game with lots of expansions to selling the main game and then lots and lots and lots and lots of small additional things the problem with this is now developers had a vested interest in keeping the coolest Cosmetics or the most fun little things out of the base game and that is something that I have complained about for uh I don't know [ __ ] 10 years like I poured salt on my head about this in 2012 and everybody said I was a loser but now 10 years later they realized that I was right all along yeah it it I [ __ ] knew this [ __ ] was gonna happen because if you tell people that you can make money doing this they're gonna start doing it of course game and instead releasing them as additional micro transactions which is something we'll see happen more and more and this absolutely does not favor the play because it leads to an experience where you as a player even though you have bought the game when you sit down to play it you do not feel like you have access to the whole game because yeah it's not to say yeah you do you don't have access to it that's the reason why and it used to be you bought a game and got a game now it's you buy a game and you get the main framework which you need to pay more to flesh out so let's add sells small additions to your game as microtransactions to the box of abusive monetization strategies and as the Box grows so does the space it would need to take up on the game it's getting bigger now we head into 2009 to the rise of Facebook and one of the Cornerstone oh dude like these Facebook games like I remember there would be times where like people would say that their grandma got addicted to like Farmville or something on Facebook and she was spending more time on FarmVille and the cat's dead and it's been dead for like two weeks and and like she doesn't even know about it because she's just been playing Farmville the whole time holy [ __ ] yeah people got addicted to this of casual gaming oh my God yeah the mafia game too Farmville was everywhere in the late 2000s made by Zynga I never played this Masters because Facebook was everywhere everyone was on it and even non-gamers were gaming which sounds great but they were burning through the game too quickly they were enjoying it and then just moving on which was not you can't have Facebook is all about retention so Farmville did something really counter-intuitive to increase player retention they gave you daily energy so you couldn't progress more than a certain amount every day now these games were most and this is how every game is now you have like these weird [ __ ] throttling systems that make it to where you can't do any progress now they have this the thing is some of them are okay I actually think that some of these swaddling systems are fine but most of them are not like for example only being able to do a raid and get loot from it once a week and wow is fundamentally the same thing it's just done in a way that's not harmful to the player conduit energy yeah exactly dailies uh [ __ ] lost ark resonance I forgot even what it was called in Diablo Immortal but it was probably there was three different versions of that in Diablo Immortal probably yeah a Vitality in uh Tower fantasy if you played by people on phones and laptops and people got bored pretty quickly and one of the best ways to prevent boredom is to limit your time with something absence makes the heart grow fonder as they say so Energy Systems limiting what actions you could take or timers connected to Growing your crops or building things and you couldn't progress them quicker well it's not just the energy systems it's that the energy systems enable them to also monetize bypassing the energy systems that's what that's I think the real reason why these got implemented it's not because people would stop playing the game it's basically them putting ankle weights on you and then telling you that for five dollars they'll take them off for the week and making the player progress only in short but intense bursts and then wait for their next fix of game yeah you either force them to pay more money to gain more energy or it's like you're wearing like a chastity belt for 23 hours and they take it off for one [ __ ] hour and then after that you've got it back on for the rest of the day unless you pay five dollars skip the timers or will you make them return tomorrow and this is game design focused on the formation of daily habits the psychological power of the Habit has been studied for years motivational speakers talk about them self-help books push them and now gaming companies were looking to use them as a way to turn players into users because it wasn't just about the game being fun anymore the focus wasn't on giving the player the best experience you could I think it's very important whenever you look at the terminology right I mean this is It's a terminology change terminology change like players are no longer players they are now users I think that's huge them and letting the player enjoy it at their own pace the focus was about the game being effective at encouraging a specific behavior response from the user encouraging the user to return day after day is habit forming someone who plays your game habitually is more likely to remain playing even after the game itself has stopped being enjoyable they're just continuing their habit along with this game design is new you would also have friends on Facebook that may not be playing the game oh my God the updates from Farmville holy [ __ ] that was so annoying share your progress share your progress oh somebody gave you a gift log on to Farmville to claim it oh no and they wanted those friends to play the game which is why they put the mechanics in the game I remember one time there was like a hot girl on Facebook and I saw I had a notification from her and I was like yes and then it was Farmville share this achievement with your friend to get bonuses and get boosts a huge amount of people began playing Facebook games not because they thought they would be the type of game they enjoy but because they were doing their friend a favor by starting up they were supporting their Farm attention servitude online I love it they were joining their Mafia and just like Maple Stories gacho being viewed by the players in the game you could share the progress of your farm you could show off how far along you were with the recruit your [ __ ] recruit your nephew and your grandma to come work on your farm and [ __ ] work for free on your video game farm on Facebook it's just like whenever you break it down it's so stupid but it worked and people did it spurred competition so we can add limiting progression per day and encouraging you to invite your friends to start the game to give yourself advantages or the ability to share your progression with the community which is why achievements on almost all consoles and PCs are publicly viewable into the box of abusive monetization strategies and while habitually playing something isn't generating money in itself it does keep the audience around longer so they can be exposed to other more successful strategies now some people it's more like let's say every single time that somebody opens the game there's a 10 chance that they're gonna buy something well then all you need to do is get them to open the game 10 times so there you go that now this is the goal you got to get him to open the game 10 times it's that easy we'll point out that paying to advance more or paying to skip timers is in some ways similar to the old arcade process of dying and then putting more coins into continue yeah it is similar but there is a crucial difference with an arcade game you could in theory finish the game entirely on skill these timers and energy bars in games such as Farmville cannot ever be finished on skill alone because you will hit a wall yeah there are there are no as far as I know there were no Farmville Esports competitions that you will need to either wait for or pay to remove but this wasn't everything nowhere near Farmville had other strategies the TSM doesn't have a farm built in I hate to make them progress faster but not with money directly now you have to convert real money into a proprietary currency in this case Farm books and this is one of the most prevalent designs we still see used because it does several psychological things disgustingly well if you can buy that would actually been so [ __ ] funny though whenever I'm thinking about it like imagine if one of the big Esports orgs just brought in like a bunch of the players moms and they had like a competitive Farm Bill team and it was actually just like seven of the you know like their Counter-Strike players like their moms just talking about the game that would have been [ __ ] hilarious I would watch that yeah game you can see the cost in a currency that you understand but if the game displays items in their own proprietary currency such as Gems or coins or platinum or Farm box or whatever they want to call it you have to make one mental step converting the currency from what you understand to what you don't understand so all these things are now one mental step away from having real value and that is hugely important because even once and that's why all these games have like two or three different currencies where you you buy the Cur you you use your real money and then you buy the in-game premium currency and then you use the premium currency to buy the sharp currency it's like Lost Ark you buy Royal crystals and turn them into blue crystals and then you spin blue crystals on items in the shop step is further than most people are willing to go so it's like how much money are you really spending with uh you uh you know like four hundred dollars or you know a hundred dollars of Lost Ark money it's kind of hard to say because you've got to go through Royal crystals blue crystals and gold so let's add that into the box proprietary in-game premium currency to obscure real world value by a single step I also think that every single game this should be that this shouldn't let you do this I think that if if you're going to have microtransactions in a game I think that it is there is no consumer advantage that pricing in the store exists in crystals or oh [ __ ] is it messed up foreign testing one two three is we big good oh we yeah there it is so like I I do think that it should be just against the rules because like at a certain point I think that what is really the government and Regulatory agency's job it is to protect individuals and consumers from predatory and unfair practices that companies have and I feel like there is literally no advantage that having these different intermediary currencies provides to the player this does not help anybody this doesn't make it easier to understand it just makes it worse what's the line though what do you mean where's the line the line's simple if you have something in the store it's supposed to be in USD or whatever the currency of the uh we're gonna move this a little bit let me move this so now you guys can see how big the box is getting there we go yeah you just you just have everything in USD or you know Euros or whatever of whatever that currency is yeah it should be in well it should be in local currency only and that's it bonus points if it makes you convert the currency to multiple other in-game currencies which as well and you have to think about why is it like this fundamentally the reason why it's like this is because it is designed in a way to deceive you so how is it good for the consumer that these things exist well I'll tell you it's not it's completely impossible to track in your own mind so you need to buy the currency and this is the next trick the currency is usually sold in packs and these packs are specifically sized to either be just under what you actually need or very very close to the next best thing making you consider the next pack up for they're not actually well they're not even either which makes it even more more difficult to like let's say you get a hundred a hundred keys for a hundred dollars well each key is a dollar but they don't do that they have all these like weird like you know odd numbers for example if you need 100 gems to buy something in the game and Gem packs are sold in packs of 90 or 205 you may as well buy the 205 pack but then yeah it's like at this point right I mean at this point you're you're losing money if you don't buy 505 gems yeah you're just losing money you're stupid and there's a really good item in the game for 210. you're only five gems short but the next pack contains 500 gems but there's a mega item for 505 gems and you're only 5 gems shy of that now you're not thinking about the number 505 you're thinking it's only five and then only another five much smaller jumps for much higher jumps in value you'd be a fool if you didn't take them right exactly going in the Box you'd be losing money if you didn't spend a hundred dollars on the Primo pack that gives you 20 extra crystals I mean you're basically stupid if you don't spend a hundred dollars of bad design but let's say you do buy a pack whatever pack you buy you want to spend your unique in-game proprietary currency but then you'll discover something else the currency is non-refundable and it is almost impossible to spend all of it you'll always be left with some random number like four Gems or two bits of platinum it's never zero and this will bother you because in your mind that's a waste and you don't like waste and if you don't spend that currency then the game is keeping it and you've paid it up but the only way to make this useful is to buy another currency pack I mean this is just like in like the logic with this is so stupid but it works it's like I remember one time I had a bag of Gummy Lifesavers that I ate and it started making me sick and I thought to myself oh I've got to eat the rest of these as fast as I can so they won't be around anymore to make me sick exact same mentality be a fool if you didn't do that right I ate the whole bag premium currency just sitting there in strange unspendable amounts it's annoying and it's by Design so add that to the box but maybe you know all this and you're not a fool you won't spend a lot you'll wait for a sale but oh look you're a brand new player and there's a load of Premium currency a boost a few Cosmetics it's a limited time that's it and it's all for the low price of just under a dollar yeah you'd definitely be a fool if you didn't buy this yeah you'd be an idiot by the intro packs to almost any game are such good value it's because Studies have shown people who buy a single purchase are much much more likely to make another purchase so now it's how to get it's a the salesman's technique is called get getting your foot in the door right it's like as soon as you can condition a person into buying something or getting getting them into a habit of doing it then it's so much easier now it's yeah now it's only a matter of of time so you want to make the first purchase really enticing and it's because some phones need you to authorize in-app purchases but once you've authorized one exactly and like also yeah you have your payment information saved so now there's not that barrier entry now you don't have to put in your credit card information to spend a hundred dollars all you have to do is spend a hundred dollars you just click the button it's not I mean you didn't even really spend the money I mean where to go like you just click the button it's done so yeah as soon as they have your payment info it makes it way easier don't think just buy it yeah I mean what you you have to just buy it because it's a limited offer and it's going to go away in two hours and if you don't get it now it'll be gone forever don't double check for any extra purchases so you confirm that you want to buy the cheap pack and then it doesn't double check for the expensive packs because every screen between the player and the purchase is a moment they could doubt and reconsider and this is always true and like for example this is the case with any sort of like online uh online Commerce is that the different websites that you have can track whenever people leave the store so like they can track okay this person put the item in their cart okay this person put the item in their cart and they went to the checkout and it's like what the drop-off is at each different time period so you want to get those are you sure you want to purchase this checks agreed with and out the way unusually cheap intro micro transactions just to get you into a habit let's add that to the box and while the box is looking pretty anti-player and anti-consumer so far it's nowhere near full no it's not perspective this ugly design can be we only need to go forward one year to 20 oh my God bro like this fantasy team [ __ ] I can't [ __ ] believe that people buy this like a lot of the times like you're buying the same characters and like the worst part about this is like however stupid I think FIFA is I spent like forty dollars on Lost Art card packs yesterday so I I mean it's the same exact thing it's it's oh [ __ ] idiot yeah well at least every year though if I get the light of Salvation plus 30 I'm gonna be okay yeah I won't have to worry about it for a long time d10 and look at FIFA's Ultimate Team mode yeah no I'm not really into football games but the female franchise of the games actually highlights the game design shift really well it shows how games have moved from being a fun experience by themselves to a fun enough framework that other monetization tactics will cling to like limpets in FIFA you can buy loot boxes which contain random cards of players and use these to build up your ultimate team the Ultimate Team mode takes several of the box ideas and combines them and now the Ultimate Team mode makes more money than the Box laughs holy [ __ ] man oh we are really in for some really interesting days aren't we oh my God this is so ridiculous like be a triple [ __ ] like yeah gotcha indeed I I think that again all this stuff is enabled by gambling like if for example on the FIFA store they had [ __ ] messy on the store and he was five hundred dollars okay nobody would buy it but the reason why they're buying it is they're getting eaten one bite at a time they're not getting swabbled whole with the 500 purchase right on right immediately but it's one bite at a time it's the Gamba that enables these purchases because I think that the amount of people who would actually sit there and spend five hundred dollars just to have that card and you knew that the only way that somebody had that card is that they spent 500 dollars people would laugh at it and if you think that I'm wrong people laugh at you for spending eight dollars on Twitter think about how stupid you've got to be to spend five hundred dollars on a FIFA game that gets outdated next year sales of FIFA itself in fact since 2018 FIFA Ultimate Team has generated over 1 billion dollars in Revenue per year for EA in 2021 they made 1.6 billion and it happens every single year and the cards you buy in the ultimate team for one year cannot be used in the next year I mean why not why not why can't you use the cards in the next year I wonder why the micro transactions now have a shelf life horse armor May last forever that's right if it didn't what if you could make my lightest salvation well why what my whenever I get my wider salvation up to level 30 it's going to be forever too player pay for it again and again every year let's add that to the Box yearly repeating micro transactions now as a developer you'd look at this thing this box and think wow selling my game isn't the profitable thing anymore no it's what I can sell within the group by now the box of abusive monetization strategy it's getting bigger so big it's almost impossible to ignore if you are making a game and this was it like we haven't even gotten to 10 years ago okay one year later in 2011 the MMORPG RuneScape is suffering they had a major update to the combat system which a huge majority of the player base hated and this made them lose a lot of players this is a mistake worthy of its own video but the bottom line is they are a monthly subscription game losing subscribing players yeah they need to find a way to either recover paying members or to stem the tide of people leaving and so a subscription game that you pay monthly for losing players and then having micro transactions in it yeah I could see this happening yeah I I think this seems reasonable yeah enter the Loyalty program every month of membership you now earn loyalty points and you earn more for every consecutive month that you remain subscribed and then you can spend loyalty points on cool exclusive Cosmetics or mechanically powerful auras and boosts so now canceling your membership wasn't just a case of thinking I'm not enjoying the game so I won't pay which is a very simple understandable Fair transaction it's now a case of thinking I'm not enjoying the game but if I unsubscribe you lose everything my loyalty Street yeah you will earn far fewer loyalty points and this is what people that do to streamers too like I don't understand this like I'm subscribed to some people on Twitch yeah sure they're like friends of mine but it's like some people like make a big deal out of like being subscribed to like different streamers and [ __ ] like that like oh I don't know man like it's just I don't know not really yes absolutely what do you mean really yeah put my streak yeah I don't know it's just it's not that big of a deal at least to me it's not over the long run which will put me at a disadvantage if I ever do want to come back in the future which is not as Fair the transaction used to be simple but now we're putting the player in the position of give money even if you don't want to play because you don't want to break a habit that's good and I think this is still okay like if a company wants to do this a game developer wants to do this I think that they should be able to do this I don't like it but I think it's okay if a company does this even though it is somebody says it's ass it is absolutely ass however there are things that are much worse going in the books and by now the box is demanding a bigger and bigger slice of the game design pie chart two years later 2013 sees the release of Dead Space Three the third one within a terrific horror Trilogy well sort of well Dead Space one and two were indeed terrific horror games with tension and pacing and balanced gameplay and great stories Dead Space 3 did something strange it took the idea of you being a lone engineer trapped on an infested spaceship struggling against incredible odds using only your small collection of mining tools and very limited ammunition To Survive and it added in the ability to let you buy in-game guns with real cash from the cash shop a horror Survival game what damn bro that's I mean wow okay what's wrong with micro transactions if they're completely cosmetic number one they're not cosmetic number two uh I don't have a problem with micro transactions as long as they are priced in USD and they are not a gotcha system it's not a random event system you spend money you get thing literally that simple frame selling you in-game guns and ammo completely wow beating the atmosphere and Vibe the game was going for selling players things they could use within your game to make the game easier let's add that to the box that's effectively selling power this one manages to out monetize even the arcade it would be like putting more coins into Time Crisis and getting a rocket launcher or removing the time limit in Crazy Taxi it's sort of let me think about that has there ever been a game back then that would sell Power the closest thing that you could possibly have would be maybe buying one of those different controllers that have a turbo button that is the closest thing that I can think of to like back in the day pay to win game shark yeah that yeah game shark is a good yeah that's a good point I actually had a game shark back in the day defeats the purpose of the original game along with dead space selling guns we now see the MOBA game Dota 2 release what many consider the first major battle pass system now when this crazy starts walking into gaming shops and seeing the phrase battle pass everywhere and I had no idea what they were effectively they are optional purchasers which unlock a series of challenges or processes you can go through to unlock more stuff in the game but they are time sensitive so you buy the monthly battle pass and if you play a certain number of hours or kill a certain number of enemies or achieve a certain number of whatever it wants you to do you can advance along the battle pass and unlock new stuff now I think battle passes would have been way better and I think that they would be way better if at the end of the battle pass duration everybody just got everything out of the battle pass and like you could just work to unlock it inside of the season but if you don't finish it inside the season you can just get the rest of it at the end I I think that would be a lot a lot better now you could just have the elements it's never gonna be available for everyone to unlock anyway but by limiting it to a timed battle pass you're doing a few manipulative things you're creating a fear of missing out or fomo as players know if they don't have this month's battle pass they may never get the full experience or that rare cosmetic ever again so you are encouraging an unhealthy amount of gameplay because if you're not advancing your battle pass you're losing precious time so this is the same with like login rewards I remember whenever Lost Ark had like some login reward that was really cool people were logging in every single day I remember like Stoops and Zeals were on vacation and they had to go to like a [ __ ] one of those like computer land cafes to log into Lost Ark to make sure that they collected their item for the day it was nuts now you're actually discouraging players from enjoying any other game and forcing them to focus entirely on progression within yours yeah this design is of course at odds with the limit playtime technique because they appeal to different demographics remember a battle pass or I think battle passes are a lot better for people that are like mono Gamers like for example you only play like maybe one or two games I think battle passes are pretty much okay for those people because they're gonna play through it and get it anyway but whenever you're playing like 12 different games at a time and then you have 10 different battle passes I think that's whenever Things become really just like unmanageable it's a Time progression track it doesn't always actively improve a game but it does always increase that game's Revenue so throw it in the Box by now even the concept of a fun well-made game is starting to look like a horrifically augmented shadow of its former self imagine what a well-made game would look like if you tried to shoehorn in all of the techniques in this box and unfortunately eventually I know what it's like I played it last year it was called Diablo Immortal you won't need to imagine we're seeing it more and more later that same year one of my favorite games comes out Assassin's Creed Black Flag a fantastic Pirate game that's just one problem unless you own both the PlayStation and an Xbox and are willing to buy two copies of the game you can never experience the full game Black Flag featured console exclusive levels which not only fueled the petty console Wars but also highlighted the fact that Marketing Executives were now powerful enough to tell games developers exactly exactly what their players deserved or more importantly what their non-players don't deserve this is not player focused design at all and while I completely understand the power of console exclusives when I walked into a game shop and picked up two copies of black flag and realized no matter what I choose there is a mission I won't get to play because I don't have the right console that didn't leave a good taste in my mouth so no it sucks I it absolutely sucks like my opinion has always been that console exclusive games are trash there is no benefit for the user that some game is console exclusive on Playstation there will never be a situation where this game only being available on Playstation makes it better for the people playing it while DOTA may have started the battle pass idea it was almost perfected four years later in 2017 by fortnite season 2 which replaced The Season's Shop with a battle pass system played fortnite four years never spent a single Cent and then later in November of 2017 we witness a bit of gaming history and it fills us all with a sense of Pride and accomplishment Star Wars Battlefront 2 wasn't a people [ __ ] went ape [ __ ] about this oh my God this was bad amazing game which released back in 2005 not to be confused with Star Wars Battlefront 2 which was a mediocre game which released in 2017. it was a full price game and yet also had a loot box system in it along with premium currency system this led to a Reddit user complaining that even though they'd bought the 80 it takes 40 hours to unlock a hero that's what this says um apparently this after reading this post a developer at uh on the OverWatch team uh got a promotion after they gave their new idea for the new game uh OverWatch too they said only 40 hours you just giving it away for free at that point game they still couldn't play as Darth Vader from day one unlocking Darth Vader means buying his hero crate which costs 60 000 in-game credits or you can spend real money now you can earn an average of 250 credits per 10 minute match at the time so you'd have to grind for roughly 40 hours of constant gameplay longer than the average completion time of most video games to unlock a single rare character or you can play crystals in the premium and the thing is like for example if you had to spend that much time just to unlock the character I wouldn't really give a [ __ ] about that the problem is that you can just spend money to bypass it if you couldn't bypass it it'd be fine I wouldn't care show up and spend those on hero crates and just hope EA responded to this reddit's complaint saying the reason crates were so expensive or take so long to unlock is to give a sense of Pride and accomplishment to players who did manage to unlock them this becomes the most down surprise oh my God wow I spent a hundred dollars I have Darth Vader I'm a winner holy [ __ ] man yeah this is a negative uh 667 thousand uh updates that's a lot of down dutes pride and accomplishments to players who did manage to unlock them this becomes the most downvoted comment in Reddit history so locking premium parts of your full priced game behind either hours of grind or spending even more money to unlock the cool stuff before other people who bought the same game as you now it's important to understand that games having things locked within them is not necessarily bad design one of my favorite games of all time is SSX tricky the snowboarding game and as you play through that you unlock new characters yeah it's totally fine that it takes a really long time to unlock certain characters the problem isn't that it takes a long time to unlock other characters the problem is that you can spend money to bypass the time boards and new tracks progression within a game and rewarding that progression with new mechanics new characters and new areas is not bad the problem was progression wasn't the only way to unlock this you could simply yeah there it is and because it was a competitive game people who paid the extra money were at an advantage over those who did exactly this is a video about how new games feel wrong and it feels wrong to buy the same game as someone else and to know that they will have an advantage over you if they pay more I totally [ __ ] agree with that I I think that's probably one of the best ways to say it too like why do you want to play a game that's a competitive game that you're set up to lose in it's it just sucks man like that's why I think a lot of people stop doing like wow PVP also because like you don't have all the best gear why do you want to go in there I'll be right back I went to a grocery store a day before a show um and a guy there was looking at me weird and he walked by me like three times was like okay you know it's going to be like a thing that's what comes up to me is that bro I know you from somewhere and I'm like yeah I do YouTube because that's crazy I'm like yeah I thought I knew you a fan there's a viewer and he's like I watched a video of you about Elden ring I'm like is that right he says yeah you are watching somebody else's video and they didn't like Elden ring and you were saying they were stupid and I'm like yeah exactly that was me it's like and they were stupid I'm like I know right I'm like did you play all the Rings like yeah it was great I'm like yeah I don't know what that guy was talking about I was a [ __ ] idiot and he's like yeah can I get a picture with you I'm like yeah sure and he's like uh you know he's look so I see him looking over at like it's like middle-aged man with like a you know everything you know like prim and proper I'm like that's your manager I'm like yeah he's like yeah I'm like I'm not on break it's like uh it's fine and I'm like just get out of wine inside of the manager we'll just go stand over here he won't be able to see you and uh he's like oh oh okay yeah it's fine and I did it actually worked straight up [ __ ] worked lost manager took a picture with the dude drove home did the Stream that in the box of abusive monetization why not it's going to work and then five years later Diablo Immortal oh God already covered Diablo Immortal pretty extensively in the video the diabolically immoral Diablo Immortal and its follow-up about the legendary crests because it took basically every idea from the big box of abusive monetization and sprinkled them liberally over it's kind of like imagine thinking of like there's a list of every immoral and predatory practice for a video game to have and Diablo Immortal used that list like a checklist and I got a 100 too for a somewhat Diablo looking game including multiple premium currencies a deliberately similar in-game item which functions slightly differently to a paid version of the same thing and multiple battle passes all called different things but don't worry because everyone assured me that Diablo Immortal was a mobile game and thus would not be representative of the actual next Diablo game which would be Diablo 4. everyone told me Diablo 4 would be a full game by itself with no cash shot with gameplay first and none of the strategies from the big box of Badness I don't think anybody said that Diablo 4 wasn't going to have anything like that I just think it's not going to be pay to win and for everything that I've read so far it's not pay to win except for being able to spend money on the head start which I think is undoubtedly pay to win so of course the sad thing about that though is like I'll give them credit like if I was a game developer I would also allow people to pay money to play the game early because it staggers out the amount of people and the amount of stress on your servers it's kind of like a soft release to see how your servers are going to be able to do and also you make more money with it so it's like a win-win situation it's like a like it's logistically a good idea and it's financially a good idea like Lost Ark did that I feel like most games are going to do this just because it it works of various digital versions of the game the more expensive ones giving you an accelerated battle pass bonus allowing you to progress quicker and there is a cosmetic cash shop using its own proprietary currency and if you're thinking Diablo doesn't need all these extra bells and whistles to be a good Diablo game you are correct these have not provided because they make the game better they've been added because they make the game money and then dark side released I think that's actually a really really simple way of putting it I'm going to rip the game better you are correct these have not been added because they make the game better they've been added because they make the game money and then that's exactly right it's it's to make money not make the game better and that's what I think the real problem with this is that it's all about just making more and more money and there is no thought no concern no value placed on the consumer experience until I'd released which is a full price game with an abusively priced cash shop or you can grind for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours to get some of the cheap things in that shop that's the thing is like I have people they're like man I'm the same item level as you in Lost Ark oh you're a whale no you're not you're a loser it's like well I only play 17 hours a day on 15 alts it's like oh okay well you know I I guess yeah I guess I'm an idiot then huh is that right so why have games become like this simple because games are businesses games have been businesses since arcades since consoles allowed you to buy the game and have it in your own home they have always wanted to make money but up until now the best way to make the most amount of money was to make the best game you possibly could because people would buy it and that was it the transaction was finished it was fair the best way to make money on Modern games is to make the best framework as a holder for these strategies and companies have experimented with various methods to increase income over the years from gacha loot boxes to pre-orders console exclusives to battle passes Energy Systems to just straight up selling power and instead and this is only so far keep this in mind there will be a new idea you know what I should do I should try to come up with the next predatory idea in video gaming like what's the next step yeah I should really try to think like what is the next thing that we should do like get a patent on it sell the patent to Activision for you know like 70 million dollars and then develop my own game with the same system bring game design as they hired psychologists to build habits to reinforce addictive behaviors to design gameplay Loops which encourage spending the problem was these techniques were never about the player having fun they were about the user being monetized and when a marketing executive I like the language you aren't pictured smiling and laughing with friends you're pictured opening your wallet and reaching for your credit card because you're not pictured you aren't pictured a number is pictured that's their goal and eventually the Pandora's box of abusive monetization strategies was so full of proven effective techniques that making a game is often no longer about the game at least not for the people in charge of the money I think that battle passes at this point are always going to be three-tier you're going to have the battle pass the the the the uh the the Poor People's battle pass where like you work for 40 hours and you get um like uh seven uh like a bronze bars or something like that and uh then if you go and you uh you buy like the normal uh the normal premium battle pass you get all the cool pay to win stuff like you know like a thousand bronze bars or you know a thousand gold bars for just playing for 30 minutes and uh then if you buy the the empowered ultimate wizard uh battle Champion warlord Chieftain of gaming uh battle pass which is more money then you get the cool cosmetics team is now simply a life support system for as many of these systems as you can design into it the game is a host and the parasite of monetization has begun to take over and the unfortunate reality is this one it's like the guy at the beginning of Men In Black works even with a breakout incredible success like Elden rink which won game of the year and sold over again as of this video at 60 a sale that's over a billion dollars in sales worldwide still not as much as an anime waifu and genshin impact as hard as they try as hard as they work not as much as a waifu and genshin impact holy [ __ ] isn't that sad that is still slightly shy of how much money genshin impact made this year of how much money FIFA Ultimate Team has made every year for the last four years the reality is when companies look at that pie chart of game development time and how they divide developer time or invested money that big box of abusive monetization strategies that Pandora's box of terribleness is so effective they would be hurting their own profit to not put at least some of the techniques in the older designers simply didn't have the knowledge of this box and even if they did they didn't have the technology to act on it at the time yeah and I also that's a very good point if Nintendo could have done this in 1995 with the Super Nintendo they would have it's just that they couldn't do it then that's all modern design often puts the player into an awkward position where the game has spent more it's getting bigger only manipulative abusive systems than it has on just being the best game it could be so what is the exact Choice which makes games feel wrong is it maplestory's fault for adding gachapon is it oblivion's fault for the horse armor is it dope no it's the player's fault for buying them that's whose fault it is because they could have put all this stuff in the game and people wouldn't have played it and then the game would have died you would have never seen another game like that so ultimately it's the player's fault don't just fault for the battle pass FIFA's fault for the success of ultimate team is it farmville's fault the mastering the addiction cycle or is it EA's fault for locking away Darth Vader unfortunately it's kind of all of them it's just the reality of games designed today you cannot close the lid on power I also think that to an extent there is a certain level of personal accountability there are people Behind These purchases people choose to spend this money in this way and those people enable these practices and prevent us from having more games like Elden ring Dora's box designers can't unknow the effectiveness of these techniques and every game made for the rest of time has to either use them or actively choose to avoid them so the exact choice that makes a game go from being the best it can possibly be to anti-player or anti-consumer is when a designer or a marketing executive stops thinking about how they can make the best game they're capable of and starts throwing some Sly glances toward the box in the corner and when I don't even think that it's the game designers I think the people that are making these games like I I really I'm not even kidding I think that the people who are making a game like Diablo Immortal or Diablo 4 or OverWatch 2 I think these guys really try to make a good game they do but whenever you're given um let's see uh a pile of shits some candles that don't work and a uh a Roman Candle it's pretty hard to make a good tasting cake that's the truth so it's not even really their fault it's just how things go they say hey this technique may not fit our game perfectly but it's proven to make a lot of money do you think we could put it in our game that is the moment any specific game goes downhill from what it could be from a player's perspective and the worst part is that big evil box and all its dark design knowledge is constantly being added to and when you play a new game and spot the cash shop on the battle pass and the premium currency in the awkward pack size and the loot boxes and the exclusive levels and when you just feel sad that the game you didn't have to do that that's when you know that the pie chart of design of this game had at least a small slice dedicated to that stupid box a small slice focused on making the game a little bit anti-player in the name of a lot of profit and this is another really important thing whenever we talk about like uh games like for example vampire survivors or Elden ring it's one of the reasons why I do try to elevate those games and talk about how positive they are and play them more on stream and a game like valheim we're going to play valheim again pretty soon here like you know you you wanna You Wanna Give credibility to that because the truth is that regardless of whether Genji impact made a bunch of money or not or whether a MapleStory made a bunch of money or not Eldon ring is going to forever be known as a great game Dark Souls 1 will be forever known as a great game and Super Mario World will be forever known as a great game these other games will never be remembered as that I understand a lot of people might not care about that but it's a good thing that at least some people out there do but personally I also know it can be very cathartic to be angry at a thing instead of a concept so let's just collectively agree it's Bobby's phone the stupid horse yeah it is another massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon Twitch and YouTube who keep the channel alive you can support from only one pound a month check the description for links to the patreon twitch Twitter and our Discord and as always have a great day wow 2022 I'm not gonna watch this one right now but uh I I definitely [ __ ] agree with pretty much everything Josh said in this video like I I I I love these videos this video was so good please guys make sure to give it a like subscribe to Josh Drive Haze he's [ __ ] great he's been on allcraft before Big Friend of the scream we love Josh I am very glad to see more people talking about this and also it's a game like dark and darker is another example it's a good game it doesn't have any of this [ __ ] in it it's just a good game and that's it I'm not the kind of person to not play a game if it has micro transactions and bad stuff in it if I think it's good content but I am somebody to give like I don't view that I view it as a negative [Music]

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 1,466,628

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, ZackRawrr

Id: -0XerHqFSgI

Length: 70min 9sec (4209 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023