Second, if we've learned anything from social media and other ML-optimized user experiences, it's that optimizing solely for profit (or engagement) isn't healthy for your users. Some of them will be more affected than others, but if you do it wrong, you're converting human suffering into profit. Some of the stories of gem-game whales are just awful.

On top of that, many games have only cosmetic purchases. Fortnite is an obvious example of this model. Saying Fortnite is “optimized for profit” makes very little sense, since nothing you can do in the game requires purchases at all.

It’s just a good game that a ton of people enjoy playing, which is really all you need to make a profitable free-to-play game these days.

(the other route to getting more players is advertising, which is a whole other thing)

Unfortunately in many of the games that my kids enjoy, I have noticed that the optimization path for the freemium model includes increasing the time sink required for access to game mechanics and content, and increasing the rewards for paying actual money for access to mechanics and contents.

There are some free to play games that find a good tension between this early on, but longer term, I find that the games because less enjoyable because it is too time consuming for others to keep up with my "pay to play" approach to skipping the time intensive portions of the games.

> Saying Fortnite is “optimized for profit” makes very little sense, since nothing you can do in the game requires purchases at all.

Sure, from a mechanical perspective. My son uses a portion of his allowance to keep current on his emotes and skins because his friends apply social pressure by teasing the kids that don't have them. It's been a great opportunity to teach him about peer pressure, and the relatively harmless of this version of it, in contrast to more harmful ones related to drugs, alcohol, or risky behavior for teenagers.

I don't think anyone is arguing that freemium games can't be fun or that some microtransaction models are more player-beneficial than others. But, like with any feature, if you include microtransactions than some other aspect received less attention (assuming a fixed budget, which I realize is also a consideration as game X might never have been made without the freemium component to propel the business decision).

Edit: Also, as others have said here, most freemium developers focus on extracting revenue from the "whales," not the players who play for free or pay little.

Those resources would not have existed had it not been for the sales of cosmetics.

I think the thing that people miss in their discussions of video games is that “enjoyability” or “fun” are not 1-dimensional quantities. In fact, there are many different ways to evaluate a game: meaningfulness, emotional range, decision complexity, flow state, educational/pedagogical value, literary value, societal/social impact, etc etc etc.

Furthermore, many of these criteria can be good at multiple ends of their range depending on individual taste and/or mood. For example, sometimes I’m in the mood for complex decisions to really sink my teeth into. Maybe a Zachtronics programming game or engineering game like Factorio or perhaps a challenging roguelike such as NetHack or Slay the Spire will scratch that itch for me. Other times I’m really burned out from work/studying and I’m just looking to unwind so a super relaxing, simple, flow state game like Stardew Valley is better for me.

By pursuing the free to play model, games like Genshin Impact are incentivizing their developers to optimize the game for two things only: engagement and gambling-like rewards. That is very bad. These games are the junk food of the game industry. Even worse. They’re casinos as well.

That's only true till the baseline. After that point, you need to focus on specific players, or you will risk compromising your game by catering for too many tastes, making it generic and bland. Ultimately you will drive people away anyway with your decisions, so there is no real harm in focusing on the money-pots, as long as you stay about the baseline of fun.

Earlier Battlefields had generic soldiers per side that were identifiable by weapon class and customizable by camouflage but retained a clear distinction between the two large teams. This helped players to distinguish friend v foe and to optimize their attack/defend strategy based on the class of their opponent.

Things started going downhill with Battlefield V (WW2). It has "Elites" that can be played on both sides, so it's possible to have a Japanese soldier fighting in an early battle on the Western Front. This is not great for immersion in a game realistically themed around a serious subject.

From what I know about BF2042, because it's in the future, DICE's story is that there is a mercenary war (instead of country vs country). So now DICE can allow players to use their favorite Specialist and cosmetic on either team, which completely ruins friend v foe. And the Specialists can use any weapon which eliminates some of the strategy used when attacking/defending.

Premium cosmetics are certainly harder to pull off in some game types than others. I guess EA/DICE figured the in-game purchases will more than offset any popularity losses from these gameplay sacrifices. But hopefully DICE will be able to find a sweet spot if they are willing refine their current approach.

The 442nd regiment composed mostly of Japanese Americans was deployed in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(Unite...

So what's breaking the immersion? Are they wearing the wrong uniforms?

If you can't identify someone based on uniform and coloring, you're in for some nasty team kills.

This reminds me how much I still love BF4

If it's not compromising the game design, and it's not so addictive that people are spending more than they have, I don't have a problem. I'm not against monetization, as long as the games steer away from the dark patterns / don't make casinos for children.

If you're willing to pay money to experience less gameplay, are you really enjoying the game?

How so? As far as I'm aware, the free-to-play version of Fortnite never sold loot boxes.

Hacker News strongly underestimates the appeal of cosmetics.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Making a good game is important for user retention and keeping them spending, and being too aggressive with monetization can alienate them and result in less revenue overall.

Genshin Impact could be far more aggressive with the monetization to put it on par with other gacha, but it's relatively subdued.

Apple Arcade is a good example of this. With the subscription, they have a bunch of games which used to be gem games, but had that part of the monetization removed. And all of the games are better for it - they removed a lot of the frustration, gambling, unnecessary delays, which had been added to push people to buy gems.

This is half-true, at least for the ones I tried on Apple Arcade. Example, the Castlevania game. All the stupid gem gacha bullshit addiction-driving stuff is still in the game, it's just that you no longer buy the gems, the game just absolutely throws gems at you for free while you play. But you've still got all the stupid mobile game addiction driving stuff like daily quests, 'pulls' to randomly get items, a tedious and complex system of upgrades for weapons/characters that's completely unnecessary (except it is necessary because the difficulty's tuned such that you'll never get through the game without engaging with it all), all that stuff. The Star Trek game was similar IIRC.

The games are still worse despite not wanting money, the (originally) monetization-driven game design poisons it anyway. For me this was one of the most disappointing parts of Apple Arcade, I'd thought the point was to pay for access to _quality_ games, not bullshit mobile games with the IAP hastily ripped out.

This ignores the fact there aren't unlimited resources to develop and maintain a game. Not requiring people to buy gems would improve some areas of the game for sure, but making less money is certain to impact other areas of the game - you always need to give up something in order to fit things in budget.

IMO Genshin Impact has the right balance which is rare for gacha. Content is not balanced around the assumption that players spend real money (the game itself is relatively easy too).

> Apple Arcade is a good example of this. With the subscription, they have a bunch of games which used to be gem games, but had that part of the monetization removed.

So there's a funny of example of that with the Castlevania game recently released for Apple Arcade. They 5x-ed the earnings of the formerly paid-for currency to compensate for the lack of payment...

...and it's still far more difficult and grindy to get anything worthwhile than in Genshin Impact.

I had to do two weeks worth of time manipulation to get something useful that could actually end up finishing the current content.

Maybe they are poor, they can't afford the skin, and feel poor because they are poor and reality reflects it.

>according to a damning report on gaming habits

Reads like another moral panic from fake news they blow out of proportion and citing "some kids" to sample bias only from anyone who already agrees, like saying "Kids love Linux" with only interviews of Linux loving preteens.

>Another is quoted as saying: "Sometimes if you are wearing the default skin you can get bullied."

You get bullied for losing or making mistakes, but you don't hear articles about:

"Kids who play Fortnite say they get bullied and shamed if they are killed in the game, according to a damning report on gaming habits"

That said, I don't have a problem with cosmetic-only purchases. It's really the gambling and other dark patterns that are the problem.

Gamblers and stock traders beg to differ.

The number of parameters you can optimize for is limited (to one, in my opinion).

While a premium game might also be attempting to optimize for profit, there is a greater distance between theory and data about what will achieve the highest profit.

Therefore, we game developers (the individuals making the game), who may be more motivated by making a quality game than profit per se, are able/allowed to push harder on creating a fun experience. It is more difficult for business interests to require compromising gameplay for profit when not armed with the data that freemium games provide.

I have loved working on premium video games (~20 year career, mostly RPGs and RTSs). I expect I would find it soul-crushing to work on a freemium game where I had to compromise player experience for the sake of profit.

(I do not disagree with your later point that freemium games can be fun (and still must be, to some degree) and I cannot comment on Genshin Impact specifically.)

Edit: I suppose I'm also attempting to point out that there can be a significant difference between what is motivating the corporate entity funding the game and the people who are actually creating it.

It's a difficult question with no single answer.

But this has always been true of games based on whatever market pressures optimized revenue.

In the 80s arcade games, many of the classics we love today, were optimized around you feeding as many quarters as possible into a machine in order to beat it. There's even a joke about this in Wayne's World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tmzwrdTmY

The 90s home console market has some classics but every 90s kid remembers awful games with great cover art or movie licensing.

Early 2000s is probably the peak of quality gaming: we were online enough to allow things like easy to access reviews to have a major impact on purchase decisions, while not online enough to make constant updates feasible.

After that we also saw the rise of extremely addictive MMORPGs that not only consumed people's wallets but their lives.

In the grand scheme of things I rather enjoy gacha games. Like most HNers I'm often in a position of having more money then time, and it's surprising how many relatively crappy gachas will evolve into pretty fun, well designed games over time.

It's a repetitive adventure game with shallow gameplay. I played it for about 5 hours waiting for it to become good before recognizing they copied the least interesting parts of BOTW and slapped a gacha-mechanic on it. At least the graphics are nice. I think gacha mechanics are bad because the random element means it's effectively gambling. The skinner box mechanic aims right for that sweet dopamine hit. The fact that Genshin Impact is so financially successful is deeply worrying.

The thing with Genshin that makes the mechanics rewarding durably is a consequence of the gacha for a free to play - each account is different. So you can't just use the same tactics as other people, you have to take what you get and make it work. In the process you have to learn the combat mechanics - animation cancelling, ICD, energy recharge, character switching, geo reactions and shields, crit-rate optimization, i-frames, stamina consumption, character grouping, resistances, swirling, elemental mastery, etc...

My main two concerns with the game are that there is the "Soylent is people" aspect where if you dig deeper you realize the game is funded by a small addicted minority. And second, I shudder to think what kind of 996 sweatshop that company must be given that I don't know a single western company that achieved this level of polish (and they are already known as cruel employers).

I spent some time a few years ago playing some of the multiplayer "strategy" mobile games (FF, GoT, etc). I only ever sunk about $100 into any of them, the fun part for me was the politics and the intrigue on each server and that was roughly the ticket to entry. Got to know some of the whales a little - people who drop $5K-$10K+ on the game without a second thought. No real life names, just some conversations here and there. One was a VC, another a race car driver, lots of people from Kuwait for some reason...

My point is that I'm having trouble applying the "predatory" label when it's high net worth individuals throwing around sums that are ridiculous to me but trivial to them. I probably spend way more on some of my hobbies as a percentage of my income than they do on these games.

Now lower down on the scale, the people spending $100, $200, $500 on these games... that's where I get more uncomfortable.

In-game I had no illusions about personally competing or winning given that those games are purely pay-to-win, as I said I just enjoyed watching the server dynamics and the drama. I felt I got enough value out of, say, the $100 spread out over a few months until I got bored with the game.

That's kind of the disappointing thing about all this. In retrospect "classic" (as opposed to gacha) games are somewhat egalitarian. It didn't matter how much money you had, if you could master the gameplay and mechanics you could beat anyone else in the world.

It's a shame that the industry is turning so hard towards re-creating real world inequality in these fantasy spaces. This is an ironic reversal of imagined post-scarcity society from sci-fi like Star Trek - instead of creating post-scarcity in the real world we're artificially introducing scarcity to our virtual worlds.

Not everything imaginable is realizable.

We have so much food available that it’s a problem that poor people suffer from eating too much

It’s easier and more convenient to throw electronics, clothing, and furniture away than to bother repairing them

I wouldn’t bend over to pick up a quarter, even though it could buy me a day’s rice or flour

Once we’ve moved industry into space, we could well be ten or a hundred times as wealthy as this. Maybe employment will only be something for overachievers in that distant future

There is little the average person truly wants that we cannot provide.

You are assuming people have fixed minds, and wants never expand to fill the available resources.

I never assumed people have fixed minds. People have complex and ambitious minds. But largely these ambitions are social, and not material. Even "materialistic" desires are rarely about the actual material, they are almost always about the social significance of the material.

Regardless of how perfect the ‘setup’ the remaining materialistic desires will continue to expand as population and technological capacity grows. There is no known force that can completely extirpate such desires. Since there is no upper limit, all available mass-energy will inevitably be utilized given enough time. You are arguing that such a progression can be delayed, I agree. Perhaps a delay is possible up to millions of years but that’s just shifting the timeframe.

For example, I’m fairly certain I’ve encountered someone that genuinely wants an actual Star Trek like spaceship for their personal use, with a minimal social signalling component.

Even if there’s only 10000 such folks on Earth, that already represents vastly more industrial output than real policy makers can even dream of realizing. Let along the current and future desires of everyone else.

When it comes to those of us with a 9-5 job, there's usually no practical difference between facing off against people being paid to play a game vs people paying to be good in a game.

I would say that isn't really true. To play Genshin Impact on PC, you are required to install kernel-level always-online DRM on your computer. And the kernel anti-cheat (which exists solely to protect the integrity of their lootbox gambling monetization and has zero benefit to players) isn't even one of the usual ones like EAC or BattlEye (which I personally don't have much trust in either, for the record), but rather one developed in-house by the game's Chinese developers. And considering how involved the Chinese government is in the local game industry, that means you could effectively be giving the Chinese government kernel access to your computer in exchange for being able to play Genshin Impact. That's a pretty heavy price to pay in my books.

And of course, because the integrity of the gambling machine is the ultimate priority, things like modding and other popular single player pastimes are completely out of the picture as well. And because it's a live service game, every single penny you put into it will eventually be lost to the void as servers are shut down and nobody will ever be able to play the game again.

I'd be happy to pay for Genshin Impact as a regular single player game with no lootbox gambling mechanics that I could play offline without DRM and do whatever the hell I want with it after purchase without having to worry about a built-in killswitch disabling the game one day. But as that is not the reality we live in, I'm fairly certain I will never be installing the game on my computer, as the price is simply too high.

If you don't like it, it's not very hard to make Genshin single-player only. Most of the game is client-side, except for the spawning of enemies and resources. If you can figure out how to replicate it, you can get a 100% server-less Genshin Impact. I can definitely help with that if you want.

People have tried in the past to get the game running in single-player mode, and managed to get everything working except for mob spawns.

You'd also need to figure out some progression system to unlock characters, but that's not too hard.

If we could find some people to maintain the patch I'd be very willing to contribute to this too.

You may as well not bother.. people with self control and awareness will play non-toxic games, and people without it will avoid your patch since it’s not the real game to them

Certainly, if you make such patch you can't have it be too easy, it should be a challenge to get 5* characters and there should still be some RNG.

Really the biggest obstacle is that updates may happen and prevent new content from being available.

True of a lot of things, such as World of Warcraft and Steam.

And as mentioned, I don't put much trust in kernel anti-cheats in general, which is a big reason why I primarily play single player games. Which is why I'm extremely annoyed that a single player game that I might otherwise play comes with a kernel-level always-online DRM, all to protect the sanctity of predatory lootbox gambling monetization.

At this point so many busnisses exploit unreasonableness of some of their customers. Aren't people being sold this season's handbag for few thousands of dollars exploited?

By the time you realize the thing you wanted was actually $600 (which you wouldn't have spent upfront) but you've already spent $500 without getting it, it feels unavoidable to go and spend another hundred. And then the cycle happens again and again, making you feel very much like you have a sickness.

Many people can effectively avoid all of this and be very happy not spending a dime and not feel any pressure at all, but the problem is the large, very large, sometimes underage, base of vulnerable people who are spending money they can't really afford on these games.

I'm a pretty frugal player and not competitive at all, but I still feel a little spark when I see the fancy, expensive cards.

IMO There's a balance. People are responsible for themselves, but that doesn't necessarily remove culpability from the seller. I think it's easy to assume that everyone is a perfectly rational agent capable of avoiding bad deals through reason alone, but desire is a funny thing. The most extreme example is the drug dealer (or the cartel, or the US government, however high up you want to go on the chain) and there's definitely a gradient of moral responsibility from there.

This business practice is pure dogshit. Especially given how much it targets children and those with gambling addictions.

This is true in theory, but the rapid rate of new characters being introduced means that re-runs are far less common than new "banners". Indeed, some characters released nearly a year ago have never had a rerun. This means that there is a strong sense of FOMO - if you don't have the gems to guarantee the character you want this time around you may have to wait a year or more to get another chance.

Genshin Impact also has a very poor gatcha "rate" compared to many gatcha games (0.6% to get a "5 star" character, and there's no guarantee it's the featured one until your second "5-star" roll).

Albeit, Genshin Impact's pity mechanics are less generous than other gacha. Usually it's about 80-90 pulls for a guaranteed on-banner pull. For Genshin Impact, it's 90 pulls for a guaranteed 50/50 chance at an on banner pull, but if you lose the 50/50 you will get an guaranteed on banner pull after the next 90 pulls. Both guarantees persist across banners.

When it comes to regulating what is effectively gambling, this is actually a pretty healthy set of rules more countries should follow.

(AFAIK there are no such regulations in the US, which is why lootboxes here usually do not come with drop rates, don't give you any way to view your pull history, and almost never have pity mechanisms)

The issue is gambling VERY easily moves underground.

I'd recommend watching one of their recent expansion previews with the developers talking about their process and influences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8YXe7EkmoU

3:29 introduction by the CEO 9:57 dev team introductions, combat design 20:57 concept / writing lead 47:30 environment art direction 57:58 music production

Is it really though? Almost all aspects of it are cloned from other games/media.

Gameplay cloned from MMOs. World design cloned from BotW. Character designs cloned from the worst of anime.

It is the game equivalent of a street cart hotdog. They sell lot of them, but it is not innovative, good or a particularly thoughtful food/game.

I still agree it's predatory. But it's not true that you can play the machine many times and get nothing you want. The constellation mechanism really really sucks. But thanks to regulation it's a lot better now than it used to.

Gaming people to do things of nonsense utility is about all humans have to do after basic life supporting logistics.

Seems like mining fake objects, while power consuming, is less literally damaging than rocket ships and garages full of cars, boats, and 5 mansions that never get used.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility pretend loot is what the masses have to look forward to “owning” aside from basics down the line.

There is no intentional sunk cost fallacy or gambler's fallacy at play.

What you've posted would be valid if the topic of discussion were NFTs or skins where a person gets exactly what they pay for, no more or no less.

A gacha-style game operates differently from an NFT or car or house. It's not "If you pay $200 you get this digital item in the game", it's instead "If you pay $2, you get a 0.6% chance of getting the item." After you spend $100, the next chance is still 0.6%, and our human brains are really bad at realizing that. That's how it preys on us.

If the game were instead "Pay $200 and you get this digital item", I would consider it less predatory, and I bet it would also have far less profit.