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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Well, let's look at Starfield. I don't hate it nearly as much as you do, but I definitely agree it has flaws. But now imagine that some of these hyper-monetization practices had invaded it, on top of the other problems. Like, if you had to do some horrible grind to get fuel for your ship, unleeeesssssss you wanted to pay for some Bethesda Bux, to make that process go faster.
And now imagine almost every other single player RPG game has similar shit, crammed into it. Say anything you want about Todd Howard, I do think he would fight tooth and nail to prevent such a thing. And so would every other traditional RPG developer. But they don't really own their companies, anymore. They've all had to sell out to bigger entities, to keep putting food on the tables of their employees. And even the ones who remain independent aren't entirely above the pressures of the publishers.
So imagine that they can't hold the flood back anymore, and the mobile-style ultra-monetization shit gets into all the RPG games, even more into every online FPS game, into all the single player FPSes and Boomer Shooters, even somehow into sidescrolling platformers and Metroidvanias. And adventure games. And every other genre you can think of.
If all the major releases become completely overburdened with this shit, people might just decide "welp, I'm out. I'm leaving the hobby."
That could cause a crash. Hopefully, true indie games could pull us out of the spiral, but I'm not sure of that. Especially in a scenario like I'm talking about. If there was a real exodus of millions of players, away from gaming, the industry would have to contract massively. Then all those devs who are currently employed by major studios would found a bunch of little indie studios. Some people would applaud that as an unalloyed benefit, but they would all be competing for a much smaller pool of money, and maybe none of them would be able to remain solvent.
So, again, you get the potential for a devastating crash.
Ok. So if I understand your argument correctly you are saying that the financial success of Genshin et al would prompt other publishers to force the studios they own to implement these monetisation strategies.
And this leads to players like you and me leaving the hobby. (Not that I know what else I would do… but anyways) But who knows… maybe people growing up with this sort of thing is fine with it… which might not then crash the industry but just leaves us with shitty games.
Maybe we are in the minority. Maybe millions won’t leave it and it is just you and me taking up stamp collecting or something.
Other than CDPR… I wouldn’t be very upset if a crash in the industry causes some AAA studios to cease to be. The scenario you sketched with more indie studios rising sounds kinda nice actually.
Nature dislikes a vacuum. If the industry crashes because of overzealous monetisation practices I am sure studios with somewhat more competent executives (like say Larian) would jump on the chance to produce content players want.
Then again… it is not like the rise of reality tv lead to the sudden generation of lots of great tv shows from indie studios. So I guess you have a point.
The TV industry is a great parallel example. Like it or not, TV also needs the large money investors to keep the entire thing afloat. Sure, if the proliferation of ludicrously high streaming service prices continues and causes a contraction in that industry, a lot of actors and writers and production crew could try and get together to make YouTube content, but it would be a similar splitting of everyone into little channels, where none of them actually have enough revenue to really sustain true TV-style production.
I think the "nature abhors a vacuum" principle could work beneficially, in terms of another reset, after a crash. But if we had to restart the console market from scratch, that would be much more difficult now than it was back in the 80s.