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Comment by SirMaster | Hacker News Reader

I've honestly never minded all the micro-transaction stuff myself.

It means I get to play tons of games now for free, subsidized by others.

I'm "guilty" of this too but my problem with this is that the monetisation controls the design.

If they're heavy on cosmetics, there's incentive to make the gameplay-obtained stuff worse. If they have QoL upgrades, the base experience is worse. If the cash shop exists, it's plastered all over the menus and with little annoying notifications, breaking immersion. Not to mention silly joke outfits, which generally proliferate even in serious games.

They designed Diablo 4 at a very high zoom level - my guess is this is so you focus on your character more, making you want to deck them out in cosmetics. This limited FoV makes gameplay worse.

You log in to town in PoE, instead of your hideout, where you want to spend most of your time. The players suspect this is so you see other players in their supporter pack outfits, tempting you to do the same. This is a small annoyance, but it's there, and won't be fixed.

> It means I get to play tons of games now for free, subsidized by others.

The article does mention some tactics that would prevent this, such as a bottleneck in the game where a level is so difficult a user can't reasonably win without having to pay. With such a tactic, you would not get to completely play tons of games, and the game becomes more of a free demo where the later parts of the game are unlocked with money, but that fact is hidden behind a manipulative psychological mechanic.

Ah, I only play multiplayer games, and so I have never really seen much of anything that I can't do for free.

There are many multiplayer games, especially on mobile, where the more you spend, the more powerful you are. One of the more infamous recent examples was Activision-Blizzard's Diablo: Immortal, where the most powerful items were locked behind either significant monetary investments (think tens to hundreds of dollars) or unfathomable amounts of grinding (literal decades for a >80% chance at some of the top-tier items, or something crazy like that). And these items were very much usable in PvP combat, where any non-paying player has about 0 chance of ever winning.

>There are many multiplayer games, especially on mobile, where the more you spend, the more powerful you are.

Sure, but none of the ones I play work like that. There are plenty that don't. Easy to simply avoid the ones that do.

Companies are actively working to make it harder. Some games now launch without microtranscations of any kind, or with cosmetic-only ones. Then, after they gain popularity (and thus hook you in), they start adding more and more pay-to-win transactions. Sometimes it's also unclear that an item they offer for sale will make it easier to win, by hiding the advantage behind various layers of obfuscation.

Also, if you agree that these types of games are not worth playing, perhaps you also agree that not much would be lost if they were outright banned?

The mobile Dungeon Keeper was pretty infamous for this.

Eh, it depends. A lot of free games are trash from a gameplay perspective, if you spend any amount of time in them it's obvious how they're trying to milk you for money.

Free games with cosmetic mtx are usually better, but I really don't like the direction the industry is taking.

While really great fixed-price games with no mtx are still being made, it certainly feels like a dying model in the AAA world.

Maybe, but I seem to have fun with plenty of free games.

DotA 2, Call of Duty Warzone 2.0, PUBG, etc.

I am looking forward to Embark Studio's 2 free-to-play games (Arc Raiders, and THE FINALS)

Try some random appstore games.

There are very, very few games as generous as Dota2 out there.

Ah, I only play PC games, not mobile or console.

I can see how it would be bad in mobile games.

Same with cheap shoes - I get to buy new cheap shoes every month, subsidized by child slave labor in some far away place.

Or, perhaps I should feel some moral qualms about riding on the suffering of others. And make no mistake: most F2P games are subsidized not by some million people each spending $2 dollars to get a Candy Crush hammer or some nicer-looking toy, they are subsidized by some hundred people each spending $2000 to fuel their addiction to seeing the numbers go up.

Are we really comparing voluntary entertainment to working a job to make a living?

No, we are comparing coerced "entertainment" with coerced labor.

The people who feel compelled to spend every last dollar they own on a game are not doing it for entertainment - they are victims, and something in their psyche has been successfully manipulated by the game designers.

I realized that playing free to play online shooters was detrimental to my health. Fortunately I did not fall victim to monetization and only spent what I thought to be reasonable for the quality of the game. However I would stay up all night playing, hoping for one extra loot box or one more battle pass level. I've had to force quit these types of games multiple times. I'm fortunate in the ways games affect me, but others are not so. Their finances can be ruined, their lives taken over by a psychologically damaging product. I just can't support this. People are getting hurt. It's equivalent to the addictiveness of smoking and alcohol. This can't be the way we have fun

"One more turn/match" is bad enough for sleep & life when it's not supercharged by actual gambling mechanics designed by a team of professionals to keep you playing. Yeesh.

That is important to say. I have definitely stayed up all night playing games with zero extra monetary support. Those nights are infrequent and devoted to games I absolutely enjoy. Once I get my fun from them I go back to sleeping normally. Free to play games override this sense of contentment.

I play multiple free online shooters. But I have never spent a penny on one and never plan to.

They also don't affect my health as I just play a normal and reasonable amount of time and it doesn't seem to interfere with my life or sleep or heath in any other way that I or anyone around me has seen or said.

Maybe it helps that don't care about loot boxes and battle passes and such? The battle pass (if free) levels up, but I rarely even look at what it does for me.

I just play and enjoy these games for what they are like I did 20 years ago (quake, counter strike, call of duty 1/2, bf1942, unreal tournament, etc). No unlocks, no progression, etc.

What's your point? The parent post said they find the games addictive. Your comment is like bragging to an alcoholic that you can drink in moderation.

My point is just to tell my point of view and my experience on the topic at hand.

If they are sharing their experience, why shouldn’t I share mine?

Your experience is irrelevant, since, as you stated in another comment, you play the most popular f2p games on PC, which are actually reasonably monetized. The games remain fair and monetization focuses on cosmetics and/or faster progression.

The article on the other hand explicitly talks about mobile games, which are monetized vastly differently and significantly more predatory.

Reminds me of how sweepstakes always include a no purchase necessary option. Maybe there's a legal analog to be seen.

Playing games with micro transactions and not paying playing it wrong. The games are specifically designed such that not paying feels bad, but paying just a little gets you to enjoy it significantly more.

If a game includes micro transactions its most important goal is to get you to spend money once, that is the most important psychological barrier to overcome. And that is why many "free to play" games are unpleasant to play without paying money.

There are a few exceptions (Dota2, csgo, path of exile and sone more) but on mobile these are exceedingly rare and drowned out by games designed to get you to spend money.

> path of exile

Path of Exile actually is unpleasant to play toward the endgame without specialized stash tabs, which cost money. PoE has possibly the most irritating item/inventory management of any game I've ever seen, and those purchased stash tabs make it tolerable. But the total cost of the mandatory tabs is still somewhat reasonable compared to what you can get out of the game.

At the point where you reach the stage you need to start worrying about stash space in Path of Exile you are going to be many, many hours into the game. And once you purchase the enhanced storage space it is a permanent addition to your account. Personally I don't mind this form of monetization. As far as predatory strategies goes it is on the low end.

I played Genshin Impact earlier this year I was enjoying the game until it sank in just how predatory the whole thing felt - they had timegates baked into the game to encourage you to spend money - there was a limit to how much of the in-game currency you could earn each day (it was also a very low maximum cap). You needed to spend this currency to level up items and characters etc so it placed a deliberate block on how quickly you could progress and of course you could spend money to bypass this block. Not only that but because of how little of the currency you could carry it created a massive FOMO loop where you needed to be logging in everyday to spend your allotted quota ro you would miss out on making progress on your account.

Although I try to avoid them I do feel bothersome that a large chunk of the market is taken up by games that are made with the goal of getting you to pay instead of being fun. Broken incentives.

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