How Fortnite Exploits Your FOMO 

The point you made about "moving on from fortnite so it doesn't matter how much digital junk you have" is a very important thing to learn. I had friends who kept chastizing themselves playing league of legends because they played it since highschool and even when they were just miserable and having no fun at all, they kept playing it because they had so many skins and things they'd accrued since their teenage years. It's very much an equal problem of these live service games is to know when you should just cut it off when it's not enjoyable anymore, FOMO contributing to that.

Another example of handling FOMO is how Ghost Ship Games has been running the seasonal model for Deep Rock Galactic. When the season changes, any cosmetics you didn't earn are just moved to the reward pools of other existing mechanics (lost packs, cargo crates, matrix cores). This not only means that new players don't miss out on old content, but it also restocks the rewards for veteran players who previously unlocked everything from those sources.

"I feel like I'm playing to minimize missing a reward rather than playing to maximize my progression." Damn that hit the nail on the head. This is exactly the reason why I can't get into any live service games anymore.

I work for a game studio that arguably pioneered this kind of live-service content and a big reason we ended up moving away from it is that besides being a dark pattern that's player-hostile, it was also just brutal on the developers. We had, I think 4 teams working on regular content releases that were out for only a week or two before the next content drop came and totally flattened it. With four teams, that meant that each team only had about 8 weeks total to create, prototype, test, and debug their content before it was shipped out - a sanity-fraying schedule for even the most veteran of dev teams.

For me the biggest thing about FOMO-style stuff is that if I finally do miss out, I'm really unlikely to come back, because I just feel like I lost.

Shout out to Deep Rock Galactic developers Ghost Ship Games for having seasonal events with skins for your character and guns, as well as emotes, and putting them into the random secondary mission unlocks if you miss them during the event. No fear of missing out from these bad ass devs

As someone with moderate-to-severe ADHD (sprinkled with some anxiety), consciously choosing to skip a reward every now and then has been incredibly powerful for clamping down on FOMO for me.

As a psychologist, videogame fan and someone who made a thesis about videogame addiction, I find this video very interesting and academically relevant. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's always great to find and hear people who loves to deconstruct videogames

I really wish you touched on the battle passes in deep rock galactic. Easily one of the best implementations of a battle pass I’ve seen in a game. If you miss out on any of the cosmetics from the pass they get added into the game world to find whilst you’re out exploring the caves. Plus the battle passes are all free so there’s no feeling of “I paid so I have to play”

I would love a video or series on ethics in game design, I think it’s a fascinating topic!

I recently started playing Fall Guys once it went free-to-play. I started out just playing because I enjoyed it as a goofy way of killing an hour or two, and that was good enough. Then they released a limited event where you have to complete specific challenges within a week to win rewards, including the ultimate reward of a gladiator-style skin. I wanted that skin, so I tried to complete the challenges, the last of which was winning a solo game. But kept losing my solo games, and as the deadline inched closer, I became more and more frustrated, until I was screaming in fury at each loss. I ended up not completing the challenge, and looking back I realized how the FOMO on that skin had made me enjoy the game less. I was playing to win a stupid reward, not because the game was fun. It was the first time I had ever let a game reward influence me like that, and I didn’t like it at all. From then on I vowed to myself that I’d only play for fun, not because I wanted to win a digital item that meant nothing in the long run. I’m also basically never going to play any other live-service game, which probably has worse FOMO than Fall Guys.

The power of FOMO is in silence, in the subliminal. So naming it and putting it to light like this really is the strongest thing you can do to counteract it. The more we can have a conversation about FOMO and how it’s ok to not be perfectionist, the less people will be trapped by it.

Ironically, the current sentiment from the Overwatch community is that they preferred the first game's loot box system over OW2''s battle pass simply for the fact that with OW1 all you had to do was buy the game once and every cosmetic contained within the loot boxes could be obtained without any further cost. Yes you could buy loot boxes (which btw I agree are problematic) but you never had to. All you had to do was play the game. Every time you levelled up you would get a box. And there were also weekly arcade challenges where you could get 3 boxes every week by simply winning games. And if you ever got duplicate cosmetics from the boxes, they would be converted to in-game currency which you could then use to get other cosmetics again without any additional cost. Compare this to OW2's model. There are cosmetics on the battle pass that you can get by simply playing but there are now also a number of cosmetics that can literally only be purchased with real money. Again, loot boxes are a problem but OW1's system with getting cosmetics was actually very generous compared to how OW2 is currently.

Folding Ideas has a video called Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite. Dan is a blessing upon this earth, and he explains quite comprehensively about these kinds of hostile FOMO tactics. Highly recommend watching that as a follow up to this video here if you're interested in learning more about video game addiction and the fundamental complicity of basically the entire gaming industry these days.

A few months ago I realized I had FOMO with Genshin Impact. Being a free-to-play (F2P) player meant I already miss out on so much (banners, shop sales, characters, weapons, special events, etc..), so my saving grace was doing everything that the game has to offer for free, and keeping up with all of the game's updates, scoops and leaks so I feel included in the community and not 'lacking' anything. This somehow took the fun out of the game and made it feel more like a chore than a way to escape my chores and responsibilities in real life. It was just another thing I 'had' to do! Thankfully, my vacation ended and being a senior with so much work to do made me have less and less time for the game and ultimately, I stopped playing it. Now a graduate, I already have missed so so many banners and new characters and stories now that I don't care anymore lmao. Kind of like your situation with Fortnite! 😄

I think FOMO is ok-ish in free to play games, but where it really starts to become a problem is when the game removes content that you literally paid for. The biggest example I personally experienced is Destiny 2, which removed content worth more than $200 last year. Expansions I paid a lot of money for are now permanently inaccessible. To a certain extent this also applies to stuff like season passes, where you pay money in expectation of getting all the rewards, but then if you don't actually grind out the ranks, you permanently lose the stuff you paid for. That is unacceptable in my opinion.

Even if you say "I don't care, it does not affect me, I play only for the fun", the game will keep trying to grab you back into FOMO state as much as it possibly can trying to break you up into spending money. I felt the same when I started playing Genshin Impact, liked the gameplay, the story, did not care much about the limited things, but the more I play the more the game adds something for you to "miss", even not being completely predatory, it is always and constantly talking to you every single day about what you missed, what you're going to miss and much more that you need to do directly or indirectly. In my case, I gave up on the game, I could not stand anymore of that pressure and also on how much it wanted me to grind and spend more and more time on it, most of the time asking me to do many and many things I already knew I would not enjoy.

Deep Rock Galactic does a great job of fighting FOMO by: 1) Giving away the performance pass to everyone for free. 2) Placing performance pass cosmetics in the in-game reward systems once the season expires. If you miss out on a seasonal reward, you can still acquire it later through in-game activities that are not time limited.

Fortnite has so much content that I've 'missed out' on due to not paying attention to the game since launch that I feel discouraged from jumping in, especially since any collectibles or whatnot that I'd want to get are no longer available. It makes the game feel completely unapproachable, and I get this exact feeling when I see something that had exclusive content in a Kickstarter I never knew about. If I had been playing since the beginning it would have kept me invested, but now it acts as a deterrent.

Fortnite recently had some extremely rare emotes drop into the shop. It looks like it was by accident but people who previously owned it (not all but a vocal portion) went BALLISTIC on social media. Players had their identity tied to the emotes and had some feeling of “superiority” to newer players who did not have them. One large content creator and player even went so far as to threaten to quite the game since “this is all I have.” Being a newer player I picked em up cause I liked them, and was totally dumbfounded that a large creator felt their only connection to the game was the exclusive emotes and skins they possessed. I felt sad for them. I’ve been there before. I have noticed it affecting me to a degree. I can’t shake the feeling of regret not getting Spider-Man and doctor strange from previous seasons. Which is ironic as I only play as master Chief and Goku. So ultimately I waste time regretting skins i wouldn’t even use. It’s insane how this stuff works. Thanks for sharing this with me. I like Fortnite and play with friends and my gf, but I do not want this game to “become an idol.” As it were.

Being mindful in this way is a completely underrated skill, and it applies in many many aspects of life. Knowing when a videogame, tv show, book, or hobby is no longer worth engaging with can save you hours upon hours of time. It even applies to people. Some relationships (with friends, family, or partners) might start out great, but over time you, the other person, or your situation may change, and in some cases there comes a point where the benefits you get from spending time with them no longer outweigh the costs. Habits are a powerful thing, and mindfulness is one of the few antidotes we have to this inevitable pitfall of life.

Used to work on me until around chapter 2, but then there was just too much content being added and removed, which ended up making it all seem less significant and outweigh the FOMO

6:02 I'm honored to be included lol. On the topic though: The best point I got from that reddit post (well, the same one but in r/LowSodiumDestiny, much more conversation), was that live service games, and everything in them, only exist for as long as the devs let them. So now I focus on playing for the experiences, which can't be revoked. And putting way more time into those hobbies in the real world :)

I love the idea of a live service game growing over time and leaving some stuff behind. However, to make sure you're not falling into a harmful practice, I think a health balance is something that is annual. for example the map could change in the winter to be snowy and you offer winter-themed skins and the map could player differently due to the winter like ponds could freeze, snow balls could roll down hills to crush people, etc. do something similar with fall, summer, and spring. but make sure you let players know, it's all going to return next year so they don't fear that they will never get a certain skin or miss out on a certain map experience. I love Fortnites gameplay, art style, and what's under the hood, but the blatant use of fomo to exploit kids for money is evil.

I'm surprised you didn't linked in your souces below any talks by Celia Hodent: she was the head of psychological/UX division for Fortnite, leading a dozen-folks team of psychologists and analysts. She wrote very numerous and extensive papers (even a book) about how they made the game to be that addictive and consistently feeding the player to an auto-sustaining loop of satisfaction, specifically regarding children sometimes (kinda scary to read/hear when delivered with such a straight face).

In this instance I think it’s okay for the title of the video to more directly address the predatory monetization practices the game engages in. Hearing my nieces and nephews lament at missing things - to the point that they wish they didn’t go on family vacations just so they could play Fortnite more is heartbreaking. This level of psychological manipulation in games didn’t exist when I was younger and I’m so glad for that. Edit: Didn't expect this comment to blow up so much. For context, I'm a former alcoholic who also had a gambling addiction (casinos more than happily fed into my alcoholism). To see video games implement the same tactics that casinos use - arguably even more effectively due to being remote and offering truly endless pits for people to spend their money - is very tragic to me. Hearing a content creator whose work I quite enjoy implement the same tropes of "I'm personally not affected so it must not be THAT big of an issue" (my takeaway from this vid) is also disappointing because it indirectly makes people who see a material negative impact in their lives as a result of these practices feel like they had a personal failure when in reality they were simply manipulated by a company with more resources than are even conceivable actively trying to take advantage of them. Studios worth billions of dollars hiring psychologists to design their games to purposefully take advantage of people's insecurities, proclivities to be impulsive, and desires to not miss out on something of projected value is horrendous. it's wrong. Nothing should do this, but especially video games which are an artistic medium and entertainment experience. A video game company shouldn't even allow an environment where someone could spend obscene amounts of money in the first place. Even if you ascribe to the fallacy that it's a personal failure to be impacted by deliberately manipulative practices of a billion dollar industry as an adult, surely you must understand why we must not allow that to exist when children are involved and directly advertised to. The only reason there aren't more "whales" spending thousands upon thousands of dollars in these games is because in a capitalistic environment's quest for ever increasing profits they eliminate the amount of people who even have enough money to spend thousands in the first place.

Using psychology within games to drive an experience and keep players hooked has always been interesting to me. On one hand, it can very much enhance an experience if used correctly, making even small tasks feel great to complete. On the other hand, it can cause situations like Fortnite where people get literally _addicted_ collecting everything for the game. I'll be sure to keep this stuff in mind with my own games :)

Feeling exploited and manipulated into turning a game into a lifestyle is one of the main reasons I’ve shied away from AAA and popular games for a few years now. I know that my personality is vulnerable to these sorts of tactics. As an adult with a job, a family, and goals besides leveling up I know that I just don’t have the bandwidth to get sucked in. So I don’t even start playing.

I think one of the worst side effects I've observed from this model is the attitude certain people and players have towards time limited items. I have an acquaintance who was complaining online that a limited Funko Pop he had gotten was being reissued because it diminished his efforts to get it when he thought it was going to be a one-off production. I get it to an extent, but it all falls apart for me when the items are digital and not physically real. I've seen similar rhetoric towards Battle Pass items where players talk about the notion of bringing back expired items as an insult to their grinding to get all of the unlockables in a given season. This attitude towards limited digital items is particularly frustrating to me, because it's hard for me to fathom getting upset because someone else was given an additional opportunity to get a weapon skin or loading screen. I've always hated the idea that you have to buy the Battle Pass when there's the potential for missing out on items you've basically purchased because you didn't invest enough time. If the Battle Pass were free I'd be more understanding, but it just reeks of exploitative marketing practices to me.

Really disappointed to hear that the weekly quests are, in fact, changing. As someone who started playing Fortnite around the same time as you, having the weekly quests stick around was a breath of fresh air when it came to the FOMO grind. That and how easy it was to obtain battle pass rewards (perhaps because of the quests) gave me a very positive opinion of their system compared to other games I've played with those features (namely, Fall Guys and Magic Arena). EDIT: Looking at discussion on /r/FortniteBR, it seems like the change in the weekly quests may just be for the start of the new season? Seems unclear but hopefully that's the case and Epic doesn't make it a permanent thing. Would love to see confirmation from them one way or the other.

This video hit a little hard since I've been playing Marvel Snap lately. It's not as bad as other mobile games with FOMO but I do know I have a tendency to get sucked into FOMO with other games (oddly specifically mobile titles. I never have had this problem with console titles). At least in MS though there are a lot of time sensitive offers none of them are permanently locked but I was thinking about getting the new season pass for this month even though I wasn't terribly interested in the specific rewards for it. This honestly had me rethinking spending the money. I'm still going to play the game since I like it but maybe I should let go a little bit.

This video has been a real eye opener for me. I've been playing Fortnite since the very beginning, and I've gathered a massive collection of skins and cosmetics over the years. But for the past year, I have had barely any fun playing the game. None of my friends play anymore, and I've played entirely for collecting and FOMO rather than for fun and enjoyment. I do play other games, and I've discovered that I really enjoy single player stealth games, even a bit more that multiplayer games.

I liked how Ghost Ship Games worked to reduce FOMO with their game Deep Rock Galactic. You dont have to pay for a battlepass, giving all the players a chance to unlock the cosmetics and even if you cant unlock all of it the cosmetics will be moved into a random reward pool where players can get them later. DRG is a great game with amazing desing and vision behind it. Its player friendly and easy to fall in love with. Both from a desing perspective and as a player.

Because of the FOMO, I have personally *ALWAYS* found Battle Passes even worse than Lootboxes, since their inception. I think that's because FOMO hurts quite literally every user who cares about the game that uses it, while Lootboxes are a problem only for people who suffer from addiction, and should solve this problem outside of the game anyway (and a problem for children, of course, as this system could/should be 18+ only). I have stopped playing many games because of it, including Destiny 2 (which uses the worst kind of FOMO : locking even the *story* behind limited-time seasons AND limited-time full-price expansions), which was one of my favorite games ever. Halo MCC and Halo Infinite's system for Battle Passes that don't expire was such a breath of fresh air to me.

I think this dichotomy has become the nature of live service games (or the nature of all games in general). Like you said, updating games with limited time content surely makes them funnier but at the same time (as the concept of the "event" in fortnite) the content you want to experience in that limited time can really cause a fomo. In case you can't play it or dont want to, I think you dont feel part of the community anymore. Remember, fomo is always a social anxiety.

i just started playing the game this last september. only been a handful of months that i've been a player, but the changing and evolving map has to be one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. i love seeing the game world evolve and change to shift the flow of gameplay and keep things fresh.

The more painful part of the FOMO is, for me at least, is the required commitment when you're in. Last season of Destiny 2 looked boring, so I didn't even touch it. I uninstalled the game in august and didn't look back. Unplugging for 3 months from my "main game" has been amazing - the new-found free time meant I could try other stuff like Final Fantasy XIV and Halo Infinite, and also give a chance to weird games I normally wouldn't have time for. Shoutouts to Paradise Killer, man, what a game. Now, the new season of Destiny has arrived and it looks like a banger - the battlegrounds are fun, the new loot is dope, and the secret exotic mission looks exciting. Sadly, logging in and seeing the barrage of chores -- daily bounties, seasonal challenges, seasonal reputation grind for the all too familiar 3x7 vendor upgrade grid, the weapon patterns, the new reputation grind for three core activity vendors, the seasonal artifact mods, oh don't forget the battle pass! The list just goes on and on. It feels like it's no longer enough to ask "Is this a fun game I want to spend time with?", now the question is "Is this the thing I want to invest my time into over the next N months?" and that's sad. The reason developers do it is because playtime correlates to MTX spending, but I feel like it's making me fall out of love with video games.

I avoid this problem by simply not knowing what I'm missing out on until it's over. Does that make it not a problem? Not really! I will never be Moon Knight in Fortnite, and that's my burden to bear. I didn't get the fear, I just missed out. ok wait i bought Mario 3D All-Stars, i forgot i'm not immune to FOMO

7:36 A little bit of clarification on this part Fortnite did have Loot boxes, but only in Save the World, a paid game that was originally supposed to go free. They were never present in Battle Royale. Later on, they were repackaged as X-ray Llamas, which are still similar to the original lootboxes, but now you see what's inside before you buy, and it refreshes each day.

I’ve definitely fallen at the hands of FOMO, but for the most part, I do seriously enjoy Fortnite and playing with my friends and watching all the cool events happen. I’m not completely vulnerable to FOMO, though. There have been many times where I just tell myself that it’s not important, and I only get the skins and cosmetics I WANT, not just stuff that won’t be there forever. I’ve missed multiple “never coming back” type bundles just because I knew I wasn’t ever gonna use it anyway.

This is part of the reason I’ve never really gotten into MP games the way I have with SP ones. I don’t want to be compelled to spend all my time playing just one or 2 games so I don’t miss out on anything. I like playing at my pace, which because I have a kid now, tends to be a lot slower than it used to be

Dan Olson has done a great video on Manufactured Discontent and Games as a Live Service- using Fortnite as a case study- that anyone who finds this topic interesting should really watch

This whole FOMO thing that live service games do is actually why I don't play them much. I really want to and I really want to get into them, but I have a hard time even starting because I already feel like I'm way behind on everything. Then when I finally do play one, I play fairly often for a while, but then I miss a week or two and suddenly I feel like I'm super behind and there's no point in continuing to play.

This is why I quit Fortnite. Just said "No more" and uninstalled it. I am done. I don't NEED any of it. Once upon a time it was fun, but it's just so insidious. Not just Fortnite too, any game that has some kind of irritating Battle Pass or engagement system, anything with time limited gubbins or whatever. These games started to feel like an obligation and I'm sick of feeling "obligated" to play a game, instead of "choosing" to.

Can't believe you didn't mention Deep Rock Galactic, which is using a free version of the battlepass system where after the season ends, the cosmetics you didn't get are added to the various random loot pools from extra events in missions, so you can still get them afterward.

When I tried playing Fall Guys, I was disappointed to learn that so many of the seasonal pass items weren’t available. Instead of having a paid and free pass, everything was included in one list meaning some unlocks were just not available to me. The events that require you win some shows seem especially time consuming, since you’re not entirely in control of winning or losing sometimes.

3:05 damm bro 💀

I started the game in season 1 but kept leaving and when coming back in chapter 3, it was such an experience.

My Fear of Missing Out is that I'd never hear of "FOMO."

Been playing fortnite since launch and only stuck around until a few months ago for this exact reason. I had invested so much time into the game to get every battle pass completed that i genuinely panicked if I realised time was running out. This season, I didn't play at all. and though I find it sad that a game I used to love has turned into one which makes me nervous to the point of having to quit, this gap has definitely helped me come to understand how unhealthy this was. Hopefully I can start playing again in a few seasons and just enjoy it, without having to worry about collecting anything :)

The point you made about intentionally missing out to see that it didn't feel as bad as you feared doesn't ring true for me at least. When I started in Chapter 1 I didn't care for rewards in the slightest, but started having FOMO with the start of Chapter 2 after missing out on a specific reward and looking back at how much I'd already missed out on. Because of that I had a recent memory to fuel the FOMO, the fear wasn't just a fear without reason. It had gone from the fear of missing out to having missed out in the past and not wanting to feel that missed out feeling again. And I've had times since where I've missed out on a reward from a challenge thus giving more fuel to the FOMO, giving me a more recent reminder of that bad feeling, making the FOMO worse in the end. I had also made a bit of a loop for my self of not playing till the end of the season, then doing 3 months worth's of challenges in a week or maybe even a single night. and then being exhausted of the game because of that and not wanting to play for another 3 months. then I'd do it in a single night again and the cycle continues of teetering on the edge of missing out. In Chapter 3 Season 4 I managed to make a schedule out of it. where I'd complete the weekly challenges as they came out and do whatever other challenges I had to. then do whatever else until the next weekly's were out. With that I was able to start enjoying the game again and have a little less FOMO because I was progressing at a steady rate instead of doing it in a night. Because I was now no longer doing it all at the end of the season I didn't feel exhausted of the game the next season, so the loop wouldn't start again. thus far the loop has not started again and I'm enjoying the game more than I have in a while, while still keeping up with rewards. I've struck a balance of FOMO while still enjoying the game.

I think they should just make all battlepasses purchasable at any time so you can pick and choose and no one misses out unless you don’t have money, but then again there are free rewards. It could be like those charts from Among Us where you pick and choose which to unlock in.

I’ve been playing Fornite very casually since no build got introduced. It was exactly what I was waiting for! I loved that I could hop on mid season and still be able to catch up with the battle pass bedause all the weekly quests were there. Them removing the weekly’s honestly might make me quit the game simple because they changed something that didn’t need to be changed, yet they did it anyway. I don’t want to play the game every single week if I don’t want to, so it’s easier for my to just not play it at all! I’m happy to finish my single player games.

That’s literally one of their most predatory marketing mechanics

I love the burn you made to Overwatch "2". I played OW2 for about three weeks before I realized that it was more like "Overwatch 0.75".

Fortnite really has to be the most egregious case of FOMO farming from any notably big game. EVERYTHING is time limited, EVERYTHING is going away soon, even the game itself changes wildly frequently. It just feels so awful to come back to because I’ll inevitably find something cool that I missed out on and have absolutely no way of getting it or even knowing when I could. I started playing the game because I liked polar patroller and wanted to play as him, and he literally has not been in the shop for over a year.

And one more thing that came to mind. Parallel to this, for me, are daily/weekly missions in things like Genshin Impact, where the "missing out" isn't content, but progress. If you don't complete each of the tasks given you, you miss out on time limited resources that are necessary to progress beyond a certain point. With Genshin, as much as I enjoyed my time with it, I reached a point where I told myself that I just didn't want to continue to "keep up", so I just kind of said "okay, that's enough" and stopped.

Something I find interesting that you didn't mention, but is a big reason in why I am disinterested in most live service games is simply the fact that you will inevitably believe the game was better at one point then it is currently. I understand thats part of the appeal, but I am someone who goes back to games I love all the time, and it would be very bizarre to return to a game I haven't played in a few years only for it to be completely different; only really resembling a foundation of what it was previously. I understand that's the appeal of these sorts of games, and that's not to say I dislike all of them. I've been very into fortnite in the distant past, recent past, and likely will be in the future. It just sucks that the expirence of most multiplayer games is constantly being altered, everytime I jump into a multiplayer game there's something different about it good or bad, and that's not always something I want if I loved what was there previously.

I had too many bad experiences with FOMO tactics, that I started to get a feeling of repulsion towards games that introduce them. It is very easy to miss out on events due to other games or simply outside obligations nobody has any control over. And this is punishing players for not being present at that time, at that event, at that game. And this feeling of "I missed something I might have really enjoyed", or "If only it lasted a little longer I might have been able to see the full extend of the content" or "I don't know if I would have liked that content, I never had the chance to try it out" are just giving me feelings of regret, and tell me these are not the kind of games I wanna be in. It's why I don't really play multiplayer games (on top of the usual, persistent, subscription to even play the game to begin with). I want to play games to enjoy them, and to escape my anxieties, not to fuel new ones.

Nice video! These shorter form GMTK videos are a very nice addition to the longer form content as well!

I absolutely hate fortnite with a passion, but I gotta say... watching Vegeta crawling for his life as he gets sniped at 1:14 was pretty hilarious.

Im loving the new “mini” episodes, I think they fit right in. Good work👍

Great video! The flip side to this of course is never removing any content, and we can see the downsides of that in any f2p MMO that’s more than a handful of years old. Years of old content, old tokens, old vendors, that are completely unused and unuseful, just taking up space.

I noticed my FOMO a year or so ago, and have been trying to get over it since. I enjoy games a lot more now and some games I don't even hate anymore because I'm not forcing myself to play them. 🙌🏾

GMTK referring to "the removal of the awkward building mechanic" is hilarious

That sort of reminds me of the time in Warframe when Vay Hek was blowing up Relays if the players didn't complete enough counter missions, and we essentially just let one of the relays go, so everyone was packed into the relay to watch the active event as it was blown to atoms. It was a really cool event that you either had to be there for or you missed it forever. It's had a variety of limited-time events since then as plot things happen and new things are added and sometimes things are removed or reworked.

I tell this to my friends constantly I’m so happy that a RU-vidr is finally speaking on it.

I didn't stop playing Fortnite because of FOMO on cosmetic content. I know it's a problem for some but didn't care that much and, while I do enjoy exploring new places when the map changes, it was gameplay changes what bothered me: constantly adding gadgets, weapons and methods of transportation I couldn't manage to understand before they were removed. That's what made me feel that I was missing something out, not having the time (and the will) to learn new gameplay mechanics each week or so.

It's been so cool watching your channel grow. I've been a fan since Boss Keys S1, keep it up! 🙌🏿

What you mentioned about the game constantly changing has me concerned from a preservation standpoint. Like it or not Fortnight is now one of the most important games of the modern era, but how will future generations be able to experience what made it so great if everything about it is constantly being overwritten. It reminds me of the tale of the ship of Theseus, is it even the same game that was released in 2017?

I think the Ghost Ship Games model in Deep Rock Galactic is one of the best out there. Nothing from the FREE "performance pass" is missed, it just goes into creates that are discoverable in mission when a new season starts. Outside of a few cosmetic DLCs, everything, including the cosmetics is unlockable in game (with time). Luckily, there's no purchase able methods of speeding things along, and you get rewards at a pretty steady pace.

Please talk about Deep Rock Galactic and their battle pass system. If you don't finish it within the end of the season, it goes into crates you can find during missions. Meaning you can unlock everything that has been added to the game.

That was definitely Fortnite’s hook early on. I think I might’ve spent well over a grand keeping up with battle passes, collabs, and “event” skins. For me the last straw was the apparent awareness Epic has with the appeal of classic BP-locked skins and the introduction of remixes skins. They know kids will shell out bank for even the slightest tweek to old skins. See the Marvel themed battle pass which featured several iconic character skins forever locked to a season. A lot of them were eventually rereleased as remixes which sounds cool on paper, but adds to the FOMO if you missed these.

In my opinion, Genshin Impact has it worse than *anything*. There are time-limited characters that you can't get when their banner isn't active - so if you didn't get Venti or Arataki Itto, sorry! Hope for a rerun in the future! You can't use them in gameplay, but you also can't listen to their voice lines, read their unlockable stories, or put them in your little player-home pocket dimension, all of which are the primary ways the characters express their personalities. Even worse, there are events that contain fairly important lore and story beats, and many of them were time-limited and you can't even watch their cutscenes in the game itself. You have to watch on RU-vid if anything. I create fan works for the game, and eventually I realized that reading the wiki about characters I didn't have was more fun and rewarding than actually playing. That was very demoralizing.

I play fortnite to this day still but the secret to my enjoyment of the game is that I never force myself to play it. I only play when I really feel like it and if I’m not having a good time then I just stop, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. People get so burnt out on games now because I feel that they just play for the sake of playing not even for enjoyment a lot of time.

Not related, but I'm so surprised that you added that scene from Jingle all the way @ 4:24, mainly because just yesterday I watched it with my family.

Thank you so much for making this video! Many game companies are weaponizing psychological effects like FOMO to get us to keep playing and give them more money.

I find FOMO very powerful for someone like me. However, I do want to point out something about the current live service that games like Destiny and Fortnite operate on: It feels like watching a soap opera. The story continues and goes and goes, and those who jump in can have a sense of "this season, the plot thickens as XYZ does ABC". Like a TV show, you might skip a season and jump back in later. To those who have stuck with the show since the beginning, they get the see the progression of their favorite characters.

FOMO is one of the worst mental health hazards of our time. And I'm not even kidding. You see it everywhere, not just in games. Every store, every event...I had good friends really suffering under FOMO to a point where it bordered on depression because of it. In my opinion, video games are first and foremost meant to ease stress, to entertain and distract. To have *fun*! I believe we as game developers, should strive to provide fun experiences that do not try to manipulate players, instead of making them stressed at best and actually miserable at worst, in the name of getting more money and more "engagement". BTW: I, too, had some issues with it, but you are exactly right! After the first time purposefully missing out on some in-game event, I could break the cycle and don't care anymore if I miss any skins or similar. So this is very good advice!

FOMO is the reason why I don't *usually* battle passes anymore When I used to have it in Fortnite, I was spending all of my free time in the game, wanting to get the full battle pass. The only game I still buy them every now and then is F1, but those battle passes are so small and easy to unlock, I can get it all with the amount of time I spend enjoying the game, doing what I want, instead of focussing on challenges that I don't enjoy so much. I don't even check the challenge page there anymore.

Damn now I want to go back, I didn't even know that building got removed and honestly I've never liked it, ambushing from pre generated structures was more of my cup of tea and I always struggled towards the end when outbuilding opponent was more important than out smarting him or shooting better.

It’s cool to explore the psychological effects in GMTK. You rock!

I experienced this with Mortal Kombat 11. It had skins and items locked behind making a certain rank. This rank would reset every month and new items would appear. This meant that if you wanted everything, you had to grind to make the top rank every time. As someone who wasn't a fan of the MK11 gameplay, this meant that I was forcing myself to have a miserable and salty time in ranked mode, just because of the rewards. I'll never do that in another game ever again.

"Digital junk" is a very good phase. I got so overwhelmed with all of my cosmetics in _Fortnite_ that I vaulted every outfit that I had except for the one that looked the cleanest (a default skin from a previous season), and now I use just that one outfit.

Yes, it does, 100%. Not only the story events but the marketing too. Almost all modern games use predatory tactics in their Battle Pass or Exclusive skins or so many other things. I used to love supporting game companies! Like Riot Games had such a fair monetization policy -- buy skin for X amount. Then they added Exclusive skins. Then Battle Passes. Then Prestige skins. Then more and more FOMO and other predatory marketing tricks. And players keep just accepting it and supporting them. It is frustrating to see this. And even more as someone in game dev. I'm constantly bombarded with suggestions on how to use these "borderline dark patterns" (which of course other game devs would never call it that) to maximize profit. It feels horrible and is so manipulative. I'm glad that the board game industry has largely pushed back on it and fought to stop the practice. But so far this is still rampant in the video game industry and only continuing and getting worse and more predatory. As someone in both industries I simply refuse to do it in my designs even if I'm losing out on possible revenue. Sadly, the only solution seems to be regulation. Maybe players will wake up and speak up against this stuff, but so far that hasn't happened. Sigh... Okay rant over for now. =)

Great video man. In the end, I feel like it all comes down to self control when it comes to buying skins in games like Fortnite, and they definitely do make it seem like you're missing out if you don't get all the battle pass rewards. But I feel like that's where maturity comes in, you need to be mature about the situation and see that you will not be any more happy owning every skin in the game. A lot of these addictions we have today come from primal human instincts, and these gaming companies definitely know how to appeal to it. We must tame ourselves.

Listening to your butter smooth voice is just extremely enjoyable. Please make more videos. I know that you’re working on a new game but please don’t forget this channel in the process

What I like about Fortnite's battle pass is the fact that it feels like you level it up passively, even if you skipped some of it you'll still be able to catch up. However they removed this in this new chapter, which I don't like. Besides this will probably reduce their money, I wouldn't have bought last season's battle pass if I wasn't able to catch up by doing all the quests I missed, I hope our outlash is enough for them to change it.

Hi Mark, I've been watching your channel fairly early days. You're easily one of my favourite creators and I never miss a video, despite the fact I play on average two games a year and don't really follow gaming culture in general anymore. Your videos are always excellent, intriguing, and well made, and watching your channel grow from game design to videos like this about gaming culture and industry practice made me weirdly parasocially proud. You have a great voice, in the literal and cultural sense, I believe you to be a role model for budding creators out there and are just generally a force for good in gaming culture & commentary. Keep up the good work!

One thing I've learned from old browser games like Urban Dead and Inselkampf is that I don't like playing games on someone else's schedule. Those games didn't cost money, but if you're not playing efficiently you fall behind. It's a similar thing to RU-vid and social media. An interaction happens, you get a notification on your phone by default, and you're summoned to check it out instead of the website waiting until you decide to visit it. I'd rather wait until the evening, thank you very much.

I got into Fortnite around February of this year, and since I moved out of state for school in August its been a great way to stay in touch with some of my best friends. I can definitely see how it plays into FOMO. I was grinding pretty hard to get one of the bonus battle pass skins I liked last season, still had fun doing it though. I'm not even going to buy the battle pass this season since I don't care for any of the rewards and I already have a couple of skins I like. I'm happy to just relax and enjoy playing with my buddies.

I avoid this by not considering it missing out. And having a great distaste for FOMO-marketing, etc, that's really easy.

Can’t miss out if you don’t play.

I have missed out on so many experiences that I no longer care about that and instead pursue those experiences that I would find more meaningful for myself

One reason I'm a *really* big fan of Guild Wars 2 is that after their first sortof live updates that went away over time, they promised to never gate content (especially story content) like that again, and in fact they've made all of that old content available again for everyone (including f2p players). There's still seasonal festivals, but those will *always* come back next year, and last years rewards are still available this year

Dude it feels like a lot of people don't give epic games the credit they deserve for the work they've done in Fortnite. Most people are too busy complaining about the 7 yr old player base (and other unfortunate aspects of the game) that they fail to recognise the great stuff epic has done with their game. It scratches this itch to hear you talk about it so favorably. Thank you. The thing about fortnite and fomo is that things like the battle pass is a fun acompanymant to the base game and can make just playing the game more rewarding; but it can also become FOMO if you let it. Introspection is really important in decerning this because at the start of one discovering a game like fortnite they could play it 90% for the gameplay and I0% FOMO stuff (events, battlepass, challenges, etc.,). Over time, they may lose interest and slowly lose interest in the game itself while the FOMO stuff becomes more and more of the reason they keep playing, making playing the actually game hell to do.

This is exactly why I prefer single player games. Complex games where you can never do everything or discover everything unless you play the same game all over again. The constantly morphing gaming world is more of a nightmare than an enticement. The ever-changing world just lets me KNOW that I will never master the game. Bummer. A definite turn-off.

My main gripe with FOMO is the fact that devs will take time to design game modes, events, cosmetics or whole game elements that will disappear as soon as they are gone and will not come back for the majority. Of course, sometimes it creates "once-in-a-lifetime" memories that you fondly remember, but in terms of efficiency, designing something that is due to oblivion isn't great for the industry. It's the same thing as an online game being shut down. Talking about Destiny 2, there has been countless game modes, quests, even whole raids that you can't play anymore. They have been "vaulted" for the sake of "game size creep" but who knows if they'll ever come back. That's why we have books that are 500 years old, but game content that is no longer available a month after release.

This is unrelated to the main premise of the video, but where you said you weren't playing for all the quests and unlocks and just for the fun made me realize that I don't really have fun on video games anymore. I've been playing them for a while and I do enjoy some games but not as much as before, like most single player games I can't finish or bring myself to play. I mainly play with my friends but when they are offline, I don't want to do anything unless it's unlocking things or making distance in a games progression system. I honestly miss when I just played them for fun and I'm thinking I have some sort of addiction or something because I've wanted to take a break off of them for a long time now.

Yes. Zero questions. No video needed.