Why gamers should be worried about Microsoft advertising in Windows | Hacker News Reader

Why gamers should be worried about Microsoft advertising in Windows

medium.com

5 pointskminehart3 comments

Hi guys. I'm the author of this article. I would appreciate any constructive feedback; I'm not much of a writer but I do feel passionately about this.

Thank you.

To start with, this is very much a slippery slope fallacy from my perspective. I'm not saying this to outright dismiss your claims, but that if you want to avoid being seen as a "Chicken Little" on this subject you either need more direct evidence and/or maybe tone down the way you approach it/present it (less hyperbole, a less inflammatory domain name).

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and there are clear holes in your logic. Why are gamers particularly subject to "lock down" and "walled garden" as opposed to any other Windows user? Beyond political spats with Valve (which mostly seem to go one way with Valve angry at Microsoft, but Microsoft remaining happy that Steam is a mostly good Windows citizen/sub-ecosystem), what makes you think that Microsoft would break backward compatibility just for gamers when it potentially endangers Microsoft's long standing relationships with enterprise customers that are built on decades of backward compatibility?

Furthermore, can you better explain why a "walled garden" is bad for gamers? A lot of gamers (in fact, the long standing majority) are perfectly happy with their PlayStations, Nintendos, and Xboxes. A walled garden may be exactly what gamers want. Maybe it's not a massive conspiracy to endanger "PC master race gamers" but a company trying to make "I want a good console" gamers happier on Windows?

A rising tide floats all boats and it is better for everyone if there are strong gaming ecosystems on other platforms such as Linux and macOS, so instead of focusing on what you perceive to be Microsoft's problems and behaviors, can you try to focus more on Linux's benefits and be passionate about "Why gamers should love Linux" more than "Why gamers should be worried about Microsoft"?

Thank you for your detailed and helpful response.

I wholeheartedly agree with your first point. I was honestly worried that I was approaching "slippery slope" territory. Really what I intended to show by the "historical" aspects was that Microsoft was capable of shutting down a competitive market with their own product because of their enormous market share, and that it almost seems like they're about to attempt something similar for their app store.

I'm not super proud of the article that I wrote; I think it's full of logical fallacies. I'll be doing it over again on the flight I'm on tomorrow, and I really want to be more structured and logical in my argument.

> Why are gamers particularly subject to "lock down" and "walled garden" as opposed to any other Windows user?

My goal isn't really demonstrate that Windows locks users into its platform. I'll be honest: I just really want to play Overwatch on Linux without using Wine. So by targeting PC gamers specifically I hope to draw more attention.

> Furthermore, can you better explain why a "walled garden" is bad for gamers? A lot of gamers (in fact, the long standing majority) are perfectly happy with their PlayStations, Nintendos, and Xboxes.

That's true. I'm not here to tell gamers what they want. I think that PC gamers are a different breed; we love our freedom of choice. We all build our computers differently. We can buy DRM free games, games on Steam, games on the Windows store or on Origin or physical copies. My fear is that Microsoft might be trying to limit our freedom of choice and I want people to know about it.

> Maybe it's not a massive conspiracy to endanger "PC master race gamers" but a company trying to make "I want a good console" gamers happier on Windows?

Platform lock-in usually begins a set of exclusive features. The problems arise whenever the company does something to make you not want to be a customer anymore; how can you switch whenever all of your games are on the Windows store?

I think a good demonstration of this is Apple and iCloud. iOS is a pretty locked-down platform. iCloud is a huge convenience for a normal user. Apple has done a number of things that may make a consumer unhappy, but it is a hassle for them to switch to a competitor whenever they've tightly integrated with iCloud.

> A rising tide floats all boats and it is better for everyone if there are strong gaming ecosystems on other platforms such as Linux and macOS, so instead of focusing on what you perceive to be Microsoft's problems and behaviors, can you try to focus more on Linux's benefits and be passionate about "Why gamers should love Linux" more than "Why gamers should be worried about Microsoft"?

You know what: I absolutely agree. I'll try to focus on the positive more than the negative next time around. I tried to do that with the website I made to accompany the article.

Thanks a lot for your input. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your opinion and constructive criticism.

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