memes

horse armor made more money than starcraft 2 expansion. Thus was the beginning of shit DLC cash grabs

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.

Nah, they'd just call it finished and do the same thing.

Exactly. I don't know how a lot of these people have opinions that are so wildly different from this.

When you have people paying you for a game that isn't finished yet, you're making a compact with them. If you take it seriously, you should be saying "I acknowledge that you people have given me the entire purchase price of this software, even though it is absolutely not finished. Every day that I spend working on this software, from then on, is OWED TO YOU PEOPLE. I will not consider a single moment of my time to truly be my own, until I have paid off that debt, and released a fully featured, complete product, as quickly as possible."

If you aren't comfortable with that situation, you shouldn't enter the Early Access program. It's not for profiteering. It's also not for weak people. If you don't absolutely KNOW that you have the ability to pay off the debt you have incurred, you shouldn't take on that debt. Nobody is forced to take on that debt. If you want to spend forever and a day making your game as a little hobby project, you can do it without a shitload of other people's money lying around in your bank account.

And if you want to make microtransaction money, you CERTAINLY shouldn't be doing it on other people's investments. Not unless they're going to get that money back, with an added return.