Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
Rules
No it's not, the community is just paying for it collectively! The players deserve a game that's better because they're still paying for it as a group instead of as individuals! Stop individualising yourselves so much that you can't even critique a product anymore!
Not exactly what you mean but my favorite is “it’s free on gamepass.”
So not free, in fact the opposite of free even. Do words even have meaning anymore?
"this game was free on gamepass!"
"how much do you pay for gamepass?"
"$15"
"how many games have you got from it this month?"
"just this one"
"so you rented this game for $15"
I will provide a counter argument, Mechwarrior Online, sorta, it's complicated.
Gamer consciousness probably isn't a solid foundation. There's no real incentive for free players to see any common cause with paying players and whales, because the free players get a free game on the backs of the paying players. Then there's there fact that the people playing for free are likely in a lower social class than the paying players, who have the disposable income to spend on games. There's a contradiction that can't really be resolved by gamers rising up and realizing they have a common interest.
The incentive is a more united voice in criticising or demanding more from developers. The incentive is that, instead of profits being scraped from the game for investors, more of those profits are put into improving the game.
Developers get away with doing less because they have these loyal dogs in the community actively defending their ability to do less.
One of the things that I've noticed over time is that when these voices take over a community, over time you see the critical voices decline, because they give up on change ever happening and leave, the result is more and more of these people take over.
Unless you are suggesting that there is a difference between an incentive and the overall common interest I'm not sure I understand you.
The only purpose of the free tier is to increase the player base, exploit them for additional content, and pad out the community to create engagement - free players might as well be bots. They're scenery and props for the paying customer.
Then, the people with the disposable income for video games also have the free time to be involved in the community, so naturally they're going to take over. Inevitably the community will be dominated by people with lots of money and free time.
You even revealed it yourself - you called them "loyal dogs" because they are your class enemy. People without disposable income who play for free find that the game enshitifies over time, so they either go play something else (so there's no real incentive to stay behind in a shitty game and advocate to make it better) or stay and resent the dogs that paid to ruin the game.
There's a class element here that you're ignoring.
You even revealed it yourself - you called them "loyal dogs" because they are your class enemy. People without disposable income who play for free find that the game enshitifies over time, so they either go play something else (so there's no real incentive to stay behind in a shitty game and advocate to make it better) or stay behind to resent the dogs that paid to ruin the game.
You've got what I said backwards. This behaviour increases as time goes on. It would decrease if those people were leaving.
Or you got what I said backwards. This behavior increases because the people who don't behave like loyal dogs all leave, because there's nothing keeping them there. This would cause brand loyalty to increase.
I don't think the free players are actually that loyal. It's the ones with money invested that behave like dogs.
yeah, people reference a particular game being free as if that's the company going easy on us out of the milk of human kindness and not the corporation realising that's the only path they have to maximising revenue (most likely off of whales)
I don't even really care if it's whales or not in a lot of cases. I actually think the inherent anti-whale thing is driving individualism and causing players to fight among themselves. If they united with the whales they'd have a stronger voice as one community.
A lot of these people drawing the distinction between the whales and themselves are paying players anyway. It's a tool of division. Splitting the playerbase into fighting among themselves instead of directing their criticisms and desires in a united way towards the developers. A lot of it reminds me of the identity-based infighting in the working class and how it divides them up into bickering among themselves instead of directing their, ahem... criticisms... at the bourgeoisie. It's not 1:1 but many of the behaviours are similar just in a consumerist space.
plus a lot of so-called "whales" are just people with average or below average incomes who are vulnerable to the predatory practices these free-to-play game companies spend immense time and resources to develop
the idea that they are all rich people is largely a myth
i'm not talking about whales as a player, i'm talking about whales from the perspective of the company making it free to play, i think f2p is inherently predatory so i don't play them
sometimes games really are just free
Yeah no complaints here about those genuinely free ones. I respectfully mean every single game with a business model that isn't an up front payment.
Amber.
Amber
Amber.
I feel like you’ve got a particular game in mind.
I've heard it in so many games recently but yeah I guess the latest one I've been playing is Where Winds Meet and the response to any criticism is always "but it's a free game".
It's not free, the players are paying for it! It's an incredibly bad and individualised mindset. Getting people to group up and see themselves as "the community" would be much healthier and also teach them a thing or two that might lead them to some class consciousness if they apply it outside the games they play.
G*mers realize that free-to-play games aren't actually free challenge: impossible.
It's driving me mad. Especially if I'm a player who has literally paid something into the game. The response then is "you chose to do that". Yeah and? I am still a paying player who is responsible for this game continuing to exist!
These communities would have a stronger voice if they realised they all had the same interests - the game being better. And that they're all contributing something to the game as part of the community, whether it's contributing as just another totally player able to be matched with, a member of online discourse, content creator or paying player. It's all the same interests. Teaching these people to recognise their interests as one playerbase would teach them the same skill needed to recognise their class interests in the outside world. They individualise themselves to their own detriment.
It doesn’t help that those sort of games tend to be online competitive ones which breeds antagonism between the frugal players and the whales.
Not always, think of all the gacha games or the pve games that are funded entirely by cosmetics. Those big competitive ones are just the loudest.
if not free . then why not cost coins ?