7 ms·

This is absurd. So you also don't use any software products which are a) free to use or b) habe a free tier?

by bootloop 4y ago

jeegsy 4y ago
I dont think an f2p game and your typical "open-source" software have anywhere near the same business model.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  I don’t think they meant OSS per-se. I mean, compare Google services with a popular f2p game like Valorant. Google mines your data to target advertisements at you on a psychological level. In Valorant, you can spend money to make your gun look cooler. I think the latter business model is very respectable because it’s not sneaky and it isn’t manipulating me nearly as much. You can have hardly any money at all, play on a crappy computer, and still have a huge amount of fun in the game. You could even be very competitive. And all for free! Not even at a cost to your privacy! And you can optionally “donate” money to the project if you want to support the game and get a neat cosmetic. How is that not a great business model for me as a consumer?
  - parkingrift 4y ago
    I won’t use either. No Valorant, no Google. I want to pay once for a game the same way I want to pay once for a car. Elden Ring is a perfect example. I understand others feel differently. To each their own.
OtomotO 4y ago
Counterquestion: Do they entice gambling?
mmcdermott 4y ago
Not the GP, but I have a hard pass rule on F2P as well. My reasons for it are two-fold. The biggest one is that I just don't want to deal with it. I spend my entire day "doing business." Games are a place away from all that and I don't want the F2P shop to intrude on my time away from the rat race. The other reason is that in the vast majority of scenarios, F2P creates incentives on the developer to create games that feature things I don't like (grinding and lootboxes being examples).
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
bootloop: have you tried machine zone or other popular FTP "games"? These "games" are HIGHLY MANIPULATIVE. They use bullying, false cult inclusion, peer pressure, gambling reward ration, false emotional and time investment, and outright slot machine tactics to extract money from players. They are worse than Las Vegas gambling by a country mile, since at least Las Vegas gambling is open and honest about the fact that the house wins and has established rules. The social bullying that comes from "fake players" that are paid employees of the company is among the most disturbing aspect of these games. They exists to "shake down" players to upgrade with paid upgrades, to sow conflict, etc. The rules of these "games", including the value of in-game currencies of dizzying types, is routinely nerfed/devalued at rates similar to the more comical instances of hyperinflation in the real world. These "games" are at the extreme end of the spectrum for now. What is truly disturbing is that practically every "platform" of gaming drools over the revenue streams they produce. It is a sad dark gravity hole that is sucking the entire industry towards it. It is the depravity of capitalism in action, the almighty dollar destroys any idealism. Aside from that, the appalling ad and currency extraction tactics used by virtually every "free to play" kids game is perhaps more distrubing, not because of the extreme tactics of the MZ games, but because the target audience is young children with demonstrably biological inability to properly regulate the addiction and investment behaviors involved. Rather than a 10 second toy ad "hooking" a kid, you have a program that can spend an hour or more "hooking" a kid with tactics that aren't as immediately apparent to regulators in their manipulation.
- tsuujin 4y ago
  > Rather than a 10 second toy ad "hooking" a kid, you have a program that can spend an hour or more "hooking" a kid with tactics that aren't as immediately apparent to regulators in their manipulation. Fun fact, in the US it was not permitted to advertise to children on TV at all between the late ‘40s and early ‘80s. It was only because Reagan reversed these laws that advertising to children because permissible and common on tv. Many other countries still prohibit or limit advertising to children today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children
michaelbrave 4y ago
for games I want an immersive experience, any kind of shops, popups, ads, or any other prompt to purchase anything in game disrupts that immersion and is a turn off much the same way ads during a video/movie are. Some accept ads as inevitable but all dislike them for their immersion breaking. Any kind of store experience inside of an experience is just as annoying as any other kind of popup ad except it usually causes the devs to change the nature of the game to cause people to lean toward using the store, making things grindy like enemies have more hit points or have greater difficulty than they would have otherwise for example in candy crush there are levels that are unbeatable unless you pay for help. Free software is not the same as a freemium game, they don't make the software more difficult to use, make the responsiveness of it slower and have it riddled with popups in the middle of use, or even fake you out with being unable to complete something until you pay. It would be like photoshop allowing you to design something then not letting you export print or save but only right as you were about to complete it, and this wouldn't happen every time, maybe on like the 5th time you use it, it's that kind of annoyance.
midasuni 4y ago
Back in the 90s shareware was common, you’d get the first level of Duke Nukem, but to get the rest you had to pay That’s closer to the “free tier” stuff, and a very different model to modern “freenium” games.
- rolph 4y ago
  also if you wanted to you could generate your own levels and manipulate the skins for the game. there used to be a big scene for this spanning many games, for free and thats the kind of game i want to pay 50 or 60 bucks for and get a disk or zip. beyond that it seems im not a gamer anymore,specifically because of what contemporary gaming has become.
- rchaud 4y ago
  First level? They gave away Part 1 of the whole game! The full game included a Part 2 and Part 3.

This is absurd. So you also don't use any software products which are a) free to use or b) habe a free tier?

jeegsy 4y ago

I dont think an f2p game and your typical "open-source" software have anywhere near the same business model.

noahtallen 4y ago
I don’t think they meant OSS per-se. I mean, compare Google services with a popular f2p game like Valorant. Google mines your data to target advertisements at you on a psychological level. In Valorant, you can spend money to make your gun look cooler. I think the latter business model is very respectable because it’s not sneaky and it isn’t manipulating me nearly as much. You can have hardly any money at all, play on a crappy computer, and still have a huge amount of fun in the game. You could even be very competitive. And all for free! Not even at a cost to your privacy! And you can optionally “donate” money to the project if you want to support the game and get a neat cosmetic. How is that not a great business model for me as a consumer?
- parkingrift 4y ago
  I won’t use either. No Valorant, no Google. I want to pay once for a game the same way I want to pay once for a car. Elden Ring is a perfect example. I understand others feel differently. To each their own.

OtomotO 4y ago

Counterquestion: Do they entice gambling?

mmcdermott 4y ago

Not the GP, but I have a hard pass rule on F2P as well. My reasons for it are two-fold. The biggest one is that I just don't want to deal with it. I spend my entire day "doing business." Games are a place away from all that and I don't want the F2P shop to intrude on my time away from the rat race. The other reason is that in the vast majority of scenarios, F2P creates incentives on the developer to create games that feature things I don't like (grinding and lootboxes being examples).

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

bootloop: have you tried machine zone or other popular FTP "games"? These "games" are HIGHLY MANIPULATIVE. They use bullying, false cult inclusion, peer pressure, gambling reward ration, false emotional and time investment, and outright slot machine tactics to extract money from players. They are worse than Las Vegas gambling by a country mile, since at least Las Vegas gambling is open and honest about the fact that the house wins and has established rules. The social bullying that comes from "fake players" that are paid employees of the company is among the most disturbing aspect of these games. They exists to "shake down" players to upgrade with paid upgrades, to sow conflict, etc. The rules of these "games", including the value of in-game currencies of dizzying types, is routinely nerfed/devalued at rates similar to the more comical instances of hyperinflation in the real world. These "games" are at the extreme end of the spectrum for now. What is truly disturbing is that practically every "platform" of gaming drools over the revenue streams they produce. It is a sad dark gravity hole that is sucking the entire industry towards it. It is the depravity of capitalism in action, the almighty dollar destroys any idealism. Aside from that, the appalling ad and currency extraction tactics used by virtually every "free to play" kids game is perhaps more distrubing, not because of the extreme tactics of the MZ games, but because the target audience is young children with demonstrably biological inability to properly regulate the addiction and investment behaviors involved. Rather than a 10 second toy ad "hooking" a kid, you have a program that can spend an hour or more "hooking" a kid with tactics that aren't as immediately apparent to regulators in their manipulation.

tsuujin 4y ago
> Rather than a 10 second toy ad "hooking" a kid, you have a program that can spend an hour or more "hooking" a kid with tactics that aren't as immediately apparent to regulators in their manipulation. Fun fact, in the US it was not permitted to advertise to children on TV at all between the late ‘40s and early ‘80s. It was only because Reagan reversed these laws that advertising to children because permissible and common on tv. Many other countries still prohibit or limit advertising to children today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children

michaelbrave 4y ago

for games I want an immersive experience, any kind of shops, popups, ads, or any other prompt to purchase anything in game disrupts that immersion and is a turn off much the same way ads during a video/movie are. Some accept ads as inevitable but all dislike them for their immersion breaking. Any kind of store experience inside of an experience is just as annoying as any other kind of popup ad except it usually causes the devs to change the nature of the game to cause people to lean toward using the store, making things grindy like enemies have more hit points or have greater difficulty than they would have otherwise for example in candy crush there are levels that are unbeatable unless you pay for help. Free software is not the same as a freemium game, they don't make the software more difficult to use, make the responsiveness of it slower and have it riddled with popups in the middle of use, or even fake you out with being unable to complete something until you pay. It would be like photoshop allowing you to design something then not letting you export print or save but only right as you were about to complete it, and this wouldn't happen every time, maybe on like the 5th time you use it, it's that kind of annoyance.

midasuni 4y ago

Back in the 90s shareware was common, you’d get the first level of Duke Nukem, but to get the rest you had to pay That’s closer to the “free tier” stuff, and a very different model to modern “freenium” games.

rolph 4y ago
also if you wanted to you could generate your own levels and manipulate the skins for the game. there used to be a big scene for this spanning many games, for free and thats the kind of game i want to pay 50 or 60 bucks for and get a disk or zip. beyond that it seems im not a gamer anymore,specifically because of what contemporary gaming has become.
rchaud 4y ago
First level? They gave away Part 1 of the whole game! The full game included a Part 2 and Part 3.