Are you a luddite?

[Clinamenic]

Fortnite, arguably the most popular game of all time, is free, and has a presumably massive market of in-game cosmetic items to enable that business model.

 

[version]

In some cases, this enables to base game itself to be free.

True, but only because you end up paying for it via this new method, and perhaps unwittingly paying more due to the nature of paying in small amounts over a much longer period.

 

[Clinamenic]

But the nickel-and-diming can go too far, in which cases the player base either becomes disgruntled enough to leave the game, or else they feel trapped, in the manner of an addiction. Fallout 76 is a good example of this.

 

[Clinamenic]

True, but only because you end up paying for it via this new method, and perhaps unwittingly paying more due to the nature of paying in small amounts over a much longer period.

But in cases like Fortnite, you don't ever need to buy the tchotzkes and apparel items.

In other games, using models I would argue are generally suboptimal, there is more of a play to win dynamic.

And depending on the game, like the Fallout example I gave, players may feel compelled to buy in-game stuff, almost against their rationality and longterm desire, as in addiction.

Fallout 76 has what I think is a dirty habit, one of the reasons I haven't played it in a couple months, there they offer in game items for limit amounts of time, in order to capitalize on the FOMO of players who wouldn't buy the stuff if it was permanently available.

 

[version]

But in cases like Fortnite, you don't ever need to buy the tchotzkes and apparel items.

People do though, don't they?

 

[Clinamenic]

People do though, don't they?

Exactly, which enables this business model in the first place.

But it also gets murky in terms of responsibility, because it some cases we get into blaming-the-addict territory. Ultimately I do think the player is volitionally capable of not buying this stuff, though.

 

[Clinamenic]

Like is it the game's fault for the FOMO-mongering in-game item marketing strategy, or the player's fault for dishing out again and again for in-game items.

Again, not unlike real world rationales behind trend-following.

 

[Clinamenic]

But if you don't care about the in-game cosmetics, you now have a free game to play.

 

[Clinamenic]

But if you don't care about the in-game cosmetics, you now have a free game to play.

Its really when your friends are playing and the in-game culture becomes impressed onto your identity that you really start feeling compelled to keep up with these trends and status markers and whatnot. Another vector converging unto the metaverse.

 

[Clinamenic]

Dude just wait until all these microtransactions are non-fungibly tokenized. Video game communities have had violent reactions to this dawning trend, and for understandable reasons.

The downside of the free-to-play paradigm is that you may feel like you are hooked on some casino-like virtual atmosphere with its own economy and culture. Its a fine line that these games have to ride to prevent the alienation of their player bases.

 

[version]

Exactly, which enables this business model in the first place.

But it also gets murky in terms of responsibility, because it some cases we get into blaming-the-addict territory. Ultimately I do think the player is volitionally capable of not buying this stuff, though.

The playerbase skews younger though, right?

 

[Clinamenic]

But the successful business models I think can be understood dialectically, synthesizing the better parts of the buy-to-play and free-to-play models, at the cost of incurring novel but ideally less prominent downsides.

 

[Clinamenic]

The playerbase skews younger though, right?

Yeah and thats presumably another controversial matter. Kids immersed in this digital economy where purchases may be seamless, depending on parental settings. Really I think the parental settings is enough of a buffer most of the time, but psychologically I think we are in uncharted murky waters.

 

[Clinamenic]

Similar problems with gamified social media platforms causing addictive dependencies for young users.

Its perhaps the major learning curve of gamification as a business technique.

 

[version]

To bring it back round to the initial point, all of this goes to show that this stuff is consciously constructed. You can try to mystify it and claim it's inevitable "according to the logic of capital" or whatever, but it's still real people building things, directing energies and resources; 'Fortnite' has that model because the people who built the game chose it.

If digital ID happens then it happens because people in a position to make it happen wanted it to. It's not going to just spring up of its own volition.

 

[luka]

To bring it back round to the initial point, all of this goes to show that this stuff is consciously constructed. You can try to mystify it and claim it's inevitable "according to the logic of capital" or whatever, but it's still real people building things, directing energies and resources; 'Fortnite' has that model because the people who built the game chose it.

Stan needs to have a bucket of cold water chucked over him sometimes. cluttering up the forum with nonsense and relentless obfuscation and point-missing.

 

[Clinamenic]

I'd like to revise my bleacher metaphor re: luka, to keep it consistent with the "roleplaying" metaphor. Its more like luka is standing in an audience, hurling tomatoes at me.

 

[Clinamenic]

And I agree that these things largely boil down to choices, choices that are in response to market sentiments, which are themselves in response to prior executive choices, ad infinitum.

Ground-seeking here I think is misguided, i.e. attributing sole and ultimate responsibility of society-formation to conscious decisions made by executives.

 

[version]

You can just phase things out and remove the ability to choose, e.g. my point about nobody wanting microtransactions. Nobody's happy about them, but they're there anyway.

Wouldn't be surprised if this is what happens with meat.

 

[Clinamenic]

Who are governed most prominently by profit-maximization, which i think is a flaw in our corporate models and best practices.