Anthem and the peculiarities of modern monetization.

It seems all major triple A companies are obsessed with what they like to call "never ending experiences" or games that compel the player to spend at least 80 to 100 hours in their environment. This is also why most triple A games feature coop or pvp, because they generate more short term engagement and are easier to monetise. To me it seems like a hit or miss mentality. There are just too many games with the same purpose of retaining the players for the longest duration. And it wouldn't be that much of an issue if what they were aiming for was true, a "never ending experience", but few companies actually support the game with content for more than one or two years before releasing a new entry in the series.

What's your take on this @[HP] ?

It was clear from the announcement this game was going to be a Destiny clone ?

I’m also convinced that it would be much better if was developed as an IP for movies or tv-show. I’d watch that.

Visited my bro in Stockholm last weekend. Coul'nt get over the fact that it looked damn repetative.

He tried to get me to buy it but , i'm not sold at all. All the grind gotta have a purpose, why can't devs learn that.

Apparently though, unfortunately for Bioware, this was actually in development for about a year and a half before Destiny even came out. I can imagine they probably took some inspiration from it anyway.

Quote from Radu

14 hours ago, Radu said: It seems all major triple A companies are obsessed with what they like to call "never ending experiences" or games that compel the player to spend at least 80 to 100 hours in their environment. This is also why most triple A games feature coop or pvp, because they generate more short term engagement and are easier to monetise. To me it seems like a hit or miss mentality. There are just too many games with the same purpose of retaining the players for the longest duration. And it wouldn't be that much of an issue if what they were aiming for was true, a "never ending experience", but few companies actually support the game with content for more than one or two years before releasing a new entry in the series.

What's your take on this @[HP] ?

I'm not a big fan of this personally. Most recently for me is probably with Battlefield 5 where they have those weekly challenges you need to complete in order to unlock a new skin, or more annoyingly, a new weapon or vehicle. I don't want to have to play week after week to ensure I can unlock everything - Or at least not game changing things like weapons or vehicles - Those should always be unlockable through gameplay (Maybe I'm wrong and they are?).

If it's a grind for cosmetics then that's fine. Put all the time limited stuff you want in. But please don't try to force me to play every day.

I guess a similar game to Destiny and Anthem would be Borderlands. Borderlands nailed the want to chase loot and wasn't a "live service" that forced you to play all the time and sold like hot cakes.

Quote from Tisky

7 hours ago, Tisky said: He tried to get me to buy it but , i'm not sold at all. All the grind gotta have a purpose, why can't devs learn that.

I mean I don’t work in a dev studio, but seems unfair to blame the devs. I don’t imagine anyone excited of putting treadmills and loot boxes in place, unless they are indie devs (that will actually benefit from that income) or micro-transactions specialists (whom job security depends on defining these systems).

I imagine higher ups requesting slot-machine games, and these people have to make the best out of it.

Quote from blackdog

1 hour ago, blackdog said: I mean I don’t work in a dev studio, but seems unfair to blame the devs. I don’t imagine anyone excited of putting treadmills and loot boxes in place, unless they are indie devs (that will actually benefit from that income) or micro-transactions specialists (whom job security depends on defining these systems).

 I imagine higher ups requesting slot-machine games, and these people have to make the best out of it.

Yeah i mean , lots of loot-based games have alot of grind to get good gear. And all for nothing. Once you've grinded out a good gear there are usually not alot of shit to do with it.

More in-depth review, if you care to watch:

People are hating this game so much that I kind feel like playing it... out of curiosity... but I'm not paying $60 bucks for an early access game It will probably be a really good game in about a year or so!

@[HP] EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and so many more... Name a 2017 franchise still alive

Quote from [HP]

12 hours ago, [HP] said: Fucking microtransactions man... Started out innocuous, then they became "optional", now they're everywhere and the very foundation/core of video games are designed around these things, that's the topic at hand here, not exactly "Anthem sucks", I'm sure it's a really fun game.

In a slightly related note:

An aside to what @[HP] was saying: player retention has been the target for big publishers for many years: when G4 was still a thing, I remember Geoff Keighley interviewing Jade Raymond along a couple others during an E3, must have been like 6-8 years ago. The main topic was player retention and how the publishers were aiming to increase that as much as possible: to limit the losses from the used game market, as playing and finishing Gears/COD/[whatever 8hrs game] on release weekend would cause massive losses as people could buy a used game at like -50% after a week from release… and they wouldn’t see a penny of it. That’s why sandboxes became so popular, along collectibles of all kinds, and of course most of all multiplayer experiences that would keep players playing. Would they also buy accessories afterwards? Awesome! The result are loot boxes and micro transactions like a red-dot for $1

Quote from [HP]

7 hours ago, [HP] said: All this could be mitigated by increasing the price of a video game overall. The used games market is not a problem anymore and gamestop will become the next blockbuster in the next couple of years. Games have been costing 60 bucks since the NES days, that's 3 fucking decades.

If the cost of game is raised to 80 bucks and said game takes 10 hours to be completed, that averages at $6 an hour! To go to the movies you pay $20 a ticket plus coke and popcorn, it could easily set you back $35 a person for a 2 hour movie, and everyone is more than ok to pay for that kind of entertainment. Of course, this all psychological, it's easier to ask people to pay $5 here, $10 there a few times than it is to ask for a bigger chunk of money, it skews the perception. People actually spend more money without realizing it... And this is why the bottom line of it is, vote with your wallets. Supply and demand, as long as there's a demand for this kind of stuff, that's what you'll get.

Nitpicking here, but I remember a 10 EUR spike in prices for games (in Germany) with the beginning of the PS3 generation. What used to cost 60 EUR now costs 70 EUR. And I find that to be a lot of money to shell out on a game*.

You are writing "$5 here, $10 there a few times" which makes me wonder how much higher the price for the base game would have to be to mitigate the lack of microtransactions? Because unless you are going F2P, it isn't like the base game has gotten any cheaper. And I am wondering how many players are put off from purchasing the game completely by microtransactions for stuff that can be unlocked through playing (yes - sometimes A LOT OF playing but still). It seems like bonus money for the publisher right now. This way they can keep the price for the initial offering as it is and depending on how sales go decide to develop/offer more content over time (or not). Developing and offering everything at once (at a higher price) seems riskier to me. I also don't think that the messaging "NO Microtransactions included!" would be something that either Marketing or shareholders would be excited about. All of this only applies to a big publisher and not a company that caters to a hardcore niche ofc (in case you are reading this, Devolver)

*It's probably because I'm cheap and would rather rent a movie at home 3 months down the line than watch it at a multiplex on launch for similar prices you mentioned.

Raising the prices would not work so well, I believe. Like Friechamp mentioned, 60-70 eur is quite a lot to spend on a game, especially if you have 3-4 games that you want to play and they all come out in a short window of time. Compared to going to the cinema, where a ticket costs 5 euros, it can seem pretty costly. Myself and a bunch of other people sometimes just wait until the prices drop for some games. If it's a single player game it will most likely drop 50% a year later. Also, if the said single player game has microtransactions or xp boosters that affect the core gameplay, it's pretty much a no buy for me. This ties into the issues I brought up earlier about big companies trying to retain players for the long term in all of their games. I think that's a mistake that ultimately leads to a lot of extra cost on their part and which forces them to adopt bad practices in order to recuperate their money. Take most of the recent sp open world games for example. They are so massive and littered with content, albeit repetitive, and take up so many resources to produce, all with the motivation of retaining the player for tens or hundreds of hours. There's just no balance, no small scale or shorter game experiences. Every game has to be just as large and last just as long. The more, the better. And there's nothing wrong with having some games be like that, but when almost every game is designed like that, there's something not quite right. Maybe it's just me having an open world fatigue. Maybe that's why I've been enjoying some of the recent shorter - more traditional games like Titanfall 2(4 hours), DUSK(10 hours), FAR: Lone Sails(2 hours) etc At least the indie scene still has it going. That's something I wanted to point out. Why can't big companies have smaller teams to produce something similar to an indie title? Hasn't the recent Spyro Reignited Trilogy been received positively?

Totally disagree that increasing price is better for the industry, I see even more justification for people to buy used, where a lower entry price just appeals to more. At least as far as I’m concerned I don’t buy games at more than £20/€30. Few games would be a D1 purchase for me, no more than two per year anyway.

I find very unfair that a full priced game also pushes microtransactions on you, whilst I’m ok with expansions-dlc.

Opem world fatigue is clearly there and I’m sure that’s the reason why many smaller titles have done very well.