Video Games Play YOU... (Not The Other Way Around)

Video games have evolved over time. What started as a meritocracy of peer to peer competition... has now become a constantly changing maze of parameters designed to manipulate the player base, keep them online, and cause them to spend.

With clearly defined systems (patented by companies like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, and exposed by executives now working for Ubisoft) designed to award wins and losses, or change even basic fundamental mechanics such as "player aim"... Video games no longer exist to be played... they exist to play their users.

#gaming#videogames #callofduty

[ohnosmoarlulcatz]

This is why you stay away from games with season passes and microtransactions. There's an incentive for them to push that crap when they can monetize it.

[lorddaro]

So in summery a lot of newer games are completely worthless to anyone, who's looking for a fair challenge.

[alfonso]

This is exactly why I stopped playing most multiplayer games.

[nickjohnson]

When I first started noticing this years ago people told me I was crazy and it was a "skill Issue"...

[dsagent]

I replayed the original Deus Ex. They talked about people being wary of data mining algorithms. This was like 20 years ago.

[samuelschwager]

there is a reason these companies hired psychologists...

[PixelNomad]

What I find the craziest thing of this, is that playing Matches in CoD feels so artificial even though you are playing against real people.

[Strakester]

Someone once pointed out something quite eye-opening to me: it's in a modern game's best interest that the player makes bad decisions, and that those bad decisions are not immediately punished, giving the player time to dread them, blame themselves, and contemplate purchasing microtransactions to cheer themselves up.

In old games, if you were not having fun, you'd quit playing. So the games used things like tutorials and confirmation boxes to help teach you how to make good decisions and avoid bad decisions. And when you made a bad decision, the game would convey it very quickly without stringing you along and wasting your time.

But for modern games, it's in their best interest to let you make bad decisions, so they no longer stop you from, say, leveling up bad characters, using premium items at bad times that would cause them to be wasted, and so on. And when you make a bad decision, the game never tells you. It just strings you along, making you think you're doing great, leaving you to realize the mistake you made all on your own.

As an example: if Mario jumps into a pit, he dies and has to start the whole level over - a harsh and immediate consequence for your mistake. If Mario were designed like modern games, he'd respawn nearby every time he dies, and then you'd get a star rating when you touch the flagpole based on how many times you died. That disconnection between the mistake and the consequence, and that fundamental conflict of interest between the game and the player, drives a lot of microtransaction sales!

[PrincessFionaYT]

You know they use this everywhere, shopping, bills, dating apps, office apps, social, entertainment. It’s the inevitable permeation of “dark patterns” into our lives.

[Andy_Rose]

This is probably the main reason why most publishers insist on having their games always online. So that they can monitor the players' behavior and implement manipulative systems as described. I don't think they care about piracy because whoever pirates a game is most likely not the type of person to spend money on microtransactions.

[snakeplissken]

So they added equality of outcome to the game to make everyone feel better, yet doing so makes it a stale, dumbed down experience for everyone.

Why am I not surprised.

[XDRosenheim]

Stop buying always-online.
Stop pre-ordering.
Support indie.
Use your left over money (that would have been used for the more expensive game) to help with upkeep of self-hosted/rented game server.
Matchmaking is still possible.
Having """micro"""-transactions can still be a thing (If you are in the camp of "How to support further development?")

[ViperChief]

I mostly play video games from the past. I don’t play a lot of the live service nonsense that comes out nowadays.

[thahrimdon]

I encourage everyone to go read the public patents for call of duty’s SBMM. I thought it was bad until I read through it, and then I was downright horrified. Most of those metrics gathered and psychology induced onto the players should should be illegal. But then again, what’s new it’s 2024.

[DracOVic]

If you want to go deeper into this look into Halo Infinte’s SBMM. The game actively predicts (fairly accurately, you can actually view this yourself on halo’s website) what your performance will be in each given match and essentially places you in matches where you’re projected to win or lose depending on whether or not you’re statistically likely to continue playing. If you’re a good player, you’ll be matched with terrible teammates in an effort to force a loss, while bad players will be systematically handed out wins to maintain their retention. Again, you can actively see this on display by checking your past matches on halo waypoint, as it shows a graph that compares your projected K/D with your actual for your last few matches. Stuff like this is why playing competitive shooters feels so fruitless.

[hightierplayers]

We've been telling people this stuff since the early 2000s and we were the new adult generation, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT to a lot of these companies.

That's when the first models of the modern over-monetized slot casino crap first started to creep into AAA. Its all been downhill since people kept increasingly pretending its normal and squelching any of those of us that point this out (they are now called the paid shills of "gaming journalism").

[breadmoth]

remember back in the day, when we had LAN parties, and all you had to do is double click on a shortcut to launch your game, and not go into a "launcher" like steam? I remember. those were teh days.

[justinwhitsitt]

Remember when you played games because they were fun?

[RomanBellic-ezfh]

It just confirms that the REAL customers of any game company are actually the investors and WE, the gamers, are the product.

[Protocurity]

I'm not that much of a gamer myself, but I've noticed this kind of stuff happening, too. One of the games I play is Yugioh Master Duel, and it became clear after about a week of playing it that card shuffler system is, in no way, actually random. It is designed to frustrate players just enough to want to buy gem packs with real money. I can give a couple of examples of this, being a free player who's never spent money on the game.

#1: I have built every deck that I own IRL in the game. Somehow, the real life cards that I draw never brick, but the exact same deck will get a brick hand roughly 1/3 matches.

#2: The game has a limited single player mode, and in this mode the biased shuffling system isn't being applied. While playing cards solo, you will get yourself far more consistent and diverse hands than while playing against other players. It's like night and day, between solo mode and ranked.

#3: A large part of the game is something called The Maxx "C" Tax. For those unaware, Maxx "C" is a card that the entire game effectively revolves around. Every deck in the game has 3 copies of Maxx "C", alongside of 6 total cards meant almost exclusively to stop Maxx "C". Entire games are won and lost around this card. I'll spare the math, but this means there is a 33% chance to open with Maxx "C", but a 57% chance to open a card that beats Maxx "C". So, roughly 18.8% of games, Maxx "C" will go off without a hitch, which is roughly one out of every five games. For me, I'll go days without successfully resolving Maxx "C", weeks without it meaning anything, but against me it is successfully resolved somewhere between half and one third of all games I play. The times where I will resolve the Maxx is usually against a control deck that doesn't special summon, which in spite of being rare for this format seems to happen every single time I get the Maxx.

#4: Decks become cursed over time. The longer a deck is played, the lower the win/loss ratio becomes. Inevitably, even if there are no format changes, a deck becomes a "loser" that will win, at most, 1 out of every 4 games... no matter what format or ranking it is in. Nothing changes, it is just that when the deck is used, it will consistently fail to open even a decent hand, and when it does the opponent will pull god-like and have everything necessary to beat you + extra. For example, my strongest deck atm is Unchained, which is at full power in the game right now and should, by everyone else's estimation, be ripping people to shreds in the ladder, but I'm having more luck with off-meta junk than Unchained, because somehow Unchained always bricks or my opponent opens the perfect counters.

#5: Side Corollary, but they also have another game called Duel Links, which I have spent small amounts of money on. Each time money is spent there, I shoot up through the ladder on a series of improbable victories.

So, my running theory is that Master Duel has a neural network that's been tasked with maximizing profit. First, it matches the combination of cards that lead to victories and losses. Second, it runs an analysis to find what combination of wins and losses is most likely to lead to somebody spending real world money. Then, once money is spent, it will give the spending player a temporary boost in the shuffle weights, coin flips, and the matchmaking system to give them more victories, but only for awhile.