My Life As A Gamer: Lost Ark Doesn't Deserve To Be Found

Amazon launched the English-localization version of a Korean MMO this past week, Lost Ark. I am already turned off, and Josh Stryfe Hayes explains why.

He is correct that "Pay To Win" does translate into "Trash Game".

And there is no Korean game that is not Pay To Win. All of them, therefore, are trash and increasingly they are set up to so bog down those that don't pay that merely to get anywhere at all you're swiping your credit card. This is the sort of predatory Pay To Not Suck practices we see in mobile trash games routinely, and they're all horrible practices that should be banned on the grounds of being predatory. Casinos are less predatory that this.

So no, I don't care if it's Free To Play. Hearthstone is also Free To Play, but you're going to get curbstomped routinely unless you swipe that card to buy your way to the power you need to be viable and competitive.

Games, to be valid, must maintain a level playing field where only one's skill at and knowledge of the game matters in the results that you get. Input must, at all times, correlate 100% to output--If This, Then ALWAYS That--or you don't have a real game. You have, at best, a broken (but fixable) game; at worst you have something that's worse than a casino wearing a game like a skinsuit as it seeks out prey to suck the life (represented in money) from unsuspecting victims.

And no, there is sweet fuck-all political will to do something about this because it's not hurting the governing class yet. Watch how fast this ends as soon as it does; the sooner Precious Tommy drains Grandpa's election fund to get all his waifus at five stars with max stats, the sooner governments go Base Delta Zero and crush this threat utterly.

And because this psychology is that reliable, now you know how to get governments to do what you want. So do it.