Is it just me or did the game market become much more sinister than it used to be? It's all about getting people effectively addicted to make more money out of them. Give them a taste for free, once they're hooked, start cashing in on those poor addicts.
It does seem sad. So many problems to be solved in the world, but the things getting financial reinforcement and attracting technical talent are compulsive gaming and nanosecond-level stock trades that are unrelated to productive work. Good thing Farmville wasn't around in the 1960s, we'd have never gotten to the moon.
Calling the game market "sinister" borders on hyperbole.
Horia Dragomir and Stephanie Kaiser from Wooga gave a presentation[0] on metrics driven game development at GOTO Copenhagen earlier this year. Through the lens of one of their more popular franchises "Monster World", they discussed, among other things, A/B testing and the surprisingly short life (days to weeks) of a game feature before it becomes irrelevant. Nothing in their talk suggested late night meetings in dark corners, plotting to turn their users into addicts. Rather, they discussed adapting to rapidly changing trends and patterns--which sometimes but not always included introducing new in-game purchase items.
If on the surface the game industry as a whole appears to you to be an online equivalent of a casino, thats fine. What I see are dedicated and passionate engineers trying to ensure the survival a product in which they've dedicated years of their lives to getting right, by employing many of the same techniques nearly every other user facing tech company uses everyday, and I for one am not ready to cast the first stone and accuse entire industries of moral bankruptcy.
There are surely very dedicated people working in some casinos. That doesn't have anything to do with them doing interesting stuff.
And the fact that they use "what every other user facing tech company uses" is exactly the problem. I like and use A/B testing, but it's purpose as a tool is to take decisions based on what extracts the more money from users. There's no dark corner, but the goal is definitely the same. And it's not exactly something that I want to associate with games.
The fact that your whole post, and a big part of the link you give, is as much applicable to selling games as to selling rocking chairs or any random saas product is exactly the problem. Marketing and sales come first, game development is merely an afterthought.
It's not that it's more sinister, it's just that the spectrum of people who play is just so wide now. I assume the "sinister" side form your affirmation would correspond to the casual section of gaming.
Back in the early days, only "hardcore" players would really pay attention to video games, but now, with so many casual games coming out, everybody is busy click or tapping away at least for five minutes each day.
While there are heavy monetization wheels turning in the casual world, it's still about getting people to relax.
Let me explain a small difference, bare with me.
Just think about what user penalties for mistakes are in casual games. Also, think about how many time a casual game has made anyone feel that a mistake is their fault.
Now think about hardcore games: it's always your fault.
This means that to be better at a hardcore game you need to train. There is no magic button to press to become a pro gamer over night.
With casual games, the only way to get "better" is to cheat luck of make time go faster. And there are buttons for that.
Very few people press those buttons because very few people are looking to do or get better at those games.
These buttons are clearly offensive to a person who is a hardcore gamer at heart. I know that, I see them everywhere.
I guess your affirmation comes as a result of the growth of casual / social games while the pace at which hardcore games are being released has stayed pretty steady over the years.
And the "give them a taste for free" bit makes me think of trial periods for non-gaming software.
That's a very good point. I haven't considered the casual-gamers aspect and the different style of engagement with games.
I still somehow have a little trouble with the way this in-game purchase works. As a child I used to go to play at the arcades, and of course when you fail, you have to slot another coin into the machine. This is probably quite similar. However, even as a child, I knew I am going to spend some money, within my budget, on playing games. There were no free games.
It seems like a subtle difference, but there is an element of luring-in with something that is marked as free, but actually encourages you to pay later.
Also, the coin-operated arcade (due to technical reasons I guess) offered a reasonably predictable price model. You play until you fail, which is usually a few minutes. If you're really good, a bit longer. You weren't given a chance to buy extra ammo or turbo-charge your car if you add two coins, and then later get the mega-pack for five extra coins and so on...
UPDATE: just to make it clear. I'm really speaking as a complete outsider to this world. I don't play any kind of games, and apologies if I'm making very wrong assumptions based on little knowledge in this area.
It's pretty much always been this way since the Internet became ubiquitous. UO/EverQuest/DAoC/WoW/etc. started with subscription fees and a steady stream of expansions; followed by "DLC" on the latest round of consoles, and thanks to the iPad and Facebook; it's just more mass-market.
It's not just you. I've very glad I got the hack/slash/upgrade/repeat cycle out of my system with Diablo II many years ago, before publishers figured out how to rent Skinner boxes.
The entire gaming paradigm with pay $X to get better equipment so that you can use that to get even better equipment sounds like a giant Skinner's box.
The original game model for PC was freeware first hubs and pay for full games, like Doom and Quake. This is only a more predatory evolution of that concept.
