Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO(pocketgamer.biz)
pocketgamer.biz
Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO
https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource-john-riccitiello-marc-whitten-merger/
369 comments
I don't think the full context does him any favors. The way he talks of gamedevs that are not engaging in predatory behaviour ("beautiful and pure, brilliant people") is incredibly condescending. Like, "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!". These are his customers he's talking about. And later talking about "compulsion loops"... just, no.
Unity used to be famous for being the game engine of choice for creative indies. Games like Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Ori and the Blind Forest. It seems to me very clear that Riccitello has no understanding of the value of tools for making games like that. He sees Unity as a way of pumping out endless shitty Candy Crush clones stuffed with predatory microtransactions.
EDIT: by the way, for the full context, this is the question he's answering:
> "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers."
The pushback the question is referring to is developers being disappointed in the ironSource merger. He's literally being asked about Unity focusing too much on microtransactions and ad technology, and in his answer to the question he refers to his critics (which, again, are his customers!) as "fucking idiots".
This guy should not be in charge of Unity.
Unity used to be famous for being the game engine of choice for creative indies. Games like Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Ori and the Blind Forest. It seems to me very clear that Riccitello has no understanding of the value of tools for making games like that. He sees Unity as a way of pumping out endless shitty Candy Crush clones stuffed with predatory microtransactions.
EDIT: by the way, for the full context, this is the question he's answering:
> "Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers."
The pushback the question is referring to is developers being disappointed in the ironSource merger. He's literally being asked about Unity focusing too much on microtransactions and ad technology, and in his answer to the question he refers to his critics (which, again, are his customers!) as "fucking idiots".
This guy should not be in charge of Unity.
I haven't seen much of what he says in general so I don't know if he has a really antagonistic trend in his he talks.
I interpreted what he said to mean "I have respect for devs who approach this for just the art, but if you don't consider monetization into your design from the beginning, you are self sabotaging your chance at business success".
He just said that with less politically correct talk, which is easily taken out of context.
Also there's this assumption in this thread and in HN in general that "monetization" always means bleeding people out of their money. Sure much of the industry does that, but I don't think that has to be the case
I interpreted what he said to mean "I have respect for devs who approach this for just the art, but if you don't consider monetization into your design from the beginning, you are self sabotaging your chance at business success".
He just said that with less politically correct talk, which is easily taken out of context.
Also there's this assumption in this thread and in HN in general that "monetization" always means bleeding people out of their money. Sure much of the industry does that, but I don't think that has to be the case
"Less politically correct"? He called his own customers "fucking idiots" for not liking what he's selling. It reminds me of impotent men who blame feminism for their lack of a sex life, it's ridiculous. Perhaps you meant "irreverent," which is a more apt description.
What's ridiculous here is what it reminds you of, which makes you look worse than him.
He's just open and honest about his thoughts and feelings about some people, but you, on the other hand, are definitely, at least, weird.
He's just open and honest about his thoughts and feelings about some people, but you, on the other hand, are definitely, at least, weird.
The analogy is people who blame other's reactions to them on the people themselves instead seriously contending with the claim and at least looking inward.
Anyway, that was a bit off my point which I admit. The main point I am making is "irreverent" is more descriptive than "politically incorrect." Politically incorrect would be something not culturally sensitive or offensive to people with certain politics. He didn't make that sort of gesture, he just was crude about his own customers which is mean sure but also pretty unwise just from a PR perspective.
Anyway, that was a bit off my point which I admit. The main point I am making is "irreverent" is more descriptive than "politically incorrect." Politically incorrect would be something not culturally sensitive or offensive to people with certain politics. He didn't make that sort of gesture, he just was crude about his own customers which is mean sure but also pretty unwise just from a PR perspective.
This the worst analogy.
There should be no monetization design in a video game. The design should be make your game good so people will buy it.
How ridiculous would it be for other forms of art to have "monetization design".
A chef that styles their dishes in such a way that there clearly is a gap in the dish which should contain a nice piece of steak or something else. When you are eating the dish the waiter comes with that piece in hand and asks if you want it for a small price.
Or a painter that paints a picture with elements missing. If you want to experience the true masterpiece. Please buy these extra element and also for a small price you can have better matching colors.
How such behavior is acceptable in video games is truly baffling to me. But then again I have never bought anything using a microtransaction. I think it should be illegal to be able to ask a user to buy something when in game. You also don't get a pop up when watching a movie to please enter your credit card number to be charged $2 to watch this extra scene that was cut.
How ridiculous would it be for other forms of art to have "monetization design".
A chef that styles their dishes in such a way that there clearly is a gap in the dish which should contain a nice piece of steak or something else. When you are eating the dish the waiter comes with that piece in hand and asks if you want it for a small price.
Or a painter that paints a picture with elements missing. If you want to experience the true masterpiece. Please buy these extra element and also for a small price you can have better matching colors.
How such behavior is acceptable in video games is truly baffling to me. But then again I have never bought anything using a microtransaction. I think it should be illegal to be able to ask a user to buy something when in game. You also don't get a pop up when watching a movie to please enter your credit card number to be charged $2 to watch this extra scene that was cut.
Hard agree. "Monetization design" is almost universally a euphemism for casino-style addiction mechanics whose sole purpose is to habituate users to continue feeding quarters into the slot so the good feelings don't stop.
I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call. All due to respect to the fine folks working on the platform, but it's not something I'm interested in using anymore.
I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call. All due to respect to the fine folks working on the platform, but it's not something I'm interested in using anymore.
> I pulled my (meager) rev contribution out of their subscription service following the IronSource acquisition and this makes me confident that was the right call.
Yesterday, I took a 5 figure loss on my Unity position to get out from under this horror show. Still feel fantastic about it.
Yesterday, I took a 5 figure loss on my Unity position to get out from under this horror show. Still feel fantastic about it.
If you are going to have casino monitization, it is still better to consider it earlier than try to bolt it on at the very end.
In principle I don’t entirely disagree that the pendulum has swung way too far towards monetization and away from pure vision in video game design, but it’s funny you mention chefs not compromising…the restaurant business is notoriously low margin and very many new restaurants fail quickly.
One of the more common reasons is that inexperienced owners don’t understand their food costs and therefore design delicious, lovely menu items that actually lose money when you calculate everything that goes into them. If you want it to be more than a brief experiment, you gotta get the spreadsheets out at some point…
One of the more common reasons is that inexperienced owners don’t understand their food costs and therefore design delicious, lovely menu items that actually lose money when you calculate everything that goes into them. If you want it to be more than a brief experiment, you gotta get the spreadsheets out at some point…
I'm not saying don't charge what is necessary. I'm saying monetization shouldn't be part of the experience you are creating.
If you are going to have it, still better to consider implementation and mechanics early, opposed to try to bolt it on to a mostly finished game. I would agree that intentionally planning to do the latter is idiotic.
That's the answer to the wrong question. You shouldn't even be considering adding monetization into the game. Because you are "fucking evil" if you do.
But the question in the quote was about early versus late addition.
Waiting until the end to add it in is both evil and idiotic
Waiting until the end to add it in is both evil and idiotic
Hmmm...
Is that really so?
Sounds like pizzas where you can put things on it for additional price. Or when you buy house or car and pay extra for each little thing.
I agree that in modern games its way more intusive then it needs to be.
Is that really so?
Sounds like pizzas where you can put things on it for additional price. Or when you buy house or car and pay extra for each little thing.
I agree that in modern games its way more intusive then it needs to be.
No it's not comparable to that. Adding things to the pizza/car is a decision you make prior to using/consuming the good. I have no problem with games doing the equivalent. E.g. you purchase any DLC or costumes or cosmetics or whatever BEFORE starting the game. The evil part is making monetization part of the game. I would also find it evil for a car to suggest "Buy the vacation increased range package for 49.99$ and have 50 extra kilometers of range for the next 2 weeks", while you car battery is at 10%.
Yeah, you are right. Intrusion level is different and way more peedatory.
It doesn’t have to be “politically” correct to simply not call your critics idiots. Long long before PC was a term, it was never acceptable to use this kinda language in a business/work context. Not to mention the utter disrespect in calling someone (not the idea or criticism) a ‘fucking idiot’. Even worse when that someone is your customer.
Being decent and being respectful has nothing to do with politics. Strong language betrays the emotional state of the speaker than any valuable idea. All this conveyed to me was that he has very thin skin and easily triggered with no emotional maturity to rationally push back.
Being decent and being respectful has nothing to do with politics. Strong language betrays the emotional state of the speaker than any valuable idea. All this conveyed to me was that he has very thin skin and easily triggered with no emotional maturity to rationally push back.
It's hard to see what else it could mean in this context. I've seen a lot of cosmetic-based monetization strategies I really have no issue with, and in general they seem like a great way to let people who really like the game choose to pay more for it. But if you're considering monetization from the beginning, doesn't that mean your core design is making a tradeoff between fun and transactability?
No, it’s not a trade off because the 2 concepts are not mutually exclusive. Through innovation they can be greater than the sum of their parts.
Sure, in lazy/bad games there’s trade off, but that goes for anything. Bad games have existed for a long time for more than just money
Sure, in lazy/bad games there’s trade off, but that goes for anything. Bad games have existed for a long time for more than just money
I haven't worked with Unity, but I'm assuming they get a percentage of the money spent through microtransactions and monetized content? They're essentially a platform, kind of like the Apple app store, and taking a cut?
In that case, it's obvious why the Unity CEO would say this. He has a financial incentive to get game developers to try and milk gamers for profit (because Unity gets a cut).
I think that this could ultimately push gamers and developers to use other engines/platforms. If you try to milk gamers for profit, it will eventually lead to unplayable games where the only way to compete online is to buy a ton of virtual power-ups and accessories.
In that case, it's obvious why the Unity CEO would say this. He has a financial incentive to get game developers to try and milk gamers for profit (because Unity gets a cut).
I think that this could ultimately push gamers and developers to use other engines/platforms. If you try to milk gamers for profit, it will eventually lead to unplayable games where the only way to compete online is to buy a ton of virtual power-ups and accessories.
They don't get a cut. It's a per seat model. Everyone seems to think Unity has some incentive to push IAP and they don't.
Reading the full quote, I would not bet on Unity even having an option of a per-seat subscription in five years. They're moving to capture a cut of every microtransaction, looking at how they speak and the acquisitions they're making.
Nah, it's just that ads are a much better growth business, and gaming ads are super profitable.
Growth is generally king for tech companies.
Growth is generally king for tech companies.
Huh? I'm pretty sure that unity act as an ad server, and take some money from it. As do iron source, for that matter.
Honestly, this was always gonna happen post iOS tracking changes. Less data means worse ads and no measurement without substantial first party scale, which will tend to lead towards consolidation.
Edit: in fact, if you look at their S1, you can see that they make money from subscriptions to their game creation tools and also from operate services, to help customers monetize and increase LTV. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000119312520...
Honestly, this was always gonna happen post iOS tracking changes. Less data means worse ads and no measurement without substantial first party scale, which will tend to lead towards consolidation.
Edit: in fact, if you look at their S1, you can see that they make money from subscriptions to their game creation tools and also from operate services, to help customers monetize and increase LTV. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000119312520...
What is your point? My point is that they're not incentivized to push games towards abusive MTX like the parent hypothesized.
And you based that point on unity's licence being per seat, implying that they don't have a profit incentive to push for IAP/ads.
Their point was that this implication isn't correct, because unity does indeed have a profit incentive for ads and IAP, as they're providing a platform for such. It's one of the features unity mentions on the pricing page.
Their point was that this implication isn't correct, because unity does indeed have a profit incentive for ads and IAP, as they're providing a platform for such. It's one of the features unity mentions on the pricing page.
What do you think the IAP incentive is for Unity? It's just one of the cross platform features they wrap. It's surfaced on the pricing page because it sells the engine but there's no monetary incentive to Unity if you use it or not.
Unity takes a cut from its ads business but it just does not do that for IAP any more than the animation system.
Unity takes a cut from its ads business but it just does not do that for IAP any more than the animation system.
So fundamentally, ad prices in the mobile game ecosystem are driven by life time value. IAP is the biggest contributer to LTV, this Unity care about this. I'd like to know which portion of their revenue is bigger, but I can guarantee that the ads business is growing faster.
If your game doesn't make money, your studio collapses and Unity loses a customer. They do have an incentive but it's indirect.
Godot seems to gain popularity. Maybe it has a chance to become the choice for indies.
at the microsoft game hackathon thing in 2019 at their HQ in NYC, godot was pretty common choice. I think i saw it more than unreal actually (anecdotally, I don't know the actual aggregate). seems to be gaining popularity.
It's very easy to get into, and very light weight so I'm not surprised. I'm not sure how well it'd scale into a large team or for a commercial project, but it's gaining heaps of steam.
What's the current portability proposition of Godot? Unity and UE4 allow indies to cross-platform relatively easily.
Fully cross-platform for the usual suspects on desktop, mobile and web.
If you want to publish on consoles you need to pay someone who ported the engine to the console you want to target (or port the engine yourself). The code can't be open source because of licensing issues.
From: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...
If you want to publish on consoles you need to pay someone who ported the engine to the console you want to target (or port the engine yourself). The code can't be open source because of licensing issues.
From: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...
Except that developers do not take advantage of that, and here I am reversing UE Blueprint bytecode to make games working on Wine.
ori runs on unity? Why don't we have a linux native build?
The vast majority of Unity/Unreal games don't have native Linux builds despite the engines ostensibly having native Linux support. Developers don't see it as worth the QA/support hassle, especially now that they can do nothing and still get Linux customers thanks to Proton.
Valve are even pushing developers towards Proton by default because they'd rather have a well maintained Windows build running in a well maintained API wrapper, than a half-baked native Linux port that never gets updated, which is often what ended up happening during their earlier Linux-native push. I believe some games that did get Linux ports are now flagged by Steam to ignore that version and run the Windows version in Proton by default, because it provides a better experience than the port.
Valve are even pushing developers towards Proton by default because they'd rather have a well maintained Windows build running in a well maintained API wrapper, than a half-baked native Linux port that never gets updated, which is often what ended up happening during their earlier Linux-native push. I believe some games that did get Linux ports are now flagged by Steam to ignore that version and run the Windows version in Proton by default, because it provides a better experience than the port.
I seriously could not care less about proton, it is basically a gigantic and massive money sink hole and literaly disgusting software, actualy quite microsoft grade.
To make things even worse, proton is said to include a significant amount of software components directly copied from windows.
What actually worries me, is the devs from gcc and the glibc perfectly ignoring the fact that there has been games on "linux" for the last decade. The glibc devs have literaly a frenzy of GNU symbol versioning, breaking game binaries built on a recent glibc that on distro with a glibc no older that 1 year and half for no good reasons. Not to mention you still cannot properly libdl the libc itself, namely do a clean ELF dynamic load of it (maybe not true anymore, have to check). Unfortunately, many game devs have the c++ tantrum and the static libstdc++ from gcc does not "libdl" properly what it needs from the glibc/posix libs, and something tells me not to hold my breath at gcc devs fixing that.
So, I guess, I'll keep playing "linux" native games until windoz... I meant they force proton upon everybody for good, or until the glibc and gcc devs managed to make it near impossible to make reasonably robust in time and compatible across "linux" distros game binaries.
Actually, I got myself a simple C compiler and built a lean win64 with vulkan support from wine, useless, no windows game binaries are that clean, except maybe the ones from ID software.
To make things even worse, proton is said to include a significant amount of software components directly copied from windows.
What actually worries me, is the devs from gcc and the glibc perfectly ignoring the fact that there has been games on "linux" for the last decade. The glibc devs have literaly a frenzy of GNU symbol versioning, breaking game binaries built on a recent glibc that on distro with a glibc no older that 1 year and half for no good reasons. Not to mention you still cannot properly libdl the libc itself, namely do a clean ELF dynamic load of it (maybe not true anymore, have to check). Unfortunately, many game devs have the c++ tantrum and the static libstdc++ from gcc does not "libdl" properly what it needs from the glibc/posix libs, and something tells me not to hold my breath at gcc devs fixing that.
So, I guess, I'll keep playing "linux" native games until windoz... I meant they force proton upon everybody for good, or until the glibc and gcc devs managed to make it near impossible to make reasonably robust in time and compatible across "linux" distros game binaries.
Actually, I got myself a simple C compiler and built a lean win64 with vulkan support from wine, useless, no windows game binaries are that clean, except maybe the ones from ID software.
I've been using Unity happily for 7+ years at this point, willfully ignoring all other engines because Unity is easy to use and has native C# support.
This merger has spurred me to try other engines. I keep hearing good things about Godot. That'll likely be the first one I try.
This merger has spurred me to try other engines. I keep hearing good things about Godot. That'll likely be the first one I try.
Godot has a big 4.0 release coming up, currently on alpha 11: https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-0-alpha...
Breaking changes expected still but should end with the beta, so if you're looking to noodle around with it they're probably close enough for you to skip 3.5 and start learning on 4.
Breaking changes expected still but should end with the beta, so if you're looking to noodle around with it they're probably close enough for you to skip 3.5 and start learning on 4.
Thanks for the heads up! Adding this to my learning bookmarks.
I've used Godot back when I was developing VR games. I've started out with Unity, and then switched to Godot, and never looked back. Godot makes developing games so much easier and more fun, and it's open source.
Unusual!
He's been there for 10 years, made $1b, could have retired before he started ... and it's unusual that those SO POINTEDLY cruel words are being used by him, based upon my 6 years of experience listening to / occasionally talking with him while I was at Unity.
It appears to be unkind, maniacal, transactional thinking in my perspective. It deserves clarification. Without clarification the impact is kind of an evil one: From a people sense, it divides people up, chides them if they are non-binary about monetization.
Pivoting to talking about himself in the next breath smells bad to me too, like a slightly muffled narcissism that excuses self-misbehavior.
And Marc Whitten cleans up / enables just after, which is common to see around narcissists: "To double down on John’s point, Unity has democratised creation [...]"
So to avoid the pathological dead-end of being considered a narcissist, he ought to restate this.
I am puzzled. I wildly guess he could be creating an "out" as CEO for himself. IDK what this is.
What would have been better messaging here? I'm not a C-level / executive and don't have a clue.
He's been there for 10 years, made $1b, could have retired before he started ... and it's unusual that those SO POINTEDLY cruel words are being used by him, based upon my 6 years of experience listening to / occasionally talking with him while I was at Unity.
It appears to be unkind, maniacal, transactional thinking in my perspective. It deserves clarification. Without clarification the impact is kind of an evil one: From a people sense, it divides people up, chides them if they are non-binary about monetization.
Pivoting to talking about himself in the next breath smells bad to me too, like a slightly muffled narcissism that excuses self-misbehavior.
And Marc Whitten cleans up / enables just after, which is common to see around narcissists: "To double down on John’s point, Unity has democratised creation [...]"
So to avoid the pathological dead-end of being considered a narcissist, he ought to restate this.
I am puzzled. I wildly guess he could be creating an "out" as CEO for himself. IDK what this is.
What would have been better messaging here? I'm not a C-level / executive and don't have a clue.
It's an important life lesson for anyone to learn that money is not success. An artist who makes enough to live but doesn't produce works of art specifically to make money is a success. They have many things to teach you about your craft, though true you would be a fool to ask them how to get rich.
Money has diminishing returns on "success" if you define it in literally any other way than "accumulation of money" which only a narcissistic child would.
Money has diminishing returns on "success" if you define it in literally any other way than "accumulation of money" which only a narcissistic child would.
Yep.
I mean, there's absolutely a market for the stuff, but it should NOT be our goal to make every game the same cookie cutter formula for "how to maximize money".
In fact, I think there's a bigger problem at hand here.
It's something about how people want to find a formula for X, so they essentially don't have to be creative and think about how to make something interesting and new.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I've been trying to pin it down for a while now.
I mean, there's absolutely a market for the stuff, but it should NOT be our goal to make every game the same cookie cutter formula for "how to maximize money".
In fact, I think there's a bigger problem at hand here.
It's something about how people want to find a formula for X, so they essentially don't have to be creative and think about how to make something interesting and new.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I've been trying to pin it down for a while now.
he used to be pretty high up in EA. He also worked at a PE firm that especialized in media, although I think better of PE firms than most people. Point being is that I am not surprised at his revenue driven perspective.
He was president and COO from 1997 to 2004 and CEO from 2007-2013.
He's the Larry Ellison of games.
Less a functioning human and more like a mid-sized neural net trained only on making game company short-term stock evaluations increase.
He's the game dev equivalent of Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment.
Less a functioning human and more like a mid-sized neural net trained only on making game company short-term stock evaluations increase.
He's the game dev equivalent of Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment.
As an aside, Universal Paperclips is the best clicker game I've played and has zero monetization.
https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
Well, that and the fact that their rendering engine isn't really competitive with Epic, who do get it ....
I think it does do him favors.
He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.
Idealism can just as easily be not paying attention to any form of making money, which you know full well that lots of developers do, especially passionate game developers.
Have you ever tried to help someone make a game? Have you ever tried the finance side with them? When that CEO says some of them are fucking idiots he is absolutely right.
He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.
Idealism can just as easily be not paying attention to any form of making money, which you know full well that lots of developers do, especially passionate game developers.
Have you ever tried to help someone make a game? Have you ever tried the finance side with them? When that CEO says some of them are fucking idiots he is absolutely right.
> He isn't saying stuff them full of microtransactions and addictive behaviors.
I mean, he is talking about the importance of tuning "compulsion loops", whatever those are supposed to be.
Sounds to me, he isn't advocating addictive behaviours because he's already taking that point for granted.
I mean, he is talking about the importance of tuning "compulsion loops", whatever those are supposed to be.
Sounds to me, he isn't advocating addictive behaviours because he's already taking that point for granted.
That's just sticking your head in the sand and pretending that you can't see all of the indie devs that are wholeheartedly using microtransactions and injecting ads into their games. You can opine about how Unity should be a pure game engine for pure-hearted indie devs who make games out of passion, not filthy lucre. But that doesn't match reality, I'm afraid.
I wouldn't call these business-first, ethics-be-damned people "indies". Not because no true Scotsman, but because of how they self-identify, which from my experience tends to be temporarily embarassed CEO fatcats.
I mean, like it or not, it kinda sounds like this is the guy who should be in charge of Unity. Strong leaders are willing to tell people things they don't want to hear. Weak leaders regurgitate PR and marketing softball garbage and have no vision. To him, with all the data and knowledge he has, it's probably night and day obvious the difference in sustainability between studios that incorporate a recurring revenue model and those that don't. I don't think he's saying "no game should ever not have micro-transactions". I think he's saying "in this day an age, if you're serious about building a sustainable studio, growing to the type of success fledgling studios imagine, and leveraging the Unit platform to help you do it, you're gonna need some recurring revenue component somewhere in your portfolio and that's why we have invested in tools to make that easier for people".
Strong leaders are willing to tell people things they don't want to hear.
Right, we get it. But if they can't manage to do that without being condescending to their customers (and like this guy, generally sounding like a bit of an asshole) -- they shouldn't be in charge of anything.
Right, we get it. But if they can't manage to do that without being condescending to their customers (and like this guy, generally sounding like a bit of an asshole) -- they shouldn't be in charge of anything.
We’re talking about gaming here and the fact someone said “fucking idiot.” You’ve just used asshole is your response, so collectively we should get off our high horses, and recognize that in the real world people swear constantly. It’s not even like this was laser focused at one specific person, in my opinion this title is more evil and misleading than what he said.
We haven't been talking about the mere fact of someone saying that -- but rather the context in which it was said, and to whom it was addressed.
These being very, very different things.
These being very, very different things.
Easy to say, for sure.
It's also pretty easy to do, actually. The not being an asshole part, anyways.
Is the dude an asshole? I don't know anything about him other than this discussion here. I'm certain most people have said something to the effect of "those people are fucking clueless" in their lives. Does that make them assholes?
Does that make them assholes?
No -- in this guy's case it's the other things he's saying, and the broader context which brings him into that territory.
No -- in this guy's case it's the other things he's saying, and the broader context which brings him into that territory.
This guy gets it.
Fortunately and unfortunately (we likely won't see him be burned at the stake) he'll be out of the game soon. Throwing shade at the devs as well as pissing off the consumers, pure marketing GeNiUs
Fortunately and unfortunately (we likely won't see him be burned at the stake) he'll be out of the game soon. Throwing shade at the devs as well as pissing off the consumers, pure marketing GeNiUs
Key words are "earlier in the process".
If you are going to have monetization mechanisms, ignoring them during development and trying to bolt them on at the end is indeed idiotic.
If you are going to have monetization mechanisms, ignoring them during development and trying to bolt them on at the end is indeed idiotic.
Who should be in charge of Unity?
> "yes children, once you grow up you'll realize how foolish your idealism has been and you'll stuff your game full of gems you can overpay for!"
As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off, didn't truly think out monetization and prayed at some point the free users would be willing to play assuming we gave the right features and benefits, I would say you're incredibly naïve. So in retrospect, this isn't that poor of a take.
As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off, didn't truly think out monetization and prayed at some point the free users would be willing to play assuming we gave the right features and benefits, I would say you're incredibly naïve. So in retrospect, this isn't that poor of a take.
He's right one should think about monetization earlier in the development process.
But it's a poor take because the kind of monetization he's talking about taps into an addicted person's dopamine pathway.
Most run of the mill SaaS work like utilities instead as far as monetization goes.
But it's a poor take because the kind of monetization he's talking about taps into an addicted person's dopamine pathway.
Most run of the mill SaaS work like utilities instead as far as monetization goes.
Yes, if you go freemium, you better have the mium part figured out. But this insult clearly also extend to anyone who simply sell their games.
> As someone who has worked at a start up that really took off ... I would say you're incredibly naive
You don't really have the standing to preach here.
You don't really have the standing to preach here.
He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.
IMO it's not clear just from the immediate context in the article that he's actually advocating for MTX or ads.
If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.
If he is, then he deserves all the flak. If he's simply talking about having a market fit so your game sells at all, then IMO that's just talking about the viability of the game as a product - and in this case it's just about whether making the game makes financial sense, not whether you can juice the customer for more money.
He just executed a merge of his company with a company that produced know malware delivery platforms for installing scamware.
I think we can guess where his intentions lay
I think we can guess where his intentions lay
Having read the full context on the original article on pocketgamer.biz, he is, in fact, making the assertion in this post title -- that game creatives that aren't working with sales and publicity teams from the beginning to build in monetization are idiots.
Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...
Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.
Original article: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...
Edit: I say this because I don't understand how it's not clear that he's driving for monetization in every game.
The confusion is over what is meant by 'monetisation' here.
Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".
Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).
Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".
Without a clear statement that he meant the latter, I decided to give him some benefit of doubt unless I have additional context (I never heard of the guy before).
I think using the term “compulsion loop” when taking about monetization is a pretty clear sign that he means the latter.
Making a game that can pay for itself doesn’t really need to trick people into it. Look at stardew valley for instance, or factorio, or minecraft
Making a game that can pay for itself doesn’t really need to trick people into it. Look at stardew valley for instance, or factorio, or minecraft
But Minecraft has a really solid compulsion loop, it’s what makes it so easy to start playing and then realize it’s nightfall. You never have to wait for anything because there’s always something else to do, you get mild gentle pressure from the environment to do things like hunger, night, mobs that inject variety. Every step of building something is set up as a reward, and there’s tiers of progress that reward basically every action. Mining and drops is literally lootboxes.
You picked basically the most addictive game in existence that uses every trick in the book as your shining example. Minecraft just hides it well.
You picked basically the most addictive game in existence that uses every trick in the book as your shining example. Minecraft just hides it well.
I’m straight up talking about the connotations of using the term “compulsion”. Last I heard these described by game developers they were referred to as “game loops” or “core loop” if they were referring to the main part of the game.
Using the term “compulsion” to describe it instead comes from a certain mindset that I believe is centered around making skimmer boxes
Using the term “compulsion” to describe it instead comes from a certain mindset that I believe is centered around making skimmer boxes
Sad panda, that Microsoft is doing their damnedest to shift Minecraft out of this category.
Just in case there is further confusion here he is talking about how cool it would be if you could charge per reload in shooter.
https://youtu.be/ZR6-u8OIJTE
"You are really not that price sensitive at that time"
https://youtu.be/ZR6-u8OIJTE
"You are really not that price sensitive at that time"
That's just effing evil.
There are some real dark vids from GDC and the like talking about the psychology behind manipulating people into MTX and real money economies in games.
Having worked under Ricitiello at EA, I am fairly confident his brain is not capable of distinguishing these concepts. I don't think he even understands the concept of "enough money".
>Is is "making sure the game is at all commercially viable so I can afford to keep myself alive and well fed", or "making sure that every drop of money is juiced from the customer".
yes, because teams typically undertake complex, expensive, and difficult projects for charity with no intention of being paid or making any financial gain
yes, because teams typically undertake complex, expensive, and difficult projects for charity with no intention of being paid or making any financial gain
It looks like the intent is to offer tools for taking money from customers. This means that the extent and character of monetization would be up to developers. It might mean adds, it might mean in game purchase opportunities. It does not necessarily mean a choice between two extremes.
> He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful.
Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic.
He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.
Come on, that's clearly not what he's saying in that quote. I don't like microtransactions either, but it makes your position weaker to get hyperbolic.
He's saying you have to include monetisation when planning for your game, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. To me this seems so obviously true that it's almost a product design axiom, let alone a priority for businesses. The question is how it should be done, and how well it will be done, which he says nothing about in that quote.
To me, "monetization" means everything except for just selling your product for an upfront sticker price. When it comes to games, that means subscriptions, ads or microtransactions. Arguably, the latter two aren't inherently scummy, but I find it very distasteful when a game's design is fundamentally changed to push them.
This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.
This is the reason I completely avoid F2P games to begin with. I can't deny it's financially very lucrative though.
I think the confusion is in the art vs business part of the conversation. Some people are not making games for business purposes, they are 100% focused on the creative pursuit. Does that make them stupid? Of course not, they're competent adults who made their decision not to prioritize money over the experience of the game. I think it's pretty clear that's who he's talking about as well, with the "pure, brilliant.." comment.
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> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that.
Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.
Few people have driven as many once-successful studios into the ground as Riccitello.
> ”And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.”
There is this desire for “authenticity” in the current zeitgeist. You see it everywhere, but mostly in how the crowds love people like Trump and Elon Musk.
I think this is an understandable reaction from being lied a lot by polite PR-trained people. Politicians and businesspeople mostly.
But I think there are two very relevant types of bias that people who praises this apparent authenticity:
1 - Thinking people who use an aggressive, unapologetic tone do not lie. They do lie. I see no evidence that they lie less than “polite” people. The thing is that the mainstream is smaller and much much less dominant than it was decades ago. So you can get away offending a lot of people, because there will still be a lot of people left that will adore you. So you can use unapologetic tone that offend a group of people. It pays to offend a group, as long it is not your group. It gives you credit to lie to your group without getting caught.
2 - Thinking polite people are always lying. The other side of the coin. We see so many PR-trained people lying emulating polite people that we start to equal politeness to insincerity. But a lot of people are genuinely polite, considerate and kind. They tell the truth and try not to offend anyone.
These biases, equaling offensive tone to authenticity is, I believe, a misleading and dangerous way to see the world. You use a flawed heuristic that leads you to believe in liers while bragging you are avoiding liers.
There is this desire for “authenticity” in the current zeitgeist. You see it everywhere, but mostly in how the crowds love people like Trump and Elon Musk.
I think this is an understandable reaction from being lied a lot by polite PR-trained people. Politicians and businesspeople mostly.
But I think there are two very relevant types of bias that people who praises this apparent authenticity:
1 - Thinking people who use an aggressive, unapologetic tone do not lie. They do lie. I see no evidence that they lie less than “polite” people. The thing is that the mainstream is smaller and much much less dominant than it was decades ago. So you can get away offending a lot of people, because there will still be a lot of people left that will adore you. So you can use unapologetic tone that offend a group of people. It pays to offend a group, as long it is not your group. It gives you credit to lie to your group without getting caught.
2 - Thinking polite people are always lying. The other side of the coin. We see so many PR-trained people lying emulating polite people that we start to equal politeness to insincerity. But a lot of people are genuinely polite, considerate and kind. They tell the truth and try not to offend anyone.
These biases, equaling offensive tone to authenticity is, I believe, a misleading and dangerous way to see the world. You use a flawed heuristic that leads you to believe in liers while bragging you are avoiding liers.
I think there is another angle to it beyond Truth vs lying.
There is also content and clarity. A lot of generic PR speak is devoid of actual content, it doesn't mean anything.
In this example, he is making a clear claim, like it or not. There is no ambiguity or double speak.
I think a lot of people are willing to tolerate disagreement and even lying if it is done in simple language opposed to evasion.
If you disagree, you know it. If they are lying, it is also clear because their statements aren't stuffed full of weasel words.
There is also content and clarity. A lot of generic PR speak is devoid of actual content, it doesn't mean anything.
In this example, he is making a clear claim, like it or not. There is no ambiguity or double speak.
I think a lot of people are willing to tolerate disagreement and even lying if it is done in simple language opposed to evasion.
If you disagree, you know it. If they are lying, it is also clear because their statements aren't stuffed full of weasel words.
I find that sort of ironic because Unity's very own press release, in which they announced this merger was stuffed with some of the most vapid and nonsensical PR bullshit phrases I have ever seen.
As in, they couldn't even get out a straight line about what ironSource's actual product is.
As in, they couldn't even get out a straight line about what ironSource's actual product is.
What exactly is Ironic?
To be clear, I was making a comment and speculating on the publics attraction to blunt language.
It seems like you are agreeing with me - you are sick of vapid and nonsensical PR bullshit.
I don't think anyone is in favor of the PR bullshit, except the people who hide behind it.
Wouldn't you prefer something more direct?
To be clear, I was making a comment and speculating on the publics attraction to blunt language.
It seems like you are agreeing with me - you are sick of vapid and nonsensical PR bullshit.
I don't think anyone is in favor of the PR bullshit, except the people who hide behind it.
Wouldn't you prefer something more direct?
I guess so. My point was that neither Unity nor John Riccitiello can take credit for being particular direct in this whole affair - they produced the exact same vapid PR phrases just one submission earlier.
Also, what another poster said still applies: "blunt" language may appear to be more honest, but it really isn't. You can lie or misrepresent while being blunt just as well as with twisted PR phrases.
E.g., maybe it's John's deep belief that game devs should build their games around monetization from the start and so he made the merger to empower his users to do that - or maybe, he made the merger because it was a lucrative business decision for Unity and his "blunt advice" is just him trying to sell that move to his userbase.
Also, what another poster said still applies: "blunt" language may appear to be more honest, but it really isn't. You can lie or misrepresent while being blunt just as well as with twisted PR phrases.
E.g., maybe it's John's deep belief that game devs should build their games around monetization from the start and so he made the merger to empower his users to do that - or maybe, he made the merger because it was a lucrative business decision for Unity and his "blunt advice" is just him trying to sell that move to his userbase.
I was making a comment more about the general reaction to Blunt discussion. not the company or the individual. That said companies and obviously speak more bluntly or less and are not consistent
Very nice thinking regarding ultra popular folks like Musk.
However, IMO it doesnt hold truth for others which risk rage and clearing from insulted. Insulting people is always risky buisiness but if you want to show that you give a shit that shouldnt stop you.
I pesonally dont like to work with polite people very much because I know they always euphemize the truth. Some things are so shitty that if you frame it in polite way you simply lie.
However, IMO it doesnt hold truth for others which risk rage and clearing from insulted. Insulting people is always risky buisiness but if you want to show that you give a shit that shouldnt stop you.
I pesonally dont like to work with polite people very much because I know they always euphemize the truth. Some things are so shitty that if you frame it in polite way you simply lie.
Those are very fair points, and I agree.
For me personally, authenticity is more about choosing to speak vs. laying low on certain topics.
Sure you can still lie when you speak to it, but at least you're being truthful on your desire to express.
For me personally, authenticity is more about choosing to speak vs. laying low on certain topics.
Sure you can still lie when you speak to it, but at least you're being truthful on your desire to express.
You can lie..but at least you're being truthful?!?!
Care to enlighten me on how to achieve this?
Care to enlighten me on how to achieve this?
It's more about reacting to being called a liar, I think. React with evasions or moving goalposts, and people will think you're a slimeball trying to fool them, even if you're not. Double down and stick to your guns, and people will respect you, even if they think you're an idiot, a liar, or batshit insane.
Very well put, Sir!!
Sorry to see the new generation falling for these con-artists.
My humble advice as a nobody is look at things objectively and understand that words have unintended consequences so make a conscious effort to not insult others.
Sorry to see the new generation falling for these con-artists.
My humble advice as a nobody is look at things objectively and understand that words have unintended consequences so make a conscious effort to not insult others.
Hopefully I'm not putting words into their mouth, but the implication here is that those people are idiots because they're not making as much money as they could be by using the techniques he believes in. The second implication is that they are doing this unknowingly. That's a pretty naive outlook. Some people are either not in it for money, or don't care about the money more than they care about the integrity of their product and experience of their customers.
I’ll be as blunt as he is.
With the full context … he still sounds like an asshole.
Admittedly an “authentic” asshole I genuinely believe that’s how he feels, but he strikes me as a corporate suit wearing asshole … a real Bobby Kotic (I think his name deserves to be a pejorative for assholes in the gaming industry)
He can talk nice about it, but he’s saying anyone who isn’t focused on the money is and idiot, the stupid thing about that is that he clearly thinks “pay once” is for fucking idios and just let the mask slip to show this disdain for customers that want quality games that aren’t trying to productise the players. He’s saying if you don’t want to be sold, avoid anything built with Unity. Which is to bring it full circle… fucking stupid of him.
With the full context … he still sounds like an asshole.
Admittedly an “authentic” asshole I genuinely believe that’s how he feels, but he strikes me as a corporate suit wearing asshole … a real Bobby Kotic (I think his name deserves to be a pejorative for assholes in the gaming industry)
He can talk nice about it, but he’s saying anyone who isn’t focused on the money is and idiot, the stupid thing about that is that he clearly thinks “pay once” is for fucking idios and just let the mask slip to show this disdain for customers that want quality games that aren’t trying to productise the players. He’s saying if you don’t want to be sold, avoid anything built with Unity. Which is to bring it full circle… fucking stupid of him.
Why should Ferrari move on to something other than clay and carving knives? I really can't see a render on a computer screen of any size giving you the same visceral understanding of how a car looks walking up to it and moving around it, which is absolutely critical for a premium product like that. Maybe a VR rig might be useful in prototyping, I don't know.
That comment makes him look even more like a short-sighted asshat.
That comment makes him look even more like a short-sighted asshat.
It does, or ignorant at the least. All the auto manufacturers use clay, not just for Italian sportscars.
Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.
Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.
.. and it loses any Unity Ferrari business.
Is there positivity somewhere in this kind of talk, like will it somehow win Unity more business? I am not seeing it.
Is there positivity somewhere in this kind of talk, like will it somehow win Unity more business? I am not seeing it.
> It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand.
The thing about a decent monetization model is that is _has_ to be thought about and structured from the very beginning.
If you are going to have a live team creating content for a game over the long term, then the game has to make money over the long term as well. If you try to hamfist that monetization model at the end, it looks like a hamfisted monetization scheme that players are _very_ attuned to.
Bad monetization design is like bad game design, it makes the game worse. Good monetization design can allow you to support your game for _decades_.
League of Legends would have died years ago if not for a monetization model that worked over the long term.
The thing about a decent monetization model is that is _has_ to be thought about and structured from the very beginning.
If you are going to have a live team creating content for a game over the long term, then the game has to make money over the long term as well. If you try to hamfist that monetization model at the end, it looks like a hamfisted monetization scheme that players are _very_ attuned to.
Bad monetization design is like bad game design, it makes the game worse. Good monetization design can allow you to support your game for _decades_.
League of Legends would have died years ago if not for a monetization model that worked over the long term.
Oh please, defending predatory, manipulative behavior and calling others fools for not indulging in such morally corrupt actions?
There are "baked in monetization" practices that went so out of hand, that have become illegal in several democratic, and free countries. Let's just think about that for a second.
I'm ashamed to even have to reply to this.
These "brave", utterly perverse statements, given out by these decadent businesspersons, shouldn't be met by anything other than criticism, and disbelief.
He's totally calling out for developers to embrace these ill practices. It's fucking disgusting, manipulative behavior.
I'm ashamed to even have to reply to this.
These "brave", utterly perverse statements, given out by these decadent businesspersons, shouldn't be met by anything other than criticism, and disbelief.
He's totally calling out for developers to embrace these ill practices. It's fucking disgusting, manipulative behavior.
> And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.
I think a lot more CEO talk frankly than we give credit for. The difference would be that many of them are polite and considerate, and their baseline isn’t abrasive language. NPR had an interview of toy maker about Prime day, and it was pretty frank and natural, with pretty emotional topics, without calling anyone fucking idiots.
I think a lot more CEO talk frankly than we give credit for. The difference would be that many of them are polite and considerate, and their baseline isn’t abrasive language. NPR had an interview of toy maker about Prime day, and it was pretty frank and natural, with pretty emotional topics, without calling anyone fucking idiots.
I think he says "the biggest fucking idiots" in the way some of us say, "aren't thinking of all the angles".
If folks are getting wrapped up in the insult, they're not reading his tone correctly. He says it lovingly, and even if you disagree with that kind of tone, it's disingenuous to say he's literally calling these people "fucking idiots".
If folks are getting wrapped up in the insult, they're not reading his tone correctly. He says it lovingly, and even if you disagree with that kind of tone, it's disingenuous to say he's literally calling these people "fucking idiots".
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> “I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour.
A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me, I'd never heard the term before. Although if I try to take a step back I suppose this term could be used to describe any game and not just one of the lootbox-mania or idle games.
However, the wikipedia article [1] states:
> A core or compulsion loop is any repetitive gameplay cycle that is designed to keep the player engaged with the game. ... A compulsion loop may be distinguished further from a core loop; while many games have a core loop of activities that a player may repeat over and over again, such as combat within a role-playing game, a compulsion loop is particularly designed to guide the player into anticipation for the potential reward from specific activities
For some reason, all I can think of is that game from ST:TNG [2]. I'd like to say that I am somehow above it all but back when I used to play FPS games, it was probably just the same thing. Nonstop dopamine infusion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_loop
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_...
A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me, I'd never heard the term before. Although if I try to take a step back I suppose this term could be used to describe any game and not just one of the lootbox-mania or idle games.
However, the wikipedia article [1] states:
> A core or compulsion loop is any repetitive gameplay cycle that is designed to keep the player engaged with the game. ... A compulsion loop may be distinguished further from a core loop; while many games have a core loop of activities that a player may repeat over and over again, such as combat within a role-playing game, a compulsion loop is particularly designed to guide the player into anticipation for the potential reward from specific activities
For some reason, all I can think of is that game from ST:TNG [2]. I'd like to say that I am somehow above it all but back when I used to play FPS games, it was probably just the same thing. Nonstop dopamine infusion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_loop
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_...
Compulsion loop does sound rather dystopian and "attention-hacking" but it's interesting that he says "two minutes when it should have been an hour," instead of the other way around. An hour long compulsion loop sounds like it could be an immersive experience.
That said, I'm not hearing nice things about IronSource and it sounds like maybe there's better ways to get user feedback than the particular implementations they're using and are going to use with IronSource.
That said, I'm not hearing nice things about IronSource and it sounds like maybe there's better ways to get user feedback than the particular implementations they're using and are going to use with IronSource.
From what I've seen of mobile games, in practice it means that it starts off fun and well balanced. Then after [x] minutes it starts to get a bit frustrating, and suddenly you're unable to make progress without sitting and waiting or banging your head against the wall. This presents a choice to the player. They can choose to put the game down until they unlock some power up that helps them pass the level. Or, they can pay money to receive the instant dopamine hit of getting back to the beginning of the "compulsion loop".
The real dystopia is that I'm 99% sure these games dynamically adjust durations, prices, and incentives based on the user's past behavior to extract as much money per hour of play as possible. Essentially a machine that identifies and preys on a person's weaknesses.
The real dystopia is that I'm 99% sure these games dynamically adjust durations, prices, and incentives based on the user's past behavior to extract as much money per hour of play as possible. Essentially a machine that identifies and preys on a person's weaknesses.
Yup, and these scummy games will leverage social connections as well. They'll show your friends progress in a way designed to produce FOMO, without showing you that they're buying their way past the pay gates too.
To my way of thinking it's only slightly more reputable than bitcoin slot machine crap like stake.
To my way of thinking it's only slightly more reputable than bitcoin slot machine crap like stake.
I've developed to be a terrible gamer: Great games that are finished in 7 hours usually don't feel worth the money, while games that do these compulsion loops quickly feel like a waste of time.
I think I'm not alone in that, and the few games I really enjoyed in the last couple of years were significantly text-based and/or complex simulations for this reason.
I think I'm not alone in that, and the few games I really enjoyed in the last couple of years were significantly text-based and/or complex simulations for this reason.
Why aren't shorter games worth the money? I really dislike the way modern games inflate their length because it's usually tons of padding.
When a game dev says "vast area and lots of things to do", I hear "lots of walking across empty lands with sporadic fetch quests".
I wouldn't call a 7 hour game short, I'd define that closer to 2 hours. The reason it's bad is that they usually fail to fully explore whatever idea the game is built around or they never really had an idea good enough to carry an entire game.
> but it's interesting that he says "two minutes when it should have been an hour," instead of the other way around.
Didn't sound very nice to me. More like an elder drug lord who knows that too many overdoses are bad for business or a virus that evolves to be less lethal because dead hosts don't spread.
Or in this case: a two minute compulsion loop would probably make it really obvious that the game is trying to hook you and might trigger some kind of counter reaction: Players realizing it's a slot machine and uninstalling it to stop themselves from wasting time. Whereas a hour-long loop might keep a player hooked without them realizing it.
Didn't sound very nice to me. More like an elder drug lord who knows that too many overdoses are bad for business or a virus that evolves to be less lethal because dead hosts don't spread.
Or in this case: a two minute compulsion loop would probably make it really obvious that the game is trying to hook you and might trigger some kind of counter reaction: Players realizing it's a slot machine and uninstalling it to stop themselves from wasting time. Whereas a hour-long loop might keep a player hooked without them realizing it.
Two minutes would be a holdover from 1980's arcade games. That's about how long you'd play on a quarter. Maybe 3 minutes.
And most of them were tuned for profit too, so it's not like this is a new concept. It does feel like a lot of the mobile and F2P monetization folks are the same ones that enjoyed profiting from arcade games and see them as being similar to slot machines (except better, because they only pay out in neurochemicals, not money!).
There's been a quiet war for decades between people who want to design games as art, and people who want to design them as a predictable recurring revenue stream. I'm not sure what iteration we're up to now.
There's been a quiet war for decades between people who want to design games as art, and people who want to design them as a predictable recurring revenue stream. I'm not sure what iteration we're up to now.
Comparing arcade machines to gambling is a sore spot, especially for pinball. Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based. They are not random. You may be able to win an award or prize but that will be based on some objective measure of performance with little to no randomization. This is important because arcades operate where gambling is illegal, so suggesting they are anything like gambling threatens the security of those businesses.
Roger Sharpe [1] saved pinball by demonstrating it is a game of skill.
RE: art vs profit I think there is room for both. Games are probably the best example of that. Game designers are very much artists but they are also engineers and business people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sharpe_(pinball)
Roger Sharpe [1] saved pinball by demonstrating it is a game of skill.
RE: art vs profit I think there is room for both. Games are probably the best example of that. Game designers are very much artists but they are also engineers and business people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sharpe_(pinball)
You are factually correct, but the intentions are a bit murkier. The explosion of video arcades in the 70s and 80s was due to how lucrative the machines were as an investment, not due to any passion on the part of the owners. The value proposition for arcades at the time was basically like gambling, but not illegal. While arcade games have always been skill-based, that's not the same as "fair," at least in the modern game design sense.
Yes, with repetition, you can eventually learn to beat Ghosts and Goblins on a single quarter, but the game is not going to just let you do that on the first try. Games of that era are designed to lure you in, then kill you with something completely out of nowhere after your 3 minutes are up and it's time for the next person in line to put in their money. This self-reinforced when you saw someone who had put in the reps getting really far on one credit, so you would think you can do that. But no, you can't. You die at the end of the first stage like everyone else.
It's not gambling, but it's still designed to extract money as efficiently as possible.
Yes, with repetition, you can eventually learn to beat Ghosts and Goblins on a single quarter, but the game is not going to just let you do that on the first try. Games of that era are designed to lure you in, then kill you with something completely out of nowhere after your 3 minutes are up and it's time for the next person in line to put in their money. This self-reinforced when you saw someone who had put in the reps getting really far on one credit, so you would think you can do that. But no, you can't. You die at the end of the first stage like everyone else.
It's not gambling, but it's still designed to extract money as efficiently as possible.
>> While arcade games have always been skill-based, that's not the same as "fair," at least in the modern game design sense.
Well sure the games tend to be skill based, but arcade machines were also novelties, like the little peep-show movie clips where you turned the crank and looked inside, or the "fortune teller" and some others. Skill games seem better because there is more replay value though.
Well sure the games tend to be skill based, but arcade machines were also novelties, like the little peep-show movie clips where you turned the crank and looked inside, or the "fortune teller" and some others. Skill games seem better because there is more replay value though.
It's not gambling simply because there is no possible way you can come out ahead, therefore you are just paying for entertainment. Nobody ever got quarter out of a PacMan machine, no matter how well they played.
But games with persistent inventory like World of Warcraft are different than PacMan machines, because you could sell your items for real money.
But games with persistent inventory like World of Warcraft are different than PacMan machines, because you could sell your items for real money.
Not really a counterpoint, but a neat aside: pinball machines used to be actual gambling machines, back when they took nickels. They were common in pool halls my father frequented.
>Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based.
That's also a slippery slope of an argument. Poker players claim that they are not gambling. Early stage addicts claim they are not addicts and can stop any time. Gaming, whether the player is earning money or points, all keys in on the same addictive traits of their players. Some game devs go all in on that because it is fish in a barrel stakes for making money.
That's also a slippery slope of an argument. Poker players claim that they are not gambling. Early stage addicts claim they are not addicts and can stop any time. Gaming, whether the player is earning money or points, all keys in on the same addictive traits of their players. Some game devs go all in on that because it is fish in a barrel stakes for making money.
Sure. Modern arcades even survive by selling alcohol as a 1-2 punch. But now we are talking about addiction in general, not gambling specifically.
Not sure why that matters to be honest. Gambling is a form of addiction. GaveDevs are tapping into that rush. That's how it breaks down for me. It may not be an illegal/scheduled substance that they are pushing, but they are pushing a product specifically made to trigger addictive behavior. It's no different than social media algorithms in my book either. They all are designing their product to be consumed by an addict to ensure they continue using their product as much as possible. We've just been dealing with drugs/alcohol/etc for much longer and society is much more aware of the addict problem in these cases. Social media/gaming addiction is a much less understood and/or acknowledged.
It matters because gambling specifically is regulated differently than general behaviors that might be addictive. There are more bars in the world than casinos. As I already outlined arcades specifically exist in their current form because they were re-classified as containing games of skill, not chance.
The difference matters a lot to someone who owns a bar or arcade or frequents one.
Further, conflating the meaning of words in general is just not a useful approach to learning or building consensus. Words have meaning. By respecting the meaning of words we can convey complex ideas with simple language.
Saying alcoholics are basically gamblers because "what's the difference" is about as useful (read: not) as arguing that FAANG should be broken up because "monopoly". The words matter and when you use the wrong ones the merit of your argument can be easily dismissed on the semantics. It's just not persuasive.
The difference matters a lot to someone who owns a bar or arcade or frequents one.
Further, conflating the meaning of words in general is just not a useful approach to learning or building consensus. Words have meaning. By respecting the meaning of words we can convey complex ideas with simple language.
Saying alcoholics are basically gamblers because "what's the difference" is about as useful (read: not) as arguing that FAANG should be broken up because "monopoly". The words matter and when you use the wrong ones the merit of your argument can be easily dismissed on the semantics. It's just not persuasive.
I don't know where you're trying to take this, but it's not in a direction I'm going.
I never equated alcoholic are gamblers. I said they are forms of addiction. I'm beating the drum that some game devs are targeting addicts. That's the direction I will continue this conversation as. Where ever you're going with I will no longer follow
I never equated alcoholic are gamblers. I said they are forms of addiction. I'm beating the drum that some game devs are targeting addicts. That's the direction I will continue this conversation as. Where ever you're going with I will no longer follow
My pinball machines actually track average ball times in the audits. It’s a KPI for operators. Machine setups will be changed to increase difficulty if necessary.
Have any pinball machines ever been designed to change the difficulty during game play. Some sort of algo to make the bumpers less bumpery, restrict the movement of the flippers, adjust the angles of things, etc?
Not to my knowledge. It would be antithetical to the game. Games do scale difficulty based on progress but this is the same for everyone. Some games do reverse flipper sides or direction but again, it is based on progress, not a more complex playtime targeting algorithm.
An example of this is multiballs. The first one (per player) can start with say three shots. The next one might require six and then the third nine. This is oversimplified but the point is the progress is consistent.
The only dynamically-scaling feature I am aware of is the replay score which (can) set a starting score based on recent plays but will also scale up rapidly when it is reached (say, +50%) until it isn’t reached, at which point it resets to the starting score. But this has no actual in-game effect.
An example of this is multiballs. The first one (per player) can start with say three shots. The next one might require six and then the third nine. This is oversimplified but the point is the progress is consistent.
The only dynamically-scaling feature I am aware of is the replay score which (can) set a starting score based on recent plays but will also scale up rapidly when it is reached (say, +50%) until it isn’t reached, at which point it resets to the starting score. But this has no actual in-game effect.
Compulsion loop aka Skinner Box aka Operant Condition Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
I wonder if there is a point that a game or other experience can become "predatory" solely focusing on the time someone spends on it regardless of monetization. To my own mind, there are many games that I can't put down for hours, sometimes missing out on sleep entirely for days. But the capitalistic part doesn't apply to me since I never play games with in-game monetization. Still, a lot of my time is sucked away by those activities (sometimes >18 hours a day), and I sometimes have to stop myself and question my priorities.
As an example, Minecraft is only a $20 one-time purchase, but free and/or open source mods made by people who are motivated by fun instead of profit have created a staggering amount of content that happens to be really addictive to someone like me. For the $20 I got the equivalent of years of content and novelty that I can never hope to fully explore.
I wonder if any given computer program that's given a colossal amount of development resources thrown behind it will ultimately come somewhere close to irresistible, and would suck away various parts of our less interesting hopes and dreams regardless of how much monetary currency the creator is expecting the user to pay. There just happens to be a motive to tack on some extra profit if the game is pseudo-irresistable, where all that time would have been "wasted" on someone's freeloading video game addiction instead. It makes me wonder if what is known as "predatory" is just a pathological explosion of what someone thinks of as a successful accomplishment (my "any given side project could one day addict us all" theory).
As an example, Minecraft is only a $20 one-time purchase, but free and/or open source mods made by people who are motivated by fun instead of profit have created a staggering amount of content that happens to be really addictive to someone like me. For the $20 I got the equivalent of years of content and novelty that I can never hope to fully explore.
I wonder if any given computer program that's given a colossal amount of development resources thrown behind it will ultimately come somewhere close to irresistible, and would suck away various parts of our less interesting hopes and dreams regardless of how much monetary currency the creator is expecting the user to pay. There just happens to be a motive to tack on some extra profit if the game is pseudo-irresistable, where all that time would have been "wasted" on someone's freeloading video game addiction instead. It makes me wonder if what is known as "predatory" is just a pathological explosion of what someone thinks of as a successful accomplishment (my "any given side project could one day addict us all" theory).
I noticed something like this with Nintendo's early Switch games. Both Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey had a design philosophy that something should always be just over the horizon, waiting for you to explore. It sounds romantic in theory, but the problem is that the game never gives you a good place to take a break, and it drives that same kind of addictive behavior you're describing.
It's a set of design habits that served the industry well back when they were trying to get people to pump in money, but which don't really do anyone any good when it's just you at home on a fully paid-up console game. It's not malicious, it's just a habit that got uncritically elevated to a Best Practice.
It's a set of design habits that served the industry well back when they were trying to get people to pump in money, but which don't really do anyone any good when it's just you at home on a fully paid-up console game. It's not malicious, it's just a habit that got uncritically elevated to a Best Practice.
Having read Wheel of Time recently.. "[The Forsaken] Graendal in the Age of Legends was famous as a great psychologist and a noted ascetic. After her conversion to the Shadow, she became a master manipulator and an extraordinarily skilled user of Compulsion weaves... She is very particular about her servants, often choosing people of great status, power, or renown and reducing their minds to empty husks"
But be carful, she uses compulsion like a hammer to distract from the fact that she is also amazing a light touch compulsion.
Another term for this is grinding. The CEO is saying they should have made the grinding parts of the game longer. Grinding is usually boring and repetitive part of the game that's required to advance. A typical RPG example is defeating the same monster over and over again to get experience to reach the next new area.
Grinding is just one way to lengthen the loop. Or you can create lots of compelling content, like Elden Ring, which did not feel grindy to me at any point in 130 hours.
ER has a couple loops, with dungeons taking O(hour), and regions taking O(10hour). But there is no hard requirement to grind baked in at any level. (Of course, there is a requirement to Git Gud, which might make it feel grindy to some.)
ER has a couple loops, with dungeons taking O(hour), and regions taking O(10hour). But there is no hard requirement to grind baked in at any level. (Of course, there is a requirement to Git Gud, which might make it feel grindy to some.)
> A typical RPG example is defeating the same monster over and over again to get experience to reach the next new area.
A great RPG however, provides you with the tools to advance without ever grinding.
Most Fire Emblem games for example, are carefully tuned (thanks to a pretty interesting experience point formula) to rig your "active members of the party" to a particular level. Fire Emblem effectively asymptotes your character's level to what is expected for a particular map.
In Fire Emblem, 100 experience points is a level up. However, a stronger character gets less experience points, while a weaker character gets more. So weaker characters grow much faster, maybe leveling up after defeating just one foe. While a strong character ("the Jeigen" as Fire Emblem fans call it), may need 20+ wins before they level up.
As such, most Fire Emblem games feel like "there's no grind", because the experience point system is designed to never have a grind to begin with. Weak characters feel weak for their first few combats, but exponentially level up and catch up to the rest of the party in just a few maps. While your strongest characters feel like they're "wasting the precious enemies" (there's only a set number of enemies per map. Killing an enemy for +5 exp on your strongest character is just not good tactics when the same enemy is +100 exp on your weakest character).
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Even Pokemon to a large extent does this well. You can defeat all the gyms without ever "Grinding". It gets harder and harder to advance, but the game has enough tactics (Swords Dance, X Attack, etc. etc.) to allow you to win even with 10-levels or 15-levels behind the computer.
I think "no grind" Pokemon playthroughs are pretty fun. It completely changes the game and kind of provides the player an entry point into the competitive scene (you need to use competitive meta strategies vs the CPU if you expect to win with 10-to-15 level disadvantages against them).
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EDIT: It should be noted that Fire Emblem / Pokemon does offer a grind, but only as a method of last resort. Children who are incapable of ever understanding advanced tactics like Swords Dance or Calm Mind, are given a "grind" which guarantee progress.
Similarly, Fire Emblem has "grind levels" that serve as a way to increase your character's strength. But a lot of "hardcore" Fire Emblem fans try to avoid the grind levels and beat the game "grind free".
From this perspective, "Grind" exists as a way to allow casual players to advance, while trying to stay balanced so that stronger players (on their 5th or 6th playthrough with deep understanding of the mechanics of the game) can play without that "emergency escape hatch" so to speak.
A great RPG however, provides you with the tools to advance without ever grinding.
Most Fire Emblem games for example, are carefully tuned (thanks to a pretty interesting experience point formula) to rig your "active members of the party" to a particular level. Fire Emblem effectively asymptotes your character's level to what is expected for a particular map.
In Fire Emblem, 100 experience points is a level up. However, a stronger character gets less experience points, while a weaker character gets more. So weaker characters grow much faster, maybe leveling up after defeating just one foe. While a strong character ("the Jeigen" as Fire Emblem fans call it), may need 20+ wins before they level up.
As such, most Fire Emblem games feel like "there's no grind", because the experience point system is designed to never have a grind to begin with. Weak characters feel weak for their first few combats, but exponentially level up and catch up to the rest of the party in just a few maps. While your strongest characters feel like they're "wasting the precious enemies" (there's only a set number of enemies per map. Killing an enemy for +5 exp on your strongest character is just not good tactics when the same enemy is +100 exp on your weakest character).
-------
Even Pokemon to a large extent does this well. You can defeat all the gyms without ever "Grinding". It gets harder and harder to advance, but the game has enough tactics (Swords Dance, X Attack, etc. etc.) to allow you to win even with 10-levels or 15-levels behind the computer.
I think "no grind" Pokemon playthroughs are pretty fun. It completely changes the game and kind of provides the player an entry point into the competitive scene (you need to use competitive meta strategies vs the CPU if you expect to win with 10-to-15 level disadvantages against them).
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EDIT: It should be noted that Fire Emblem / Pokemon does offer a grind, but only as a method of last resort. Children who are incapable of ever understanding advanced tactics like Swords Dance or Calm Mind, are given a "grind" which guarantee progress.
Similarly, Fire Emblem has "grind levels" that serve as a way to increase your character's strength. But a lot of "hardcore" Fire Emblem fans try to avoid the grind levels and beat the game "grind free".
From this perspective, "Grind" exists as a way to allow casual players to advance, while trying to stay balanced so that stronger players (on their 5th or 6th playthrough with deep understanding of the mechanics of the game) can play without that "emergency escape hatch" so to speak.
That's the general theme among turn-based RPGs. The games are either too undertuned to warrant grinding for skilled players, or they are tuned so they do require some form of grinding. It's an inherent problem with stat sticks and fairly simplistic strategies. Almost no moderately difficult RPG is tuned to not have some of its player base grind, bar introducing difficulty selection.
Pokemon is absurdly easy because the story appeals to a wide variety of players. Most of which include "just give a single fast Pokemon 4 coverage moves and blast everything to pieces". Only gen 5 had a counter mechanic to this by adjusting experience to level difference.
Fire Emblem doesn't really have a grind because you fight the mobs you need during the campaign, and beyond higher difficulties the games have changed to accommodate lesser skilled players into not having to restart the entire campaign. Because it turns out, few people are looking forward to replaying 20 hours only for your 1-5 super pumped up units to not be able to beat the game (read: leaving almost all your other units underleveled or dead, no skirmishes / arena to catch up, and your remaining party can't clear the map).
Paper Mario, you can beat the entire game skipping every non-required battle and still have room to spare. Strategies are even based around keeping your HP low.
And despite not needing to grind, the former two still suffer from similar issues (beating weaker enemies with no sense of strategy to stall getting to the meat of the game). Beating required Geodude trainer number 30 with Tackle and Rock Throw may as well be grinding.
Pokemon is absurdly easy because the story appeals to a wide variety of players. Most of which include "just give a single fast Pokemon 4 coverage moves and blast everything to pieces". Only gen 5 had a counter mechanic to this by adjusting experience to level difference.
Fire Emblem doesn't really have a grind because you fight the mobs you need during the campaign, and beyond higher difficulties the games have changed to accommodate lesser skilled players into not having to restart the entire campaign. Because it turns out, few people are looking forward to replaying 20 hours only for your 1-5 super pumped up units to not be able to beat the game (read: leaving almost all your other units underleveled or dead, no skirmishes / arena to catch up, and your remaining party can't clear the map).
Paper Mario, you can beat the entire game skipping every non-required battle and still have room to spare. Strategies are even based around keeping your HP low.
And despite not needing to grind, the former two still suffer from similar issues (beating weaker enemies with no sense of strategy to stall getting to the meat of the game). Beating required Geodude trainer number 30 with Tackle and Rock Throw may as well be grinding.
> The games are either too undertuned to warrant grinding for skilled players
That's a good thing. Players who figure out the system "properly" shouldn't have to grind.
Ex: Atelier series generally have "alchemy engines" that create absurdly powerful creations, if you spend some time mapping out how alchemy can pass back and forth and mastering the alchemy minigame (main game??). Yeah, you can grind another +10 levels, but the game is about crafting items and rewards you with way more damage from well-crafted items (from +Quality loops) rather than from trying to bash your head against enemies for 10 hours.
The only games that seem to "force a grind" are these crappy phone-RPGs / gatchapon games, where escaping the grind literally costs money.
> Beating required Geodude trainer number 30 with Tackle and Rock Throw may as well be grinding.
A decent speedrun of Pokemon is only a couple of hours long at the most. I don't think any skilled RPG player would call any decent run of Pokemon (of any game) a "Grind".
That's a good thing. Players who figure out the system "properly" shouldn't have to grind.
Ex: Atelier series generally have "alchemy engines" that create absurdly powerful creations, if you spend some time mapping out how alchemy can pass back and forth and mastering the alchemy minigame (main game??). Yeah, you can grind another +10 levels, but the game is about crafting items and rewards you with way more damage from well-crafted items (from +Quality loops) rather than from trying to bash your head against enemies for 10 hours.
The only games that seem to "force a grind" are these crappy phone-RPGs / gatchapon games, where escaping the grind literally costs money.
> Beating required Geodude trainer number 30 with Tackle and Rock Throw may as well be grinding.
A decent speedrun of Pokemon is only a couple of hours long at the most. I don't think any skilled RPG player would call any decent run of Pokemon (of any game) a "Grind".
>A decent speedrun of Pokemon is only a couple of hours long at the most. I don't think any skilled RPG player would call any decent run of Pokemon (of any game) a "Grind".
I'll articulate what I mean, since it hasn't come across. The problem isn't with grinding itself. It's with the things associated with grinding.
Grinding itself can be immensely fun and satisfying. Doing the same repetitive, thoughtless actions to advance the game, not that fun for most. I can sink hours into Monster Hunter grinding because I'm still put on my toes with most endgame monsters. It does get annoying, but it gets annoying way later (and for different reasons, mostly).
Pokemon? Let's set aside speedrunning, since that implies I already have a strategy prior to even booting the game. You'll go through various non-random battles with trainers which have Pokemon with no random moveset whatsoever. They all have the same algorithm-determined moveset or some inferior version of it. Most of the time, they play out the exact same way they do at the current point as they did 10 levels ago. Most of these battles aren't mentally challenging past first occurrence, they just drag the game out. The clear exceptions are trainers with Pokemon you've never seen, and story-relevant trainers (hopefully not for the former reason, but for having unique movesets / themes). Remove all those trainers, and you could probably cut the level curve in half along with the playtime.
You either care enough about that padding to dump the game over it, you bite through it despite the padding, or you like the padding. But it's the same thing as grinding: it's padding. It isn't inherently necessary beyond ensuring players have garnered some experience with the battle system before giving them a larger challenge. And even there, it's entirely up to the designers to ensure previous challenges match the current state.
I'll articulate what I mean, since it hasn't come across. The problem isn't with grinding itself. It's with the things associated with grinding.
Grinding itself can be immensely fun and satisfying. Doing the same repetitive, thoughtless actions to advance the game, not that fun for most. I can sink hours into Monster Hunter grinding because I'm still put on my toes with most endgame monsters. It does get annoying, but it gets annoying way later (and for different reasons, mostly).
Pokemon? Let's set aside speedrunning, since that implies I already have a strategy prior to even booting the game. You'll go through various non-random battles with trainers which have Pokemon with no random moveset whatsoever. They all have the same algorithm-determined moveset or some inferior version of it. Most of the time, they play out the exact same way they do at the current point as they did 10 levels ago. Most of these battles aren't mentally challenging past first occurrence, they just drag the game out. The clear exceptions are trainers with Pokemon you've never seen, and story-relevant trainers (hopefully not for the former reason, but for having unique movesets / themes). Remove all those trainers, and you could probably cut the level curve in half along with the playtime.
You either care enough about that padding to dump the game over it, you bite through it despite the padding, or you like the padding. But it's the same thing as grinding: it's padding. It isn't inherently necessary beyond ensuring players have garnered some experience with the battle system before giving them a larger challenge. And even there, it's entirely up to the designers to ensure previous challenges match the current state.
> You'll go through various non-random battles with trainers which have Pokemon with no random moveset whatsoever.
In my experience though, most of those trainers are easily avoidable if you don't want to deal with them.
I think that's what I'm going for. They're there as "grinds" if your the type of player who wants to capture a whole lot of experience points and/or money throughout the game. But if you're "against the grind", then you simply walk away from those trainers, and they'll never challenge you.
There's exceptions of course. You must fight the gym leaders (each with a specialization on a particular typing. Brock for Rock, Misty for Water, etc. etc., ensuring forced diversity through the game). And the Elite 4 at the end force you to fight against 4 trainers (again with elemental specialties), before facing the champion (who breaks the mold and fights with a well balanced, supported team across multiple elements/typings)
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In Sword/Shield, its an explicit strategy to run away from fights in fact. You're not really expected to fight against the most powerful Pokemon, and Poke-dolls (aka: run away from fights) are plentiful.
In my experience though, most of those trainers are easily avoidable if you don't want to deal with them.
I think that's what I'm going for. They're there as "grinds" if your the type of player who wants to capture a whole lot of experience points and/or money throughout the game. But if you're "against the grind", then you simply walk away from those trainers, and they'll never challenge you.
There's exceptions of course. You must fight the gym leaders (each with a specialization on a particular typing. Brock for Rock, Misty for Water, etc. etc., ensuring forced diversity through the game). And the Elite 4 at the end force you to fight against 4 trainers (again with elemental specialties), before facing the champion (who breaks the mold and fights with a well balanced, supported team across multiple elements/typings)
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In Sword/Shield, its an explicit strategy to run away from fights in fact. You're not really expected to fight against the most powerful Pokemon, and Poke-dolls (aka: run away from fights) are plentiful.
> A typical RPG example is defeating the same monster over and over again to get experience to reach the next new area.
That’s ARPGs and JRPGs (and maybe some action RPGs), CRPGs typically don’t have any grinding.
That’s ARPGs and JRPGs (and maybe some action RPGs), CRPGs typically don’t have any grinding.
Yet a lot of people love this and there are multiple genres (MMOs and ARPGs) built around it. Heck even Minecraft is just a mindless grind for some
I think a lot of the people don't understand the 'modes' a person can be in when playing a game.
There are some games that you want to play with your full attention, and you want it to be an intense and immersive experience.
But there are also games that you want to play 'in the background' while having a discord conversation about something else. It's fun and simple, and doesn't come with stakes.
Some analogies to this are throwing a ball back and forth in the yard. Or having a show play in the background. It's comforting.
'Grinding' doesn't have to be bad if it's in that context
There are some games that you want to play with your full attention, and you want it to be an intense and immersive experience.
But there are also games that you want to play 'in the background' while having a discord conversation about something else. It's fun and simple, and doesn't come with stakes.
Some analogies to this are throwing a ball back and forth in the yard. Or having a show play in the background. It's comforting.
'Grinding' doesn't have to be bad if it's in that context
Thank you for the "The Game" wiki link. It's pretty much a software virus on intelligent beings' minds. Very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if something like it has been deployed in other intelligent worlds.
Explicit references to a "compulsion loop" make me want to delete all my non-indie video games and take a shower.
> A 'compulsion loop' sounds bad to me
Yes, it is bad. Crack cocaine has a really tight compulsion loop, for example.
Yes, it is bad. Crack cocaine has a really tight compulsion loop, for example.
It's not a great sounding phrase, but a compulsion loop can be a pretty harmless thing. Think about a cliffhanger in a book or a tv show -- something that gets you to come back to the next episode/chapter. That's really the same thing. Right now I'm playing God of War, and there's a compulsion loop of doing side quests to make my character stronger. There's definitely a compulsiveness to that -- I stayed up too late last night doing that -- but it's not particularly evil.
For more information on the Skinner Box theory and how it is applied to exploit human psychology for monetization purposes:
https://levelskip.com/how-to/Skinners-Box-and-Video-Games
https://levelskip.com/how-to/Skinners-Box-and-Video-Games
Path of Exile has the most exquisite set of compulsion loops within loops. Even when you’re aware of it they’re so satisfying.
Did you know there is a market for pre-war steel? This is steel manufactured before 1945 that is uncontaminated by radionuclides:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games.
Also: I used to hate on the casino industry for using the term “gaming” to euphemistically refer to gambling, but now they’re not so different so I’ll let them have that one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games.
Also: I used to hate on the casino industry for using the term “gaming” to euphemistically refer to gambling, but now they’re not so different so I’ll let them have that one.
>There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games
I'd argue there already is -- what's currently called "indies". IMO the greater threat is the "compulsion loop". Plenty of excellent games, both historical and modern, are content to challenge the player without much in the way of enticement. But in this late year, we're having to contend with things like Vampire Survivors [0], which, while being microtransaction-free, is fun, straightforward, and takes inspiration from video lottery terminals. Yes, really! Its creator, Luca Galante [1]:
>“Slot games are very simple,” he tells The Verge. “All the player has to do is press one button, and the game designers have to find a way to push the player to press that button. [The player] is actually spending money every time they press it, and because of that, there’s a huge attention to detail on the sounds, the animations, and the sequences, because you have so few elements to work with. Basically, [the designers] try to maximize the importance and impact those elements have on the player. I just absorbed that knowledge basically just by being in the industry. And so when making a game, I have automatically applied it to what [I’ve been] doing.”
>That’s all reflected in Vampire Survivors. Starting a game immediately drops you into the action, and the only controls to think about are moving your character and picking upgrades. You don’t even need to press a button to use your weapons. The charming retro graphics feel like they’re ripped straight from a long-forgotten Super Nintendo Castlevania game, and you’ll hear a delightful chime every time you pick up one of the countless experience gems. Opening treasure chests seems to intentionally create the feeling that you’re pulling a slot machine; pixelated weapons stream by on ribbons of color as coins fly everywhere, all backed by a catchy jingle. (If you get lucky and find a chest with five items, there are actually fireworks.)
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/Vampire_Survivors...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/19/22941145/vampire-survivor...
I'd argue there already is -- what's currently called "indies". IMO the greater threat is the "compulsion loop". Plenty of excellent games, both historical and modern, are content to challenge the player without much in the way of enticement. But in this late year, we're having to contend with things like Vampire Survivors [0], which, while being microtransaction-free, is fun, straightforward, and takes inspiration from video lottery terminals. Yes, really! Its creator, Luca Galante [1]:
>“Slot games are very simple,” he tells The Verge. “All the player has to do is press one button, and the game designers have to find a way to push the player to press that button. [The player] is actually spending money every time they press it, and because of that, there’s a huge attention to detail on the sounds, the animations, and the sequences, because you have so few elements to work with. Basically, [the designers] try to maximize the importance and impact those elements have on the player. I just absorbed that knowledge basically just by being in the industry. And so when making a game, I have automatically applied it to what [I’ve been] doing.”
>That’s all reflected in Vampire Survivors. Starting a game immediately drops you into the action, and the only controls to think about are moving your character and picking upgrades. You don’t even need to press a button to use your weapons. The charming retro graphics feel like they’re ripped straight from a long-forgotten Super Nintendo Castlevania game, and you’ll hear a delightful chime every time you pick up one of the countless experience gems. Opening treasure chests seems to intentionally create the feeling that you’re pulling a slot machine; pixelated weapons stream by on ribbons of color as coins fly everywhere, all backed by a catchy jingle. (If you get lucky and find a chest with five items, there are actually fireworks.)
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/Vampire_Survivors...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/19/22941145/vampire-survivor...
Every game has a compulsion loop. In chess its a full game of chess. In Street Fighter II it is one full fight with up to 3 rounds. Its a very dystopian sounding but very central component to almost all games.
>Every game has a compulsion loop
Of course, but in non-Skinner-box-speak, we call that the "gameplay". Refactoring an old concept like "gameplay" to wield the tools of war usually associated with gambling -- that's the crux of the matter. That's what I and the root-level commenter fear.
Vampire Survivors itself isn't the problem -- it costs $3, and doesn't require any more (non-temporal) investment, neither microtransactions nor additional quarters. But it's a harbinger of things to come. Remember horse armour, and how harmless it was?
Of course, but in non-Skinner-box-speak, we call that the "gameplay". Refactoring an old concept like "gameplay" to wield the tools of war usually associated with gambling -- that's the crux of the matter. That's what I and the root-level commenter fear.
Vampire Survivors itself isn't the problem -- it costs $3, and doesn't require any more (non-temporal) investment, neither microtransactions nor additional quarters. But it's a harbinger of things to come. Remember horse armour, and how harmless it was?
What we call things is fluid and flexible, like our language. So there might be a discussion about calling the main loop in a game something different. But redefining the gameplay loop as the compulsion loop is oh so wrong in my mind; one implies no nefarious intent, and the other is clearly meant to describe the loop of a game focused on selling microtransactions.
> of a game focused on selling microtransactions.
Or a game that is engaging and doesn’t fall into the trap of making the player non-productively frustrated or bored.
It’s really hard for me to play video games at all because of my ADHD and so I feel it so hard when games fail to get this right because it makes them basically unplayable; I can’t “power through” the luls.
Games like Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Slay the Spire, Binding of Issac, Don’t Starve all are A++ because they either have tight game loops with lots of variety or they make it so the player always always has something meaningful to do.
Or a game that is engaging and doesn’t fall into the trap of making the player non-productively frustrated or bored.
It’s really hard for me to play video games at all because of my ADHD and so I feel it so hard when games fail to get this right because it makes them basically unplayable; I can’t “power through” the luls.
Games like Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Slay the Spire, Binding of Issac, Don’t Starve all are A++ because they either have tight game loops with lots of variety or they make it so the player always always has something meaningful to do.
This is just arcade design. Vampire Survivors might have a more bombastic way of presenting random drops, but otherwise it's not meaningfully different from something like Robotron or Gauntlet.
Well, why do we want to go back there? The demise of the arcade, brought on by computers and consoles growing inexpensive and powerful, allowed videogaming to become an art form (eg Braid, FEZ, To The Moon, etc, are artistic experiences if a film ever was, cannot be replicated on other forms of media, and cannot easily be monetized into an arcade machine). Returning to an age where electronic entertainment needs you to feed it money every once in a while, regardless of how much or why, seems like a step backward.
More concisely, why excuse shittiness with historical precedent?
More concisely, why excuse shittiness with historical precedent?
Arcade games are fun. It's great that we have more thoughtful, artistic games now, but not all games need to meet that description. I can still walk up to a Robotron cabinet and have fun, but I'll probably never play Braid again.
I'm speaking specifically to your criticism of Vampire Survivors, which as you said doesn't have microtransactions. I'm strongly opposed to the use of "compulsion loops" to generate revenue via microtransactions.
I'm speaking specifically to your criticism of Vampire Survivors, which as you said doesn't have microtransactions. I'm strongly opposed to the use of "compulsion loops" to generate revenue via microtransactions.
Thank you for explaining my recent videogame behaviour. I think the last AAAs I played through was Ghost of Tsushima and the Demon Souls remake. I feel less inclined to play AAAs and I find myself gravitating to Gris, Sable, Untitled Goose Game and Trek to Yomi to name a few.
Honestly, I think there already is a market for that. I know personally, when I buy mobile games, I completely avoid the F2P space. The last mobile game I played was The Oregon Trail (on Apple Arcade), and I gotta say, it was incredibly refreshing playing a game on the phone that was just a game. No annoying timers or things like that to convince me to buy "gems" or whatever currency. (I'm not sure if that game is completely clear from that, but I didn't notice it at all if it was there)
Even in F2P games, there's a huge chunk of gamers that take pride in "I've never bought anything in this game". I think culturally "whales" are frowned upon, even though they (sadly) make up the vast majority of F2P games profits.
When guy's like this CEO talk about monetization btw, IMO a lot of these methods are really shady, because the vast majority of profits come from a very small minority that are unable to exercise self control around these "compulsion loops." On the surface, "if you don't want to pay for it you don't have to" seems friendly enough, but when you realize that essentially all the profits are coming from people that have (arguably) an addiction, it feels a bit gross. Not that all monetization is bad. I don't have a problem with like, selling hats or outfits or things that don't affect gameplay, but when your gameplay is designed to open peoples wallets... it's a bit of a grey area IMO.
Even in F2P games, there's a huge chunk of gamers that take pride in "I've never bought anything in this game". I think culturally "whales" are frowned upon, even though they (sadly) make up the vast majority of F2P games profits.
When guy's like this CEO talk about monetization btw, IMO a lot of these methods are really shady, because the vast majority of profits come from a very small minority that are unable to exercise self control around these "compulsion loops." On the surface, "if you don't want to pay for it you don't have to" seems friendly enough, but when you realize that essentially all the profits are coming from people that have (arguably) an addiction, it feels a bit gross. Not that all monetization is bad. I don't have a problem with like, selling hats or outfits or things that don't affect gameplay, but when your gameplay is designed to open peoples wallets... it's a bit of a grey area IMO.
The dichotomy between cosmetics and gameplay-impacting microtransactions is irrelevant. They both produce the addiction you describe.
I don't think that's true. Take something like Clash of Clans. There's a real incentive to pay for an upgrade to help your clan in your next clan war, or you get into an impatient fuck-it mode because your inferno tower is going to take 10 days to upgrade. After a few weeks of play time and some leveling up the game essentially offers the player a choice: either disengage from the game and accept that most of your efforts were a sunk cost (which is extra sad because your base layout if fairly personal and an expression of yourself), or pony up to get the same feelings you got initially for free.
On the other hand, if I buy a hat I like in Team Fortess, like, I might buy more hats in the future but there's no particular incentive for me to do so.
Addiction generally requires a couple things IMO:
- The product/substance needs to provide some sort of short term relief or benefit
- The short term relief or benefit becomes more expensive over time and less satisfying
- The higher the usage, the more invested or dependent the person becomes
If you spend like $1000 upgrading your base in Clash of Clans, then you're certainly invested and likely to spend more in the future. The benefits also start to dwindle -- you have to spend more for the same effect (ie, upgrades get more expensive/time consuming)
On the other hand, if you buy a hat for $5, none of the above applies. Maybe you're a little more invested in the game but that's about it. And well, if you were buying a hat, you're probably already pretty invested.
On the other hand, if I buy a hat I like in Team Fortess, like, I might buy more hats in the future but there's no particular incentive for me to do so.
Addiction generally requires a couple things IMO:
- The product/substance needs to provide some sort of short term relief or benefit
- The short term relief or benefit becomes more expensive over time and less satisfying
- The higher the usage, the more invested or dependent the person becomes
If you spend like $1000 upgrading your base in Clash of Clans, then you're certainly invested and likely to spend more in the future. The benefits also start to dwindle -- you have to spend more for the same effect (ie, upgrades get more expensive/time consuming)
On the other hand, if you buy a hat for $5, none of the above applies. Maybe you're a little more invested in the game but that's about it. And well, if you were buying a hat, you're probably already pretty invested.
Elden Ring's massive success shows the market for games without MTX is absolutely active and large.
But if you never publish those games and no other publishers ever do, you deny that market from existing. I have plenty of gamer friends. They move like sheep yearly to the next title because thats where the playerbase marches to. There is no alternative unless they want to wait 10 minutes between rounds and have half full matches or deal with totalitarian private servers. A publisher like EA has no incentive to ever allow a game like that to be greenlit under their brand, and every incentive to forever shirk it out. A smaller time publisher like those behind Elden Ring can come in with a game like this, but the big time publishers know that the best practice is to wring the cow dry for all they can because it comes to pasture yearly.
EA published that Star Wars Jedi game with no microtransactions and sold 10 million copies. Yeah if you think all your customers are idiots or sheep then you'll make bad games that just manipulate people into constantly spending more, but it's clearly not the only path.
There is a market, unfortunately it might be a small one as I've been unable to find good resources to find games without IAP or without "bad" IAP, aka gems, coins, powerup, speedup, etc. The only good IAPs are DLC, Full Unlock, or Remove Ads. If a game has anything but that I will not download the game. No matter how many times they scream "Free to play" we all know that's 100% bullshit (and if you don't then I've got a bridge to sell you). The only exception to this rule is if the only IAP is cosmetic-only (think: Fortnight).
All other F2P games progress to the point that they require you to pay to proceed either by making your progress slow down to near-zero and/or forcing you to grind for hours to move forward even a tiny bit. No, it's not "The game is just harder", they specifically make the game too hard at a certain point to force you into paying. It's a really ingenious system where they will let you get quite far in the game before they turn the screws, when you think "Well I have played X hours, I can spend $Y on this powerup". PvZ2 is a good example of this. EA absolutely ruined the PvZ franchise (they even went back and screwed up PvZ1, adding ads/IAP even if you bought the game previously) with their greed.
F2P/IAP game developers have perverse incentives to milk you for all you're worth and no matter how "pure"/"moral" they think they want to be. The siren call of money will always lead them to ruin games and make them effectively P2W, even if subconsciously. It's simply too easy to do, just bump the boss HP up by a factor of 10, make this part of the level near-impossible without a powerup, etc.
Apple Arcade helps will some of this but the catalogue is limited (though there are some real gems in there, some of which are games that were F2P/P2W initially). I've found Apple's "Games you might like" or "Based on your downloads" to actually be surprisingly good. I just have to filter them out if they have "bad" IAPs.
All other F2P games progress to the point that they require you to pay to proceed either by making your progress slow down to near-zero and/or forcing you to grind for hours to move forward even a tiny bit. No, it's not "The game is just harder", they specifically make the game too hard at a certain point to force you into paying. It's a really ingenious system where they will let you get quite far in the game before they turn the screws, when you think "Well I have played X hours, I can spend $Y on this powerup". PvZ2 is a good example of this. EA absolutely ruined the PvZ franchise (they even went back and screwed up PvZ1, adding ads/IAP even if you bought the game previously) with their greed.
F2P/IAP game developers have perverse incentives to milk you for all you're worth and no matter how "pure"/"moral" they think they want to be. The siren call of money will always lead them to ruin games and make them effectively P2W, even if subconsciously. It's simply too easy to do, just bump the boss HP up by a factor of 10, make this part of the level near-impossible without a powerup, etc.
Apple Arcade helps will some of this but the catalogue is limited (though there are some real gems in there, some of which are games that were F2P/P2W initially). I've found Apple's "Games you might like" or "Based on your downloads" to actually be surprisingly good. I just have to filter them out if they have "bad" IAPs.
YES! I registered gamblingisnotgaming.com with a view to put some material on there about the difference between games and gambling, the dangers of addiction, etc, but dread the idea of getting sued because of it, so it's currently not hosting anything.
It's also especially annoying when searching for jobs in games, and these ruddy e-gambling companies keep popping up on searches, because "gaming".
It's also especially annoying when searching for jobs in games, and these ruddy e-gambling companies keep popping up on searches, because "gaming".
I think Apple Arcade and similar are already doing this. Games on there are free from microtransactions/ads.
...besides the recurring nominal fee that you have to pay to retain "ownership" of a title? I think you misunderstand what "free from microtransactions" means.
That's why there are so many hugely successful remakes/remasters of old games in recent years. I might just be getting old, but the AAA studios don't seem to be capable of making great games anymore, now that business guys are running the show.
> There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games.
It's already too late to get into the hobby of collecting retro games/hardware. eBay prices have been shooting upwards for a good few years already.
Thankfully, the classics are well-preserved via emulation (and in some cases, FPGA recreations of older hardware). But there's an ever-increasing number of games that simply aren't able to be preserved due having no access to server-side components, and many others lost from the early days of mobile gaming (e.g. 32-bit iOS games from before F2P took over), with no way to run them on modern hardware and no emulation solutions yet, even if the games themselves have survived somewhere.
It's already too late to get into the hobby of collecting retro games/hardware. eBay prices have been shooting upwards for a good few years already.
Thankfully, the classics are well-preserved via emulation (and in some cases, FPGA recreations of older hardware). But there's an ever-increasing number of games that simply aren't able to be preserved due having no access to server-side components, and many others lost from the early days of mobile gaming (e.g. 32-bit iOS games from before F2P took over), with no way to run them on modern hardware and no emulation solutions yet, even if the games themselves have survived somewhere.
But if there's a market for "pre" microtransaction games, then wouldn't there be a market for "non" microtransaction games? And couldn't you just... make those? It's not like microtransactions are literally dispersed in the atmosphere.
Building a RetroPie is a fun project that can end in having hundreds of old games.
https://retropie.org.uk/
Frank Stephenson who designed the Ferrari F430, some BMWs and the good looking Mini from 2004, has a youtube channel. He sticks to pen and paper because computers lock him in too early in the design process.
I don't get what Mr Riccitiello is on about. Clay is a great way to sketch car ideas.
Mike Morhaime of Blizzard fame sees indie games as a space where the small guys can try out games that have never been made before. What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games?
There is a GDC lecture from way back in 2017-2018, where one man did his thesis on what motivates people in video games. When people see the 'victory screen' or story cutscene or audiovisual reward feedback for an action, what are they responding to deep down inside?
He did a metastudy of 70-something studies on this topic and they barely agreed on anything. Nobody really has a firm answer for why people are motivated to play video games and you end up with a lot of handwaving around dopamine.
Why is Mr Riccitielo still pushing compulsion loops like we should be yanking players into addiction? Games are so much more than that. See the recent Ocarina Of Time beta showcase at GDQ.
I don't get what Mr Riccitiello is on about. Clay is a great way to sketch car ideas.
Mike Morhaime of Blizzard fame sees indie games as a space where the small guys can try out games that have never been made before. What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games?
There is a GDC lecture from way back in 2017-2018, where one man did his thesis on what motivates people in video games. When people see the 'victory screen' or story cutscene or audiovisual reward feedback for an action, what are they responding to deep down inside?
He did a metastudy of 70-something studies on this topic and they barely agreed on anything. Nobody really has a firm answer for why people are motivated to play video games and you end up with a lot of handwaving around dopamine.
Why is Mr Riccitielo still pushing compulsion loops like we should be yanking players into addiction? Games are so much more than that. See the recent Ocarina Of Time beta showcase at GDQ.
It's a bit of a non-sequitur, but a charitable reading is that he's saying Frank Stephenson can do this with cars, and maybe Lucas Pope and Jon Blow can do it with games, but most indie devs aren't generational talents, so they should spend some time thinking about how they might convince the public to buy their game.
> What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games?
Not cookie cutter. Cookie clicker.
Not cookie cutter. Cookie clicker.
> What is the unity CEO pushing for? Cookie cutter games?
Does Unity take a cut of any microtransactions run through their ecosystem?
Does Unity take a cut of any microtransactions run through their ecosystem?
Nope, licenses are paid up-front and per-seat. I think they optionally had a free tier where you could pay nothing except a royalty on your overall earnings, but I don't think that exists anymore (and even if it did, it always made sense to just buy the licenses). Broadly speaking, though, no. Unity does not offer any payment services that he would directly/indirectly benefit from. This just seems like a bizarre offhand attack at his customerbase.
Most of Unity's revenue does not come from licensing the engine. It comes from their "services" portfolio, which includes advertising and other tools for monetizing, including via IAPs (although they don't take a cut of IAPs, they offer tools to help implement them and improve monetization e.g. A/B testing). I agree it was a bizarre attack at his customer base, but it makes sense given Unity's merger with Ironsource (mobile game advertising giant).
The message seems to be clear: Unity is for people who want to make games that make money, not for indies who want to create for the love of craft.
The message seems to be clear: Unity is for people who want to make games that make money, not for indies who want to create for the love of craft.
This seems like a click bait title to me, he "technically" uses those words, but the article seems a lot more sensible to me than inflammatory. We should definitely be thinking through sales/marketing when building games just like we do when building software. Not sure why you wouldn't be.
Edit to add: This rings true even when you decide "not a priority this time", that's still thinking it through
Edit to add: This rings true even when you decide "not a priority this time", that's still thinking it through
Counterpoint: Minecraft did essentially zero marketing and is monetized only in the sense that you need an account to log in (which is easily bypassed for single player) and it was/is the biggest and most valuable game of all time.
"Minecraft did essentially zero marketing and is monetized only in the sense that you need an account to log in"
No, Minecraft has been monetized for a while: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/catalog
That said, I've found it on the inoffensive side. It's got a plug on the title screen but my kids zip past it easily enough. Most of what you can buy involves a reasonable amount of work, they're not selling slight retexturings for $25. They've given away enough free stuff (of substance!) that I don't even feel bad that the free stuff is to remind you the market exists. No lootboxes.
No, Minecraft has been monetized for a while: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/catalog
That said, I've found it on the inoffensive side. It's got a plug on the title screen but my kids zip past it easily enough. Most of what you can buy involves a reasonable amount of work, they're not selling slight retexturings for $25. They've given away enough free stuff (of substance!) that I don't even feel bad that the free stuff is to remind you the market exists. No lootboxes.
Minecraft was sold for $2B before it had any of that.
Minecraft also supports 3rd party content, skins, gameplay mechanics, etc. There's a lot of things mods can do that official marketplace content can't.
That’s hardly a solid business plan though. We’ll be the next Minecraft because of magic! What about the 1000s of games released every week that fail to get more than a thousand downloads?
Is there some correlation between predatory mechanics and game popularity I don't know about? I'm not sure that games that follow the Unity CEO's advice have a better chance of breaking that barrier.
Because if you read the article his advice wasn't to engage in predatory mechanics - and that's why this conversation is so inflammatory for folks. It's a bad title. Here's the quote:
“It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.”
“But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product. And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.”
“It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.”
“But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product. And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.”
Lot of them fail to get traction also because they're bad. A small part because they're unlucky, too niche or other reason.
Still, with so many game out every day, it's also hard to keep track of everything. I should engage with my family (children and wife), do sport, work, learn to improve and be more efficient, see my friends, keep a healthy diet and sleep 10h every night... That's without speaking of the need to publish to be seen and heard.
So no, I won't engage with all the small games. No one will.
Still, with so many game out every day, it's also hard to keep track of everything. I should engage with my family (children and wife), do sport, work, learn to improve and be more efficient, see my friends, keep a healthy diet and sleep 10h every night... That's without speaking of the need to publish to be seen and heard.
So no, I won't engage with all the small games. No one will.
For sure - you can often find anecdata that works out well. But I think being conscious about that decision up front as a developer is still a good idea. If you choose to go the Minecraft route then great. Just know what you're getting into and what bets you're making.
Fortnite is also a free to play game, that requires no purchases to be equally competitive to paid players, and it is one of the most profitable games too. Players can pay for skins, celebration dances, theme music, etc.
That said, this is not the only way to make a living as a game developer and I'm happy to pay up front for a game that provides the full richness of the experience to all players.
That said, this is not the only way to make a living as a game developer and I'm happy to pay up front for a game that provides the full richness of the experience to all players.
Fortnite does require purchases if you want to be equally competitive in the dress-up meta, however. Certain player groups (usually children) use "default" as a slur. In fact, dressing up your character is arguably more important to the Fortnite experience than the actual shooty-bang-bang part of the game. And it's in line with Epic's "metaverse" aspirations too.
Only thing that I'd add to this is that the Bedrock Edition has a store on which you can buy skins, texture packs, total conversions, maps, etc. Microsoft is definitely pushing for monetization outside of unit sales.
>"Most valuable game of all time"
Is it though? Yes, it did sell the most copies of any game ever, but how are you justifying to call it "the most valuable"?
Is it though? Yes, it did sell the most copies of any game ever, but how are you justifying to call it "the most valuable"?
Its cultural impact is undeniable and is generally positive. It depends on how you define valuable. It's pretty subjective when describing a video game.
By valuation and number of copies, it sold for more than any game. It defined an entire genre. It's culturally relevant a decade on. There's almost no metric that you can't define it as the most valuable.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
― Upton Sinclair
― Upton Sinclair
> Not sure why you wouldn't be.
Art is an end in itself. Not everything that takes work needs to make needs to be immediately converted into money.
Art is an end in itself. Not everything that takes work needs to make needs to be immediately converted into money.
I think the difference though, is what you're saying is "think about what your audience wants and how to tell them you're providing it" which is perfectly sensible, versus what "monetization" is generally referring to, which is "make your gameplay funnel people into buying things outside the initial purchase/download"
Nah - his behavior is bad.
Sure the concepts are also relevant / informative. However the impact is pro-bias, shaming people who don't think like he does.
It deserves a sincere apology.
Sure the concepts are also relevant / informative. However the impact is pro-bias, shaming people who don't think like he does.
It deserves a sincere apology.
Yeah, this is gross. He has a point that when you are selling a game, you're in it for a non-zero amount of profit, so you do have to think about compulsion and keeping people coming back to the game - if people aren't drawn back over multiple sessions then they're going to walk away thinking they spent money for 2 minutes of playtime and they'll be upset.
But the context of the question was moving monetization earlier in the development process. This is something that winds up feeling very broken in most games. You can tell when the game is a fleshed out around a scaffold of "how can we extract payment" and it always feels lame. In fact, some of my favorite games are the opposite - the core gameplay is built out, and then the monetization is added as a cosmetic store.
But the context of the question was moving monetization earlier in the development process. This is something that winds up feeling very broken in most games. You can tell when the game is a fleshed out around a scaffold of "how can we extract payment" and it always feels lame. In fact, some of my favorite games are the opposite - the core gameplay is built out, and then the monetization is added as a cosmetic store.
> if people aren't drawn back over multiple sessions then they're going to walk away thinking they spent money for 2 minutes of playtime and they'll be upset
The solution to that is to git gud and build a game that's actually enjoyable to play, not wireheading players with dirty tactics.
The solution to that is to git gud and build a game that's actually enjoyable to play, not wireheading players with dirty tactics.
are you suggesting that game dev labor should be valued by society in other ways than via the market? the market finds that this type of monetization is more profitable. why does HN turn anti-capitalism when it comes to games?
The way the psychology of gambling has entered the games industry has indeed produced more money, but at the same kind of costs that the gambling industry has always created.
I don't advocate for killing this new gaming industry, just as I don't advocate for killing the more traditional gambling industry, but both need much stricter supervision than most markets because they attack a weak point in human psychology, and taken too far, they harm humanity more than they generate value.
In the end any "distortion" of the market requires a strong justification, but I think the justifications used against the gambling industry have always been pretty compelling, and they appear to apply just as well to modern games industry techniques.
Another way to put it is that the "value to society" of modern games techniques contains a negative externality: damage to the players comparable to that of gambling addictions. You could solve it with the equivalent of a carbon tax, though defining the cost of different tactics feels impossible, so I'd argue that the traditional gambling restrictions are a better fit (illegal in many places, illegal for children, legal limits, requiring various warnings and protections to discourage extreme behaviours, high taxes, etc).
Many families play boardgames with their children at home. Fewer visit blackjack tables. I think theres a fair argument that these broadly match the different financial strategies in the games industry. How much of this behaviour is parental wisdom and how much is limited accessibility thanks to legal restrictions is a hard question to answer, but I have a suspicion that the world would be a worse place with unrestricted gambling. But kids _do_ sit at home opening lootboxes as their parents watch tv, I'm not sure if the effects are much different.
I don't advocate for killing this new gaming industry, just as I don't advocate for killing the more traditional gambling industry, but both need much stricter supervision than most markets because they attack a weak point in human psychology, and taken too far, they harm humanity more than they generate value.
In the end any "distortion" of the market requires a strong justification, but I think the justifications used against the gambling industry have always been pretty compelling, and they appear to apply just as well to modern games industry techniques.
Another way to put it is that the "value to society" of modern games techniques contains a negative externality: damage to the players comparable to that of gambling addictions. You could solve it with the equivalent of a carbon tax, though defining the cost of different tactics feels impossible, so I'd argue that the traditional gambling restrictions are a better fit (illegal in many places, illegal for children, legal limits, requiring various warnings and protections to discourage extreme behaviours, high taxes, etc).
Many families play boardgames with their children at home. Fewer visit blackjack tables. I think theres a fair argument that these broadly match the different financial strategies in the games industry. How much of this behaviour is parental wisdom and how much is limited accessibility thanks to legal restrictions is a hard question to answer, but I have a suspicion that the world would be a worse place with unrestricted gambling. But kids _do_ sit at home opening lootboxes as their parents watch tv, I'm not sure if the effects are much different.
In all honesty, I would advocate for killing this "new gaming industry" in its entirety. We already invented gambling, and it's called "gambling".
I'm sick and tired of dark patterns winding their tentacles into every aspect of our digital lives - it's tiring, and predatory on the little self-control and attention that I have remaining. We didn't need casino-isation of our games before, so we don't need it now.
I'm sick and tired of dark patterns winding their tentacles into every aspect of our digital lives - it's tiring, and predatory on the little self-control and attention that I have remaining. We didn't need casino-isation of our games before, so we don't need it now.
Not anti-capitalist, quite the contrary, you deserve to be compensated for the fruits of your labor at a rate that the market will bear.
However, there's what the market will bear, and what the market can be coerced into paying. The latter is definitely more money than the former. The point at which you step into a game and then are psychologically manipulated into spending more than you otherwise would have, that isn't right. Building out gameplay loops that are only fun if you fork over more cash after you've invested considerable time into the application and leveraging the sunk cost fallacy to pull more cash out of your user, do you really respect your consumer at that point, or their wallet?
People are free to build what they want. I'm allowed to call it gross. I'm also allowed to say that those gameplay mechanics feel broken and not fun.
Run a thought experiment next time you play a game. If money was no object, and you were able to pay the developer the average value of their customer (total revenue divided by their total downloads), and in return, all purchase screens are removed, would that game be even more fun? In my experience, they'd usually wind up being a husk, a very generic, boring gameplay loop with nothing enticing. That's how you know that the enticement is actually manipulation.
However, there's what the market will bear, and what the market can be coerced into paying. The latter is definitely more money than the former. The point at which you step into a game and then are psychologically manipulated into spending more than you otherwise would have, that isn't right. Building out gameplay loops that are only fun if you fork over more cash after you've invested considerable time into the application and leveraging the sunk cost fallacy to pull more cash out of your user, do you really respect your consumer at that point, or their wallet?
People are free to build what they want. I'm allowed to call it gross. I'm also allowed to say that those gameplay mechanics feel broken and not fun.
Run a thought experiment next time you play a game. If money was no object, and you were able to pay the developer the average value of their customer (total revenue divided by their total downloads), and in return, all purchase screens are removed, would that game be even more fun? In my experience, they'd usually wind up being a husk, a very generic, boring gameplay loop with nothing enticing. That's how you know that the enticement is actually manipulation.
I agree the market isn’t aligned with fun or respect for consumers
Because it's common consensus that capitalism went way too far with games. Microtransactions and/or ads and dark patterns are endemic, diminishing enjoyment of games and unduly robbing people of attention/money. Online activation is a thing. And it's not that it's "fine not to do these things", because there are so many offenders, both high and low-profile, that it seems "all right" to do these things to developers who are still on the fence, which poisons the pool even more than it already is.
are you saying that capitalism innately has a good solution for games, but that it became slightly ill and can be reformed back to excellence? seems odd to promote “capitalism, but not like this”
I'm saying that in the past (before the microtransaction era) the parameters of capitalism in the gaming industry were tuned such that it was commercially viable (and most importantly, normal) to release a nice, toxicity-free game and sell it for a reasonable one-time fee that the customer pays once, and is then free to enjoy without an ongoing commercial (or otherwise) relationship with the publisher.
If you could somehow turn back the clock, you could go back to this tolerable trade-off, but you never twice step into the same river. The only options available now are to either find another set of parameters of capitalism enabling this trade-off, or to avoid most mainstream gaming.
If you could somehow turn back the clock, you could go back to this tolerable trade-off, but you never twice step into the same river. The only options available now are to either find another set of parameters of capitalism enabling this trade-off, or to avoid most mainstream gaming.
games market was much smaller back then. why are you certain that the market has solutions for growing the game industry beyond its current size without these tactics. and why resign to minor reforms of a system you don’t like the results of
vv bingo
vv bingo
Please don't completely edit your comment after someone replies, it makes it hard to keep track of the discussion.
I am far from advocating for a minor reform. MTX, subscriptions, and basically anything designed to extract money from a customer's pocket after a one-time initial purchase should be very heavily restricted. "Compulsion loops" and dirty tricks used to create artificial addiction should be made outright illegal. In effect, companies that rely on these techniques to survive would struggle, but IMO nothing of value would be lost. Short of establishing a parallel system of funding video game development (such as patronage), that's all we can do.
And yes, the games market was smaller back then. Yet, it still produced quality games. So we need to cut back those actors who grew big by employing toxic product techniques, not "solutions for growing the game industry beyond its current size".
I am far from advocating for a minor reform. MTX, subscriptions, and basically anything designed to extract money from a customer's pocket after a one-time initial purchase should be very heavily restricted. "Compulsion loops" and dirty tricks used to create artificial addiction should be made outright illegal. In effect, companies that rely on these techniques to survive would struggle, but IMO nothing of value would be lost. Short of establishing a parallel system of funding video game development (such as patronage), that's all we can do.
And yes, the games market was smaller back then. Yet, it still produced quality games. So we need to cut back those actors who grew big by employing toxic product techniques, not "solutions for growing the game industry beyond its current size".
>Short of establishing a parallel system of funding video game development (such as patronage), that's all we can do.
exactly (tho I wouldn't say in parallel)
>Please don't completely edit your comment after someone replies, it makes it hard to keep track of the discussion.
HN disables replies, or I expanded what I wrote as you were writing yours - I'll just disengage instead, bye
exactly (tho I wouldn't say in parallel)
>Please don't completely edit your comment after someone replies, it makes it hard to keep track of the discussion.
HN disables replies, or I expanded what I wrote as you were writing yours - I'll just disengage instead, bye
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Capitalism is one of the words that are so general and used for so many phenomena it often becomes useless in a conversation. One can think some market behavior is unethical and to be opposed by individual action, but not see an acceptable political way to remedy this. I don't generally subscribe to this type of thinking, but it is a position. People also tend to see production of culture as something that should be different from producing/selling cars or potatoes.
Besides, people seem to call "capitalism" a set of laws and regulations that are good for current large capital holders, and freely extracting money from people if you have superior psycho/marketing and lawyer power. But there is a vast, vast space of possible regulatory conditions that would still be essentially capitalist in how economy functions.
Besides, people seem to call "capitalism" a set of laws and regulations that are good for current large capital holders, and freely extracting money from people if you have superior psycho/marketing and lawyer power. But there is a vast, vast space of possible regulatory conditions that would still be essentially capitalist in how economy functions.
For the same reason people turn anti-capitalism when it comes to art and music.
There's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks.
There's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks.
I agree and hope it would provoke wider reflection beyond how it affects the HN crowd on their couches
The problem is that those AAA games people demand are not possible to make without those big bucks. People demand to be paid and that work does cost a ton of money.
So careful what you ask for. Even an indie developer needs to pay bills and put food on the table somehow. Very very few game developers got rich developing games, in most of the studios burnout and attrition because of the extremely toxic work environments are common too.
That doesn't mean that stuffing ads, subscriptions and microtransactions everywhere is the only way forward. However, saying that "there's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks." sounds like you are suggesting that the developer of the next Call of Duty sequel should be working those 60-80 hour weeks only for their personal enjoyment from delivering something for the gamer to play (and then loudly complain online and demand this or that - or else!) and sense of dedication to their fanbase.
That really doesn't work like that.
So careful what you ask for. Even an indie developer needs to pay bills and put food on the table somehow. Very very few game developers got rich developing games, in most of the studios burnout and attrition because of the extremely toxic work environments are common too.
That doesn't mean that stuffing ads, subscriptions and microtransactions everywhere is the only way forward. However, saying that "there's more reasons for a game to exist besides making big bucks." sounds like you are suggesting that the developer of the next Call of Duty sequel should be working those 60-80 hour weeks only for their personal enjoyment from delivering something for the gamer to play (and then loudly complain online and demand this or that - or else!) and sense of dedication to their fanbase.
That really doesn't work like that.
The last call of duty game I played charged me $60 up front and then was largely free from all future costs, except some add-on dlc I chose to buy later. MTX was there but only as cosmetic items. This state of things was fine.
However they eventually added overpowered weapons that could only be unlocked via expensive rng loot boxes and that's when I stopped playing.
However they eventually added overpowered weapons that could only be unlocked via expensive rng loot boxes and that's when I stopped playing.
that cod was one of their highest revenue microtransaction platforms to date
No, this was years ago. Black Ops 2 (or was it 3?). One of those. Haven't touched cod since they added p2w mechanics.
> The problem is that those AAA games people demand are not possible to make without those big bucks.
I question this premise. Do people demand the production values of AAA games, or are they just used to expecting it? I remember reading some article about how much more expensive it is to build photorealistic games now that you need to add so many more details to everything, and it makes sense. Maybe the fix is not to keep the current unsustainable system, but to readjust people's expectations and downgrade production budgets. Indie games are already doing this, because they cannot compete on production value.
I question this premise. Do people demand the production values of AAA games, or are they just used to expecting it? I remember reading some article about how much more expensive it is to build photorealistic games now that you need to add so many more details to everything, and it makes sense. Maybe the fix is not to keep the current unsustainable system, but to readjust people's expectations and downgrade production budgets. Indie games are already doing this, because they cannot compete on production value.
>I question this premise. Do people demand the production values of AAA games, or are they just used to expecting it?
Well, look at what sells most e.g. on Steam or Epic's store, etc.
No, those aren't indies with "Minecraft" or "Nintendo" graphics. Ultimately it doesn't matter at all whether people "demand it" or "are used to expecting it" when it is what they are putting their money into.
And it isn't for lack of other choices.
Well, look at what sells most e.g. on Steam or Epic's store, etc.
No, those aren't indies with "Minecraft" or "Nintendo" graphics. Ultimately it doesn't matter at all whether people "demand it" or "are used to expecting it" when it is what they are putting their money into.
And it isn't for lack of other choices.
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Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative.
Isn't that what he means when he says the loop needs to be an hour or longer, not 2 minutes?
Isn't he advocating a longer rewarding sequence instead of a quick cash grab every couple minutes?
Isn't he advocating a longer rewarding sequence instead of a quick cash grab every couple minutes?
No. He's advocating for the opposite—an enhanced "time on device" that keeps the users playing for much longer than they otherwise would have. This is well-known technique lifted directly from machine gambling in Los Vegas, where they try to draw out the "loop" long enough so that people keep playing as long as possible without ever walking away. Here's a quote about one of the best academic books on the subject, Addiction By Design:
There's a ton of crossover in these fields between people who designed gambling machines for Los Vegas and then got in on the ground floor of the big mobile gaming boom.
Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the “machine zone,” in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and “ambience management,” player tracking and cash access systems—all designed to meet the market’s desire for maximum “time on device.” Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers’ everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.
There's a ton of crossover in these fields between people who designed gambling machines for Los Vegas and then got in on the ground floor of the big mobile gaming boom.
> Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative.
The most profitable franchises have not done this. It's all timesinks, pay-to-win, and microtransactions.
The most profitable franchises have not done this. It's all timesinks, pay-to-win, and microtransactions.
The maximization of profit over everything else is the cause of much suffering.
Suffering. Really? All those poor suffering souls, forced to slave away playing... er... video games. Talk about first world problem.
I mean sure, game addiction is a thing, but I remember people shovelling coins into arcade machines. PTW and micro transactions are just the modern equivalent. Nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads.
If you ask me indie and art games are in a renaissance period. It's amazing how many cool games from small dev teams there are on the App Store and Steam. If bored housewives prefer PTW crap, well, they'd probably just be spending it on bingo or scratch cards instead. It's really just mass market casual entertainment moving out of newsagents and bingo halls and on to smartphones, but it's always been there.
I mean sure, game addiction is a thing, but I remember people shovelling coins into arcade machines. PTW and micro transactions are just the modern equivalent. Nobody's holding a gun to these people's heads.
If you ask me indie and art games are in a renaissance period. It's amazing how many cool games from small dev teams there are on the App Store and Steam. If bored housewives prefer PTW crap, well, they'd probably just be spending it on bingo or scratch cards instead. It's really just mass market casual entertainment moving out of newsagents and bingo halls and on to smartphones, but it's always been there.
Even from a reductionist and materialist "this game with microtransactions gives me the dopamine hits when I buy stuff" with no other considerations, I know how to get the dopamine hits for much cheaper than hundreds of dollars, and not gated behind microtransactions.
I can get only marginally more joy from getting the exact five-star gacha draw I want than I get from a Slay the Spire rare card draw that is just the card this run needs, but the former may be several multiples of the price of the latter's entire purchase price.
I can get only marginally more joy from getting the exact five-star gacha draw I want than I get from a Slay the Spire rare card draw that is just the card this run needs, but the former may be several multiples of the price of the latter's entire purchase price.
So, just straight facts here. In F2P games, (and gambling), the vast majority of the profits come from a very small minority of people called "whales". The vast majority of users never spend a dollar. These whales are usually people with a gambling addiction or some other psychological issues, and they can and will bankrupt themselves and their family. Yes, they have some of the responsibility here, but people that design games to prey on these people deserve some responsibility too.
Just a personal anecdote, I used to work on a F2P game years ago before I knew these things. Once, I wrote a visual effect for some dragons that players had to pay for which used some pretty fancy shader code. As a consequence of said fancy shader code, some low-end devices with poor ES2 standard support didn't run the shader properly. One day, we had a crazy lady drive to our office across interstate lines, about a 16 hour drive, and she threw a tantrum because she thought that we had "scammed" her out of getting the visual effect she paid for (I guess she was older and didn't realize it was just a bug). Some people get way too invested in this stuff, and as moral human beings we have to be mindful of that and not just blame the crazy person.
Just a personal anecdote, I used to work on a F2P game years ago before I knew these things. Once, I wrote a visual effect for some dragons that players had to pay for which used some pretty fancy shader code. As a consequence of said fancy shader code, some low-end devices with poor ES2 standard support didn't run the shader properly. One day, we had a crazy lady drive to our office across interstate lines, about a 16 hour drive, and she threw a tantrum because she thought that we had "scammed" her out of getting the visual effect she paid for (I guess she was older and didn't realize it was just a bug). Some people get way too invested in this stuff, and as moral human beings we have to be mindful of that and not just blame the crazy person.
> Suffering. Really? All those poor suffering souls, forced to slave away playing... er... video games. Talk about first world problem.
People in Venezuela were forced to play RuneScape in order to make money for quite a few years. Prior to that in China, people were forced to play world of warcraft to farm gold to make money. I don't think it's just a first world problem.
People in Venezuela were forced to play RuneScape in order to make money for quite a few years. Prior to that in China, people were forced to play world of warcraft to farm gold to make money. I don't think it's just a first world problem.
`
No, it’s absolutely not the legal obligation. That’s just an internet meme.
So profit is the only thing that matters in life? And not leisure, which appears to be the whole point of engaging in gaming?
That's nice and all but it'll be the last thing your studio does if you didn't think about monetization. Why is "have a business model" so controversial?
> Why is "have a business model" so controversial?
The same reason that a restaurant that charged you for water, more if it's cold or hot outside, by the second for the time you spent inside it, an extra gratuity if you used the restroom, more if you sat at a 4-person, instead of a 2-person table, had rolling ads in a tablet implanted into your table (That you could pay to turn off), etc, etc would be panned.
Even if the food was fine, and the overall cost were similar/lower than its neighbours. Capitalism is dehumanizing, and people don't want to engage with microtransactions in the middle of having their meal.
There's a qualitative difference between dealing with someone who figures out how to provide a good service, and then get paid for it, and dealing with someone who figures out how to get paid, and then tries to build a good service around it. The latter tends to look like that restaurant - an utter shit-show, and many people won't really care that you have a three-star Michelin chef making the pasta.
Also, in gaming, the bar from your competitors is high. There are a lot of excellent titles that provide a lot of entertainment without having predatory monetization. If your title does, it'll get panned. (If it doesn't, it'll still get panned for the monetization it does have, but hey, gamers are entitled.)
There's also monetization that crosses straight into gambling (loot boxes of various flavours) - or, alternatively - the apocryphal tale of two cowboys who pay eachother to eat cow patties (designing the game around whales trying to outspend eachother). These are very profitable, if shitty business models, and one should probably be regulated down[1], while the other can't scale - it's limited by the number of whales in the ocean.
[1] There are a few reasonable restrictions to it, that could be introduced - requiring all purchases to be fiat-denominated, as opposed to in a smorgasbord of in-game currencies, and requiring odds & costs to be shown[2] (again, fiat-denominated).
[2] If people want to spend $5,000 gambling for a hat that has an expected cost of $2,000, they are free to do it, but they should be aware of the odds.
The same reason that a restaurant that charged you for water, more if it's cold or hot outside, by the second for the time you spent inside it, an extra gratuity if you used the restroom, more if you sat at a 4-person, instead of a 2-person table, had rolling ads in a tablet implanted into your table (That you could pay to turn off), etc, etc would be panned.
Even if the food was fine, and the overall cost were similar/lower than its neighbours. Capitalism is dehumanizing, and people don't want to engage with microtransactions in the middle of having their meal.
There's a qualitative difference between dealing with someone who figures out how to provide a good service, and then get paid for it, and dealing with someone who figures out how to get paid, and then tries to build a good service around it. The latter tends to look like that restaurant - an utter shit-show, and many people won't really care that you have a three-star Michelin chef making the pasta.
Also, in gaming, the bar from your competitors is high. There are a lot of excellent titles that provide a lot of entertainment without having predatory monetization. If your title does, it'll get panned. (If it doesn't, it'll still get panned for the monetization it does have, but hey, gamers are entitled.)
There's also monetization that crosses straight into gambling (loot boxes of various flavours) - or, alternatively - the apocryphal tale of two cowboys who pay eachother to eat cow patties (designing the game around whales trying to outspend eachother). These are very profitable, if shitty business models, and one should probably be regulated down[1], while the other can't scale - it's limited by the number of whales in the ocean.
[1] There are a few reasonable restrictions to it, that could be introduced - requiring all purchases to be fiat-denominated, as opposed to in a smorgasbord of in-game currencies, and requiring odds & costs to be shown[2] (again, fiat-denominated).
[2] If people want to spend $5,000 gambling for a hat that has an expected cost of $2,000, they are free to do it, but they should be aware of the odds.
Figuring out if you can sell your game for $1 or $10 is thinking about monetization. Understanding the market is important.
>There's a qualitative difference between dealing with someone who figures out how to provide a good service, and then get paid for it, and dealing with someone who figures out how to get paid, and then tries to build a good service around it.
On another note, it's funny to see HN understand that when Google does it, it's borrowed time but scrambling to cram in monetization after you launch a game is the smart way to do it...
>There's a qualitative difference between dealing with someone who figures out how to provide a good service, and then get paid for it, and dealing with someone who figures out how to get paid, and then tries to build a good service around it.
On another note, it's funny to see HN understand that when Google does it, it's borrowed time but scrambling to cram in monetization after you launch a game is the smart way to do it...
'Monetisation' as used in modern days refers exclusively to abusive tactics, or so it seems. Figuring out what you can sell your game for is just 'figuring out what you can sell your game for'.
Sure, and likewise, there's thinking about whether or not you're going to be a $1 title, a $10 title, a $30 title, or a free-to-play with cosmetic mtx/expansion mtx/quality-of-life mtx/power mtx.
You need to have a business model, and the model needs to be complementary to what you are building. The pushback isn't to that, the pushback is when the business model is predatory, and drives the design.
You need to have a business model, and the model needs to be complementary to what you are building. The pushback isn't to that, the pushback is when the business model is predatory, and drives the design.
Not that I'm a fan but Unity is selling analytics here. They're not taking a cut and they're not pushing predatory IAP.
The complaints are at best projection of general sentiment from an industry trend.
The complaints are at best projection of general sentiment from an industry trend.
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because often the people emphasizing business models are insufferable sociopaths that have no interest in making quality products; they'd sell you a fart if they could get away with it... there is healthy space between, but the loudest people in business set a poor stage for the industry and it's so off-putting that many people would rather not think about it at all
cognitive dissonance between loving free market capitalism and having values that the market doesn’t recognize
Focus on monetization/profit as the first priority in a creative effort is the world's biggest flashing neon sign for shitty leadership.
Making a AAA video game is a gigantic gamble no matter how you slice it. Trying to hedge this gamble up front with micro transactions will result in vicious design cycles that further increase the effective risk profile of the project to your business.
This is all a matter of higher-order consequences to me. I always believed the harder you focused on the money (especially in gaming), the harder it would be to obtain. Only once you completely wash yourself of that madness can your mind expand and engage in more empathetic thinking. If you are trying to make something fun, empathy is critical. Obsession with money robs most humans of that trait.
I think Blizzard is a good example of how money has nearly zero impact on the amount of fun that can be produced, especially when looking at fun per unit of capital involved. I believe running a game studio like a hedge fund is the critical error here.
Making a AAA video game is a gigantic gamble no matter how you slice it. Trying to hedge this gamble up front with micro transactions will result in vicious design cycles that further increase the effective risk profile of the project to your business.
This is all a matter of higher-order consequences to me. I always believed the harder you focused on the money (especially in gaming), the harder it would be to obtain. Only once you completely wash yourself of that madness can your mind expand and engage in more empathetic thinking. If you are trying to make something fun, empathy is critical. Obsession with money robs most humans of that trait.
I think Blizzard is a good example of how money has nearly zero impact on the amount of fun that can be produced, especially when looking at fun per unit of capital involved. I believe running a game studio like a hedge fund is the critical error here.
If these people only care about money, I don't understand why they don't go into some other business. Take your bunches of money and go make a real estate investment firm or something.
In the eyes of the MBA, the ideal business is one whose customers hate it as much as possible while still using it.
Why would they want customers to hate it? Don't they want word-of-mouth sales?
First you become indispensable, then you squeeze as much money as possible from the customer without them leaving.
I guess my feeling is, if you're in the game industry and your core concern is maximizing profit, you're in the wrong industry. He seems to be suggesting that the key to success is selling your soul. However, even people that cynically monetize everything and use every dark pattern available have enormous chances of failure. For every Zynga or Candy Crush there's a million similar things that failed. At least if you're going to fail, aim high. There are so many samey games that come out and are immediately forgotten. IMO, if you're going to make a game and work in the game industry you should do it because you have a great vision for what can be accomplished artistically in a well made game.
It takes one to know one, I guess. Not being interrupted during gameplay by prompts to spend money or watch ads is a feature.
Committing to a full price game is also thinking about monetization.
That's not the first thing that comes to mind when you mention "monetisation" these days to the average gamer or gamedev. Without further context, the word is usually interpreted as bleeding your customer for more attention/money.
And this is the model that's being criticised as archaic and stupid here.
It's really not. Just making a guess is what he's talking about.
You still need to right price a full paid game and I'm sure Unity would be happy to help you figure that out.
What does a game engine have to do with pricing? He is clearly talking about how Unity will soon let you introduce in-game ads/payments.
You can already introduce in-game ads and payments with or without Unity's help. I understood the article as describing some sort of auto-detection feature that suggests where money-making hooks can be introduced - sort of how Youtube supposedly suggests to content-makers where would be a good spot to insert an ad break in the video.
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I knew I remembered the name John Riccitiello from somewhere as a dumbass. And it turns out, it's 1997 to 2004 and 2007 to 2013 at Electronic Arts. The two periods known as the absolute worst times in terms of quality and scumbaggery when it comes to monetization of games for EA. Oh, and also as someone who was fired because EA was bleeding out money, fucked up not one but four consecutive high profile game launches and was in litigation with about half of its studios.
Thanks John, but I seem to have a slight idea at who the fucking idiot in the room might be, unfortunately, you're failing upwards.
Thanks John, but I seem to have a slight idea at who the fucking idiot in the room might be, unfortunately, you're failing upwards.
This short-sightedness will ultimately kill big publishers. Yes you can milk customers and it will be profitable in the short run. But in the long run, your clientele will consist solely of idiots. Look at EA and Blizzard for examples of this.
I can't help but notice the underlying conflict giving rise to these sort of controversies. What is a game? What makes a successful one?
Ok, checks dictionary: "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun". I remember buying Age of Empires or Total Annihilation as a kid. That was before the ubiquitous internet, you asked your friends and read game magazines before heading to the shop to buy the CDROM. New games had similar prices but some were better (from the player pov) than others and I feel like at that time, being fun and entertaining more directly correlated to commercial successes.
Now everything is online: the games, the stores, the payments. We have in game transactions, DLCs, pay-to-win, pay-to-not-wait-24h, in game gambling, analytics to optimize, etc. And also this definition of gaming: "to manipulate (a situation), typically in a way that is unfair or unscrupulous". What gives?
> “But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product."
So yeah, could this divide actually come from our definition of "success"? Is it about maximizing the financial ROI using all the tricks we know to hook and exploit whales? Is it about making an actually fun and enjoyable game? I wonder...
Ok, checks dictionary: "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun". I remember buying Age of Empires or Total Annihilation as a kid. That was before the ubiquitous internet, you asked your friends and read game magazines before heading to the shop to buy the CDROM. New games had similar prices but some were better (from the player pov) than others and I feel like at that time, being fun and entertaining more directly correlated to commercial successes.
Now everything is online: the games, the stores, the payments. We have in game transactions, DLCs, pay-to-win, pay-to-not-wait-24h, in game gambling, analytics to optimize, etc. And also this definition of gaming: "to manipulate (a situation), typically in a way that is unfair or unscrupulous". What gives?
> “But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product."
So yeah, could this divide actually come from our definition of "success"? Is it about maximizing the financial ROI using all the tricks we know to hook and exploit whales? Is it about making an actually fun and enjoyable game? I wonder...
This would be great advice... If it weren't for the fact that Unity is mainly used by small to medium size studios (yes, they do have 50% market share), while in-house, Unreal and some other well known engines, rule the AAA market.
It's the AAA studios and publishers who can afford the bad PR that comes with exploiting your audience, by throwing exorbitant amounts of money at marketing.
Meanwhile, the indie studios can't afford that, and relay on word of mouth, streamers/YTubers, luck, and just plain simply being a good product. Exploiting your audience is a great way to burn bridges that you don't have the resources to repair by fanning the media monster into hyping your next title.
It's the AAA studios and publishers who can afford the bad PR that comes with exploiting your audience, by throwing exorbitant amounts of money at marketing.
Meanwhile, the indie studios can't afford that, and relay on word of mouth, streamers/YTubers, luck, and just plain simply being a good product. Exploiting your audience is a great way to burn bridges that you don't have the resources to repair by fanning the media monster into hyping your next title.
I think he's probably right, in context. And I also think this is increasingly why I just don't play new games anymore. I like the output of those clay-carver idiots, and don't like product from savvy businessgamers.
Cash extraction machines aren't fun. When I want an escapist experience, "social" bullshit incorporating status skins and whatnot is an utter turnoff, as is effectively mandatory upsells for in-game whatevers.
I'm sure losing people like me works out on the balance sheet. I'll be over here, yelling at clouds.
Cash extraction machines aren't fun. When I want an escapist experience, "social" bullshit incorporating status skins and whatnot is an utter turnoff, as is effectively mandatory upsells for in-game whatevers.
I'm sure losing people like me works out on the balance sheet. I'll be over here, yelling at clouds.
It'll eventually collapse under its own weight like Atari in the 80s.
Other things monetized to great success:
- facebook (soooo much better with 80% ads)
- google search (soooo much better with an entire first page of ads)
- app stores (I love how they "curate" and "enforce standards")
- insulin (mmmm, monopolize a drug whose manufacture is open and charge 10x for that, that's the free market)
- college tuition and education (even nonprofits can be completely ruined by MBAs)
- military/defense
Well, the list goes on.
Gotta love those MBAs with their excel spreadsheets and strike price stock options.
- facebook (soooo much better with 80% ads)
- google search (soooo much better with an entire first page of ads)
- app stores (I love how they "curate" and "enforce standards")
- insulin (mmmm, monopolize a drug whose manufacture is open and charge 10x for that, that's the free market)
- college tuition and education (even nonprofits can be completely ruined by MBAs)
- military/defense
Well, the list goes on.
Gotta love those MBAs with their excel spreadsheets and strike price stock options.
>It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way
Yeah, I don't know about that.
For every pay-to-play game there are 10 excellent indie games on Steam/GoG that still "works that way".
Yeah, I don't know about that.
For every pay-to-play game there are 10 excellent indie games on Steam/GoG that still "works that way".
No surprise. This is probably the most useless and mindless generation of leaders the US has ever produced.
Doing mobile ad IRR modeling spreadsheets, tweaking ad copy to rank higher in search engines, and other business-y MBA crap is easier than actually building a good game, especially if you don't actually like games and are just getting into "e-sports and mobile".
"Idiot" in this case means anybody who prioritizes anything over money.
That's not how I understood his words, like at all. He means that monetisation should be considered as part of the creative process.
Many indie devs could've been sitting on gold mines, but that those rewards (which could've lead to the creation/evolution of more games) weren't reaped because they didn't consider it. Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all, but I bet there's also some whose jaws would've dropped if they were told how much they could've made.
Many indie devs could've been sitting on gold mines, but that those rewards (which could've lead to the creation/evolution of more games) weren't reaped because they didn't consider it. Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all, but I bet there's also some whose jaws would've dropped if they were told how much they could've made.
> ...monetisation should be considered as part of the creative process
That mindset is the antithesis of open source.
And believe it or not, not every game dev is into it to make money. There was some classic interaction between Nimblebit and Zynga back when where Zynga offered to buy Nimblebit, who politely turned down the offer. It could have made a huge amount of money for the founders, but they preferred making their money by creating great games.
That mindset is the antithesis of open source.
And believe it or not, not every game dev is into it to make money. There was some classic interaction between Nimblebit and Zynga back when where Zynga offered to buy Nimblebit, who politely turned down the offer. It could have made a huge amount of money for the founders, but they preferred making their money by creating great games.
> That mindset is the antithesis of open source.
Aren't 99% of successful indie games closed source?
> And believe it or not, not every game dev is into it to make money
Oh absolutely, did you not read my comment?:
> Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all
My point is x% don't care about the money and just want to make great games. Cool! I'm all for it. But y% probably would care about the money if they knew how much they could've gotten had they considered monetisation as part (keyword being part) of the creative process.
Aren't 99% of successful indie games closed source?
> And believe it or not, not every game dev is into it to make money
Oh absolutely, did you not read my comment?:
> Now of course some of those devs wouldn't care about that at all
My point is x% don't care about the money and just want to make great games. Cool! I'm all for it. But y% probably would care about the money if they knew how much they could've gotten had they considered monetisation as part (keyword being part) of the creative process.
> if you’re not thinking about monetisation during your creative process, you’re a “fucking idiot.”
This is why Poe's work is not enjoyable. Knowing he died penniless makes all his creativity worthless. Likewise William Blake - what a fool, laboring upward into futurity! /s
This is why Poe's work is not enjoyable. Knowing he died penniless makes all his creativity worthless. Likewise William Blake - what a fool, laboring upward into futurity! /s
It is a little foolish to marry heaven and hell..
The link title doesn't match to the article title so I suspected the comment wouldn't look as audacious in context. But actually it doesn't look much better. Here's the relevant snippet:
Ah well, he's financially incentivized to say all this crap so what can you do?
Interviewer: Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers.
Riccitiello: Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.
I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.
Ah well, he's financially incentivized to say all this crap so what can you do?
The paragraph after the f'ing sentence feels like clean-up to me, and IMO deserves a proper apology.
'Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate'
He throws this in as well, and I think it's if anything a more important quote. I think anyone working in a creative industry would like for there to be a process whereby you can 'fail fast' and realise that you aren't making something that's fun or meaningful, but from my experience, such a mechanism really doesn't exist.
As a study, it would be interesting to imagine what minecraft would have looked like if the concept had been developed by an established game company, using all the latest wizz-bang graphics and sound. If it had been well funded, and had focus groups and a team of industry veterans helping out, would it be the game it is today, with the following it has?
I would go as far as suggesting that the most amazing creative innovations happen from the indie scene - amateurs doing what they love for it's own sake, and monetisation coming a distant second. Most crash and burn, or are boring 'me too' efforts, but every now and again, a Minecraft, or a Linux appear.
He throws this in as well, and I think it's if anything a more important quote. I think anyone working in a creative industry would like for there to be a process whereby you can 'fail fast' and realise that you aren't making something that's fun or meaningful, but from my experience, such a mechanism really doesn't exist.
As a study, it would be interesting to imagine what minecraft would have looked like if the concept had been developed by an established game company, using all the latest wizz-bang graphics and sound. If it had been well funded, and had focus groups and a team of industry veterans helping out, would it be the game it is today, with the following it has?
I would go as far as suggesting that the most amazing creative innovations happen from the indie scene - amateurs doing what they love for it's own sake, and monetisation coming a distant second. Most crash and burn, or are boring 'me too' efforts, but every now and again, a Minecraft, or a Linux appear.
>He throws this in as well, and I think it's if anything a more important quote. I think anyone working in a creative industry would like for there to be a process whereby you can 'fail fast' and realise that you aren't making something that's fun or meaningful, but from my experience, such a mechanism really doesn't exist.
Oh they do. But they don't fit with the classic waterfall model of publishing where you pitch a title to a publisher, publisher gives you some money, you work your butt off for a few years, deliver the title to the publisher, it goes on sale - and gets panned to the ground because this or that.
Feedback, fast iteration, etc. exists and are applied also in game industry. But it is usually the indies, working with their supporters and fans who release alpha/early beta versions of their games often and then work with the feedback which gets integrated for a future version.
E.g. Factorio is a great example of this. Or Christopher Tin (the composer who made the Grammy winning soundtrack for Civilization) works like this - releasing bits and pieces of his upcoming work to fans and supporters early - and using the feedback he gets as he goes.
With big buck AAA titles you don't have this except for NDAed closed beta testing and sometimes focus groups. But those rarely are your core audiences. And even when the testers say the title is bad/not ready, it gets overruled by the publisher/management because missing the Christmas sale would be disastrous ...
Oh they do. But they don't fit with the classic waterfall model of publishing where you pitch a title to a publisher, publisher gives you some money, you work your butt off for a few years, deliver the title to the publisher, it goes on sale - and gets panned to the ground because this or that.
Feedback, fast iteration, etc. exists and are applied also in game industry. But it is usually the indies, working with their supporters and fans who release alpha/early beta versions of their games often and then work with the feedback which gets integrated for a future version.
E.g. Factorio is a great example of this. Or Christopher Tin (the composer who made the Grammy winning soundtrack for Civilization) works like this - releasing bits and pieces of his upcoming work to fans and supporters early - and using the feedback he gets as he goes.
With big buck AAA titles you don't have this except for NDAed closed beta testing and sometimes focus groups. But those rarely are your core audiences. And even when the testers say the title is bad/not ready, it gets overruled by the publisher/management because missing the Christmas sale would be disastrous ...
Compare to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney's presentation on game development from ~2006 including, among other things, his thoughts on the merits of Haskell
https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced...
I'll put all my money on Sweeney over this asshole.
https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced...
I'll put all my money on Sweeney over this asshole.
[deleted]
Famous last words.
Unity is doomed with the malware company merger
Unity is doomed with the malware company merger
I doubt it; I can't imagine this is going to affect the engine/editor itself in a way you can't opt out of. Companies that want tools like ironsource would have already been using a package or custom code to do these things anyway.
It does speak to the priorities of the company though -- Unity used to be about indies, but it seems like their focus is more on mobile and services. I don't think that means they're going to neglect the indies, but I think they're realizing subscriptions without royalties isn't a huge money maker for them.
It does speak to the priorities of the company though -- Unity used to be about indies, but it seems like their focus is more on mobile and services. I don't think that means they're going to neglect the indies, but I think they're realizing subscriptions without royalties isn't a huge money maker for them.
The problem is a LOT of developers are starting to second guess using Unity which means no seat licenses and likely not using their ad network for in game monetization on mobile games.
Will people stick by that or will they try something like Godot, not like it instantly, and jump ship back despite their concerns? Only time will tell, but the concern seems pretty widespread in the gamedev community.
Will people stick by that or will they try something like Godot, not like it instantly, and jump ship back despite their concerns? Only time will tell, but the concern seems pretty widespread in the gamedev community.
a man with a hokus pokus business degree and a history of working pseudo-jobs in lazy c-suite positions is really not in a position to call anyone an idiot. especially not the excellent craftspeople who know how to make their own video games. fuck off john riccitiello, keep your worm-infested brain away from us!
The headline is pretty sensationalist. The full quote "Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots."
Wait, are you telling me this fucking idiot said that:
John Riccitiello, the CEO of gaming company Unity Technologies, repeatedly sexually harassed female colleagues, propositioning them for sex and then threatening one if she spoke about his behavior, the former executive claims in a lawsuit filed last week.
I mean, if you sexually harass your employees... you're a fucking idiot! and a fucking piece of shit...
John Riccitiello, the CEO of gaming company Unity Technologies, repeatedly sexually harassed female colleagues, propositioning them for sex and then threatening one if she spoke about his behavior, the former executive claims in a lawsuit filed last week.
I mean, if you sexually harass your employees... you're a fucking idiot! and a fucking piece of shit...
I too love the fucking idiots. Or artists as I prefer to call them.
Go go Godot!
...and gamemaker studio, unreal, and a host of other's that don't do this monetization through ads...
unity was nice while it lasted... time to let it die.
only you can prevent advertising - by not putting ads in games (note to game devs: don't be evil, don't just follow orders from your boss either if those orders are evil).
unity was nice while it lasted... time to let it die.
only you can prevent advertising - by not putting ads in games (note to game devs: don't be evil, don't just follow orders from your boss either if those orders are evil).
The Big Lebowski comes to mind: "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."
I remember this guy. John Riccitiello was the CEO of EA when they got the Worst Company in America twice. I can't tell if he was the mastermind of driving EA into the ground, but he accelerated it. He was just as scummy and profit driven then as now.
The ability for him to get another CEO position after getting canned from EA is mind blowing.
No one should be surprised by these remarks. Companies always market themselves like their a force for good, "democratizing game development" in Unity's case. In actuality, all that matters is making the Benjamins.
Mainstream gaming is dead to me and has been for 8-10 years. It seems focused on yearly sports releases (which could really be 100mb rooster update packs), endless reskined Ubisoft sandboxes and the latest iteration of that shooter you've already bought 12 times before.
Obviously im in the wrong..... This is what the market wants apparently. My 80k of disposable yearly income can't compete with whatever auts Whale they can catch with "surprise mechanics". The buying public will vote with their wallets and the publishers will continue shovelling in bland paste to fill the demand void.
Obviously im in the wrong..... This is what the market wants apparently. My 80k of disposable yearly income can't compete with whatever auts Whale they can catch with "surprise mechanics". The buying public will vote with their wallets and the publishers will continue shovelling in bland paste to fill the demand void.
Related thread from yesterday:
Unity merges with IronSource - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051
“I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate. There isn’t a developer on the planet that wouldn’t want that knowledge.”
Cool. I had to look that up and found Wikipedia informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_loop
Thanks for the tip!
Cool. I had to look that up and found Wikipedia informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_loop
Thanks for the tip!
Url changed from https://mobilegamer.biz/devs-not-baking-monetisation-into-th..., which points to this.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
FTA: ... "they tuned their compulsion loop" ...
We've done it folks. We've found business models far shadier than standard issue surveillance capitalism.
This whole attention economy thing is just so unbelievably gross. The only things lower on the moral totem pole these days are cryptocurrency scams and the really shady/exploitative side of the porn industry.
We've done it folks. We've found business models far shadier than standard issue surveillance capitalism.
This whole attention economy thing is just so unbelievably gross. The only things lower on the moral totem pole these days are cryptocurrency scams and the really shady/exploitative side of the porn industry.
It's phrased so... nonchalantly. Basically an out-and-out admission that they are trying to appeal to producers of addictive gambling garbage. Content rather than art. Skinner boxes rather than agency. And the market rewards them for it (not Unity specifically - I expect Riccitiello to run the company into the ground within a year or two - but rather the game companies actually making slot machine games that collectively form half the games industry by revenue).
“Compulsion loop” definitely needs to go in the hall of fame of dystopian phrases.
/r/BoringDystopia is waiting for your submission
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What he says ONLY applies for AAA games. Metrics and research push every game into the same few buckets. Just like web design best practices imply that every website should be roughly the same.
Chasing what 'works' the best has little to do with stickiness. Yeah, you can be addicted to Candy Crush and play it endlessly without any joy at all. But that kind of stickiness is a problem and not in the soul of gaming.
Real stickiness comes from some kind of authentic joy. And coders and marketers don't know how to put that on screen.
Chasing what 'works' the best has little to do with stickiness. Yeah, you can be addicted to Candy Crush and play it endlessly without any joy at all. But that kind of stickiness is a problem and not in the soul of gaming.
Real stickiness comes from some kind of authentic joy. And coders and marketers don't know how to put that on screen.
The best games aren't Products. Mine never will be :)
Making games is both an Art and a Business, and it always has been this way, but the F2P model, especially on mobile, tends to put heavy constraints on the game structure, transforming it into a time sink, engineered to keep you inside for as long as possible. (what they call Engagement and Game As A Service)
That’s OK, a lot of those “fucking idiots” are probably switching to UE5 now, so he won’t need to worry about them.
People who don't want to use the results of decades of scientific research to psychologically abuse mindless morons into giving them money are fucking idiots.
Okay. Well, he's probably not wrong, but I'd rather be a fucking idiot than taking advantage of so many people.
Okay. Well, he's probably not wrong, but I'd rather be a fucking idiot than taking advantage of so many people.
I wish the game industry would crash hard as people realize most games these days are nothing but time wasting addictive loops, and all these people that are in it for pure profit get blown out, leaving only the true craftsmen as the only ones making games.
So nobody just writes games for fun anymore? Seems like the Unity CEO has a very narrow view.
Unity sure knows how to pick its leadership.
Instead of trying to make the technology compete with Unreal, Godot, and custom-rolled game engines, they are gonna double down on a sea of forgettable mobile games that aren't sustainable once the whales leave.
Instead of trying to make the technology compete with Unreal, Godot, and custom-rolled game engines, they are gonna double down on a sea of forgettable mobile games that aren't sustainable once the whales leave.
i like beautiful and pure ceos that are able to effectively do their jobs by paying attention to basic and obvious macroeconomic trends and then using the insights gained to operate their businesses without knee-jerk layoffs and mergers.
Fund indie games or deal with this overlord, folks. I know what I'm going to do.
I'm glad the title was changed from "creators" to "gamedevs".
I an think of lots of famous creators who didn't concern themselves with "monetization"
I just don't purchase anything with a store or anything buyable attached to it. My only gripe is when those don't exist on release and get added in a few months later.
You can monetize and keep the gameplay pure. DOTA2 for example.
Businesses need to make money, but I hate for every app or website to have some anti-user poison pill. I’m not sure there’s a real solution here, just an arms race.
No solution without first examining, identifying, and criticizing the incentives that are induced when the profit motive is assumed as a central tenet of modern society. If the point of enterprise is to make money, then that's what they will do. If the point of enterprise is to do something else, then they will do something else.
Monetization should be a key consideration from the very beginning for any kind of product that's supposed to generate revenue. Nothing new here.
He's obviously heavily incentivized to think so, since his company doesn't make money if devs don't make money.
Not everything in life is a pursuit of profit.
Umm... People who cannot envision other people may have different value system are "fucking idiots".
What wver happened to the sexual harassment lawsuit he got hit with for hitting on a lesbian VP?
Ah yes if you are not actively working to prey on people you are a "fucking idiot".
One of those quotes that I bet can be taken extremely different when heard vs when read.
The insanity. Maybe the gamedev wants people to have fun for a change.
I'm not playing any future game that is developed with Unity.
[deleted]
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Riccitiello is a class A sociopath. He managed to almost drive EA to the dumps, before getting sacked. For exactly the same practices he advocates here. It would have been so much better if David Helgason made someone who he built the company with as CEO, instead of a serial executive. EA learned from their mistake. The kind of posturing Riccitiello has to do in this article is exactly what narcissists do. Obviously, after being cut from EA, the kind of smooth talking he must have done to get this job is beyond me. Did they just ignore his track record?
The people here defending him shows how good he is a persuading people, unfortunately.
Unity sure is taking some bad PR hits
UU
clickbait hot take..
Counterpoint: Stardew Valley. No IAP bullshit, no lootbox chicanery... and yet I doubt its creator is hurting, financially speaking.
Of course, we're talking about an outlier here. Excellence doesn't guarantee anything, but it is a strategy that sometimes works.
The irony is that you'd expect the big publishers to be the ones willing to take on risks and put out products that are excellent but maybe not financial blockbusters. They're the ones who can afford to parlay a reputation for excellence into further success of their more commercial products (since they're diversified and more likely to live long enough to realize the returns). Yet, it's only indies and self-publishers who seem to care about doing the best work... and this isn't limited to games, but visible in all the arts right now. The entities that can afford big risks and long-term plays (inherent to excellence strategies) nevertheless avoid them, and the small actors are invariably the ones making them.
Of course, we're talking about an outlier here. Excellence doesn't guarantee anything, but it is a strategy that sometimes works.
The irony is that you'd expect the big publishers to be the ones willing to take on risks and put out products that are excellent but maybe not financial blockbusters. They're the ones who can afford to parlay a reputation for excellence into further success of their more commercial products (since they're diversified and more likely to live long enough to realize the returns). Yet, it's only indies and self-publishers who seem to care about doing the best work... and this isn't limited to games, but visible in all the arts right now. The entities that can afford big risks and long-term plays (inherent to excellence strategies) nevertheless avoid them, and the small actors are invariably the ones making them.
When people say Stardew Valley is a counterpoint, are they saying publishers shouldn't pay developers at all until their game is a massive success? ConcernedApe spent 4 years working on the game on a pretty much ramen salary and then hit a success; I vastly prefer whatever dysfunction we have now, to publishers not paying any salaries unless you come with a 1-in-100 success.
Games are a hit driven business; so if you have a success you are incentivized to milk it; if you don't want to be forced to milk it, then don't build 100M-budget games. If you are building a $100M game and not baking in monetization, then you are an idiot.
Games are a hit driven business; so if you have a success you are incentivized to milk it; if you don't want to be forced to milk it, then don't build 100M-budget games. If you are building a $100M game and not baking in monetization, then you are an idiot.
> Stardew Valley sold over 400,000 copies across Steam and GOG.com in two weeks,[13][72][73] and more than a million within two months.
Stardew Valley sold at $14.99. At 1 million copies in two months that's around 15 million gross, which works out to a 3.75 million payout for each of those 4 years of Ramen living. I would happily live off Ramen for a payout like that, and I think this is usually what people are talking about when they say this game is a counterpoint.
No, this doesn't mean you don't pay developers if you're a giant company. But it does mean that you don't need to put in MTX or AAA quality to have a successful game. 3.75 million a year could support 37 developers at 100k a year. Which means you could lead a small team to mild success instead of busting out 100s of developers for a 100 million budget game.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardew_Valley#:~:text=Senso....
Stardew Valley sold at $14.99. At 1 million copies in two months that's around 15 million gross, which works out to a 3.75 million payout for each of those 4 years of Ramen living. I would happily live off Ramen for a payout like that, and I think this is usually what people are talking about when they say this game is a counterpoint.
No, this doesn't mean you don't pay developers if you're a giant company. But it does mean that you don't need to put in MTX or AAA quality to have a successful game. 3.75 million a year could support 37 developers at 100k a year. Which means you could lead a small team to mild success instead of busting out 100s of developers for a 100 million budget game.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardew_Valley#:~:text=Senso....
I think the problem is that we have to have $100M games - or bust. There is very little funding available for those "less than blockbuster" titles.
Even with predatory monetization it is extremely hard to recoup costs caused by such budget - there is a market for only so many Worlds of Warcrafts or similar long running games where the huge costs can be amortized over millions of players and years of subscriptions.
If you don't build the game around the "AAA" assumption that requires you to ship (and have made!) hundreds of gigabytes of artwork, scripting and what not, then a lot of these monetization pressures go away - unless your producer pushes to put it back in, because, hey, free money!
Even with predatory monetization it is extremely hard to recoup costs caused by such budget - there is a market for only so many Worlds of Warcrafts or similar long running games where the huge costs can be amortized over millions of players and years of subscriptions.
If you don't build the game around the "AAA" assumption that requires you to ship (and have made!) hundreds of gigabytes of artwork, scripting and what not, then a lot of these monetization pressures go away - unless your producer pushes to put it back in, because, hey, free money!
>Riccitiello: One thing I always find interesting is, anytime there is talk about the stock market and the future of recession, the one growth industry becomes pundits. People with something to say and not a lot of knowledge about what they’re talking about.
Yeah, that's HN in a nutshell.
Yeah, that's HN in a nutshell.
anyone making actual art is technically a fucking idiot compared to someone making money the same way a martyr is an idiot
Actual title of the linked article is:
> John Riccitiello: this industry divides people who shun monetisation and those who embrace what makes a successful product
Instead, we get the non-representative clickbait "fucking idiots" in our title, which goes against the HN ethos and guidelines:
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> John Riccitiello: this industry divides people who shun monetisation and those who embrace what makes a successful product
Instead, we get the non-representative clickbait "fucking idiots" in our title, which goes against the HN ethos and guidelines:
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And looks like the clickbait is working too, this is one of the top posts of the day already. Bit ironic that OP is condemning dark patterns like iAP, when clickbait is a dark pattern itself
> Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.
Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an idiot, just that there are some in that group of people. And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.
The next thing he says in the interview:
> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.