Stolen Pixels: A Hat for Every Head

[JonnWood]

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So no developer has any obligation or need to make quality games/DLCs because hey! you do not want it either way!

Developers don't have any "obligation or need" to make good content, period. Valve could turn out a game that was just Gordon Freeman's foot stepping in a cow pie a few hundred times, if they wanted. I doubt people would buy it for anything more than the lulz, but there's no reason the game couldn't be made in the first place.

What a marvelous line of thinking, developers are scott-free from any criticism, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT COMMITTING A PERSONAL WRONG AGAINST ANYONE!

This is just crap and i am done, you might not see anything wrong with the logic that no developer could be criticized or has any obligation to create ANYTHING worthwhile, but to me its just laziness and detrimental to the quality of video-games overall.

I'm saying you're reacting as if Valve set out to piss you, personally, off.

I'm not saying you don't have a right to criticize. I'm saying your criticisms are wrong. I know it's subjective, but you seem to be basing your conclusions on a lot of false premises.

Game development isn't a closed system. If I make a crappy flash game, it doesn't mean that Team Fortress 2 is instantly a little less good. The existence of Justin Beiber doesn't make Florence + the Machine any less awesome.

And as I've already asserted, no developer has to make good games. Should they make good games? Yes. Do they make good games? Not necessarily.

 

[jabrwock]

Honestly collector's Editions didn't show up on my radar until WOW. And that only because now I know, had I bought one, it would sell really well. But I don't really fault collector's editions because they sell something that wont be sold again ,ideally, And I always attach a higher value to something that exists physically, such as coffee table books of metal boxes.

As do many people. But that doesn't make the practice any different, or "new". There has always been worthless merch. The industry is just finding new ways to sell it.

 

[mcnally86]

Honestly collector's Editions didn't show up on my radar until WOW. And that only because now I know, had I bought one, it would sell really well. But I don't really fault collector's editions because they sell something that wont be sold again ,ideally, And I always attach a higher value to something that exists physically, such as coffee table books of metal boxes.

As do many people. But that doesn't make the practice any different, or "new". There has always been worthless merch. The industry is just finding new ways to sell it.

And I'm sure when they added the coach section to an airplane and charged more for the seating and treatment people were used to it was a shock then as well. It feels like they are finding a way to raise the price without raising the price obviously. I remember getting a FH license. 2004 they raised the price 30% and since they could not get away with another rate hike so soon the next year they shortened new license issued from lasting 5 years to only last 3.

 

[jabrwock]

And I'm sure when they added the coach section to an airplane and charged more for the seating and treatment people were used to it was a shock then as well. It feels like they are finding a way to raise the price without raising the price obviously. I remember getting a FH license. 2004 they raised the price 30% and since they could not get away with another rate hike so soon the next year they shortened new license issued from lasting 5 years to only last 3.

These aren't comparable. Imagine instead that they made all the seats in the airplane the same, but a few passengers paid an extra $50 for their ticket, and they get a flimsy paper party hat to wear during the flight. No extra leg-room, no free champagne, no dividing curtain to ensure they don't have to look at your grumpy face...

And there are some people wearing party hats who got them because they did a double-backflip while boarding the plane instead of having to shell out $50.

Or in the case of your FH license, they kept the price and term the same. But if you pay $5 more, you get a happy face stamp on your license card. Doesn't mean a thing, but you get a nice stamp.

 

[mcnally86]

And I'm sure when they added the coach section to an airplane and charged more for the seating and treatment people were used to it was a shock then as well. It feels like they are finding a way to raise the price without raising the price obviously. I remember getting a FH license. 2004 they raised the price 30% and since they could not get away with another rate hike so soon the next year they shortened new license issued from lasting 5 years to only last 3.

These aren't comparable. Imagine instead that they made all the seats in the airplane the same, but a few passengers paid an extra $50 for their ticket, and they get a flimsy paper party hat to wear during the flight. No extra leg-room, no free champagne, no dividing curtain to ensure they don't have to look at your grumpy face...

And there are some people wearing party hats who got them because they did a double-backflip while boarding the plane instead of having to shell out $50.

Or in the case of your FH license, they kept the price and term the same. But if you pay $5 more, you get a happy face stamp on your license card. Doesn't mean a thing, but you get a nice stamp.

Of course you cannot compare these things on content. The license only lats a set time and the airplane you only ride one per ticket, excepting multi-flight tickets and frequent flyer programs. But I wasn't comparing them in content I was comparing them in the fact that they had one price and then they increased over the years.

 

[Morgriff]

Post n°1 here ! Huuura...

First, I don't care about capitalism, micro transaction model or anything market-related AT ALL (or at least, not in this post), I just wanna talk about game quality and player's satisfaction.

Back to the (good) ol' days where DLC didn't existed, when you paid for a game, you got the game everyone got. Oh, perhaps you bought the Xtra Deluxe Plus+ With Norvegian Strawberries Inside Edition so you also had a fancy Tshirt and a "For the Horde !" toilet roll but you most importantly had a FULLY PAID game, and this game was designed to live forever with nearly no modification. And then was coming the great part: you played, you enjoyed and you were such a stupid time-wasting nerd that you spent hundreds of hours just to see some sort of "Completion: 100%" somewhere (Tales of symphonia Compendium, anyone ?). This 100% was (at least, for me) AWESOME. Seriously, it was such a great feeling and I'm pretty sure everyone of you felt this in at least one game. There wasn't any reward, no crownd screaming your name and no hot female giving you her body but the feeling of achievement was here. Ok, I'm misleading, sometimes you got a skin/unique-item/bonus-for-the-next-game...

Now, there is no more 100%. When you complete ANYTHING, it's not over, there's a little last task to achieve...
-> You won't reach 100% unless you spend 120 bucks in lame shop for some sort of stuff.
And where the skin obtained by achieving something truly epic (full completion, achieving an online pentakill, defeating Baal with a level 3 necromancer... whatever) was great, the skin obtained by typing your credit card number feels full of Faggotry. It's exactly as pointless as facebook in the hands of a retarded 16 year old girl:
Girl: "Heyyy, look at me ! I'm so awesome !
Me: "Oh, nice, why are you so awesome, what did you just achieved ?"
Girl: "Oh, nothing, I'm just awesome lol <3"
ME: "DIE, BURN, EAT POOP, CHOOSE ORDER"

And I don't even blame companies because they make money using this "I want shiny stuff NOW. No, I'm not able to achieve anything so I'll give you money" mentality. I blame them for filling their awesome games with a tiny bit of gross faggotry. It's prostitution and I do not want this to even exists in the games I'll state as epic in 10 years (Portal 2 is really good but the shop makes it appear as a money machine -> Seriously Valve ? Really ? No Joke ?) I hate them for being sooo good at making games and sooo good at wanting money. Same goes with Blizzard, they learned with years how to devellop good games, truly epic ones... And then they discovered big money.

However, I have to admit these DLC have one interesting purpose: supporting a game company financially. But I'd rather click a "Donate 30 dollz" on the League of Legends homepage than buy 5-6 skins that I'd enjoy wayyys more if they were included in the game natively or gift as reward for some sort of achievement.

Finally, please notice that I do not really complain. First because there's still awesome games. And second because I know that DLC makes companies earn money so I guess digital prostitution will live forever and I'll have to deal with it... It just makes me sad.




PS: Scuse me if my post does not fits this forum standard and if my english is pretty poor... I'm new and french...