Fuck no. An arcade charges money because it is a physical retail space that costs money to own and maintain, and they have a limited amount of customers that can come in and play per day due to physical constraints.
A company like EA or Activision does not have those physical constraints on their income stream, and the only real estate they need is for their office and their server farms. No arcade in the world could compete with that, and it shows. Even without lootboxes and other microtransactions, they still blow arcades out of the water.
The whole reason why I never got into World of Warcraft back when it was big was because I couldn't fathom paying a subscription to play a single game. I barely tolerated Xbox Live back when I still played Xbox, and I'm pretty close to cancelling PS Plus once I finish playing the free games in my library that they offer. Now that I have a good PC, there's no reason to do something silly like that.
okay, so you'd rather pay the up front cost of the game, plus deal with the pay-to-win schemes, the lootcrates, etc?
sorry, i'm not trying to antagonize, i'm just trying to drill down on this one which is preferable. Obviously, we'd rather go back to pay for the game and that's the last money you spend on the game.
Fuck no. An arcade charges money because it is a physical retail space that costs money to own and maintain, and they have a limited amount of customers that can come in and play per day due to physical constraints.
Fair, but EA/Activision does pay to maintain the servers, update the game to fix glitches, security flaws, etc, add new content, etc.
I'm not trying to make a rebuttal. I'm genuinely trying to figure out which would be preferable. I know what I prefer, but I'm clearly the odd man out.
okay, so you'd rather pay the up front cost of the game, plus deal with the pay-to-win schemes, the lootcrates, etc?
Where have you been living the past decade? Realistically, game companies will just add "pay per match" on top of the pile of other MTX already existing. You think it's either get A or get B, but we will just get both.
Fair, but EA/Activision does pay to maintain the servers
No one actually asked them to do so. Community servers existed since the dawn of online gaming, and people will gladly make their own servers for the game they love. On top of that, they generally have mods and admins looking at the game and banning cheaters on the fly, way more effective than any other automated anti-cheat.
No. Not even if it was free up front. The first game that tries charging per game, is going to crash and burn and the entire rest of the industry will treat the concept like it was radioactive.
The consumer's tolerance for being nickle-and-dime'd is not that elastic. Particularly in the face of the ridiculous push to charge seventy, eighty or ninety dollars for games these days.
I hate to break it to you, but that already exists, is very common and is making OBSCENE amounts of money.
All those mobile games that have some form of energy that you have to spend to play? Yea, that's exactly that. Go buy some more energy tokens if you want to continue playing!
so you'd rather have seventy dollars for the title, plus lootcrates, plus pay-to-win, plus DLC? Personally, i think paying only for how much you use the service since they want to moved to a games-as-a service model anyway, but to each their own, I guess.
Charge reasonable prices and don't fill the game with bullshit. If not I won't buy it. It's not a necessity, they do not and have never needed to do this predatory nonsense.
Deep Rock Galactic for example, proves that quite well. The game is beloved and survives entirely on the list price and cosmetics.
Personally I'd rather the industry just bring back private server capacity for users like in the heyday of online games.
Charge reasonable prices and don't fill the game with bullshit. If not I won't buy it. It's not a necessity, they do not and have never needed to do this predatory nonsense.
probably gonna have to abandon AAA for a few years then... until these companies crash and hard, they're gonna keep doubling down on this nonsense until casual games are less egregious...
Personally I'd rather the industry just bring back private server capacity for users like in the heyday of online games.
no arguments here. I miss LANplay and private servers, too.
would you pay a dollar per match if it meant no up-front fee, no pay-to-win, no lootcrates, etc?
Fuck no. An arcade charges money because it is a physical retail space that costs money to own and maintain, and they have a limited amount of customers that can come in and play per day due to physical constraints.
A company like EA or Activision does not have those physical constraints on their income stream, and the only real estate they need is for their office and their server farms. No arcade in the world could compete with that, and it shows. Even without lootboxes and other microtransactions, they still blow arcades out of the water.
The whole reason why I never got into World of Warcraft back when it was big was because I couldn't fathom paying a subscription to play a single game. I barely tolerated Xbox Live back when I still played Xbox, and I'm pretty close to cancelling PS Plus once I finish playing the free games in my library that they offer. Now that I have a good PC, there's no reason to do something silly like that.
okay, so you'd rather pay the up front cost of the game, plus deal with the pay-to-win schemes, the lootcrates, etc?
sorry, i'm not trying to antagonize, i'm just trying to drill down on this one which is preferable. Obviously, we'd rather go back to pay for the game and that's the last money you spend on the game.
Fair, but EA/Activision does pay to maintain the servers, update the game to fix glitches, security flaws, etc, add new content, etc.
Why do you keep offering this false dichotomy as if it were a legitimate rebuttal?
I'm not trying to make a rebuttal. I'm genuinely trying to figure out which would be preferable. I know what I prefer, but I'm clearly the odd man out.
Where have you been living the past decade? Realistically, game companies will just add "pay per match" on top of the pile of other MTX already existing. You think it's either get A or get B, but we will just get both.
No one actually asked them to do so. Community servers existed since the dawn of online gaming, and people will gladly make their own servers for the game they love. On top of that, they generally have mods and admins looking at the game and banning cheaters on the fly, way more effective than any other automated anti-cheat.
fair
No. Not even if it was free up front. The first game that tries charging per game, is going to crash and burn and the entire rest of the industry will treat the concept like it was radioactive.
The consumer's tolerance for being nickle-and-dime'd is not that elastic. Particularly in the face of the ridiculous push to charge seventy, eighty or ninety dollars for games these days.
I hate to break it to you, but that already exists, is very common and is making OBSCENE amounts of money.
All those mobile games that have some form of energy that you have to spend to play? Yea, that's exactly that. Go buy some more energy tokens if you want to continue playing!
Mobile slop isn't appealing to the kind of people this is targeted towards. I expect they'll vote with their feet rather than play such things.
so you'd rather have seventy dollars for the title, plus lootcrates, plus pay-to-win, plus DLC? Personally, i think paying only for how much you use the service since they want to moved to a games-as-a service model anyway, but to each their own, I guess.
No I'd rather avoid all of the above.
Charge reasonable prices and don't fill the game with bullshit. If not I won't buy it. It's not a necessity, they do not and have never needed to do this predatory nonsense.
Deep Rock Galactic for example, proves that quite well. The game is beloved and survives entirely on the list price and cosmetics.
Personally I'd rather the industry just bring back private server capacity for users like in the heyday of online games.
probably gonna have to abandon AAA for a few years then... until these companies crash and hard, they're gonna keep doubling down on this nonsense until casual games are less egregious...
no arguments here. I miss LANplay and private servers, too.