$100,000 Whales - AKA the disgusting future of gaming

[X'tyfe]

I was forwarded this article by this indie developer I know, since there isn't a general gaming forum here at TS I'll post it here where I have before.

Him and I have had long discussions in the past about the gaming industry and how terrible it is these days and both wishing it would hurry up and crash again.
Well, He was going over last years GDC stuff and found this scumbag here http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An

Its a long video, but its pretty much this ex-gold farmer trying to sell how awesome exploiting players is. Going so far as to call anyone dumb enough to fall into it a "Whale".

[quadz]

Interesting. Sort of the online game design version of:

[Whirlingdervish]

But do I get comped drinks?

[Barton]

I don't see why you are casting bad light on this fellow. His whole speech was just to inform Western developers how the standard F2P model works in China, as he believes there is some useful information that can be learned from it. Also, I'm pretty sure that he only referred to that one player who spent 100k in one month in a single game, as being stupid, and not the average whale who constantly is lining the speaker's pockets with cash every month. :>

Anyway, I don't have much of a problem with F2P. Usually that model is used in games that I don't play (strategy, RPGs, MMOs), and usually promotes endless quest for equipment or stat whoring, which I does not interest me. F2P is bad for me when companies put F2P into games that really don't need it like FPS shooters that are not MMOs, then I get annoyed. I never tried Tribes: Ascend or Hawken, so I don't know how bad F2P is in those games, but the fact that they use it is enough to turn me off from trying those games. The only grinding in a FPS game that is alright with me is building my skills up, not building up some imaginary stat that makes me kill a player more easily or is necessary for me to gain access to gear/weapons that already should have been available at the beginning.

[X'tyfe]

Don't confuse "F2P" free to play with "P2W" pay to win, which is what he was talking about. The problem I have is not just that, but the fact that in China games are disposable. I want to go back to the point where good games were made and stayed that way for 10+ years (such as Quake2). Games are made like shit these days and don't last any longer than 2 years or even a 1 year in some cases , id say we are in the middle between the old way and the way it is in China.

They spend millions to make these shitty games these days only to have them last a short time, its not worth it. While in China they spend many times less and bring in way more. There is no doubt it will happen. Why not spend money on one game and have it keep selling for years simply because its good, not because it brings in many players for a short period before being thrown in the trash.

[quadz]

I don't see why you are casting bad light on this fellow. His whole speech was just to inform Western developers how the standard F2P model works in China, as he believes there is some useful information that can be learned from it.

I found the presentation informative and interesting.

It describes a type of game design focus that I'm not really overjoyed exists in the world--like that of designing slot machines or state lotto tickets--but indeed it exists and it is what it is.

A recent example of a Western failure along these lines was the attempted cash grab perpetrated by a money-grubbing outfit who tried to cash in on the popularity of the DayZ mod, with their "War Z" offering.

When "War Z" was rushed to market at the end of last year, it was clear that the overarching design ethos woven into its DNA was that of producing an ongoing revenue stream for the developer/publisher. Like the Chinese games described in the above video, the revenue stream itself is the guiding design principle from which structure and choices in the game derive.

By way of contrast, some excerpts from an early interview with the creator of the original DayZ mod about what influenced his design:

You have to go through those authentic thought processes. You know? That was the idea behind Day Z having the layers. Like, it’s raining, I need to watch out. I need food, but I can’t carry too much, I need to carry some ammunition. You have all of these different things to consider, and suddenly it’s all going on up in here instead of you just watching and reacting.

I think it just seems crazy to me that as a medium, video games haven’t really explored a lot of the areas that movies and literature just constantly explore. You look at the zombie genre, in literature and movies they explore... You know, zombies aren’t the terror. There’s complex political stuff that happens when the world collapses. (Games? Shoot zombies.)

And you don’t need a story to make someone feel something. That’s where games will win over movies. Hands down. Because you can’t have the viewer of a movie experience it.

Just before I came to work at BIS, I did an army exchange to Singapore, and I did their officer training. And as part of that I had to go to Brunei and do this survival training. So I’m the only white guy, trying to do this 30-day survival course with the Singaporeans, they’re not the best communicators, and it was just awful. I ran out of food, I ended up getting badly injured and had to have surgery and stuff. It was terrible. But as part of that whole experience, that was just what you were saying... You have to balance all this basic little stuff, and the effect that had, the way that I felt, the emotions I felt, that was when I was like... Why don’t video games try to create those emotions? Because even though some of them are terrible, the way they come together is really amazing, if that makes sense. You get all these stories out of them, you really want to tell people about them, because you went through this crazy thing. Why don’t we do that in games?

In my opinion the latter produced a more compelling game.

Personally as a software developer I've got no problem with capitalism and I most definitely want the developers to make money. But as a game player I think I can feel the difference in the result when the designer's primary motivation was maximization of monetary micro-transactions.

So in short: fuck those fucking fuckers.

[|iR|Focalor]

I want to go back to the point where good games were made and stayed that way for 10+ years (such as Quake2). Games are made like shit these days and don't last any longer than 2 years or even a 1 year in some cases , id say we are in the middle between the old way and the way it is in China.

That is never going to happen. The "good old days" will always be in the past. Rampant piracy has created this style of video game out of necessity. It sucks for the players who are used to simply buying a copy of a game and then being able to play it as long as they want, but because so many players are now downloading the games with torrents and not buying the games, game makers have been forced to recreate the way games are played. And it actually works out BETTER for them. Instead of selling you a game one time for 50 bucks, they can charge you a monthly subscription of 10 or 20 bucks and make even MORE money. And the way they set it up, you have to CONTINUE playing it for a long time in order to earn access to the more fun parts of the games. Like iRacing. No other software companies have really put out a great NASCAR style racing game since Papyrus came out with Nascar Racing 2003. iRacing has taken the strategy of World of Warcraft by basically copying NR2003's physics while adding some nice updated graphics capabilities, and then making you have to subscribe to it to be able to play. And you don't just START OFF getting to drive all the different cars. You have to start off driving the boring bullshit that most people don't give a damn about in order to EARN the right to drive Nascar Sprint Cup cars or Indy cars or the other types of fancy exotic touring cars.

It sucks, because I'm NEVER going to pay a monthly fee to play anything. But that's just plain old capitalism. China might be "communist", but that's quickly becoming more and more of a ridiculously non-applicable description for them. People who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to vilify communism for being so oppressive, harsh, and dull have never really thought about just how shitty capitalism can make things too. When the population continuously increases to become more and more HUGE, the opinions of individuals (sometimes even large numbers of individuals) become entirely disposable and unimportant, at which point a "better product" is not necessarily the goal of business as much as "what sells TODAY".

[fdrjk]

fun is subjective.

whether you like games today or 20 years ago is entirely up to opinion.

[|iR|Focalor]

fun is subjective.

whether you like games today or 20 years ago is entirely up to opinion.

Money is not subjective. It's better FOR YOU to pay 50 bucks one time to play a game than it is to pay 180 bucks in 15 dollar installments over 12 months to play a game.

Interesting. Sort of the online game design version of:

Yeah. There's a difference though. When you play slots, you have the possibility of winning money even if the odds of coming out ahead are very unlikely. With browser games, the only possible payout is "fun". If the game makers give out prizes for certain things, obviously the prize value won't come close to anything you'd probably put into it as a player. Maybe you could get extremely lucky and not dump that much money into playing a game and walk away with a great prize... but the odds of that are probably way worse than odds you'd get playing any slot machine.

[quadz]

fun is subjective.

Indeed; de gustibus non disputandum est.

Nevertheless adjectives like jejune, insipid, banal, puerile, mundane, tedious, vapid must exist in language for some reason.


<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D8Fj2iqJc_4/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D8Fj2iqJc_4"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/D8Fj2iqJc_4" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/D8Fj2iqJc_4</a>
(mad reviewer is mad)

[quadz]

There's a difference though. When you play slots, you have the possibility of winning money even if the odds of coming out ahead are very unlikely.

That's the psychological hook of course, yes. On average players are losing in the vicinity of 10 cents per dollar.

The reason 23,000 slot machines can generate three billion dollars a year in profits after prizes/winnings is because virtually every player is losing money.

So they're effectively trolling people who are bad at math, and/or who don't grasp the Sunk Cost fallacy...?

With browser games, the only possible payout is "fun".

If one is going to set fire to a bunch of cash, I suppose it might as well be fun.


In any case, though, the comparison between slot machines and Chinese P2W browser games was something I was looking at from a game design perspective. Designers in both cases are setting out very deliberately to concoct the most finely tuned set of bells, whistles, and rewards to sink the hook and keep reeling in the money. ("Dark sociology," as a colleague once put it.)

I've occasionally thought about what it would be like to design that sort of game, but it seems kind of  .


:shrug:

[|iR|Focalor]

Taxi Racer, lol.

Guy in the video mentioned this wonderful game. This video made me LOL even more. I love the "spinning burnout" at 1:50.

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rikTiT2OwqQ/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rikTiT2OwqQ"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/rikTiT2OwqQ#!" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/rikTiT2OwqQ#!</a>

[fdrjk]

rofl

There would be a lot of arguments in saying that Big Rigs isn't an actual "game".

[Barton]

I found the presentation informative and interesting.

It describes a type of game design focus that I'm not really overjoyed exists in the world--like that of designing slot machines or state lotto tickets--but indeed it exists and it is what it is.

A recent example of a Western failure along these lines was the attempted cash grab perpetrated by a money-grubbing outfit who tried to cash in on the popularity of the DayZ mod, with their "War Z" offering.

When "War Z" was rushed to market at the end of last year, it was clear that the overarching design ethos woven into its DNA was that of producing an ongoing revenue stream for the developer/publisher. Like the Chinese games described in the above video, the revenue stream itself is the guiding design principle from which structure and choices in the game derive.

Agreed. TWZ always came off to me as a scam even though I purchased and played the game knowing that ahead of time. I think if the game didn't have the insane F2P mechanics it has, it could be a decent game if polished up and the features that the game's developers promised to implement actually were (e.g. anticheat, larger maps and more maps available, casual and hardcore servers, private servers, improved safe zones). I'm not sure how many of those features were actually added to the game outside of private servers, but I'm sure that private servers can make the game far more tolerable now as rampant cheating made the game quite unplayable.

But yeah...regarding the F2P mechanics in TWZ, I thought it was pretty bad from what I remember it being. It was really pay2win because the in-game currency was worthless due to items/weapons being terribly overpriced in the marketplace. You could grind but it would take forever and it's not guaranteed (e.g. dying while carrying money before you could get to safe zone to put it in your global inventory). And if you managed to buy something that would last, let's say like a weapon, I don't think it would be a worthy purchase with "real money" or in-game money, since if you character was carrying that weapon when he died, someone else can loot it from your corpse or the server would eventually reset it. And it didn't matter if you played in casual mode for that character who had that weapon, because if you revived him/her later he/she would no longer have that weapon equipped or anything else they had prior to death.

[Barton]

Don't confuse "F2P" free to play with "P2W" pay to win, which is what he was talking about. The problem I have is not just that, but the fact that in China games are disposable. I want to go back to the point where good games were made and stayed that way for 10+ years (such as Quake2). Games are made like shit these days and don't last any longer than 2 years or even a 1 year in some cases , id say we are in the middle between the old way and the way it is in China.

They spend millions to make these shitty games these days only to have them last a short time, its not worth it. While in China they spend many times less and bring in way more. There is no doubt it will happen. Why not spend money on one game and have it keep selling for years simply because its good, not because it brings in many players for a short period before being thrown in the trash.

The games he described are F2P but those Chinese companies he mentioned are catering their games, maybe even too much to the pay2play players. I don't see how F2P relates to how bad video games have become in my opinion. It seems to be more of a reaction by developers to combat piracy and gain a steady cash flow rather, IMO.

As for why the quality has decreased in games over the past decade (IMO), my guess would be due to a few things:

a) Developers sacrificing quality in gameplay in order for their game to appeal to the masses.
b) Game development is too expensive, thus we see much less new IPs.
c) The most successful games transmitting their terrible gameplay mechanics (regenerating health, two weapons only, very lengthy cutscenes, lack of save points, lower AI difficulty).
e) The rise of shooters on console.
f) Cliched plotlines (worst now than ever).
g) DRM implementation, especially "always online" put into games that don't require them (e.g. Simcity)
h) The industry's move to destroy the second hand market (aka used games).

Once they got rid of hi-score, I guess you could say that was the beginning of the end.