I think Hoyoverse (formerly Mihoyo) has the formula down. You don't have to spend money on their games. They play just fine without. But you think "wouldn't it be nice to have Ganyu or Hu Tao". I think the drop rates are better than FGO at least.
All the other freemium models are just tricking you into thinking you don't have to spend money.
And even that is still quite gambling-like, if you think about it.
Plus I paid $20 or whatever for OW1. That game no longer exists. I would have happily paid $20 for OW2, even $50-60. But since I don't subscribe to the pay for cosmetics model, now blizz gets $0 from me, and I just accept I won't get cool new dances.
That only makes it more tempting to start playing. You can't get hooked on these games if you never play them in the first place, so making it 'easier' to start playing is a big part of the problem.
What is any modern, non-boxed sales model videogame selling?
Artificial scarcity.
And who is in absolute control of that scarcity?
The developer.
Why addict yourself to something your counterparty has every incentive to abuse you over?
Or as I asked in terms of my EVE Online experience, "Am I actually enjoying every moment of playing, or am I doing work I don't enjoy just so that I can get something?"
sorry if this answer sounds dismissive, but well: "because it's fun". I don't think myself as that strong an addict, though. So if it starts feeling not fun I simply quit spending, and likely quit altogether.
>Or as I asked in terms of my EVE Online experience, "Am I actually enjoying every moment of playing, or am I doing work I don't enjoy just so that I can get something?"
that's honestly an interesting question in and of itself. Because real life can have that analog too. Especially for an MMO like Eve. There may not always be times where I want to go out with friends, but I want to keep good relations, so I can put up with it until/unless I really can't make that plan.
I imagine guilds in MMOs have similar incentive. At some point you make genuine friends and you're there for them more than the daily grind itself. It's a means to gather friends together.
The thing that really rubs me wrong is that you're playing a rigged game (literatively and figuratively) when you invest effort into grind games.
Essentially everything about the game world is under the developer's control, and they can use anything they want to get you to do what they want (spend more money).
Which to me feels like a card game where the dealer says "I'm going to cheat and redefine the rules whenever I want" and customers respond "Deal me in!"
Granted, there are good and bad developers and publishers. I play a ton of Paradox games, and I'm generally happy with the balance.
I don't personally care if they set more restrictions, but I'm not really a fan of outright banning something that an able adult chooses to partake in. Which seems to be how so much of the conversation goes on the topic.
In any case, I still don't believe that games are so addicting as to be compared to Cigarette's nicotine. I a dealer changes the rules too drastically and maliciously against my ability to have fun... I leave. And that's why many mobile games outside of the absolute top money makers tend to be short lived. They aren't just a casino holding players hostage, they compete with other games and even medium, and like any game it can be hard to hold attention. Some may not even go in with the intent to hold the player attention for more than a few months.
>Granted, there are good and bad developers and publishers. I play a ton of Paradox games, and I'm generally happy with the balance.
of course. It's the same even with old school PS1/N64 titles. But I suppose many people aren't knowledgable enough in those games to know which are good/bad, and assume all are bad.
They can "simply" create an entire culture around a game or even individual characters and use that parasocial relationship to grip players. Within the game with stories and bond mechanics and whatnot, and outside the game with animation, merch, Youtube personalities (as it's called today, Virtual Youtubers, or "VTubers"), and even concerts. And I didn't even get into the fanart side of this.
It makes for better game design at least. but what they are doing is much larger thinking than those old school arcade grift strategies.
For example, I have a friend who is into ウマ娘 (Uma Musume - Horse Girls) by Cygames. It's a "horse racing" game with anime girls with horse ears. There's a whole ecosystem around it with several anime series, concerts with music from the game with the voice actors singing and dancing on stage, variety shows with the voice actors, YouTube channels, lots of limited edition merch you can win at convenience stores.
My friend (who only has a part time job and lives with her parents at age 25) has spent over $700 upgrading just one of her characters. "But she's so cute!"
https://1kuji.com/products/umamusume7
https://umamusume.jp/event/gb5th/gaze/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAWxPGGuIfWME2KTLUmSCHw
etc etc it never ends
If your friend can't afford that, why is the problem Uma Musume and not your friend? We could regulate gacha games into extinction, but that only means your friend will just find another avenue to spend $700 dollars of unaffordable money in.
If anything, I would at least take solace in the fact your friend isn't spending her money on things that would matter of factly cause tangible harm like drugs and alcohol instead.
I just meant it as a concrete example of how the parasocial marketing tactics GP mentioned in these games get people to spend way more than they had planned to (or that you even could spend in "classic" games)
We never seem to blame the source of the problem in any of these discussions, blaming one scapegoat after another in a frantic and futile attempt to blame anything but the actual problem. It prevents any meaningful answer from coming to bear.
It's not exactly new either. Toy lines were doing this as early as the 70's by leveraging colorful mascots in commercials and commisioning thinly veiled ads they called cartoons to keep the brand awareness. We simply have better tools to do this today.
No, the source of the problem are people who can't responsibly manage their finances. Whether that stems from something within their control or not is irrelevant.
If it's the latter, then yes we can keep avoiding addressing the actual problem.
Combined with more serious forms of gambling like horse racing (keiba) and pinball (pachinko), there simply isn't a stigma against gambling like there is in the west.
It's gross when you hear a young kid talk about how much some youtuber or twitch streamer "whaled" on stream like it's a flex to be admired.
I've tossed a little money (probably about USD40 over three years) on Genshin, but I'd rather express my attachment to characters by buying an Arataki Itto oppai mousepad off of Aliexpress. TBH, I found my interest waning when I realized I had a sufficiently capable team of characters I liked, so there wasn't really any reason to go chasing characters I didn't want.