[donmcronald]

I think the NFT thing should be illegal. It adds nothing beyond a false promise that you're buying an "investment" instead of an in game item. IMO it's disgusting to see game companies targeting kids with a scam like that.

As for the rest of the article, he could be talking about me. I've basically given up on PC gaming. I used to love gaming and now it feels like a second job. It feels like I'm being forced to "accomplish" a bunch of in game goals because the developer thinks "engaging" me like that is going to lead to a microtransaction.

I thought I'm probably just getting older and grumpier, but I bought an Oculus Quest before Christmas and it's been a blast. Games like The Room had me feeling like a kid who just got their first PC game. I think a lot of it has to do with VR being a new platform and there's less focus on developers squeezing every penny out of you and more incentive for them to build small, fun games that help discover what makes sense in VR.

The craziest part is that I've spent several hundred dollars on VR games in a few months which is more than I've spent on PC games in the last 5 years combined. I know it's popular to trash Meta/Facebook, but I think they did a really good job of pricing VR games. It's <$30 on the high end and they have frequent sales, but the sales aren't such deep discounts that I feel bad for buying something at full price.

I also think microtransactions can make sense. GGG did a good job with Path of Exile. I've played that game on and off and every time I pick it back up I play for a bit and if my stash starts getting disorganized with items that have a convenience stash tab as a microtransaction I'll buy that stash tab. It's always after I've spent a weekend playing and it's only $20, so I don't feel like I've gotten ripped off or forced into buying something. I've probably spent twice as much on that game as any other in recent memory.

[prox]

I guess it very much depends what kind of games you play. These are the games I enjoy : Rimworld, Valheim, Police Simulator, Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, KSP 1, Factorio, Skyrim, Mount and Blade 2 : Bannerlord.

None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.

[paulmd]

> None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.

over-monetization is actually one of the things that's ruining modding, because if you let players mod whatever they want there's no way to get them to pay 10 bucks for a vorpal sword +3 when they could just mod it in.

this is one of the major pushes away from story-driven offline single-player content at present, there's no safe way to monetize it. To monetize it safely you need always-online, DRM, and ideally it would be better if there was some minimal amount of "multiplayer" interaction (but not so much that you have to spend a bunch of money on servers).

the titles you've named are mostly old titles (Skyrim) before monetization really took off, or indie titles. To get an AAA developed these days it pretty much needs an online component.

[donmcronald]

You're right! Rimworld and Factorio have been on my Steam wishlist for a while.