manipulation tactics used by game developers - Elly reacts to Lets Go Whaling
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- time to finally understand why there are so many pop ups in mobile games and why online competitive games feel unwinnable these days.
In this video, I react to a presentation in finland at a game developers convention on how they use manipulation tactics to make people upset in order to scam money out of their consumers. how fun! lol
/ ellyinvideoland
Thanks for the video :)
So here's my thoughts as a former game developer. Some context, if you will:
- When I saw this years ago (or a very similar lecture, I don't remember), I took it as him calling out this behaviour out. Game designers have known for a long time, but back when I was in university, people rarely called it out for what it was. Also, I love his dry, understated humour.
- There is a terrible temptation in every game development studio to give in and use these techniques in order to survive amidst a deluge of competitors without such restraint. Most give in, but it will never be everyone. Support them; It'll be fun.
- Ye designers: study ludology, not psychology.
- Some government regulation might help (but keep in mind, who is better at gaming a system than a game designer?).
- Regarding gacha: Would you believe gambling is illegal in Japan? (Okay, that's a gross simplification and I don't know the specifics.)
If I remember correctly there was a push in the past to make predatory systems illegal or to at least regulate it to the point where it was adults only and had a spending limit.
Afaik it went to a gaming commission that then decided that predatory gacha mechanisms are good honest fun and need not be regulated.
It was later revealed that the same commission was mostly funded by game industry titans, presumably for the express reason of giving people the illusion that there was some sort of authority limiting the excesses of said industry without actually getting in the way of their profit.
Can't rightly remember which regulating body it was, unfortunately.
Chris broad made a vid on these casinos/pachinko machines in Japan, where gambling is technically illegal, but pachinko parlors found a loophole where you win the ball bearings/tokens in the main building, but you cash out the winnings in a separate building(perhaps a separate corporate entity legally speaking) so that's how such things stayed afloat for several decades.
So, the little interjection at 5:30 caught my attention. So, firstly, under current law in certain countries (EU) they have to disclose the drop chances. I don't know if these are visible in the US versions of the games a lot of the time but living in the UK, even after we left the EU, I can see still them in pretty much any game that comes with a chance. Almost always, the pattern is as you'd expect, that being the stuff that is ranked by the game developers as higher quality will have a tiny drop chance, but the stuff that is considered common or whatever the they call the lowest quality, that will usually be pushing around 75%-ish drop chance between them. By the time you get to the ones that people really want like the legendaries, you rarely have less than a 1% chance of getting any of those in any box.
Secondly, you're right, it's not completely random. Computers can't do random. There's a dozen videos talking about this all over the web, including some videos where they are able to make a program that perfectly predicts a series of random numbers that google generates for them. They use some very complex mathematics that use an input number and then spit out a random looking output number. There are some security firms and such that actually go out of their way that use things that are random such as the radiation interference of a laser or a video of like 5 shelves of lava lamps or videos of traffic to generate the input numbers used. Obviously, that kind of thing is way more pricey and unless you're a company that needs their computers to genuinely generate a series of numbers all of the time that nobody will be able to guess a few seconds down the line, they generally just default to the simple and predictable stuff that anyone can access if they really want to.
I experienced this with 2 Gacha games, Danmachi Memoria Freese and Fire Emblem Heroes, both are Gacha games and both are extremely pay to win when it comes to PVP, they always release these "Limited time only" characters for you to try and pull, and like it was explained in the video, the more you try to pull the higher the chance of getting it, there's even some where if you spend actual money, you can guarantee a pull of that rarity, amongst other things. Gacha games are absolutely evil, one of the VERY FEW I play sometimes is Fate/Grand Order, mainly because it doesn't have PVP, it's mainly story, so even though you CAN pay to get the rare characters, they are not necessarily the BEST. For example: they have rankings from 1 star ro 5, 5 being SSR 4 being SR then 3 2 and 1 stars, in the game, some 1 and 2 stars are actually so overpowered when used right that they straight out outclass most 5 star SSR's, which is why I enjoy the game so much, it's not pay to win at all, plus the story is quite enjoyable.
Anyways, I went off topic for a bit but it was slightly relevant, the main point is; Gacha games are absolutely meant to hook you in to spend money, a lot of it. Look at games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact etc. if I could have all the money I had spent in the past when I was young and silly, I would be very happy right now lol.
Ironically if you try to get my immediate reaction it tends to be "screw off". Long thinking I might actually buy some bundles if the price is right.
they been doing this for 30 years
Very interesting look into human psychology... 🤔
Thats why i pirate all my games since 10 years, most of new games are not even worth piriting, waste of HDD space and time. I only play 2 F2P games, and ive spend money on them, its Path of Exile and Warframe, really big games, with big influence, and fair monetization. If youre f2p - i can spend ~60 bucks to get convenient, like stash tabs in PoE. I know the cosmetics micros are crazy expensive, but its for crazy folks, who want to support the dev, i think they even have a barrier on how much you can spend in a month. Blizzard release Diablo 4, 70$ game, with same micros xD People already leave ship, and they know that Path of Exile 2, when it goes live this year, D4 will be dead, need to put p2w stuff to make money ;] I also hate how like 2 years ago? people were boycotting Blizzard for their rapey culture, in bill cosbey suite, a woman did commit suicide, after that came Diablo Immortal, most greedy predatory game on market, and now they all forgot about it, preorder Diablo 4 xD And most youtubers who were bashing the company - "im in love, game is great". I miss people like TotalBiscuit, whp would rip it a new one. Remember horse armor in Skyrim? How all people got up in arms aginst it? Now its - oh its just a cosmetic, dont buy it if you dont like it, oh its just a cash shop, with p2w, you can play without it. I miss old days.