There is No Such Thing as a Good Free-to-Play. Full Stop.

I'm a good dog! U・ᴥ・U

Frankly, I have difficulty to articulate the last and first missing piece, in a deservedly impactful way, to sew up this argument.

Cosmetics is meant to convey that these items don't affect gameplay, but it doesn't at all describe the nature of these purchases. People don't pay for lipstick or hair product, they buy clothes, armor, mounts, pets, ships, shaders, skins. These are hardly cosmetics. The word is just the best possible description for an excuse. "Look we aren't Pay-to-Win, it's all just superficial!"

So how to best characterize, what people are actually buying? Why would anyone buy that shit? And why are they only buying it in multiplayer games?

The answers to these question should inevitably lead someone to realize how cunning these sales tactics are! Provided one's answers are slightly more in-depth than: Fun, for fun, most fun.

Some games call them vanity items, which is slightly more fitting. Sadly, I don't have a better suggestion. What do you call expensive clothes, cars and wrist watches in real life? They clearly serve a social function: to show off, to make someone feel special. A high price is part of the deal with status symbols. Furthermore status symbols have a function beyond vanity, like civil rank insignia. Dress the way you like to be treated! Especially when dealing with rather anonymous interactions.

The fakeness of these social dynamics is what I hinted at. The admiration and envy someone receives from his peers in game for owning something rare is fake, after all it's virtual play pretend, which is enough to really want something, but instantly vanishes once you step out of the bubble.

Sometimes social dynamics lead people who have the least, to spend the most in a phenomenon called, conspicuous consumption. Frustrated youths are desperate to find something to be passionate about or a thing at which they're good at. People like their Kool-Aid.

From experience: Being able to grind in game for items of status is the worst possible option, games that have an exchange rate between their two currencies actually allow to make these conversions. Even using cheats, exploits and market speculation, I personally never managed to get anywhere close to minimum wage. Making it up by grinding overtime. Is it addiction or determination? It's funny how real life social divides creep into games and re-create a virtual working class of the addicted and disenfranchised. Some even argue, it wouldn't be so bad if somebody of means spent more than a kid who has to mow lawns to purchase virtual stuff.

The problem isn't so much that the money goes to some Chinese conglomerate (that also bought into the World Series of Poker), the problem is that people with their wallets vote to rather be manipulated than pay for games upfront. People spending money on free-to-play are responsible for games getting worse. Instead of diversifying and developing a variety of games, Tripple-A now doubles down on single popular franchises as-a-service.

Meanwhile people are getting tired of in-game stores, unless someone also has the collector bug, there is only so many wrist watches somebody can buy. We see games circle around to subs, passes and event bundles. The "just cosmetics" lie worked for a while, pretty sure the next big thing will be when they rename F2P to Free-Lunch-2.

This thread inspired me to open up Marvel Puzzle Quest and spend $20 I didn't need to spend.

For the sake of argument we'll pretend that people only buy cool items and cosmetics to show off to others and not for a personal gratification of Hey I like to Look Cool/Cute.

Fine.

Does it actually work like that in many games? Because let's say you show me two players and one has all this high level or Savage tier boss loot and one has a 18$ glamour set from the store. I might think that both looks are pretty rad but there's definitely only one player I'm gonna be impressed by.

It's not the one where I say to myself "I can just go buy that."

Yeesh, not sure how much it's worth for me to add now, but I went ahead and logged back in right after reading this:

Addiction does imply that someone really enjoys and likes something. This enjoyment may not ever stop. Sometimes people get tired of the lifestyle, other times they chase it from one game to the next. Is it fine for some to "enjoy" an addiction, or remain in denial about it? Hardly. In any case it helps to understand, that an unhealthy amount of enjoyment always brings with it an interference with priorities...

Not sure you understand the fundamental difference between a person enjoying something vs being addicted to it.

On one hand, a person might enjoy a few scoops of ice cream with sprinkles as a dessert. It makes them happy to eat it, and the aspect of it being a treat makes the person feel satisfied and happy.

On the other, a person might need to dump sprinkles into their gallon tub of ice cream every night, even though they know it's unhealthy and it freezes their mouth to eat it but they just keep eating til it's gone and then spend the night sick. And they'll do it over and over again because they don't achieve any lasting satisfaction from it; it's merely the closest they can get.

I'd argue that enjoyment isn't a component of addiction, because being an addict twists enjoyment into a necessity. Addiction doesn't imply enjoyment, it implies dependency. You really can't conflate the two, at least not in the way I think you did in the quoted post.

That's my two cents, anyway, as just another person with another set of experiences and ideas.

@eurobum: I'm curious, do you have any paintings in your home? Plants, decorations, fine china, anything like that? Assuming you don't live in a completely bare, unfurnished house/apartment, I'm going to say that buying a thing because it looks nice, and for no other reason, is not a sign of being conned, or a symptom of some mental deficiency. Some people like it when things look a certain way, and they have the income and inclination to pay for that.

As for why they're called cosmetics, a dictionary definition of the adjective cosmetic is "affecting only the appearance of something rather than its substance." Given that, it makes perfect sense for items that affect a character's appearance, rather than any gameplay aspect, a cosmetic item. Suggesting that lipstick, eyeliner, and the like only exist for social purposes, and that all people only wear cosmetics to impress other people, is somewhat dismissive. The phrases "cosmetic surgery" and "cosmetic dentistry" exist because they apply to areas that don't affect bodily or dental functions, they simply affect appearance.

It sounds like you were convinced to put a lot of money/time into one of these games, feel cheated by that game, and assume every person who plays these games feels exactly the same way you do. Are you incapable of imagining a person who plays something like Warframe for an hour or so a night, pays no money, and genuinely enjoys their time? Your "arbiter of good taste" shtick is based on the assumption that every single person who plays any game with any purchasable content whatsoever is guaranteed to fall into the throes of addiction, and is incapable of enjoying any of these games.

I'm having a hard time seeing how this is about F2P games and not just a rant about commercialism. Like, there's nothing in the OP that's unique or specific to F2P games. My first impression is that most of the (half baked) arguments presented could be applied to mostly any commercial product.

@efesell: Yeah, pretty much this. I'm thinking either that person has put in the time, or they got lucky in a loot drop in some cases.

Also, I like skins because I like the way they look on my character.

There is a Silence of the Lambs thing going on with this post I don't know if I like or not.

@vortextk: Haha, yeah. That is a weird sentence, right? One of those instances where something that sounds perfectly normal to people familiar with the context just accept it, but anyone else reading that would be like, "WTF?" while slowly backing away.

I've been playing MMOs for years now, and the term has even come into more common usage because of games like Overwatch, I'd say.

But now every time I see or say the word, I can't help but think of this: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/americas/mexico-flayed-lord-temple-scli-intl/index.html

That Flayed Lord dude was really into skins, too.

Firstly, this well-trodden political rhetoric is absurd, because it argues against your own interest. Why would for instance junkies or society at large want opiates to become more addictive or more lethal, as has happened in the case of Fentanyl?

Secondly you can only hold someone accountable for a crime, whereas responsibility requires a certain understanding and awareness. Which is why a child or a fool cannot assume responsibility unlike say a politician or CEO.

Whether or not a society should opt to "coddle"/protect people from fraud, should never be decided by political ideology (ideology tends to be BS), but by the practical viability of any kind of prohibition, regulation or restriction.

Gaming Disorder is too big and too widespread to be a just a "personality thing". What is known: it is somewhat correlated with young age, being male, anxiety and depression. Lastly, Arguing that something cannot be helped is all kinds of wrong and simply dishonest.

I want someone to prove me wrong. I would also like the discussion to mature and sober up, stop using industry doublespeak and side with the interests of consumers. It can't just be Jonathan Blow and Jim Sterling in a sea of influencers, steamers and hype-men.

Why would any of this matter? No developer is going to want a bad relationship with the people giving them money, especially not long term. Let's see, the community of a cooperative game is nice, the community for the competitive Dota is "toxic"! Pretty sure, that's why.

PoE is a Diablo clone, Diablo II released in 2000 A.D. was one of the first successful and really addictive and repetitive games. People auctioned off items on Ebay for a thousand bucks and some guy died playing it in an Internet-cafe for days straight. Battle.net (games as a service) ran on dedicated servers, that prevented cheating. This closed random loot system became the template for WoW. MMOs popularized by WoW found ways to charge "super-fans" uncapped amounts, creating the free-to-play payment model. Other MMOs started to sell their subscription for in game currency and thus reward the really unhealthy lifestyle of the gold-farmer, splitting the user base into pay-not-to-grind and grind-not-to-pay, both being bad choices.

Borderlands became Diablo with guns, but it didn't have dedicated servers. So grinding didn't make much in game sense. Warframe(?) and Destiny cloned the cooperative shooter adding forced matchmaking, along with an MMO like (as a service) loot system, incentivizing spending vast amounts of time on repetitive activities.

Funny thing is, that these games literally are the spawn of Diablo.

One thing you can never say: That you haven't been told. (to quote my favorite Sopranos moment)

@eurobum: dude just stop no one want to have a "debate" with you, we've already have made our counterpoints to your argument and to many of us we don't see this as a big deal, does it affect some people yes, does that make these types of moves inherently evil like you seem to think it is, no its business that's video games people are trying to make money at every turn and for many deves going free 2 play is a good way to make money on a consistent basis and in many of these games there are ways to get around spending money in game. For example in warframe, you can engage with player to player trading to get the premium currency in destiny 2 you can earn a cosmetic engram in about a 1-1/2 hours of playing once you reach max level, in League you can grind to get a new champ. Most good F2P games present the premium stuff as the secondary option. If you think these games are inherently evil don't play theme simple you don't have to engage with this stuff there are other type of games that dont feature free 2 play and paid mechanics. Let people make there own decisions about the games they play and if you fell a friend has a serious problem with games addiction talk to them about it not judge an entire audience and community just because your friend might have a problem. also, one last point maybe don't envoke Jim Sterling as a ahha moment the dude is still bitter about a game getting a mobile version I take him as credible as a pack of cheese.

@acharlie1377 said:

Intent is very important when it comes to judgment. Post release and ongoing monetization betrays an intent to profit from addiction, be it addiction to progression or gambling. In fact my argument is anything but extreme, free-to-play is simply the most obvious. There may very well be other addictive games, but arguing that is called deflection.

Monetizing addiction makes these games much worse. Just like intent makes the difference between murder and manslaughter. Monetization also changes these ongoing games structurally and socially.

Other staggered releases and episodic content didn't work, because people only seem to spend money when jonesing or fiending. I once blew someone's mind by explaining, that being manipulated doesn't mean that you are spending money against your own will, it just means that somebody makes you spend it voluntarily.

Whether somebody is spending money or time, does not matter much either, because you can turn time into money and you can pay money to save time. Time is money. The sky is blue. Corporations are evil.

Honestly, I don't want to just wag my finger and moralize. My biggest criticism is that exploitation for exploitation's sake makes a game bad. Before addiction, there was other exploitative stuff: war, violence, sex, power-fantasy, mystery. But these are exploitative means to an end. For instance someone could create a great fighting game and make it really gory (or bouncy), to bring in the crowd. When numbers going up ceases to be a means to an end, but instead it becomes an end in itself, then you have a bad game. Free-to-play & as-a-service titles all share this pointlessly perpetual attribute.

The actual fallacy happens when a supposed game critic says: "I can't put this game down, therefore it must be good."

You're just gonna have to step back and accept that basically no one here seems to be with you on this little This Is Evil train.

You might have found something if you wanted to have a talk about it being a very complicated issue for a variety of reasons but not so much with "It's the literal Devil, actually."

When you make statements like that no one is gonna bother trying to argue against you, as you obviously have no clue what you're talking about. There's over 20 years of video gaming history before Diablo, and you're saying it was one of the first games to get people to come back over and over ? Forget all the arcade games, forget all the pre-crash home gaming systems, forget the entire first console generation and forget all the early PC games. None of them had managed to create an experience that people wanted to replay over and over.....

Can't a story be so good that it's hard to put down? Can't there be a satisfaction to incrementally get better at a racetrack and get a new personal record? Are RPG's not worthwhile because leveling up and getting stronger through skills & gear is a fundamental part of how these games are designed to be fun? Are people in f2p games not playing these games for the gameplay but merely for the numbers getting higher?

You're assuming a lot of things and treating them as indisputable facts, without any substantive proof those assumptions are true. You say "Post release and ongoing monetization betrays an intent to profit from addiction," but you don't give an argument as to why that's true; you say it, assume it's true with no justification, and then make your case based on the assumption. If you can prove that statement is true, then more people would agree with you, but the problem is people don't agree that your base assumptions are true, which means any conclusions you reach are void. It'd be like if I said something like "selling a game for more than 20 dollars is immoral, so all large game studios are morally bankrupt." I don't get to use the first statement as automatically true, because it isn't automatically true.

Further, it's your responsibility to prove that assumption true; it isn't on everyone else to prove it false. Not to get into the philosophical weeds, but there's an example for this called Russell's teapot. If I were to say that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun, somewhere between Earth and Mars, the onus is on me to prove that teapot exists, not on everybody else to prove it doesn't. So, you have to prove to the other people on this thread why monetization immediately means an intent to profit from addiction. The same goes for this claim:

When numbers going up ceases to be a means to an end, but instead it becomes an end in itself, then you have a bad game. Free-to-play & as-a-service titles all share this pointlessly perpetual attribute.

You don't get to say that without proving it; it isn't a universal truth that everybody should know. You have to prove that Warframe, Path of Exile, Hearthstone, Gwent, Brawlhalla, Fortnite, Dota, and all other free-to-play games are all about "numbers going up" and not about enjoyable gameplay. Your only argument so far is that "Path of Exile is like Diablo II, and someone died playing Diablo II once, and Path of Exile is free, so free games are bad." That isn't a good argument for why these games are bad; at most, it's an argument that some people are dumb. People have died from eating too much, but no one would make the argument that food is bad for you; some woman died trying to win a Wii, but no one would make the argument that the Wii is a product of evil intent; and people have gone bankrupt shopping for clothes, but no one would make the argument that department stores are harbingers of Satan. Saying "a person got addicted to this" does not automatically make a thing bad, and it certainly doesn't make the entire category of things that that one thing belongs to bad. It means some people make bad decisions, and that anything can be bad in excess.

lmao

For very long time the difference between enjoyment and addiction is indistinguishable to the person in question, to friends or to parents. It's anything but clear cut, even for trained professionals. After repeated scandals psychology developed standardized questionnaires, to be able to deal with this vagueness and uncertainty. These yes/no questionnaires even reached pop-magazines in the 90's as the Psycho-test. While they allow statistical evaluation of larger groups of people, they may still occasionally fail when it comes to any one individual diagnosis.

Your portrayal of addiction as destructive, unstoppable, ugly extreme, is more or less one possible final form. We know it as a movie trope and from scare campaigns. The reason you use this "gallon tub of ice cream" exaggeration, is to skew perception towards a low likelihood. However it's the worst possible example to use, since the vast majority of adults now suffers from some form of behavioral issue, when it comes to food. Sugar may be the 'level progression' of food, it's easy, it's cheap, it makes everything tastier, everybody likes it.

Luckily, in the practical world there are practical solutions. Doctors don't determine if someone's an alcoholic, by asking him/her all these questions: how often they tried to quit, or if they have ever lied about drinking to their next of kin. Doctors just ask someone how much they drink in a given amount of time, and they probably don't even bother converting percentages into liters divided by body weight. The answer is often plain as day: Regularly drinking too much is alcoholism.

Believing that someone isn't addicted as long as they enjoy themselves, is extremely dangerous and completely false. To be fair, you phrased it slightly differently.

The two properties that characterize all addictive stimuli are that they are reinforcing and intrinsically rewarding (i.e., they are perceived as being inherently positive, desirable, and pleasurable). -1. Paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

@wheelhouse: I think posts like this can be helpful in pushing people to acknowledge that things like this may be bad for them.

Not that I think free to play games are inherently bad, but I do agree with OPs point that shady games prosper because theres a ton of marks out there who falsely believe that they have more control than they really do.

I'm not sure if I think lootboxes should be more regulated or not, but I do believe the conversation around games with these business models should be critical and suspicious. And not built around the assumption that because people have free will that any amount of effort by developers to hook them is acceptable.

Not sure about that. Path of Exile is better than most paid or AAA games.

@eurobum: As others said, you're not really intertested in a discussion here. Your implicit conclusion - that EVERY person who plays ANY Free-to-Play game and has the GALL to be entertained is suffering from some undiagnosed-and-very-tragic-addiction - is not much more than crying "I'm smarter than an entire general population of people, and they should accept me as their messiah" into the internet.

There's also a surpring amount of conspiracy-theory fallacy in the OP (and following posts) as well -- that is, "people only disagree with me because everyone (except me) is brainwashed" and "any evidence that counters my theory is invalid, because that evidence is presented by people who are brainwashed (unlike me)."

Is this a direct quote from a Flat Earth video on YouTube?

@mike: The truth is out there. Just look around--well, not around, per se...

@acharlie1377:

I appreciate the first part you wrote, it would be a good general criticism of anything really: "You don't explain enough. The burden of proof is on you." Except I don't make extraordinary or unfalsifiable claims, I just generalize. My goal is to disprove such a Teapot claim, that it is somehow possible to give away a game and charge people after, without cheating or abusing most of them.

My sentence which you singled out, doesn't even need proof, we don't need to imply intention. It is stated in Doublespeak in the earning reports of these companies. Such as for Acti.blizz.: "Engagement drives recurring revenues and strong cash flow."

I've been quoted out of context a couple of times already. Fine, I'll explain, but was it really necessary to truncate that sentence to make your point? Post release monetization betrays an intent to profit from addiction...., be it addiction to progression or gambling.

The two predominant methods of monetization are gating progression (Pay-to-win) and gambling (loot boxes). Both of them are notorious for making people act compulsively towards a rewarding stimulus otherwise known as addiction.

Rewards in a game allow to teach a player to act in a certain way. It's just like training a pet, by using positive reinforcement / treats. But animal experiments also show that subjects can learn this conditioned behavior from each other. B.F. Skinner experimented with hungry pigeons in a box and he figured out a way to quantify their response (=engagement). This is him in a 4 min clip.

So that part kind of explains "All causes are external". But one needs to contemplate that stuff, to understand its significance : Nobody acts, people only react to their environment. Enjoying isn't an act, it's a reaction. This is also the second characteristic of addiction - reinforcement.

Reinforcement and Reward characterize addictive stimuli. Reinforcement is the external stimulus (You got a Raise!), reward is the internal stimulus. (Wow!). That comic is really, spot on. I just realized.

The second quote I'm not going to argue. It explores the question of how much exploitation of psychology should be allowed, enough to serve a noble purpose. Not keep people playing for 1000 hours.

Well, you're getting a lot of hate, but I agree with your argument. You're pushing up against a group of people (here on Giant Bomb), that very likely have some level of addiction to both content consumption and video games. I know I have some, so I tend to agree with you. I also tend to push back against games and content when I feel they're wasting my time.

People think you're being a moralizer, but I don't think you are at all. You're saying games are worse because of these practices, and I agree with you there, as well. The nature of monetization and "capturing" an audience causes all kinds of games, F2P or not, to be designed in a way that wastes (is disrespectful of, whatever you want to call it) everybody's time, whether they are coerced into putting money into it or not. Yeah, some people may like whiling away their hours like that, but I think there comes a point where manipulating people into engaging with systematized meaningless for too long is an objectively bad thing.

@subscryber: Don't fuel the already inflated idea that his detractors are just in too deep and don't know any better. I imagine many people myself included disagree with his stance primarily because it is overly generalized and borderline maniacal.

@efesell:I am literally admitting to some level of addiction and agreeing with him from personal experience. I'm fueling it with my own personal experience, and extrapolating from other gamers I know, and others I know who frequent this community. It's an educated GUESS, but it's not unfounded, and it's merely my opinion. I find your rush to invalidate my opinion to be suspect, but again, I don't know you, nor am I trying to impute any truths onto you specifically. Those who are addicted will never admit it anyway. They are either enjoying their addiction or don't realize they are addicted. Of course, again, not everyone who denies having an addiction is addicted, either. I think his argument is a bit extreme, perhaps, but it touches on a lot of truth for me. I also think most people arguing against him are completely missing the point.

@subscryber: I don't want to invalidate your opinion. If you see more to all of this and find some common ground then more power to you.

What I take issue with is the implication towards the people who do not, in a thread that already has an exhausting tone of "If only you knew what I know".

@subscryber: I disagree. I think a lot of people are getting his point, and agreed, until he then spat out 20 more paragraphs telling us that not only are these things not the best, not always cool and working against us; we are actively in the system without knowing it and he has come down, The One and only Neo, to lead us into the light.

F2P has a lot of bad systems and tendencies. Grind for grind's sake can lead to a need to continue without the want to do it. Any and everything in gaming has some nasty tendrils around it. That doesn't mean diablo is invalidated as a game whole cloth because -he- says so. If you read the early responses I think you'll find a lot of people agreeing in part while pushing back on the notion that the world is completely on fire. The more he goes, the bigger the push back grows because he seems incapable of compromise or discussion; we seem to be a thing to be spoken at and told, not an entity to be discussed with.

@subscryber said:

Hate is a strong word. Also, I feel the OP deliberately chose to present his point with a certain attitude in order to generate overreacted responses, which only further reinforces his point. I'm guessing he relies on people reacting the way they do. A lot of people will instantly dismiss him because of his tone and they will let their disdain be known, which only plays into his hands.

Yeah it's about time to close this one down, which I really should have done immediately after it was posted.

Next time if you want to have an actual discussion instead of inciting arguments, maybe don't broadly generalize your audience as having a "mental disorder."