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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge tangent, but I've started harboring similar feelings for video games. Go read comments for the latest game and 90% of the comments will be about item drops, skins, loot drops, whatever. It's absolutely mind boggling because all those things IMO suck the fun out of the game which it to kill something, kill someone, or explore some world.

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I winced hard at the $70 price tag on Tears of the Kingdom - but damned if I didn't get more than my money's worth. One of the things that makes that game so fun is that the whole thing is just there in front of you and you are largely allowed to approach the game however you want. One of the best games ever in terms of respecting the player's intelligence and creativity - just gives you a set of tools and says "fuck around and find out."

Nintendo is sometimes very good at what they do. Another example is the Pikmin series. Miyamoto's favorite. It's never been a real seller, but they do another version every ten years and it gets better every time. One day we'll look at these games and realize how much they invented.

I was first a bit torn about Tears of the Kingdom, it was hard to get back to the world of Breath of the Wild. Then I found this cave, and then it was 2am, and four hours disappeared somewhere. Now I can't let it out of my hands...

Tears of the Kingdom is a perfect example of doing it right. It respects the player and treats them well. Jedi Survivor does too.

The key is to just pass on those sorts of games, because there are still plenty of others that don't play with the customer that way.

I'm actually arguing against the gamer in this case. For the most part, I enjoy those games because I don't work myself up over loot drops, skins, etc.

This is one of the major reasons why I stopped playing most games entirely. When the fun has been monetized out of them, what's the point?

I mostly play single player games these days because they've been spared. I played a Plague's tale a few weeks ago. Really strange premise but a lot of fun!

Game publishers must fear the day when a FOSS game engine will be interfaced with a FOSS AI capable of creating credible worlds and interacting NPCs.

More recycled garbage that I can ignore

They already use procedural generation for worlds and stupid NPCs. If adding Open Source AI makes offline single player games more credible, I'd be all for it. If not also because that would force them to make online multiplayer games a lot more palatable. The point is creating competition, not discouraging multiplayer.

I only play single-player games anymore because I won't play any game that requires a connection to a server somewhere. So it's not a stance against multiplayer games (I still play old multiplayer games with my friends. They just don't require connecting with a third-party server) but a stance against phoning home.

That means there are quite a few single player games that are off the table for me as well.

There's too many single player games that require an internet connection though, usually for DRM or (if mobile) ad serving purposes :/

Single player games are not competitive enough for the people who believe in "the microtransactions are only cosmetic".

That's generally true, but I'd point out the Souls games which can be very rewarding for competitive people.

Who are you competing with, speed runners? I've played all of them but I never thought i should look online and find some other player to compete with in kill time or something.

Edit: oh funny. I forgot they had pvp in them. Because I've always ignored it and in Elden ring you can't get invaded unless you ask for it, so I never was.

I've basically given up on AAA titles and don't bother anymore. The only games I can tolerate now are indie and story driven games like "The Quarry"[0]. I think studios such as Ubisoft are the biggest offenders in this space, if you look at all their latest release , it is all free to play, looter shooter "live service" games. On second thought, everything related to tech is becoming junk in general: from Social Media to Games to Subscription based Note apps to Mobile apps.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1577120/The_Quarry/

Just stop playing most AAA or mobile games and that should solve most of that for you. The exceptions being the God of War series, the Mario and Zelda series. I still get excited for those. And probably the next Elder Scrolls or Witcher game.

But other than that, lately I've been far more excited about the Persona series, Nier Automata, Spike Chunsoft games (especially Danganronpa), The Witness (a bit older now), The Outer Wilds, Subnautica, Slay the Spire, Inscryption, and Vampire Survivors.

Tears of the Kingdom is probably the best pure exploration game ever made, with Outer Wilds being better in some ways, as it's simulating an entier solar system in real time and has some really clever ideas in it, but it's a smaller game overall. I think I pretty much fully explored Outer Wilds (except the expansion) in 20 hours, I've aleady put in 80 hours into TOTK and I've seen maybe 40% of the content so far.

Yes, it's a disaster. A lot of industries are out to maximize profits, even if it means destroying their own product. What economic forces would drive you to ruin their product? Are these corporations looking ahead economically and concluding it's best to destroy their product and just accept the money?

The mobile gaming era pioneered the approach where game design is fundamentally driven by the game's monetization mechanics.

It's mind boggling how many people enjoy that though. You're right. Clash of Clans et all really changed the gaming dynamic.

Just as an example, Halo Infinite came out and it had warts, but also had a good fundamentals for gameplay. Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.

The thing a lot of these AAA devs don’t seem to get is that what works for Clash of Clans doesn’t work for AAA games most of the time. Also, the Clash of Clans devs are liked by the player base because they take community feedback very seriously (and, as a counter point, the Clash Royale devs are despised because they don’t).

Buying a monthly pass for one of those games ends up feeling like a pretty good deal because it enables you to increase your engagement with the game by a lot for what feels like a good deal. AAA shooters that go down this rabbit hole feel like they’re spending more development effort pushing skins I don’t want while giving a half-backed game with the promise of improvement in the future that often never happens.

For the price of a monthly pass for Clash games, I’m easily getting more hours of enjoyment than dollars invested each month.

> Buying a monthly pass for one of those games ends up feeling like a pretty good deal because it enables you to increase your engagement with the game by a lot for what feels like a good deal.

You have no idea how right you are. It increases your engagement. Not your enjoyment.

> Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.

You have to play for something. To reach the end of the story. To grow a thing (city builders, minecraft). Or... for skins in a competitive shooter. But there are no skins unless you pay real money for the game you've already paid for. Oops?

The surprising thing is how captive we our to the chemical responses of our brains. These companies measure out dopamine like a drug and use their games to drip-feed it methodically to maximize your cash spend.

This exact thing made me stop wanting to use reddit

I would like to add completion mechanics and badges to this list of things as well. Reddit is obsessed with 100% completion. It stops being a game and starts being work at some point.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point in the past it stopped being about playing games for fun, and turned into playing these things for something else - status maybe? I don't know how to describe what I'm thinking.

Yeah, I had to remove myself from gaming subs.

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