Jimquisition: The Trap Of Gamer Gratitude

[grumpymooselion]

EA and several other mentioned companies out there have terrible practices, but, this episode outlines something even more . . . disgusting. The people that buy into it, the people that thank these companies for screwing them over and ask to be screwed over some more.

 

[JET1971]

I refuse to buy DLC unless it is a full on expansion pack like Dawnguard for Skyrim was. 5 maps for a FPS that had a tiny amount of unique maps to begin with I won't touch the maps. And yes 10-15 unique maps in a FPS then by the end of the month there's 2 map packs available at $9.99 each is exactly the issue Jim is talking about and started years ago. At one time 20 unique maps was considered pathetic and 30 about right then came DLC and the amount of available maps was cut in half for new releases. Now it simply 5 maps that's used for all match types rather than different maps for each plus the 5 used by all. This makes the game boring when you play TDM, CTF, and DM all on the same maps one right after the other and makes getting the map pack seem like a good idea so you have some illusion of variety. Thanks for the map packs? No. Absolutely NO. [sarcasm alert]Thanks for not making more variety to begin with, Thanks for not giving us expansions that extend the life of the game by adding not just maps but new class and weapons.[/sarcasm alert]. Hell I remember when we used to get new map and gear with a routine patch because the gear and maps couldn't be completed by the deadline and someone finished them off after release and they were added to a patch rather than sold as DLC.

Todays we make the game shit then sell you a fix later is just bullshit and customers should show them it is bullshit by refusing to buy the fix that should have been free and in the patch notes. On disk DLC should be ignored except for the big "Fuck you for being sleazy" in forums. Customers need to not buy the bullshit, immediately stop playing the game, and tell the publisher to fuck off when they pull this crap. That's the only way they will listen and quit abusing customers.

 

[Ukomba]

Mass Effect 3 was on the edge of this. The game avoided the single player micro transactions that infested dead space 3, and the one's in single player were mostly harmless. They are what paid for the free multiplier dlc and events even. People complained then, but in retrospect, I think me3 shows one of the best version's of micro transactions along with tf2.

I wish that they would have implemented direct buying over a random "booster" pack if I'm shelling out REAL money for a virtual item. It's gambling, pure and simple and even with spare points I never bought anything in the MP store because I didn't want to gamble.

Ok, yes, I'll grant you that. Especially unlocking character customizations when you wanted the new class. But there is a reason people are still playing the me3 multiplayer even after that ending.

 

[nondescript]

Reinforcing negative behavior doesn't help, but that applies as much to gamers praising lackluster QA as condemning some peon's hard work as "not good enough."

 

[maximara]

No Jim, you're wrong. These people ARE fucking stupid. And this is why I don't have any faith in consumers.

"No one in this world, so far as I know ? and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me ? has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." - H. L. Mencken (1926)

The painful truth is the gaming companies would not do this nonsense if it didn't work.

 

[squid5580]

I haven't paid any attention to PvZ:GW but the way Jim describes it, it sounds like a rather obvious ploy. Now I don't think gratitude is out of order all the time. (just most of the time) Recently Subset Games released an expansion for FTL for free. FTL was already fully functional and now it has more content than I bought it for, for free. That sounds like I'm being given something good that I have no claim to and so something that merits gratitude. That said, I can see why some cynisism is appropriate. Nobody, certainly, should be thankful when things they bought were broken through a fault of the people making or selling the things and were subsequently fixed. I understand why so many people are. We more or less expect to get screwed over from time to time by some big company we unfortunately have to deal with and when one of these companies decides not to then spit in our faces for complaining we feel grateful. But, broadening the scope, that is an outrageous state of affairs to begin with. And even if the people at these companies take their responsibilities once in a while, at least in some cases this needs to be justified to the other stakeholders through some notion of 'building goodwill' or 'consumer loyalty' rather than just doing the decent thing because it is the decent thing to do.

Since you haven't been paying attention to PVZ:GW I'll give you the update. They have added tons of new silly hats, a new ability for each class, a new variant for each class. Along with a new mode, a new map, new achievements and increased the amount of coins earned for playing. So now it will take a person on average about 2 maybe 3 matches to earn enough for the decent pack (20K). Oh and all future DLC will be free as well. This whole PVZ thing is just a donate button getting blown way out of proportion by people who haven't played it because they used the word "MICROTRANSACTION". Because if you really need to use it and can't earn the coins they generously give you ingame then you really shouldn't be playing it

 

[weirdee]

Even worse is the idea that we should want to decrease the amount of time we spend playing a game we paid for. Shouldn't we instead buy missions, map packs etc that increase our playing time? More money = more hours of fun?

well, first off, they've already turned "buying a game = getting a game" into "buying a game = getting part of the game while the rest of the game is being held ransom for more money but it's being marketed as an additional feature", so that's been ruined

secondly, if the price doesn't scale to the content, then they're still lying for more money, because we all agreed to the big lie, "it's okay to rip somebody off if they consent to be treated poorly, regardless of the circumstances"

 

[Demonchaser27]

I was having a debate on Youtube (I know, an honest to goodness to debate in the Youtube comments, holy shit!) and the other guy was defending on-disc DLC saying that it's good for the publisher AND the consumer with his main arguments being ease of compatibility and how you don't actually own the game, you own the rights to play it.

Gamer gratitude is a backwards and Stockholm Syndrome-esque mindset that not only puts more and more power to the publishers' "Give us all your money" business models.

Pretty much this. You do have a right to ownership of your copy of the game. The reason companies try to take that away is because people like this let them. People seriously need to stand up for their rights.

 

[Demonchaser27]

Even worse is the idea that we should want to decrease the amount of time we spend playing a game we paid for. Shouldn't we instead buy missions, map packs etc that increase our playing time? More money = more hours of fun?

well, first off, they've already turned "buying a game = getting a game" into "buying a game = getting part of the game while the rest of the game is being held ransom for more money but it's being marketed as an additional feature", so that's been ruined

secondly, if the price doesn't scale to the content, then they're still lying for more money, because we all agreed to the big lie, "it's okay to rip somebody off if they consent to be treated poorly, regardless of the circumstances"

This just saddens me. I really do feel like this is a case similar to con-artists/drug dealers. Just because people want a fix so bad that they'll pay for it, doesn't make it right that you do that. If a company screws up development then they should want to fix it. Lack of self-respect in common people, and a lack of dignity in pubs/devs.

 

[Teoes]

He is, of course, completely right. My buddy had a similar situation with the LAW! He forgot to renew his registration. We take a ride and we get pulled over. He gets a ticket that costs nearly $200, and then thanks the cop because he could have had his jeep towed and impounded, but was nice enough not to. I had to set my buddy strait. I told him, "if he was really trying to help you he would have sent you off with a warning saying he needs to drive right home and not drive it again till he gets his vehicle registered. This is an identical situation. Don't thank them for making it so you can buy your way passed the grind they built into the game on purpose. Don't thank someone for fixing something that broke your game, that never benefited you in the first place.

But, people can be pretty dumb about this stuff. I'm happy to say that most people are not that thankful, I believe. I think that most people are truly outraged in these situation. In the end, all they can do is move past it though. In the future it should affect how they perceive that company, but it may not.

..except your story is completely different. Put it like this:

EA
Person A breaks something.
Person A "fixes" said something, for a fee.
Person B is an idiot for thanking Person A for charging them to fix something they shouldn't have broken in the first place.

Your buddy and the Cop
Person A breaks something.
Person B "fixes" said something.
Person A is not an idiot for thanking Person B for not charging as much as they could have for fixing something that Person A shouldn't have broken in the first place.

You see? "Person A breaks, Person A fixes, Person B thanks and is an idiot" is different to "Person A breaks, Person B fixes, Person A thanks and is not an idiot".

 

[Atmos Duality]

SMBC has it covered, as it so often does.

Spoiler

Marketers have become extremely adept at exploiting psychological holes in human minds, and this is one of em.

People are happy when a bad thing is given to them, then taken away, even when the bad thing didn't need to be there in the first place.

^I knew about that many years back.
It's why I don't immediately forgive companies; especially for shit they knew well in advance that would go fucking wrong.
Because a lot of these things are planned. Unfortunately the public at large has the attention span of a goldfish so the only transgressions they remember seem to be those most recently topical. I do things differently. I measure a company's long term behavior to see if they're actually changing, or if they're just salving the raw spots.

Exploiting behavioral psychology like this is unpleasantly common.

Like last year with Sim City.
The game was rendered unplayable for most for reasons so many predicted (Always Online). Reasons that EA promised to address in advance. And when it inevitably failed, EA caved and put forth a mea culpa.

But instead of offering refunds for a product that didn't fucking work because of problems THEY DELIBERATELY CREATED (knowing full well the problems in advance and not doing what they promised is quite deliberate), they offered free games on Origin to everyone who purchased Sim City as an apology.
Business wise, this makes the most sense, because proper refunds would result in a "hard loss" of revenue, while giving away free games only results in "potential loss" (we can't assume everyone wanted the games offered normally).

And when I pointed this out, some folks jabbed me for it.
"Oh, but it's a nice gesture. These are full priced games EA is giving away for free! Why are you so cynical?"

And to those people I say: "Congrats, if you really believe that, you just got played."

By accepting their token apology on the spot you've already committed yourself to accepting their fuckup; thus negating any pressure on your part to force a solution to said fuckup. Even worse, the free games were only offered via Origin; so even their fuckup was leveraged into a means of furthering user attachment to their system.
The same system that failed in the first place.

So in the end, EA still makes money and the market is one game built on shitty practices wealthier.

EA isn't the only company to pull that. Back when PSN was breached (in one of the largest information breaches in history) Sony pulled the same gambit, and it worked.

All of this can be mitigated in the market if consumers would wise up a bit and stop doing business with these jackals.
At least enough to make them sweat a bit.

Even worse is the idea that we should want to decrease the amount of time we spend playing a game we paid for. Shouldn't we instead buy missions, map packs etc that increase our playing time? More money = more hours of fun?

Depends. How is the content structured? For that matter, how is the game structured?
One of the horrible truths of the video game market is that it's the ONLY market (I know of anyway) where people will gladly pay to be deliberately inconvenienced.

Many then fool themselves into calling it "challenge" to rationalize what a colossal waste of time and money it is.

MMOs, F2P games and "Freemium" games all exploit shit like grind, "stamina", and other time wasting measures to deliberately inconvenience the player so they can either sell convenience or capitalize further on stretched playtime for more subscriptions and pay gates.

 

[leviadragon99]

Huh... yeah... I wasn't even aware people were being thick enough to thank EA over that Plants Vs Zombies thing.

But in other cases, when a company finally does something right, like working to improve the experience of playing Diablo 3, pursuing a course of action that'd probably actively work against their bottom line since they can no longer take a cut out of every auction house sale, then at least some acknowledgement that they've finally made the right move may be called for, with the obvious caveat of making it clear to not do the stupid thing again.

 

[Bruce]

So wait - Kotaku is grateful that EA is charging people as a solution for their game's shitty pacing?

Really? Seriously?

Oh for FFS.

This is the precise sort of bullshit that gets gaming journalism such a bad name - and one of the major reasons why I don't think people who accuse reviewers of being bought and paid for are nuts.

Sure, I think they are wrong, but not nuts.

This sort of corporate blowjob journalism brings the field into disrepute - we aren't supposed to be spin doctors.

We're supposed to be the press.

 

[Valagetti]

Jim Sterlings ma Fwiend.
Don't be grateful that your house is made of shit and perfume is used to mask the smell?
Co-writer... Yahtzee Crowshaw.

 

[themilo504]

I admit that I fell into the trap of gamer gratitude when creative assembly decided to actually finish Rome 2, I should not have been thankful they started patching a game they obviously rushed.

 

[Petromir]

They don't deserve your gratitude. You don't give them money to thank them. They should be thanking you for buying their products. They should be grateful every time you shell out some of your hard-earned cash to play their game. They don't own you. They don't give you pennies from heaven. They're here to do a job, and you're the one that ultimately decides if they deserve a payday. If a game is shit, you let them know. If they fix it, you tell them "and don't let it happen again." Don't be their *****. They're YOUR *****. They bark at your command because you have the money to offer. Thank god for Jim.

This is so true, so very true.
Yet, I've seen it happen countless times.... players being grateful to the developers for fixing game problems.

Heck, sometimes I even stumbled into topics saying "thank you for making this game!!". While I appreciate the enthusiasm, they do not deserve any thank you for making a good videogame. Because it's not like they gave it to you completely free as a gift.

Well that's taking it a bit far. The ideal relationship between a content creator and a content consumer is a relationship of mutual benefit and respect. Ideally we should be thanking them for creating great games and they should be thanking us for buying them. This promotes a strong dialog between the two parties that will result in a net gain for everyone. If we don't acknowledge and appropriately reward behavior we like (not only with a purchase but by vocalizing our satisfaction, consumer loyalty, and spreading the word) then there is no reason for companies to behave in a way we want. You should be thankful, you should be loyal - but only when a content creator deserves it.

If our relationship with content creators is based purely on financial transaction how can we expect them to do anything but base all their decisions purely on financial gain?

Indeed the respect needs to go both ways. If the consumer gets to melt everything down into a cold financial equation then so do games publishers. Both sides need to get this respect thing into their heads.

Does anyone remember expansions? You know, you'd pay maybe and extra 20 dollars and you'd get hours of new content? Now it's like "You want this shirt? Fuck you, pay me 10 dollars". All of a sudden what used to be cheat codes are now just paying to unlock things quicker. Nope, no new content for you, pay for the shit that's already there, you just get it a bit faster.

And then they slow down the game to make that shit necessary. And then they call minimum wage workers on benefits lazy while shoving in microtransactions for their games so they don't have to work to earn money.

I have no sympathy here. None. Publishers can go screw themselves for putting in problems intentionally and then fixing them to get praise. And then they take the lion's share of the profits. And THEN they lower developer wages and then say "It's used games fault" and then the developer makes the statement against used games instead of the publisher and then some gamers side with that developer. What the hell, people?

Yes I remember expansions. They weren't all great but they were almost all better than what we have today. Hell, even the kings of expansions, Blizzard, fell shallow by charging full game price for there "expansions", at least for Starcraft 2.

I remember "expansions", and there was plenty of the same bullshit going on back then with them. Cut content being repackaged, feature that made games playable were both common back then. We just noticed less.

A massive swath of the actual content DLC sold for £9.99+ these days would have been sold for £14.99+ in the past.


There is a massive bullshit DLC/micro transaction swamp thats masking the stuff thats the same. The reason isn't publishers have got any more greedy, its just the delivery method makes the crap viable.

We train them towards a better good stuff balance rather than tarring the whole lot the same way and we'll get somewhere.

 

[Strazdas]

Even worse is the idea that we should want to decrease the amount of time we spend playing a game we paid for. Shouldn't we instead buy missions, map packs etc that increase our playing time? More money = more hours of fun?

see, paying for more hours of fun is a good idea, when in reality it turns into paying for less hours of boring grinding.

"Tank God for me!"

Anyone else get a mental image of Jim as some kind of grotesquely-cool cyborg-human-tank deity combination with robot lobster hands, tank treads and laser beams coming out of his eyes?

Spoiler: Well, there was an image of him made in 1941 by Time Magazine....

I see Jim's week on YouTube, reviewing Steam Greenlight trailers which feature "walls of shit", has finally had an effect on his professional work too. Brilliant metaphor going on there, Jim.

im so glad im not the only one that caught it.

I sitting here with a question: isn't the point of games to waste time? I mean productively waste time. If you just pay extra money to get the content, then you're not gaming properly and wasting time the wrong way.

No. the point of games is to have fun. If the game is just same repeating boring grinding, then its not fun, and some people chose to pay to go directly to fun part.

And Kotaku, good God, are they trying to become "Your source for editorial content that's self-congratulatory, self-righteous, and wrong...?"

What do you mean "Trying". Kotaku in gaming press is what Daily Mail is in regular press.

Does anyone remember expansions?

pepperidge farm Strazdas remmebers.
They have renamed them to "Sequels" and are asking 60 dollars for that now.

Second, no, games are not made purely for profit. No more than movies are made purely for profit or books are made purely for profit. And it is not just indie game makers. Did you know most video game programmers make less for their work than they could make doing something else with their programming skills? It is also typically more challenging work. The same is true for artists that work on games. These people work on games because they want to create games even if it means taking a financial hit. Just because profit is the primary motivator does not mean there cannot be some other motive at play.

Um... but movies ARE made purely for profit with exception of few indie studios, like few indie game developers, that uisually show at few festivals and get forgotten. Just look at what formula they managed to get to sell you complete crap. take popular name (trnasformers) advertise it to hell and have tons of profit. so they keep making that trash. because money. Look at Uwe Boll, or at James Cameron. And you are saying they are not made for profit? Movie industry is the most for profit entertainment industry there is.
Oh, and you think camera operators and whatnot get paid a lot? Only the big names (actors, director) get paid well. You know, the names that sell... like a good game publisher....

 

[grigjd3]

A significant portion of games journalists have become more connected to publishers and developers than gamers. This often results in a media that has a very skewed viewpoint.

 

[Baresark]

He is, of course, completely right. My buddy had a similar situation with the LAW! He forgot to renew his registration. We take a ride and we get pulled over. He gets a ticket that costs nearly $200, and then thanks the cop because he could have had his jeep towed and impounded, but was nice enough not to. I had to set my buddy strait. I told him, "if he was really trying to help you he would have sent you off with a warning saying he needs to drive right home and not drive it again till he gets his vehicle registered. This is an identical situation. Don't thank them for making it so you can buy your way passed the grind they built into the game on purpose. Don't thank someone for fixing something that broke your game, that never benefited you in the first place.

But, people can be pretty dumb about this stuff. I'm happy to say that most people are not that thankful, I believe. I think that most people are truly outraged in these situation. In the end, all they can do is move past it though. In the future it should affect how they perceive that company, but it may not.

..except your story is completely different. Put it like this:

EA
Person A breaks something.
Person A "fixes" said something, for a fee.
Person B is an idiot for thanking Person A for charging them to fix something they shouldn't have broken in the first place.

Your buddy and the Cop
Person A breaks something.
Person B "fixes" said something.
Person A is not an idiot for thanking Person B for not charging as much as they could have for fixing something that Person A shouldn't have broken in the first place.

You see? "Person A breaks, Person A fixes, Person B thanks and is an idiot" is different to "Person A breaks, Person B fixes, Person A thanks and is not an idiot".

You thought way way way too hard about that. It's the same kind of situation because they are essentially acting like they did you a favor when they in fact did nothing of the sort, and that applies to both situations.

People around here have a hard time with analogies. They do things like make it overly complex so there are enough differences that the essential point is missed.

 

[Arppis]

Mass Effect 3 is a game I didn't actualy mind micro transactions on. It's co-op and you can get good stuff without buying those packs with real money. And if you wanted, you could buy some packs to help yourself get started. I bought some packs when I had extra Microsoft points that I couldn't spend anywhere else. Otherwise got everything by playing.