The Problem of Voting With Your Wallets | Cold Take
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2023
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This week on Cold Take, Frost talks about voting with your wallet.
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I'm not going to say that there is solidarity beyond just game devs to create a demand for the games industry to act better. Although I don't think it's exclusively correct in thinking gamers as in the average body is selfishly voting without the knowledge or sympathy there. Rather, all industries are gatekeepers to an extent and voting for an alternative isn't viable in the current state of the world. All the resources, supply lines, and lobbies are for maintaining the status quo. It is like when a psychologist once labeled all human actions as inherently selfish, well defining it that way may be a bit strawman-esk but I see the same problem with it even here and even if it was meant biologically in the selfish example. That is, only a nonsense answer would qualify as something else.
First let me say I really like the video and agree with a lot of the Cold Take points, however:
5:22 This is the part I think the video is wrong on. The argument being that anything the money is spent on by people is "Ok" isn't accurate. This would mean people technically vote with their wallets for Heroin and Fentanyl but that doesn't make it ok so saying the voters are ok with gambling mechanics isn't really fair. Abused into Spending isn't really Voting
Now obviously that's a extreme example but taking the concept of "Vote with their wallets" and reducing it down to "anything money is spent on is being voted on" is a bit misleading and blurs the point.
You see that's where you're wrong bud, crocs are sick!
"When you vote with your dollars, people with more dollars get more votes" -Ian Danskin
Based
Which is actually how we got gatcha games.
The cult of the Whale. Ten high rollers are worth more than a hundred thousand casual players.
Bingo
course the problem with voting more generally is that the uninformed and simple also get a vote.
The problem with "voting with your wallet" is that there isn't a "No" vote. There are only "Yes" and "Abstain".
Abstaining is a no vote. Then you use those votes on something that needs the yes more. For me, that means EA told me not to vote for Jedi Survivor when they put always-online DRM on the game, so I bought a different game instead.
The thing is there actually was a "No" vote in the past.
I'm old enough to remember a time when physical storefronts would fight for foot traffic, and making your purchase in HMV instead of Electronics Boutique was a "Yes" to one and a "No" to the other. But the industry giants have gobbled up the competition, created walled gardens of exclusives, and now sit as virtual if not actual monopolies so the average consumer has nowhere else to go.
For a time I tried prioritising buying games on GOG, especially after I could use Galaxy to get everything in one place. But after I discovered that some developers just weren't updating their games, or were several versions behind the Steam version I had to go back to Valve.
Technically, the "No" vote is spending your money elsewhere. Look at Hi-Fi Rush, totally against the grain of current gaming trends, right down to the marketing. It did well enough. Then again, it hasn't exactly been imitated or had a lasting impact on the industry.
Once whilst games with an ingame shop encourages people to vote an unlimited amount of times.
@@crystanubisHow could it possibly have been imitated? It has been out for 8 months.
It ain't just about video game, either. The same point stands for all other consumables, pursuits, and engagements. No matter how loud you 'beat the drum' for change, the average person will either not care, not get it, or not even notice it. The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but energy flows easily through the paths of least resistance, and average person will resist least to their impulses.
You're right, and the companies prefer the one person who spends $50, over two people spending $25 each.
Damn that was well put
Absolutely.
It's almost as if the capitalist system we live under is fundimentally broken
The same is true of people in general, but most of us are smart enough to want better for others.
It's getting difficult to vote with my wallet because even things I like get cancelled despite my votes (I'm looking at you, Netflix).
Movie studios are a whole other can of worms. They spent the whole strike losing money and don’t budge. They release ever more expensive movies and expect the audience to watch them just because.
Inside Jobs death is a fucking tragedy
@@andrecarpenter2432not to mention half the shows that come out now require 6 others to be watched to understand wtf is going on.
Or just don't exist, how was I supposed to have voted for more RTS' with kick ass campaigns when they've only just begun to resurface as a genre?
sounds you dont got a big enough wallet
This was the most calming moment of existential dread I've experienced.
Im happy the ending had a "maybe there's hope" turn to it
Even if the "hope" in question is "maybe the Second Great Crash is FINALLY upon us". Because this industry badly needs another complete reset.
@@ArcaneAzmadi not the industry but the consumer
In cases like this, I'm always reminded of a conversation I had maybe twenty years ago with a senior exec from Microsoft's customer support team. He told me some interesting stats based on information they gathered from Xbox services, so they had a huge amount of data to use. He told me, and I paraphrase a little, "Of all of the people using your service, only 10% will engage directly with the company, and of that group, only 10% will engage passionately and often, so basically all you're hearing from directly is 1% of your customers, and they're either rabid fanboys or equally rabid haters, so paying attention to them is completely at odds with what the gaming public *actually* wants. Those players, the silent majority, will simply stop playing. They won't tell you why, they'll just stop giving you money, so basing decisions on "customer feedback" is playing into the hands of the outliers and is a terrible, terrible mistake..."
Yeah I could've guessed Microsoft wasn't listening to feedback last console generation.
That's true. However, that 1% minority is very influential.
They write a disproportionately large number of game reviews (thus influencing the all-important Steam/Metacritic scores). They tweet, they complain, they review-bomb. They're active on Reddit, Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
That 1% can sometimes make or break a game.
I think its a bit different now, twenty years ago the gaming scene was much smaller and social media wasnt a thing. Now a viral post etc.. can make or destroy your game. It was also a time where physical distribution was the primary way people bought games, thus it was more the retailers who controlled what made money vs the gaming community.
@@checker297 You're spot on. Microsoft had a point back in 2000 when only 52% of the US population had consistent internet access and gaming forums were exclusively the domain of basement dwellers and hardcore nerds... 3 years before Myspace was a thing.
But this is 2023, an estimated 91.8% of US households have consistent internet access, and roughly as many have a social media account somewhere that they'll gladly tell the publishers exactly what they want through - if only the big publishers would f**king listen and stop just copying whatever sold the most and abandoning anything that only garners a niche audience.
@@checker297A viral post can make or destroy an indie game, yes, but for AAA social media is a tertiary concern at best. Case in point? Hogwarts Legacy. A huuuge amount of influencers tried to make that game flop. There were MULTIPLE viral posts condemning the game, enormous websites like Polygon and Kotaku dunked on the game. The result? It's one of the best selling games for 2023. Pretty soon, it's going to outsell Elden Ring.
Yahtzee made an excellent point relevant to this issue this not too long ago. It's easy for we as enthusiasts to get tired of the endless sea of utterly interchangeable AAA Jiminy Cockthroat titles distinguished only by whatever surface level skin has been bolted onto the template, but for the average consumer who only buys, at most, a small handful of AAA games in any given year, it doesn't seem nearly nearly so repetitive. That's why a studio like Ubisoft can get away with effectively remaking the same game over and over and over, year after year after year, with only the most minor of actual gameplay tweaks. The simple fact is the average consumer just isn't as interested in the potential of games as an art and entertainment medium as the kind of person likely to be leaving comments on this video.
If only they did that though. Just having AC Brotherhood era mechanics and put all the focus on writing, and modeling a new region. Then it wouldn't have gained the reputation of being a buggy mess.
They’ve taken a hobby and watered it down. The hobbyists will notice, but they’re not the primary market for “AAA” studios. Those corporations are selling to the same impressionable masses that everyone else sells to; the ones most easily swayed by the same bland commercials and boring ads.
I liked Brotherhood. I liked Odyssey better.
The problem is thinking your tastes are or should be universal. That if you see games and gaming one way, everyone should agree with you or they’re being fleeced. Even if they’re getting as much enjoyment out of it as you think YOU should.
If a franchise sticks too close to its original vision, it’s “putting out the same game over and over.” If it reinvents itself, all y’all lament that it’s betrayed that vision.
They can’t fucking win.
We have an embarrassment of riches and the complaint tends to be in the vein of “every single game doesn’t blow my socks off, so nobody working on these games cares about me at all.”
Every game can’t be exceptional. Every sequel can’t both maintain the original vision and take you places you’ve never been. And that’s what you all clamor for.
Most games suck. At least from one perspective or another. There are many very popular titles I can’t stand. But I’m not personally insulted by their fucking existence.
The first Jiminy Cockthroat I ever played was Horizon Zero Dawn. I really liked it but for some reason I didn't go forth and play lots of Jiminy Cockthroats. I didn't play another one until Ghost of Tshima. Really liked that too. I don't know why but once again it didn't make go and and play a bunch of Far Cry or what have you. I game every day I just rarely play the same genre close together. Now I'm playing the Spiderman rerelease while everyone is getting hyped for the sequel. definately stops me from getting burnout.
@@gentlemans7579 that reputation doesn't really matter when it's from such a small proportion of a playerbase tbf
The problem of voting with your wallet is that you can't JUST not purchase the games you don't want to see more of; you also need to purchase the games you DO want to see more of. And that... gets expensive.
Probably the best way to do this is to balance both methods
In some way or style or another.
but we don't even purchase games anymore... the industry has snuck it in that we now purchase "licences".
@@renemuller7383 There are still options to do so through GOG and itch. But it's not that cared about by many, or more specifically, not enough people care enough to push back this way, to have many with this approach.
@@renemuller7383 I don't buy that. I'm an avid gamer and have never purchased a license in my life. Perhaps I am abnormal in this respect, but stores like GOG exist for the kind of people who still like to buy games and that part of the industry won't die unless we let it.
@renemuller7383 If you're talking about EULAs, those far predate the modern games industry. That's been the standard model for most software for decades.
BTW, the courts haven't yet really decided on the legality of EULAs. Some have been upheld while others have been struck down. I think there just haven't been enough cases to really force the issue.
For a series that always starts with a drink, cold take is such a sobering experience
Good points. One other issue with voting with your wallet is making sure your vote is interpreted correctly. If I don't buy a game with microtransactions, am I voting against those transactions or against the company labor practices or that I just don't like the game. The people up top aren't going to look at bad sales and thing, "Maybe we should treat our programmers better." they will think "I need to lay off a bunch of people to get my annual bonus". It's self-interest all the way up.
Exactly. Even when you have the chance to break it down things can be less than clear. Put a skin as DLC in a game and it doesn't sell. Is it because it's ugly? Too expensive? The player already has fifty skins and doesn't need another? As you said, protest against the company's business practices? And that's all just towards a single skin. Imagine all the things you could be for or against in regards to a game as a whole that can only be expressed in one purchase, or lack of one.
This is exactly why a proper controversy/shit storm is important. The ghouls up top will only receive the correct message behind a boycott when they're literally unable to ignore it or spin it any which way to be the most beneficial to their own interests. EA didn't remove the pay to win loot boxes from Gamblefront 2 because people didn't pre order, they did it because the backlash was loud enough that legislative figures started to side eye them.
Sadly big controversies that lead to positive change like that are the exception rather than the rule, especially as scummy tricks become more prevalent and ""tolerated"". Things like always online DRM for SimCity and Diablo 3 used to garner enough pushback to warrant some action, but now it barely garners a peep. Hard to not get cynical and despair when keeping that big picture in mind.
Not only is it unclear it's very much interpretational as to what those at the top choose to think it means.
And let's not forget that anything sold with any kind of artistic bent has multiple qualities that any one person might be paying for.
@@Tuss36 Yeah, and you also have to remember... even making a completely new skin isn't really that much work for a graphic artist. Maybe a few weeks of work unless it's an incredibly convoluted one, like some of League of Legends' skins with separate particle effects and new animations.
So, we're talking a few thousand dollars worth of work, and then only 0.1% of League's 40 million players buy it for $10... its still a massive profit for them!
The problem began when gamers stop being mostly broke teens and turned into adults with full-time jobs and disposable income! Does a guy with a job making $80k a year care about spending $20 or $30 a month on his current, favorite game? Its not even an afterthought, considering that's that cost of having a single meal delivered by Door Dash nowadays!
you can't even review a game, or leave a "public" comment on why you aren't going to buy the game really.
It's a common misconception for people who are submerged in a hobby to believe that people who participate in the same hobby have the same level of engagement. It's just like you said, the average gamer is apathetic regarding the state of the industry beyond their inmediate satisfaction. Thing is, the companies know it. That's why they have been slowly but methodically introducing more predatory and abusive monetization practices in games, and they will keep pushing for it to see how far they can go and what they can get away with. My only hope is that their greed eventually makes them screw up in such a massive and public way that neither the public or gobernments can ignore it anymore. Only then will the people care, and only then they will be stopped.
I'd argue this already happened to some extent, with the wide reporting of the EU defining loot box mechanics as gambling and cracking down on it. You are someone much more engaged yet seem to have forgotten, so what makes you think the average consumer is going to care even when the next scandal hits?
ActivisionBlizzard higher ups were STEALING BREAST MILK and they still make quadrillion dollars, I honestly don't think what the public thinks matter that much
@@t_z1030 I didn't forgot, I just though the EU didn't go far enough and wasn't worth mentioning. I honestly don't know what will make the average consumer care, all I know is that it has to be the right combination of a big screw up, massive media coverage, loud public outcry, and politicians taking serious action. All I have is hope that things will improve, and that not too much damage will be done in the meantime.
It's important to note that just because someone engages with a hobby does not mean that they are a hobbyist in what they are engaging with.
I can drink wine without being a sommelier, and fix my car without being a grease monkey gearhead.
Ultimately the vast majority of people who engage with entertainment media are going to be pedestrian tourists, at best.
@@t_z1030 but what does this accomplish, really?
Gacha and Lootboxes still exist in a lot of games, some of them have just gone the distance of hiding them behind obfuscation layers, but at the same time we traded a loot box system in Overwatch that was one of the most generous and consumer friendly versions of the mechanic for a FOMOPass... sorry "Battlepass"
We traded up for a worse system by complaining and holding the "good" example of the mechanic up to describe the issue, just to watch as they introduced an objectively worse system for the public to eat up. Overwatch's balance alone should be a humble reminder that the silent majority... the "lowest common denominator" is the consumers they're listening to. Play a niche hero like Symmetra or Mercy, watch as they get reworked and gutted so the rest of the community is happy at the expense of the "niche" players that were actually playing those heroes.
The truth is they wont start listening until they see actual number decreases, and then they might start listening. But they may still only listen to the "majority" cacophony of voices rather than the right voices (IE instead of listening to somebody with an informed and detailed analysis they're probably going to gauge what changes to make through a statistic or something as easily as quantifiable). They're going to see that people stopped playing Overwatch and instead of working to improve their workplace culture, or actually produce content players want, they removed lootboxes because out of all of the things it was the change called for that was trumpeted the loudest "No More Lootboxes" was the most stated phrase on their forums and other inputs of feedback... so that's what they did, completely disregarding the context and suggestions people had to replace it.
AAA games and gaming corporations have the same problem as any other corporation, they can only respond to statistics and numbers, otherwise they're blind. Unless we can get real statistics across their table that pre-orders are undesirable (or whatever other change you want to see), they literally cannot see that complaint, and unless they see the statistic that the game is underperforming they won't even look at other numbers no matter how convincing you can make them.
I always thought voting with your wallet didn't work, because your "average gamer" is actually that guy who plays what ever new hotness just came out and nothing else, and spends little to no time engaging with the medium beyond that. Most people ARENT the people who spend their time immersed in gaming as a hobby, its more likely they consume games the way most people consume movies or tv, that is to say, they watch/play what ever thing and then that's that, they move on to the next one, and they only ever talk about it, at a bbq when you bring it up to your gamer pal, and they chime in "oh I played that, it was pretty good." So when something bad happens, they have literally no idea about it, until maybe years later when it comes up in idle conversation at yet another bbq at which point it is FAR beyond too late.
There's also the fact that people outside the more hard-core audience just don't experience the same tropes of game design as much as a more hard-core audience does. As much as game reviewers complain about open-world games feeling the same, with samey quest objectives, collectibles, skill trees, crafting, gear upgrading, etc., the average person isn't tired of these things because they only played one or two games like that. The average person isn't tired of games filled with microtransactions because they only played one or two and don't keep up with the news surrounding it because they don't know (and probably don't care to know) how and why that business model can be, and often is, predatory. Not only is it a problem of apathy, it's also ignorance by virtue of lack of experience.
Another important factor is that at least some part of "average gamers" are kids who get gifted games from parents and the like. Granted I haven't seen any statistics so I don't know how big a part, but I imagine it's hard to vote with your wallet when someone else is buying your games for you and trying to keep it a surprise which one you're getting this time. Add that to what you two have commented and publishers can pretty much guarantee a nice return on profit if the adds are good and visible enough
yup braindead consumption at its finest
@@kambor1578 iirc the average age of gamers as a whole is 36
@@kambor1578 This market of ignorant parents and kids was ironically huge in the 90s and much of the 2000s. So many crappy licensed games, because a licensed game on a popular movie or cartoon must be good, right? They still sold even if they were terrible. Few had internet or bought gaming magazines to check reviews, buying from the box art+blurb was still king and association with popular things was everything. Even Nintendo sold their Mario rights to all sorts of garbage in the 90s until they put it under first party lock and key.
The internet has taught me that people can be convinced of many things that are not in their best interests. This is especially true if it feels like there are no better options out there.
I agree that voting with your wallets doesnt work because the average consumer has already voted for all this crap, but i dont think the reason why is that they dont care. A lot of my friends hate the current state of gaming but then buy the OW2 battlepass day 1. They dont like it but they tolerate it. And companies always try to see how much they can do that the average consumer will tolerate. And i think they have found it for gaming.
I think an extension of this from the video is that because something is big then many players may feel “forced” to play in these bad environments. As much as people may hate Overwatch, there’s no non-battlepass alternative that fits. The game is big so people play it… because the game is big and there’s few alternatives. Sure, there may hypothetically be a great $20 indie game that matches Overwatch’s style and gameplay… but do your friends play it too? Does it have the same server quality as Blizzard? The varied character roster?
Because people do things on a social level, being ‘part of the pack’ (even if it sucks) would be more appealing than not being with friends. Sorta like when Yahtzee said that “fun game with friends” shouldn’t be a statement because having friends tends to make anything fun.
"hate the current state of gaming but then buy the OW2 battlepass day 1."
You start to wonder with some people why they don't find another hobby. If they're still having fun, they don't hate the current state of gaming as much as they think they do, and if they're not having fun but spending their money anyway, that to me is a pretty good definition of "wasting time."
As always you have to ask is there an alternative, same thing with the BS car companies have put in with heated seats being a subscription - once one company gets away with doing it all the others start looking for ways to do it too. And in the case of gaming its even worse as the point of the majority games now is to interact with other people through your screen, maybe your friends, maybe strangers, but it is still a social experience. So you can't just choose to buy your videogame 'car' from the one remaining brand that hasn't started with anti-consumer practices unless enough others do as well, creating that community experience. Folks might look at you funny for driving that weird import car, but it does the job of the car without mugging you every month for the privilage of having a few buttons enabled, most folks can live with that. But a multiplayer game without the people to play it with...
@@foldionepapyrus3441"Folks might look at you funny for driving that weird import car, but it does the job of the car without mugging you every month for the privilage of having a few buttons enabled, most folks can live with that."
I always say there are three things you should never buy American: Cars, beer, and video games.
@@SimuLordthe cost of switching to a new hobby isnt free. Both psychologically and monetarily, it costs a lot.
This goes far beyond just gaming. Well done.
Being in your own bubble is so on point. I haven't been interested in Pokemon for years because I think they just look bad. Everyone I listen to says they're bad, but each release tops the sales of the previous. Clearly, the majority of Pokemon fans have voted with their wallet, just in silence. I always have to remind myself that most people don't post on the Internet.
And 'most people' are stupid
You don't "think" they look bad. They factually look bad and are bad. And the average consumer is a clown.
Never listened to cold take, but god damn i was pleasantly surprised. Its written very well and brings up a bunch of thought provoking points, plus the guys voice is smooth as hell
It's a consistently great series, and the voice is smooth the whole time as well.
The other problem with voting with your wallet in a cutthroat industry is that sometimes beloved studios and / or franchises don't get a second chance if they lose their way. How many times have we gotten a not so great addition to a series, and the studio gets shutdown or rolled into another studio. Yet, we can't pretend to like games just to try and keep a studio alive because that could send the wrong message, so it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.
And what else is there left to do? Buy into it and fuel the bad practices more?
There really doesn't seem to be any middle ground that won't fuck over either the consumers, or the developers.
Try to protest against a bad game? The bottom line will be hit first.
Do absolutely nothing? Well, ignorance pretty much helped shape the industry how it is, the average Joe Doe, alongside whales spending hundreds or even thousands on singular game's microtransactions aren't stopping because they simply don't care, and barely anyone cares to do anything about it and in case of whales no one seems to care enough to provide them with help, as what they are doing isn't healthy to them, nor their wallet.
And worst thing, buying into it, will only enforce the bad decision as a good one in the eyes of executives and shareholders. It's quite literally what they want from a consumer, to tolerate as much cash milking as possible before it stops being profitable.
Sometimes change requires a few to get lost along the way. I'm willing to let a studio or series get shut down if that means clearing up the garbage landscape that is gaming now.
@@jediguy634unfortunately, what seems to happen is that those studios get bought by bigger studios and put to work doing not the the game they were doing.
So they don't get to learn their lesson, they don't get a chance to change and improve and they don't get a chance to make good.
They just become a cog in someone else's machine and the industry moves.
@@janematthews9087 Maybe some self reflection is needed on the dev's part? Either they give in and make what the big wigs force them to make, or they move on to a studio that will give them more creative freedom or change industry's.
Eventually something will change (it always does) and either the gaming buble will deflate a little or the big wigs move on to the "next big thing."
Another problem with voting with your wallet is that it takes time. We want instant resuslts but trends don't die over night, even when the trend is bad it takes time for the majority to turn against something. The suits won't stop following the trend until they see it consistently losing money, and you can only vote with your wallet on games that you can actually spend money on, you can't vote against a game that isn't out yet.
Bud light, Disney +, target.
It does work, companies want your money.
And we only get what the whales with deep pockets want.
@@christinaedwards5084 Bud light is the only one I read enough about to comment on but it is a weird example because it doesn't really fit the point. People were butthurt about a minor marketing gimmick, sending some minor influencer some cans with their image. (A trans influencer which lead to the giant tantrum.) But there wasn't anything ongoing to stop so it is not really relevant as an counter example for what @eldibs said. If there is no trend to stop so all that is possible is PR gestures which can be given quickly so a big reaction works well to get them. (Can't say whether the other two are better examples because I didn't pay much attention.)
That scenario doesn't have the inertia of a trend and the product is already there to try to cancel because people aren't protesting properties of the product they are protesting the marketing. Well with a game company you could refuse to buy their already existing games to protest something but unlike with a consumable most sales for old games are already made so that doesn't work as well.
@@user-zj9rr6yc4u I think it’s less about mulvaney and more about insulting their customer base calling them ‘fratty’ and unwanted by the brand
@@christinaedwards5084 Hadn't heard of it, checking what was said that would be also quite silly as a reaction to someone calling their brand (not any people) fratty. "We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach." My gut feeling is that random interview fluff like that is nothing people would talk about in significant numbers without mulvaney but who knows.
Anyway would still be a bad counter example.
"never pay more than twenty bucks for a computer game"
good rule to live by these days with a few rare exceptions once in awhile
This is the upside of going after good "indie" games now. Most are already in the 20-30 dollar range. Let the fools keep buying the big name trash and try to support whatever good stuff you can.
Definitely agree voting with wallets as a catch-all going to fix everything is quite silly in the current industry. When less than 1% of players make up the majority of Revenue of free to play games everyone else doesn't really have a say.
Yes. Our wallet votes don't carry the same weight. And that's what matters most. My vote doesn't count as much as your vote or the 1% wallet vote.
To add to that, as the Jimquisition show has covered extensively, in-game economies and micro-transactions are often targeted at the 1% (for argument's sake) of players that are vulnerable to that sort of manipulation (children, people with ADHD, etc.). In those cases, it's not so easy to say 'vote with your wallet' because the nature of the business is inherently predatory.
Fun anecdote, I was part of a studio that did 2 micro-transaction games. Our whales were there but they only accounted for 10 - 30 % of the monthly revenue (depending on the month). They were consistent and high profile as single user value goes, but over 40% of all users were paying frequently. It's WAY more effective than people think. It wouldn't be everywhere if it didn't work and popular games like Genshin wouldn't make so much money if only 1% bought shit. Most people are paying money on these multi-billion dollar micro-gatcha games or massively successful season pass games.
Another anecdote, I know a guy currently leading design for a successful live service game. His philosophy is that each themed content season is like a TV series. They get 'season runners' and each content piece is part of an episode, each reward on the pass a milestone event with featured 'directors'. They design the key points and hooks of the season and try to pace it out so you get building desire to re-engage on the pivotal episodic events. There's a lot of work that goes into making that content, but it is content made to sell the season and get the audience to engage with the paywall. It also works extremely well when done right.
The masses are voting with their wallets and they love this shit. Couldn't be happier with seasonal content that they find appealing (visually, thematically, mechanically, etc.). Bigger events bring is WAY more money from a much larger % of players than the small events which is why every seasonal or limited-time event is advertised so boldly and in-your-face. It's drumming up hype for the new season coming out.
Thank you for pointing out the popularity of crocs! I thought everybody agreed they were goofy years ago but recently I’ve been seeing tons of people wearing them.
they are ugly but they're really comfortable. I only wear them inside my house and never ever wear them when i go out. XD
@@odin3442 My experience from a decade ago was that the tread wore out really fast when I wore them outside of my house (and was very slippery if wet). Still super comfortable.
I know right. The thing is I've actually worn them "a person forced me to wear them in their house to avoid tracking dirt on their carpets", and they are so incredibly uncomfortable too.
Like seriously, why do people keep insisting that their comfort makes up for their ugly design? Just wear sandals or better yet, slippers. You'll probably collapse on the floor with tears of joy with how comfortable something like slippers are, if crocs are your baseline for what's considered comfortable.
I have always hated the notion of voting with your wallet, especially in protest of a company's mistreatment of employees. First thing that company will do is mitigate the loss of revenue, usually at the expense of the employees. Any change this brings won't come unless the loss is felt year over year, and even then the offenders just cut and run and leave someone else to clean up the mess.
To be fair, no matter what thing you would do against the company as a protest, it will hurt the bottom line.
Same as any other industry, bottom line is the easiest to replace for the executives and shareholders, and often cheapest.
@simplysmiley4670 that's why I don't think voting with your wallet has ever actually accomplished anything. When all those allegations came out against Activision, it wasn't lost sales that finally sparked some action, but the looming threat of the lawsuit launched by the state.
Don't boycott a company and hope they'll change, help get people elected that will do something about their practices.
Cold Take is an automatic listen, great work
Right? I never thought I'd see a legit good companion show to Zero Punc; but these two have a nice hot-and-cold difference, but both really based take on things.
Hottest cold take I’ve seen yet :P. I actually think we are on the precipice of this concept. All prices are rising and the general population has less and less money every year. And video games are what they always have been: a hobby. So as the price of the hobby increases, all of a sudden the wallet goes from voting 10 times, to 5 times, to once every year.
This reminds me a lot of my pro wrestling fandom. 10 years ago the common belief among promoters was that pro wrestling fans would watch anything with wrestling in it, so the people you needed to attract was the casual audience. This meant that the second any company got any big exposure it stopped caring about good wrestling and started pushing celebrity appearances, non wrestling segments and storylines, and wwe castoffs with any name value. It happened to TNA, it happened to ring of honor (to a point). It helped kill both of them
I guess there's also the problem where some mechanics play directly into addictive behavior to extract money.
I'm a religious man, and it is my sincerest hope that B.F. Skinner is in Jotunheim where his head is being used as the ball in a game of polo between the frost giants.
The experiments Skinner conducted on rats are bad enough, but the ones he conducted on his own children in the guise of parenthood make my mother-a loathsome woman with whom I am not on speaking terms in my adulthood-look like the greatest parent who ever parented by comparison.
@@SimuLordis it the fault of the researcher and scientist that their work is misused by people they could never forsee existing?
The term 'Tragedy of the Commons' springs to mind. Everybody's voting for their own self-interest, which ultimately serves *nobody's* interests. Now, the grass has been gnawed to its roots, and the drought threatens...
The tragedy of the commons is a myth pushed by protocapitaliats to justify the enclosure of the common spaces. Historically people were pretty good at managing the commons because it was in their best self-interest to tend to them in a sustainable way.
Aren't there studies showing that the Tragedy is more fallacy than not?
the notion of the tragedy of the commons is that the common interest in maintaining some communal resource (like a sheep pasture) is the same as the individual interest. if one person allows their sheep to eat all of the grass then they have no grass either and they can no longer benefit from the community because it can't live off of the pasture. by looking only at short term interests in using all of the pasture at once they make their long-term situation worse in addition to everyone else
@@Brian-tn4cdthere are studies that show everything but they need to be solid studies with results anyone can replicate if they follow proper scientific methodology.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid i would link to you an article but YT does not allow it, for that case there has been little in studies proving the tragedy either. It is only a hypothetical Lloyd put out and later emboldened Hardin, Lloyd at least didn't even give proper examples just played on "Common sense" that that's just how people are and always will be. You dont even have to search much to find groups of people that communally take care of shared resources and self govern to ensure that they used well. The cases were the Tragedy can be called upon for consistent example are where we allow a few people with power control vast amount of "common" resources
People take the “vote with your wallet” a little to literally. It’s not about “oh I don’t like McDonalds so I just won’t go there and in about 2 week it will be all be bankrupt”. It’s about knowing “even thought this thing is popular I refuse to go along because they are involved in practices that go against me”.
That doesnt work when the place you did like to go to gets replaced by a fast-food joint because they make more money.
The "Vote with your wallet" thing just boils down to "ignore bad games and business practices and pray to god that they never affect the things you actually like in any way".
@@ilikevideogames4331 Of course at some point it affects the stuff you like. The trick is being ready to find new stuff to like.
Well, but that's the whole point - that your not going along with it changes absolutely nothing.
@@BlueCoolOla At times it actually does. Look at the report on Square Enix and realize how their desire for live service games has ruined them. It wasn’t a boycott, it wasn’t a movement. It was us gamers individually going “no thanks that doesn’t look good”.
@@TNTITAN Okay, and what about all the other times when it doesn't? When most gamers don't care? What does your individual wallet mean then?
Core example; the cell phone market. I voted with my wallet and kept my phone that still worked and had features I liked. Now, I've cycled through three phones I've hated and features like headphone jacks are disappearing because of people like me "voting with my wallet" against Samsung and Apple. If you don't buy, only the people that did buy voted. You didn't vote at all.
Most of the time it is hard for me to vote with my wallet because the types of games I like, 6-14 hour single player, are rarely made now.
The problem is that people are barely motivated, we just don't care. Everyone is depressed or oblivious, and we depressed are all envious of the oblivious.
These videos are next level. Cold Takes are rapidly becoming one of my favorite parts of The Escapist... keep them coming!
"Critics, journalists, and enthusiasts" being the only ones who care about this stuff really puts things into perspective. I've met people who are entirely content with owning GTA Online, the current COD, and the current NBA 2k, not even touching free game offerings, maybe picking up a single title from a sale. If that's the average user, it's no wonder why practices don't change.
Meanwhile I'm spending more time on CZcams looking at the state of the industry and video essays than I am clearing my backlog...
I think at the end of the day it’s just entertainment. Buy games you think you’ll enjoy. You might have to look for them but they’re there. Sometimes I think a lot of people just like being in the gaming community rather than actually finding games to play.
Glad you mentioned genshin, before that, I always hated phone and gacha games, the few I tried were really bad, and left a terrible impression, but there was so much hype around Genshin in the anime communities, I gave it a shot alongside my friends just for the sake of it, sure of me getting bored and tired of a bad game wanting my cash constantly at every corner. But thats not how the game ended up, and I enjoyed my time with it. Now 3 years later and I still play it, and god forbid, even spent some cash on it with its monthly sub since I weirdly feel it deserves something for me having free fun with it for hundreds of hours across 3 years. Its a real weird feeling now since I still am not super happy with gacha, but the game has now reinvested 700 million back into itself and I saw with my own eyes as it grew over those years, to be about 3-4 times bigger than at launch, It actually used its gacha cash to expand heavily, and the game just straight up could never be as big and unique if it didnt rake in that cash as a live service gacha, its literally the most expensive game ever made, and its technically still a phone game. (though id never recommend playing it on phone over a PC or console)
Airfriers are generally coated in teflon: DO NOT USE METAL UTENSILS ON THEM
Apathy is one of the most dangerous things for people. The problem is (as you pointed out) that many people don't even see that there IS a problem with the gaming industry. When people are out of the loop (be it gaming, politics, whatever), there is always an oppotunity to exploit this lack of awareness and set whole new ways of how things operate which supersedes the prior model. If your of a certain age, you'll have the benefit of past experience on your side, whereas young people don't know any different. This is how big societal change happens also of course. I'm disgusted with how some new game releases have been handled and shows what little respect some companies have for their customers. Micro transactions, DLC that should actually be present in the base game etc etc - it's all stone cold capitalism and it's really ugly. I'm much more into Indie now and am more than happy to support these single people/small teams that actually have some sort of moral compass. *End of rant* 😁
The problem I've seen with voting with your wallet in regards to video games (and probably in other spaces) is that it harms the people you least want, while never actually reaching the people you most want to listen.
A game doesn't perform well because you don't want microtransactions, "isn't complete", or was rushed out with bugs? Studio gets shut down while the CEO and major shareholders walk away laughing to the bank, leaving the employees with the least decision making power jobless.
Whereas purchasing the game begrudgingly just informs those same people that what they're doing makes them money. Even if the gaming community hates it as a whole.
Don't worry about what other people are doing. If you don't agree with something, don't put any of your money towards it. Any arguments of "but what is it going to matter in the end if everyone else doesn't do it too?" is simply succumbing to a false futility that doesn't exist.
You do you and live up to your own moral standards. That's all you can do and all you should worry about.
Romantic? Idealistic? Yes, they are, and they are wonderful qualities to have, thank you for saying that about me and others who behave in this way. Join us if you'd like, or don't. We don't care, and neither should you. As long as you're doing you.
DUDE! You have SERIOUSLY got to be a voice actor for a Noire detective game. Your voice is literally perfect for it! Damn!
My wallets only got so many ballots, so while I want to vote for what I love, I can't afford to for every game with good practices
Well written and well read as usual, good job guys🙏
I think an important point about the "voting with wallets" debate is that it pretends marketing doesn't exist.
The bigger companies spend as much, or even *more* money on marketing as they do on development. This means, in effect, that they *buy votes*.
Almost easily the best Cold Take yet
Awesome work Frost
Love the Cold Take series. Great opinions, and a soothing voice helps too :D
You missed your true calling. There's a noir detective book somewhere just hoping and praying you'll narrate it into an audio book with that voice. Great video, great voice! ;)
"...and Crocs are ok."
NEVEEEER!
Tencent and Microsoft somehow have the most votes in the "Vote with your wallet" system.
That's because 2/3rds of game purchases are a vote for them nowadays
@@ninjab33zblatantly untrue but okay
I feel like your vote matters more in the context of supporting niche genres and weird small developers.
Why is it that whenever I listen to a Cold Take it sounds like a 1930s detective narrating a video gaming CZcams channel. Absolutely brilliant stuff
This narration sounds like it was done in a 50's greasy smokey dinner that just happened to be overlooking multiple Gamestops. Love the atmosphere and many truths included. Great video Sebastian.
Perhaps the first time I watch a non-Yahtzee video on Escapist, and I'm absolutely amazed by how good this cold take is. Really well-written, articulated, damn, I've been missing out.
Nick your voice is the living embodiment of a noir narrator. If you switched scripts halfway through and started speaking about how the guarded sultry femme fatal entered the door of your small detective agency, I doubt I would even notice 😂
I've always gone on the assumption that 90% of any hobby, interest, or media will be either mediocre or outright bad. It's only that leftover 10% where you'll find the good and great works. As a kid, I was still figuring out what exactly it was that appealed to me when it came to music, movies, games, etc.
But as an adult, I'm at the point where I don't find myself wasting my money on games and such that I regret after purchasing, lamenting the fact that I gave so much as a penny to some garbage studio.
I use the term voting with my wallet regularly, and I don't think I see the same issue you do with it. I live in an area where the political party I vote for is in such a minority of the vote that there is next to zero chance of them ever winning, yet I still vote for them. People say I'm throwing away my vote by doing this, but I believe in the principal of making my preferences known.
With video games, I see it as an even more optimistic situation since despite all the trash released on the market, patience is usually rewarded with excellent gem at least a few times a year. I never preorder games, instead waiting until launch to potentially purchase a game. AAA games, even if they get decent user reviews, I wait until they go down to 25% off minimum before I'll purchase them since I don't care about the larger companies' success.
With indie titles, however, if on release they get decent user reviews and appear to be up my alley I will purchase them at full price. This despite knowing that if I just wait a year I could probably nab it for half off or even free. Because I do see this as voting with my wallet, even if no one else votes, and the hope that the individual company's potential success spurs others to follow their lead.
Boycotts haven't been effective in a long time. They were a lot stronger in the times before the internet. But now every piece of content has such a gigantic consumer base to draw from, they will always be able to find enough of an audience to survive. At least, big companies that can get the advertising out to begin with.
Consumer boycotts never work in gaming. Because fans are too strong and override them. Seen it time and again. It was actually worse back in the day before the internet because you only had games magazines who were paid by game publishers for ads anyway.
Brilliant analysis. 👏🏻
that shot of the "drugs" sign when you talk about other activities, before using the footage to speak about playing the original bioshock is masterful
We are pebbles fighting a machine we can't beat. This doesn't mean give up and give in, it means find what makes you happy and try to stick to that. We can't beat the machine as it is, we can huddle together and make what we want and play what we want.
The problem is that most people don't care what they vote for. Some of my friends are as passionate about me when it comes to games and only buy the cream of the crop, but the rest just buy the new cod and fifa game.
once again a good take!
Love this series.
Important topic, great video :)
An additional issue that many people that are ~30 years old right now seem to be missing: A LOT of players are children and young adults who simply aren't old enough to have experienced all the negative sides of the game industry enough, and they are also more susceptible to hype and peer-pressure to purchase micro-transactions. And this "supply of fresh players" is never ending, so my cynical view is that many big companies abuse this fact. Same with other media, like TV shows or movies. Young people simply haven't watched that much stuff yet to be fed up with another super hero franchise.
So I guess what I'm saying is that this problem won't go away as long we don't go extinct :D
Really enjoying this series
I always felt like the "vote with your wallets" statement as to ward out the bad stuff in gaming as stupid because I kept hearing "WE WANT UNIQUE AND FUN GAMES" and "WE DON'T WANT THE GENERIC/SAFE STUFF" yet stuff like the games of Sony's Japan Studio, or PlatinumGames' SEGA games flopped in sales just because they aren't the AAA mainstream games. Where were those people for the sale numbers? It seemed like the gamers' wallets actually voted for the "live service games, buggy yearly releases and sequel slops" over the "unique and fun games" that had its studios either fade into obscurity or killed by executives who are not seeing anything valuable with keeping them alive while they "bleed money".
the average consumer doesnt read or watch reviews follows the industry and most certainly doesnt discuss on reddit or twitter
they buy a game because they know the name saw one trailer or an ad poster
Masterfully said.
I freaking love this series
This became a very relevant topic for The Escapist very soon after this one was made!
Well shit I feel somehow called out but twice
In my case recently my voting with my wallet has been going pretty smoothly. Lots of really good cheap indie game kept me entertained this year. Only really big title I splashed out on was Zelda so far but I'm considering using game pass for the upcoming Lies of P when it comes out.
Same. But that only works because my tastes are out of the mainstream. If I loved shooters and open world sandboxes and was waiting for the next Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty with baited breath, I would feel like I was stuck with a hopeless tide of mediocrity and day 1 bugs. Heaven forbid if I was gaming with friends and had to decide between my principles and buying Borderlands 3 on release so I could be included on game night
@@websterbillingham8873 even then if you are willing to looks slightly below the surface you will find plenty of gems. convincing your friends then becomes the hardest part
The problem is that there are too much idiots with too much money on their hands...
Cold Take is the best new series you have. Keep it up!
I don't have enough money to vote with my wallet anymore. So instead I'm out. My journey ends here, I have a backlog of games to last me until death most likely. I can buy the odd newer title if it tickles my fancy, but given how they are these days it's easy enough to ignore them and pick them up later when the price goes down. I'm learning how to make games, so I might just create the games I want to play and leave it at that.
Based
*gestures at Pokemon*
Voting with your wallet will never have an impact lololol
I love cold takes and zero punctuation two of my favorite this on CZcams
"Voting with your wallet" is basically just survivorship bias.
They only see the people who buy and have no way of finding out the amount of people who don't buy. And so they craft their game to aim towards they have data on, which is the data that says "this thing works because there's this money people who bought that thing."
There ahould be a way for devs and publishers to know and interact with their customer base and come to an agreement of "We want your money, tells us what we have to do to get it, and your money must collectively overwhelmingly be more valuable than the people we already know will buy without doing what you want us to do."
Like locking each other into a pre-order, that's elying on the demand be met.
Which is ridiculous, but it's the onky thing that comes to mind.
I never see anyone raise this point but I think it's also important to understand that this industry constantly has a flux of new children who never experienced older games and who don't actually have to spend their own money on the games. They pic games that are trendy and publishers spend a lot of money on marketing towards this group of people.
People don't want to admit that video games are toys
Meanwhile From Software still sticking to their original goal from 1994
Thanks again
We still see people voting with their wallets when highly marketed products fail spectacularly(Looking at you Stadia/Anthem/etc). We also see the voting when things sell off the charts, even if the gaming media and savvy people didn't like aspects of it(Cyberpunk 2077). The thing we also fail to recognize is people have limited time and most don't spend their free time watching reviews and controversies in gaming media, they just wanted to be a futuristic edge runner and Cyberpunk fit that bill.
Look, even if its raining you can slip them on quick to get your mail without ruining them. Try that with slippers.
My counterargument is that the public may be fickle, but they catch on eventually. In addition to what is pointed out at the end. Publishers and developers pushing the limits further and further of what they can get away with, and the collective growing awareness in the public of bad trends in gaming will eventually force a paradigm shift.
Effectively voting with your wallet requires knowing what you're voting for. that awareness is what is growing. While there are undeniably subgenres of gaming that rake in cash with shamelessly greedy financial models, a lot of games have taken shameless nickel and diming too far. Genshin Impact and Fortnite get away with it, but Battlefield 2042 did not. Games with more of a specialized appeal rather than a mass market appeal have more stringent requirements for what people will put up with, including more casual and average consumers. That includes what positive qualities a game must have, but also what negatives it can't have, or can't have too much of.
I think we're nearing a turning point, if we aren't in the middle of it already. we'll see. gaming is not monolithic. It is massive and multifaceted. It is not an easy beast to keep perfect track of.
This one really spoke to me. A lot of what you said about youself applies to myself- I personally would not be too bothered if the entire games industry completely and irrevocably crashed tonight because I already own enough games to last me literally for the rest of my life, my backlog is monolithic, I never buy games on launch both because they'll going to be much better if I wait a while (even Remnant II, which I'd practically been counting down the days to release of, I ultimately decided not to buy because it would need multiple patches to get into an optimal state, something which has proven 100% true) and because I have no reason NOT to wait for a sale since by the time I'm actually able to get around to PLAYING a newly-bought game it'll already have either gone on heavy sale or even been given away _for free._ And I'm also painfully aware that "voting with your wallet" is pointless because the overwhelming majority of the audience for the games industry is significantly stupider and with incomprehensibly lower standards than myself. Hopefully, some time after the 40th anniversary of the Great Crash of '83, we can FINALLY get the Second Great Crash we've been so badly overdue and reset this rotting industry again.
crash course in anarchist critique of consumer politics for any who care:
1. any campaign of boycotting, abstention, or promotion of alternatives only succeeds if it actually hurts profits. with video games and hollywood the scale of profits are so extreme that it doesn't matter if a single AAA game fails do to consumer choice. for this to work ALL AAA games with microtransatctions, of a particular uninspired style, or released unfinished would have to suffer losses. Or an entire major studio would have to be shut down due to loss of consumer interest. these are the sort of situations that impact corporate decision making. a single AAA game failing for good reason doesn't do much to sway execs. Companies this big factor in potential failure, and corporate buck passing is a huge part of the culture, so different groups of execs will find someone within the company to blame but they will not blame the product until they are sure that the products failure isn't a fluke.
2. It doesn't really matter if consumers don't support a single company if they keep supporting an industry overall. For 'voting with your wallet' to work, large numbers of people would have to not only boycott individual AAA titles, but stop buying AAA games altogether. If ANY games with microtransactions succeed (and they clearly do), that says that companies can secure exponential profits as long as they deploy these features correctly. a single microtransaction infested game failing doesn't tell the industry that people don't want microtransactions if several others succeed. We can't blame the whales, literally everyone buying AAA games are part of the problem.
3. As this video points out, only a very small portion of consumers are invested in their choices. Most people buy a game and if they don't like it they stop playing it. but they already bought it. kind of like how it doesn't matter if a movie or tv show is critically panned as long as people are paying to watch it. as many have pointed out, the companies don't care about active player fall-off as long as they have made a tidy profit from purchases. It is, depressingly, an economically smart move to overhype a game so that tons of people preorder or buy at launch. it doesn't really matter if the game has staying power unless you can find ways to get people to keep paying for games forever, which is exactly why microtransactions, dlc, and live services are and will continue to be the standard.
at best, some company will come along and release a game with microtransactions and dlc done so well that people say 'usually i hate this but its actually not so bad here' then that will become a new industry standard. the long game for the industry is not to trick you into accepting bad things, its to keep doing whatever bad things make money until they don't. this shit will never end until the shit we hate stops being profitable, and we are, frankly, not doing anything as consumers to change that.
This made me feel like a noir detective staring out a rainy office window nursing a glass of whiskey on the rocks.
For my two cents I don't think "voting with your wallet" works anymore as a means to effect change. Especially with the bigger companies like Riot etc. I got frustrated with the way League was handling certain things years ago, and people kept telling me to vote with my wallet. My account was a smaller whale account, but I certainly whaled a lot in the 10 years that I played the game. I ended up quitting, moving over to DOTA2 and haven't really looked back. But from what I gather all the BS that I wanted changed/improved/etc years ago is still the same or even worse.
So voting with my wallet has done nothing.
Its also interesting to me how your mindset on this can shift, over the last decade ive slowly shifted from being firmly against pay to win, but that was when I had 100s of free hours and not much disposable income to throw at gaming, but as that has slowly swung around to plenty of disposable income to spend on games, but very little time, I will now happily part with some cash to see and use stuff i just dont have the time to grind for. Im still as deeply ingrained in the subcultures, but now part of a growing group who are rarely discussed, those of us who love gaming, but just dont have the time to physically play much any more but still want to see and enjoy eberything the dev teams pour into our preferred titles.
The thing is, it's not the devs. It's the studios and monetization experts. There are people whose literal job is to optimize your gaming/mobile gaming experience so that you will spend the max bux -- or in the case of data collecting, provide the most data to sell.
I'm reminded of Jimquisition where they said very well (and it took me a while to understand) that if you offer a chance to spend money to skip the grind is tantamount to saying your basic gameplay is worthless. That the grind is there not as a mechanical or structural or gameplay device... it's just there to coerce you to pay to skip it.
Pay to win and predatory monetization are disgraceful and unnecessary, but unquestionably a part of the ecosystem now.
Fun fact about Crocs: they were originally invented for the 2006 film Idiocracy, which is about a future in which all of humanity have, well, devolved into idiots. They wanted a shoe that looked ugly and would come across as visual shorthand for "shoes only an idiot would buy/wear." Years later, most of the American population owns or has owned a pair.
Icy as always but the man's got points. Because of my level and type of income, I don't often get to play big titles unless they go on sale (had to wait a good long while to grab the $10 Bioshock bundle)... I do occaisionally play for full price (Hades- one of my best gaming choices ever), but the sheer volume of my votes goes unseen or at least unnoticed when compared to every gamer currently gaming so I just get to wait and pick up what I can when it becomes available🤷🏻♂️ Cheers Frost and thanks for another amazing piece! 🙏🍻
"Naw, I believe in a lot of things. Puts a little pep in my step."
These cold takes are extra spicy
I can't agree with "the wallets are already voting" while knowing full well that there's a variety of methods to skew a person towards buying something. Been on the receiving end, after all.
When people say "vote with your wallet" they imply much more than just "buy whatever you feel like buying at the moment". In fact, more like the inverse of that.
For most, it's like an addiction. Or literally an addiction. They would tell you they hate the current state of gaming, the next day buy the new season pass.
If you disagree with what the AAA industry is doing, voting with your wallet is not about somehow getting everyone to agree with you to rise up and completely change the AAA industry.
It's about helping the niche that you do like to just barely survive, and that's much easier to do. A self published indy doesn't need to spend millions on production, then sell a million copies just to break even, then give a chunk to their owner Bethesda, so they can give a chunk to their owner Zenimax, so they can give a chunk to their owner Microsoft, so they can give a chunk to their owner BlackRock. There's no gigantic parasitic chain.
There hasn't been almost anything AAA has done in over a decade that I liked enough to want to pay for. I'm voting for the indies and I'm *very* happy with how many others have supported stuff like The Messenger, Celeste, Dead Cells, Hedon Bloodrite, Ion Fury, Prodeus, Rise of the Third Power, Chained Echoes, Fell Seal...
I like Sea of Stars so much I bought 2 copies and still intend to buy a physical edition when that's out. Turns out so many other people felt like that that the studio outsold their sales projections for the whole year in just a few days.
Then there's some of my all time favorite games like QC:DE and Ashes 2063 being free mods.
Happy and empowered voter here.
It's kinda funny... we simultaneously complain that there aren't any good games anymore, but our backlogs are longer than ever... The fact that predatory moneymaking schemes exist doesn't mean there aren't good games made as well. The industry is so large now that there is room for both... for better or worse.
When you start to think "man, they sold complete games back in the day with fewer bugs, no microtransactions or DLC", remember that the $50-70 price tag has been around since the NES days, and dev teams were much smaller back then. Doom took 13 months for 5 developers to make, and they sold it for $30 in 1993 (roughly $63 today after inflation). Nintendo just sold the latest Zelda game for $70 and got a lot of criticism for that $10 more than most AAA titles, but it's the result of over 5 years of development by 100s of developers, on top of the 5 years of development for the previous game they reused the engine from.
Right, but they made profit on the previous zelda game, so it doesn't count as an expense for the next. Markets are also much larger now and getting millions of sales in the first week is not uncommon, especially for zelda.
It's not the same thing.
My wallet casts the same vote it always has for at least as long as my Steam account has existed (March 4, 2009, FWIW. Empire: Total War on launch day, massive bugs and all. Inauspicious beginnings and all that.)
Namely, if I'm not getting at least 3 hours of replay value, however that may be defined for the game in question-it means something quite different for Super Mega Baseball 3 or American Truck Simulator than it does for Fallout New Vegas, and I've got over 1,000 hours in all three-out of every dollar I spend, that's gonna be a real hard sell.
Bang for the buck is in part a throwback to when I didn't have a whole lotta bucks-$70 would've been nearly a day's pay after taxes back in those halcyon days of the late aughts rather than the chump change I earn by the time it's actually light out in the wintertime in Seattle now-but I'm too old for FOMO and too burned out on same-old AAA junk and turned on not just to indies but to Eurojank and other stuff from around the world that departs from the usual suspects of American and Japanese gaming tropes to care.
As for stuff the Internet flips out about, well, I got off social media for good at the end of 2020. Best thing I ever did for my mental health. And after telling CZcams "Don't recommend this channel" to enough overtly political media on this platform, left AND right, even the Google monster seems to understand I don't want to hear it.
Frosty my man that was so good. Nailing it 🤙
The cyber chase footage is a core memory