For the last time, about Diablo Immortal.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Josh gives his final lengthy speech regarding variety of topics revolving around Diablo Immortal and mobile games monetization system with the Tangent Tavern co-host Callum Upton.
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#JoshStrifeHayes #twitch #diablo #diabloimmortal
He keeps saying that "games don't need to last forever" but the irony of these live service games is a lot of them don't have the shelf life of regular games.
Genuinely impressive how Blizzard out-gacha'd gacha games. Outstanding.
Well, the company is known for taking other games’ ideas and perfecting them for the relative masses.
@@Staysa001 holy shit, you are right :o
This is so true; I literally play Genshin Impact, and it's not half as predatory as what I've heard about Diablo Immortal. (This isn't to excuse Genshin or other gacha games; they're extremely predatory in their own right, and I think people should be extremely careful with them if they play them at all)
@@jellosapiens7261 I also play Genshin and you are right, but D:I makes Genshin look downright generous
@@Grishnag85 In Genshin F2Ps are competitive in every ingame activity and 4* characters you can buy in the shop for free game currency are consistently topping the Tierlists.
only Speedrunning and Completionism rely on paying money
You can barely even meaningfully compare those 2 games and that's crazy considering Genshin is an f2p whalebait gacha that was rightfully criticized for its predatory monetization.
I am so glad i washed my hands of Blizzard ages ago. And the recent law suit stuff and now diablo immortal has cemented that decision for me. And whats funny is when Josh was on the episode of Allcraft with Asmon i thought to myself, "he was the smartest person there because he didnt spend a dime on Diablo Immortal"
The part about the psychology being used for the MTX is so true and sickening. I study psychology and I find it insulting on a personal level that people agree to help design this shit.
It's the exact opposite of what psychologists should do.
They probably also find it sickening, but it’s the only real way to pay off the student debts
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 if you major in psychology I can assure you, you can find a decent job and/or open your private study, especially in the USA.
Research is also another field that is constantly in need of staff. And there are quite a lot of specializations, a clinical psychologist does different things from one who works with children (say for crimes or separations/divorces).
I know ppl in my country who took psychology and all of them are working in something else. Not surprising some unethical people would go for this.
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 Not necessarily. I once saw a "let me tell you about my job" video of a girl who worked on such games, and she was _so_ enthusiastic about, and focused on, the mechanics that she didn't even see the big picture of how abuse the result of her work was.
@@zenkichihitoyoshi9513 you can get a good job but I feel like these pay way more. Don't blame the player, blame the game and the game is captialism.
As someone who has played mobile games since 2012, I HIGHLY doubt Blizzard spent 6 years researching how to monetize this game. The research has already been done by plenty of other mobile games. Every single monetary design choice in Diablo I have seen elsewhere. It wouldn't surprise me if these predatory practices became so ubiquitous around 2016ish that mobile game developers realized the way to get people to play their new game was to NOT have such terrible monetization design, and the game that makes me think that is Azur Lane (one that has done monetization design fairly imo). However, since Diablo is such a massive IP, they can get away with doing this unlike games with no/little IP recognition. Anyway, that's just all speculation but I'd like to think my almost 10 years of playing many different shitty mobile games gives me a decent insight into this.
Agree to this. I'm already tired to test any games since I know the monetization practices will just piss me off.
Yes there's been research but it hasn't been put together as well as it has here on this scale ever.
About 10 years ago I tried to write my Master of Science thesis on the psychology of game monetization and addictive gameplay loops and I was prohibited from doing it by my thesis advisor due to it being unethical to test lol.
Well, he was right
Call him and tell him thank you, then tell him how far things have fallen.
In my bachelor's thesis, I worked on algorithms for "trimming" neural networks to generate good-enough speech with much fewer resources. And among the possible uses was the automation of spam call-centers. My supervisor thought it was hilarious. But the head of the department made me correct the wording
Such an thing doesn't apply for many other Nations......
It was really funny to hear Josh's "I don't own a horse..." bit.
In my own experience, and I remember this very clearly, I was playing FFXIV with a friend and we were in a discord call. I was learning how to play Dancer and verbally appreciating how good it feels to use En Avant; a short range, target free gap closer with multiple charges, for those who don't know. Saying that out loud prompted targeted ads to suggest heavy agricultural machinery to me from the brand Avant. I've never done agriculture, whatsoever. We both had a good laugh over that.
Laugh? That's scary levels of surveillance and insidious marketing that we should be worried about
@@Daiyuki117 its literally everywhere online, why do you think it's called targeted ads?
.
But of course you are doing agriculture now right?
There was a politician who recently made an angry tweet about receiving an ad for a all-gay cruise on the Military Times website. He didn't recognize the ads were targeted towards him for his past searches/cookies.
It freaking happened! I got a horse feed ad! It's called Cosequin Joint Health supplements you add into your horse feed. I watched this video like two days ago and got the ad today on TH-cam on my phone about to watch a penguinz0 video. I do not own a horse. Lol
Really love when you collaborate with Callum. You two mesh really well.
10:22 I had this happen to me while playing Naraka: Bladepoint. It's a buy to play game with a F2P monetization system built into it. The game puts you against bots for the first couple of matches, slowly lowering the amount of bots as you level up. By the time you are level 9, you're only playing against humans, most likely better than you are.
I was thinking "Wait is this a reupload? Why does this all sound familiar." Then I remembered I caught this live for once lmao
Keep it up man, promoting awareness of this kind of predatory bullshit is important and I hope we can eventually push the industry away from this garbage
these two need a podcast where they go over game design or things related to it like psychology used in it
so I learned of the Tangent tavern approx. 30 seconds after writing this
"Not every game needs to last forever." I completely agree 100%, and I know what you meant by that, but what's funny is that Diablo 2 released 22 years ago, and people still talk about it. The reason DI even exists is because of the goodwill from D2 (not that D3 was bad, but do you really think the series would have legs if that was the only one?). Resident Evil 4 and Skyrim have been ported to almost literally every platform that has existed since their release, and since RE4 is getting remade soon, that could go on infinitely. Just make a good game, and you can sell it for decades.
Yeah, I know that's easier said than done, but like josh also said, if your game is just "good enough" then you can probably make another one.
Monopoly disagrees with you.
This is the reason people made a huge fuss over in game stores when they first went into games. People argued "well cosmetics only are fine!" The problem is that it's a slippery slope and game companies are starting to finally hit the deep end of what we saw coming.
By the way, you can tell Google to always prompt you for your password to purchase anything, and you'll get prompted every single time in a mobile game to purchase I have this enabled. I don't now how iOS handles it.
It’s generally the same, either use the sign in for your phone or full iTunes password.
Cosmetics aren't even that ok anyway because they are still advertised in a predatory way by a lot of companies, and they do things like world of tanks where you win more if you buy it, or put you up against people with cosmetics who are way better than you to help convince you may you should buy it, as even though you know it doesn't give you power this person who has bought it is winning more, so maybe it'll help.
Thats the saddest part, a lot of these shops could be ok, but they can't help but instead of wanting to just sell things to people that want it, instead trying to manipulate them into buying way to much stuff they don't need that's over-priced and will cause them monetary problems because of it.
I was obsessed with this cute little mobile puzzle game called Panda Pop for a few months, and it totally did that thing in the later levels where you'd always be just a few moves short of being able to win without paying for boosters or extra moves. So much so that I ended up dropping it completely because, rather than feeling like they were being designed with any sense of fun or challenge in mind, the levels all just started feeling like they were trying to squeeze as many microtransactions out of players as possible. Actually, looking back on it now, there were a lot of predatory design decisions going on, which are probably made a lot worse by the fact that they're on top of a genuinely fun, well-designed, highly polished, kid-friendly game.
Yep
About a decade ago i met on old school mate, who just dropped out of beeing a psychologist. He was in the team that made any aspect of antidepressants, but the substance itself, appealing and make you stick with your product. Thats just a quick summary and a slight peek into ONE other space. Genuineley its quite impressive how we could have them hold back in the gaming industry for that long.
As a victim of their manufactured opiate crisis (and I'm one of the lucky few who lived, most of the others I knew are all dead). Big pharma has a very long history of this sort of stuff and have tons of lobbyists that buy off government so that they could get away with the evil shit that they continue to do. The gaming market was never this kind of big money before so they didn't have the money to actually do the expensive r&d to be so evil. Money = power = more money and more power which ultimately ends in peak greed, corruption, and lack of any moral compass.
It's crazy how this basically got started with Bernais who used his uncle Sigmund Freud's work to better psychologically manipulate and control people into buying things they don't want, need , nor can afford, and his crowning achievement: the reversal of all laws protecting the American public from big pharma corps from doing crap like advertising addictive prescription medication on TV...well everywhere. But it was worse than that because they bribed and paid off Drs to over prescribe these medications, all under the guise of miracle drugs that wasn't addictive/habit forming. Oh did I forget to mention that Bernais is also part of the same family that owned the big pharma corps. that was pumping oxycodone into the population...which has killed more people than covid yet nothing is done to punish those bastards who did this to millions of people and their families.
At this point it's only a matter of time before it's in everything...I mean it almost already is. The only way to stop them now is to make it illegal across the board in all industry. If you cannot market your product for what it really is, without any psychological manipulation and sell it...then your product sucks and people don't want or need it. Meanwhile the peanut gallery is yammering on about how great the "free market" is....free market my ass! I'll buy that hot dog juice right after I get done eating the bullshit about the "most popular, and most voted for American president is Joe(can I sniff you children)Biden...you know that shambling corpse currently "running" the US government....😆🤣🤯
I hope your friend found a better job where he wasn't being used for evil ends.
Great convo. You make some of the best vids Josh. Actual Top Tier contributor to our community and relatable because of the generations we grew up gaming in before the 'modern' era hit so to speak. You get it man. Glad we have you as a voice of reason.
As far as horse feed goes.... i once got a new phone. One morning i was describing my grimy ranarr water pipe to my friend, full details, shape and all, parts inside it.
I go across the road to get a coffee, sit down, open Instagram, instantly hit with an add for the EXACT grimy ranarr waterpipe i described 10-30mins before hand. Straight out of WISH of course.
A few other things may have tailored it, but it was just too quick, too soon, and too accurate. Literally couldn't find another one of the bong- uh herblore device to save my life, but the add finds one a year later in an instant.
For half price too!
I've been convinced since lol
I noticed this in WoW way back in TBC - I was doing Arenas and had trouble, but then i realised i could just queue by myself, lose on purpose and every 4th loss i would get a free win with no enemies. I could get my weekly conquest done like this way faster than actually trying. At some point i would start getting matched with really bad players and i would sometimes 1v2 them -> as soon as that hapened i would get matched with near gladiators again.
Every 4th match get a free win?
@@malibuhiegts I assume he meant that people would leave or afk while queuing and not notice they found a game or whatever. It has been ages since I played arena, original WOTLK but I remember sometimes you get free wins. However I would venture that every 4th match would be way too frequent. Maybe 1 in 8. But I never played original TBC wich saddens me.
Let's not forget the predatory design with fast popping overlays which have "Buy" or "Purchase" buttons in the same position as regular menu activation or cancelling buttons which you rapidly tap, because you've been psychologically conditioned to quickly skip just to get to what you're interested in.
And you can get tricked into pressing a "Buy" button. And if it's paired with a non-confirmation design, oh boy...
Hope this stuff gets regulated someday. I mean it is nothing new to use the human psychologie to sell stuff but this is insane!
Let's be real, Blizzard isn't smart enough to have done the monetization on Diablo Immortal; evil and greedy enough, yes, but not smart enough. The monetization side of this was all NetEase - they're the true masters of the craft, with years and years of experience. Morally, they're both equally villains, but Blizzard is just the sniveling sidekick where the science is concerned.
That is the thing. Blizz deserves plenty of blame for signing off on it, but yeah, it's pretty much all the slimy Chinese company they outsourced the development to.
This whole thing reminds me of the Stellaris mobile game; when it released there were a bunch of stolen art assets from other scifi games (Halo, Starcraft, et al). Paradox did the right thing and pulled the game immediately from being sold. It's hard to believe that Paradox never saw the game prior to launch, but they still did the right thing.
If Blizz wanted to claim that they had no idea the monetization was this predatory and pulled it, I'd almost believe them. But keeping it up has just been passive approval of this nonsense.
I'm not willing to give the corporation that owns Candy Crush a pass and claim they're not smart enough to do predatory monetization.
I'm not willing to give the corporation that owns the WoW token a pass, for that matter.
If a criminal has an accomplice, it makes them both equally guilty of the crime. So Blizzard and NetEase should get full wrath as far as I'm concerned. Everything about this was Smart because the game is succeeding in how it was designed to do it. The only thing not Smart about it is the fact it's morally bankrupt and kills goodwill since nothing moral is nothing smart.
I'd compare it to like someone hiring an assassin. They are just paying for someone with the expertise to do the job for them. They may not be the one pulling the trigger but they are the reason the hitman has the job at all.
So it doesn't matter if Blizzard had little or no involvement with the actual development, they hired NetEase and they signed off on the final product.
@@DracoSuave Touché. I always forget about King.
15:57 it's also a reason for you to visit the shop in the first place. Like in Marvel Snap you get 50 credits every day for free. It's not much but it's free and it sums up over time, but to get the free credits you have to go to the store and scroll down past all the Bundles and Variants to get to the free credits, making sure ypu visit the store every day and take a look at what the shop has to offer increasing the possibility of you actually engage with it.
When companies sell your data they don't care who they sell to. including phone scammers, hate groups, criminal organizations etc. Lovely to have an inventory of what people have bought, money flow, shopping trends before you rob/scam them.
they in fact care so little that they don't know whose data they have or who they're selling it to. it all gets bundled up from thousands of people and sold off pretty much blind, it's deliberately blameless I think because nobody at any step really knows they're doing anything malicious
There’s actually a pull-the-pin-type game called “How to Loot” that’s genuinely good. Just putting that out there
And the devs have the best method of advertising I’ve ever seen for a mobile game: replying to fake pull-the-pin ads on Twitter with their own game
I've seen your immoral immortal video twice, and youtube have recomended it to me 10 times after that. Might add some contect as to why it does so well
Josh is very much right on the psychological aspect, it's fascinating and as someone who is studying psychology there is so much you can see go into the game.
Fomo
Sunk cost
Peer copying (seeing others play it making the need to join in)
dopamine hits
And last the hook tactic, you lead them along usually with an algorithm matching up to success to failure ratio and when thinks you are going to give in and stop, it'll give you something close, not the best because that would end the hook and reel, but close to it, keeping the player or person on the edge for more, an arcade game that does this is claw machines.
Claw machines have always been easy for me. So much so that I have actually been 'banned' at places because I would empty out their claw games......
The funniest part of having played Hero Wars (web, not app but same concept ov eternal grind) is how little the ads have to do with the gameplay. Sure, there is occasionally a "minigame" of pull the pin at the end of a map once you get three stars (all party heroes survive) in every battle there, but the current TH-cam ads (lasting 30 sconds to two minutes) only have some character graphics in common with the game: The gameplay is not "kill a monster and add its level to yours" like the ads show.
Regarding the random number for "sales" for items that have never been in the shop to begin with (and thus cannot be on sale) and are also bundled in order to give you the illusion of a package and further confuse you about the (arbitrary) "value" they are being given, while also being fomo'd like there's no tomorrow (since we all know digital items have limited reserves) - this is something that's been entrenched in f2p (and even some not so f2p games) AAA pc games for quite a while.
While not exactly on the level of mobile games (since there's no buying power), you should check out the Apex Legends monetization in its entirety. It's fascinating, from lootboxes that are (compared to other lootboxes in similar titles) less generous, unimaginable amount of filler drops (let's just say, stat trackers can drop from a lootbox), low quality filler skins, low quality skins per tier of skin, to events and downright insane pity systems (like 500 boxes for a heirloom item - basically a melee weapon skin with custom stuff), to rotating offers with nonsensical prices and sales and in-game currency that, of course, has to be bought in chunks that are incompatible with most common item prices.
Before someone chastises me on the "just cosmetics" basis: while I do agree that buying power is a definitive and final step in scummy monetization and Apex hasn't done that, I think that current atmosphere about "cosmetics" is completely nonsensical and unhealthy. Buying power is a technical no-no, as it breaks the game's competitive integrity. However, cosmetics coupled with fomo can be even more devious when it comes to exploitation of consumers and the whole psychology that goes into it, since they tug on some other strings - and don't think for a second that those strings are less "tuggable". People have been conditioned to justify every single possible scummy practice if it's "just cosmetics" and companies are milking that cow like there's no tomorrow.
(also, let's not forget that Apex has legendary skins that offer objective in-game advantage - by design or accidentally? We don't know, but they're there and they haven't been redesigned or patched yet).
tl;dr - the train has left the station a long time ago, it's just a matter of how tiny the followup steps are going to be. If they're big, like with Immortal, the frogs will realize the water got significantly hotter. But, if they're smaller or if they just come from a different structure (by no means less destructive), they'll just be lapped up.
For the double check thing. iPhone has a thing where you have to double click the power button for confirmation and Face ID every time.
I keep seeing stuff labeled Evony, and I remember 10 years ago playing a game that advertised itself like it was another Age of Empires, only to realize it was just a slow burn. It was my first experience with how pay to win worked, and I decided after that game that I wouldn't bother with pay to win games. Shortly after that game, I got into WoW, and that WoW had great content, wasn't pay 2 win, etc, held me for years. Even the Annual Subscription gimmick of WoW for D3 didn't seem so bad, since at that point in that expansion, you were either going to play the full year anyway or you'd already dropped.
I agree with these gentlemen with regards to Diablo Imoral. But hear me out, glamours and other aesthetics, present in many, if not all MMORPGs, can be just as dangerous. 😳 Id love to see some numbers on that kind of spending by players. It’s not as invasive or insidious but, I’m fairly certain it represents many many millions total. 😅
Especially if a company sells costumes like GameForge in Tera.
The best looking costumes were linked to lootboxes with a very small chance of you getting it, POE does it too (or did it, I've stopped playing POE).
It definitely does depend on how it is implemented and what the ratio of freely accessible cosmetics are versus paid ones. Like a 'This is just bonus stuff we're releasing' vs 'we are literally making cosmetics paid only'
I'd really love to know what the statistics are on WoW in regards to how much they made off the two (three? I forget) armor sets for transmogging they sell in the store. Those sets are rather blatantly 'let's try and make more money off of them' but compared to the sheer number of pieces of gear available just from playing its hard to see much incentive to get them. (probably why the first one was bundled in with a mount and 12 months of membership, iirc)
Everything is dangerous if you're a simp.
So I think one thing that differentiates 'pay $x for this cosmetic set' from pay to win is that cosmetics are inherently limited (obviously not talking about cosmetics in loot boxes that's exactly as bad as pay to win). This is not to say paid cosmetics aren't bad, they are absolutely predatory as with all mtx, but one of these predators is a bobcat and one of them is a tiger.
@@TuffMelon The incentive is that the paid for skins are FAR superior in quality to what you can get in-game now. I saw some of the newest stuff and it's actually unique assets instead of reskins of other items as well as moving affects. Nothing you can earn in-game can compare.
These two chaps here have really good insight on things, very enjoyable to listen to both of them
A tip for everyone who plays mobile games.
Before you start playing, go to the settings of the game and disable wi-fi and internet usage. You can avoid ads for many games by doing this. There are also games that claim to have online features like leaderboards but the features don't actually use internet. I'm currently playing a nonogram game that does it.
Or you can delete the whole thing because if it has pop-up ads inside the app it is a piece of shit game anyway.
Well, the leaderboards are usually fake. The creators "populate" the game with bot names just so you don't think you're playing alone.
@@AgraxGaming Hell even some of the pvp is just bots with random names taken from the net. I think there is a video proving this with some IO games
@@maxhax367 I remember one that did that. It was a game where you play as a hole in the ground and eat things and other players to grow bigger. I can't remember the name anymore though
2:40 Far as I know Google Play does actually have the option for requiring a password for every single purchase. Best option ever.
Slight correction. There is more than 1 Path of exile server. The chinese realm is fully seperate and has a different cash shop and a few different mechanics.
However the other (russian) server did a while back get rolled into the global pool, so now you only have 2 seperate ones.
Funny that you mention horse feed, I was just about to hit the market for cheap horse feed shop near me.
That's one of the ways I help keep my FOMO in check. I don't have 1 tab buy enabled. And my wallet is across the house on the buffett or something. So I feel like getting up, getting my wallet, entering the info? Nah.
The mentioning of the first transaction is why I believe we're walking towards subscriptions.
It is one thing to buy an item every time. It is another to sign a.subscription and let it bill you every month/year.
It's also why I prefer to pay once upfront.
I will not pull a credit card every time the game wants me to spent. I'd rather pay upfront for everything there will ever be and never have to worry about another transaction again.
The tracking is based on your network adapter in many cases. Plus the data provided by your browser about your configuration. That data together can identify your hardware in a trackable form even if you change OS.
Gotta say this is a great channel, I found out about you through Asmongold reaction. I even watched that horrendous 3 hour reaction to his reaction you made us suffer through.
I can tell you that this indeed is a youtube channel.
You said something near the end that I have to remark on, when talking about live service games: "Not every single game is designed to last for eternity." Well, the thing is, if it's a live service game, it's certainly not going to last forever - at some point people move on and it's no longer economically viable to keep the servers up. Whereas, if it's a DRM-free game that you can just play locally - that might last forever.
Especially since those games open up the possibility of modding.
It infinitely lengthens the lifetime of a game. Just look at Skyrim.
Or hell, people are still playing Morrowind and Daggerfall to this day.
@@SproutFarms GBA Rom hacks have given me so much enjoyment over the past... Let's say 8 years, at least? Shout out to Fire Emblem Bloodlines, it's awesome.
And then there's Minecraft and Terraria mods- from small QoL/convenience stuff, to interesting and often game-changing add-ons like Gulliver in Minecraft or Orchid in Terraria, to huge content packs like Twilight Forest in Minecraft, or Thorium and Calamity in Terraria.
Want to be a wizard in Minecraft? Thaumcraft is there to potentially drive your character to eldritch insanity! Want to make a badass build in Terraria? Terrarchitect adds *so many* build items. There's something for everyone.
The thing that confused me was how deeply unexciting the beginner pack is. We’re all saying this is brilliantly evil monetization, but at no point was I like ‘oh man, I can’t pass up 60 orbs (which buy nothing) and a cosmetic I don’t care about.’ I wonder, given everything that went into monetization design, they came up with that as the starter bundle.
Yeah the low numbers of orbs in the tiny bundles just make no sense to me! _And_ the premium currency is insanely overpriced.
Its simple the entire goal is to leave you with trapped premium currency on your account (the same reason is why the currency bundles are never the right amount to buy anything), why because unusable premium currency applies psychological pressure to buy more of it so you can spend it and avoid the feeling you are wasted money.
@@mattm8870 Sure - but that only works if you actually purchase it. Wouldn't it make more sense to make it something like 60 orbs and 3 legendary crests? Then I'm like - oh man, great price for 3 legendary crests, I use them in a rift (find out you can actually use up to 10 at once), then I'm stuck with 60 orbs and I'm pressured to buy more packs to get enough orbs to use them. Last but not least, I get the giant dopamine hit from all the legendaries and I can't bring myself to go back to rare crest runs. That seems like a much more compelling initial hook.
Oh god, I just realized I'm trying to help them make it even worse.
i'm following this channel now, this is so interesting topic
Got to love the Diablo add TH-cam gave me during this
And then in a couple of months, we'll FINALLY get a response from them: "We've scaled the monetisiation back because we listened to YOU" when in reality they've made their buck and haven't listened to **** all!!
"See, now it only costs $40k to max a single character!"
@@blimlimlimm And look, 10,000% Value!!!
I remember when fallout 4 was announced, I downloaded out of euphoria Fallout Shelter, a mobile fallout themed freemium mini game with - obviously - in game purchases. After spending 40€ on that game I realized that it subtly forced me to pay to make my shelter inhabitants to "survive". I gave it up totally, after trying another play without spending a single cent.
Getting a Diablo-Immortal advertisement while watching this, great timing TH-cam
I'd be curious to see what time of day that 2 hour pvp window falls in say areas of the USA and Korea, surely they've skewed the timing to be more available to whaling regions, wouldn't surprise me in the slightest since almost everything in this game has been methodically crafted to be unfair, malicious and predatory in some way.
I know of this tactic of first baiting you with a small amount and then never double checking. So far I've only bought something in a mobile game, if I wanted to keep the game and get rid of the ads.
I did enjoy D3 Hardcore Seasonal when I played a bit with friends. Was a ton of fun when you actually had the fear of losing your character in the back of your mind, and it completely changed how you built/played your character.
6/19/22 I received a commercial on TH-cam for tractor supply. The first time seeing it on TH-cam. Wtf
I’ve seen mobile game ads show someone lose twice, spend currency to try again and win.
I’ve also seen one where someone spends currency and still loses so that they have to do another thing (with money attached, I’m sure) to even try.
The amount of manipulation is just stunning…
There was an ad for Evony that bashed on other games for having fake gameplay in their trailers, before showing the supposed game play in Evony.
So... Did we ever find out if the Horse Feed ads happened?
Diablo 1, 2, and to a point 3 did NOT have microtransactions (d3 did have RMAH for a while).
When WoW announced the pay for the game and pay a monthly fee to play, I called this type of stuff happening. Nobody listened. It incrementally got worse and worse until we got to this point. Had people listened to me at every point when I called this stuff out, we wouldn't be here. But here we are. I'm not happy I was right, but I was and it sucks...
OMG why didn't we listen to Cyanide Popsicles?! He knew the truth, and we DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM
Love watching this and keep getting an an ad in-between for diablo immortal game 🤣
About WOT. There is one more thing.
They don't tell you when your accuracy is determined (RNG), before or after shot.
There is possibility of using your future accuracy in matchmaking?
If they are using previously drawn tables it's really easy to do and manipulate player.
I don't think the advertising bots understand context in messages.
Some friends and I were talking about how much we hated "product x", and now all of us get ads for "product x".
I felt so dirty watching this video. All of this was just so skeevy. I don't really play mobile games, so I didn't realize how terrible mobile practices in general are. I played one game that ended up not being what I saw in an ad (like some sort of block breaker game)... I had no idea that issue was so prevalent, to the point of creating an entire genre of game that only existed as an enticing ad. This is all insane, and with everything that keeps happening or coming up, I have a hard time imaging any scenario in which I'm going to pick up Diablo IV at this point. I don't feel good rewarding a company that does these kinds of practices, and I don't trust that they won't pull some crap in IV.
great video with tons of valuable info and proper analysis. good job.
Damn, I agree so much with the Diablo 4/Life service argument... It was cathartic to hear you
15:10 Factorio really has the best trailer. It's literally only showing you the entire gameplay loop, and that is enough to make me wanna play.
i had a short stay accomodation which had a note on the toilet saying dont use too much paper it blocks easily. i spoke to the other person in the house about this and the first ad i got was for plumbing services 😂
my friend is a plumber so ive never needed to Google search for a plumber. damn hot mics everywhere .
One of the latest I've seen game advertising on mobile wise was
An image was taken from the age of empires 2, when you start with ya camp and it's been placed on front of a new game that's being advertised
It's disgusting that game companies are doing this and it needs to be addressed
On the cleared PC it's really simple. Every part of your computer from monitors and peripherals to the parts of the computer contain metadata which is pretty unique to you so you are tracked even if cookies are wiped etc...
you got into thumbnailing finally :D
Guys, this is just the beginning of it. THE BEGINNING.
Some years from now we'll say "back in my days games didn't have shops", and every kid around will look at us in disgust.
even angry birds had a p2w/win button option
Lmao the ad before this is about Diablo immortal
I've always seen those 'Pull the Pin' game ads and never new it was fake. That's actually mindblowing to me
It IS very unfortunate that Diablo Immortal was 'financially successful.' Every person that paid anything into it, has actively invested in the corporate corruption of gaming from here on.
Everyone that has ever paid into these things, has brought this and a future of more of it upon us all. And I'm not blameless in this as well - there have been points where I was weak. Difference is, I'm ashamed of every instance of that. Everything is downstream from culture, and as soon as culture deemed it socially acceptable, neigh *preferred* that people spend money and *show it off* - I blame Fortnite, zoomers, and infantilized-adult millennials - the encroachment of this filth hit terminal velocity.
Not until the younger generations culturally rediscover the concept of shame, and reattach it to spending on this tat, will there ever be a slowdown in these antics.
I dont get how you wanna make 8 year olds the ones repsonsible here, if there were 40+ year old professionals that were paid to make those kids addicted to buying shit...
Leave it to boomers to uselessly moralize instead of doing anything to change the perverse incentives corporations have.
The millennial who's video you're watching has done much more to help the situation than your lazy generalizations
It isn’t 10 year olds dropping thousands on these types of games though; the strategy is to find and hook whales (incredibly large spenders) to spend like crazy and support the game and rest of the players who don’t pay. This role is not being fulfilled by kids asking their parents for vbucks
I'm actually pretty sure the reason that PVP is limited is because they want to limit it to the time where they can maximise their matchmaking systems to be most effective. When the largest playerbase (and paying playerbase) is online they are capable of matching people easily to make their "paid vs non paid" systems work correctly. With a smaller pool of players it becomes much harder to force this to occur and the psychological tricks won't work.
Good to hear there are others with the same opinion about games not showcasing actual gameplay. I refuse to purchase a game on Steam if none of the videos/screenshots feature actual gameplay and UI. The number of games that don't show their game is incredibly huge, from triple A all the way down to solo indy dev. I also refuse to seek out the gameplay on youtube because I'm stubborn and if they want to sell me a game, they need to do the legwork and put everything someone needs to make an informed purchase on their store page.
The pre-ad was for diablo immortal
Got a diablo immortals ad for this video lol
Same
"ours phones listen to us" is a bit of a misconception, they don't need to tap into microphones to find out what products to market to you, they can use meta data from a range of other sources you probably don't consider.
"Why am I being advertised the brand of toothpaste my grandma mentioned at dinner yesterday? Was google listening to our conversation?" Probably because your grandma purchased that toothpaste, which was logged by her Tesco clubcard, and then her phone was in close proximity to your phone, or on the same wifi, making an association connection, so now the data bought from Tesco and your ISP are combined and now you're being advertised the same toothpaste.
Like how he said worthless around 23:05
Josh and Callum have some fantastic points in here. What struck me was what Josh said that not every game needs to be a live service. I know I'm probably not the only one here, but I feel like Rockstar has also done the same with milking GTA V within an inch of its lifespan. How about we have a decent GTA 6 game earlier that then releases expansion packs that aren't online models and are akin to GTA 4: The Lost and the Damned, and the Ballad of Gay Tony. We all know the game companies are designing games now to maximise profit whilst going over its use by date keeping it alive when it becomes a dusty shell on the shelf. It would be nice for game companies to change the philosophy of live games for monetization but it seems like they just keep churning out online expacs or leagues that have these cash shops involved for progressing quicker. The indie games obviously produce these unique experiences where it's refreshing, but AAA game corporations don't seem to be going back to grass roots where it was early 2000's or late 2000's. It would be nice to just buy a game with an $80 price tag and have those collectors edition for the fans but not require a cash shop when playing.
Magic the Gathering: Arena also has a very predatory ranking system. Basically if you make a really good deck and win too many matches it will mark that deck. Marked decks are automatically matched against god tier meta decks. And its not a lot of winning either. You win just 7 of 10 matches there is a good chance your deck will be marked and you will never win another match with it. This is so you are constantly building new decks and buying more cards from the shop.
World of tanks actually does this, funny thing is either I'm experiencing a bug or something because after a long time from logging in I get a free membership for a time BUT the game thinks I bought it and pairs me with people that are not that good but then after some time it changes the people I'm paired up with and I'm paired with pros that sometime solos a team, or close to it.
For the league question.
League actually "knows" that players will stop playing after 3-5 wins or losses in a row, but are more likely to keep playing with a mix. So yes they do manipulate you into free wins or definite losses so you stick around for longer.
I literally got a Diablo Immortal ad on this video. 😂
TH-cam ads are absolutely garbage, in the middle of the video it played a diablo immortal ad
Also, when i see an ad that seems like the player in the ad has less than 20iq i just dont even bother considering it, as it is obviously done to annoy people into installing it
7:20 actually blizzard themselves has done things like this with, say, Heroes of the Storm. a f2p generic skin account would/will very often get matched with super kitted players, so they can see all the cool cosmetics and sprays and mounts, and think "i want those too!" and go buy them.
edit: the chat caught on to the same thing shortly after
The bit when they're talking about getting advertisements reminded me of something really spooky that happened to me. I was in the market for a new pc. I was either going to build one or buy a premade. I had *NOT* searched for, talked about, or went to any parts stores. I *THOUGHT* about building a new pc, and then started getting ads.
Someone should try and make a "Diablo Immortal RNG Simulator" where you can put in how much you wanna spend and how, and then it gives you the loot you'd get and playtime you'd have to invest.
"No, I like my phone" really sums up why I haven't investigated anything behind those "99% of players get it wrong!" ads.
Since I've been playing Grim Dawn recently I picked up Diablo III for the Switch on offer as I'm still waiting for my Steam Deck Valve -_- and I've heard about the auction house in days of old but I have to say it's absolutely brilliant. Saw gameplay of Immortal and the gameplay for 4 and while it had me thinking 'this looks great', knowing how insidious Immortal is and how it could very likely be with 4 left me bummed because these classic dungeon crawlers are a relatively recent interest for me. Luckily, that scratch is now itched especially since I can take it on the go.
Callum reinstalling Windows on his machine wasn’t enough for advertisers to forget the ad preferences already associated with his computer’s MAC address and his home’s external IP address.
I've set my Google Play to ask every time, for every purchase. Even so, those tiny purchases can add up quickly. D:
Might wanna read up more on that WoT thing. All new tanks, tech tree or not, benefit from a protected matchmaker for a few matches.
im camp sell data is bad because whether im good with money or not getting targeted with manipulative ads is annoying and scary
as oppose to junk mail which can be filtered easily and even use it for fire starting.
Monster hunter world was/is the perfect example of a service game. They released free content almost weekly and there were a few mtx available they were never shoved in your face
A Diablo immortal ad played during this vid
did not get horse feed adverts, did get an add for some horse brushes tho
i once dropped my phone and bought a 100 pack in a mobile game as my phone slipped out of my hands, and i was told if i wanted to refund it, they would ban me from the game.
The 'bottle of water' thing is more about the person giving you the water, rather than that it's a place where you spend money.
Shops, and shop attendants, are more trusted than random oldmate on the street.
Shops have regulations and rules and can be sued and are seen to have much more to lose than some random dude on the street who you don't know, probably couldn't identify, couldn't catch and presumably has less to lose.
The 'psychology' is just that the shop is seen as more trustworthy.
Nothing to do with "because this is a place we spend money".
You're more likely to get ads for ancillary horse products like rugs and riding clothing than feed.
Feed is something every horse owner needs and they advertise more at point of sale for that reason. Optional "lifestyle" products like clothing, boots, rugs etc are far more likely to be advertised online and follow you around. That is all 😌
Maybe they should put, instead of a login screen ,a credit card info. And put some spells like card swipe that cost 0.39$ which kills entire screen. Maybe they are not utilazing all the possibilities they can. It is annoying how they think that anything can pass and I am glad that you can hear voices of people that agree that whole thing is a bullshit. Excellent video as always.