That’s not what i’m saying. I’m just saying that i’m currently a satisfied customer, and they spend money, some dubious content is to be expected but unsatisfied customers are not repeat customers and it’s up to the developer to milk the market while still retaining their customer base.
I never said it’s anyone’s fault or say anyone’s to blame, at that point it’s just that their content is no longer worth it for me. And my expectations are low to begin with , so they’d have to really blantantly rip us off for me to feel that way.
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This is not analogous to my point in the slightest. Let me make my example crystal clear. Imagine Hitman 3 was released without Dartmoor and Berlin. The ambush takes place after Dubai, then we skip straight to Chongqing. You agree this would represent less value for players, surely? To deny this would be hilarious.
I know this hypothetical is rather extreme, but it serves a specific purpose. You seem to engage in relativism, suggesting that it is impossible to make comparisons because value is entirely in the eye of the beholder. My example seeks to establish that, on some level, we can say ‘X’ is less than ‘Y’. It would be laughable to take issue with this.
Not at all. I believe it is entirely reasonable to work on the assumption that each ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ pack will be comparable to the ‘Greed’ pack released today. My view is that this does not represent good value for money. For this reason, I have concluded that I will not be purchasing the DLC at this stage. Nobody else’s validation is required. I am simply sharing my opinion.
Not at all. At no point have I made any assertions about the specific engineering of these Escalations. Neither have I denied that some people will be able to find value in them. It is quite clear that you have neglected to consider my very first point:
I believe a Bonus Mission has more ‘entertainment value’ than an Escalation… That’s my subjective opinion, sure. Nonetheless, it’s an opinion I feel I can justify with evidence from observable reality.
I have never claimed that these ‘premium’ Escalations are of no value whatsoever. Rather, my view is that they are a far cry from previous post-launch content, such as 2016’s Summer Bonus Episodes or the H2 Expansion Pass. That is the context for my disappointment.
I am certainly not demanding special limitations on IO Interactive. I am a fan of the Hitman franchise. These are the games I choose to buy. As such, I am commenting on their DLC model. If I cared about another game franchise, I would be making very similar points about their products.
The entire gaming industry seems to be moving towards these business models. As an individual consumer, all I can do is voice my opinions in forums such as this one. Hitman is the corner of the industry I care about. That’s why I’m here, asking IO Interactive to be better. They are free to ignore me.
I take exception to your characterisation of my carefully written, well-meaning posts as “outright rude” and devolving to “mob chanting and demagoguery”. I think it would be civil to retract that statement.
I notice you did not address the question about IO’s financial situation. Do you stand by the view that it is “gibberish” to describe IO as being in a stronger financial situation than they were before H3’s release?
As I have already said, I believe the post-launch strategy for Hitman 3 represents a radical departure from that which we saw for the previous two entries in the trilogy. I believe this DLC consists of slimmed-down content, and yet comes at a higher price. I feel that’s worthy of scrutiny.
I addressed the “special limitations” point earlier. Hitman is the corner of the industry I care about. That’s why I’m here, talking about IO Interactive, and not on a forum for ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘The Sims’.
IO Interactive is a successful profit-making business. The real question, therefore, is why are you so willing to dismiss any & all criticism of their strategy?
And why do you deploy emotive language, talking of “uncharitablity” and not being “nice”, when responding to politely worded criticism of a business? Frankly, this has the whiff of a parasocial relationship.
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Such a product is too theoretical to speculate upon because it has no viable explanation for how it could exist. Like a shoggoth, it defies human understanding and imagination.
Without those two maps the scope of story and production shifts so far you are essentially looking at entirely separate game.
The only way this has any conceptual value is if you define a map as an objective quantative value rather than a piece of an overall production.
This is why it is comparable to the Absolution outrage where they tried to argue the value of the game by counts of types of maps and “real” maps (always with arbitrary criteria)
So no it doesn’t serve a purpose. It is detached from purpose and reality.
Hang on…
You just said you were only talking about your personal decision to not buy the DLC.
That’s because games are increasingly expensive to make and the box prices have stagnated for thirty years. Also literally every industry has been shifting models to adapt to technology and social changes.
Actually you are saying they are bad because you assume they are, not asking for improvement at all.
Specifically calling their work low effort and anti-consumerist, now trying to pretend that you were being nice and kind.
If you did the actual scrutiny you wouldn’t have to do this plea about your personal purchase decision.
Largely because as someone adjacent to the games industry and aware of its ins and outs, who owns a forum for civilized conversation, I have little patience for this kind of over simplified nonsense that generally leads to exponential toxicity and appeal to reactionary groups.
Actually criticism doesn’t depend on assuming the least charitable scenario, hypotheticals without foundation or “I am just saying I won’t but it… and that proves the whole system is bad” It has points to make, ideas to discuss, information to consider.
Because this is a forum for civilized conversation and “charitable” is not emotive, it is a standard of analysis. A charitable view factors in and considers what might motivate the party to do the thing other than give and malice. An uncharitable view assumes the worst of the party and demands they rebutt.
IO Interactive is not going to rebutt speculation about their finances and are certainly not going to “be better” in response to people making uncharitable assumptions, because their business would not survive it.
So,in layman’s terms: You should generally be nice.
I mean I am charitably assuming that you are going to take this on board and consider it, wouldn’t you rather I do that than post something like this?
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Pretty much all post release DLC gets made as part of balancing out workloads for teams as their requirements shift - when you’re in pre-production and early production you don’t need teams who can produced beautiful, polished assets, fancy skins, interesting effects, decorate levels, work out unique escalation combinations etc.
You do need the people who can work on levels, stories, etc at a conceptual level. You do need the people who write the complex dialog, invent new characters etc.
In the era prior to DLC it used to be a pretty standard practice that studios would either have projects going back to back or would hire large amounts of staff on temporary contracts, letting them go when their job is done. That was horrendous on the people working on the material and the on the end result, since it meant that smoothing out the bugs etc post release or trying make new content match the old was entirely dependant upon the employee being 1. available and 2. not so disgruntled they refuse to come back and 3. not so burned out they can’t work right now (or maybe ever)
Day One DLC was celebrated by many mid range developers because it let them manage these things better and afford to keep more staff on full time salary. Unfortunately many people who did not understand the relationship between studios and publishers ruined that.
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I’m not sure you’ve grasped the concept of a hypothetical. It’s a thought experiment, not a viable product.
Yes, that’s the point. It’s a very different game, with less entertainment value for the player.
Okay, we’re getting warmer…
Nope. Absolutely not (pardon the pun). This thought experiment very clearly compares Hitman 3 to a hypothetical lesser version of Hitman 3 (released with only Dubai, Chongqing, Mendoza & Carpathian Mountains). It’s really simple. No assessment of “map types” is taking place.
A hypothetical is, by definition, detached from reality. That’s the point.
An imaginary version of Hitman 3, released without Dartmoor or Berlin, would provide less entertainment value. This is not a controversial statement. Your intransigence speaks for itself.
I hope you don’t think this is some sort of ‘gotcha’. I was explicitly clear about this from the very beginning. I am giving my subjective view about this DLC model, which informs my personal decision not to buy the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ DLC. This is now the third time I have had to labour the same point.
Yet Hitman 3’s development costs were recouped within a week. You’ve neglected this point twice now. In fact, I will just copy/paste the question from above, because it was already perfectly clear:
I notice you did not address the question about IO’s financial situation. Do you stand by the view that it is “gibberish” to describe IO as being in a stronger financial situation than they were before H3’s release?
At no point have I said IO Interactive is bad. Criticism of the DLC in its current state implicitly seeks improvement to the post-launch content. But I have gone further, and directly stated that I think Bonus Missions provide more entertainment value thant Escalations. That’s literally asking for improvement.
Again, your comprehension skills have failed you. I stand by my view that Escalations, specifically, are lower-effort than other post-launch content such as Bonus Missions. I also stand by my view that this particular DLC model is anti-consumer in nature. You should take more care to avoid misrepresenting other people’s views, it hinders the discussion.
Again, this is a swing and a miss (see meme above).
I must take issue with this characterisation of my posts as ‘over simplified nonsense’. My view has been carefully thought out and I have taken the time to express myself clearly and respectfully. If other people decide to use toxic and reactionary language, I denounce that behaviour. I am not responsible for it.
I have not assumed the “least charitable” scenario. I have considered the merit of this DLC within the context of the WoA triolgy, and deemed this worthy of scrutiny. I do not owe IO Interactive the ‘benefit of the doubt’ regarding paid DLC. If I have concerns at this stage, I will express those concerns.
I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to participate in civilized conversation here. You have built a wonderful forum. Like so many here, I have been a Hitman fan for many years. I have purchased all of the games multiple times on various platforms. I usually sing IO’s praises from the rooftops and recommend their games to my friends. My current concerns are specifically about this DLC model.
Exactly. That’s the key power inbalance in this situation. I can give my view about this DLC model, but IO are free to ignore me. Power is entirely in their hands, unless enough customers share my interpretation.
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In that case, you clearly do grasp the concept of hypothetical or a thought experiment. You do not have grounds to be talking down to anyone.
Your hypothetical was meant to illustrate the value of “quantity” but the biggest issues to value in it come from damage to the quality. Your thought experiment is one where you refuse to think about the actual considerations involved.
Your proposal have nothing to do with quantity and is just nonsense akin to saying the quantity of polygons in a model matters, imagine if we deleted the left 50% of every model in the game.
Yes it would be lower value, because you’ve chosen an absurd and disruptive way to lower polygon counts. You were offered a more viable hypothetical and now you’re made a wall of text pretending you had a better point because your scenario supports your point.
This is not a thought experiment, it is begging the question.
“Resolution is important because if you reduce this image down by one third it becomes about butts. That’s why everything should be in 8K”
No I didn’t actually, I covered that above a with points about points about the complexities of finances and obligations and how it absurd to tell a mid range studio “I loved your stuff but I don’t want you to make to much money because you’re my fav”
You ignored it and instead rambled on about how you’re a genius for loving your own rhetoric.
You just said I neglected it and then covered that I didn’t neglect it.
It is gibberish for anyone who, instead of spending infinite more time defending a terrible fake “thought experiment”:
- Their financial situation being “better” does not mean “invincible” or “undeserving”. If I sell a painting for the value of my last two years salary at work, I shouldn’t tell the boss he doesn’t have to pay me for the next two years because I’m “stronger financially” now.
- The notion that because they achieved a lot of sales early in the product cycle, means that they should not capitalize on that and try to convert primary sales to secondary sales while enthusiasm is high is akin to telling me that not only should I tell my boss I won’t accept pay, I should also not sell any more paintings to the people messaging me with offers.
- Making a large amount of sales straight away doesn’t actually guarantee staggering amounts of money, it can just mean making the same money as a slower moving product in a shorter time. Many kickstarters etc have been undone by this - using it to launch their product only to find that literally everyone who was going to buy the product pre-ordered and now they have mountains of inventory they can’t sell, no customer and no money.
- Its not enough to just make a profit in a business where costs and expectations grow exponentially - you need to make enough profit to capitalize your next venture. If you spend $10,000 on making a video game, make $25,000 in sales, spend $5,000 on safe during sales etc then you are unlikely to be able to just withdraw your initial $10,000 and make another game for the same amount - you’re likely to have to spend the whole $20,000 on the next game so you can improve it and have a capital cushion so you can make another game if it doesn’t do as well. This concept is well illustrated in the seminal text Game Dev Tycoon.
It is also well illustrated in the latest financial report from IO Interactive where you can see their operating margin across years.
The 42.7% is 2017/2018, when Hitman 2 dropped and the 2.2% and 0.7% are the two years prior they had to be very careful about literally every spending decision - that’s why no animated cut scenes in Hitman 2 main game.
For perspective, companies like Apple and Blizzard consistently have operating margins around 25% (in good years they spend more on expanding, in lean years they trim off non-profitable areas)
Now, you’re probably frantically typing that the 42% means they’re doing great because they made lots of money in that year, but they didn’t, they made less. How did the operating margin go up? Well that’s been covered in this thread too.
In fact, IO Interactive’s gross revenue is roughly the same for 2020 (8.2%) as 2017 (2.2%) sso essentially they still haven’t recovered from the 2018 downsizing. Even if they have now accrued the equity to do so, it takes time and work to rebuild the infrastructure of missing staff and the confidence staff can have their jobs will be there next week.
The proposal that the company doesn’t need to continue to find ways to generate money is ridiculous and defies basic common sense and commerce.
- There is no release date on Project 007 so there is no way to tell how long IO Interactive will need to make the uncertain amounts of money from Hitman 3 last.
But you haven’t. You’ve just stated an ignorant opinion as fact, invented a nonsense “hypothetical” this is illustrative of nothing but your lack of thought on the topic and contributed not a single fact to the conversation.
This is not a “power imbalance”
IO Interactive have made a product, they have advertised it at a price they feel is fair and they are offering to sell it to anyone who has already purchased Hitman 3 and is willing to pay that price.
That is the standard model of ethical business.
They are free to ignore you because it is their business, they own it and your argument essentially amounts to as long as IO Interactive staff are not living in boxes they are overpaid and not working hard enough. You are also free not to purchase their DLC or any future products.
If they were obligated to listen to you that would be a power inbalance since it would mean that claiming to own and enjoy their products, you were entitled to their time and to influence their decisions while they maintain no guarantee you will purchase another. This burden would be unmanageable if they had equal customers to staff, but they have vastly more customers than staff.
Futhermore, they have something you are clearly not interested in obtaining: Expertise.
It takes a lot of careful decision making and calculated risks to survive more than six months in the gaming industry, it takes tremendous skill and insight to create a product that recoups its costs in the first few weeks without wide spread backlash - particularly when your baseline is a game that just wasn’t selling well enough to please a major publisher.
It takes nothing to make up nonsense “hypotheticals” and pretend they’re evidence, to cry that a company is anticonsumerist because you don’t want to buy one of their many products or to try to portray yourself as the victim because you can’t think of an argument based in facts and reasoning.
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I cannot guarantee myself that same frame of mind looking at the actions they are taking. But in the case we can choose to buy it as one later, personally would be my option if the vast majority is worth it. We’ll have to see though.
SBMM is the equivalent of the FIFA FUT programming - it purposely puts you in a game that makes it difficult to progress in rather than the classic RNG good and bad games we used to have and can be manipulated by the devs or even worse; player spending. They like to tell you that SBMM is designed to have even games. What they don’t tell you is that it gates in the noobs away from the pros, meaning the noobs will have a better time not being demolished by others.
Why would they focus on casuals and noobs? Because they are the majority and those who are likely to spend the most on items. Having a better time on the game means you’re likely to enjoy it more - who’s going to spend on a game where you’re watching the kill cam 99% of the time.
As for the manipulation, I don’t have hard evidence like FUT but I have a case where my friend who is a casual, paid for a sledgehammer because it was too hard to complete the challenge. Upon buying the item, his next few games are apparently noob level by his standards - making him happily use that paid item against others.
Ever since the gameplay became free, it’s second to their attention since it’s not the goal for margins anymore. And that’s why we’re getting terrible content but of course tons of cosmetics. CoD is about 6v6 but only added (and now removed) a map to this gamemode.
Activision are willing to chuck away the core game for SBMM to focus on the playerbase who just pay the most.
TV series are different, hence why story driven episodic games work well too. Locking content that’s already in the game as in it’s currently accessible right now in another gamemode only to market the exact same map that is already out I must state; in another as “new” content. There is a huge difference in making a series for TV and a single already made environment that’s released but locked off there because they want to release it as “fresh”.
The cost it takes to create the content versus the price of sale. Not to be confused with our own personal opinions of value. Everything costs more than is takes to makes, as it should. It’s about how much more and how they achieved that. Doubling your revenue by getting twice as many people is different to doubling the price for the same people, despite if it achieves the same end goal.
And I agree, they are just selling a game which takes less resources than an IRL item which would need the same resources for every time you make the product.
That’s the glory of the latest system companies are employing. If the masses (or price per person) find their own value in it. That’s the goal. If there are enough people who are happy to see personal value in 33% of an AAA game for a single skin.
Imagine having a burger you loved to eat all the time at $1.00. And 5 million people love it. Now it’s costing $1,000,000 for that same burger - insane to buy. But 5 people pay for it. The company still gets their money as normal but now millions are locked out because they don’t see the value but doesn’t matter who pays. Hence the group effort.
Are you saying I just want my “own way”? I’m giving figures to explain at the current moment, why it’s doesn’t seem to be value. For the basis of the price points IO gave, it is extremely unlikely for these to hold anything bigger than a contract mission in an existing location. From there I make at the time of writing educated guesses on comparisons to similar content priced similar. If someone enjoyment supersedes the price point - they see personal value in it. For the record, I’m extremely interested in value.
CoD have been developing maps for years without issue. The issue is not in them making maps, they are making greatly smaller maps for other gamemodes (2v2 and 3v3) while vastly ignoring the 6v6 core gamemode. It is a lot to do with the resources and efforts. This stuff is now classed as “free” so it isn’t the focus for the devs. So why make a big 6v6 map when you can make a small 2v2 map instead, after all it doesn’t bring in the money anymore. Their “new” map is a smaller version of an existing map and marketed as “new” or “redefined” or whatever buzzwords they like to choose. It cost them a lot less resources than to make a new 6v6 map.
It’s watering down the value of our content we all get with the current system. And since the free stuff is the gameplay, that’s now become minimal effort since that’s not being sold anymore. The game is being reduced to nothing for skins.
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As much as I enjoy escalations, I struggle to see how seven escalations are objectively worth approximately the same amount of money as an entire bonus campaign, which focused on carefully redesigned sandboxes with far more freedom of approach, and thus replayability. One could make a case that escalations have replay value (for speedrunners, for example), but the typical reason for revisiting Hitman levels is to attempt new approaches. Escalations do not lend themselves particularly well to experimentation; sandboxes do.
Whilst IOI appears to have made a far more detailed escalation to kick-start the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ DLC, an escalation is bound by what it is. Unless IOI significantly loosens its definition of “escalation” , or unless they have discovered that most Hitman players prefer escalations to main missions, I struggle to see how this price tag is well justified. It is the price tag they have previously used for a DLC of premium content, after all.
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I can support this claim when purchasing Operator Bundles such as Maxis. There is a patent that Activision has that influences player lobbies depending on who has the newest bundles purchased.
The theory goes that if someone is dying by Vargas or Wolf that they would want the operator bundle in turn creating a cycle of people buying the bundles.
I like Cold War enough to throw it a few bucks from time to time that being when bundles feed off my nostalgia for WAW, BO1, and BO2 especially when it pertains to Zombies, but some of the stuff is laughable when it comes to its pricing.
As for Progression they need to intertwine the weapon unlock challenges with Zombies because some of the melee challenges aren’t fun.
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You are referencing their patent
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Heh. Still cheaper than PlayStation - on the NZ PS Store it’s $48.95.
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This was called “director’s cut”, “extended edition”, “after dark cut”, etc in the days of television.
That’s not value, that’s a “cost per sale” which is used to retrospectively analyze products or to analyze sales of periods of consistent tangibles. It doesn’t work with an upcoming product because despite what people with marketing degrees tell you - nobody knows how much a thing will sell until it goes on sale.
Furthermore with intangibles like video game licenses, its a reverse system. A game with a high cost-per-unit-sold is a failure and a game with a tiny cost-per-unit-sold is a runaway success (like say, Fall Guys or Angry Birds).
Referring to it as “true value” is like referring to urine as a “true beverage” because it has already been drank and completed the process without being regurgitated.
There are a wide range of systems that companies are employing as each is trying to find a model they are comfortable with, works for their particular type of game and does not get the attention of YouTubers who make their living off screaming that everyone else is not contributing value.
That is literally how mass marketing works across all industries and mediums. People find value in your product, they covet your product, they offer you money for the product because they perceive it has value.
I have read this five times and it makes less sense every time.
There is no “single skin” on sale for 33% of a the price of a AAA game.
There is a series of DLC including a skin, custom items, unique escalations, etc available for 33% of the price of an indie game each - or there is a pack of 7 of them available.
Hyperbole nonsense does nothing but confuse what you think the basis of what you’re saying is.
The burger comparison is also nonsense and doesn’t fit with anything. The situation is much more akin to a movie theatre. See initially movie theatres used to make all their money off ticket sales, people would come in and watch the news reels, movies, etc and the theatre would make quite a bit of money.
As movies got to be a bigger business, they became more expensive to make and major studios started to get control over the really good, high quality ones people would really come to see - so they would charge more. At the same time, movie theatres found that people who went to see the movies would buy things at convenience prices like they would in clubs. Cigarettes, candies, matches, etc.
Now currently movie theatres themselves make almost no money on the screening of movies - the margins are so tight and audiences fluctuate so much per movie they can’t reliably make enough money to justify it as a venture off tickets. So what started as a side hussle is now a critical part of their revenue, they live and die by people buying snacks, stupid novelty cups, etc and by companies paying to put their stupid promotions in the front hall, or have their ad show before the movie.
Likewise, it used to be pretty easy to make money off a high end game. But as standards of hardware kept going up, expectations of quality did too but prices people were willing to pay for a game plateaued and - as a few key studios made it big, competition increased fiercely. Now its almost impossible to release a AAA game and make a profit off regular sales - you need a monster marketing budget (Cyberpunk 2077 spent more on marketing than IO Interactive spent on any game including development and marketing), sponsorship (whether its to be a loss leader on a console, or to promote VR, or to have exclusive content on that console) and/or you need to post-sale purchases.
The latter is the one lots of people are struggling with since sadly, we live in a world where its popular to throw shit at people who are popular, and various platforms like YouTube have essentially rewarded people for screaming nonsense about how everyone is bad - including game developers who are just trying to make a living.
The approach IO Interactive is using is very straight forward and fits standard commerce ethics very well. They are offering to sell people who already bought the game some additional content, they are showing people what the content is and are asking a price.
Juxtapose that with:
- Blizzard, who for the same price will give you three tiny chances to potentially unlock the content that you want or earn in game currency toward buying that item. A process which is increasingly being seen as a form of unlicensed gambling. Particularly they often do limited availability runs so people get worn down trying to grind out the items then spending big due to sunk cost fallacy.
- Epic Games, who will offer you the opportunity to earn the item in a challenge (which probably requires you to pay a subscription) or buy it but only at particular times (thus creating the pressure to buy) and built their whole game to create FOMO.
- Bethesda who will sell you lootbox items that only work in a single instance of your game, at 60% of the rates of those in games where you get permanent benefits across all instances - oh they also sell mods where you pay like the same price for a skin that has… no basis in anything.
- Mortal Kombat having content you could “unlock” but that they wanted you to get frustrated grinding for and pay for instead.
- Electronic Arts who have gone for the full sampler pack and incorporated every shady process into just about every one of their products
- CowClicker, which was supposed to be a parody game making fun of those “but tokens” Facebook games but actually had people start spending money on premium cows etc.
It hence fundamentally absurd to:
- Claim there is a singular model or system
- Claim that offering to sell DLC to people who are interested in it at a price that offers far higher value than the standard AAA rate is part of this exploitative “system”
Doing some just dilutes the conversation around genuinely deceptive or manipulative practices listed above and lumping them all together both advantages dishonest publishers (since people never develop the tools or vocabulary to understand how they’re being preyed upon) and honest publishers (who get attacked because they’re more accessible and easier to impact than a mega corporation like Blizzard).
Well let’s see… there’s seven items, each would be $7 NZ to buy separately… 7 x 7 is… $49
So yes, you are getting the standard 10% discount for buying in bulk and yes New Zealand is still getting screwed on currency exchanges.
Also if I try to buy 7 McDonald’s double cheeseburgers on Ubereats it comes to roughly the same price before delivery… and also if I try to buy 7 legham sandwiches from Subway via Ubereats it would come to $52.50 before delivery.
It turns out buying 7 of something usually multiplies the price by 7 and that can make small cost items seem more substantial in cost. It can also apply with other numbers, for example, four times ten.
Plus I mean, it’s still pretty good value if compared to DLC heavy products…
Or even DLC light type games to be honest, Control’s two pieces of DLC come to $30 NZ or $23 NZ for the season pass.
Red Dead Online is $33 dollars and then it wants you to spend money in game to unlock stuff while you get hacked because they never put decent protocols up in place (I got mine on sale, but clearly its apparently worth it to enough people to keep this price up)
HITMAN (2016) has a suit, a duck and a gun for sale at $6.50 NZ… so roughly the price of GREED if you buy it in the pack.
And if you want the three “Game of the Year” outfits thats… counts on fingers roughly the same price.
And if you bought all the DLC on Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain (which includes coins to buy the stuff in game that you have to use the in game multiplayer currency for) that comes to roughly $40 NZ too.
I’m starting to think these prices are actually pretty normal and its just a matter of personal preference as to if you find suitable value in it. It seems that creating games might involve a lot of time and expense, so even minor things sold to small audiences need to have some substance to their pricing.
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For me £3.99 every 4-6 weeks is nothing, IO has given me enough free content to jutify the price, the Escalation is better than your average Escalation and it’s better than a few of the Deluxe ones. I like the suit, the cane and coins are okay i guess, it’s equal to £1 per item and escalation, if they had an in-Game store using micro transactions they could get away with charging £3.99 just for the suit.
But if you think it’s not worth it, just don’t buy it, you shouldn’t feel like you’re missing out anyway if you think that. This DLC isn’t integral to the game, if they chopped off the ending to the story and charged £24.99 i think people would have more of a right to complain.
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At the risk of a no-content reply, I am very impressed with your eloquence and clarity of thought in these responses.
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That’s my assumption too, and SBMM is the perfect system to control lobbies of groups of people depending on level of skill. I suspect when you buy a bundle, you get put in a level or two lower than your skill for a few games to “reinforce” your purchase was “justified”. Like buying FUT packs and suddenly the match is completable. Even though I started zombies back when you had to complete the WAW campaign, I still personally can’t justify buying Maxis. I think it’s a bigger spit in your face when they’ve abused 13 years of playerbase connections from Der Riese where she started only to drive a paywall. Yet completing Firebase Z EE where you actually save her gives you nothing but a crummy calling card.
The system doesn’t reward you with your abilities anymore, playing the game gets you nothing. Playing better gets you nothing. This whole bundle store system has zero earn-ability and nothing of incentive to drive a player to do something. I’ve completed nearly every EE in zombies history, yet here I am without Maxis while my casual friend who has only completed a small handful of EEs that I carried him for his trophies has Maxis because the game disregards your in game actions now. Just wallet. I quit the game every time I hit Master Prestige because it’s not efficient to continue and nothing to work for.
I still find it insane they have a “buy tier skips” option. You pay to have the game complete itself? If it was for people to unlock stuff before it’s gone; then why is it available day 1 of the battle pass when there’s loads of time to earn? Games are slowly being grinded into nothing and just cosmetic sim with a bit of gameplay.
Yeah, they need to make a challenge in zombies to unlock them too. And the “in 15 different matches” is tedious as hell, desperate to keep you on the game. Once again they don’t value your skill as if it was 45 kills, people would be able to do it at their own pace but you’re restricted. Personal ability isn’t valued anymore.
The editions you’re referencing is actual new content added. The closest to that in games would be editions of games where there’s slight additions. In the CoD case, this system is locking content that exists and available but launched for a single game mode but not elsewhere until a later date. Not an after thought but a marketing ploy to trick consumers in a “fresh” update. Instead of making new content, they release the same content twice under a different banner.
To which they add their inflated margins rather than the point you described. It is about the cost to make which dictates the cost of sale. A single skin is 1.7x a DLC pack. That’s 1 main zombie map and four large 6v6 maps which as you mentioned:
Designing quality multiplayer maps is immensely difficult since you have to deal with the infinite possible decisions of real humans, factor in skill levels, abilities, possible exploits etc Every map represents a huge amount of resources and quality checking.
So despite the pipeline of events that goes through designing a DLC pack versus creating a skin on a rig. How is the latter 1.7x more than the efforts of the former? This is how we calculate “true value”.
Fall Guys was free for Playstation on Day 1 so I don’t know how much it is. But Fall Guys is also an out of the box idea that breaks away from the oversaturated Battle Royales and the alike.
However they’re not trying to see what works. They’re shoehorning it in and dwindling the game in the process. Ubisoft got a winner by converting Rainbow Six into Overwatch. They ditched the campaign (Patriots) and got away with selling just the online portion for AAA money. Then they focused on e-sports side for a further return, events, arenas etc. Siege is just Patriots Online, it’s lost all elements of Rainbow Six but because the influx of people who were drawn to it outweighed the original group and those new people gave money - it’s all they want. Despite if the game is genuine to the IP. The system once again at play. As long as there’s a significant reoccurring spenders (RS) come, it doesn’t matter what the product was meant to be.
Then came the Yearly Passes for margins. And then they decided to remove content from the game and “rework” existing maps instead of making new maps. More margin. Then they made the content in each Yearly Pass less but cost the same - more margin. And now there’s a battle pass. You get the drill. All while the IP is what really remains of the product, solely now a marketplace with a tad of gameplay.
Ubisoft attempted to do the same with Ghost Recon but the amount of RS did not appear, thus the game dropping off a cliff. No income, no support. The whole game for everyone gets ignored because they want cosmetics margins.
GTA uses a similar method of grind or pay. They inflated their shark cards by I think roughly 3x to 4x to the launch. A T20 is the equivalent of GTA IV EFLC expansion. On a very old Newswire, they admitted to needing Shark Card milestones before they release the update so that’s obviously their business strategy. But as times gone on, what did Rockstar do? Turn it into a Battlefield of PvP. Solution? Buy the items. Griefers became the weapon for Rockstar to use against other players by creating majority of the game modes with profit to reside in Freemode - open to PvP. They typically force you in a terrible vehicle and mark you on the map for people to actively ruin your profits and time. Designed to entice the pay option but ruin the game in the process.
This is true value in a nutshell. And yes people find “value” in the T20, but are ultimately paying for the inflation.
That’s why this system is bad because the “support” they aim for is cosmetics which don’t affect the quality of the game, yet is now required to further the game. The whole product is relying on RS’s spending willingly on inflated products. It’s not about finding profit but trying to magnetise those who pay for inflated stuff and even blackmailing the whole future of the game on that for all. The system allows the companies to cut their losses if it doesn’t work out, there’s not insurance for consumers. Future passes provide some guarantee of what you’re entitled if you paid for it. And hence my concern for Hitman that may also fall down that rabbit hole.
Each bundle is 2400CP which is £17 here. Ask yourself these questions:
- Does the process of these items out weigh the efforts of making 5 maps by 1.7x?
- Is the items in question equate to 33% of a AAA game?
Didn’t Evolve charge money for colours? Also Valorant which is free, is selling largely priced skins. If there’s enough to say “Yes” that’s all that matters. You’re talking about Hitman I assume? That’s because they’re testing the waters, to get the data of those who say “Yes”. All these other games have been using these systems for a significant period to have analytics.
Nothing is hyperbole and nothing is nonsense, you can check yourself. I gave the figures. Roughly each bundle is 1.7x more than a DLC pack. Just like 7 Sins is 0.75x the price of Additional Hitman 2 DLC so I would expect .75% the effort. The burger analogy fits perfectly, if there’s enough people (or enough income) it doesn’t matter who misses out or what the actual quality is anymore. That is what the system is doing.
If you’re comparing it to movies. This is similar to being able to pay for a membership that gave you access to tickets and food for a one off yearly fee (Season Pass). Now they disregarded the membership and now give you tickets for free to movies but you have to pay for food and extras at 1.7x the amount the membership costs so you have to deal without because you know you’re getting less value. And if the movies don’t get the inflated food money, the quality of the movies suddenly gets less because that food money drives “support”.
Is it? The only AAA games I can think of in recent times who may not have gotten their revenue back is Ghost Recon and the Phoenix Rising game. Can you reference AAA games who have gone in the red? There are more people in gaming than ever today, audiences have grown so much as opposed to even 20 or even 10 years ago. With more people, is more sales. And with digital sales being on the rise and solo launchers/storefronts, companies have been getting bigger incomes and percentages. Does that out weigh the new costs? Possibly but IFAIK, not thus far. The glory with digital products and media is that you spend on it once, and copy it to the vendors. Physical items require materials each time to create a new sale.
Does this mean companies aren’t allowed to make better profits? Of course they can but it’s how they do it. A company can choose making a loss from their initial sales to then rely on a system of selling over inflated items to go in the green. Mobile games and F2P do so, it’s how inflated and lucrative the system is, But now we’re seeing it in AAA games that are in the green from their initial sales and are now going to such lengths to manipulate the game around the system for these margins because they are so big. And they have no obligation to support a game beyond their means, just look at GTAIV losing a ton of its songs because Rockstar wouldn’t renew the licences despite clearly having the funds to do so.
But they aren’t showing people the content. Nobody but IO knows what the content consists of the other 6 packs. We can only make educated guesses. But they are asking for that price - to find how many “Yes” men they have and can establish the amount of content around the money they’ve gotten from blind buying. Hitman 2 Additional pass/Gold is perfect - tells me exactly what I’ll get, and if shit hit’s the fan. I’m still getting the content I paid for no more no less to which I have already happily agreed to. The 7 Sins is effectively 7 loot boxes of content that they have full control to decide what goes in there.
The systems you have listed are all part of the issue but ironically not the systems itself. Lootboxes aren’t actually bad as a system - it’s the additional predatory mechanics they tie to them.
It’s the same reason why people hate Lootboxes. You ask someone why and they’ll say these reasons:
- P2W items
- Duplication
- Grind
What people don’t understand is that is not the biproduct of lootboxes but companies adding that to them with adding in P2W items, a duplication system and drop rates. If the above was removed, lootboxes are the best thing to date if they wished to add stuff. And earnable. Lootboxes are not bad but the additional mechanics they tie to them are.
I didn’t say there’s just one scheme? This is just the top scheme of today’s time because it’s so controllable and exploitable. We can pretty much guarantee that not 100% of the players bought the season pass for a game. However depending on the amount of playerbase, due to the controllable inflations, they can get the equivalent of 100% of the player bases money. Just add it on the “extras”. At current CoD CP prices, if just 30% of Cold War’s Playerbase paid for a single bundle, that is the equivalent of everybody buying the DLC. And now content is watered down since it’s not the moneymaker, game is then remoulded around the system, playing the game gives no rewards because it’s not your wallet. That is the system.
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Over here the physical copy dropped from 70 to 50 pretty soon after the release. Deluxe stayed at 90… lol. But on ps store it’s currently 25% discount. (along with every other hitman in the series having a price drop).
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Usually director’s cut was content they cut in order to meet target runtimes - that changed when George Lucas started doing his Remastered Editions but even those were the same footage he had all along just with new FX. Letting directors shoot new content for these editions is a very new development.
So no, they made you pay for a whole second edition to access content they already had available up until it got so hard to fill DVDs and Blu-Rays with content that they started giving it away at the time of sale.
The point I described distinctly covered that this is not viable with intangibles - such as games you can buy through the Internet. Because, unlike a can of beans, there isn’t a price to produce option - there is a massive capital investment and then running fees.
Your entire model is predicated on being unable to distinguish between a game on Steam and a can of Coca Cola… and isn’t even accurate if you use the Coca Cola metaphor because they don’t operate with set costs and set profit margins either.
Well let’s see, some basic commercial factors - covered above - that you apparently ignored because you’re obsessed with this idea you can determine “true value” through nothing in particular.
The most fundamental factors in intangible sales are:
- Initial capital cost (ie how much it costs to produce)
- External fiscal support (sponsorship from a company)
- Customer base size (how many customers may purchase the product)
- Market size flexibility (how that number might be affected by marketing or other external factors)
- Customer price point (how much the majority of customers with fork out for the product)
So on any given product, you have those five factors which are unique to each and can wildly influence the price.
A skin may be expensive to make because it requires licensing costs to parties that own it, have relatively small customer base but that customer base may be devoted fans who are willing to pay a lot for it. (Hence why Train Simulator charging so much for obscure trains in the Czechia).
A map, or indeed, a whole game, may be sponsored by the US Military to the extent that it barely needs to sell a copy to “succeed” but the contract specifies it should attain “wide saturation” with additional money for distribution targets - so they can make a lot of money selling it for pittance.
So throwing “explain these two non-specific hypothetical items” is a pointless question that feeds into more attempting to create a magic formula that reduces the infinite complexities of the games industry down to an equation from eighth grade.
It’s currently the price of four Seven Deadly Sins DLC on Steam right now, and Mediatonic has basically a giant portfolio of games that are low development cost and reliable appeal, almost all on Web.
Fall Guys was undoubtbly their most expensive product because they had to engineer the network protocols for it from scratch, but it was also doubtlessly their most lucractive by all measures (including cost-per-unit-sold) because it led to them getting acquired by Epic Games.
Among Us is also a game with an epic cost-per-unit-sold measurement - which again in the era of online sales translates to: Successful.
Citation required since the alternative is: They’re trying to go broke.
That is known as very clumsily attempting to see what works or assuming what worked for x will work for y and z. They are all trying to work it out because currently the only ones that are doing it reliably are the ones that have market supremacy and models that been in place since 2004.
That’s the most Rainbow Six thing one can do given the entire basis of the IP was a cash grab by Tom Clancy to capitalize on his jingoism and the popularity of his novels. Then when he realized he didn’t need to do all that work he just licensed his name and gave them full rights to do whatever as long as the money kept coming in. Of course, he’s dead now.
Furthermore, if you’re an old fart like me - Rainbow Six has been dead since 2006 when the mission planning went out the window and it became Counterstrike but with different skins and names.
This is a very familiar situation for anyone who’s been in a comic shop that sells D&D items for any period of time since arguments over this kind of thing have been happening since at least 1985 when Unearthed Arcana was published.
Pretty sure stadiums have been selling season/annual tickets for particular sports/leagues since before either of us was born.
Actually it’s about the same level of margin since you still have to pay all the same people to do all the work, and by far some of the most expense with maps is the art assets (specifically updating them as graphics improve) and playtesting (particularly now if you have one problem spot you can expect there to be 100 YouTube videos about it before you have time to confirm if it’s a consistent problem)
The improved margin comes from more sales because they know the map has long lasting appeal and so x number of people will likely buy in if it is present - as opposed to completely unknown numbers if its a novel product. Hence why it’s important to understand how models work rather than just assume everything is a can of Coca Cola.
It’s been increasingly expensive to make the same content - see above with the improvements in expectations and risk involved with errors or misunderstandings or just outright malice. It’s been an issue lots of people working in games have been talking about as an issue for at least twenty years, and part of why the indie market has leaned heavily into doing retro games with modern sensibilities.
See above about companies with market supremacy, GTA V has been having massive spikes in sales because of the pandemic because it’s basically the most fun version of Second Life available: It has missions, sports minigames, social applications, etc. It’s also like the Sims where you can live out your wildest fantasies like having money to spend, and an inner city apartments.
This is known as manufactured discontent, and is a model that works for GTA V because it has:
- The social standing that not being involved in it can generate FOMO
- The social elements mean that all the same social pressures of real life apply
- The model allows for a constantly shifting marketplace, like real life
The most iconic exploiter of this system is Fortnite. I linked to this video above, but I can see nobody clicked it because there’s this real desire to believe the complexities of game development and the free market can be solved with an eighth grade math formula.
Now, an important element of this is that the product essentially needs market supremacy - such a massive of the market where they can generate FOMO simply by existing. That’s why GTA V and Overwatch spent nine figures on marketing (and presumably why Cyberpunk 2077 is now in a hurry to add multiplayer). To ensure massive saturation from day one.
A major factor in their maintaining market supremacy is keeping the competition down, or steamrolling them after looting them for ideas and keeping the money going to a few key publishers - in game development terms, this is known as a positive feedback loop.
I’ve seen people point out that many character archetypes from Overwatch are more or less lifted one-for-one from Dirty Bomb, a game which also went to much greater lengths to do diversity and inclusion properly but received much less praise due to it not having the marketing budget to make it topical.
This is of course, nothing new in the world of commerce - its been highlighted many times in novels, comics, television, movie and even quirky podcasts.
So when you accuse small studios not doing that, of doing that, you don’t hurt Rockstar or Blizzard - you hurt the small studio and help Rockstar and Blizzard by normalizing what they do and sabotaging their competition.
But, let’s briefly humour your “true value” theory.
Well what is the actual production cost of the car?
Is it the hours of creation time spent on making the model, the skin, the rigging, etc?
If so, does that include the time spent on making the basic car mechanics and effects (like glossy surfaces) in the game?
Does the development of the game count? What about the previous games and marketing that built up the GTA brand to the point GTA V could be released and people would be excited on a scale that they would buy it on opening day and then spend more money in game?
What about depreciation schedules on all the countless investments Rockstar has made ever since 1997… or even before that?
There’s no viable way to calculate your “true value” unless you have access to all the books and advanced education in accounting and economics.
Nobody uses it when weighing up if they think a DLC is worth the asking price or not, especially not the executives who set the price.
They usually don’t advertise when they go into the red - the games simply appear on the store front, fade away and are never spoken about. Largely the reason they don’t get investigated is, like Dirty Bomb, they don’t have the cultural currency to be worth reporting on. Even more of them get shut down before they are even reach the marketplace.
Nintendo posted a $456 million loss in 2014, largely attributed to the hardware sales etc because while they do, as a publicly listed company they are legally obligated to share the overall figures but keep the specific figures hidden to maintain market advantages. Telltale games was doing great until it wasn’t.
As mentioned above, IO Interactive’s figures make it very difficult to read which games made what purely because you have to factor in things like ongoing sales of previous games, loss of staff, etc. There is also the above mentioned issue of profit is not always profit.
If I start with seed money of a million dollars from an investor, and I spend $900,000.00 to make a game and $100,000.00 in other expenses, that game sells $1,400,000.00 I have made $500.000.00 “profit” by your “true value” model and am now in possession of $1,400,000.00. (However, that’s only for that moment, since every moment the studio continues on you’re losing money on salaries, licenses, rents, etc)
The investor is going to want a lot of their money back - in fact they’re going to want to receive back more than they invested. If they own 90% of the venture, and decide to cash out, that means they must choose between:
- Taking back $1,260,000.00 - making a quarter million dollar on their investment
- Risking it all on another venture and hoping that it goes better
If they decide to take the safe option - that leaves you with $140,000 - so if it took you three years to go through this entire venture from the start you worked for $46,667.00 a year to make a quarter million dollars for someone else (roughly an 8% rate of return, healthy but not the 15+% they look for)
This is why every AAA game now comes with deluxe versions, special sponsorships, merchandise, product placement, etc.
Hitman 3 made its money back also immediately, but they had:
- Playstation VR money
- Epic Games exclusive money
- Deluxe pack sales (which included merchandise for console players)
- Sales from Hitman 1 & Hitman 2 to provide cash flow during development and building of anticipation
- Twenty years of good will and branding - ie free marketing
And whenever “within a week” occurs now they mean “with pre-orders and first few days of sales” and that the majority of sales were pre-order (another practice people scream should not be allowed for… reasons).
Crackdown 3 never released it’s profit/loss information, and we can’t even infer it since Sumo Digital does a lot of freelancing for other companies (like IO Interactive) and they are a 100% owned subsidiary of Sumo Group - it almost certainly did lose a shitload of money though since 47 appears on that year’s “highlights” page of the annual report but Crackdown 3 is almost completely absent.
I’m seeing “Bundle” in there, so right there we’re completely departed from your claim. Further there is the issue that when the game came out was £55 on release, and you’ve set the bundle at £17 (in game currency fuckery aside) so even if this skin in the pack makes up 100% of the value that’s… still only 31%.
But that doesn’t hold up - the highest value by their rating system is Z-74u (Ultra) and the skin is Legendary (one of five items) with lower value items. The skin is the leader because it is the most distinct and had the most creative effort applied to, but is not the rarest, so the value is extremely murky (which is the point).
So your claim, right off the bat - is wrong.
That’s without even going into how the business models are not even faintly comparable. When I buy the Seven Deadly Sins pack I don’t get to run around on the deathmatch map in the gold suit to show off that I am more affluent than fourteen year olds who aren’t allowed to buy DLC, and the CoD bundle comes with zero Hitman escalations.
I just did. I feel this conversation would go better if you spent less time assuming all your theories are flawless and actually took some time to take on board what I said.
The burger analogy is completely unworkable and makes no sense in any way, it’s a shapeless horror made to try to force all models and economics to conform to a singular formula of extremely limited value to manufacturers and zero value to consumers.
That system that was such amazingly good value that the company offering it went bankrupt?
No it’s nothing like that. It’s very simply. For the movie theatre, it now costs so much to rent the right to show the movies that they can’t make money off them until at least half-way through the run. The local theatre ran Titanic for nine months, and for five of those nine months if you looked only that the ticket sales vs showing rights fees.
Dude the markup at movies is way more than 1.7x
See above how the quality and cost of production of movies skyrocketing is why the theatres are dependent upon advertising, novelty promotions and 3000% markup on popcorn to stay in business. This would be the same even if the studios owned the movie theatres, because the costs of the movie tickets only pays for the production of the movies - not the upkeep on the theatres, etc.
Games used to cost tens of thousands of dollars to make, now they the cost tens of millions to make and studios want to torque down the risk as far as they can and find as many revenue streams as they can in order to mitigate their risk and prolong their returns. This is venture capitalism 101 and applies to every industry.
Yes that’s exactly what your system means. They can either not make better profits (as you are demanding as IO Interactive) or change their products to get wider sales (which you are demanding they not do after Rainbow Six).
This is also Business 101: Rockstar concludes that the presence of the songs no longer generates enough revenue to account for the expenses, so they stop paying the licenses and remove the music. That’s how Rockstar got to be a billion dollar company and got all that money you’re saying they should spend on losing money instead.
It’s also part of why your “true value” thing doesn’t work - because licenses etc need to factor in how long you’ll need the things and third party assets can require renewal of assets or have sliding commissions (ie if you get over $ in sales, your rate goes up).
No, no, it’s in the trailer. You’ll be getting quirky, campy content packs based on the Seven Deadly Sins and it’ll include things like a pimping gold suit and cane. That’s more than I knew about the game going in when I spent much more.
See this is just outright fabrication and nonsense, like the burger analogy it is a desperate attempt to simply the complexities into a basic formula. To stretch the definition of loot box to this extent, you would need to add the following to “loot boxes”:
- All story based games
- All games that use procedural generation
- All games that have further content added later
- All games that have pre-order
- All streaming media subscriptions
- All variety boxes of confectionary
- All delivery services
This is why you should embrace complexity and learn how things work rather than try to understand everything through a singular equation.
Lootboxes are definitively a system which focuses on Whale Hunting, which seems to be what your weird burger analogy is supposed to be about before it falls apart. It literally hinges on the idea of a system where you can spend infinitely on a game without ever accessing all the content and that you have a system of slow diminishing returns so you can get the most money out of customers via exploiting brain chemistry.
The more they lean into exploiting brain chemistry the more money they make. Dirty Bomb (free-to-play) was a game that specifically worked to manage the issues that you mentioned and still had a lot of people saying it was terrible etc because … they didn’t want to pay for anything and weren’t sucked into the hedonic treadmill.
Overwatch charges you full AAA price to purchase then exploits social pressure, brain chemistry and limited time gimmicks to get people to spend millions on loot boxes.
Seven Deadly Sins DLC can’t do that because there’s only seven of the deadly sins, and there’s designated content for each. There’s no way for me to keep buying a few more packs to try to finally unlock the shiny gold coin so I can feel more like I’m in John Wick land, I just get it when I buy the package.
You did in fact say that. You just called a set content DLC a lootbox.
That is indeed the system for CoD and big multiplayer games like Fortnite, Overwatch, etc because the mix of social pressures allowing the manufacture of discontent through:
- Obvious consumerism: The thrill of showing off something that you can afford that others cannot, to broadcast your personal success to the world.
- Individuality: It’s not just about being the “Playboy Bunny McCree” guy who posts those two stamps everywhere and uses the cha-cha emote, it’s about carving out an identity so you can feel memorable and appreciated.
- Inclusivity: If it’s pride week and I want to show I support LGBT people, well I’m going to feel left out if I can’t have “Some people are gay” Tracer, if I’m at a Fortnite rave and the DJ tells me to the hopscotch emote, but I don’t have it and everyone around me does… going to make me feel left out… and like I need to buy all new emotes as soon as they come out.
The reason these kind of factors are important is that literally none of them apply to the situations you are saying are exactly the same.
These kind of oversimplifications and trying to demand people change their thinking to be fit within a simplified equation are not only harmful to conversation, and yourself (nothing creates social isolation quite like yelling “no, you’re wrong! I said so!” at people) but also to society in general since they open opportunities for exploitation.
Overwatch and Fortnite are two of the worst offenders in terms of predatory business models, but they get a free pass by lots of game communities because “it’s only cosmetics” and so doesn’t factor into their feared “pay to win” nightmare by effecting their K/D ratio.
Train Simulator gets raised regularly on the “absurd DLC” lists even though it’s actually probably the best use of the system possible and succeeds because it recognizes its market and caters to them.
People buy into Bitcoin and NFT, contributing to the approaching heat death of our planet because they buy into simplified ideas of value and think “proof of work” guarantees that it is a more robust product than a more conventional database.
This thread is full of people accusing IO Interactive of using exploitative models that it does not have the intrastructure or approach, and tons of other games have suffered because they’ve tried to implement ethical monetization schemes to be bombarded with people accusing them of being CoD/Overwatch/etc.
It’s not good for anyone. Life is more complicated than eighth grade math led you to believe.
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You must have known from Hitman 1 and 2 that we would have the same content as the previous games? That’s why I pre-ordered Hitman 3 at least, I was pretty sure Hitman 3 would be like Hitman 1 and 2 content-wise.
I think they did when the first of Seven Deadly Sins Packs was released, I’m pretty sure it will be 7 Escalations, but I’m not so sure about this than I was about Hitman 3 compared to Hitman 1 and 2 though. 
“Still confused? Watch next episode of Soap.” or something like that…
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Well yes and no.
I thought I knew what I was getting into when I bought the OG Hitman 2 - Silent Assassin, but that was very different experience from Codename 47. I put off buying Contracts for ages because I was pretty sure it was going to feel like an expansion pack for Silent Assassin 2. I bought Blood Money on opening day because, while I didn’t know what it was going to be - I knew it was not going be Contracts. I pre-ordered Absolution not because I knew what it was going to be, but because I figured whatever it was, it’d be worth exploring and I wanted to play the pre-order game.
I had a fairly good idea what I was getting into with Hitman 3 since I was reasonably sure it’d follow the interface, etc but a game is so much more than that. Also I was a lot better informed than most people since, for my sins, I am on this forum daily and (more happily) I follow lots of games industry discussion.
However, until I played the game I didn’t know for sure if I would find the climatic ending satisfying. I didn’t know exactly how the levels I’d seen in screenshots and discussed would play. I didn’t know which of the assassination techniques I would find most satisfying, the quality of the writing (it was Nick’s first go as lead writer), the quality of cut scenes, etc.
This is evidenced by the people who raged that they felt cheated the Carpathian Mountains contained zero asylums, the people who were so looking forward to saying “I told you so” when Lucas Grey turned traitor, the misogynists who were salivating at the opportunity to destroy Diana, the excitement from the shippers over the tango.
Every creative product has an element of mystery to it until you experience it. You can invest time to dig out spoilers, reviews, etc or you can just invest cash and experience it for yourself for the first time.
The fundamental difference with the lootbox is that it is not the details which are unclear, but the particlar items from a selection that you will receive is not decided until after the purchase is complete.
Overwatch does not allow me to buy lootboxes that will definitely contain one particular skin, one particular voice line, one particular emote, one particular victory pose, etc then refuse to let me see what that particular will look like until the transaction is complete. It lets me see all the options available, the vast plethora, and then promises me items that will be selected at random in alignment with its algorithm should I purchase and open the box.
Specifically they want me to know all about what I could get so as to create desire for those items. People don’t buy 50 lootboxes at a time on a whim, they do it because they really want that Betty Draper Mercy skin, they’ve been looking at it for weeks and in 1 hour it won’t be available any more unless they get it in a loot box, and they’re out of free loot boxes.
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