Can't blame the publisher if they're only responding to the current market. People love to blame the publishers but really you should be pointing the finger at the people who buy MT's and loot boxes. If people didn't do that, they wouldn't spend money & resources making them. Sad but true.
This is the exploitation of human behavior to gain profit in a new and very successful way. Exploiting each other for profit has always been around but we need to decide how acceptable this is. We need to decide a designated line and policy needs to be put in line to protect those that are more vulnerable to these psychological business tactics.
I don't think it's fair to blame, or point the finger, at lab rats for acting the way they're designed to act.
The majority of people that are purchasing them aren't people who are being exploited though. They're making a logical (in their eyes, me I think they're nuts) decision to purchase something they want. If they're going overboard on buying these things, then for the majority (yeah I get some people have mental illnesses that may make them more susceptible to these tactics) they need to exert their own self control imo.
Don't get me wrong though, what I'm not saying is that publishers cannot or shouldn't be held accountable for these. It's just what everyone seems to be focusing on is the publishers in this issue. I'm only producing other discourse here.
Mental illness is a sad and extreme but not required aspect of this. You don't have to be mentally ill to be exploited by this. Many publishers have psychologists and economists on staff and they're looking at human behavior and how to maximize profit out of how their customers minds work. Self control is the obvious solution but loot boxes / microtransactions are designed to work against those logical thoughts and replace them with a nice dopamine rush for the potential of getting something rare or cool. They are working very hard to make self control a more difficult task.
I think you're spot on in saying that people that buy the MT's are pushing this business tactic to the forefront of publishers minds but we need to consider why. we need to consider the amount of time put into deciding exactly how these boxes open and what effect a great opening animation has on the mind and tangentially, the wallet. I myself appreciate the Hearthstone card pack opening and won't deny that I've bought into the expansion set pre orders and whatnot. It's freaking fun to open this stuff! It's fun to get things! It's human nature!
Can't blame the publisher if they're only responding to the current market. People love to blame the publishers but really you should be pointing the finger at the people who buy MT's and loot boxes. If people didn't do that, they wouldn't spend money & resources making them. Sad but true.
I don't know...It's a chicken and the egg scenario. The customers wouldn't be buying this stuff if it wasn't available to buy but the publishers wouldn't offer it if the customers weren't buying them.
I really think it's more complicated than pointing fingers. This is the exploitation of human behavior to gain profit in a new and very successful way. Exploiting each other for profit has always been around but we need to decide how acceptable this is. We need to decide a designated line and policy needs to be put in line to protect those that are more vulnerable to these psychological business tactics.
I don't think it's fair to blame, or point the finger, at lab rats for acting the way they're designed to act.
@sackmanjones: I don't think microtransactions are as innocent as a tip jar. It's a fair analogy until you consider the incredible amount of time and focus that is put into manipulating human behavior to make the "tip jar" more profitable than the entire restaurant.
That trailer is really intense. The facial animations are incredible. Some of the movement looks damn near photorealistic. When they throw the first girl down on the ground I was amazed by the level of detail on her face.
Can't wait to see what they do with this game. Most people were against a sequel to the Last of Us in general but I feel like there's so much more story for them to tell. I hope Naughty Dog continues to bend expectations the way they have been with this game.
Posting a post saying good bye and explaining your reason for leaving I have no problem with.
But when I see posts like "Mario Odyssey gets day one patch to fix saving issues" and "New trailer for insert name here" and it turns out to just be a rudely written ban me post it's just childish and trolling behaviour.
That's not how protests work. If you see people picketing, they aren't quietly holding signs off to the side saying "I'm upset. Ask me for more information." Public demonstrations are meant to be seen by everyone, and if that means pulling people into stuff they may have otherwise avoided, that's frankly perfectly valid. Disruption is necessary.
Successful public demonstrations and protests will always take the high road though. That is what makes a truly effective protest.
That's just a narrative that gets pushed by those in power. It's why history books and all of modern American culture focus more on MLK than Malcolm X. He was considered the lesser of two annoyances, the narrative of protest that they would rather push in order to avoid escalation of more disruptive and effective practices, so they choose to elevate him first and foremost. "High-road" protests, as you say, are only effective if they are able to garner a large publicly negative response from those being protested against. Those leaving GAF peacefully aren't getting that response. Those who commit account seppuku do. There is no MLK route in this relatively trivial scenario, so folks are making themselves heard in the most efficient and visible way possible.
It should go without saying, but this of course does not apply to those posting lewd material.
I think we just fundamentally disagree about the power of non-aggression.
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