This thread came over my Twitter feed late last night while I listened to the Killstream.
There’s actually a lot more going on here with regards to why some people are unhappy. Most of you who follow me know how I feel about mobile gaming & microtransactions, and that it’s part of a bigger industry trend that has some people (rightfully, IMO) concerned. https://t.co/cw4teOGfK2
— Carolyn Spookyraptor (@Arumi_kai) November 4, 2018
That Tweet is the start of the thread. The authoress uses her experience working in mobile "gaming" to illustrate the threat: mobile gaming uses casino-style exploitation of psychology to mindfuck players into blowing their fortunes on the game, all the while delivering a shit-tier gameplay experience done on the cheap.
The company Blizzard outsourced to, Netease, is notorious in China among the Chinese gaming network for shoving out these digital whaling ships masquerading as videogames and it is known that Immortal is nothing more than a sanctioned reskin of an existing title. It is likely meant for the Chinese market, as others have said, but for some reason the Diablo team thought that the core audience would accept this as valid and were honestly taken aback when paying attendees booed them and asked if this was a joke.
Then the PR spin doctors got to work, and this happened.
This news made it to Reddit shortly after it began happening. It's one thing to be tone-deaf to your core customers. It's another to bald-faced lie to them and double-down by covering up the negative reception via manipulations like this and then using the Q&A panel time to bullshit until the very end so they could stack the question queue with shills and cucks. We've noticed, Blizzard. You only made your own mess worse with this misbehavior.
This needs to be hammered, good and hard, and not just because mobile games are trash; they are predatory, exploitative quasi-scams akin to lootboxes and need to be taken as gambling as much as lootboxes are (because, in this case, they are deliberately modeled on casino games). You may scoff, until someone you know (and rely upon) gets sucked into such a thing and the same pitfalls that befall gambling addicts afflict them and fuck you over in turn. Time to take out the trash.
Bradford,
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Mobile games need to be like the old Angry birds game. You play and then play as long as you want without paying a dime.
Govts need to ban it because once a young kid gets hooked it's like a meth hit. NO way in hell I'm letting kids become slaves to evil lazy companies. If you can make a game get out
xavier
Concur. Corporations exist solely at the sufferance of the states that grant their charters. The price for existence is satisfying the public good; this is actively damaging the public good, and therefore merits banning on those grounds.
DeleteBroadford,
DeleteNo argument. In fact alot of these companies are shadies to begin with. Given that the chicome have a huge chip on their shoulder over the Opium wars, I wonder if the mircotransaction/lootboxes is just another prong along with the fentanyl to destroy their adversary and then walk over the world.
In any case, time for the U.S. and othr countries to drop the hammer and indict these companies.
xavier