|
Post by X-pert74 on May 21, 2019 5:15:33 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Catalyst on May 23, 2019 0:56:28 GMT -5
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp wasn't too bad in this regard, but I understand the rational of having to remove this. I myself don't think I spent more than $10 on the game when I played it. Usually, just when they had they're monthly sale and the purchasable items were a dollar. I wonder what implications this will have for Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, or any of the other mobile games Nintendo is planning. Like, did they also pull Dragalia Lost? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
|
|
|
Post by kaoru on May 23, 2019 1:39:58 GMT -5
Like, did they also pull Dragalia Lost? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Dragalia Lost wasn't even available in Belgium yet. I think it's only availalbe in the UK and Ireland in Europe so far.
|
|
|
Post by Digitalnametag on May 23, 2019 10:27:47 GMT -5
I'm kinda curious to see how this board feels about loot boxes/gacha games. At this point I honestly would not mind if the practice of selling loot boxes became illegal in the US. With the ridiculous amounts of money these games are pulling in each day I feel they are negatively affecting traditional game development. Hell I bet the new Fire Emblem console game will be more profitable to Nintendo via the new characters it will add to Fire Emblem Heroes. Or perhaps I'm just bitter about these things and should get over it? Eh.
I would think if these laws become more common that games will just switch to selling characters/costumes/whatever in a digital store front. Sure it may be less profitable for them but at least that will seem way less predatory than gacha.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on May 23, 2019 11:48:04 GMT -5
FEH has managed to bring in $500m in its first two years (2/17 to 2/19) so probably not but still quite a bit. Pokémon Go by itself has brought in over $3b versus ~$1.5b for the games (300m units x $50 which is too high). Even the movies are at ~$1b. Regular merchandising is always were the real money is and that at around $70b! That's always been the paradox with secondary products; they absolutely dwarf the main one but can't exist without it.
I limit my exposure to gacha games, don't really hold my interest anyway, and totally stay away from anything with purchased loot boxes. The amount of money gained from dangling some fancy sounding 5* character is so much greater than the cost of development, and not even that many people need to take the bait. At least a casino gives you free drinks! I do feel like consumable in game items are worse overall though. It doesn't come across like gambling but squeeze people for money more. It's can also be design corrupting to the point that it's an issue even if there's a paid port that doesn't have any IAP. Even in a case where it isn't too bad, those vestiges still stick around. The one that comes to mind is Defoliation, an adventure game that I liked overall that used "energy per tap" on mobile. Without that energy system, everything is totally normal, but you also need to "find" 100 maple leaves from tapping around the screen to properly finish it. You do gain a pretty big chunk of that from simply getting to the end, but I imagine that having to get that many simply arose from getting people to run down that energy meter more.
It's the classic dilemma between art and commerce. There's much more money to be made in squeezing a handful of people for hundreds or thousands of dollars compared to making something good that a person might actually want.
|
|
|
Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 24, 2019 12:35:40 GMT -5
Really all this does is preventing players from Belgium from playing the game. So as much as I despise lootboxes and gacha mechanics, this is worse that doing nothing.
As long as bigger countries don't take a stance against these practices, they'll continue to exist and companies will just ignore the relatively smaller markets altogether instead of fixing their crap. Maybe this is a start, but there's companies out there that practically rely on these kind of things now, and they're not going to go down without a fight.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on May 24, 2019 13:28:50 GMT -5
There was actually a draft US Senate bill released yesterday that would outlaw loot boxes, gacha mechanics and pay to win in "minor oriented games". It is not a good bill at all, but hopefully gets revised to something actually useful that doesn't also inadvertently ban arcade games (seriously, it does). There's also a big section on what "minor oriented" means, but it actually applies as written to anything that could be used by someone under 18 ("publisher or distributor has constructive knowledge that any users are under age 18"). In all honesty, it's a total show bill that has 0% chance of even making it out of committee.
|
|