Congratulations on resisting manufactured discontent and weaponized frustration. Even if they never crack you, personally - they’ll get a lot of people, and take them for as much as they’re worth. Some for thousands upon thousands of dollars. For hats.
The entire industry is becoming infected by this business model. It is the dominant strategy. It’s in full-price, major-franchise, single-player games. It’s in subscription MMOs. All dismissive excuses have been proven wrong. It’s naked greed, on top of whatever money they can already charge. And in pursuit of that, these products are made objectively less enjoyable. They openly employ fear and impatience to provoke irrational decisions. Your enjoyment without paying them is a bug to be fixed.
At this point they must consider you an NPC. A generic inconstant target for paying users to feel superior to. That feeling is the only reason you can throw money at this crap. The entire experience has been engineered to maximize how much better you feel, every time you fork over more money - moderated only by keeping you addicted so you never just leave. The longer they have you padding their servers, the more they can harass you with limited-time offers for shiny nonsense.
Why is that tolerable?
This has become half the industry, by revenue. What part of that is not a horrifying warning of things gone wrong? It’s not like the billions in revenue have been great for anyone doing the work, what with investment-drunk publishers slashing studios apart. Turns out when you forecast unlimited revenue, there’s no such thing as enough.
Congratulations on resisting manufactured discontent and weaponized frustration. Even if they never crack you, personally - they’ll get a lot of people, and take them for as much as they’re worth. Some for thousands upon thousands of dollars. For hats.
The entire industry is becoming infected by this business model. It is the dominant strategy. It’s in full-price, major-franchise, single-player games. It’s in subscription MMOs. All dismissive excuses have been proven wrong. It’s naked greed, on top of whatever money they can already charge. And in pursuit of that, these products are made objectively less enjoyable. They openly employ fear and impatience to provoke irrational decisions. Your enjoyment without paying them is a bug to be fixed.
At this point they must consider you an NPC. A generic inconstant target for paying users to feel superior to. That feeling is the only reason you can throw money at this crap. The entire experience has been engineered to maximize how much better you feel, every time you fork over more money - moderated only by keeping you addicted so you never just leave. The longer they have you padding their servers, the more they can harass you with limited-time offers for shiny nonsense.
Why is that tolerable?
This has become half the industry, by revenue. What part of that is not a horrifying warning of things gone wrong? It’s not like the billions in revenue have been great for anyone doing the work, what with investment-drunk publishers slashing studios apart. Turns out when you forecast unlimited revenue, there’s no such thing as enough.