EA - Favours Open World Games - Pushing Microtransactions

Carnifex said:

Anyone that has a single EA game or the Origin platform on their system cannot even pretend to disdain this company. With that said, EA, you may now go kindly die a huge, napalm-like fire. And take Origin with you into that fiery inferno.

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I can disdain all I want. See? See?!

Seriously, I have an Origin account exclusively for The Sims 3 (and EA DID seem to do better for a short while...), and I feel only moderately dirty because of it. I also collected their free giveaways like Syndicate and Crusader. Of course, now my daughter has hijacked it and added Sims 4 to it. What a mistake!

Arkadia7 said:

I won't be buying any games filled to the brim with micro transactions, or loot boxes. The reason for my stance is because these things impact the overall game design in a horrible way, especially loot boxes.

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Loot boxes hit a nerve.
Lootboxes are useless for players who enjoy their run. There is no gameplay mechanics to force players into buying loot boxes. Even, buying lootboxes would go against the enjoyment as they shorten the time spent on the enjoyment.

For players who play products for othe reasons like social tokens to belong to a group, it hits them and hard. They are offered a way to decrease their burden and it is monetized.
To keep being part of the group, they must fork out more.

you said:

I'm not sure the classification of aaa matters as much as revenue and profit. I will note that D:OS was not the same scale of revenue (1.5 million vs 4 to 8 million unit sold) but it would be interesting to see the profit value. For the record funds from kickstarter were not relevant to D:OS-2; it was a fan service.

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Without exact knowledge on the subject, I'd guess that Larian's team size and the game costs for any of their games does not come close to that of a modern Bioware or Bethesda game. Larian's last two games were very successful, but D:OS 1 sold a comparable number of units (albeit at a higher price) to the original Legend of Grimrock (which had a 7 man team, I think). Noone would compare LOG to a Mass Effect: Andromeda, in terms of team size, or costs, but LOG made a massive profit in comparison to its development costs, and ME:A did not. If ME:A sold as many units as L:OG or D:OS it still would probably have been considered a failure. Games like that need to sell multiple millions of copies, and rely primarily on consoles for their income.

The good news in all this - for me at least - is this feels pretty much irrelevant to me. While I did play the Dragon Age games and Mass Effect 1 and 2, that's basically only about 5 games over quite a number of years (that's all I've played from them (if DA 1 and MA 1 were under the EA banner already then? (can't remember)). Anyway, the simple fact is smaller studios and indies are giving me all the gaming I need - and frankly, usually produce better games than what comes from AAA publishers. So EA and their minions can do whatever they want and enjoy their own hell.

you said:

The only way EA will change their direction is if their wallet tells them to change. What I find odd is companies like cdprojek and larian can do very well with what we want - perhaps I do not understnad the scale of revenue/profit that EA sees from their open world loot box games ?

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The Witcher 3 cost $81m to make, but that was with mostly Polish salaries. The avg game dev salary in Poland is around $1k USD per month from what I can gather on the web. In 2014, the lowest salary in gaming in the US was QA at $54k/year (or $4.5k/month) and neither include all the other cost associated with the employees (the HR rules is that an employee cost x2 its salary to the company) which are probably higher in the US than Poland because of the difference in cost of living (why Polish salaries are lower too).

In other word, if The Witcher 3 had been made in the US, a good chunk of that $81m would have quadrupled just because of the salaries differences, probably causing the budget to go over $200-300m in budget which means winning or getting close to the title of most expensive game ever and 10m copies sold not being enough to have a profit yet.

As for EA revenue from "loot boxes", FIFA is not open world, but it generate $800m/year for EA in microtransactions (that's pure profit, there is also a $40/year box cost to the "new" version released each year).

Shame that EA can't make better games with all that money they're paying their devs.

On a game that I was anticipating, Assassin's Creed Origins, there is mixed news. They do have loot boxes/microtransactions, but they are doing it in an unobtrusive way, apparently. In other words, not nearly as bad as some other games. Youtuber Yong Yea seems optimistic that the game won't be affected, if you choose to ignore it. For those who prefer a direct link to the video (or just in case this video isn't working for whatever reason) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OydhFhZCQ0&t=0s

Well they already lost me at UPLAY so it affects my game even less. Will wait for the... patched.... version.

A few hours back an interesting Sterling's input on lootboxes' impact when it comes to sales was uploaded:

joxer said:

A few hours back an interesting Sterling's input on lootboxes' impact when it comes to sales was uploaded:

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People sitting in their armchairs and complaining over facebook and twitter... and then doing nothing. Inaction, the skill of the people.

rjshae said:

One day they'll put it all together and create an open world taxi simulator.

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Isnt that what Uber is for?

joxer said:

A few hours back an interesting Sterling's input on lootboxes' impact when it comes to sales was uploaded:

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That is a video.

Arkadia7 said:

On a game that I was anticipating, Assassin's Creed Origins, there is mixed news. They do have loot boxes/microtransactions, but they are doing it in an unobtrusive way, apparently. In other words, not nearly as bad as some other games. Youtuber Yong Yea seems optimistic that the game won't be affected, if you choose to ignore it. For those who prefer a direct link to the video (or just in case this video isn't working for whatever reason) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OydhFhZCQ0&t=0s

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Lootboxes do not affect the product when you choose to ignore them except on terms of speeding up a run completion.
On this ground, it is hard to see how ACO could benefit from the loot box approach. It is not so much about unobtrusiveness or whatever, the loot box formula does not apply as it applies to SW.

ChienAboyeur said:

That is a video.

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It sure it. But it's not live twitch stall'em to earn more $ stream. It's also interesting how this author earns money - totally different from billions of leeches on twitch.

Unlikely. He looks like pandering to his audience serving them what they desire to hear just as streamers do.

He is unlikely to make vids on the mess that is the crowdfunded scene for gaming and likely to target the big bad corps that are lagging behind the crowdfunded scene in terms of sound ways of making business.

He's making "attitude" vids about things asked by people who fund him. What's likely and what's unlikely he'll make depends on those people - and those aren't twitch audience.
He did not monetize videos through bloodsucking live stream business.

So he peddles ideas for a living and serves what his sponsors desire to hear.

Streamers is not about monetizing videos.

Streamers rely as well on Patreon.
Streamers depend on subscribers. People watch streams and streamers convert some into subscribers. A range of price in subscription.

Analogous.

Looks like disappearance of single player games is a topic rather minor and uninteresting.

Once more the evolution isn't coming from evil publishers but from players. It's since some years that I see a significant evolution, more and more players playing only marginally a few single player games and in general not liking any.

But there's a logic, the autism category has increased hugely those last 10 or 20 years, many people that was normal 30 years ago are now considered to have an autism syndrome that need be cured. The frontiers of normality has evolved a lot and now a normal human is a human hyper focused on social with a phone glued firmly in his hands, if not you are sort of mad.

It's quite possible the "requirement" to use a mobile phone, and the internet evolution, contributed significantly to this evolution, there's clearly a logic between those evolution and the evolution of autism definition.

In that context you can't be surprised that the "new humans" with some phone buried deep inside their head, are more and more focused on multiplayer games only. Single player games have hard time to develop the social aspect as well than MP games.

Ok, if I can only play indie or crowd funding single player games, that's fine, it won't kill me. At reverse torture will be easier, isolate one of those new humans during one hour and his mental is broken.

Dasale said:

Ok, if I can only play indie or crowd funding single player games, that's fine, it won't kill me. At reverse torture will be easier, isolate one of those new humans during one hour and his mental is broken.

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Non sense. Crowdfunded scene is the one that brought multiplayer to UgoIgo party based products.


The crowdfunded scene of a bubble of privileges which is afforded a regressive pattern. Crowdfunded products do not need to improve on their predecessors (they do not match old good games in their gameplay) and they do not need to innovate.
Crowdfunded products are afforded to be inferior to their predecessors and copies of their predecessors.

Devs have been turning to social features as a way to cope with the difficulty of making progress in SP products.
Social features come as a substitute for the lack of expected SP products.
Devs fail to deliver any progress in the SP department so they turn to social features as additional content.

ChienAboyeur said:

So he peddles ideas for a living and serves what his sponsors desire to hear.

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Exactly. Sponsors want to hear his judgment on something. Right or wrong, agree or disagree, he doesn't just stall and earn $ by wasting others' time.

Unlike twitch where streamers have to pretend being excited about Destiny 2 because Bungie paid them to. Even Jessica Alba would be more believable than all those twitchers.