#predatory monetization

[paradoxcase]

I've been looking over this site, and I think some of these "dark patterns" are not actually dark patterns for everyone. I think, for a number of these, some people might say, well, yeah, that's what I wanted out of the game and that's why I play it, this is not a surprise to me, or something I dislike. For example, it specifically notes in the Infinite Treadmill pattern that many people like this type of game specifically because it can't be completed, and MMOs that make use of this are practically as old as any type of computer game - it dates back to completely 100% free text-based MUDs and was not invented by modern mobile games. But apparently some people have an unhealthy relationship to this type of game, which I never realized before. I dunno, I play a lot of sandbox games, so maybe I'm just more used to the idea of it being fine to never finish a game, but I played MUDs in the past and didn't feel like the other people playing them were being negatively affected by the fact that they couldn't finish the game, and instead appreciated the fact that there would always be more stuff to do. Similarly, with Complete the Collection, a lot of games have collecting as the purpose of the game, and I think a lot of people do actually enjoy the process of collecting and don't feel driven to finish their collection even if they are not enjoying the game anymore, or would be forced to spend real money, or at least that's how I feel about them. Like, a lot of IRL collections of say, stamps, or bugs, or rocks are also collections that would be impossible or almost impossible to complete, but plenty of people still have fun with them without feeling compelled to spend huge amounts of money on them.

Then there's this:

A common dark pattern seen in modern mobile games is the timer. Often, you have a certain amount of "energy" that you can use to play the game. When you run out of energy, you can no longer play until this energy replenishes itself.

If I recall right, this concept was originally pioneered by Kingdom of Loathing, and KoL dubbed it an "anti-poop-socking" measure, i.e. a way to keep users from spending literally all of their free time playing the game such that they began pooping in a sock rather than leaving the game. This was considered a positive and healthy aspect to the game, and I don't recall KoL having any monetization to speak of. I know that a lot of mobile games do shit like "oh, it takes 2 minutes/10 minutes/3 hours to craft this, come back then!" but this example is specifically talking about running out of some "energy" currency that you have to wait to regenerate. They later do make reference to this newer type of pattern:

Another common in-game timer is related to "harvesting" or "research". You may send your character off to harvest some resources, but you have to wait an arbitrary amount of time before this task is completed. This forces you to stop playing and wait for the timer to expire. Often there is a way to pay money or watch an advertisement to accelerate or skip the timer.

I'm not sure it really makes sense to lump these two things together, they seem like completely different things.

And then there's this sub-item of the Aesthetic Manipulations pattern:

3) Subconscious Associations - People like cute things or tasty things. This is why a lot of games use cute animals or candy imagery. In-game candy attracts the subconscious desire for sweets and makes the game more desirable.

I mean, this isn't a secret. People like playing games with cute art, a lot of the time that's the point of the game. If this were saying like, the game uses cutesy art to make you want to spend money on microtransactions or spend premium currency, I agree that's nefarious. But this just seems to be saying that any attempt to make the game's art or subject look cute or attractive is a problem. And this is listed alongside things like tricking you into buying something by coloring the Yes button red, or guilt-tripping you into spending premium currency. It's very strange. It's like saying, man this game tricked me into playing it by being fun.

I fucking hate game apps. I wanted to play tetris the otherday so I figured there must be a simple tetris app out there its the most basic game. But every app is like heres your daily log in bonus of 10 gold! You get 5 free plays a day. Here's an ad. To replay a level costs 1 diamond. You can eart gold by earning points in levels. 1000 points = 1 gold. You can exchange 550 gold for one diamond but we have a sale right now that they only cost 500 gold. Heres an ad. You can buy a loot crate of diamonds for 5.99$! You leveled up! Heres 1 free diamond. Youve run out of free replays for today, would you like to buy some more diamonds? Heres your daily tasks, make sure to log in every day this month for a free reward chest. its free! Heres an ad. Would you like to sign up for this credit card to recieve 10 free diamonds? Invite a friend and you can earn points! Ding! Youve leveled up. Heres an ad. This is our special bonus play weekend, you get one free replay and a pack of diamonds only costs 4.99$. You can use your gold to purchase new skins for the tetris blocks. This ones shaped like cats! It costs 100 diamonds. You need to collect them all. Free to play, may be some in-app purchases.

[transcendingirl]

I love MtG, but it's impossible to talk about it with normal people and sound sane. You try explaining to your friends why it somehow makes sense that this card you just "pulled" (gambled for) is worth 25€. You can't! Because it doesn't! It feels so alienating. It's hard to convince anyone you love to play this game you like when it keeps increasing in price and honestly kind of keeps you addicted.

[crazysodomite]

western game company makes game with predatory monetization -> "game company" is awful!

game company from china makes game with predatory monetization -> the chinese are evil!

[yoiku]

So I played through episode 12 yesterday and episode 13 today between my cleaning sprees and i only cried a little maybe dozen times through it all, so all I can say is that the main story continues to deliver. Wasn't very keen on the storytelling style of ep13 at first, but definitely warmed up to it along the way. Getting scenes from the wiewpoint and in the thoughts of so many characters in just one episode turned out to be pretty refreshing. I did feel a bit overwhelmed as well but i'll put that on me chewing through it all in one day. Sometimes I feel a bit worried that where is the main story going to go after a huge chunk of it comes to a conclusion, but at the same time... If the side stories have proved anything, its that there are so many things about the entire world and lore to explore. And I have to admit I'm still getting more curious about it all. if you told me 5 years ago that the story and universe in a gacha game(derogative) is going to be something i'm obsessing over, I would've been so pissed at you even suggesting that. Anyway, its a nice feeling to be so interested in something. I've lost interest in so many things and i feel like over the years its getting harder and harder for me to really get into something.

[foulfirerebel]

The Addictive Cost Of Predatory Videogame Monetization (The Jimquisition) (youtube.com)

unironically believe that if you draw fanart for genshin or overwatch or whatever you should have to include a big red banner underneath saying THIS GAME WILL TRY TO INDUCE COMPULSIVE GAMBLING IN YOU in a huge font. kind of like how cigarette packaging has to say that it kills you

[boss-poss]

"cuck me with an anti fun patch" hasn't left my head since I read this

[demonir]

watched a zenless zone zero character demo video and it was sooooooooo cool but then i remembered the game isn't gonna be half as cool or enjoyable as the video bc it's a hoyoverse game so here I go imagining a better game in my head instead of downloading it ✌️

[dustofthedailylife]

Interesting... I switched browsers, away from a chromium-based one (Opera GX) to Firefox and suddenly tumblr is less buggy, too.

A welcome outcome...

Let's hope it stays that way. It's certainly less annoying to navigate the site now.

[sapphire-weapon]

i caved and bought the PC version of RE4make because i’m tired of not being able to mod leon’s hero hairstyle onto his normal default look

this is now the fourth time i’ve bought this game

i have spent $450 on this fucking video game

help

[luxlightly]

I have nothing against people who enjoy mascot horror games nor the basic idea of them, but the genre itself was created by a bigot and has been, basically since its inception, designed to prey on children in a desperate, souless cash grab that's completely overtaken the entire horror game industry and I'm thrilled by the idea of it dying a firey death.

[enarei]

Many here have joked that subscribing to Transgender Studies Quarterly is essentially $45 for a rehash of things that have been circulating on this website for years, or similar things tot that effect, but it seriously fills me with rage that the one major journal focusing on trans people, not exclusively as medical/legal subjects, is so inaccessible to the very populations it is concerned with.

How many trannies that aren't academics will read this shit? Not because it is not pertinent to them, but because they literally cannot?

Like, idk, it has become frustratingly difficult to find a good entry point into it other than just emailing the authors for each paper individually.

If I was enrolled in a fancy american college I'd quickly become the new Aaron Schwartz and try to upload all of them into lib-gen and sci-hub as soon as they ware drafted, or I'd like to say that knowing it's not a tad naive, but still--it doesn't seem absurd to think that amongst all the editors, someone would've made such an effort to make referencing this easier outside the scope of trans people in academia. That's such an unconscionably small group to come into contact with your work, it'd piss me off this isn't open access.

[moreeels]

i think i just have a soft spot for mascot horror games that blow up accidentally. i also love baldi basic and there is a SMALL (VERY SMALL) part of me that appreciates garten of banban

[lunarfortune]

"who cares about cosmetics anyway" EVERYONE. I don't know how to get it through to you that most games these days having monetized cosmetics don't do that just for a small minority of whales or whatever you think, but because they have actual market research that that kind of content is popular enough as a whole. Yes, a lot of times it probably Is whale bait! "normies don't care about cosmetics" yes they fucking do lmfao. Shocker! People like to dress up and look different from other players in video games!

It is so unbelievably frustrating to watch games start doing egregious monetization through cosmetics to test the waters with the playerbase and see people brush it off because "well its just cosmetic it doesnt matter"

Yes it does matter. Do you know how often the cosmetics have turned into other monetization that isn't solely cosmetic.

[jinxessticktogether]

y'know for all the (deserved) memes about the batshit crazy choices you sometimes get, i do actually love the Episode app

you mean to tell me i can read my y/n wattpad stories and they have animations to go with them?? and i actually get to choose what i do / say instead of the author assuming abt the reader??? god-tier

[captainrazzzledazzle]

@mr-kench

Wow you uh… you ok there ? Not sure what you were trying to do here but I’ll give you points for creativity, and hey at least you portrayed the conversation accurately, I asked questions and you kept telling me you gave me proof when all you did was continue to make vague claims.. 

I did say I was done but now I’m perplexed, you genuinely don’t seem to understand why I have no reason to believe what you say because you haven’t provided anything concrete, like you just don’t understand the concept of evidence. I’ll try to explainone last time myself as best as I can and why your arguments don't stand as is.

You said that in the leaks an unnamed consultant company was mentioned, however by your own accord the leaks are nowhere to be found now, so you can’t even see them yourself. You didn’t quote anything from the leaks or told me where to find archives or screenshots and you didn’t offer any precision on what exactly was said about the consultant company. You just implied that it was named as a reason why Spiderman 2 had to make rewrites in the leaks. That is not proof, your source here is literally just “trust me bro” tell me why I should take what you said at face value here ?

You said you “noticed patterns” and that you had a list of games that were negatively affected by SBI implying that SBI was the cause for games having to scrap content and make rewrites, yet you only listed spiderman 2 (you can’t make a list with only one thing ?!) and even then as I said above, there is no real evidence that spiderman 2’s cut content was because of SBI, and even how exactly it affected the game. So far you had only provided speculations. If you were to make a constructed argument here, you’d give me some of the names of games in that list and links to articles saying they had to make rewrites or to cut content. GIVE ME THAT DAMN LIST DINGUS >:(

Also most games have to cut content or make rewrites for a plethora of reasons, Elden Ring had to cut huge chunks of content for example because it was too ambitious, Overwatch 2 cut the whole PVE campaign and only released what are really just half-assed archive missions. Half-life 2 had to scrap 2 years of work because it wasn’t up to par with the rest of the game and SBI didn’t have anything to do with any of these games. The quality of the games I cited above vary a lot despite making cuts. Cut contents and rewrites aren't an indicator of quality just of setbacks in the developpment.

When I asked what you meant by corrupt, you said that the people working at SBI’s main goal was social justice, how is that being corrupt ? You then said that “they also make it clear in that same space the ultimate goal is to control how people think”, again, how do they make it clear, do you have any quote or link ?

Your main "proof" of SBI being bad and biggoted was you vaguely gesturing at twitter and telling me to go look at SBI’s employees posts, if you truly had something you could’ve given me ANYTHING, a twitter handle, a screenshot, an article. I am not going to scour twitter looking for proof for your argument. And from what I did see there was only one employee who asked people to report a steam group because they were getting harassed in mass because of said group.

You seem convinced that Miles being the "ambassador of his culture" as you put it is the fault of SBI, and not the original decision of the studio. Changing characters, and any big creative decisions are not what SBI do when they work with studios, they don't go around telling devs to completely change their characters. That wouldn't be feasible anyway because the edevs would have to redo pretty much everything if the main character was fundamentally changed. Go look at the links at the bottom of this post to find articles talking about what SBI really do.

Tl;dr : At any point in the conversation instead of getting increasingly angrier you could have just shut me up with solid proof If you had any. You weren’t even able to point to one of those videos peddling misinformation and ragebaiting. You gave no screenshot, no article, no link, no name or twitter handle, not even a quote. Nothing concrete, simply nothing at all. When you make wild claims like you did, the burden falls on YOU to substantiate it with evidence and proof. Claims alone aren’t arguments and they aren’t proof. People don’t live in your head; you need to actually build up an argument to convince others. I can't just take you at your words when you make insane claims.

But I know why you provided nothing. You didn’t notice patterns. You didn’t make lists. You didn’t do any research. All these ideas in your head aren’t yours, you watched a video, or read an inflammatory post that told you what to think, and what to be mad about. And you didn’t need convincing, you were already mad and wanted a target so you just went along with it because it was so easy to swallow. Do you even know why your claims are so vague ? It’s because the guy you got them from who made the steam group “SBI detected”, also had opinions based solely on vague feelings. He never even fucking played the games he claims are “different” and that "show a pattern" ! And here, some real fucking juicy PROOF (start at 2:19, he states he didn't play the game at 2:28).

Is there tokenization in media and video games ? Yes of course, and it sucks ! Is Sweet Baby Inc. the big bad that is surgically taking out all the fun from your favorite games ? Absolutely the fuck not ! There is no easy answer, no single target to remove that will magically solve everything. So launching a whole harassment campaign against them won’t make your games better, you’re just punishing people for nothing. Executives that want minorities’ money and who don’t care about art or storytelling are the ones making horrible decisions that make games worse as a result.

If after all of this you still don't want to buy games that SBI worked on at some point, great that's your choice, as long as you're not spreading lies and participating in harassment.

Here are three articles that provide proof of research on the subject and infos on what Sweet Baby Inc. actually does, and one explaining that the cut content and the rewrites in Spiderman 2 was because of Sony.

Kotaku Game Developer Wired Tech 4 Gamers

Bisous je m’envole.

[21st-century-minutiae]

Angry Birds was an early twenty-first century media series about a set of titular cartoon 'angry birds' attacking cartoon 'green pigs' in order to retrieve their stolen eggs. The media series began as a simple mobile game where the player used a slingshot to launch birds at a domino-esque two-dimensional fortification with the goal of trying to collapse it on top of the pig inhabitants. Levels would have a maximum number of attempts to collapse everything. As common in aggressively monetized mobile games, a person could pay real money to get further attempts.

Angry Birds was very influential in the early mobile game world, as one of the 'original' games. Its popularity led to many spinoffs, including a series of animated movies. Angry Birds is not considered a prime cornerstone of culture. It is very commercial and uncontroversial. But it is a well known concept.

A denizen of the early twenty-first century can be expected to understand that the poster was talking about 'Angry Birds' in the post.