Jimquisition: Fee-to-Pay and the Death of Dignity

Thanatos2k

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rasputin0009 said:
There's just not enough competition in the industry. You'd see more customer friendly practices if there wasn't only 6 big companies calling most of the shots. You would only need one of those companies to stop selling DLC and start selling full packages again. Imagine if EA just up and put out $70 games and started releasing DLC for free. Everybody would love them. But sadly, none of those 6 companies are active. They're just reacting and matching each other's practices.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is the ideal form of DLC (A really rare props to Ubisoft). It was a taste of something different that didn't need the base game to play, but ran off the same engine. It was great value for both the consumer and the publisher. And it helped sales of the base game at the same time.
Wouldn't work because most people who buy games don't know or care who makes them. There's no advertising component either to figure out what you're going to get when you buy a game. Will it have DLC? Microtransactions? BOTH? Will the DLC be stuff that matters like actual story content, or just cosmetic nonsense?

Even those of us who care about gaming can barely keep up with what's in what. If EA stopped putting DLC in their games would anyone notice? How are they going to tell everyone that their product is better than Activisions because they did that? Would anyone believe them?

The only way to compete is price. That's why "free to play" gained any traction, because people were dumb enough to think it was cheaper than paying for a real game. "I could pay $60, or I could pay $0! What a value!" Except it's not a value, but you only find that out later.
 

Lunar Templar

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Makes me even more happy I'm not buying an Xbone.

Interestingly, no one seems to mention the PS4 lineup in these rants, Sony just not doing it, or not doing it to a degree that's pissing people off?
 

Johnson McGee

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I was just utterly captivated by the gameplay going on around 4:15. Just where are those Romans getting all of those javelins from?

OT: One of the advantages of having no time to play video games due to my job is by the time I'm ready for something usually there's a GOTY version available so I don't have to worry about putting down $60 for an incomplete game.

There's another limit to the type of microtransactions that allow you to skip grinding and that's time. Even free-to-play games have the hidden price tag of time on them and as games become built more around these microtransactions, say by including grinding gameplay to encourage pay-to-skip, they become less worth the time investment put into them.
 

Erttheking

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Lunar Templar said:
Makes me even more happy I'm not buying an Xbone.

Interestingly, no one seems to mention the PS4 lineup in these rants, Sony just not doing it, or not doing it to a degree that's pissing people off?
Killzone Shadowfall's devs actually say that they're going to be releasing future map packs for free.
 

Bravo Company

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erttheking said:
Wait a minute. Ryse has microtransactions? I...what for? How does that work?

Gah. This is why I hope the PS4 does well. I don't want the Xbone to crash and burn (Just kinda struggle) and I don't hate people who buy it, but I DO want the PS4 to outsell it. Because I haven't heard anything about DLC from their games and the one game that does have DLC is going to have FREE DLC, thank you Killzone Shadowfall for taking a step in the right direction.
I don't know anything about Ryse, but I'm not sure how they managed to fit microtransactions in it either...

But referring to your free DLC statement, a good many years ago developers would release dlc in the form of patches. They wouldn't charge for them, they would just release new stuff for you to play with because they could. Teamfortress 2 for example. Before that game went free to play (which they only did because valve figured anyone who would've bought the game already did) they were pumping out new stuff for free constantly and they still do pump out free stuff for that game, you just have the option to pay for things if you want.
 

gamegod25

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The sad thing is that even with all this excess and greed these companies are just hurting themselves in the long run. Every iron-fisted DRM, every feature chopped off to sell back, every micro transaction pinprick to slowly bleed gamers dry, and the sheer disregard for treating their customers with any respect is only eroding away their support.

The industry is constantly complaining of dying of thirst yet they continue to guzzle salt water and wonder why its not working. Either they will learn and take real steps to correcting the problem or they will die with no one to blame but themselves.
 

MB202

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When I heard about what Jim said about Angry Birds Racing, I literally dropped my jaw... SERIOUSLY?! 100 FLIPPING DOLLARS?!?! Is there no end to this madness?! ...This is why I'm fine with just the Wii U, say what you want about Nintendo, they don't make us go through all this BS.

Also, Jim should have posted a link to this Kickstarter under the video and on the first post.
 

jaateloauto

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NBA 2K14 is also littered with this, with features previously available for free now locked behind VC (virtual currency) which you can buy for real money. Every season you play of MyGM your head coach comes to your office and asks you to spend VC to increase a players attributes or his morale will drop and he might quit the job.

Oh, and you can use VC to upgrade your created character's attributes to maximum. And you can take that character online. So you can literally pay to win online against other players in a 60 dollar game that releases every year. Fucking disgusting. The sad part is that the gameplay is actually very good.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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I'm not sure if companies will get screwed over this whole DLC business. Now I'll be the first to admit I bought just about every single DLC for the entire Mass Effect series. I loved that game and I'd pop that in over any new console release. But here's the thing; that game owned my gaming life for months. Like 6+ months! I was obsessed, yes, but I wanted a bang for my buck. If i spend $7.99 on a new story line, I'm going to play the hell out of it.
The problem is that too many gamers are just buying DLC, playing it once and moving on. So company numbers just look amazing! Everyone is doing it! And then they're going out and buying MORE games! So they must have loads and loads and loads of cash for this. So then, why should they stop? What incentive do they have? I mean THQ and Relic went belly up, and they were just auctioned off...
 

rembrandtqeinstein

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The solution is really straightforward

Abstain from consoles, spend a bit more money upfront (but less money overall) to buy a PC and hook it up to your TV.

And stop buying corporate published games. Period.
 

mjc0961

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Mr_Terrific said:
Next up he should tackle why reviewers completely ignored the fact that Forza 5 has half the content of Forza 4 yet still gave that shit top honors.

I get why they trashed Killzone. No mechs, less classes, less dynamic maps. It deserves those 6's and 7's. But Stripping the usually good Forza of mainstays like Nurburgring as well as a shit load of cars only to sell you it later should automatically half Forza's scores.....

Or maybe not. Either way, I find the subject a bit more interesting than the dead horse beating done in todays video. I don't agree with Jim often but when I do, it's usually when he rants about industry bullshit.
Killzone doesn't have less classes, it just rolled three classes into one for some reason (Support is Medic, Tactician, and Engineer all rolled into one because reasons). And it still has more classes than that god-awful Killzone Mercenaries which was okay but got away with too much bullshit because it was a handheld game. It's a handheld game trying to be a home console game and not doing such a great job of it. It needed lower review scores just like Forza.

rembrandtqeinstein said:
The solution is really straightforward

Abstain from consoles, spend a bit more money upfront (but less money overall) to buy a PC and hook it up to your TV.

And stop buying corporate published games. Period.
Oh okay. Because nothing bad happens on PC.

No insanely low quality ports.
No obnoxious, intrusive DRM.
No games riddled with DLC and microtransactions.
No having to sign into a second service on top of your first service just to play a game. (You know, like how Metal Gear Online had you of course sign in to PSN and then Konami made you have a Konami account for no reason, just like Ubisoft and EA make you have UPlay and Origin to play your games even if you already signed into Steam or bought them from another place that doesn't make you sign into anything never mind that doesn't happen because PC is perfect)
No missing out on games because every game gets a PC version.

You should have just said "buy indie games" since that was the not so well hidden implication you were making with that last statement and skipped the whole "get a PC" as a solution that doesn't solve anything idea.

Oh and there are plenty of great "corporate published games" that aren't Fee to Pay.
 

josh4president

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canadamus_prime said:
I don't have the same faith in the market you do, but if all these bubbles do burst and these fat bloated companies do suffer for it it'll be a very good day indeed.
Faith has little to do with it, friend.

Either consumers will choose to cease paying for these extra fees out of a feeling of disgust with the business practice, or they will cease paying because they will no longer be capable of paying them as this renders each individual game more and more expensive to play.

Expecting someone to pay between fifty and a hundred dollars for a racer in the Angry Birds game is appalling - expecting someone to do that for *EVERY* game is utterly impossible.

The end will come. The only question is when, how, and just how much of the industry it will take with it.
 

Thanatos2k

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Jasper van Heycop said:
Vivi22 said:
Jasper van Heycop said:
Or League and Dota which provide years of challenging MP fun without needing to spend a dime.
League is a pretty poor example to be honest considering most of the actual game is locked behind an exorbitantly expensive pay wall or a grind so unbelievably lengthy no sane person will ever actually accomplish it. Dota2 is a better example since actual things that are important to gameplay are all available immediately.

I agree in general that some free to play games do it right. Most don't though. And quite a few games you purchase are adding in the worst elements lately.
Yet you don't need every single champion and skin (which would indeed take a lot of cash or grinding)to enjoy yourself in League of Legends. I manage just fine with the one champion I purchased through grinding (wouldn't exactly call it that though, you earn points by just participating in matches, which you do anyway, right?) and the completely free champions from the weekly cycles. I've enjoyed myself far longer without spending any money in League than I would in a modern 60$ game.
And you don't need every character in a fighting game unlocked to enjoy yourself, but your content is still restricted. It prevents you from becoming a more rounded player as well because now you're limiting yourself intentionally due to the restrictions and pretending you're having a full experience.

I enjoyed myself far longer playing the original Dota (which was a $50+$30 game in having to buy Warcraft 3 and TFT) than I ever got in LoL, which I just couldn't take because of the restrictions. New Dota content was released for free after all and everything was ALWAYS available.
 

BabySinclair

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The sad part is when the bubble busts, it won't be the people responsible for it that will suffer. CEO's and other Executives are guaranteed money in the event of a crash and are making plenty of it now. It's the people who work the long hours making the game that will get laid off.

But yay, more reasons why I only get Nintendo consoles and upgrade my PC.
 

squid5580

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gamegod25 said:
The sad thing is that even with all this excess and greed these companies are just hurting themselves in the long run. Every iron-fisted DRM, every feature chopped off to sell back, every micro transaction pinprick to slowly bleed gamers dry, and the sheer disregard for treating their customers with any respect is only eroding away their support.

The industry is constantly complaining of dying of thirst yet they continue to guzzle salt water and wonder why its not working. Either they will learn and take real steps to correcting the problem or they will die with no one to blame but themselves.
sorry wrong person quoted
 

squid5580

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Bravo Company said:
erttheking said:
Wait a minute. Ryse has microtransactions? I...what for? How does that work?

Gah. This is why I hope the PS4 does well. I don't want the Xbone to crash and burn (Just kinda struggle) and I don't hate people who buy it, but I DO want the PS4 to outsell it. Because I haven't heard anything about DLC from their games and the one game that does have DLC is going to have FREE DLC, thank you Killzone Shadowfall for taking a step in the right direction.
I don't know anything about Ryse, but I'm not sure how they managed to fit microtransactions in it either...

But referring to your free DLC statement, a good many years ago developers would release dlc in the form of patches. They wouldn't charge for them, they would just release new stuff for you to play with because they could. Teamfortress 2 for example. Before that game went free to play (which they only did because valve figured anyone who would've bought the game already did) they were pumping out new stuff for free constantly and they still do pump out free stuff for that game, you just have the option to pay for things if you want.
What it is in Ryse is you can buy your skills with real money instead of using the in-game currency that you earn. The menu in the level up screen has coins (the paid) and below that is the amount you earned. My friend has it and levelled up to 7 (I think, last tier anyways) when I was there. He had enough to buy some skills but not all (and it was his second playthrough)
 

Rodolphe Kourkenko

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Thank god for your Jim.
I was thinking about buying one of the two consoles (even if i mark myself as a pc player, sometime i like to play a game with a console) but the games are full of microtransactions, for a 60$ price tag, it's a shame. It's just my opinion of course but i choose to support developers that give me a full game for a correct price.

I'm happy to see that you nailed it again and just want to remind everyone here:

We have what we deserve !