this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Loot boxes are so 2017. It's all about battle passes, engagement, and player retention now.
You know what creates engagement and retains players?
Making a good game that's actually fun to play instead of focusing on how you're gonna sell me hats and paint jobs and weaponizing FOMO.
But however will the poor shareholders get their value this quarter?
Someone think of the shareholders!
Oh I am thinking of them.. how to murder shareholders in various unique ways... could be neat game idea too!
As much as I prefer this model that actually isn’t what creates engagement and retains players over several games and years. They don’t do it because it’s fun to make predatory things. They do it because it makes them heaps of money. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it. That’s the sad truth here.
Re: hats and paint jobs…hats dominated TF2 for how long? There was a black market and widespread scamming for cosmetics, that’s how nuts it got.
I wonder if the TF2 "buds" item is still used as a game-trading currency.
Sorry, but the other methods are demonstrably better at it. We didn't arrive at them by accident. There are outliers like Civilization keeping people hooked for years; the people still playing Skullgirls all these years later sure aren't doing it for any type of reward system. But the fast track to keeping people playing your game is to use all the scummy bullshit.
I wonder why they haven't tried the model airport books and comics use, though. We could do it with games at this point. Like, make a series of games that are low budget, relatively short, and easy to pump out very quickly, but with a distinct series identity and maybe a consistent writer/artist across games. Then make a lot of them and get people hooked on the series instead of on 1 mega game.
Even just text adventure style games, wireframe arcade style games, bullethells, shooters like Vampire Survivor & etc, visual novels, syuff like Undertale, whatever? I think it's clear that a low budget or small team doesn't equate to unpopularity these days, if the game is made with care and attention to detail.
We do have series now but they're high budget and long and kind of also trying to be the 1 mega game at the same time.
There's also a lot of options for reaching new/underserved audience. Like. Make a high quality horse game for once, please? And profit off a bazillion horse girls who've been waiting for just that for decades.
Or make games for other countries that don't have a big video games market yet, maybe. Like sell a console real cheap, at a loss, and then sell games in an area where there's less competition? Maybe.
Telltale has entered (and exited) the chat.
I think that's exactly what Fortnite and Destiny 2 do, even though I object to the way they do it for so many reasons.
One example might be Fnaf (before security breach or help wanted), since they are relatively simple, short games made by one guy, not on high budget. Most of them launched like 3-6 months after each other, keeping up interest in the series.
Something big aaa games also miss is the creativity, since a cool gimick can be implemented as a main mechanic in a 1-2 hour game, since it doesnt over stay its welcome.
So yeah, most games are getting too long for their own good (like ubi sandbox games), not to mention the 'games as a service' games.
Urban Games currently does this with Transport Fever. They flat out said while hyping the release of Transport Fever 2 (which was their third transport tycoon style game) that their goal as a development studio is to make the best transportation tycoon game they can. So they intend to continuously iterate.
N3V Games, who developes the Trainz simulator game was literally formed to buy up the property and talent from its original developer Auran and continue the franchise
There's a third example I was going to give but got distracted while writing this comment and forgot