It's mind boggling how many people enjoy that though. You're right. Clash of Clans et all really changed the gaming dynamic.
Just as an example, Halo Infinite came out and it had warts, but also had a good fundamentals for gameplay. Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.
The thing a lot of these AAA devs don’t seem to get is that what works for Clash of Clans doesn’t work for AAA games most of the time. Also, the Clash of Clans devs are liked by the player base because they take community feedback very seriously (and, as a counter point, the Clash Royale devs are despised because they don’t).
Buying a monthly pass for one of those games ends up feeling like a pretty good deal because it enables you to increase your engagement with the game by a lot for what feels like a good deal. AAA shooters that go down this rabbit hole feel like they’re spending more development effort pushing skins I don’t want while giving a half-backed game with the promise of improvement in the future that often never happens.
For the price of a monthly pass for Clash games, I’m easily getting more hours of enjoyment than dollars invested each month.
> Buying a monthly pass for one of those games ends up feeling like a pretty good deal because it enables you to increase your engagement with the game by a lot for what feels like a good deal.
You have no idea how right you are. It increases your engagement. Not your enjoyment.
> Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.
You have to play for something. To reach the end of the story. To grow a thing (city builders, minecraft). Or... for skins in a competitive shooter. But there are no skins unless you pay real money for the game you've already paid for. Oops?
The surprising thing is how captive we our to the chemical responses of our brains. These companies measure out dopamine like a drug and use their games to drip-feed it methodically to maximize your cash spend.
I would like to add completion mechanics and badges to this list of things as well. Reddit is obsessed with 100% completion. It stops being a game and starts being work at some point.
I don't know when it happened, but at some point in the past it stopped being about playing games for fun, and turned into playing these things for something else - status maybe? I don't know how to describe what I'm thinking.
Just as an example, Halo Infinite came out and it had warts, but also had a good fundamentals for gameplay. Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.