This is video games now, apparently



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    You're the one buying a Ford, and you call me insane? Wow.

    Fix Or Replace Daily!
    Found On Road Dead!
    It's nice that Ford identifies all the problems in their vehicles and draws an oval around them!


    Filed under: [#likearock][1] [#chevyrunsdeep][2] [#findnewroads][3]


  • No, it's not silly at all, and your comment is condescending as fuck.

    Just because free market and competition is generally good, doesn't mean greed is always good. Very often the decisions that companies take to maximize their profits make the world worse for everyone else, and it's perfectly right to dislike that, even if the companies are in their legal right to do it.

    • When I actively work to make my software product as locked and incompatible as possible so my current users won't be able to move to another one since they can't transfer their existing data, I'm making things worse for everyone.
    • When I charge you $5,000 for a product that I sell for $800 to other people, because I know you're richer and can afford it, you obviously have the right to be angry at me and publicly discourage others from doing business with me.
    • If you buy a game from me and I close the servers 6 months later because they were no longer profitable, making the game useless, would you demand a refund? I hope not, I'm just earning money. That's what people do. You never signed a contract.
    • And I'm not even going to get into exploiting gambling and psychological addictions because I'm too lazy to argue about that now.


  • How are those arguments related to DLC in any way?



  • How are those arguments related to DLC in any way?



  • @anonymous234 said:

    When I charge you $5,000 for a product that I sell for $800 to other people, because I know you're richer and can afford it, you obviously have the right to be angry at me and publicly discourage others from doing business with me.

    BUT WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH DLC!?

    (Nothing, is the answer, but I'd like to see anonymous234 struggle a bit before we get there.)



  • I dunno? I was replying to a particular comment.



  • @Rhywden said:

    How are those arguments related to DLC in any way?

    @Buddy said:

    How are those arguments related to DLC in any way?

    @blakeyrat said:

    BUT WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH DLC!?

    Blakeyrat's two alts found. 🚎



  • Well I can't be @boomzilla's alt or I would have posted that Meg tweet.



  • You could just be saying that to cover yourself, @boomzilla



  • BUT WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH DLC‽



  • A-HA! Caught you out! You are @blakeyrat's alt and I claim my £5.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    Blakeyrat's two alts found. 🚎

    Given that I posted first, those two are my alts.



  • Fairly sure that account is newer than the blakeyrat account.

    Honestly, if you are going to 🚎 like this, at least get your story straight!



  • Maybe I just hacked the server and changed all the timecodes?



  • You hacked into Discourse and modified the database? And you're still sane?



  • @Arantor said:

    You hacked into Discourse and modified the database? And you're still sane?

    Given what my alt blakey is posting, this is a pretty weird question and has already answered itself.



  • So you're telling me that as a result of hacking Discourse, you have dissociative identity disorder and one of your divergent identities is a rage fuelled critique gamer?

    Well, I'm convinced. Sounds legit to me!



  • Normally I'd complain about you talking about this stupid shit in a thread that's supposed to be about how much of a ripoff DLC is, but considering I already demolished Lorne's arguments and he seems to have gone running off to his mama with teary eyes, I say proceed with the retarded conversation by idiots.



  • qed 😛



  • The gaming industry isn't doomed by the DLC any more than it was doomed by freemium, and any more than it was by shareware.

    For me, the problem is a lot of "me too" games shoved out by folks that don't know what they're doing and releasing before done because of all that fat Early Access style cash.

    I'm not opposed to DLC, but some places do take it a bit far, and I think if I'm SFV they made a "core" feature into DLC, that would be too far. Fortunately most devs aren't entirely retarded.



  • @Arantor said:

    For me, the problem is a lot of "me too" games shoved out by folks that don't know what they're doing and releasing before done because of all that fat Early Access style cash.

    No, those are awesome, because then they get into 12 games for $2 bundles, and I can buy them up and make fun of them for pennies on the dollar.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said:

    I already demolished Lorne's arguments

    Your reality is cute. Wrong, but cute.


  • FoxDev

    He's rejecting your reality and substituting his own



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Your reality is cute. Wrong, but cute.

    Oh mommy made you feel all better?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    One day we will destroy DLC, @buddy.



  • In REAL tragic gaming news, I can't get Mount & Blade: Warband to run on Windows 10.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I just learned that my wife has a dreamSteam account.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Also, there's a guy here at the car wash with a green parrot.



  • I don't know what that means.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said:

    Oh mommy made you feel all better?

    Nope. Your mom made me fell better. With her vagina.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Also, there's a guy here at the car wash with a green parrot.

    I don't know what that means.

    It means Boomzilla also fucked your mom.



  • Speaking of which, games there were released in an unfinished state but were later 'finished' by DLC: Mount&Blade. As far as I'm aware, to this day the succession quests in M&B don't complete properly (as in, you finish the quest, and then the person you've been helping take over the throne says "DIALOG_NOT_FOUND" or the like at you and nothing changes).

    @Rhywden said:

    How are those arguments related to DLC in any way?

    It's the same basic tactic! Selling Thing at price X and Luxury Thing (only slightly different) at price Y > X is a form of price discrimination, that thing I linked a wiki article about earlier.

    Selling a game and then selling umpteen different DLC packs is the Thing and Luxury Thing model. It's merely irritating if the DLC is cosmetic, but if it's game-affecting and I have reason to believe the company is deliberately exploiting that strategy (say, because the DLC is released for sale on day 1), then it's really annoying, in the same way shouty adverts, used car salesmen, and sleazy marketers are annoying.

    Obviously not all DLC is that. Skyrim's DLC, for example, is all obviously developed later in the cycle; it's not Thing and Luxury Thing, it's Thing and some additional Thing.

    @Buddy said:

    That's silly. You're silly. “I don't like it when people try to earn money by selling me something at a price I am willing to pay for it”. Trying to earn money is what people do. One day when you get some responsibilities of your own and stop pissing your money away on games you don't even like, you'll understand.

    Why would having more responsibilities make it /less/ annoying when companies obviously and openly attempt to maximize the money they can get from me?

    The thing I don't like isn't "People trying to earn money by selling me something". It's "People trying to optimize the amount of money they can earn off of me, by exploiting certain pricing strategies and bugs in the human brain". In the metaphorical iterated prisoner's dilemma of life, they're defecting.



  • @jmp said:

    It's the same basic tactic! Selling Thing at price X and Luxury Thing (only slightly different) at price Y > X is a form of price discrimination, that thing I linked a wiki article about earlier.

    And that's a problem because...?

    Before when you mentioned it you made it sound as if the SAME game was being sold at two different prices. Which would arguably be wrong and objectionable, but is also obviously untrue-- people who bought the DLC have more content, not the same amount of content.

    Now you acknowledge that the DLC adds content to the game, but you're still a mile away from explaining why any of this is a bad thing. And to make it more confusing:

    @jmp said:

    Obviously not all DLC is that. Skyrim's DLC, for example, is all obviously developed later in the cycle; it's not Thing and Luxury Thing, it's Thing and some additional Thing.

    It's somehow ok when Bethesda does it? But no other companies?

    Figure out this conundrum, people.

    @jmp said:

    The thing I don't like isn't "People trying to earn money by selling me something". It's "People trying to optimize the amount of money they can earn off of me, by exploiting certain pricing strategies and bugs in the human brain".

    You can phrase it in a nasty way, but I still don't find that a problem at all.


  • :belt_onion:

    :hanzo:


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @jmp said:

    Selling a game and then selling umpteen different DLC packs is the Thing and Luxury Thing model. It's merely irritating if the DLC is cosmetic, but if it's game-affecting and I have reason to believe the company is deliberately exploiting that strategy (say, because the DLC is released for sale on day 1), then it's really annoying, in the same way shouty adverts, used car salesmen, and sleazy marketers are annoying.

    Obviously not all DLC is that. Skyrim's DLC, for example, is all obviously developed later in the cycle; it's not Thing and Luxury Thing, it's Thing and some additional Thing.

    Where it matters is in the determination of whether the game without paid-for DLC is a sufficiently complete product at all. If the game is obviously incomplete without the DLC, there's a problem because there's a deliberate failure to provide what people might reasonably expect. But what is a reasonable expectation when it comes to completeness of a game? I don't recall reading about any court cases on this, though that probably just reflects the fact that I don't spend much time looking at the gaming press (to my immense benefit ;)).



  • @jmp said:

    Why would having more responsibilities make it /less/ annoying

    Because it is nice to get paid for products you've created. You should be able to identify with that.

    But also because it would hopefully cause you to get your priorities in order. If both the money that you spend on your games and the time you take to play them were taking away from more important things, the decision of whether or not to buy the dlc would be a lot clearer than you're making it sem right now.

    To play frontier psychiatrist for a minute: there's a weird kind of conflict in the argument that you're presenting. On the one hand, you keep talking about ‘extracting money from [you]’, as if its practically a given that you are going to buy the dlc, yet the whole point of this argument is that you hate dlc. You (or someone. Whatever. I'm not scrolling up) brought up problem gamblers, and sure, there's an argument to made that gambling should be restricted, to prevent societal harm. But there's an equally persuasive argument that if someone's an addict, you're not gonna be able to help them until they admit they've got a problem.

    So what's the fucking problem?



  • Also, can I just comment that while I dont play many games, the ones that I have played and bought dlc for, the dlc has been noticeably less polished than the base game. All this talk about how dlc is making people ship unfinished games, and all I'm thinking is, that's the stuff that would have been left on the cutting room floor anyways. Or sometimes you get the terrible, brokenly under/over-powered weapon packs that make the game 100% less fun for having been included. If anybody wants to make a case against downloadable content, maybe they should start by considering whether the actual content of it is any good.

    Also remember what used to happen when people would release a half-finished game back in the nineties? Just straight up abandoned, and anybody caught trying to release a community patch'd get the shit sued out of them.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I guess the only possible answer is that I am a dummy stupid know-nothing idiot moron.

    I'm surprised that none of your ... fellow ... posters jumped on you offering such a blatant straight line for them to (ab)use. Or maybe I'm just not thinking about the effects of weekends on people's Internet habits.



  • @Groaner said:

    I believe that some games accept a certain amount of error in the player's displayed position to make the experience less choppy.

    I've seen the results of this in a Taiwanese MMORPG (published in the West by a German outfit who shall remain nameless because I have nothing good to say about them).

    It caused endless complaints that:

    • monsters that were visibly right in front of you weren't attackable because they were too far away
    • monsters that were visibly right in front of you weren't attackable because you aren't allowed to attack things that are behind you
    • monsters that were visibly right in front of you weren't attackable because you couldn't see them, which led to snide observations about our characters having their eyes in their ankles
    • your character could suddenly die for no visible reason at all, especially if you walked along a very narrow thing like a rope, because the server would kill your character if it disagreed too violently with the client about your location (the server could decide you fell off the rope, and if the client didn't agree, the positional discrepancy was too big, and the server killed you)


  • @Steve_The_Cynic said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I guess the only possible answer is that I am a dummy stupid know-nothing idiot moron.

    I'm surprised that none of your ... fellow ... posters jumped on you offering such a blatant straight line for them to (ab)use. Or maybe I'm just not thinking about the effects of weekends on people's Internet habits.

    That was too easy. Like taking candy from a baby and thus boring.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't know what that means.

    :doing_it_wrong: - fixed in original.


  • Notification Spam Recipient


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Price discrimination! I should be able to get a double scoop of dutch chocolate for the same price as a single scoop of chocolate, otherwise the evil capitalists win!


  • FoxDev

    *looks at the font used in the title*

    Are you in Los Santos?


  • Java Dev

    What's dutch chocolate.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    hehehehe... American Nuts.



  • It helps that it's made absolutely clear that for 30 rupees you get one scoop of vanilla, and for one scoop of vanilla you pay 30 rupees.

    Rather than, say, an ad with an image of a double of butterscotch, with the legend "Served in a three-scoop cup!" and a price of 80 rupees, for which you get one half-melted vanilla half-scoop and told "oh, you want what's in the picture? that's another 80 rupees!"

    I think the problem isn't so much price discrimination, or even really value-for-money (when considering game + season pass + extra DLC). It's the bait-and-switch compared to our previous expectations. Civilization, Age of Empires, the Elder Scrolls series, the Impressions City-Builder Series, you could buy the base game for $49.99 and get a complete game out of it, with a full storyline and a clear beginning, middle, and endgame. If you wanted to, you could pay another $29.99-$49.99 and get an expansion pack, which either added more to the experience, or added a completely new storyline with its own beginning, middle, and end. Usually both. For more modern IP, the games still cost $99.99 per complete game plus side story, but you pay in 3 installments instead of 2 -- base "game", day-1 DLC, "GOTY" DLC -- where the first installment gets you something that's only an upsell vehicle, not an actual completable game, and the third installment is bundled with the second.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    It helps that it's made absolutely clear that for 30 rupees you get one scoop of vanilla, and for one scoop of vanilla you pay 30 rupees.

    Rather than, say, an ad with an image of a double of butterscotch, with the legend "Served in a three-scoop cup!" and a price of 80 rupees, for which you get one half-melted vanilla half-scoop and told "oh, you want what's in the picture? that's another 80 rupees!"

    Good thing rupees are fairly common across the game world... although they changed it so you no longer put rupees back in chests if your rupee counter is file.

    Filed under: Oh wait, you didn't mean in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess?



  • @RaceProUK said:

    looks at the font used in the title

    Are you in Los Santos?

    That was the font used for literally everything between about 1976 and 1982.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said:

    otherwise the evil capitalists win!



  • @PleegWat said:

    What's dutch chocolate.

    Mud? The title of a popular scat film?


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