Come gather round the stump young’ns, and I’ll tell you a tale of when video games didn’t need to be connected to the Internet.
And their monetization ended completely when the cashier handed you a receipt.
God bless Larian and Baldur’s Gate 3, the lone bastion in a sea of AAA microtransactions and early access skin-stores.
But how did you get your DLC, grandpa? Or the day one patch??
Damn this brings me back to a time period when DLC was first becoming popular and replacing expansion packs as a concept but it wasn’t a given that everyone had internet access yet so you could go down to gamestop and buy your $20 horse armor DLC for Oblivion
Well, back in 19 and dickaty-2 there was whisperings of a movie tie-in. The money spent, well I won’t bore you with that, wouldn’t mean much these days. But let’s say it was epic - do people still say that? Boy, they used to.
Anyway, they rushed to production and built a million billion cartridges. Do you know what those are? These little black boxes that had the whole video game on these massive chips. Of course they were small in those days.
So they send it to market and it doesn’t work. So then nobody bought it. And did you know, they buried all those cartridges way out in the desert some where, and that’s where the aurora borealis comes from - the sky used all those chips to paint pretty pictures. And the video game industry began a bloodless vendetta that’s still around today, to make up for that blunder by making as much money as possible, even if the game’s not worth it.
This hits different after my disappointment of payday 3…
Would be funny if Valve weren’t hat and case pioneers
Shhhhhh. Don’t bring your facts in here, we’ve got nostalgia to jerk.
I am uncultured. What foes this mean?
Tf2 is a first person shooter, hat simulator
war-based hat simulator
or a hat-based war simulator
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TF2, Dota 2, CS:GO are all games with in-game cosmetics making massive amounts of money.
And Valve did it first so the entire current state of gaming is literally their fault.
that’s a rather questionable take. that’s like saying if Russia drops a nuke on Ukraine it’s the US’s fault for inventing it.
Sure, but at least Dota and CsGo don’t hide any game-relevant content behind a paywall (I’ve played TF2 a bit, and having different weapons unlockable really isn’t fair).
Also, just a cool thing, you can generally sell the cosmetics from TF2 and CSGO (never played DotA, so don’t know), so If you don’t care about it, sell it on the marketplace, some enthusiast will buy it, and you get 3 bucks to spend on the next sale.
Yes, that works with Dota too.
I have spent ungodly amounts on that game to support it, and I sold some of my swag back to buy more games.
Loot boxes and cosmetic microtransactions
Literally invented the loot box and NFTs (I know not EXACTLY, Poindexter but its selling JPGs. Close enough.)
Otoh, Proton and Steam Deck. Valve is a yin yang company.
Anon has a talent for satire
Man I love L4D. That brings back memories.
WIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH
You can still find matches on pc pretty easily, helps that there’s been no good successor other than the -tide games and people not into warhammer or 40k stuck to l4d(2)
I’ve been enjoying Back 4 Blood, despite all the deck building and cosmetics BS. I quite like the mechanic of finding new, more powerful guns as the run continues, as it encourages you to use gun classes you wouldn’t normally consider and makes every model of every gun class viable. Which is great, because every gun has different personality and mechanics, even from the same class, so you really can have a different experience every time you play the same chapters.
Vermintide 2 is ok, but has even more of the cosmetics, loot boxes, and microtransactions. I like the medieval fantasy flavor setting, but I hate supporting GW, because they haven’t released a complete game that didn’t have $100+ of DLC to get basic features since Mordheim (that one only had 20$ of DLC, lol)
Tbf GW doesn’t make any of the video games, they just sell license rights to developers who make the games and do whatever they want to recoup that cost. GW probably should be more selective or have a heavier say in those games but they aren’t their games.
Now also tbf GWs business model for tabletop isn’t any better, they’ve been charging $60 for 5 little plastic soldiers for decades now so you can’t really say they’re a consumer friendly business
True, I know they’re not developing the games themselves, but it seems like they encourage the microtransaction business model pretty strongly, since lots of developers that didn’t used to follow that model jump on board when it’s a GW property (I’m looking at you, Total War franchise).
Plus, like you said, I can’t think of any tabletop companies that treat their fans worse than GW, so it’s pretty par for the course with them.
they also made classes in those game.
people like the arcade aspect of l4d.
Also compounded by Darktide being an unfinished mess. I might go back to it in a year or so but as it stands it’s really just an unpolished cash grab. The only thing that was finished on launch was the cosmetics store which you can buy for real money and even they have a bunch of clipping issues.
I saw last night they unveiled class skill selection overhauls that looked promising. They’ve been trying to fix since release but yeah the clear cashgrab at the beginning was certainly frustrating
It’s a shame that such an awesome OST got wasted on that game.
Killing floor 1 was pretty cool
I thought about mentioning KF& KF2 but since they’re round based not run through this map point A to B based I didn’t
Honestly the best new coop shooter is deep rock galactic, fun game, many bugs to be shot, no monetization after buying (theres a free battlepass, but after the season the cosmetics get into normal loot drop, and supporter skin packs).
I do love me some DRG, rock and stone!
If you rock and stone, you are never alone!
Ha ha this reminds me of a funny / not funny glitch that happened. Me and my friends were sneaking past a witch, being super stealth then one of the characters yells WIIIIITCH right next to her. Carnage.
I HATE VANS
I was 13, found a way to spawn dozens of witches with the console command, haunted my dreams for weeks.
L4D2 is such a timeless classic that the only thing that its imitators could do was dilute the formula with leveling and progression nonsense
Thanks I hate it
I thought this was serious at first
What are dailies? Like I know this term in a film context but what is it in gaming?
Daily goals the game gives you to achieve for extra XP. Usually something like win 3 online matches, heal 10 teammates, or capture 2 flags. Basic skinner box methods to get the player on the game every day.
From the name I assume they’re similar to the daily quests MMORPGs like wow assigned players back in the day ?
That is, tasks to accomplish once per day to get some rewards; it’s a hook to increase the chance the players come back to the game
Why what looks like a non-persistent-world online game would need it I have no idea mind you
Daily quests. Missions that you can repeat every day for some recompense. Maybe they are always the same, maybe you get a different selection from the pool each day.
It’s MMO/Phone Game design that has bleed into every other games as a service to ensure engagement.
I loved vermintide, but this was the issue with it. Hard to convince people to play when they have to grind for hours to have their character be competent even if the player is super experienced. L4D2 for sure the GOAT
Worst part about L4D2 is that I never want to stop playing it, but all my friends move on fast.
Please be a 4chan troll. You bloody Zoomer.
