The apologism for devs calling the player base, that they hire psychologists to better make gambling addicts out of, freeloaders is fucking frightening.
It's like the scene from Breaking Bad where Jesse unloads at the self help group.
"You know what - why I'm here in the first place? Is to sell you meth. You're nothing to me but customers."
You know who aren't freeloaders to these devs?
- Kids who run up their parents credit cards without their knowledge.
- Kids who have been manipulated to beg their parents for V-bucks.
- Kids who are ostracized at school because they can't afford a fancy skin in this digital slot machine.
Seriously, fuck this entire predatory industry and their entitlement to people's money via addiction. They aren't creators, they're fucking parasites.
I don't want to comment on the current situation, but there's a larger discussion here, as to what extend the industry's monetisation strategies influence the overall mood of the industry. Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I don't think we see this in the same way in other industries. It's become this tug of war between publishers and customers, where the first part is using every trick in the book to try and extract as much money as possible, while customers seem more and more frustrated, some reaching a boiling point where they lash out. It's not that companies in other industries, don't do the same, but selling games in bits and pieces digitally, provides a unique opportunity to employ practices, that would be either impossible or at least hurt the experience in books, films, comics or similar.
It shouldn't be like this, with customers and publishers clashing all the time and as far as I'm aware, it isn't to the same extend in other sectors of the entertainment industry, so why is it happening so much in gaming? What percentage of games from influental companies like EA, Ubisoft, Activision and others, will result in an backlash from influencers on Youtube or similar, making their fanbases voice their concern, some in inappropriate fashion? I haven't looked into it, but just looking from the outside, it feels like it would be higher than what big companies in say the movie industry would experience, but maybe I'm off here and they deal with just as many issues.
But if I'm not, could the monetisation practices that are possible with ever changing digital games, be part of the reason of why this is happening so frequently in the gaming industry?