Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 21, 2017

Pictures of your in-game food

When I announced the new crawl, digging through the blogs, to find inspiration and information, I greatly underestimated the task. Almost a month passed and it's far from done. However a milestone is reached: I finished the blogroll of biobreak:
Ouch, it was looong. And I clicked on every single one of them and checked its contents. Many are dead. Surprisingly many died last July, tricking me as I saw the "July X" as last post date, read them and they felt outdated, checked again and saw that the date is actually "July X 2016". Weird.

I've found some inspiring and intelligent blogs, you see how my blogroll grew from the 5 pre-crawl entries. I've even found one that made me laugh for minutes. Really check it out!

But most of the blogs are just "pictures of your in-game food". They are alike the facebook pages of random nobodies that are full of everyday busywork that no one cares about (not even the poster) and literal photos of food. Why does someone cares to share a meal? Or a minipet? Or a storyline. This is the last one on the roll and a good example of these type of blogs. (no need to check it out, check out the previous link, really!)

The trick with these blogs is that they are identical, since the adventures of the bloggers are identical. "Everyone" started to play Secret World Legends and got surprised that the tutorial is lengthy and the outdoor area is dark and feels like a dungeon. I believe the bloggers considered their stories worth sharing, but they are the same, which is kind of the problem with non-competitive games: there are no unique stories. There are no highs of victories and lows of defeats, just the boring, dime a dozen grinding over on-rails, piss-easy content.

Seeing these blogs, I can explain why my blog survived the lulls of non-gaming: I always tell something unique. Maybe hilariously wrong, but definitely something that you can't read on every random reddit page. Of course I'm not satisfied with that, (hey, nobody ever wrote "ak,fmg;ldsmL:ASmf;lssdl;fkadl;" before, I'm unique!), but it's a start. I keep crawling until I find something worthy to finally settle down. I've already got my eyes on Fortnite and got info to cross out many titles that looked good.

Speaking of which, there goes Ark Survival Evolved. While it wasn't a primary target anyway, I kept it as an "if all else fails" option. Obviously not anymore. It seems the "evolution" of games over the past decade is
  1. we are fair
  2. we give clear advantage to those who pay in the shop
  3. we break our own rules and support some players secretly
  4. we can't even be bothered to stop exploiting when there's a scandal
There is nowhere to sink now, so there must be an investor who says "I have $100M, I believe there is a niche for a non-rigged, competitive game on the long run".

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

More often than not nowadays i resort to creating mods for single player games to get the experience i want. Particularily ARMA, skyrim ect. Have considered making a mod for a game that covers what you are after. Look what happened with day z and playerunknowns battleground

Anonymous said...

But would "an investor who says "I have $100M, I believe there is a niche for a non-rigged, competitive game on the long run" really change anything for you? Mobile is the high growth part of gaming, why wouldn't an investor invest in mobile instead of PC? eSports continue to have high growth forecasts; shooters and MOBAs dominate the non-Wow market. I can't see a rational investor would choose to spend their $100M on anything you would play. Not counting that lockboxes and PLEX/REX/CREDD are desired by the customers and thus become desirable to the sellers.

You are not searching for a $100M AAA game. You need to find one tiny enough they can survive by catering to a small niche - your non-mainstream desires/requirements. The problem for the blog is that most readers are not going to know or care much about new, small games.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: simple, those markets are already overcrowded. There are at least a dozen LoL clones and new ones coming (master x master for example). You can't shake a tree without a lockbox falling to your head. There are literally thousands of mobile P2W crap without actual gameplay on Apple store.

On the other hand there a millions of older players who liked Vanilla WoW, grew up on have-5-lives-only arcade games and above all, on the peak of their earning power. I can easily pay $100/month subscription and I'm not even living in US/WestEU. There is a huge ignored market niche out there.

You are also forgetting the Gen Z, the kids who grow up now (10-17 years olds). They are cynical, they recognize every P2W shit and rigging and they have zero loyalty to any title.

Tithian said...

Ahhh, you found Njessi's Hall of Shame. The entire blog is a joy to read actually, even though I don't play SWtOR (at least not any more).

Frostys said...

"grew up on have-5-lives-only arcade games "

I'm pretty sure most arcade gave you extra life if you dropped quarters in them.

Anonymous said...

"You are also forgetting the Gen Z, the kids who grow up now (10-17 years olds). They are cynical, they recognize every P2W shit and rigging and they have zero loyalty to any title."

What makes them less susceptible to manipulation than any other teenage group in history? That they grow up with the tech makes them more likely to accept it as normal.

Gevlon said...

@Frostys: and I never understood why would anyone put in a coin for an extra life when he gets a whole new game for a coin.

@Anon: for the same reason why kids growing up in the Eastern block are immune to leftism. Kids are observant and not self-censoring. An adult wouldn't tell another "you are an idiot for playing that game, it's only about the money you spend", but a kid yells it into his face front of the whole class who laughs.

Smokeman said...

Putting an extra coin into an arcade game for more lives:

Back in the day, you could not do this, you got what you got for one quarter. If you were any good, you could play that game for a long time... and there were a few games that moronically had "easter eggs" that would allow you to play forever on a single coin or provide other powerups. (I have no idea what these people were thinking, I have to assume it was rogue engineers doing it.)

I actually got KICKED OUT OF A CHUCKY CHEESE for exploiting the Defender game.

About the time arcade games started getting really expensive to produce with more involved graphics, they started adding the "Pay to win" feature of extending the game. Did that precipitate the fall of the arcade? Or was it better consoles? Either way, when an industry like this starts down the "Pay to win" path, I think there are bigger problems in it's future.

Anonymous said...

But most of the blogs are just "pictures of your in-game food". They are alike the facebook pages of random nobodies that are full of everyday busywork that no one cares about (not even the poster) and literal photos of food. Why does someone cares to share a meal? Or a minipet? Or a storyline.

people want to feel important, because they are not. writing for the ominous internet audience is something like a exhibitionism for them. nothing more interesting than a housewifes gossip at the market. it's the same thing.

Also we can interpret this the good old harsh way of symbol stacking. To document in painful detail how you waste your youth away is a symbol of luxury if in combination you fake (usually take debt or marry some rich idiot that throws money at you) other symbols of status, wealth, health, etc. you don't buy a yacht to bang some 1000 Euro/s escort. you do all this to have exactly this dick-size comparison in every way and and form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY