What Went Wrong with Gaming? 

A retro game store opened in my town a few years ago. They've been so successful they opened a second location in a town an hour away this past month. Local news asked the owner (a young guy who opened the store when he was still in high school) why he thought there was a market for retro games. He said he wasn't sure, but he suspected that with older games, you didn't feel like you were getting nickled and dimed constantly.

I honestly think this is the reason that indie games have become popular; indie games are more often passion projects than money grabs, and consumers recognize that. That's why we love them.

I find myself playing and wanting to play significantly fewer games than I used to. It's hard enough to find an offline single player game, much less one without predatory practices.

This video makes me sad, but also helps explain why I'm so stuck on continuing to just play the games from growing up, rather than continuing into newer games. ~1987 through 2000 was the true golden era imo

I still remember when Horse Armor came out. It was mocked endlessly in /v/. Like "who the fuck would pay money for just a piece of cosmetic armor?"

Not only have these practices ruined games, but they are leaking into other things as well. Professional software that used to be a one time purchase is now a monthly fee with micro transactions. Cars are locking things like heated seats and horsepower behind a paywall. Streaming services make you pay to use the service, pay again to remove ads, pay again to watch specific shows. Airlines deliver a framework for transportation and nickel and dime you for bags, seat choice, priority boarding, wi-fi, food and sometimes even drinks. Everything that was once a one time purchase is now a monthly fee, and they'll punish you for taking a break from the purchase by not allowing you to sign back up for a set period of time.

It's interesting how the gaming industry went from, "do what you love, build games that you love" and as a result, money comes, into "build games you hate, because greed and money rules."

One thing I would add about Maplestory's Gachapon: It wasn't JUST the gambling, it was also that the BEST items in the game could be found there. Some of the most rare scrolls and absolutely ridiculously strong weapons (with often super random requirments stats, making them EVEN stronger) were all found in the Gachapon. Unlike something like Overwatch, where the lootboxes were purely cosmetic.

I used to build the website for the University of Texas' business school. They had a PhD program, and part of my job was maintaining the section of the site that they posted their doctoral theses on. There was a few years where every single PhD thesis was about how you could increase profits with microtransactions. Every thesis covered the psychological manipulation in depth, taking no care to hide the immorality of it all. They seemed to revel in it. One paper was entirely about how you could drive a certain type of person (they even used the term "whale") to bankruptcy using these methods and how fantastic that was for your business. I've never been so disgusted at work in my life.

You forgot to mention/blame all the streamers/influencers who basically get paid for luring vulnerable viewers into this abusive monetisation/gambling systems by streaming them.

This is the best explanation I've heard. I have never been more depressed about the state of gaming. If only indie devs had the budget to advertise like AAA studios.

the obsession with realism and being cinematic is what killed most of gaming to me

"Morality is a poor man's quality" is a statement that hits hard when looking at the current climate in the video game industry. Why hire a team of skilled writies, programmers, and artists when you can hire a team of marketers and psychologists that abuse manipulative and questionable practices?

Step 1: introduce an anti consumer system in a game. Step 2: get backlash Step 3: continue to do it anyway Step 4: wait for a new generation of gamers to join the market. They’ve never known games without this system so they accept it, and even defend it. “That’s just how it is”. This cycle happens every time. Most of the things people were outraged about are now considered the norm in games. All companies have to do is wait it out.

Total buscuit was vocal about this a decade ago already. RIP.

Gardenscapes has this feature that runs Monday to Wednesday where you can earn a chest full of boosters as you beat a certain amount of levels in a row. I got so good at the game that I knew I could easily play for hours every day of that period. But because it was only a three day period every week, I felt like I HAD to keep playing in that time frame. I would sit there wishing I was crocheting or reading or doing any of my other kajillion hobbies, but felt like I *had* to be playing, cuz it was only a limited time. By the time I finally deleted the game, I got to the point where I was actually relieved to lose a level and have the chest reset, cuz it meant I had a viable excuse to stop playing.

The interesting thing about the FOMO mechanic is that it encourages retention of players you already have, but discourages new players from joining because they think they have missed too much.

This is why I usually stick with indie games. You can find a lot of high quality experiences that are not predatory in nature.

We really need the world governments to get together and put rules onto this. Especially US, Europe, AUS and BRICS.. 1. In-game coins can't be sold in packs, players should be able to buy whatever number of coins they desire. 2. Paid XP multipliers and battle passes banned, all players or no players deserve to get these awards for playing. 3. Items that aren't entirely cosmetics (new characters and vehicles) can't be bought. 4. etc

This is why I don’t play games anymore lol. I just wasn’t having fun. Everytime I see something cool, they’re locked behind a paywall, for a game I ALREADY PAID FULL PRICE for. I’m gonna say that as time passes, more people will join me and and quit games all together, and go play offline/indie games from time to time

I cannot even possibly express the immense thankfulness I feel towards the independent development scene in the larger landscape of gaming. The massive boom of indie game devs releasing absolute banger titles while completely disregarding pandoras box is the thing that will keep gaming alive.

One tiny correction, when talking about the advent of DLC, you cannot neglect to mention Mass Effect infamously starting the "Day One DLC" trend. Previously, people were willing to pay for DLC because it took months to make it after the game came out, but Mass Effect introduced the concept that you could cut off a part of the game and serve it as an additional slice to players rather than include it in the base game.

Gamer for roughly 25yrs. This was an important video. A lot of games are simply one-armed-bandits. The gambling psychology behind it is scary. That's why I love Horizon: Zero Dawn so much, which I started to play recently. Buy, enjoy, that's it.

I remember when games came complete and bug free once you paid for them. Those were the days 😊

It's so sad that when a big game is announced my thoughts have gone from 'how fun it'll be to play 'to 'how much of a monetary drain will that game try to be'.

I worked with a games psychologist in 2014 when I worked for a very famous mobile game and he was utterly evil and psychopathic. I felt gross working with him when he was telling me how he was trying to trick kids into using their parent's credit card to buy expensive things in the game, and we're talking £50 here. Oh and I discovered a bug that meant sometimes players wouldn't receive their items so I asked for time to fix it from the project owners and they said it didn't matter as the players would likely just try again and double spend. I left the games industry after that.

I complain about it a lot, but this makes me even more grateful for one of my favorite games, No Mans Sky. It’s been going strong for 7 years, had multiple BIG updates, and still has many more coming, and they have NEVER charged extra for any of it. 😳

Thank you for commenting on this topic. It tears my mind assunder, witnessing this slow decent into madness via overmonetization becoming the new standard. Modern AAA companies have been slowly chopping off good qualities that make games enjoyable, for _SURPLUS_ profit, on top of their already well off profit margines they would have made from simply making a good product. If I had to sum their behavior up briefly, I'd say they are noticeably diluting game experiences to appeal to larger demographics, so there are fewer _AMAZING_ games, and far more "meh, it's alright" experiences. Ironically, the AAA companies; the ones with the most money and resources, tend to be the laziest, rejecting innovation and creativity. This leaves creativity to the indie devs, who are often working a full time job, only making games in their free time. There are certainly a few disagreements I personally have with specific directions that Nintendo has taken, but one thing I praise Nintendo for, is that they are always reinvesting their profits back into their games, experimenting with innovated new ideas, which is more than I can say for many other big names like Activision, Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, to name a few. Any time someone comments on this, they're always met with the ignorant response "Well, if you don't like it, then don't buy it!". The problem with that mentality, are the reprocussions we're witnessing today. By not demanding a certain level of standards as consumers, it invites all businesses to get lazier, overall, as they realize they can charge more while putting in less effort, knowing their consumers will not fight back. Please note, I am not anti-capitalism. I sincerely believe companies and individuals have a right to earn a "fair" profit for the products they create. What we are witnessing in modern gaming, far exceeds "fair" profit margines. Large businesses are actively performing psychological studies to determine the best way to manipulate their consumers, similar to what casinos have been doing for decades. The F2P model, for example, is advertised as this positive inclusive decision, yet it's entirely profit driven, at the considerable expense of the quality of the game. F2P appeals to the largest demographic, because what excuse do you have to not play the game if it's free, right? This model also reduces backlash towards poor design choices, as how can one complain when the game is free? The most noteable consequence of F2P, is the quite apparent increase in people ruining the gaming experience for others, via smurfing, unapproved modding, cheating, etc. These types of players suffer no consequence for their actions, as they can simply create a new account and continue hindering the intended experience for signifigant portions of the gaming community. You can observe this daily, in games like: Valorant Overwatch 2 Rocket League (after it was made F2P) This system pits the community against eachother, rather than directing that frustration towards the companies promoting this business model as the new standard, inevitably shortening the longevity and vitality of games. People eventually quit playing, because of the stresses F2P incurs quickly outweigh the entertaiment provided by the game.

When thinking about how games have changed, I feel bad for kids growing up in this environment. Being an older gamer, we at least had a chance to know 'we don't have to participate', and still just game/grind while griping around how things used to be. Children today have no such chance, and may not even realize there is an alternative to the instant gratification to spending real money on endless micro-transactions. **Great video Josh, I would show it to my child if I had one, before letting them get into gaming.**

Looking back at this chain of events is like watching a movie that goes over a dystopian future where businesses are doing absolutely vile things that make you say "Thank god that would never happen." But then I realised the reality of the situation.

This video needs to be shown to every person who wants to go into game design. If we cant stop players from being psychological manipulated, maybe we can stop people from working on them.

I want every gamer to watch and understand this video before they're allowed to defend their favorite game/gamestudio.

I find more and more beautiful, well put together Indie games on steam everyday. Those people actually put their hearts into a game.

Imagine the game studio execs watching this and furiously taking notes in case there's something they didn't already consider.

I blame EA. They may not have been the first to monetize, but they have always been the most agressive in my experience. I still remember the first time I found a single-use code in one of their physical games and realized "this game is never going to be sold used because of this code." They're the literal worst and I try desperately never to give them any of my money.

And this is why I find myself turning to indie games more often these days. That and I find more interesting relatable stories being told in that space.

Wow. I never got the big picture of how abusive these systems really are. It's devious. It makes me think we need some sort of "fair game" certificate for games you can actually buy and play in full. 🤔

It would be really cool having a second video showing how those things are starting to leak outside games, like cars locking some features behind some monthly fee

Great video, didn't know this channel before but I'm glad that it contains a rather balanced and explanatory approach to the topic, not overloading it with internet memes or senseless raging. I acutally have the impression to have learned something about the origins of monetarization in video games

Thanks for this! As someone who’s been playing video games since the Atari but haven’t kept up with the gaming community closely, it was confusing to me why EA games and most games in general took a steep nosedive in story and playability. This makes so much sense, but is so sad. I’m wondering if this is why we don’t see games comparable to Bioshock or the Batman Arkham series anymore.🤷🏼‍♂️

Besides a few exceptions I stopped playing AAA games in recent years and mostly spend my time playing indies, someone who will put passion and dedication behind a great idea will always win in my book

Shoutout to all those amazing dev teams who still just make good games that you buy and get everything, not only that, they continue to feed free DLC, sometimes asking a small and fair amount for significant DLC expansions. The Long Dark comes to mind.

In my opinion the blame is also shared by people. They either don't realize they are being manipulated or don't care. If you want to stop these decisions, you will have to boycott the products that include them. Write negative reviews, persuade your friends not to buy that shit. Announce why you are not buying them, describe why these tactics suck. It is something, even if it may not realistically change anything, you never know how much domino effect you can have.

Can we just agree that nearly no one really views anyone as human in these exchanges anymore? From the corporate side, we are just printers, where the higher ups have opened our lids to take out the paper. The developers working on the product are seeing their bosses filled with greed, monsters often forcing them to overwork themselves; They don’t look at the game and imagine the positive and fun impact it's going to make for consumers, they see them hunched over, falling for manipulation tactics, wallet out, feeding the monsterpeice the dev is being forced to make in order to make a living. From the consumer side, we start to see these companies we love shower us with crap for the money we pay them, and begin to despise them so much, once we see that they have a whole garbage bag full of these garbage bags. We don't act like they're human at all, and for the first time in many of our lives, we start to shun them, and go back inside. We turn to indie titles, made mostly by people who care about what they're making. If these companies ever want us to come back out, they need to stow away the garbage bags and bring out the detailed and delious cakes. This, of course is applicable to many industries currently, because for some reason everyone's sacrificing their customer respect, the companies soul, and long term profits for short term profits.

This video is a perfect example of why it's so important to support small independent game developers. In a lot of ways Indie developers today resemble what gaming studios looked like in the 90s and 2000s. The success of these studios is critical to preventing short-sighted tactics like this from completely taking over.

The fact that microtransactions in Genshin Impact, Diablo Immortal, and FIFA beat out Elden Ring's sales is soul crushing. The pinnacle of Fromsoft development released after they defined a genre can't beat digital heroine.

When EA said it was for a sense of pride and accomplishment, it wasn't just them slapping the players in the face, they spit in their face and shat in their breakfast. I still can't believe someone actually wrote and were given the okay to publish that, what'd they think was going to happen.

SSX 3 was my favorite of the series. I loved the way you could play on one continuous mountain. And it had Kick Doubt, which for some reason is my favorite name for a course. I sucked at the freestyle courses, I was always into the racing more, but I loved that name.

This is why indie games have been on the rise and I hope they g get bigger and I hope these big companies see how much people love them and change a bit

"Money is temporary, but doom is eternal"

You forgot another microtranstion. Timed exclusively, where you can buy a game a week before others if you pay another $30 like Starfield, 2k Basketball, or Diablo IV. They are often "premium edition" which used to come with cool toys, but not it's just early release and skins/microtranaction currency usually. You could even follow this up with very low amount of video game innovation in AAA games since they stick with sequels and microtransactions.

Oblivion got DLC right. The game was huge and felt complete, and the two main DLC’s were bolt on additions made after the main game (you can even hear the voice actors having different sounding voices; Wes Johnson had a cold during the DLC voicing sessions). The horse armour was always a funny joke back in the day, little did we know what a Pandora’s box it turned out to be

28:38 “and when a marketing executive pictures you playing a game, you aren’t pictured smiling and laughing with friends ur pictured opening ur wallet and reaching for ur credit card” basically sums up the state of modern triple A games

Weirdly the "Recurrent monetization" has really changed the way I play games. I play way more indie and AA games now. Like most of my "Most Anticipated" game of any new year has become a lot of smaller seemingly more heartfelt projects. My favorite game this year was Roadwarden. A text based RPG. It's kind of sad, but at the same time there are still so many great games coming out every year even if it's not a title I would've expected at the beginning of the year.

At the end, when you were listing all the culprits, I believe you should've concluded that we, the players, are to blame for allowing this to happen and to still, so many years later, continue to strongly signal game companies that they are right for making the box grow more and more and more over time. Thanks for the great video!

When the game is FREE, YOU are the product.

I see it as an abusive relationship. I don't see a difference when people are manipulated into a hard-to-leave mental drain. Break it off because it's only more painful the longer you give in.

A good friend of mine worked for a big publisher (no name dropping as they´re all doing it anyway) and at one point, they sat in a room with a bunch of psychologists and designers, "theorizing" about how they could redesign certain game mechanics, *specially* for people with compulsive spending habits, like ppl with ADHD for example. He left the room being so disgusted that he gave up the job and started working with an indie dev team instead. lol It´s disgusting to see that they not only ignore, but *willingly abuse* people with mental health issues (like gambling addiction) to make more money.

This is a great video and sums it up perfectly I only do sim racing now but even racing games are doing it with track packs and cars etc

For his birthday my nephew wanted $20 worth of V-Bucks to use in Fortnite. I asked him if the in-game purchases had any in-game benefit and was soundly informed they were purely cosmetic. 🤦‍♂️

Indie developers are the only thing keeping my hope and trust in games and devs alive. No scummy shops, if you buy something you have it forever. Love indie games :)

It's interesting to hear the parallels with gambling and gambling addiction. Especially around 15:10 talking about the proprietary currency. There was a saying when I used to play cards... "The man who invented gambling was smart. The man who invented chips was a genius." When the money doesn't look like money, people will quite literally throw it away

Very well made video. Must watch category!

2:02 that turtles game is the first NES game which wasn't in arcades

We need more people calling out all of the anti consumer and stingy things game companies do now. I hope everyone remembers Totalbiscuit who passed away in 2018, he was one of the first to call out these anti consumer methods used by these companies and fought for anyone who just wanted to play good games. I don’t think things will change anytime soon but I do hope more people will speak out. RIP to a great man

I actually used to be in a game development program at a university, and I dropped out because I thought it was so miserable. It wasn't cause the workload was so bad, but because even when I did get projects successfully completed I never enjoyed making them, or got any satisfaction out of the finished product, just relief that I didn't have to work on it anymore. Thank you for making this, because I could never really explain why until I saw this video - basically all they teach you in the classes is rapid iterative prototyping and shit from that pandora's box, or at least similar mechanics designed to induce a (monetizable) dopamine rush. It's never about what the developers actually want to make, it's all about what the shareholders or investors think will be most profitable.

Great video and well said. I still play an Online game from 2002 specfically for these reasons. Haven't looked back.

This is why I bought the mini classic super nintendo. Good old games with no online dlc or anything. Its what I grew up with, and with a smile, going back there again 😊 If only DOS games were able to come back, sadly nearly impossible. PS5 will be my last console, also due to age. Wishing the younger community the best with the current gaming era 👍🏻

The biggest horror which I feel is the final message that should have been on the end of this video is that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is currently no reason that this will reduce or stop. This is it now. Things are not going to improve.

I wouldn’t call this “bad” design but I would call it “Patently Evil” design.

NAILED IT!!! Best video I've ever seen on this topic, especially the influence & impact of FB games like Farmville.

Honestly the worst part about all of these systems that you've mentioned in this video is not only do publishers and players know about this, they do it anyway. Famously a few years ago there was a major announcement about an abusive DLC patch for a game (I can't remember which one, might have been CoD or it might have been something else) which was followed with outrage. Then a leaked document from the dev team got out. The dev team were having meetings with the marketers and the marketers assured them "if you put up with it long enough, eventually it will go away, and people will still buy and nobody will care." And they were right. We now have to convince addicts (and I'm certain are paid plants who stand in to encourage the addicts) that what they're doing is addicting and needs to stop. Like telling a drugged up homeless man that his life will improve significantly if he quits the drug he's on. He knows it, we know it. But it feels good, and his friends tell him it feels good, and his fake friends who don't actually take the drug but get a substantial bonus from their dealer for pretending to be his friend says it's really good. So we get ignored. We need to actually and actively act if we want these things to change because until the drug gets taken off the streets nobody's safe, the drug dealer just keeps raking dough.

Sadly younger gamers who never played games from "the golden age" will tend to have difficulties understanding just how bad things are now.

As someone with a degree in programming and a masters in design, I see this video and my prospects in the modern game industry and I feel like a biochemist whose career was not in creating helpful drugs they aspired to but in finding more addictive ones.

This video is exactly what Steve Jobs talked about, in that interview when he mentioned product people and marketing people, and which of them ends up running companies that makes too much money. This video breaks it all down very nicely into detailed specifics of how it's done and the history behind it, but it's essentially exactly what Steve Jobs talked about back in the day.

Great, sad but true video Josh! We can always say no to the box.

I really like when games sell their soundtrack as the only DLC. You could easily just listen to the music on RU-vid, but it's a neat way of supporting the team behind the game. I've done this with a few games and even though i don't use the Steam music player, i still appreciate that it's totally optional and doesn't affect the game one bit.

I love my present game deveoper pie charts, always nice to see they still put effort into magazine ads

There's another technique that I thought you were gonna touch on. When you mentioned how the base game is now the framework and all the content of the game is sold through microtransactions. EA has improved that technique by changing the Sims 4 from a prices based game to a free base game because they know if we want to fully experience the Sims we would need to buy the dlc. So let people playing the base empty game for free and get hooked so they can buy the cash cow Dlc

After many years of enjoying online games, the modern monetization made me go back to single player games instead and now I have much more fun playing games than ever before. So thank you Farmville and Diablo Immortal.

This video has perfectly explained that sinking gut feeling I have every time I see new game release and wonder how it will disappoint me this time.

love your work

Thank you for making this Josh, this video has really made me have an introspective into whether or not i should continue even playing games anymore or cut my losses because the industry is so deep into this cesspool i dont see myself ever having fun within the space anymore

Thats why you should start playing indie games. The developers of indie games put passion and ideas in their games to make the best experience for the players. They most of the time don´t care about battle passes and stuff like this. They just want the game to be fun.

I find it so interesting that game developers are secondary to making games these days and the business model is the primary concern. Clearly the gaming industry is changed forever, glad I was there for the glory days.

The most thorough analysis I’ve found on this subject

7:54 i like how you used Kratos’ Pandora’s Box 😆

I went "game amish" years ago for the sake of my kids. We simply don't consider games with transactions, or even requiring external identity validation. What I didn't expect was that, by eliminating time wasted on games that are a drag, it made games much more fun. At this point when I see some some of these mainstream games it's just repulsive to see all the shit people go through without even getting to play. Thank you genuinely for the effort put into this high-quality video.

Dont forget that going to an arcade was a fun social experience in itself. Meeting new people and challenging them face to face at Street Fighter Alpha, or teaming up with a stranger to beat Time Crisis together, then becoming friends. You dont get that with online gaming (at least not in the same way anyways). And renting games was a reasonable thing. You paid a small amount and you got the entire game, not parts of a game. Sometimes you had to rent it multiple times, but it always felt worth it.

Very interesting! Thank you!

My first console was way back in 1978/9. All this has been a steady thing that’s happened over time and just like the frog placed in the pot of cold water before being placed on the stove, nobody saw it happening until it’s so ingrained in the system that it’s lost all meaning about playing a game for the sake of playing a game. I used to play games purely for the enjoyment and to get better, to reach the next level. I went through a phase of being suckered in to buy crap. Now I’m back At playing a game purely for the enjoyment. I rarely if ever buy crap. It’s too easy and too addictive.

This is precisely why i mostly stopped playing AAA games. There is no more passion, no more "let's a make a super awesome experience", it's only about money. And then you get into a great indie game and you can just feel the love that went into it.

I’ve been playing video games since I was 3 years old, I am now 31. It’s truly a shame to see gaming transform throughout the years to what it is now due to these systems and tactics… I want to remind everyone of one thing that renders these systems obsolete, and that is choice. That is something you hold and can’t be taken from you.

Great case study for habit-based game design that predates Facebook and 2008: RuneScape into Old School RuneScape

As a massive maple story player when I was a teenager, I never realized how big of an influence that game was

The book 'evil by design' is a must read for any participant in gaming or social media. It talks about cow clicker which was built only to illustrate evil game design tricks, but then took Facebook by storm

I have largely been ignoring video games for many years now. For a while, this was strange to me, because in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, I was such a big gamer. But something just felt wrong, and I drifted away more and more. It was like the soul and art was slipping away, replaced with flashiness and hyper-commercialization. I never could quite put my finger on it, then this video here put so many puzzle pieces together.

Great video. Very well articulated. Concrete, clear and respectful. But let's be honest, the legendary uglynes of your Oblicion character takes the cake :)

Thank you so much for this information. It makes me sad to see how game’s transformed into getting money from players. If you’re a game developer or hoping to go into that field help the gaming community by making better games for everyone.

What went wrong? Shareholders and investors got involved. Happy Holidays, everyone.