If you want to engage in any sort of meaningful analysis of that - you need to look at the specifics of that and not just try to reduce everything down so it fits in your “true value” formula.
This is why people do advanced degrees in business.
No for margins they use running cost vs revenue averaged over periods of time.
They don’t use it for pricing products because it would be unhelpful for all the reasons outlined that you skipped over.
Another reason you should never have started on this “true value” crusade.
No it doesn’t. Those aren’t internal figures from Ubisoft. Ubisoft is a massive conglomerate with a huge portfolio of products and revenue streams.
All this shows is you don’t have your citation and you don’t think you need one because you’re convinced that you know more about business than anyone else in the world, yet you’re on this forum arguing about it instead of going out and becoming a trillionaire.
If nothing else, citing Ubisoft as evidence of the entire industry is like walking into your local take out place and accusing them of making their delivery drivers pee in bottles because of what you read about Amazon. See all that stuff I had up above about market forces, capital, etc
You can do that with physical products too - that’s why there’s always a shortage whenever Nintendo makes a new gaming devices or merch that takes off it tends to create a backlog, they mitigate their risk by manufacture costs. Similarly there are countless unfinished series of games which have done the same thing by abandoning the next episode - so mitigating risk is a standard practice in business…
Well either you like what they did with Vegas or it spelled the end of the Rainbow Six brand as it was established at the time - either way is fine, because at the end its just an opinion. There was never any real artistic merit to Rainbow Six - it was always propaganda puffery - just originally on a fairly unique gaming framework that fell out of popularity.
All games must evolve or perish. Wolfenstein 3D defined the popular perception of the brand, but it was the Vegas of the Wolfenstein series at the time. It’s identity has morphed and changed, for a while it was barely about killing Nazis (so much weird supernatural shit mixed in).
No. It actually started with high priced “expansion packs” that we old people used to have to buy in the “video game store”. The came in a “cardboard box” with a “disc” in them. Often you could buy “collectors editions” which included the expansion pack, and some free crap like stationary, art prints, etc.
The main reason they didn’t use the “season pass” model was they couldn’t set up a reliable method of distribution to people.
Because it’s really hard to make map that has long lasting appeal, and once you reach saturation point its even harder to break in because people have exponentially higher investment in the existing maps.
It’s more skins are a form of social capital and expression of self in multi-player games, ergo there will always fluctuating market for skins as they can change with the fashion, the times, be topical, etc and all these things that a map cannot be.
Some are. See the article about all the studios EA has shut.
I was pretty clear about my point and if you can’t follow how a standard way to mitigate increased costs is to get more revenue per customer and to expand revenue streams then I don’t think you’re in a position to talk about how business works.
And you never addressed how nebulous that cost is.
Actually they are. Not only are people doing it, we know the names of the people doing it: Bobby Kotik, Yves Guillemot, Tim Sweeny, Andrew Wilson…
But much as homeless people trash bathrooms at shelters as a misdirected proxy gesture against the people who ruined their lives, you are writing walls of text to try to blame people for systems they’re locked out of.
I have been gaming for thirty years and never once received “everything” in a game. That’s how creative media works.
Well if your “sales” figure is infinite then the cost-per-unit-sold is always “negligble” because any figure divided by infinity is infintesimally small. Your model really does not hold up under anything.
And it is a one time job, but it is only a tiny part of the equation. If I made an even cooler card in Blender today, I could not monetize it in the same manner. I have no game to sell it in, no server to host the game, no employees to make the game, no office for the employees to work in, etc.
You’re so close to a revelation here.
This is factually incorrect to a ridiculous extent as already covered above. I reminder you the forum is for civilized conversation and your obligation in that is to make your posts improve the conversation, not recite the same incorrect information over and over in the hopes the other person gives up.
If your argument hinges upon a DLC where the content is advertised, the content is non-variable (ie every purchaser gets the same content) and there is performance pressure attached being a “loot box” then you have lost before you started and are wasting everyone’s time.
You cannot expect a market to improve if there is no rhyme or reason behind what is labelled as what. This is the kind of thing that weakens the overall conversation and allows the tyrants above to thrive.
You in fact have a vast plethora of choices not covered there: indie games, streaming services, movies, onlyfans, etc. This is how money and the market works - there are things you want and money you have, for the vast majority of us we will always have to choose between things and our choices are part of our identity.
When I go shopping for clothes, I have a choice between a suit or bunch of casual clothes. When I buy dinner I have a choice of a restaurant, a local take away or McDonalds. The same money will buy wildly different things in each.
Yes, its like… the idea is to provide a massive variety so players can use these cosmetics to distinguish and express themselves - thus spending money on the ones they intend to use and not spending money on the ones they don’t want.
It’s like this is the core as to why the loot box system you endorse is so terrible.
It is the exact opposite system, as covered in my previous reply. When I receive all seven packs I will own 100% of the content. In a lot box scenario, I would only own a randomly determined quantity.
If you consider this purchase to be “gambling” then you consider literally every purchase of a console, game or other product to be gambling. Does Sony guarantee they’ll keep making dope games for the PS5? No they do not. They could cancel it tomorrow and shut down the whole PSN.
Gambling. It’s apparently what we all do whenever we buy a can of soda.
The chief flaw is that there are so many major differences between burgers and games to the point where there is no way to discuss the differences.
Burgers are a bulk tangible item manufactured to a recipe, in a restaurant where they are constantly assembled and served by workers.
Modern games are an intangible specific item where licenses are sold and each individual game must be novel and adjust to the expectations of the time, almost no game or genre sells consistently over decades.
There is no definitive measure of a AAA game so there is not way to measure 33% of one. This step relies entirely on us trust you, a person who cannot distinguish between burgers an video games, DLC and lootboxes, when you say “trust me man, they took out two thirds of the game, I can prove it because someone else made money”
This is extremely ambigious but whicher reasding: has been a thing since games came out.
Tons… studios shut down all the time, games get discontinued for support all the time, same as it ever was. Same as it ever was!
Motherfucker back in my day we had to buy games based off box art. You get instant access to trailers, to developer statements, to reviews, etc.
The only guarantee in life is death, all else is risk assessment. You are happy to dismiss the risks others have to take, so you should know you’re obligated to some yourself.
Because the link their identities (as you see it) to licensed content they do not own, will have to pay ongoing licensing for and the perception thereof will change over time!? GTA V is not “all games” dude.
Yup. All seven are going to be kitchy, silly content packs based around the Seven Deadly Sins and I am so here for it.
You’re not here for it? Don’t buy it.
In fact, you don’t even need to think about it. Go play your risk free, 100% identity integrity maintained games that totally exist and aren’t a think you’re making up to make a DLC you don’t want look bad.
Other people’s comfort with uncertainty is not your business. They don’t come to your house and tell you what you should and shouldn’t eat.
Because the advertising gave me a clear indication of the general nature of the content that I would be purchasing and, as a long term customer of IO Interactive they have “brand” and “good will” with me.
Brand is a promise, I know the kind of content that IO Interactive make and so their selling something like the 7 Deadly Sins pack is a promise unto itself.
Good Will is the strength behind the promise. IO Interactive have, over the years, continually impressed and surprised me with their approach and their commitment to quality.
Both of these have been considered essential elements of business since before the terms were coined. In many products, there is also value added by an element of uncertainty. I don’t know what Pride is going to look like exactly, and I’m excited. I have let IO Interactive know buy sending them money, and now I have additional excitement that as soon as it comes out I can dive in - no fussing on if I want to buy it or not. Just play.
Other examples where uncertainty is added value:
- Tickets to shows (theatre productions, fashion shows, etc)
- Commissioned artworks
- Sports events
- Markets (Stock, FX, commodities, etc)
Only death is certain.
And, let’s take this a step even further…
…by your argument, this forum is a loot box. I pay hosting fees every month and I have no idea what people will post. Are you now proposing that I should cancel this?
Staggeringly ignorant analysis, there is a vast plethora of information available in this thread alone about why this is a ridiculous statement but here are the key points:
- Content is a collaborative effort, some types are not viable when team members have other commitments - no new maps/missions if the key staff are in meetings with MGM
- “Quality” is no guarantee of popularity or profit, particularly in a saturated market or where strong preferences have set in.
- Even when you do that you have to deal with this kind of nonsense where people who have never read a business plan scream “trust me it has a skin involved so it’s a lootbox in disguise!”
- As prices have stagnated for thirty years, the volume of sales required as climbed so the likelihood of receiving fair payout for your work diminishes. This is not unlike many, many industries that have all evolved: movies, music, video services, transport, etc.
You would know all this if you paid attention rather than just reiterated “Trust me! Ubisoft’s burger is real!”
No they cannot. They are no more interchangeable than the iconic apples and horses. Your statements are worthless because they always rely upon people believing your extraordinary statements with no evidence and no consideration of things already put forward.
Literally every time you have claimed you have an example, it has shown to not be an example. Start doing the heavy lifting for yourself and do research off whatever other forum or discord you’re getting these claims you can’t support from.
Repeatedly doing this is the gish gallop - ie you make a bunch of bold claims and statements to get likes and support with the intent, not of providing information or contributing to the conversation but creating obstacles for the other person to overcome.
So no, I will not go look into why your idea about how lootboxes can be good because you haven’t addressed any of the issues and you are now falsely referring to anything you don’t want to buy as a lootbox. Nor should anyone.
Literally all your posts in this thread are doing that. They’re restating your stance, declaring things that are easily debunked and using vague claims like “most people will say” and “my example is good, prove there’s a flaw” (after a post already proving the flaw) and glossing over your assumption that AAA games are easy to make money with (while you continue to ignore the rate at which game studios close).
Because you’re not trying, you’re repeatedly stating the same things over and over. Passionate about your opinion is not the same as passionate about the topic the opinion relates to. Westbro Bapist Church was famously passionate about their stance on homosexuality but not passionate about homosexuality or any discourse surrounding it.
You should first familiarise yourself with some of the basics of business and arguing.
Based on your posts it seems likely that you are confusing cost per unit vs rate of return. Rate of return is an even more nebulous concept with video games because your initial investment can continue paying off for years afterwards.
This was a case with HITMAN (2016) where the initial sales were disappointing but then sales picked up and their ongoing sales were enough to convince IO Interactive it was a sound investment (and would finally pay off with Hitman 3).
On top of that, the mega studios that you keep referring to and people refer to when they use a lot of other strategies to raise their return on investment. Blizzard/Activision engages is A level tax evasion.
Epic Games, Valve, EA, Ubisoft and CD Projekt Red get bigger cuts of sales of their own games on their own platforms, three of those also make hefty amounts of money by selling other people’s games… the others have such a huge portfolio going back so far they are are essentially in a similar position. They also make staggering amounts of money on merchandise,
In regards to loot boxes, aside from your absurd notion that any product you don’t want to buy is a loot box, there is the disregard for the strategies involved, you also are basing your arguments as what you and your social circle complain about rather than any sort of analysis based in research or understanding.
The Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts dedicated 47 pages to explore the many implications and things necessary to understand the concept. You’ll note that they agree with me with what a lootbox is, and that they researched and referenced meticulously. This is because the purpose of that kind of statement is to show a good basis for the claims, and provide something that contributes to everyone not just you and the people in the Discord who complain about Pay-To-Win.
Looking around you’ll find the people who research don’t talk about “watering down the game”, “losing the identity” or “pay to win” because they’re not relevant. The first two are opinions that are too nebulous to engage in conversation with since games are a creative product. The third is motivational pressure but not a particularly unique or important or sustainable one.
Your instance that there’s good loot box models doesn’t cover anything of value because its not informed by actual study of this topic, but of your own personal preference. If a lootbox system feels comfortable, that generally means you’re not noticing how they’re taking your money off you.
I covered above how cosmetics is the mostly highly exploitative market for multiplayer - you didn’t want to believe it so you ignored it and now you’re crying about how its not fair that you’re not being considered a great contributor for repeating “P2W” over and over.
The whale hunting approach, complete with the term “whale” is taken from gambling - and common strategies in gambling include:
- Fabrication of community to create social pressure on expectations
- Creating the impression everything can be obtained through playing (literally everything, you could be set for life)
- Maintaining rates to create a false sense of security (and advertising fluctuating rates)
- Creating massive catalogs to create the false impression of novelty and different outcomes (having 500 possible prizes means you have to play longer to get that 1 prize)
- Using prizes to create a social hierarchy that creates massive social pressures to spend endlessly to try to climb the ladder (every poker room that has tournaments to allow entry to WSOP and diet versions of WSOP)
- Unlimited opportunity to participate/time (24/7 slots, so there’s never a time you can’t go gamble)
They also use strategies like allowing players to have “play” chips - which gets players into the habit of playing and remembering their victories and forgetting their losses so they then overestimate their ability when they play with real money (or in the case of poker, don’t realize the dynamics change massively when its real money).
You think Maps and Cosmetics are interchangeable somehow, but only in this weird way where you realize that maps are a lot more work, and that means that they cost a lot more money so have higher “true value” but that somehow they can just be offered interchangeably. It doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny and isn’t even logically consistent.
In economics, there is a fictional being known as the rational consumer who is someone who always does their research and always purchases the best value. It’s accepted that this person is fictional and that some elements of society go against it - giving money to a homeless person for instance. Even if we accepted every element that you spit out as fact, the irrational nature of consumers is as old as the concept of consumers.
So there was never a golden age where games were just good value, and they succeeded just by being good value - marketing and alternative strategies have always played a huge part in it. Wolfenstein 3D used shareware and expansion packs. Many school games were deliberately obtuse used “hint hotlines” to get people to pay $4.50 a minute to find out the nonsensical answers and strategies they needed. There was along period where every game had an accompanying “official strategy guide” that replaced this when games became too complex to use a tip line. Games would often partner with magazines to do special promos.
Largely the bigger difference is more companies used to be involved in these things out of necessity, and many of these avenues of increasing profits have been eliminated by the Internet providing things like free wikis, let’s play videos, etc. They are also now more a thing that props up brick and mortor stores rather than studios.
One of the first games I fell in love with on my Commodore 64 was deliberately designed to incentivise you to buy the previous two games in the series (allowing you to transfer characters across games, Bioware style). That was back in 1989.
None of your arguments make any sense unless we ignore reality and just trust that you are the only person who has observed the games industry at any point, and then we also have to assume that medium studios have the same control of market forces as mega studios with their own storefronts, massive marketing budgets and pre-determined audiences because of it.
When you post nonsense, it will be called out as nonsense because if it is not then people who do not have a background to recognize it as such are at too great a risk of mistaking it for reality, then becoming angry when reality disappoints them and (following your arguments) assign blame based off convenience.
When you continue to post nonsense, as last time you did this in a thread, you will get warnings and you will be at risk at forgoing your account here because nonsense of no value will never be more important than preventing toxicity on the forum.
If you’re actually passionate about the topic, invest some time in learning how to discuss it in a civilized manner rather than just insisting you’re right.
If they did that then they wouldn’t be able to promote the pack until all content was complete, which would mean:
- They would forgo the advantage of being able to respond to their data mapping system they’ve invested heavily in and forgone sales to access.
- They would not be able to run it as a season with reveals, it’d have to be a bulk pack and so it’d be chaotic with no thematic marketing or focused community discussion
- They would lose massive sales from people losing interest in Hitman by the time the first new DLC is released
- They would lose the benefits of sustainable cashflow since it would be an unpredictable amount of cash a long time in the future
- They would be able to devote less time to showing the benefits of each pack and thus diminish the perceived value of each and the package
This proposal only makes sense in a world where IO Interactive is not constrained by reality and can just magically choose to defy reality whenever its convenient. This kind of thing is what leads to people getting upset when their unreasonable expectations are not met and then leads to toxic behavior when people blame their upset on the developers.
I must ask you to not endorse toxicity through using over simplifications to create unreasonable expectations.