GhostofWar
Regular
It's somewhat amusing they are gambling on the creation of these games to make a game that does the same to the end user, although maybe with worse odds.
What should Sony's Acquisition Plans Be? *spawn*
- Thread starter RDGoodla
- Start date
I don’t think it’s absurd. Back in the day good games were just that. You had to pay for all the titles you named.
F2P games literally work on attacking the player’s psyche. They are designed to suck all of your attention up. We are in an attention economy now, all of our applications , devices, etc. they’ve figured out the more that you use it, the more money they make. So they bring in a lot of elements now to keep you locked in. We’ve had a great deal of articles come up on that type of topic; here’s one
Exploring the Blend of Casino and Video Game Elements in Popular Titles - Game Wisdom
Explore the fusion of casino and video game elements, examining their impact, popular titles, and the exciting future of this dynamic entertainment landscape.
game-wisdom.com
There’s a whole load of articles and videos out there that go into how more and more addictive elements that are brought in to keep players going.
So imo, when players are so used to playing games that have high fomo, and high dopamine, how will the body feel once it gets over starting a new title? Look at the data around how few single player games are finished now. Some of the slides show it. People get started and never finish; they are likely returning to their black hole game.
Like it’s very difficult for games to compete with that. No amount of goty nominations or wins seems to get over that. If you look at the slide data for steam, the most played games are over 8 years old. The least played titles are games under 1 year old. Think about how that annihilated and industry that is largely counting on their launch sales as being the bulk of their sales.
I urge you, imo, read the section on the effect of black hole titles on the gaming industry here. In fact it’s worth while to go through the entire deck. It’s long, take your time going through the content. No reason to respond right away.
PRESENTATION: The State of Video Gaming in 2025 — MatthewBall.co
A 220-page presentation on the past, present and potential future of the video game industry.
www.matthewball.co
I can certainly be wrong as to attributing things to black hole titles, but the data presented certainly shows that there is a strong correlation to black holes being the issue.
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Very subjective. AAA's still well; indeed Sony's AAA's are selling their absolute best, no? Spider-Man and Dad of War et al have outsold many of their PS2 titles.
Evidence? What do you mean by 'longer staying power'? The argument here is that the current online games are loaded up with attractions to keep players in them. In the past, you'd fire up Halo, play Halo because you enjoyed Halo, then stop playing Halo. Nowadays people fire up a game and work on the BP to collect the stuff they have to collect. Unless you can present data showing people played the same or more hours on old MP titles and then on top of that, more hours playing good single player games, your argument seems contrary to what I'm seeing.
You clearly didn’t play Halo lmao. People literally turned the Recon grind into a full time job, alongside all the other armor. Halo Reach had a simpler grind but I still saw people spend hundreds of hours getting the helmet effects.
MW2, COD4, Black Ops 1 and 2 were played for literal years after they were relevant. Don’t you remember the gold camo grind?
How is completing a battle pass ‘playing on your psyche’ but grinding weapon camps on cod4 wasn’t?I don’t think it’s absurd. Back in the day good games were just that. You had to pay for all the titles you named.
F2P games literally work on attacking the player’s psyche. They are designed to suck all of your attention up. We are in an attention economy now, all of our applications , devices, etc. they’ve figured out the more that you use it, the more money they make. So they bring in a lot of elements now to keep you locked in. We’ve had a great deal of articles come up on that type of topic; here’s one
Exploring the Blend of Casino and Video Game Elements in Popular Titles - Game Wisdom
Explore the fusion of casino and video game elements, examining their impact, popular titles, and the exciting future of this dynamic entertainment landscape.
There’s a whole load of articles and videos out there that go into how more and more addictive elements that are brought in to keep players going.
So imo, when players are so used to playing games that have high fomo, and high dopamine, how will the body feel once it gets over starting a new title? Look at the data around how few single player games are finished now. Some of the slides show it. People get started and never finish; they are likely returning to their black hole game.
Like it’s very difficult for games to compete with that. No amount of goty nominations or wins seems to get over that. If you look at the slide data for steam, the most played games are over 8 years old. The least played titles are games under 1 year old. Think about how that annihilated and industry that is largely counting on their launch sales as being the bulk of their sales.
I urge you, imo, read the section on the effect of black hole titles on the gaming industry here. In fact it’s worth while to go through the entire deck. It’s long, take your time going through the content. No reason to respond right away.
PRESENTATION: The State of Video Gaming in 2025 — MatthewBall.co
A 220-page presentation on the past, present and potential future of the video game industry.
I can certainly be wrong as to attributing things to black hole titles, but the data presented certainly shows that there is a strong correlation to black holes being the issue.
They are the similar. Except that grinding weapons and dual XP weekends you never lose progression.
But completing a battle pass gives you just enough money to pay for the next battle pass for free. This makes players have to put in countless hours to complete their battle passes. If you don’t complete your battle pass in time you have to rebuy it. And then there is the entire fomo element of the pass itself. Anything you miss on it you don’t get.
So if they step away to play another title. They can only do so for so long. There is monetary incentives to comeback to their GaaS and complete their battle pass, when there isn’t one for a single player game. And then if you are desperate to finish you can pay for boosts to get you to the finish line quicker, thus making your investments harder to walk away from.
Perhaps you have an addictive personality or whatever but most people I know playing these games don’t finish the battle pass every season. I know some that do, and they’re the same types to grind for gold camos on older games. Completionists aren’t victims here, they just like completing things.
Nothing here is forced, and people like these games.
There are people playing skyrim every day for 14 years with mods. Video games can be addictive, period. Some people have been playing Counter-Strike every day for almost 25 years. People grinded xbox 360 achievements. People grinded Diablo leaderboards. People were addicted to Everquest and played every single day. I know a guy that was a "4.0" student in high school that flunked out of in his first year of university because he played Everquest non-stop once he was outside his parents supervision. Some people bought an N64 and only played Golden Eye over and over and over. You have people that finished Secret of Mana on SNES a thousand times.
I think the main reason that people fall back to games like Fortnite, Counter-Strike or whatever is because they're just better games. Sucks to suck, but a lot of games, especially story-based ones, are only fun for maybe 20 hours max. So you pay your $70 and get 20 hours of it, and then you need something else to play, so you go back to playing CS endlessly. None of these so called black-hole games prevent Helldivers 2, Among Us, Elden Ring, Palworld from becoming viral hits. But once people are done with them they go back to the games that they like that stay fun to play. I'm sure some people are addicted to battle passes, but if you look at the "forever game" category, they're all unsurprisingly very good games. They're also usually heavily social games, which I think it's a big part of the difference. If you play a story game you're just sitting alone in your basement grinding out the latest epic, or you can go online and play something with your friends. People, generally, prefer social activity.
I think the main reason that people fall back to games like Fortnite, Counter-Strike or whatever is because they're just better games. Sucks to suck, but a lot of games, especially story-based ones, are only fun for maybe 20 hours max. So you pay your $70 and get 20 hours of it, and then you need something else to play, so you go back to playing CS endlessly. None of these so called black-hole games prevent Helldivers 2, Among Us, Elden Ring, Palworld from becoming viral hits. But once people are done with them they go back to the games that they like that stay fun to play. I'm sure some people are addicted to battle passes, but if you look at the "forever game" category, they're all unsurprisingly very good games. They're also usually heavily social games, which I think it's a big part of the difference. If you play a story game you're just sitting alone in your basement grinding out the latest epic, or you can go online and play something with your friends. People, generally, prefer social activity.
I only wish someone would finally create a mod that could save your quest/world progress after you once again modded the game too much and it become instant crashfest.
I'm 50/50 should I try to still continue my first Wood Elf character playthrough or not, it crashes about every 3rd zoning in/out at the moment but I'm several tens of hours in already
No. I don’t have an addiction to gaming, at least I haven’t since leaving WoW, closest following being Destiny.
I don’t really play them anymore. Even if I did, it’s not relevant to the point that I’m making here.
But these particular mechanics are intentional designs to keep players coming back.
I’m talking about large populations not the niche few who can play a game of Civ4 for ten years.
I don’t really care if people are playing games forever. I think it’s a big problem if you’re going to say that studios aren’t putting out great games because they cannot pull them away from GaaS titles. It’s just not reflective of the data.
The hero shooter genre is saturated and all of these companies trying to hop in with their own F2P GaaS games are failing because it's just impossible to pull people away from Overwatch or whatever ... Oh wait, Marvel Rivals is taking over. I just don't see it. Fundamentally these games can only succeed if they're good, and they start to shrink when a better game comes along. There's just a fundamental aspect of it being hard to get people to stop playing really good games to play worse ones.
arandomguy
Veteran
Isn't this the age old argument for media/entertainment? Media/entertainment I like and prefer are good, they aren't popular because of "reasons." Media/entertainment I don't like are bad, they are only popular because of "reasons."
Just another comment on the modern GaaS and MTX model is that it's important to also look at it in terms of how the financial capture model is different. Those games capture most of their revenue from a minority of players, basically the "super fans." The player count is most "casuals." The casuals like it because well they can casually play a game for free or much lower cost/investment than the conventional. Meanwhile you capture more revenue from the "super fans" unlike the traditional model from the business side. Both get new content continously pumped in for a game they like.
Just another comment on the modern GaaS and MTX model is that it's important to also look at it in terms of how the financial capture model is different. Those games capture most of their revenue from a minority of players, basically the "super fans." The player count is most "casuals." The casuals like it because well they can casually play a game for free or much lower cost/investment than the conventional. Meanwhile you capture more revenue from the "super fans" unlike the traditional model from the business side. Both get new content continously pumped in for a game they like.
It can be argued Marvel's Rivals is an outlier as it's an existing, huge IP, so has innate pulling power. If it was the same game but with unknown heroes from a new IP, I don't know where it'd be now.
that said, human beings are wired to do the same thing over and over...and then change, just kinda randomly. Someone makes a break, sets a trend and people follow. Potentially at some point, people playing one game constantly might well be drawn to try another if there's more social movement towards it.
I wonder if content creators and social media changes things though? eg. If someone follows a player, and that player tries and likes another game, as you might friends at school, a follower might well be interested in also trying this newly endorsed game. Among a community, you'll have a mix of people playing things and an ebb and flow of fashions. However, for the content creator, they risk losing their audience and income if they switch game, so they might stick with it even when not enthused, and thus it'd become a self-reinforcing activity because money is now involved.
Wow, the game was designed to be fun and replayable? The horror. All games instead should be 5 hour long expositions that you never play again after a week, for the nice price of $70. Throw in some RT to make it impossible to run too, maybe even some UE5!
@Shifty Geezer Valorant pulled the same thing off. It's both a hero shooter and a tactical shooter, both genres that had entrenched games that were considered untouchable, especially Counter Strike. Brand new "IP". It did have riot games behind it, but it's just an example of a game being a success because it's very good and managed to pull players away from other more established games (league of legends, fortnite, counter-strike etc)
You're missing the point and falling back on rhetoric again. This argument says gambling is 'fun, replayable mechanics' and board-games that can be played in two hours and packed away are a bad idea.
Please try to understand the difference between the psychological hooks of gambling and exploitation mechanics versus just good, addictive gameplay. You don't have to agree with them but at least argue the actual argument.
I fully believe that there are predatory practices in games to get people to gamble their money into cosmetics. Counter-Strike may be the worst example of this. The fact that you can sell skins for real money means it's essentially gambling for real. You spend money hoping to get a rare skin and earn a profit.
I still don't really buy that gambling or battle passes have anything to do with why "forever games" are so entrenched. The forever games tend to be best in class, and that makes it hard for me to believe these things can be disentangled. Also gameplay loops can be addictive without having any monetary buy-in. Nothing has stopped millions of people from leaving the biggest games, like Fortnite, Apex, Dota2, League of Legends, Counter-Strike etc to move on to other games. Players leave, new players come in, but the trend for all of those games right now is down. They're at least not at their peak. You just need to make better games, or at the very least very good games, that pull people away from them. I also think social gaming is a big part of it, and a single-player experience is not the type of thing those gamers are looking for in the majority of their gaming time.
I still don't really buy that gambling or battle passes have anything to do with why "forever games" are so entrenched. The forever games tend to be best in class, and that makes it hard for me to believe these things can be disentangled. Also gameplay loops can be addictive without having any monetary buy-in. Nothing has stopped millions of people from leaving the biggest games, like Fortnite, Apex, Dota2, League of Legends, Counter-Strike etc to move on to other games. Players leave, new players come in, but the trend for all of those games right now is down. They're at least not at their peak. You just need to make better games, or at the very least very good games, that pull people away from them. I also think social gaming is a big part of it, and a single-player experience is not the type of thing those gamers are looking for in the majority of their gaming time.
5-10 hour expositions often were some of the most legendary and best gaming experiences ever with replayability value based solely on good game design, that allowed for more games to be enjoyed.
Then they should go back to making good 5 hour games instead of dumping UE5 slop on us and wondering why people would rather play Fortnite.
Dominik D
Regular
Survivor bias. Majority of online games ever created aren't playable any longer.