The suits of the gaming industry are finding ever more creative ways of separating the customer and their money. How far will this go?
Who says a dud game can't have a video game comeback?
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky have to be up there. We're lucky and cursed, equally, to have games that can be updated now. For folks old enough to remember the Sega/SNES into PS1 and even 2 eras, if a game came out that was half baked (*cough*Angel of Darkness*cough*) that was it, no redemption. At the same time, having the option for updates shouldn't be an excuse for half assing games.
After nearly three decades of NFS games, here's a list of the best Need For Speed titles that have ever been released in the past years, ranked by The Nerd Stash.
Diablo III still works on modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and remains hugely playable a decade after initial release.
Are you comparing a continuously improved 10+ years old masterpiece with the... beta of an unreleased game?
The only real way to solve this problem is to wait for it to get massively out of control. Then there would have to be a massive class action lawsuit filed against all guilty publishers and developers for gauging.
There's a class action lawsuit going up against credit card companies for gauging in vancouver canada right now.
Something similar seems to be on the up and up for cell phones and internet costs too.
I don't mind the whole freemium thing but there has to be a maximum full game cost, then some maximum expansion costs. Say content released so long after the main game gets dubbed expansion and counts towards the next cost total.
It would be hard to set up though taking into account inflation and the already overpriced nature of games.
I always hear that people are cheap and even if games did release at forty bucks that people would still wait for them to come down to twenty.
Well sure some people would but as far as I'm concerned thirty dollars is an impulse buy, forty would require the fiscal irresponsibility fairy to whisper sultry things in my ear. Sixty is a kick in the nuts most of the time, especially when most of the games aren't worth that.
Thats like as much as my monthly internet bill, or three trips to the movie theater, most of my cell phone bill, three quarters of a tank of gas.
Common industry figure it out.
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In the case of Facebook and gaming...
" I read in the paper last week about a family that found out that their daughter had spent over six hundred dollars on a Facebook game in less than an hour without realising it."...O_o...
Last time I check, you needed a credit card or some other form of payment to start buying things.
It's simple...if it's available for FREE, why pay for it. Of course it's a scam, they make the farming difficult, but NOT impossible. It's difficult because people have to wait a day or 2 till the crops are fully grown, harvested and then you start all over again. People want INSTANT gratification...so they pay to buy things right away.
I don't know enough about Diablo, but if you can still trade, buy and sell outside of whatever Activision-Blizzard has set up then it shouldn't be a problem BUT if they are saying you can't trade, buy and sell with out their consent and pay them a royalty, then it's no different to me than a TAX and mob like behavior.
" Blizzard are facilitating and legitimising this, as well as optimising their own profit by taking a token amount from each transaction between players."
It seems the problem is people don't want others to BUY what they have worked, in game for. I understand that but if some guy only plays on weekends and likes to stock up on items he doesn't have time to properly find or unlock then why not??? I know it's a form of cheating but it is a service and it looks like it might of been something the community had ask for. Activision-Blizzard has set up a way of doing it in a more professional way. I'm not saying everybody will be happy but it's hardly stealing if you can still unlock the items in game.
Legalizing and properly setting up a way to do it, with out people freaking out and assuming some of the risk, then I would think that it would cost SOMETHING to Blizzard to set this up. Is it really any different than something like E-bay.
every time I see that picture I think of mad magazine
http://www.pollsb.com/photo...