"Oops, I should say customers not players". This sums up the talk brilliantly. If you're in games only as an end to making money, then boy oh boy is this THE talk for you!
a lot of commenters here seem to watch game developer conference videos expecting them to not talk about monetization. i get it, it sucks that some strategies are seemingly ugly or manipulative. i would love to only make games you just pay a couple bucks for and give you the full experience. but not many devs get that luxury. if you really want change, you can only vote with your business. if a game you like gives you a buy-out option, do it if you feel it's worth it. if the stats come back and the analysts see a preference for one-off payments, that would actually get people thinking. i cannot argue in good faith to my director and tell them to change our monetization because it feels bad. because then the whole studio would stop making money and we'd all go under. just something to consider.
The stats wont come back. This is psychologically exploitative, and thus effective. Its gambling, and sunk cost fallacy. Its a lot of ugly things in a perfect shitstorm.
People seem to think that game studios are making games just as a hobby, when in reality, they have to make money as well. It’s the hard truth that people just don’t want to believe even when they do know that it is true. This is true 4 years ago and it’s still true today.
I'm in the middle of designing a card game. And if I'm being honest this style of marketing is the exact reason why I decided to make my own competitive game. I feel that this video is really scummy. There are better ways to monetize games. To be fair I only listened to 47 minutes of this video this video before writing this review.
"Limited SKU's", "If the rate is too high, its too fast, they can never feel there is anything solid for their efforts in the game" - People at WotC could learn a thing or two from this talk!
What you can learn from MTG as videogame is: bring every year a new game that people have to buy or bring every 3 years a new game with micro transactions where the new one gives you nothing if you played (and bought things) from the old game.
Yeah, they should stop that, it's a dick move. Make a good game, make yearly upgrades. I would be fine with a playing fee, like a monthly/quarterly/yearly cost, but relatively cheap, and even having microtransactions for buying more cards. Maybe an option to filter out people that just spent a shitload on cards, and people just having gotten a lot of cards through just playing a lot. Have a few cards to win with every game, or being able to pick between a few cards, or an XP system, or both, kind of like they do. Mostly, stop having to buy a new game every year, and or being able to take your shit with you, account bound.
That is exactly what Skaff Elias is doing now with Valve's new Card Game Artifact! You can sell the cards you unpack or buy singles from other players! No dependency on lootboxes/packs at all!
That would literally be gambling because even though there are digital card games the packs you get don't get rng rolls until you perform the action to open it. That fancy unpacking animation is just a loading screen for getting the data for the rng roll. Like a lot of slot machines and digital gambling websites, the system chooses when you lose or how much you win. If you have a value system that you can cash out that object for immediately then that is the equivalent of gambling. As seeing that kids will play this game, and kids are easily manipulated, they could form harmful habits akin to gambling or just gambling. Another thing to consider is that the second hand market for physical trading card games or collectible card games isn't gambling for the simple fact that, the as-fan for booster packs cannot be changed once it gets into your hands, since it is a physical product. The digital versions could come very close to gambling because even though percentage rates for acquiring certain rarities of cards might be similar to the as-fan of the physical products, the fact that you need to be online and that the packs is given a code with a predetermined set of cards, who's to say that the odds or the code for cards might be tampered with by the service provider, whomever sold you the game. Developers and publishers can track a lot of data about their games if it's an online game. Maybe what Valve's game Artifact is doing with allowing actual trade with digital cards is well regulated otherwise it will turn into gambling and will come under a lot of scrutiny by gamers, and or authorities.
What a carp panel. Everything video game companies can learn from CCGs is that they sell good? Seriously until the end of his talk about the only topic is his buisness model... A waste of time. And in the end after 56 minutes he is being asked for ideas for a launch. And his statement is that he would this brilliant gamedesign he had been polishing for about an hour would not do without a strong license. Laughable so get lost.
We gamers are the problem. Gamers are a resource to be farmed just like gamers will farm a game or other gamers to make money if they can. Most people I know think making money is all there is to life but if a business is all about making money then gamers can become enraged. All this really amounts to are gamers attempting to manipulate the market and get what they want by creating negative drama about how game companies do business. Then internet folks farm that outrage and fan the flames to get views. Competitors then fan the flames further to manipulate the market to help themselves against competitors. The fault lies with us, the gamer, every time we preorder games we haven't played or buy advantages and shortcuts in gaming to defeat others or lesson the hoops put forth you have to jump through. So while some will refrain from buying into games and their developers by rewarding them with cash many will not. It's simple. If you don't like lootboxes dont buy the game that has them. If you don't like business practices being used then don't buy their games. We need to stop blaming whatever the current outrage of the day is and take some responsibility in our purchases. We are not forced to buy anything. We are not forced to buy to compete with others in our need to further out egoes by besting others. Once you spend money it's on you.
lol this is straight up the same bullshit gambling companies say when they are challenged about problem gamblers. think about systems instead of individuals.
Too bad MtG is not doing close to what Pokemon and especially Yu-Gi-Oh do, seen how MtG is the better game, in any and every way you look at it, except for 2 categories. The others are simpler. The others have more cartoon collector value. P and Y just sell a shitload to kids and collectors, even with shit art (Yu-Gi-Oh mostly) and a bad system and bad cards (also both Yu-Gi-Oh) mostly, cards can be worth a lot. It's fanboyism and mindless consumerism maxed out. It's ridiculous. And both of those owe MtG a lot, since that did it first.
I agree, Magic is a better game. But speaking as some who grew up with Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh in the late 90's and early 00's and never even seen a magic card until like 2016 (none of my school yard friends were talking about it, let alone playing it), I gotta come to the conclusion that MTG failed in becoming a household name franchise. Yes, it started as a card game, and every TCG owes a lot to MTG. But it could've easily expanded to a much bigger intellectual property. I read that it put out a few novels, and couple of computer game sin the mid 90's...but clearly that was not enough...
