How Fortnite Exploits Your FOMO

For as often as Epic adds new stuff to Fortnite, it takes content away. Is this an exciting advantage of playing a live game - or a manipulative tug on our fear of missing out?

=== Sources ===

[1] Fear of missing out | Wikipedia

[2] Shiina | Twitter

[3] iFireMonkey | Twitter

[4] Destiny 2 makes me more worried about missing a reward than excited to grow my character | Reddit

[5] Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) and Gaming Disorder... | Issues in Mental Health Nursing

[6] DCMS Committee recommends UK Government regulates loot boxes under the Gambling Act | Eurogamer

[7] Now Belgium declares loot boxes gambling and therefore illegal | Eurogamer

[8] Halo Infinite Battle Pass & Free-To-Play FAQ | Halo Support

[9] This Week At Bungie – 1/28/2021 | Bungie

=== Credits ===

Music by Lee Rosevere

=== Subtitles ===

[PSISomething]

The point you made about "moving on from fortnite so it doesn't matter how much digital junk you have" is a very important thing to learn. I had friends who kept chastizing themselves playing league of legends because they played it since highschool and even when they were just miserable and having no fun at all, they kept playing it because they had so many skins and things they'd accrued since their teenage years. It's very much an equal problem of these live service games is to know when you should just cut it off when it's not enjoyable anymore, FOMO contributing to that.

[datsjive]

Another example of handling FOMO is how Ghost Ship Games has been running the seasonal model for Deep Rock Galactic. When the season changes, any cosmetics you didn't earn are just moved to the reward pools of other existing mechanics (lost packs, cargo crates, matrix cores).

This not only means that new players don't miss out on old content, but it also restocks the rewards for veteran players who previously unlocked everything from those sources.

[potapotapotapotapotapota]

"I feel like I'm playing to minimize missing a reward rather than playing to maximize my progression." Damn that hit the nail on the head. This is exactly the reason why I can't get into any live service games anymore.

[Pseudoscorpion]

I work for a game studio that arguably pioneered this kind of live-service content and a big reason we ended up moving away from it is that besides being a dark pattern that's player-hostile, it was also just brutal on the developers. We had, I think 4 teams working on regular content releases that were out for only a week or two before the next content drop came and totally flattened it. With four teams, that meant that each team only had about 8 weeks total to create, prototype, test, and debug their content before it was shipped out - a sanity-fraying schedule for even the most veteran of dev teams.

[FallenOne]

As a psychologist, videogame fan and someone who made a thesis about videogame addiction, I find this video very interesting and academically relevant. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's always great to find and hear people who loves to deconstruct videogames

[ginj-ninj-]

I really wish you touched on the battle passes in deep rock galactic. Easily one of the best implementations of a battle pass I’ve seen in a game. If you miss out on any of the cosmetics from the pass they get added into the game world to find whilst you’re out exploring the caves. Plus the battle passes are all free so there’s no feeling of “I paid so I have to play”

[rickwoods]

As someone with moderate-to-severe ADHD (sprinkled with some anxiety), consciously choosing to skip a reward every now and then has been incredibly powerful for clamping down on FOMO for me.

[jakobsmith]

Shout out to Deep Rock Galactic developers Ghost Ship Games for having seasonal events with skins for your character and guns, as well as emotes, and putting them into the random secondary mission unlocks if you miss them during the event. No fear of missing out from these bad ass devs

[Arxane]

I recently started playing Fall Guys once it went free-to-play. I started out just playing because I enjoyed it as a goofy way of killing an hour or two, and that was good enough. Then they released a limited event where you have to complete specific challenges within a week to win rewards, including the ultimate reward of a gladiator-style skin. I wanted that skin, so I tried to complete the challenges, the last of which was winning a solo game. But kept losing my solo games, and as the deadline inched closer, I became more and more frustrated, until I was screaming in fury at each loss. I ended up not completing the challenge, and looking back I realized how the FOMO on that skin had made me enjoy the game less. I was playing to win a stupid reward, not because the game was fun. It was the first time I had ever let a game reward influence me like that, and I didn’t like it at all. From then on I vowed to myself that I’d only play for fun, not because I wanted to win a digital item that meant nothing in the long run. I’m also basically never going to play any other live-service game, which probably has worse FOMO than Fall Guys.

[jessical]

The power of FOMO is in silence, in the subliminal. So naming it and putting it to light like this really is the strongest thing you can do to counteract it. The more we can have a conversation about FOMO and how it’s ok to not be perfectionist, the less people will be trapped by it.

[mewwww]

For me the biggest thing about FOMO-style stuff is that if I finally do miss out, I'm really unlikely to come back, because I just feel like I lost.

[almond]

Folding Ideas has a video called Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite. Dan is a blessing upon this earth, and he explains quite comprehensively about these kinds of hostile FOMO tactics. Highly recommend watching that as a follow up to this video here if you're interested in learning more about video game addiction and the fundamental complicity of basically the entire gaming industry these days.

[FMagno]

Even if you say "I don't care, it does not affect me, I play only for the fun", the game will keep trying to grab you back into FOMO state as much as it possibly can trying to break you up into spending money.
I felt the same when I started playing Genshin Impact, liked the gameplay, the story, did not care much about the limited things, but the more I play the more the game adds something for you to "miss", even not being completely predatory, it is always and constantly talking to you every single day about what you missed, what you're going to miss and much more that you need to do directly or indirectly.

In my case, I gave up on the game, I could not stand anymore of that pressure and also on how much it wanted me to grind and spend more and more time on it, most of the time asking me to do many and many things I already knew I would not enjoy.

[fayemarch]

A few months ago I realized I had FOMO with Genshin Impact. Being a free-to-play (F2P) player meant I already miss out on so much (banners, shop sales, characters, weapons, special events, etc..), so my saving grace was doing everything that the game has to offer for free, and keeping up with all of the game's updates, scoops and leaks so I feel included in the community and not 'lacking' anything. This somehow took the fun out of the game and made it feel more like a chore than a way to escape my chores and responsibilities in real life. It was just another thing I 'had' to do!
Thankfully, my vacation ended and being a senior with so much work to do made me have less and less time for the game and ultimately, I stopped playing it. Now a graduate, I already have missed so so many banners and new characters and stories now that I don't care anymore lmao. Kind of like your situation with Fortnite! 😄

[axelthestormer]

Fortnite has so much content that I've 'missed out' on due to not paying attention to the game since launch that I feel discouraged from jumping in, especially since any collectibles or whatnot that I'd want to get are no longer available. It makes the game feel completely unapproachable, and I get this exact feeling when I see something that had exclusive content in a Kickstarter I never knew about. If I had been playing since the beginning it would have kept me invested, but now it acts as a deterrent.

[JaziB]

Ironically, the current sentiment from the Overwatch community is that they preferred the first game's loot box system over OW2''s battle pass simply for the fact that with OW1 all you had to do was buy the game once and every cosmetic contained within the loot boxes could be obtained without any further cost. Yes you could buy loot boxes (which btw I agree are problematic) but you never had to. All you had to do was play the game. Every time you levelled up you would get a box. And there were also weekly arcade challenges where you could get 3 boxes every week by simply winning games. And if you ever got duplicate cosmetics from the boxes, they would be converted to in-game currency which you could then use to get other cosmetics again without any additional cost.

Compare this to OW2's model. There are cosmetics on the battle pass that you can get by simply playing but there are now also a number of cosmetics that can literally only be purchased with real money. Again, loot boxes are a problem but OW1's system with getting cosmetics was actually very generous compared to how OW2 is currently.

[evanwilliamson]

Being mindful in this way is a completely underrated skill, and it applies in many many aspects of life. Knowing when a videogame, tv show, book, or hobby is no longer worth engaging with can save you hours upon hours of time. It even applies to people. Some relationships (with friends, family, or partners) might start out great, but over time you, the other person, or your situation may change, and in some cases there comes a point where the benefits you get from spending time with them no longer outweigh the costs. Habits are a powerful thing, and mindfulness is one of the few antidotes we have to this inevitable pitfall of life.

[unchpunchem]

I would love a video or series on ethics in game design, I think it’s a fascinating topic!

[jgierer]

I think FOMO is ok-ish in free to play games, but where it really starts to become a problem is when the game removes content that you literally paid for. The biggest example I personally experienced is Destiny 2, which removed content worth more than $200 last year. Expansions I paid a lot of money for are now permanently inaccessible. To a certain extent this also applies to stuff like season passes, where you pay money in expectation of getting all the rewards, but then if you don't actually grind out the ranks, you permanently lose the stuff you paid for. That is unacceptable in my opinion.

[asylumprophet]

6:02 I'm honored to be included lol.
On the topic though: The best point I got from that reddit post (well, the same one but in r/LowSodiumDestiny, much more conversation), was that live service games, and everything in them, only exist for as long as the devs let them. So now I focus on playing for the experiences, which can't be revoked. And putting way more time into those hobbies in the real world :)