Loot Boxes are Gambling - Get fucked EA

[dasva]

Fans will put up with a lot of shit to justify their game of choice, though. Odds are the people you find on reddit will circlejerk their beliefs into oblivion whereas those who disagree have been chased off or get habitually mocked.

Or depending on the sub outright banned if you buck disagree

[EternityEnd]

Like has been said, Witcher 3 was the correct way to do DLC

Think most fans would prefer going back to the days of such expansions as DLC.

More Shivering Isles, less Horse Armor, and zero predatory RNG garbage.

[Aerin]

Programming would be development cost which I mentioned before that. Dev costs can even be broken down. While per game for the regular game play it's likely gone up unless adjusting for inflation overall has some downward trend for some companies since comparatively most in-game purchase systems are a much lower cost to make on top of netting more gross a lot of the time

I'm still not getting how you think production cost have gone "waaaaaaaaay down." While it seems you're acknowledging that the game itself might cost more to make, but the monetary systems don't take nearly as much? Of course it costs more to make the game itself compared to just the payment system. -_-

[dasva]

I'm still not getting how you think production cost have gone "waaaaaaaaay down." While it seems you're acknowledging that the game itself might cost more to make, but the monetary systems don't take nearly as much? Of course it costs more to make the game itself compared to just the payment system. -_-

Perhaps you'll get it better if I say manufacturing costs. Both times I differentiated from total and dev costs though.... And I wasn't saying payment system I say in-game purchase systems though probably should've in-game purchase content

[Aerin]

Perhaps you'll get it better if I say manufacturing costs. Both times I differentiated from total and dev costs though.... And I wasn't saying payment system I say in-game purchase systems though probably should've in-game purchase content

Production costs are different than manufacturing costs, yes.

While the latter part of that might be true a lot of big companies have actually cut down on total development costs over the last 10 years or so while also charging more per games and having a wider audience and often more games. Actually production costs are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Also there are examples of plenty of very successful games going at decently under $60 price tag

When these things are discussed in the industry development costs = production costs, especially for mobile game studios. Manufacturing is a different cost and is part of the reason why the development studio see's only about half the cost of each game on return. One of the reasons why developers like digital distribution as opposed to retail.

[dasva]

Production costs are different than manufacturing costs, yes.



When these things are discussed in the industry development costs = production costs, especially for mobile game studios. Manufacturing is a different cost and is part of the reason why the development studio see's only about half the cost of each game on return. One of the reasons why developers like digital distribution as opposed to retail.

My bad. When I see discussion most people separate dev costs from the rest of production. But I did in fact separate them in what I said and said completely different things about them so should've been kind of obvious...

[Aerin]

My apologies for you not being more clear. I'm still waiting to hear how development costs are way down.

[dasva]

Now you're just doing it on purpose. But as you mentioned digital downloads have greatly decreased costs. Going to disks also did back in the day. Making decent parts of your progression ridiculously hard grinds unless you pay money is also a money saver since otherwise you'd have to make more content

[Aerin]

I give as much as I get. Hard copies are still being made a decent amount otherwise GameStop and such would be out of business. Without any numbers to back it up you're just making the assumption that enough people have been downloading (legit paid) copies of the game rather than buying a physical copy in the store. This also doesn't take into account inflation of any kind. And while creating physical disks does cost money it is not the bulk of the cost that developers incur outside the studio.

Also, for mobile games, we have not mentioned the fact that Facebook, Google, Apple, all take 30% of all revenue the game makes through their platforms.

Pay walls are notoriously bad, otherwise Zynga would be more popular than it is today. I'm not advocating for all forms of DLC, just stating a reason why they exist.

[synistar]

A bit of a misnomer about digital distribution. It still costs money to rent the servers/bandwidth/licensing for distribution on eshop fronts. It's why Destiny 2 is exclusively on the Blizzard Launcher or why EA titles are only on Origin. Every shop front - eg. Steam, Nintendo, Amazon, etc. - unless directly controlled by a publisher (Origin, Bliz, uPlay), takes a cut. And even the publisher running their own shops have to pay for the infrastructure for digital distribution (electricity, facilities, property tax, bandwith, redundancies to ensure uptime, DDOS preventative measures, list goes on)

And running multiplayer costs money to either run a server farm or renting during surge times. Activision Blizzard rents from Amazon Web Services, virtualizing servers to take on demand load during product launches.

Before eshops, the distribution costs were in printing CDs, packaging, and selling to vendors at wholesale who then mark it at MSRP. Can't really assume that digital distribution is cheaper than brick and mortar distribtuion.

[Niiro]

It's worth noting that digital distribution is most likely becoming easier and cheaper year after year with advancements in technology and different avenues of service.

Meanwhile the cost to package and ship a physical copy is more or less the same.

[dasva]

I give as much as I get..

Not really we've already gone over that and you trying to be cute but you do you.

[carlweathers]

I have different expectations on loot boxes depending if its a multiplayer title or what have you. I see a lot people in this thread making comparisons to Witcher 3, and I don't think that's comparable to most of these services. I can't really factor into the whole kids argument, but I 'll give my take on whats scummy or not. Basically I like it if the business model fleshes out the original game, instead of just letting it rot after 1 post-release patch and then go off to work on a new game for the next 3 years.

The shitty thing about EA's titles, is that your loot box purchase becomes irrelevant because they're going to make a release Battlefront in 2 years anyway. Overwatch, yeah it has lootboxes, but I guarantee you 4 years from now, we're still going to playing Overwatch 1 and not Overwatch 3. Your 40 dollar purchase in 2015 is going to get better and better as they add new content.

The lootboxes in Overwatch makes Blizzard sits their asses down and just make OW the biggest and best game it can be. They're not going to release Overwatch 2 where we get 7 new characters but we're missing 4 from the original cast like fighting games for some reason. Same thing with Dota 2 and the like.

Sidenote: I think even if lootboxes are up for a debate in predatory practices, mobile phone game microtransactions are probably a much more pressing matter as they affect way more kids + they're inherently way more predatory.

[synistar]

It's worth noting that digital distribution is most likely becoming easier and cheaper year after year with advancements in technology and different avenues of service.

Meanwhile the cost to package and ship a physical copy is more or less the same.

I guess. Running a server farm probably costs in the ballpark of $80-200k+ per year just for the electricity alone depending on scale.

[carlweathers]

I guess. Running a server farm probably costs in the ballpark of $80-200k+ per year just for the electricity alone depending on scale.

I know it probably varies from game to game, genre to genre, but I also can't think its overall that cheap in the grand scheme of things, you have a lot of companies who can't and won't pay for such facilities. Like how SE expected basically expected 3 continents worth of players to connect to their datacenter in Canada for FFXIV, and had to justify the addition of the Mog Station to help pay for EU datacenter, which they only got 2 years ago.

[Niiro]

Saying the Mog Station was for the EU servers was pure PR drivel and I think we all know that.

[Thunder]

It's worth noting that digital distribution is most likely becoming easier and cheaper year after year with advancements in technology and different avenues of service.

Meanwhile the cost to package and ship a physical copy is more or less the same.

while advancements in tech make those things cheaper wouldn't advancements in the scale of video games compete with that effect? Hard to say with certainty that it's getting cheaper (will depend on the title/genre of course) when some games could be increasing their resource expenditure at a faster rate then that technology cheapens itself

[carlweathers]

Saying the Mog Station was for the EU servers was pure PR drivel and I think we all know that.

shit, i forgot, i cant appeal to YoshiP's authority to win arguments here!

[Niiro]

while advancements in tech make those things cheaper wouldn't advancements in the scale of video games compete with that effect? Hard to say with certainty that it's getting cheaper (will depend on the title/genre of course) when some games could be increasing their resource expenditure at a faster rate then that technology cheapens itself

Assuming the digital model is at least competitive in terms of profitability with physical media I don't see why the cost would become any more problematic when scaled up.

I imagine scaling up a digital service would lead it to become more efficient over time rather than less but I'm just making assumptions there.

[Aerin]

Not really we've already gone over that and you trying to be cute but you do you.

That's it? That's all you have to respond to? So rather, than just admit you may have been wrong you'd rather just be cute and accuse me of being cute. No wonder you're so bad at this.