The "modern gamer"

topset

Now, this is completely off-topic and this seemed like the best forum for it. It's something I read on a different forum, after an influx of P2W posts and discussion about modern MMO practices - and what todays gamers have come to expect from gaming compared to games in the 80s and 90s. I felt like it was a great, well written post which has a lot to say - and it's something a few angry forum members need to read.

I hope you enjoy it! I know a lot of people will go wall of text, tl;dr, but I definitely think it's worth a few minutes of your time.

The "modern" gamer is the product of an environment in which the dominant providers mold and sculpt their clientele into something they can make a living off of (i.e. P2W, effectively mandatory DLC's, subscriptions, gold ammo, etc.). Anything to make a buck, to within the gamers' quitting tolerances. Go too far, and the gamer quits. A driving force in the design of many games nowadays is to push that limit as far as possible (or to within net marginal rates of return) without breaking it.

It's not a crime to want to be able to earn a living - many game dev houses back in the day were struggling and only barely profitable, and it wasn't the kind of business that a lot of investors would have been interested in. For many developers it was only a barely sustainable way to make a living, and game dev is *hard* because your users are way more vocal and critical than users of industrial or business software (who complain also, but have 'less' to complain about because they don't usually care if it's 'fun' to use, it just has to work and not get in the way). It's still not a crime, because everyone needs to eat.

Nevertheless, such things compromise the goal of the game. Instead of just being fun, now it has to be fun *and* profitable. The question is, how far do those drives go? How relatively important are those goals? If it needs to be profitable first and fun second, a lot of the stuff that 'milks' the gamer is going to be in there. If it has to be fun first and profitable second, it's still going to be true but a lot less invasively so.

Modern gamers worry about these things because they're used to it being taken too far. They feel milked and rightly so (although that doesn't justify some of the outrageous vitriol. If it's that bad, just don't play it). But it's also become their Pavlovian reaction to *everything* because the practice has become so overwhelmingly prevalent. It's right to bring up the concern, but it's also misplaced to look at CIG and say they're doing 'exactly the same things' that other development houses are doing, because those practices are frequently forced on developers by people who think about economics first and fun second.

For anyone who wasn't here for, or wasn't around during, the Origin Systems Inc. days of the original "Wing Commander", it's worth remembering that Chris Roberts (lead developer) wanted ship blueprints and immersion-rich manuals and rich audio - even speech, which was almost unheard of in a game back in 1990 - even though the size of the game made the costs of production for each retail unit (box, ever-growing stacks of floppy disks, paper and print costs, etc) very high, and OSI still couldn't price Wing Commander much over the cost of any other game competing with out on the market. OSI *ate* the costs on every unit made without being able to pass much of that cost onto the consumer. OSI *cut back* on a select few features that CR wanted to include in the game because of the number of additional floppy disks that would have needed to ship with each box and as I recall, *that saddened him*. The cost-of-production realities bore against the sheer-out fun and vision of the game, and this was a question of basic survival, not even merciless milking, and it looks like CR still would have had it the other way if he could at the time.

So CR and folks are from a league of game designers who definitely leaned way over to the side of fun in the fun-profitability concern (which we should all care about at least a little, because if the game is not profitable, the PU can't continue forever). The fun-profitability concern does exist and it is real, but I'm pretty sure, just from a review of game industry history, that CIG is on our side of that continuum.

So by all means, everyone, I'd say, continue to be concerned, and continue to think... but engage your IFF systems before opening fire.

- Toast.

cgta1967

( not sure how the relation correlates but...)

another thing that I have observed over recent years is 'evolution'


games used to be games and entertainment media was entertainment media. There was a definite divide.


in recent years they are evolving...or should I say "merging"

nowadays interactive entertainment is becoming the norm..... games are the entertainment media of choice for a lot of people .... and "cinematic immersion" is preferred by many over the old style "skill of gameplay".

movies and gaming are becoming symbiotic of each other....it is happening right before our eyes.



the rules are changing....and have not been fully defined yet.



EDIT ADD:
a thing that may tie what you posted and what I wrote is the profit value of entertainment:

the movie/TV industry used to be the big boy for entertainment industry profitability....

now it is the onset of gaming for sure ... using 'gaming' as the term for interactive entertainment s it is evolving into.


.

topset

cgta1967 wrote: »

EDIT ADD:
a thing that may tie what you posted and what I wrote is the profit value of entertainment:
the movie/TV industry used to be the big boy for entertainment industry profitability....

Great post, I definitely think that's a huge part of it.

ursusmorologus

To me the big thing that really separates old-gaming from new-gaming is printed manuals. It used to be that a publisher would not even consider putting out a boxed game withou a manual. Then it was ... oh it costs too much money and gamers are too price sensitive, so we cant afford a printed manual at this price, here's a PDF you can print instead. Then COD started costing $70 for the box and it still didnt have a manual... at $70 its not about price sensitive customers anymore. Modern gamers dont even expect a manual anymore. I'm still disappointed that there isnt one.

Expansions used to be free, still are sometimes, it seems to depend on if the company thinks they need more customers or have enough of them already.

I stopped throwing money at COD and some of the other big titles. I buy games for the multiplayer and when the publisher churns the titles there is not a stable multiuser gamer base.

neoakiraii

I remember when you did something in a game like a fightijng game it unlocked a character, now you have to buy them.

Or if you found cheat codes back in the day and used it, and unlock something, now you can buy cheats. WTF is that about ??

and DLC oh god no i will get on a rant about DLC now a days.

steamwright

As a 1st gen gamer, I'm of the view that a "profitable" game was one where the asteroids didn't manage to finish your ship, and thereby your quarter, for at least half an hour. Or that you made it to 21 before your opponent holding the other paddle controller did.