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Sometimes I forget they even allow this. Finish the fucking thing before adding extra shit. How can an unfinished thing even have extra shit?
(lemmynsfw.com)
It's like buying a tiara for your fetus, before you even buy a crib.
ALSO, MICROTRANSACTIONS = DLC.
The most annoying thing about that aspect of the phenomenon is how it's based completely and entirely on a false premise. When you do some crazy new shit and it takes off like gangbusters, you CAN'T JUST ASSUME THAT IT'S GOING TO BE POPULAR FOREVER.
Sometimes, a new product or service is immediately popular because it's genuinely a hot seller. The day hotcakes were invented, people probably said they were selling like blowjobs. Then they somehow sold even better than blowjobs, so they became the new idiom. But the thing is, that's not a guaranteed thing, for every product, and you shouldn't base the future of your industry on your bullshit assumptions.
The goddamned horse armor sold like crazy because it was a new thing. The potential market for $2.50 worth of micro-content was beyond wide open. Huge numbers of people were ready to go "LOL, I'LL BUY THAT INSTEAD OF A CRUNCHWRAP SUPREME." That should NOT have been an indicator of further success, in and of itself. But big business motherfuckers don't want to use actual logic, or even real intuition. They just said to themselves "I really want this to be the new easy way of printing money," and so they have spent all the following years FORCING that paradigm into existence.
But I think it's a false paradigm. Nobody talks about the money that's being left on the table, when such a huge percentage of the industry has been given over to microtransaction-based nonsense. The Battle Royale, MOBA, and Hero Shooter genres are as saturated as they're going to be. What about people (like myself, for instance) who play absolutely none of those games?
I've never played them. I'm never going to play them. I'm not even refraining from playing them because I hate microtransactions. I just dislike them, as genres. They're not my cup of tea. I play mostly play a mixture of sandbox games, RPGs, single-player action and shooter games, strategy games, and VR games, as well as a few survival/crafting/fighting games, like Terraria/Starbound.
I'm not alone. There are other people like me, who always want more intentional, in-depth content. If anybody doubts the possibility for better games to make money, you only need to look at Baldur's Gate 3. That game has made shitloads of money. Money that corporate advocates of the "we can just print money with skins and stickers" philosophy can never have access to, unless they also pry open their wallets, and invest in real content.