Beemo Dinosaurierfuß

I get it.

I sometimes put AAA games on my wishlist anyway.
Not to buy them on release but to get alerted when they go on discount at some point down the line, which is generally how I use my wishlist mostly.

I have some unreleased indie games on there as well, but those I might just buy full price anyway whenever I feel like it or have a little extra free time to play a bit more at a time.

You comment and comment and explain and explain shit that everyone already knows.

It is like you just recently learned what marketing is and now you feel like you know some big secret.

Just to make it short.
Every product in the world is marketed in a way to motivate consumers to buy.
That is not inherently immoral.

You said every successful game monetizes by maximizing addiction and frustration.

I have proven you wrong by naming games that just DO NOT MAXIMIZE FRUSTRATION.

Yeah off course even those games dangle stuff in front of you that you are supposed to buy.
That’s the whole business model of f2p games.

But there are different ways to get to the players money.

There are those that indeed trigger responses to frustration.
This is absolutely prevalent in mobile games or even those million deckbuilder games.

But there just are also games that use other ways to make players buy mtx.
Again, you can play PoE, LoL, CS and many other games for literal thousands of hours without ever getting coaxed into frustrating barriers like a Diablo Immortals would do to players.

You said there aren’t. So you were wrong.

So have fun running around with a goalpost in your hand, I am done.

right?

No, still wrong.

Obviously it is something that is not given to you for free.
It is a product and the developers/publishers are doing business after all.

And yes Sherlock, it is qol functionality that people playing the endgame might want and that is not included in the free version of the game.
But every functionality that any player ever needs is available for far less than what any other AAA title costs up front.

PoE is mainly financed by purely cosmetic supporter packs and whales.
Is that much more ethical than what you described? Maybe not.

But it sure as hell is not banking on frustrating the average user and thus a completely different form of monetization than the one that you just doubled down on insisting is the only one there is.
So again as I said, you are just plain wrong.

Oh and in CS I don’t think you can buy any functionality at all.
Only cosmetics, that don’t do anything for you in the game.

Any successful example is optimized for addiction and frustration.

That is just plain wrong.
Addiction I guess but frustration definitely not necessarily.
There are countless examples of highly successful games that do not monetize like that.

You can happily play PoE for thousands of hours without paying a penny; if you want to get into trading drop like 20 bucks for some stash tabs and you are ready to go again for absolutely any content the game has to offer.

CS or LoL also work just fine for f2p players.

And I say that as a player that fucking hates the new generation of soulless live service games.

Not that my opinion matters any more than the next person’s, but I also can’t recommend Celeste enough.

It does so many things so very right.
The pure gameplay is crisp and responsive platforming.
Like any good platfmorer it has some specific mechanics that make it unique, but every one is intuitive enough to pick up easily enough. I have heard it called something like “the hardest platformer that everyone can finish.”

And it is true. I could never finish some of the harder SMB levels but I never got too frustrated with Celeste.
And if I were, there would have been accessibility options to make the game more approachable.

But it also caters to the hardcore crowd with completely optional collectibles that are organically included into the gorgeous level design.

It is speedrunnable for those folks.

And as if that wasn’t enough to make a good platformer it also tells a heartwarming story supported by a beautiful soundtrack.

Sorry I am rambling, but Celeste is fucking awesome.

I am not in love with this artstyle but if the gameplay is as crisp as one should expect from Evil Empire I will probably give this a chance.

Elden Ring runs just fine on my Deck, but it drains my battery pretty fast.

But I have a refurbished non OLED deck so ymmv.

Those Larian Studios people seem pretty nice from what one can hear.

Lovecraftian art is inspired by the tone and the mystery of Lovecrafts works and not by his racism.

But that aside I didn’t downvote you for your first sentence.
I personally wouldn’t even have downvoted you for your second sentence, even though I strongly disagree with it.

I downvoted you for your edit, which ironically is totally tone deaf.
Noone downvoted the fact, that you called the dude some stuff. You got downvoted for attacking Valve over an innocent sale of supernatural mystery games.

Having read some of his works, it sometimes is scarring to read how he pictures arabic or black peope.

He definitely let his personal racism seep into his stories.
So I think the argument can be made, that one shouldn’t just consume his works without critically reflecting on the author.

There is one story set in Egypt that I remember, where the open racism kept on breaking my immersion repeatedly.

But I agree that calling Valve tone deaf for highlighting lovecraftian games misses the spot.
Lovecraftian art is inspired by the tone and the mystery of Lovecrafts works and not of his racism.

Totally different genre, but I liked how Celeste approached this.

If you struggle to complete it there are tons of accessibility options to make the game more approachable.

And the content necessary to finish the games story is not too much, while giving challenging -well- challenges to anyone who wants to spend more time with the game.

And you clear the game screen by screen making it possible to only play it a short bit at a time.

It’s almost a bonus that the story and soundtrack are fucking beautiful.

Financial success.

Is it good?

And does it include a rootkit?

At least the Blizzard RTS community seems to be pretty optimistic to me.

And Frost Giant seemed to be aware that their niche is made up of competitive RTS gamers that hate, hate, hate pay to win.

If meta joined, the users that make most fediverse content now will see their engagement drop.

That’s where you lose me again.
Why would the engagement drop if a ton more users could consume your content.

It’s not like the ratio of content creators to lurkers is any better on meta apps than here.

Btw thank you for the good faith discussion, I don’t think that would have happened at the old place.

I know that you have put more thought into this topic than I did and you just might be right.

But dude that wallmart analogy misses the point by a mile.
Wallmart kills the small stores by simply undercutting them, this has nothing to do with what meta might do.

And you didn’t really argue my point that people like you and I could and probably would consume meta content if it was federated.
But why would anyone that is part of the fediverse right now jump ship if meta came and went away again?

I damn sure will never create another meta account or use any meta app. Would you?

I understand all those points.

I just don’t quite see how that would kill the fediverse.
After all wouldn’t we be exactly where we are now if meta disconnected again?

It’s not like you and I would suddenly start using threads if it started federating.

If you like reading and are into the Witcher I have just the thing for you.

I am pretty sure Epic gave away TW:Warhammer at some point, so maybe check if you already have it.

Disco Elysium is a good one but I know I don’t have the time right now.

Maybe I get me another Metroidvania.
I have Blasphemous (which I think was already on sale), Bloodstained RotN or Sundered EE on my wishlist, but again I would probably just make the pile of shame grow.