When COD Mobile (both Global and Garena) released in October 2019 - less than 4 years ago - it had 50 Tiers in the battle pass. I came back and it's 200 tiers now, which is insane.
It's especially shocking to see as one of the OG players of CODM - I played it since launch - to see firsthand just how desperate capitalism has become at squeezing the proles of as much money as possible at every possible level including something as mundane as gaming.
Many believe it's the golden age of gaming. All bullshit, we're at the end of the gaming, where games cost $100 with more 50$ subscription fees. It's all over.
And you need a >$300 video card to even play the games ๐
AAA gaming is dead for me, but indie games are at its best.
Even 500$ gpu, without taking into account the price of the other components, easly a 1000$ pc. And if you're playing on console then insane subscriptions. Recently the price increases for playstation. Gaming era is over, it's not the golden age at all.
Its the golden age for corporate profits, not for consumers.
Yep. That's one reason I turned anti-capitalist during my neocon days.
I started to enjoy card games more recently (not gambling), they are way more multiplayer than multiplayer video games, since you actually meet with people face to face and have normal human interactions
And it's way cheaper
If you look at it from the point of playing games as a means of having fun and enjoying free time, you realize that you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars just to make your brain produce more serotonin, dopamin etc.. Dont fall for this bs
Ye. There's a reason why we're seeing fewer games these days.
That's why I pretty much exclusively play indie games these days. A small studio with less than half a dozen people aren't going to fuck over their customers with lootboxes and bullshit. If they make an expansion for a game it is a proper expansion for it.
AAA industry is pure garbage these days though, nothing worth playing in that slick, graphically detailed but gameplay bankrupt side of the industry.
I wrote more in my other comment, but I don't think we are at the end of gaming. I think we have simultaneously some of the best and some of the worst practices in gaming right now.
You can buy a game for $100 and spend $20 to buy a fucking pixel hat, but you can also spend $10 and get an amazing experience that a guy put together in his spare time over the past 12 years. There's been multiple game releases this year alone that would probably make my top 10 of all time list, none of which are ridldles with microtransactions.
I wish I could say that the exploitative business practices would go away, but we know they won't. I just hope the good practices don't go away as well.
Well yes there are many 10$ good indie games but mostly are an hour experience. So still an expansive way to gaming that only millionaire streamers can enjoy. Should be exist a minimum longevity for games to exist and most indie fail on this.
To begin with I think breaking entertainment down into hours per dollar is a bad idea, I have had a fantastic time with one-two hour game "experiences". Even if we accepted that I don't think that's being fair at all however.
Rimworld is my favourite game of all time (I am hovering around 2000 hours at the moment), and was made by a very small indie studio. Like, I am getting close to 100 hours of entertainment per dollar I spent on that, and the number keeps increasing. Stardew Valley is probably my third most played game and was made almost in its entirety by a single guy. Supergiant Games (Hades, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre) makes consistently some of the highest quality games on the market that will all last you a long time. Dyson Sphere Program is made by a tiny Chinese studio and they do phenomenal work. None of those games are "full" AAA priced games and can last you hundreds of hours if not more.
In all honesty I only play a couple of the big AAA studio games per year, and the ones I play have fairly "classic" business models. I don't play anything that subsists on microtransactions or battle passes or anything like that, and I have no lack of things to play.
What would be your periodization of the "golden age of gaming"? Mine would start at the introduction of the consoles like the N64 and PS1, and the release Windows 95...then it would end with the coming of microtransactions. So that would be 2006 with the introduction of that horse armor in Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
This is not to say that I don't enjoy any games released after that though :p I built a gaming pc in 2011 mostly so I could play Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Even sooner that microtransaction. With expansion packs for me. They understand that there is no need to sell you a full game and they can make you pay +60$ for everything called an "expansion".
While i loved expansions, they really were the start of the end lol
The so-called "Xbox 360" days (2004-2012?) so much socializing back then.
For me personally late Super Famicom to late PS1 was about my peak, but that is probably because I am really partial to JRPGs. Things like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, the PS1 FF games are all hard to top.
However, I think right now has its merits too. Yes we have some of the worst examples of exploitative business practices like in the OP, especially in the free to play realm. Microtransactions, premium currencies, time-limited battle passes with premium tracks, all that bullshit. It's all tuned to prey on vulnerable tendancies of people.
However, there are titles that aren't exploitative. Baldur's Gate 3 is a phenomenal example of that. The big "prestige single player games" that Sony has kind of made their thing generally don't bother me either, they give exactly what is advertised and don't really nickle/dime you past that.
It has also never been a better time for indy development and publishing. One-two people studios have the tools to create and publish really impressive games. There's a wider variety of games available now for every possible taste than ever before. I love factory games and there is a wealth of them coming out recently. Incidentally, I still recommend Dyson Sphere Program in that genre.
Unfamiliar with this game but curious - are the total rewards the same but spread out over more tiers, or are there just additional tiers with more rewards overall?
Additional tiers are a complete waste since not everyone has the time to grind.
I don't like free-to-play games altogether, but curious if the amount of rewards are the same.
Global version is mid. Garena version is somewhat better
It's Call of Duty for phones. And this is actually made by Activision with Timi
Even the big gaming industry has become a rent-extracting sector. Thank goodness, games with culture, like Genshin, exist.
ใใฟใใฌ
Even though I don't play it
How does Genshin have culture. It can't even run on a potato phone
The EXCLUSIVE matter of concern for all private enterprises is profit. Whatever it is that they do is at-best secondary to that goal and more likely tertiary behind not being successfully sued for their practices or even quaternary behind that and excluding meaningful competition/having control over the industry.
This. It's about time gamers realize this horrible reality we can't escape from no matter how we vote our wallets UNLESS capitalism is abolished.