Right before this video went out The Pokémon Company announced that they were making it easier to level up items in the new update. I'm happy to see the game moving in the right direction as far as pay-to-win goes, but that was only one of its problems. I feel the points in this video very much still stand.
The whole Pokémon thing is really confusing. I'm not really into it. But dang, I see all this bad stuff and think about what Pokémon COULD be and it's just all so hard to wrap one's head around.
I think what really got me here is the point regarding how Pokemon is a children's game. You're absolutely right. There can be arguments made about gambling and whatnot, but even places where casinos and such are allowed, you have to be an ADULT to participate. So having a heavily children-oriented game filled with what are, undoubtedly, gambling-based strategies, is no short of predatory. I can only hope that they tone it down going forward, but man, I'd REALLY REALLY rather just pay a full $60 at the start than even think about dealing with this nonsense
Plus in my personal opinion everything that Tencent touched ROT by just being put a leash by them Like i liked Warframe and the wholesome story about developers stopping a person from grambling A LOT OF MONEY in their lootbox and removing/fixing that BUT It was bought by Tencent all that wholesomeness is thrown out the window Even if maybe the game is the same as before Tencent Just the thought of being owned by them leaves me with a SOUR taste in my mouth and a sense of dread of that ROT spreading through that game if maybe is already happening I don't know
I can't side with you more. the most you can pay for ONE of the micro transactions in almost TWICE THE PRICE of a 60$ game. Did you see it!? 99.99$ for that many gems.
I love that older Pokémon games are now rated 18+ in Europe because the game corner could turn kids in gambling addicts, but a game that has psychological studies behind it to turn players into gambling addicts with real money involved is perfectly fine for a child to play.
I was looking for a comment like this. It's so ironic parents and Nintendo were concerned about kids gambling fake money in an optional minigame, but now they can gamble with real money that's a main part of the game! Progress at it's finest...
@@rockinrootbeer1795 Parents apparently haven't quite figured it out enough yet, and Nintendo execs probably did not care enough to fight for the game corner. Its loss hardly affects them. Meanwhile, losing money does. All that said, these practices are crap, and I say especially in the case of pay-to-win and lootboxes. Everything else I honestly don't care about staying. By the time those things are removed, I hope the present parents have brain and patience enough to limit their kids on the rest. P.S.: I do not consider buying playable characters to be pay-to-win, except maybe if the meta is blatantly skewed, which would probably be the next thing to pop up once other things are gone.
It's still so weird to me that the Australian Classification System rates Pokemon Diamond and Pearl at PG for "Mild Gambling References", but Pokemon Unite can get through with no notice of this despite having... actual gambling.
@@videogamemusic2962 look like you havent tried it. i dont even think the rewards from those loot box is worth it.. because it's mostly clothes and pokemon skins.
@@videogamemusic2962 yeah, literally like any other games that have dlc? How is paying for something "gambling"??????? You and this channel are so good at hyperboles it's disgusting how many people get mislead by these low effort criticisms
"I don't want to go on an hour long rant." I, personally, am here for the hour long rant. Also, I really appreciate you calling out this gross behavior from game developers.
@@Matanumi This is a very deceptively racist statement because it casts blame on "The Other" (ie non-white people), and ignores that game companies all over the world are capable of this too. Nintendo, EA, GameFreak, Niantic... it's not just an "overseas problem China is causing", it's a result of unchecked capitalism and these mega-corporations using any means necessary to get more money than they have now.
I'm here for the 2 - 3 hour rants. Maybe we could use this too! *holds up nectarine on top of an empty water bottle* I don't know, hey, let's get kinky!
I love how your channel is so accessible and friendly to children while still having videos that discuss serious and important topics such as this. You're exposing kids to some really important facts here, and I just think that that's awesome.
@@maegnificant A child could definitely understand the entire premise and most concepts talked about in the video, even with those "complicated words".
@@WHIPTY I'd say that it depends on how you would define "political." In my opinion, this video itself is actually very political. But it still fits within this channel because it's focused on the video game industry, and it also actually makes meaningful points about the issue at hand rather than making shallow remarks about the personalities involved in politics.
Yeah I'm just done with the whole F2P concept. I remember tweeting about it (and surprise surprise had a ton of people defending me and calling me ignorant). But nah, I think on the whole, the industry is worse because of it.
Yeah pretty much. It is like a slippery slope where more and more games outsource their actual game design to their monetization model when talking about micro transactions as a whole
Yep its a very difficult topic to discuss as their is many diferent points specially for diferent games, i have play fate go and currently Genshin impact and i can say it's perfectly fine to play for free but yea the gatcha and F2P is design to get a lot of money from people. Also you "tweeted" wath do expect from Twitter hahaha.
@@Rprot_traveler I have to disaggree about FGO being fine since the grind to max out Servants you gained is too much. Also the rates for SR chars are much lower conpared to other gachas. Until FEH Pass Fire Emblem Heroes did it better imo. I have to aggree on that sone games do it better than others tho. EDIT: Bleach Brave Souls was the most generous Gacha out of all I've played and had the best min-maxing processes I think
I'm so glad Arlo is talking about this. It's one thing for Stephanie Sterling or Curio to call out disgusting behavior, but having Arlo call it out helps normalize calling it out.
While watching this video I poked a friend who I know watches Arlo that this could be basically a video Step made in terms of the overall talking points - and him pointing out the work of them at the end made me smile :)
You don’t need someone to “normalize” calling out bad behaviors in games. If you won’t call something out because it isn’t “normalized” then you have no business calling it out at all.
This isn't really calling out anything honestly you could some up this whole video in one sentence. Its a Gacha game. This discussion is as old as dirt at this point and to be frank Unite isn't even the worst offender but its that bigger question of personal responsibility vs in forcing regulations on gacha systems Because if you ever opened a pack of Pokémon cards or bought a kids meal its the same feeling this isn't some new thing Arlo discovered its a thing he and everyone have been exposed to since birth. McDonald's Burger's have a chemically taste but everything from dollar menu to the red and yellow colors to store locations and how they've trained a generation of children to like there inexpensive low quality burger and feed it to there kids is cooperate manipulation. Hell as much as people rail on Twitter there's actually no difference between it and commenting on a video. This video feels like nothing because it adds nothing to the conversation micro transaction are evil but DLC functions the same way especially how there incorporated. If he wanted to make a video something beyond Gacha is evil would have felt impactful. Hell there are actual benefits to the system beyond treating every person like a potential victim. But that would mean putting more thought into the discussion
@@Restinspaghetti except human behavior has consistantly been to ignore or explain away horrible things so as not to upset people or be considered a muck-raker. having someone like arlo(a personality that goes out of his way to say good things about everything and vehemently avoid all but the most mild confrontations) publicly say that this is unacceptable and inappropriate helps other people who give a pass to rotten practices to not give this a pass too or tl;dr if only staunch advocates for fair and safe practices said anything then most all bad stuff can just be weathered or ignored. everyone who sees the problem needs to call it out
Exactly, I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned that. People are going after the Pokémon Company (and they definitely approved this) but I feel like Tencent is one of those companies that tries to keep it’s name under the hood as much as they can because of all the bad press they’ve had, so it’s important for people to remember who the real enemies are in this situation. Of course it’s the same people that basically made a roulette style social media app for kids smh
Tencent is seriously one of the most cartoonishly, unabashedly evil corporations of the real world. They try to hide their name, while trying to get literal children to gamble. They might as well wear top hats and twirl their mustaches and smoking cigars.
@@bugjams At least they aren't exploiting child labor like Roblox, I guess. But I'm sure you can find much worse than gambling sold to children, like Shinra-level of bad.
Its interesting that using free skins and content in a mobile game can get you made fun of by peers. Like years ago when children were made fun of for not having designer shoes. Another humorous gdc talk, it's called 1500 slot machines walk into a bar a lesson of quantity over quality
@@Justagamerhere1 I used to teach kids pre-pandemic, and I can't really understate just how much Roblox and Fortnite means to them. As ridiculous as it sounds that kids are getting bullied for not having the latest skins, after seeing how much the game means to them it wasn't too hard to imagine (there wasn't any bullying between the kids I taught, as far as I know).
Back in the day the Pokemon company teaming with Tencent would be like a hero (Pokémon) teaming up with the villain ten cent, but now they’re both villains
"Meanwhile at the Legion of Doom" [Tencent, EA, Nike, Facebook, Google,Tik Tok, PETA, and every major news network} Satan: Hey guys thanks for the invite! I look forward to... The Legion: Yes we looked at your application and according to your resume we're afraid your not right for us. Satan: ...but...but do you know who i am? The legion: Yes its gonna be a no from us. Your just not evil enough sir maybe try again when youve done a little more Satan: Dammit!
You don't even need to play video games to understand how horrible of a monopoly Tencent has on the industry. They're the pinnacle of an abysmal corporation that's driven by greed and power
If you don't feel compelled to spend money on microtransactions then congrats, you're not the target victim. The tactics they use are most affective on current or recovering gambling addicts, children and neurodivergent people, which just adds an extra level disguisting on top of the whole thing
It gets worse than that, because the people that aren’t the target victims are just going to be experiencing a game that they get to play for free! meaning that the good reviews they leave and the discussion they provoke around these games will lead to more people hearing about them and trying them out, including other potential whales! Even the f2p players are being manipulated!
The problem with the, "You don't have to spend any real money" argument is that, as the life of the game increases & more content comes out, newer & newer players are boxed out as old players no longer have to grind as much to get basic tools to efficient states, thereby pressuring new players to spend to just compete with the preexisting base. This in turn often leads to a drop off in new players and encourages further reliance on old players & whaling to continue to extract profit as new players die off and/or are unwilling to grind or spend more just to see if they like the game. In other words, the model starts tainting the soil of its own environment from the jump, and just keeps making it more and more toxic to new growth as time goes on, and the more the devs invest in that model, the faster it happens.
It's easy to say it's impossible to get addicted for the people that don't have addicted tendencies. They think that just stopping cold turkey is the easiest thing in the world because they can do it no problem.
It's a similar model to what Hearthstone had, where once upon a time you could collect every card without spending anything, but now they're a dozen expansions in and it's genuinely not possible. I don't know how Unite handles its lootboxes, but if all Pokémon are in the same pool that lootboxes pull from, then that means players will be less likely to randomly pull what they want each time new Pokémon get added to the pool. Hearthstone sold its lootboxes by putting each expansion's cards in a unique box, but if this game doesn't do something similar then it will snowball quickly.
@@theotherjared9824 I used to believe it too because I always hated games of chance and anything close to the concept anyway and my parents told me many times that money is only spent once, so I already had a pre-existing aversion to lootboxes and aggressive monetization. Then I saw more and more video game companies dipping into this BS and no longer producing any game that would be worth my time and money and I started to worry for the future of the industry.
@@pikmints no it’s not like that the only thing that would help you progress from the loot box (that you get I think 30 a week) is 320 gold (you need 6,000-10,000 to get certain characters) and 10 item enhancers ( which isn’t a lot) honestly the loot boxes are not worth your money at all
@@pikmints Pokemon are not part of random pulls. You have a chance of possibly getting a small amount of currency than can contribute to purchasing a pokemon, but fortunately you can always choose what pokemon you want to purchase next. I have yet to spend a penny in this game and I have pretty much all the Pokemon I wanna play and my few held items I like using being maxed out. I'm not excusing F2P models in general but honestly Pokemon Unite is not that greedy IMO. I'm usually quick to drop F2P games once I get even the slightest hint of feeling the need to pay money to continue playing. Unite hasn't done that yet.
As someone who does competitive public/argumentative speaking, I have to say this video was absolutely incredible and well-made. I have to hand it to Arlo, this is some of your best work. STOP AGGRESSIVE MONOTIZATIONS!
Have you actually played the game to arrive at this conclusion? This video is misleading and inaccurate. Most of the things you can buy in-game are for cosmetic purposes only, they don't provide any advantage in battles.
It's okay! The kid's parents are to blame for not Big Brother watching them 24/7. Arlo can treat kids as horribly as he wants, as long as parents aren't looking!
I swore off of playing pokemon unite the instant Tencent had its name attached to it. As for monetization: while it can be done ethically, I'm at the point where I don't believe any major game publisher is capable of doing so. The only game I remember playing in recent memory with what felt like reasonable monetization was Warframe... and that was self-published by its developer all the way back in 2013.
Monster hunter world They sold you gestures and little attachments. It cost usually from 2 bucks to 5 bucks but they had tons of them yet they also had them in bundles if you wanted to buy them all (cost less then buying all separately) all while they have use dlc monsters for free
@@denzellizasuain563 I guess that's true. I honestly ignored all the little add-ons since I didn't use gestures much. But I guess the fact that I could do that without impairment of the game speaks volumes
Smash Bros is pretty good, even if it struggles to meet the popular definition of what a microtransaction is (you pay directly for the character/costume set rather than buying a separate currency), to the point where I bought it even though I normally flat out refuse to pay for games with microtransactions. Haven't bought any of the DLC (mostly because none of it is super appealing to me), but I may do so at some point
Hmmm....skins don't give you any advantage in battle. It's just a damn costume for your Pokemon and Trainer. This is so ridiculous. If you are tempted to buy the skin, you lack discipline. You don't get anything for free, people who make this game happen need to earn.
I've seen first hand the kind of damage this can do to players, I've been there myself. I'll never play any game with a monetization model even close to this and nobody else should. It's especially heinous cause almost all these games are targeted at kids who's brains are still developing and are especially susceptible to getting tricked. I really think there need to be some serious legal restrictions on games like this.
Reminds me of back in the 360 days Valve was releasing free updates for TF2 and Microsoft literally forced them to charge money because they wanted people to get used to the idea of paying for DLC. There was an uproar back then, but it seems their plan worked in the long run.
Yeah the sad thing is how much the general reaction to these things has changed so much after years of gradual change. People would have been OUTRAGED to see this stuff back in the day. Now you have people happily defending it. It's so sad.
@@MahuruRaji You can't defend the f2p scheme. No matter how you look at it, you as a player lose in some significant way. Maybe you can't play much due to an energy system. Maybe it's pay to win. Perhaps it's an ever changing meta you can't keep up with, or perhaps it's the fact it's sucking money out of your wallet like it's next to a black hole!
@@beez1717 I think you’re right. Getting your game to be a success in the first place requires some luck. So putting out a F2P game with fair MTX probably isn’t all that viable. A new game is $60 upfront. F2P you’re not going to drop $60 on the game when you pick it up. Who knows how long it takes that person to make their first in-game purchase, let alone enough for a normal game sale. Your players have to be REALLY invested in a game they just started to put enough money into it, or you have to reach a huge audience so that the smaller dollar amount spent per person adds up enough. I’m sure these games plan for a few months of making little money, but they have to become profitable at some point. And I think to earn that goodwill might take too long to be able to continue supporting the game unless the investors believe in it. But a lot of these F2P games are from huge companies have the capitol to risk doing F2P fairly, but just don’t. If manipulative tactics work, then sadly, why wouldn’t they take advantage of it while they can? It expedites earning income faster and people are used to it/expect it from those games now so most won’t complain.
Cause people kept buying it and did nothing. They complained. Maybe people should actually just stand by their pronciples and not buy it and the industry might not be so garbage.
Arlo, never be afraid to say the right thing. I've been trying to think of a way to describe to people why loot boxes are an issue and your video helped me so much. It's absolutely awful and we need to stop endorsing companies who do these things, or at the very least communicate to them that these are not the games that we want. I appreciate you being brave and standing up for what's right and I hate that it's controversial to say that you don't like scamming kids lol.
@birdscool Exactly! If Nintendo is willing to shut down Dr. Mario World, why the heck should anyone fall for the trap of Pokémon Unite? I know I won’t after being deceived by both Pokémon Rumble World AND Pokémon Quest.
@@GatorOne-in7hk Ugh I was deceived by pokemon quest too, so sad because I genuinely enjoyed it and thought they'd be releasing more maps or dlc! I felt robbed 😭
When your Gaming Franchise's Motto is Gotta catch em all, and the only way to get everything in this game is to spend exorbitant amounts of money, it doesn't do the whole franchise a world of good.
You touched on something about will power. This is a bigger point than you think. I have ADHD so naturally I gravitate twords videogames. This is harmless on the surface but my brain literally doesn't properly reward itself with dopamine. After Overwatch came out I realized just how bad practices like loot boxes really are. I have to actively avoid such games because Overwatch showed me that if I left myself unchecked I'd easily develop a gambling problem, in large part due to my neurology. If you think these practices are predatory for regular people, imagine how this can effect people similar neurology to mine. Children with neurology like mine. These kind of conditions, while uncommon, aren't rare.
Man, I totally feel you. I also have ADHD, and I have to avoid these sorts of games just because once I start spending I can’t stop. “Just don’t spend!” Okay, but then the game is way less fun and since it’s clearly rigged to reward the spending of real money that pretty much makes it unenjoyable to me.
So many stories about how much we get preyed on These sorts of systems need both an 18 rating and a gambling warning on the PEGI/ESRB rating And even then I would prefer they were just banned outright You can’t take a child to a casino but you can take the casino to the child (and you don’t even get the booze and buffet so it’s even worse)
I hate that I’ve seen people defend this game by saying “it’s only KIND of pay to win”. Pay to win doesn’t mean you can buy a literal win match button. It means you get an advantage over other people that other people either can’t unlock or it takes an unrealistic amount of time for the majority of people to unlock. Keep in mind everything could be unlocked in Battlefront 2 if you spent enough time playing it (just like in unite) but that didn’t stop people from rightfully ripping EA apart.
The only pay to win thing in the game is the held items and you can EASILY get three or four of them to level 20 without spending a dime. Considering only four of them are viable, and they just updated the game to make getting said upgrades even easier, I really have no idea how you could argue it's pay to win. Especially since there isn't even a massive difference between players with and without the items.
Imagine paying for, quite possibly, hundreds of extra dlc pokemon coming after unites launch? Instead you can choose to pay for pokemon or you can bank coins to get them for free. The only real monetization issues are the held items, which has be addressed with this most recent season 2 update. Its not perfect, but its a hell of a lot better.
Watching this video made me realize and inconsistency that's kind of related here. If I recall correctly, the Pokemon company had to remove the game corner from remakes and future releases because it encouraged gambling and that wasn't allowed. And yet now they created a game that has gambling built into its core. They should have to remove that, for the same argument. Many of these features are complete and legitimate gambling, so if they can't be offered to kids in the form of a animated slot machine, they shouldn't be allowed to be offered in a in-game economy system either.
Governments do PEGI firced it out gif it’s rating and Belgium has outright banned it to the point EA backed down so it couldn’t be used as precedent elsewhere abd dismiss the gambling commission’s decision as just an “interpretation”
I'm going to show this video to my kids as a "why we aren't doing this game." They love you, Arlo, and they are getting old enough to start to understand this stuff. Thank you for making this.
thank you for raising your kids with good games that don’t exploit them. I had bad experiences with mobile games as a kid (though I had plenty of good games too!), but my parents weren’t educated on their predatory nature until it was too late.
I mean you can tell the game uses bad practices. But it still doesn't change the fact that you can just win F2P like me and have fun, unlike other MOBAs like league of legends which are toxic AND has toxic business practices such as buffing characters that gets a new skin or making skins for the chinese public only. Or learn your kids patience and just play for a long time and let the whales throw their money away as you achieve the same things but free
Once again thank you for actually not just sucking up to Pokemon whenever they do scummy things with their games. I really hope you continue to always be that prime example of someone that can see both the good and bad of something and then truly acknowledge how they don't just balance each other out. Pokemon gets away with too much on brand power alone and it really needs to change since by extension of that brand power, they have the power to do a lot of harm to the game's industry with what they normalize.
“They have the power to do a lot of harm to the game industry with what they normalize” Bro they are literally just copying what is already NORMAL in the game industry lol
The Pokemon Company is getting worse and worse every day. Soon it will be just as bad as EA if it isn't already. All it takes is one look at any of their modern games to tell how little effort they put in and how manipulative they are.
This. One of the reasons I actually enjoy Arlo’s content is his lack of bias (for the most part). He doesn’t suck up to the people who allow for him to pay his bills. His videos on the Sword and Shield dilemma really made me respect his opinion.
@@samuelthecamel Their modern games aren't all bad. I mean, Pokémon Sword and Shield was actually pretty good, despite its flaws. Was it worth $60? Probably not, but it's still worth playing if you can somehow get it at a discount.
Genshin Impact while having a good reputation also heavily attempts to manipulate its user base with lootboxes, scarce exp, the game encourages you to level up your characters, but later you'll discover you got to be careful with who you level because you'll find less EXP the more you play. Even if you know this you might want to hold out on leveling up your characters until you got what you want, and what you want it probably locked behind a wish, and wishes have a low to very low chance of giving you what you want. It also has a reward for logging in daily, it has daily challenges, and even double reward for completing them. The way the game is going about it is very sneaky. It's a complex system made to make you keep playing and entice you to spend money. The people that spend money on wishes very likely do not realize how low their chances are of receiving what they want. Thus they spend again when they don't get it. The reason why the developers are able to create endless content and this incredible looking game in the first place must because of all the people that burned their money on wishes. It does have a ton of currencies too but I understand what each of them does.
tbh the moment the game showed its ugly gacha grind face to me i immidiatly jumped ship. and i dont even think the game is that fun and engaging. its just a weird mix of an open world game with very generic story, action jrpg and waifu sim. pretty calculated mix that has no soul or own identity whatsoever.
@@Foxshir0 Some people can't help themself with theses type of games if they see a character they really like they try to get it and max it out for me when I play genshin impact I only spend a little because I like the game I only buy the monthly gems and the battle pass and I play 4-5 hour on work days and about 10 hours on weekends.
this is essentially the boiler plate to all gacha games sadly, give or take the exp deficiency part source: me, have played hundreds and still do, active in many gacha communities
There's some F2P games where the monetization is fair or only a little scummy but Pokemon Unite is unfortunately one of the worst offenders I've seen of greedy monetization tactics
I'm glad you brought up TenCent, as soon as I saw their name associated with this game I immediately knew the game would be like this and promised myself to never touch it, I even warned at least one of my friends about TenCent and why they should be wary of touching this game. My #1 biggest fear is that, by partnering with them on this game, Nintendo may decide to bring them back for even bigger future projects... If that happens I may stop buying Nintendo games altogether.
tencent has owned warframe for about a year now and the extremely fair monetization that game has is still there, nothing has changed over-reactionaries
Tencent makes EA look like a saint. They keep finding ways to make games that have more and somehow easier ways to vacuum up your money. EA may be evil but tencent has managed to drag the entire mobile game industry to their model.
Except like, at this point, it's really not that big of a deal now. With those three bonus max level item enhancers, it's way easier to actually get those items you need on top- and invest everything else to level 20 items, which are hardly a downgrade from level 30 items.
Stop cribbing. Paying to buy costumes and more Pokemon does not give you an edge over other people as the gameplay is balanced. Paying to upgrade held items and buy battle items is the only way one could get an edge over other players, but with the not-so-recent updates, low level players could bring 3 of their items to max level just by reaching the required level. And so many missions and events means it is easy to make the currency while playing the game. You can also exchange one in-game currency for another. Level based matchmaking ensures you will battle against players of similar capability. It's a very slight pay to win at this point and nothing too outrageous. At the end of the day, the people who made this game happen do need to earn money as well.
I love that you used the "its for kids" on them at the end. It feels right and just. Im understanding that the series is for kids, but in this case you cant have it both ways. Thanks again Arlo!
Thank you for mentioning the psychology bring exploited in these matters. As a psychology student I find the use of tools used to treat addiction and dependency twisted like this to addict people, frankly repugnant.
You forgot the fact that the coins are capped, so you can't even play enough to get all the characters. It holds you back, just so people who play a whole lot can't get everything.
There actually is a pretty distinctive difference between loot boxes and "real" gambling that I never see anyone bring up. Getting lucky in "real" gambling rewards you with some of your money back. Loot boxes don't even give you anything of actual value in return. It's literally *worse* than "real" gambling.
Not if you win on your first try, you got a cosmetic for cheaper and saved money. You "won" some of the money you'd have spent back. It is still bad though.
It's not worse. The big danger of actual real gambling is that notion that you can make back your losses which causes people to constantly keep gambling in the hope they do, not knowing or not caring that it's rigged against them. There's no losses with lootboxes, it's just stuff you want vs stuff you don't want. You can perceive the stuff you don't want as a loss, but you can't "make it back" by opening more lootboxes. You just keep going until you get what you want. In the case of Unite, at least stuff from the lootboxes can be gotten by other means, so if you really want the talonflame skin you can just buy it.
@@TheOnlyCelciAndDontYouForgetIt You probably have to pay a fair amount to get what you want even if you got lucky and got every item the first time. Do you want that perfect level 11 set of items? There are 5 items. It costs you $1 per loot box and you need to get lucky and get 10 weapon level ups per item. Therefore the minimum you'd have to pay would be $55 if you got the weapons and upgrades one after another. It's just an example but that's way more expensive than it looks when you pay only a dollar for the premium loot box...
@@TheOnlyCelciAndDontYouForgetIt Yes and no, I made my comment joking stating it is still bad in the end... but unfortunately some people do win on their first try. Too many people participate with high enough odds it happens. It is the fact they can that helps justify it in their minds, the ability to "save" money and I saw people legit justify it with this argument before as if it cleansed the toxicity of loot boxes. It is still bad, but unfortunately some people do win which means they get hooked. Then it is too late as they believe they have savings when they lost more. After all they lost 2$ as opposed to paying 15$ for the item. They never think of the numbers adding... It just sucks and is bad in the end.
Something that makes me unreasonable sad about the predatory monetization discussion is how long it's been going on and how so many just accept it at this point. It feels like it's just gonna get worse because why would any company not try to push it further?
All of these predatory practices got normalized in the mobile gaming industry quite early on, and were applied to a generally more casual audience that wouldn't be invested enough to speak up on the issue. These companies didn't start getting called out until they began to encroach on the console market where the more seasoned gamers already knew what it's like not being so heavily exploited, and would be in a position to have much stronger opinions on the subject.
I was against the practice from the start but once you mentioned parents, especially older ones, potentially being completely oblivious to the concept, that's when it really hit. Imagine being in your 40s or 50s as someone who hasn't kept up with video games at all since childhood, or hasn't even touched a game in their life; in your mind, your kid need only spend money once on a game in order to enjoy all of it. If it's then revealed that they've been buying in-game items behind your back, it's understandable to not only feel scammed but also be confused that this is something games are even able to include. Though parents should take some accountability for what their kids consume, unfortunately in many cases they're just not informed enough to understand what's going on. Too many people are quick to blame the parents for letting their kids give in to microtransactions and not the companies that practice and often encourage such things in the first place.
DO-CTOR It's used as an example of how modern parents pay absolutely no attention to their children. The tripe being taught in public schools right now is enough to justify torching them and if a parent can't even be assed to pay attention to that, how can you expect them to pay attention to their children's hobbies? It's a complete failure by parents, through and through.
@@Steve_Johnson_ As I said in my comment, while parents *should* make more efforts to understand the things their children get into, that doesn't excuse those companies doing these things in the first place. I'm not saying parents hold zero blame at all, but putting ALL the blame on them is quite narrow-minded.
*"The parents should be the ones supervising kids into not spending real money in these video games through consistent gambling with Loot Box microtransactions, it's not the company's responsibility to make sure kids don't spend money in these money giving schemes."* If that's the case, then have casinos remove the Age 18+ entry requirement then. Casinos should be allowed to let little kids and teenagers play in the casinos' games, and the parents should be the only ones in charge of restricting their spending habits, not the casinos being the ones imposing these restrictions. If you argue that video games with gambling like elements that cost real money shouldn't be restricted to little kids, then the same should be said for casinos then as casinos have the exact same electronic games with gambling like elements involving real money spending as these games with Loot Box microtransactions.
I'd support that... If your kids can buy tens or even hundreds of dollars of real money digitally UNSUPERVISED, that's on you as a parent. My kid won't be able to spend even $1 even if they can physically get their hand on my credit card.
@@goonerOZZ Parents should indeed supervise their children and not let them spend real money by themselves, that's indeed something that needs to be a regular thing; but the point of my previous comment was that the argument made by Microtransaction Defenders that the companies offering the gambling like microtransactions should literally not be held responsible in the least for letting kids interact with their gambling like elements is ludicrous. Casinos are restricted by force to not allow minors to interact with their Slot Machines and other gambling schemes, so these video games with gambling like microtransactions should be equally age restricted as they are no different to casinos with how they psychologically manipulate consumers into spending money. If casinos are age restricted because of them having addictive gambling with real money involved, then these video games with Loot Box microtransactions that are marketed towards children (cough* Mario Kart Tour, Pokemon Unite, FIFA, Madden, NBA 2K, etc.) should also be age restricted as they are no different to Slot Machines in casinos.
I'd hate to be that guy, but casinos would jump at the opportunity like a back alley transaction gone wrong in terms of making teens/kids gamble. Shit they're practically doing that right now.
You can walk away from casinos with *real* *money* . As in winnings. You can also get alcohol in casinos and smoke in some of them, and there are casinos with other features as well. *Edit: Parents need to become responsible. Too many parents make their kids the responsibility of a third party, then they are surprised why their child disrespects them, wastes their life or cuts all ties and contact with their parents after becoming an adult, over the slightest disagreement or doesn't want to become a parent themselves.
As someone who's watched Jim Sterling stuff for the past two or so years and noticed some of your more critical content lately kinda resembling that, it's nice to hear you mention them and helping push the good fight
Also a big Sterling fan, and it’s refreshing to see more and more of the community talk about these issues, especially people who normally wouldn’t. Thanks for speaking out Arlo!
Yeah that’s what I was thinking, Jim isn’t the only person talking about this but they’re one of the only people being as vocal and critical as they are about the problem and why it’s happening so it’s good to see more awareness about these issues from Arlo and other people like him
@@cheezyfilmsproductions1842 An arbok gets slashed in half after it spits acid on another pokemon that god damn _melts._ There are other really graphic pokemon deaths too during the story. Pretty grim stuff but also funny in how it flies in the face of the family friendly image the company pushes.
Bringing out this F2P style game and getting kids addicted to gambling, while simultaneously removing the game corner from old Pokémon games and remakes…
Immortals Fenyx Rising was one of my favorite games from last year... but every time Hermes encouraged me to visit his store where I could spent real American dollars it felt super gross. I wish all microtransactions would just be banned outright; or regulated like gambling to the point that it becomes so onerous that only the most dedicated shills would still include them in their games.
I was so hyped for that game before release, but after they announced DLC before it even came out and after I saw all of the microtransactions I even didnt care enough to buy it. Its sad how this practices can ruin an entire game that would otherwise be very good
That's how many mobile games already work Less than a a quarter of free to play mobile game's player base actually spend a significant amount of money But the small percentage who do aka The whales as they're referred too Spend so much that they carry this business model alone
I remember growing up in the late 90s and seeing how amazing 3D graphics were looking at that time, and everyone always wondered how amazing games were going to look like in 10-20 years........the business practice the gaming industry is in the middle of now was NEVER how we thought gaming was to look like in the future.
First of all: Thank you for making this video. What i noticed is that mostly older players are upset about those buisness models. It seems like teens are already getting used to them, which is very worrysome. Also it’s not just f(r)ee to p(l)ay games anymore. Companies are trying to force those models into fullprice games for years now. And while gamers are still successfully pushing back for now, we will lose the game in a long run, if we cant educate the younger generations. Thats why Videos like yours are so important.
I'm getting Pokémon Shuffle flashbacks. I played from day 1, had a TON of fun, did everything there is to do, never spent a cent on it. But at some point it became literally impossible to place well in online competitions without paying because the game was overrun with players spending the big bucks. It basically became pay-to-win. The newly added stages were equally bullshit, literally impossible to win without using expensive items. After struggling for months I admitted to myself that a game I used to enjoy was totally ruined by micro-transactions and pay-to-win players and I just quit.
Wow, the whole "bots that act like human" to keep you playing thinking you're wining is something Kyle Bosman talked in one of his Delayed Inputs (nice show btw), don't remember which episode, but daaamn, he wasn't talking like it'd be a good thing either. Things are evolving fast (no pun intended).
Remember Mario Run? It was a free download where you can play the first world and it launched with only one in-app purchase: unlocking the rest of the game for a fixed price. I thought this was perfect and exactly how Nintendo would and should approach the mobile market. But people hated it. It was review bombed on the appstore by people calling it not f2p or a disguised demo. Ever since, AC and MK:T launched with more typical monetarizations and if the reviews on the app store are anything to go by, they are widely accepted. Can't say they didn't try to be more ethical. People just seem to prefer being ripped off.
Honestly, that's more a case of Nintendo lying than people wanting to be ripped off. The point of "free to play" games is that the ENTIRE game is FREE. Yes, people _can_ pay to get more things, better things, or just a gameplay advantage, but every stage, every mode, is _available_ even if you don't spend a cent. If you offer people one chapter or stage or world for free and require them to pay to play the rest of the game- that's not a free to play game, it's a free demo for a paid game.
@@Silburific What lies are you referring to here? I was trying to find any official advertisements that claimed the game was Free to Play and couldn't find any.
I'm loving this season so far. The start of the ArloVerse is quickly expanding with the many arlos appearing in each n every video. I am loving this. :D
microtransactions have literally always been gross. I was in college over 10 years ago when this practice started and it was always a head scratcher for me.
Jim Stephanie Sterling has been fighting the good fight against unbridled video game industry avarice for going on a decade now, it’s cool that people are funny catching up and realizing “hey, this has all gone too far, they’re encouraging children to gamble and are preying on the uninformed”.
If you guys haven't watched it, Curio's video on Pokémon Unite's monetization and gameplay loop touches on a lot of Arlo's points and adds a bit more to boot. She even talks about how the cosmetics CAN impact the gameplay by implying that a player with a skin could be a veteran player to avoid during the match. It's a really good watch!
YES fr he’s clearly not a blind fanboy and will speak out against injustices and when Nintendo just does something shitty. I’m so sick of content creators being blind to Nintendo’s faults and being critical of Nintendo’s critics themselves
The best retour I saw a kid having in a free to play game with monetization was, as Arlo says, some of his friends making fun of him from not having a skin that was popular. His reply was simply "Yes I don't have but I still kick your ass without it..."
You mentioned the surveys that they put out, and honestly, those worry me a lot as well. I've seen examples of companies who use these surveys under the guise of "getting feedback", when really their purpose is "tell us all the things we can make better, so we can then monetise them and charge you ridiculous amounts for the solutions to problems that we deliberately engineered".
The worst part is that the game is genuinely fun, and I could even see myself maybe buying the battle pass if that guaranteed that I get the full experience, but the monetization is so rampant that even buying the battle pass alone won't balance me out with the people who spend much more money. If it was a bad game I wouldn't care about the monetization because I wouldn't play it anyways, but it pains me because this could be a very enjoyable experience
Pokémon unite is not pay to win, people who waste a ton of money on this game are doing exactly that, wasting money. The only thing that decides if you win is how dumb your teammates/the opponents are.
@Dice The issue is that you CAN get the items and Pokemon that the top players for free and not that you WILL get them. It's all up to how much you play and chance. You have to put in a ton of work and by the time you do get the items, the paying players will have moved the bar and the items you obtained are going to be outclassed via new and better items, new strategies or even strategies specifically to beat what the top paying players have. The reason you fall farther and farther behind is because the paying players will level up much faster than you due to keeping up with the meta and thus keep winning while you are grinding to get the meta and earning less XP and levels in the same space of time. Every time the meta shifts you'll have to start grinding again, thus level up at a slower pace, causing you to fall even farther behind. The devs can easily make it so just as you manage to catch up to the paying players, the meta changes. Eventually you'll either hit the level cap and always behind the current meta by how long it takes you to grind for it, or you will be in a situation where you can't level up fast enough to keep up with the whales (the top paying customers) and you'll be in the position of deciding if you'll stay stuck knowing you'll never make it to the top ranks, quitting the game entirely or paying to keep up. Apparently enough players will pay to keep up in the latter situation and extend the life of the game.
@@beez1717 lol. This is such a wild exaggeration of how it works, likely written by someone who simply can't beat people due to a lack of skill. This game is not so complex that the roof jumps up tremendously every 2 weeks because of a "meta shift". There's a pretty good cap on how things outside of skill influence the game. No amount of paying is really going to make up for a lack of skill, and definitely not going to take you from middle ranks to top ranks. Yes, it takes time for new players to get everything, and they might change that when the game is not exclusively new players because it's only 2 months old.
@@beez1717 Dude, it's super obvious from your comments that you dont play the game. you clearly have an incorrect undestanding of how the game operates. Your critiques of the game's f2p elements dont match up to reality
Love how arlo used the pokemon center music found in pokemon Colosseum and gale of darkness and the Colosseum bonus disc as background music along with other music from Colosseum
The victim-blaming is what gets me the most. It’s like some people think of predatory companies and tactics as a force of nature rather than what they actually are, and as such blame the children and their parents for having their brains and ignorance exploited. It’s disgusting.
I respect this video. For context, I’ve put over 100 hours in the game and have only paid 5 dollars for it. I think it’s an amazing addition to the Pokémon franchise. However, your points on playing on gambling addictions and this being for children stand. Continue the great work Arlo.
Typically what i do when i feel like a game is trying to pressure me into "paying to have fun" i just stop playing the game, and it's sad to see that a lot of other people don't have that kind of constraint and will dump hundreds of dollars into a game like this. Looking at how a lot of games these days are made, I'm starting to miss the older days of gaming, without all of these microtransactions being shoved in your face every 5 seconds.
15:45 - This rings more true when I say this: There are skins in Eve Online... spreadsheets in space... where ships are mostly seen as little icons and capsuleer portraits are often disabled because it lets you see who specifically is in chat better. Some skins can cost over $15. For your 8x8 pixel icon. In Space.
"Have you ever played a game with multiple different currencies? It can get very confusing" Anyone who's played any mmo-style game; WoW, FF14, ESO, even something like Fallout 76 which has like 8-10 different currencies for varying specific purposes: Yes, but continue.
The worst part for me is that gambling addiction runs hard in my family, and it was Pokemon that saved me from it. I would spend hours as a kid losing all my money at the Goldenrod Game Corner and then reloading my save. Whole weekends like this. And then one day I realized "Wait, there's no savescumming in real life! I should just never do any real gambling or I will surely make some very bad decisions." Video games were a safe space to practice things and see how your brain reacts to certain scenarios without the danger of real life. This is an incredibly useful tool for a developing brain, because the thought patterns we establish early life become physically imprinted upon the folds of our brains. I work in childcare, and you can see this happen over the course of a couple years, as behaviors and ways of thinking are or aren't enforced. Then came the microtransactions.
I’m always happy when people talk and explain the psychology behind free-to-play and incentive to buy stuff on them. So more people can understand the trap of theses tactics to milk more money of players as they can. (+ a MOBA being a pay-to-win is just a bad game, to my opinion).
What happened to the glory days of legitimately great Pokémon spinoffs like Snap, Mystery Dungeon, and Conquest? Can we just go back to that era, please?
If the fans were more powerful like with sonic or starwars maybe you could establish a baseline. But that's still a ways away cause they keep pulling the "it's a kids game" excuse. Well I'm really sad this is what "kids games" are now. A bunch of microtransaction pushing low effort moneyprinters
@@AlphaladZXA you're dead on. This is a pretty predatory game even by more adult-oriented game standards, but this is more focused towards kids as a sort of "baby's first MOBA." It's so sad to see how far the big N has fallen in the last decade...
@@caderomine8331 this isn't exclusively them, I'd say it's more the pokemon company than nintendo since their own mobile efforts have been dwindling. It's more like why can't the big N step in and more directly help pokemon and get us off this path?
How can you say that cosmetic microtransactions are harmless when you acknowledged that children have been bullied based on what skin they have if any and self expression is extremely important to mental health.
i feel like cosmetics being okay or not depends on the context. in unite, it encourages people to keep buying and is part of a very sinister model. and in a game with lots of nasty kids like fortnite, people will get bullied for not having skins. But in a game like smash with allows you to buy mii costumes, that’s its only source of extra money aside from DLC fighters. In such a high quality game, I don’t feel so bad about buying cosmetics, but I’m also not going to be shamed for not getting them.
@@denzellizasuain563 Developers KNOW this. And that's why they design their games to leverage that fact and monetise the hell out of cool skins. Every single aspect of these games has been designed to extract as much money as possible from people. Its utterly insideous.
Becoming invisible to enemy players while walking through tall grass in the game where you play as Pokemon is the most genius mechanic I've ever heard of.
I'm really happy that none of these predatory gambling games are in my wheelhouse. Aside from Overwatch (which initially won me over with its Hollywood-level animations, kept me around with its surprisingly engrossing gameplay, and then lost me immediately after the Blitzchung incident), I've never had any interest in MMOs, MOBAs, Battle Royales, sports titles, etc. Maybe it's just because I'm not _that_ competitive of a gamer, or maybe I'm just someone who likes to sit down and play something inherently fun instead of inherently frustrating? Regardless, it's nice to watch videos like these, watch the gameplay footage, and be immediately relieved that I wouldn't have touched these games even if they weren't gross.
These games are designed to keep you around, but not to be fun. That's the only way I can describe it. They assume you can't have both, that it's one or the other. ignoring how often people revisit games BECAUSE they're fun. They also tend to be run by actual psychopaths who enjoy human suffering and are physically incapable of feeling pity or bad for another being, so that doesn't help.
Nice prejudice you got there. These games are FREE. Of course they'll have to in some ways earn money. Eitherway in the dozens ofpopular MOBAs, MMOs, Battle Royales I've played, they haven't ever felt "pay to win" ever. "Loot boxes" exists, but those are only for cosmetics which honestly doesn't sound predatory at all.
The fact that it was made by Tencent immediately turned me away from it. I don't think installing anything from a company that is essentially the tech branch of the Chinese government is a good idea, let alone the game being pay-to-win as heck.
@Dice The game is still very immoral for how it targets children and tries to get people addicted with its monetization, but you're right that it is not pay to win.
@@cortster12 there is nothing you can pay money for that you can not earn for free. Someone wasting $20 on gems to buy items is not an advantage over someone who buys the same things with coins.
I am so very happy that you are spreading the good word of The Jimquisition in a package that is accesible to kids. That series is a bit much for youngsters, but the truth in it is E for everyone. Folk like you and Jim are doing actual games journalism.
I have my defenses for the model as a whole when used properly, but unite is another story all together. Take the MOBA genre, which has a reputation for being one of the most toxic and unfriendly to noobs, slap pikachu's face on it to attract kids, then use the f2p model on top of it? 3 strikes, you're out. I have no intention of touching the game, and MOBA alone was enough to convince me. Add in the factor of making whales of kids and introducing those same kids to one of the most toxic genres, even if unite is generally clean and i cannot get behind the hype.
Frankly, this is the only moba I've really enjoyed. The gameplay is quick and a blast give it a shot. Like arlo said, its REALLY easy to play this free
@@alicewonder259 I will admit, my stance mostly comes from being burned before. I did not try one of the big ones like DOTA or League, but the one i did try was impossible to learn when the pros are mad that a noob made them loose, and i cant stand a chance against even bots. Ever play a game and be met with "i would rather have a bot. leave noob."? How is one supposed to learn the game if they cant make mistakes or even play, as everyone would rather have a bot. If i started with unite, i might have had a warmer perspective for MOBAs in general, but i didnt, and i experienced the toxicity first hand from an off brand one that did not even have the audience of League or DOTA.
@@alicewonder259 dont get me wrong, it is tempting to some extent, but i am not dealing with it. If i like it, that just means i will go back into trying the more toxic ones, and for my sanity i choose not to. Unite isnt without its own faults, and this entire video is pointing out some of the worst ones. Pokemania can only last so long before it wears thin, and giving children a gambling addiction is still pretty condemning.
If you want a great example of game companies putting on a happy face to manipulate reviewers, then turning evil on their fan base, look no further than CTR: Nitro-Fueled, which had zero microtransactions until the review scores came in.
None of them were bad or predatory. Literally playing 10 races every weekend would get you enough coins to buy everything in the current season AND the next season. You could even get 20 weekend + daily bonuses if you knew a trick.
I saw TenCent was involved and stayed faaaar away. Seeing other TH-camrs demonstrate how much you can power level by means of Mom's Credit Card just reinforced my decision.
I'm surprised the videos of James Stephanie Sterling are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Their video format is a bit weird at times, but totally worth it if you want to know the dark truth about this industry.
I with 100% you, Arlo! Thanks so much for telling it like it is and calling out those micotransactions. People s complacency with the practice led to this almost as much as the developers themselves.
Pokemon manga in general is grim as hell. The pokemon adventures manga (specifically the kanto ones following Red) had some gnarly stuff, I mean Giovanni's Cloyster fucking froze and snapped a Magmar in half, and thats probably one of the more tame things in it.
Right before this video went out The Pokémon Company announced that they were making it easier to level up items in the new update. I'm happy to see the game moving in the right direction as far as pay-to-win goes, but that was only one of its problems. I feel the points in this video very much still stand.
I agree with you. I really wish this game just cost an upfront cost
Thank god. The game really did need a tone down. At least it’s not as bad as before
game isn't p2w this is old news
The whole Pokémon thing is really confusing. I'm not really into it. But dang, I see all this bad stuff and think about what Pokémon COULD be and it's just all so hard to wrap one's head around.
time travel
Arlo: "Pokémon UNITE is a very gross thing"
Nintendo: "Yes, Pokémon UNITE is grossing in very well, thank you!"
Yeah this seems like a reasonable Nintendo response to this video
More like TPC and Tencent but yeah
hahaha
This made me lol
@@andr0zzsenpai i believe nintendo just paid tencent a fixed amoun t of money for updating and making the game, and theyre just soing what nintensays
I think what really got me here is the point regarding how Pokemon is a children's game. You're absolutely right.
There can be arguments made about gambling and whatnot, but even places where casinos and such are allowed, you have to be an ADULT to participate. So having a heavily children-oriented game filled with what are, undoubtedly, gambling-based strategies, is no short of predatory.
I can only hope that they tone it down going forward, but man, I'd REALLY REALLY rather just pay a full $60 at the start than even think about dealing with this nonsense
Or you can be sign a contract with the devil and go the Fifa route
Pay for the game AND have all that is mentioned in Arlo's video
Plus in my personal opinion everything that Tencent touched ROT by just being put a leash by them
Like i liked Warframe and the wholesome story about developers stopping a person from grambling A LOT OF MONEY in their lootbox and removing/fixing that
BUT
It was bought by Tencent all that wholesomeness is thrown out the window
Even if maybe the game is the same as before Tencent
Just the thought of being owned by them leaves me with a SOUR taste in my mouth and a sense of dread of that ROT spreading through that game if maybe is already happening
I don't know
I can't side with you more. the most you can pay for ONE of the micro transactions in almost TWICE THE PRICE of a 60$ game. Did you see it!? 99.99$ for that many gems.
It’s not gambling
80$ games still have this though. F2P mechanics have spread to everything.
I love that older Pokémon games are now rated 18+ in Europe because the game corner could turn kids in gambling addicts, but a game that has psychological studies behind it to turn players into gambling addicts with real money involved is perfectly fine for a child to play.
Yeah crazy how they STILL can’t put the game corner in the remakes and yet THIS is somehow allowed.
if you
Have enough money you can do anything
I was looking for a comment like this. It's so ironic parents and Nintendo were concerned about kids gambling fake money in an optional minigame, but now they can gamble with real money that's a main part of the game! Progress at it's finest...
@@rockinrootbeer1795
Parents apparently haven't quite figured it out enough yet, and Nintendo execs probably did not care enough to fight for the game corner. Its loss hardly affects them. Meanwhile, losing money does.
All that said, these practices are crap, and I say especially in the case of pay-to-win and lootboxes. Everything else I honestly don't care about staying. By the time those things are removed, I hope the present parents have brain and patience enough to limit their kids on the rest.
P.S.: I do not consider buying playable characters to be pay-to-win, except maybe if the meta is blatantly skewed, which would probably be the next thing to pop up once other things are gone.
I don't know how someone could became addicted to gambling with the Game Corner. It makes you hate your life
It's still so weird to me that the Australian Classification System rates Pokemon Diamond and Pearl at PG for "Mild Gambling References", but Pokemon Unite can get through with no notice of this despite having... actual gambling.
I dunno, I played Pokemon Unite when it released in Mobile and I haven't seen anything in it that can remotely be considered "gambling"???????????????
@@rooks9430 You can pay real money to be able to get more items from the loot box system.
@@videogamemusic2962 look like you havent tried it. i dont even think the rewards from those loot box is worth it.. because it's mostly clothes and pokemon skins.
@@kiattim2100 yeah, it isn’t worth it at all, but people like skins and end up paying for them. And yes, I have played Pokémon Unite.
@@videogamemusic2962 yeah, literally like any other games that have dlc? How is paying for something "gambling"??????? You and this channel are so good at hyperboles it's disgusting how many people get mislead by these low effort criticisms
"I don't want to go on an hour long rant."
I, personally, am here for the hour long rant.
Also, I really appreciate you calling out this gross behavior from game developers.
Arlo always talking about how he tries to limit his videos but I'm always wanting longer videos lol
The devs don't give a shit.... they are from China!
Game _publishers._
@@Matanumi This is a very deceptively racist statement because it casts blame on "The Other" (ie non-white people), and ignores that game companies all over the world are capable of this too. Nintendo, EA, GameFreak, Niantic... it's not just an "overseas problem China is causing", it's a result of unchecked capitalism and these mega-corporations using any means necessary to get more money than they have now.
I'm here for the 2 - 3 hour rants. Maybe we could use this too! *holds up nectarine on top of an empty water bottle* I don't know, hey, let's get kinky!
I love how your channel is so accessible and friendly to children while still having videos that discuss serious and important topics such as this. You're exposing kids to some really important facts here, and I just think that that's awesome.
children will not understand most of what he is saying
@@maegnificant Children are smarter than most people think tbh
@@patrickramseyart yes but the words are too complicated
@@maegnificant A child could definitely understand the entire premise and most concepts talked about in the video, even with those "complicated words".
@@WHIPTY I'd say that it depends on how you would define "political." In my opinion, this video itself is actually very political. But it still fits within this channel because it's focused on the video game industry, and it also actually makes meaningful points about the issue at hand rather than making shallow remarks about the personalities involved in politics.
Yeah I'm just done with the whole F2P concept. I remember tweeting about it (and surprise surprise had a ton of people defending me and calling me ignorant). But nah, I think on the whole, the industry is worse because of it.
Yeah pretty much. It is like a slippery slope where more and more games outsource their actual game design to their monetization model when talking about micro transactions as a whole
Yep its a very difficult topic to discuss as their is many diferent points specially for diferent games, i have play fate go and currently Genshin impact and i can say it's perfectly fine to play for free but yea the gatcha and F2P is design to get a lot of money from people.
Also you "tweeted" wath do expect from Twitter hahaha.
The only game I've ever played that did it right was Warframe. Everything else has just turned into some damn casino.
@@Rprot_traveler I have to disaggree about FGO being fine since the grind to max out Servants you gained is too much. Also the rates for SR chars are much lower conpared to other gachas. Until FEH Pass Fire Emblem Heroes did it better imo. I have to aggree on that sone games do it better than others tho.
EDIT: Bleach Brave Souls was the most generous Gacha out of all I've played and had the best min-maxing processes I think
hey, i recognize you from the box art for vengeful spirit on the gameboy. big fan!
I'm so glad Arlo is talking about this. It's one thing for Stephanie Sterling or Curio to call out disgusting behavior, but having Arlo call it out helps normalize calling it out.
While watching this video I poked a friend who I know watches Arlo that this could be basically a video Step made in terms of the overall talking points - and him pointing out the work of them at the end made me smile :)
Yeah more people need to join in on calling out nonsense like this
You don’t need someone to “normalize” calling out bad behaviors in games. If you won’t call something out because it isn’t “normalized” then you have no business calling it out at all.
This isn't really calling out anything honestly you could some up this whole video in one sentence. Its a Gacha game.
This discussion is as old as dirt at this point and to be frank Unite isn't even the worst offender but its that bigger question of personal responsibility vs in forcing regulations on gacha systems
Because if you ever opened a pack of Pokémon cards or bought a kids meal its the same feeling this isn't some new thing Arlo discovered its a thing he and everyone have been exposed to since birth.
McDonald's Burger's have a chemically taste but everything from dollar menu to the red and yellow colors to store locations and how they've trained a generation of children to like there inexpensive low quality burger and feed it to there kids is cooperate manipulation.
Hell as much as people rail on Twitter there's actually no difference between it and commenting on a video.
This video feels like nothing because it adds nothing to the conversation micro transaction are evil but DLC functions the same way especially how there incorporated.
If he wanted to make a video something beyond Gacha is evil would have felt impactful. Hell there are actual benefits to the system beyond treating every person like a potential victim. But that would mean putting more thought into the discussion
@@Restinspaghetti except human behavior has consistantly been to ignore or explain away horrible things so as not to upset people or be considered a muck-raker. having someone like arlo(a personality that goes out of his way to say good things about everything and vehemently avoid all but the most mild confrontations) publicly say that this is unacceptable and inappropriate helps other people who give a pass to rotten practices to not give this a pass too
or tl;dr
if only staunch advocates for fair and safe practices said anything then most all bad stuff can just be weathered or ignored. everyone who sees the problem needs to call it out
Gotta love how they got rid of the fake gambling in the main games because it's bad for kids, but they're perfectly fine with real gambling
Such a good comment
I'm amazed that people were surprised by this, tbh. I knew this was gonna be fishy the second I saw it was being developed by Tencent.
Exactly, I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned that. People are going after the Pokémon Company (and they definitely approved this) but I feel like Tencent is one of those companies that tries to keep it’s name under the hood as much as they can because of all the bad press they’ve had, so it’s important for people to remember who the real enemies are in this situation. Of course it’s the same people that basically made a roulette style social media app for kids smh
Yep same.
Tencent is seriously one of the most cartoonishly, unabashedly evil corporations of the real world. They try to hide their name, while trying to get literal children to gamble. They might as well wear top hats and twirl their mustaches and smoking cigars.
I don't think a lot of people were surprised. Even Arlo said this was predictable.
@@bugjams At least they aren't exploiting child labor like Roblox, I guess. But I'm sure you can find much worse than gambling sold to children, like Shinra-level of bad.
Describing the infamous "Let's Go Whaling" conference as the "horror movie equivalent of a GDC talk" had me in stitches lol, that was great.
Its interesting that using free skins and content in a mobile game can get you made fun of by peers. Like years ago when children were made fun of for not having designer shoes.
Another humorous gdc talk, it's called 1500 slot machines walk into a bar a lesson of quantity over quality
Your azura PFP makes me think you whaled for feh
@@ThomasOwOD Nah. I don't play FEH.
@@lthc_hiryu well it'd be funbier
@@Justagamerhere1 I used to teach kids pre-pandemic, and I can't really understate just how much Roblox and Fortnite means to them. As ridiculous as it sounds that kids are getting bullied for not having the latest skins, after seeing how much the game means to them it wasn't too hard to imagine (there wasn't any bullying between the kids I taught, as far as I know).
Arlo: I don't want go on an hour long rant
Arlo's fans: *Sad noises*
As far as I'm concerned, The Pokémon Company joining forces with Tencent is the tech equivalent of a Super Villain Team-Up.
Back in the day the Pokemon company teaming with Tencent would be like a hero (Pokémon) teaming up with the villain ten cent, but now they’re both villains
Team golden rocket
Sounds like a real life Team Rocket scheme
"Meanwhile at the Legion of Doom"
[Tencent, EA, Nike, Facebook, Google,Tik Tok, PETA, and every major news network}
Satan: Hey guys thanks for the invite! I look forward to...
The Legion: Yes we looked at your application and according to your resume we're afraid your not right for us.
Satan: ...but...but do you know who i am?
The legion: Yes its gonna be a no from us. Your just not evil enough sir maybe try again when youve done a little more
Satan: Dammit!
@@raymondjones7423 Kind of an exaggeration, don’t you think? Honestly, Satan’s the one calling the shots here, not the opposite.
It's almost as if Tencent is a horrible company.
This message brought to you by a former LoL addict.
Lol
You don't even need to play video games to understand how horrible of a monopoly Tencent has on the industry. They're the pinnacle of an abysmal corporation that's driven by greed and power
I played Aov so I know the horrid nature. I was fearful when nintendo paired with them. There were better options.
If you don't feel compelled to spend money on microtransactions then congrats, you're not the target victim. The tactics they use are most affective on current or recovering gambling addicts, children and neurodivergent people, which just adds an extra level disguisting on top of the whole thing
It gets worse than that, because the people that aren’t the target victims are just going to be experiencing a game that they get to play for free! meaning that the good reviews they leave and the discussion they provoke around these games will lead to more people hearing about them and trying them out, including other potential whales! Even the f2p players are being manipulated!
The problem with the, "You don't have to spend any real money" argument is that, as the life of the game increases & more content comes out, newer & newer players are boxed out as old players no longer have to grind as much to get basic tools to efficient states, thereby pressuring new players to spend to just compete with the preexisting base. This in turn often leads to a drop off in new players and encourages further reliance on old players & whaling to continue to extract profit as new players die off and/or are unwilling to grind or spend more just to see if they like the game.
In other words, the model starts tainting the soil of its own environment from the jump, and just keeps making it more and more toxic to new growth as time goes on, and the more the devs invest in that model, the faster it happens.
It's easy to say it's impossible to get addicted for the people that don't have addicted tendencies. They think that just stopping cold turkey is the easiest thing in the world because they can do it no problem.
It's a similar model to what Hearthstone had, where once upon a time you could collect every card without spending anything, but now they're a dozen expansions in and it's genuinely not possible.
I don't know how Unite handles its lootboxes, but if all Pokémon are in the same pool that lootboxes pull from, then that means players will be less likely to randomly pull what they want each time new Pokémon get added to the pool. Hearthstone sold its lootboxes by putting each expansion's cards in a unique box, but if this game doesn't do something similar then it will snowball quickly.
@@theotherjared9824 I used to believe it too because I always hated games of chance and anything close to the concept anyway and my parents told me many times that money is only spent once, so I already had a pre-existing aversion to lootboxes and aggressive monetization. Then I saw more and more video game companies dipping into this BS and no longer producing any game that would be worth my time and money and I started to worry for the future of the industry.
@@pikmints no it’s not like that the only thing that would help you progress from the loot box (that you get I think 30 a week) is 320 gold (you need 6,000-10,000 to get certain characters) and 10 item enhancers ( which isn’t a lot) honestly the loot boxes are not worth your money at all
@@pikmints Pokemon are not part of random pulls. You have a chance of possibly getting a small amount of currency than can contribute to purchasing a pokemon, but fortunately you can always choose what pokemon you want to purchase next.
I have yet to spend a penny in this game and I have pretty much all the Pokemon I wanna play and my few held items I like using being maxed out.
I'm not excusing F2P models in general but honestly Pokemon Unite is not that greedy IMO. I'm usually quick to drop F2P games once I get even the slightest hint of feeling the need to pay money to continue playing. Unite hasn't done that yet.
As someone who does competitive public/argumentative speaking, I have to say this video was absolutely incredible and well-made. I have to hand it to Arlo, this is some of your best work. STOP AGGRESSIVE MONOTIZATIONS!
Have you actually played the game to arrive at this conclusion? This video is misleading and inaccurate. Most of the things you can buy in-game are for cosmetic purposes only, they don't provide any advantage in battles.
@@shubhamjohri290 no never played the game. My comment was very specifically on the speaking style and delivery. It was compelling and convincing.
@@shubhamjohri290 Did you even watch the video? That's a point Arlo covers.
I can't believe Arlo admitted to selling kids candy-covered rock burritos while dressed as a teddy bear smh
It's always the ones you trust most. 😥
What a monster!
It's okay! The kid's parents are to blame for not Big Brother watching them 24/7. Arlo can treat kids as horribly as he wants, as long as parents aren't looking!
Out of context this comment section sounds horrible
And to think I believed he was a decent, upstanding monster/muppet! 😩
I swore off of playing pokemon unite the instant Tencent had its name attached to it.
As for monetization: while it can be done ethically, I'm at the point where I don't believe any major game publisher is capable of doing so. The only game I remember playing in recent memory with what felt like reasonable monetization was Warframe... and that was self-published by its developer all the way back in 2013.
Monster hunter world
They sold you gestures and little attachments. It cost usually from 2 bucks to 5 bucks but they had tons of them yet they also had them in bundles if you wanted to buy them all (cost less then buying all separately) all while they have use dlc monsters for free
@@denzellizasuain563 I guess that's true. I honestly ignored all the little add-ons since I didn't use gestures much. But I guess the fact that I could do that without impairment of the game speaks volumes
Smash Bros is pretty good, even if it struggles to meet the popular definition of what a microtransaction is (you pay directly for the character/costume set rather than buying a separate currency), to the point where I bought it even though I normally flat out refuse to pay for games with microtransactions. Haven't bought any of the DLC (mostly because none of it is super appealing to me), but I may do so at some point
@@thetechconspiracy2 that's not microtransactions. That's DLC. There is a difference.
@@xXIxidor92Xx the microtransactions are for the costumes for your mii fighter
Arlo called it. Yesterday they added a skin that costs $40. The price of a FULL game.
Hmmm....skins don't give you any advantage in battle. It's just a damn costume for your Pokemon and Trainer. This is so ridiculous. If you are tempted to buy the skin, you lack discipline. You don't get anything for free, people who make this game happen need to earn.
You could buy both Stardew Valley AND Hollow Knight and still have some money left over. Absolutely ridiculous
Remember when Oblivion had horse armor for 5 bucks? Good times.
@@shubhamjohri290 okay but 40 for a goddamn skin
@@shubhamjohri290 Why comment on a video you clearly didn't watch?
I've seen first hand the kind of damage this can do to players, I've been there myself. I'll never play any game with a monetization model even close to this and nobody else should. It's especially heinous cause almost all these games are targeted at kids who's brains are still developing and are especially susceptible to getting tricked. I really think there need to be some serious legal restrictions on games like this.
Preach good sir....
Impossible, my friend. Capitalism benefits too heavily on ignorance.
Reminds me of back in the 360 days Valve was releasing free updates for TF2 and Microsoft literally forced them to charge money because they wanted people to get used to the idea of paying for DLC. There was an uproar back then, but it seems their plan worked in the long run.
Yeah the sad thing is how much the general reaction to these things has changed so much after years of gradual change.
People would have been OUTRAGED to see this stuff back in the day. Now you have people happily defending it. It's so sad.
@@MahuruRaji You can't defend the f2p scheme. No matter how you look at it, you as a player lose in some significant way. Maybe you can't play much due to an energy system. Maybe it's pay to win. Perhaps it's an ever changing meta you can't keep up with, or perhaps it's the fact it's sucking money out of your wallet like it's next to a black hole!
@@beez1717 I think you’re right. Getting your game to be a success in the first place requires some luck. So putting out a F2P game with fair MTX probably isn’t all that viable. A new game is $60 upfront. F2P you’re not going to drop $60 on the game when you pick it up. Who knows how long it takes that person to make their first in-game purchase, let alone enough for a normal game sale. Your players have to be REALLY invested in a game they just started to put enough money into it, or you have to reach a huge audience so that the smaller dollar amount spent per person adds up enough. I’m sure these games plan for a few months of making little money, but they have to become profitable at some point. And I think to earn that goodwill might take too long to be able to continue supporting the game unless the investors believe in it.
But a lot of these F2P games are from huge companies have the capitol to risk doing F2P fairly, but just don’t. If manipulative tactics work, then sadly, why wouldn’t they take advantage of it while they can? It expedites earning income faster and people are used to it/expect it from those games now so most won’t complain.
Cause people kept buying it and did nothing. They complained. Maybe people should actually just stand by their pronciples and not buy it and the industry might not be so garbage.
Arlo, you truly manage to combine comedy and education in a masterful way. You’re doing the right thing, and i hope you keep it up
Arlo, never be afraid to say the right thing. I've been trying to think of a way to describe to people why loot boxes are an issue and your video helped me so much. It's absolutely awful and we need to stop endorsing companies who do these things, or at the very least communicate to them that these are not the games that we want. I appreciate you being brave and standing up for what's right and I hate that it's controversial to say that you don't like scamming kids lol.
🙏👋👌 Bravo. (lm not being sarcastic, really i like the points you brought up)
@@raymondjones7423 haha! Thanks, Raymond! I appreciate it.
Shouldn't we ban pokemon TCG packs from store shelves as well? These have been around for much longer
@birdscool Exactly! If Nintendo is willing to shut down Dr. Mario World, why the heck should anyone fall for the trap of Pokémon Unite? I know I won’t after being deceived by both Pokémon Rumble World AND Pokémon Quest.
@@GatorOne-in7hk Ugh I was deceived by pokemon quest too, so sad because I genuinely enjoyed it and thought they'd be releasing more maps or dlc! I felt robbed 😭
When your Gaming Franchise's Motto is Gotta catch em all, and the only way to get everything in this game is to spend exorbitant amounts of money, it doesn't do the whole franchise a world of good.
To be fair it's not been their motto since about 2002 but I agree
To be fair to Unite, the ONE crime it can't be accused of is ruining Pokémon; that happened before it was born.
@@PlatinumAltaria How do you mean?
Even in the regular games you can't catch them all anymore. The PCs haven't had enough storage space for that since like Gen 6.
@@quinnsinclair7028 Yes they have?
You touched on something about will power. This is a bigger point than you think. I have ADHD so naturally I gravitate twords videogames. This is harmless on the surface but my brain literally doesn't properly reward itself with dopamine. After Overwatch came out I realized just how bad practices like loot boxes really are. I have to actively avoid such games because Overwatch showed me that if I left myself unchecked I'd easily develop a gambling problem, in large part due to my neurology.
If you think these practices are predatory for regular people, imagine how this can effect people similar neurology to mine. Children with neurology like mine. These kind of conditions, while uncommon, aren't rare.
Man, I totally feel you. I also have ADHD, and I have to avoid these sorts of games just because once I start spending I can’t stop. “Just don’t spend!” Okay, but then the game is way less fun and since it’s clearly rigged to reward the spending of real money that pretty much makes it unenjoyable to me.
I have Autism and I do not know how my brain will react to lootboxes. I do not want to put myself at risk of spending money on them.
So many stories about how much we get preyed on
These sorts of systems need both an 18 rating and a gambling warning on the PEGI/ESRB rating
And even then I would prefer they were just banned outright
You can’t take a child to a casino but you can take the casino to the child (and you don’t even get the booze and buffet so it’s even worse)
I hate that I’ve seen people defend this game by saying “it’s only KIND of pay to win”. Pay to win doesn’t mean you can buy a literal win match button. It means you get an advantage over other people that other people either can’t unlock or it takes an unrealistic amount of time for the majority of people to unlock. Keep in mind everything could be unlocked in Battlefront 2 if you spent enough time playing it (just like in unite) but that didn’t stop people from rightfully ripping EA apart.
It's classist of method like this
It really is not
People exaggerate how much effect it has on the game, thats the point really and after this update, that virtually disappeared.
The only pay to win thing in the game is the held items and you can EASILY get three or four of them to level 20 without spending a dime. Considering only four of them are viable, and they just updated the game to make getting said upgrades even easier, I really have no idea how you could argue it's pay to win. Especially since there isn't even a massive difference between players with and without the items.
@@pokeblade1016 exactly
Should’ve been like Smash Bros. where you unite, battle, and then have to fight the new challenger to unlock them. Can we go back to those days?
Imagine expecting that in a mobile game...
If they would have it into a balanced full price game. Tencent should never have been involved with this.
@@wolfdragox5563 Imagine expecting that in a mobile (FREE to PLAY game)
Imagine paying for, quite possibly, hundreds of extra dlc pokemon coming after unites launch? Instead you can choose to pay for pokemon or you can bank coins to get them for free. The only real monetization issues are the held items, which has be addressed with this most recent season 2 update. Its not perfect, but its a hell of a lot better.
dude that was 3 years ago and it's STILL going. You're quite right.
Watching this video made me realize and inconsistency that's kind of related here.
If I recall correctly, the Pokemon company had to remove the game corner from remakes and future releases because it encouraged gambling and that wasn't allowed.
And yet now they created a game that has gambling built into its core. They should have to remove that, for the same argument. Many of these features are complete and legitimate gambling, so if they can't be offered to kids in the form of a animated slot machine, they shouldn't be allowed to be offered in a in-game economy system either.
tbh i dont really see alot of kids caring about that
IIRC they had to remove the gambling for the games to still receive the E rating
You’re so right
Governments do PEGI firced it out gif it’s rating and Belgium has outright banned it to the point EA backed down so it couldn’t be used as precedent elsewhere abd dismiss the gambling commission’s decision as just an “interpretation”
I'm going to show this video to my kids as a "why we aren't doing this game." They love you, Arlo, and they are getting old enough to start to understand this stuff. Thank you for making this.
Responsible parent achievement Pokémon U unlocked 🔓
Parental goals!
thank you for raising your kids with good games that don’t exploit them. I had bad experiences with mobile games as a kid (though I had plenty of good games too!), but my parents weren’t educated on their predatory nature until it was too late.
I mean you can tell the game uses bad practices. But it still doesn't change the fact that you can just win F2P like me and have fun, unlike other MOBAs like league of legends which are toxic AND has toxic business practices such as buffing characters that gets a new skin or making skins for the chinese public only. Or learn your kids patience and just play for a long time and let the whales throw their money away as you achieve the same things but free
Now that's good parenting!
Once again thank you for actually not just sucking up to Pokemon whenever they do scummy things with their games. I really hope you continue to always be that prime example of someone that can see both the good and bad of something and then truly acknowledge how they don't just balance each other out. Pokemon gets away with too much on brand power alone and it really needs to change since by extension of that brand power, they have the power to do a lot of harm to the game's industry with what they normalize.
You are very based
“They have the power to do a lot of harm to the game industry with what they normalize”
Bro they are literally just copying what is already NORMAL in the game industry lol
The Pokemon Company is getting worse and worse every day. Soon it will be just as bad as EA if it isn't already. All it takes is one look at any of their modern games to tell how little effort they put in and how manipulative they are.
This. One of the reasons I actually enjoy Arlo’s content is his lack of bias (for the most part). He doesn’t suck up to the people who allow for him to pay his bills. His videos on the Sword and Shield dilemma really made me respect his opinion.
@@samuelthecamel Their modern games aren't all bad. I mean, Pokémon Sword and Shield was actually pretty good, despite its flaws. Was it worth $60? Probably not, but it's still worth playing if you can somehow get it at a discount.
you're not over reacting, it IS that bad
VERIFIED COMMENT NO LIKES OR REPLYS??
If anything Arlo is under recreating
I very much dislike most F2P
I don’t understand this bandwagon because I hit master rank without paying for anything
but will you still play it?
Genshin Impact while having a good reputation also heavily attempts to manipulate its user base with lootboxes, scarce exp, the game encourages you to level up your characters, but later you'll discover you got to be careful with who you level because you'll find less EXP the more you play. Even if you know this you might want to hold out on leveling up your characters until you got what you want, and what you want it probably locked behind a wish, and wishes have a low to very low chance of giving you what you want. It also has a reward for logging in daily, it has daily challenges, and even double reward for completing them. The way the game is going about it is very sneaky. It's a complex system made to make you keep playing and entice you to spend money. The people that spend money on wishes very likely do not realize how low their chances are of receiving what they want. Thus they spend again when they don't get it.
The reason why the developers are able to create endless content and this incredible looking game in the first place must because of all the people that burned their money on wishes.
It does have a ton of currencies too but I understand what each of them does.
tbh the moment the game showed its ugly gacha grind face to me i immidiatly jumped ship. and i dont even think the game is that fun and engaging. its just a weird mix of an open world game with very generic story, action jrpg and waifu sim. pretty calculated mix that has no soul or own identity whatsoever.
And it works. I have friends who spend a LOT of money on the game, just to play under an hour every day.
Unite is gross but I don't think anything really compares to the fuckery that is gacha games.
@@Foxshir0 Some people can't help themself with theses type of games if they see a character they really like they try to get it and max it out for me when I play genshin impact I only spend a little because I like the game I only buy the monthly gems and the battle pass and I play 4-5 hour on work days and about 10 hours on weekends.
this is essentially the boiler plate to all gacha games sadly, give or take the exp deficiency part
source: me, have played hundreds and still do, active in many gacha communities
I wouldn’t expect anything less than gross from Tencent...
Yep
Literally Nintendo
@@exetone Nintendo ain’t great, but Tencent is like the Green Goblin of the gaming industry
Tencent is causing the mobile game industry to continue to get significantly worse every moment it exists.
@@exetone Nintendo may not be a great company but Tencent is literally the satan of the gaming industry
There's some F2P games where the monetization is fair or only a little scummy but Pokemon Unite is unfortunately one of the worst offenders I've seen of greedy monetization tactics
My boy bowblax out her spitting fax and blowin backs 😏
@@JLLullaby its "here"
Terrible? Yes.
Worst? Idk
@@Zeverinsen I think if we want to get technical Battlefront 2 by EA is worse. (Although that isn't F2P so IDK)
@@Superstar5_ its also not targeting children.
I'm glad you brought up TenCent, as soon as I saw their name associated with this game I immediately knew the game would be like this and promised myself to never touch it, I even warned at least one of my friends about TenCent and why they should be wary of touching this game.
My #1 biggest fear is that, by partnering with them on this game, Nintendo may decide to bring them back for even bigger future projects... If that happens I may stop buying Nintendo games altogether.
The worst part is that Tencent want information from their users.
Sucks to be you. Played Pokemon Unite in Mobile and it's nowhere near as "pay to win" as you people make it to be. Your lost though, not mine.
@@rooks9430 ikr. People just like to complain about them being in a game.
@@rooks9430 Yeah.. it’s really not that bad.. I’ve been playing it a ton and still having fun.
tencent has owned warframe for about a year now and the extremely fair monetization that game has is still there, nothing has changed
over-reactionaries
It's Tencent, they can't not be evil.
EA but china.
@@roboticjanitor3332
What a wonderful combination, isn't it?..
Tencent makes EA look like a saint. They keep finding ways to make games that have more and somehow easier ways to vacuum up your money. EA may be evil but tencent has managed to drag the entire mobile game industry to their model.
ever since I watched cr1tikal's video where he spent about 100 bucks to upgrade his pokemon I knew this game would have a lot of problems
Except like, at this point, it's really not that big of a deal now. With those three bonus max level item enhancers, it's way easier to actually get those items you need on top- and invest everything else to level 20 items, which are hardly a downgrade from level 30 items.
@@mufflebuns6322 like that ignores the problem
Stop trying to downplay it
@@mufflebuns6322 delusional
@@mufflebuns6322 league will nerf champions by smaller amounts than the bonus stats these items give and that'll make them "unplayable".
Stop cribbing. Paying to buy costumes and more Pokemon does not give you an edge over other people as the gameplay is balanced. Paying to upgrade held items and buy battle items is the only way one could get an edge over other players, but with the not-so-recent updates, low level players could bring 3 of their items to max level just by reaching the required level. And so many missions and events means it is easy to make the currency while playing the game. You can also exchange one in-game currency for another. Level based matchmaking ensures you will battle against players of similar capability. It's a very slight pay to win at this point and nothing too outrageous. At the end of the day, the people who made this game happen do need to earn money as well.
I read the title as "Pokemon Unite is Grass" and wasted some 30 seconds looking at the wall wondering if Arlo had finally lost it
well, if you rearrange the letters of “Pokemon Unite,” you get “grass”!!! therefore pokemon unite is grass.
This sounds more like a YOU thing haha
I love that you used the "its for kids" on them at the end. It feels right and just. Im understanding that the series is for kids, but in this case you cant have it both ways. Thanks again Arlo!
Thank you for mentioning the psychology bring exploited in these matters. As a psychology student I find the use of tools used to treat addiction and dependency twisted like this to addict people, frankly repugnant.
You forgot the fact that the coins are capped, so you can't even play enough to get all the characters. It holds you back, just so people who play a whole lot can't get everything.
I didn't know that. He may not of.
There actually is a pretty distinctive difference between loot boxes and "real" gambling that I never see anyone bring up.
Getting lucky in "real" gambling rewards you with some of your money back. Loot boxes don't even give you anything of actual value in return.
It's literally *worse* than "real" gambling.
Not if you win on your first try, you got a cosmetic for cheaper and saved money. You "won" some of the money you'd have spent back.
It is still bad though.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 But you're never gonna win on your first try so...
It's not worse. The big danger of actual real gambling is that notion that you can make back your losses which causes people to constantly keep gambling in the hope they do, not knowing or not caring that it's rigged against them. There's no losses with lootboxes, it's just stuff you want vs stuff you don't want. You can perceive the stuff you don't want as a loss, but you can't "make it back" by opening more lootboxes. You just keep going until you get what you want. In the case of Unite, at least stuff from the lootboxes can be gotten by other means, so if you really want the talonflame skin you can just buy it.
@@TheOnlyCelciAndDontYouForgetIt You probably have to pay a fair amount to get what you want even if you got lucky and got every item the first time. Do you want that perfect level 11 set of items? There are 5 items. It costs you $1 per loot box and you need to get lucky and get 10 weapon level ups per item. Therefore the minimum you'd have to pay would be $55 if you got the weapons and upgrades one after another. It's just an example but that's way more expensive than it looks when you pay only a dollar for the premium loot box...
@@TheOnlyCelciAndDontYouForgetIt Yes and no, I made my comment joking stating it is still bad in the end... but unfortunately some people do win on their first try. Too many people participate with high enough odds it happens. It is the fact they can that helps justify it in their minds, the ability to "save" money and I saw people legit justify it with this argument before as if it cleansed the toxicity of loot boxes.
It is still bad, but unfortunately some people do win which means they get hooked. Then it is too late as they believe they have savings when they lost more. After all they lost 2$ as opposed to paying 15$ for the item. They never think of the numbers adding...
It just sucks and is bad in the end.
Something that makes me unreasonable sad about the predatory monetization discussion is how long it's been going on and how so many just accept it at this point. It feels like it's just gonna get worse because why would any company not try to push it further?
All of these predatory practices got normalized in the mobile gaming industry quite early on, and were applied to a generally more casual audience that wouldn't be invested enough to speak up on the issue. These companies didn't start getting called out until they began to encroach on the console market where the more seasoned gamers already knew what it's like not being so heavily exploited, and would be in a position to have much stronger opinions on the subject.
I was against the practice from the start but once you mentioned parents, especially older ones, potentially being completely oblivious to the concept, that's when it really hit.
Imagine being in your 40s or 50s as someone who hasn't kept up with video games at all since childhood, or hasn't even touched a game in their life; in your mind, your kid need only spend money once on a game in order to enjoy all of it. If it's then revealed that they've been buying in-game items behind your back, it's understandable to not only feel scammed but also be confused that this is something games are even able to include.
Though parents should take some accountability for what their kids consume, unfortunately in many cases they're just not informed enough to understand what's going on. Too many people are quick to blame the parents for letting their kids give in to microtransactions and not the companies that practice and often encourage such things in the first place.
Or a kiddo spends a weekend at Grandma's, and she pays $5 for that one Pokee Man... a slippery slope.
@SNES Nes How does public schooling relate in any way to this?
DO-CTOR It's used as an example of how modern parents pay absolutely no attention to their children. The tripe being taught in public schools right now is enough to justify torching them and if a parent can't even be assed to pay attention to that, how can you expect them to pay attention to their children's hobbies? It's a complete failure by parents, through and through.
@SNES Nes Still doesn't relate to what I said, but alright.
@@Steve_Johnson_ As I said in my comment, while parents *should* make more efforts to understand the things their children get into, that doesn't excuse those companies doing these things in the first place. I'm not saying parents hold zero blame at all, but putting ALL the blame on them is quite narrow-minded.
*"The parents should be the ones supervising kids into not spending real money in these video games through consistent gambling with Loot Box microtransactions, it's not the company's responsibility to make sure kids don't spend money in these money giving schemes."*
If that's the case, then have casinos remove the Age 18+ entry requirement then. Casinos should be allowed to let little kids and teenagers play in the casinos' games, and the parents should be the only ones in charge of restricting their spending habits, not the casinos being the ones imposing these restrictions.
If you argue that video games with gambling like elements that cost real money shouldn't be restricted to little kids, then the same should be said for casinos then as casinos have the exact same electronic games with gambling like elements involving real money spending as these games with Loot Box microtransactions.
I'd support that... If your kids can buy tens or even hundreds of dollars of real money digitally UNSUPERVISED, that's on you as a parent.
My kid won't be able to spend even $1 even if they can physically get their hand on my credit card.
@@goonerOZZ Parents should indeed supervise their children and not let them spend real money by themselves, that's indeed something that needs to be a regular thing; but the point of my previous comment was that the argument made by Microtransaction Defenders that the companies offering the gambling like microtransactions should literally not be held responsible in the least for letting kids interact with their gambling like elements is ludicrous.
Casinos are restricted by force to not allow minors to interact with their Slot Machines and other gambling schemes, so these video games with gambling like microtransactions should be equally age restricted as they are no different to casinos with how they psychologically manipulate consumers into spending money. If casinos are age restricted because of them having addictive gambling with real money involved, then these video games with Loot Box microtransactions that are marketed towards children (cough* Mario Kart Tour, Pokemon Unite, FIFA, Madden, NBA 2K, etc.) should also be age restricted as they are no different to Slot Machines in casinos.
Or the ESRB should make EVERY GAME with an in game monetization system an M Rated game.
I'd hate to be that guy, but casinos would jump at the opportunity like a back alley transaction gone wrong in terms of making teens/kids gamble. Shit they're practically doing that right now.
You can walk away from casinos with *real* *money* . As in winnings. You can also get alcohol in casinos and smoke in some of them, and there are casinos with other features as well.
*Edit:
Parents need to become responsible.
Too many parents make their kids the responsibility of a third party, then they are surprised why their child disrespects them, wastes their life or cuts all ties and contact with their parents after becoming an adult, over the slightest disagreement or doesn't want to become a parent themselves.
As someone who's watched Jim Sterling stuff for the past two or so years and noticed some of your more critical content lately kinda resembling that, it's nice to hear you mention them and helping push the good fight
Also a big Sterling fan, and it’s refreshing to see more and more of the community talk about these issues, especially people who normally wouldn’t.
Thanks for speaking out Arlo!
Yeah that’s what I was thinking, Jim isn’t the only person talking about this but they’re one of the only people being as vocal and critical as they are about the problem and why it’s happening so it’s good to see more awareness about these issues from Arlo and other people like him
@@mysticalquilava It's James Stephanie, not Jim.
I knew from the moment it was confirmed Tencent was developing it that this would happen lol
"Do Pokemon have blood? You never see the blood."
Somebody's never read the manga.
There’s a manga?
@@cheezyfilmsproductions1842 There's like, 2 or 3.
@@cheezyfilmsproductions1842 Melted psyduck. Melted zombie psyduck. Pokémon Adventures gives no %+#&s.
@@timwoods2852 From what I can remember, there's 3. The one with Game protags, the one with Ash, and the one I haven't read
@@cheezyfilmsproductions1842 An arbok gets slashed in half after it spits acid on another pokemon that god damn _melts._ There are other really graphic pokemon deaths too during the story. Pretty grim stuff but also funny in how it flies in the face of the family friendly image the company pushes.
Bringing out this F2P style game and getting kids addicted to gambling, while simultaneously removing the game corner from old Pokémon games and remakes…
Immortals Fenyx Rising was one of my favorite games from last year... but every time Hermes encouraged me to visit his store where I could spent real American dollars it felt super gross. I wish all microtransactions would just be banned outright; or regulated like gambling to the point that it becomes so onerous that only the most dedicated shills would still include them in their games.
Good to see someone else talking about this game. Thought it was super underrated
ElEkTrUm BuRnInG a HoLe In YoUr PoCkEt?
I was so hyped for that game before release, but after they announced DLC before it even came out and after I saw all of the microtransactions I even didnt care enough to buy it. Its sad how this practices can ruin an entire game that would otherwise be very good
i didn’t even know it had MTX…i’m not that angry at botw clones, but using another game’s quality gameplay to push microtransactions is fucking dirty.
That's how many mobile games already work
Less than a a quarter of free to play mobile game's player base actually spend a significant amount of money
But the small percentage who do aka
The whales as they're referred too
Spend so much that they carry this business model alone
I remember growing up in the late 90s and seeing how amazing 3D graphics were looking at that time, and everyone always wondered how amazing games were going to look like in 10-20 years........the business practice the gaming industry is in the middle of now was NEVER how we thought gaming was to look like in the future.
I agree. It's also an example of how hard it can be to accurately predict the future.
First of all: Thank you for making this video.
What i noticed is that mostly older players are upset about those buisness models. It seems like teens are already getting used to them, which is very worrysome. Also it’s not just f(r)ee to p(l)ay games anymore. Companies are trying to force those models into fullprice games for years now. And while gamers are still successfully pushing back for now, we will lose the game in a long run, if we cant educate the younger generations.
Thats why Videos like yours are so important.
I’m not even 13 yet and I’m glad I look into this stuff because I don’t think there are many opportunities to learn about this in normal environments.
I'm getting Pokémon Shuffle flashbacks. I played from day 1, had a TON of fun, did everything there is to do, never spent a cent on it. But at some point it became literally impossible to place well in online competitions without paying because the game was overrun with players spending the big bucks. It basically became pay-to-win. The newly added stages were equally bullshit, literally impossible to win without using expensive items. After struggling for months I admitted to myself that a game I used to enjoy was totally ruined by micro-transactions and pay-to-win players and I just quit.
Never in my life did I think I'd see Arlo mention Jim Sterling, but hey, I'm glad he did.
Yeah, it's like Dora the Explorer referencing South Park, lol.
Wow, the whole "bots that act like human" to keep you playing thinking you're wining is something Kyle Bosman talked in one of his Delayed Inputs (nice show btw), don't remember which episode, but daaamn, he wasn't talking like it'd be a good thing either. Things are evolving fast (no pun intended).
I don't trust that other arlo
I would let him write my will
hotdiggedydemon!
Remember Mario Run? It was a free download where you can play the first world and it launched with only one in-app purchase: unlocking the rest of the game for a fixed price.
I thought this was perfect and exactly how Nintendo would and should approach the mobile market. But people hated it. It was review bombed on the appstore by people calling it not f2p or a disguised demo.
Ever since, AC and MK:T launched with more typical monetarizations and if the reviews on the app store are anything to go by, they are widely accepted.
Can't say they didn't try to be more ethical. People just seem to prefer being ripped off.
Honestly, that's more a case of Nintendo lying than people wanting to be ripped off. The point of "free to play" games is that the ENTIRE game is FREE. Yes, people _can_ pay to get more things, better things, or just a gameplay advantage, but every stage, every mode, is _available_ even if you don't spend a cent. If you offer people one chapter or stage or world for free and require them to pay to play the rest of the game- that's not a free to play game, it's a free demo for a paid game.
@@Silburific What lies are you referring to here? I was trying to find any official advertisements that claimed the game was Free to Play and couldn't find any.
Also, you have a weekly limit of coins, to keep you out of unlocking Pokémon fast, so you are frustrated into buying them
I like how Arlo thinks of every possible argument chat could say against him
21:20 Arlo just made an amazing argument on why kids should be taught about finances at an early game.
This is something I imagine team rocket trying to sell or let people get hooked on in an arcade.
I'm loving this season so far. The start of the ArloVerse is quickly expanding with the many arlos appearing in each n every video. I am loving this. :D
microtransactions have literally always been gross. I was in college over 10 years ago when this practice started and it was always a head scratcher for me.
i love how they removed gambling for the pegi rating but end up adding an even WORSE gambling method
Thank you for bringing Jim Stephanie sterling to the children. Honestly more people need to know and think about this kind of thing.
Arlo's a good bridge to the kids indeed. Thank God for James Stephanie Sterling, Son.
@@guguy00 preach it ✊🏿✊🏻✊🏽
I've never seen Arlo construed as a _family friendly_ counterpart to Sterling, but I can't really argue against it.
Jim Stephanie Sterling has been fighting the good fight against unbridled video game industry avarice for going on a decade now, it’s cool that people are funny catching up and realizing “hey, this has all gone too far, they’re encouraging children to gamble and are preying on the uninformed”.
If you guys haven't watched it, Curio's video on Pokémon Unite's monetization and gameplay loop touches on a lot of Arlo's points and adds a bit more to boot. She even talks about how the cosmetics CAN impact the gameplay by implying that a player with a skin could be a veteran player to avoid during the match. It's a really good watch!
I love that Arlo isnt a blind fanboy of Nintendo. And speak when something is clearly wrong!!!
YES fr he’s clearly not a blind fanboy and will speak out against injustices and when Nintendo just does something shitty. I’m so sick of content creators being blind to Nintendo’s faults and being critical of Nintendo’s critics themselves
It's Tencent and Pokémon. We REALLY shouldn't have been surprised that it would be terrible extortion.
Exploitation*** nobody is getting blackmailed haha
I'm annoyed that people even gave this game the time of day despite knowing Tencent are behind this
@@ColtonPhillips That too!
@@Dingalow We TRIED to warn them with #BringBackNationalDex, but NOOOOOOO! We were just "Being entitled" and "Toxic"!
@@googamp32 you are being toxic
The best retour I saw a kid having in a free to play game with monetization was, as Arlo says, some of his friends making fun of him from not having a skin that was popular.
His reply was simply "Yes I don't have but I still kick your ass without it..."
You mentioned the surveys that they put out, and honestly, those worry me a lot as well. I've seen examples of companies who use these surveys under the guise of "getting feedback", when really their purpose is "tell us all the things we can make better, so we can then monetise them and charge you ridiculous amounts for the solutions to problems that we deliberately engineered".
The worst part is that the game is genuinely fun, and I could even see myself maybe buying the battle pass if that guaranteed that I get the full experience, but the monetization is so rampant that even buying the battle pass alone won't balance me out with the people who spend much more money. If it was a bad game I wouldn't care about the monetization because I wouldn't play it anyways, but it pains me because this could be a very enjoyable experience
battlerite is similar and has really fun gameplay. it's essentially a streamlined moba that just focuses on team combat.
Pokémon unite is not pay to win, people who waste a ton of money on this game are doing exactly that, wasting money. The only thing that decides if you win is how dumb your teammates/the opponents are.
@Dice The issue is that you CAN get the items and Pokemon that the top players for free and not that you WILL get them. It's all up to how much you play and chance. You have to put in a ton of work and by the time you do get the items, the paying players will have moved the bar and the items you obtained are going to be outclassed via new and better items, new strategies or even strategies specifically to beat what the top paying players have. The reason you fall farther and farther behind is because the paying players will level up much faster than you due to keeping up with the meta and thus keep winning while you are grinding to get the meta and earning less XP and levels in the same space of time. Every time the meta shifts you'll have to start grinding again, thus level up at a slower pace, causing you to fall even farther behind. The devs can easily make it so just as you manage to catch up to the paying players, the meta changes. Eventually you'll either hit the level cap and always behind the current meta by how long it takes you to grind for it, or you will be in a situation where you can't level up fast enough to keep up with the whales (the top paying customers) and you'll be in the position of deciding if you'll stay stuck knowing you'll never make it to the top ranks, quitting the game entirely or paying to keep up. Apparently enough players will pay to keep up in the latter situation and extend the life of the game.
@@beez1717 lol. This is such a wild exaggeration of how it works, likely written by someone who simply can't beat people due to a lack of skill. This game is not so complex that the roof jumps up tremendously every 2 weeks because of a "meta shift". There's a pretty good cap on how things outside of skill influence the game. No amount of paying is really going to make up for a lack of skill, and definitely not going to take you from middle ranks to top ranks. Yes, it takes time for new players to get everything, and they might change that when the game is not exclusively new players because it's only 2 months old.
@@beez1717 Dude, it's super obvious from your comments that you dont play the game. you clearly have an incorrect undestanding of how the game operates. Your critiques of the game's f2p elements dont match up to reality
Love how arlo used the pokemon center music found in pokemon Colosseum and gale of darkness and the Colosseum bonus disc as background music along with other music from Colosseum
This video was surprisingly educational. I didn't know things like loot boxes were so detrimental.
Love that Pokémon XD background music
i didn't know arlo could go full jim sterling but i'm 100% here for it, based
well, more like 35% but changes arent overnight and i am here for it all the same!
The victim-blaming is what gets me the most. It’s like some people think of predatory companies and tactics as a force of nature rather than what they actually are, and as such blame the children and their parents for having their brains and ignorance exploited. It’s disgusting.
I respect this video. For context, I’ve put over 100 hours in the game and have only paid 5 dollars for it. I think it’s an amazing addition to the Pokémon franchise. However, your points on playing on gambling addictions and this being for children stand. Continue the great work Arlo.
Typically what i do when i feel like a game is trying to pressure me into "paying to have fun" i just stop playing the game, and it's sad to see that a lot of other people don't have that kind of constraint and will dump hundreds of dollars into a game like this. Looking at how a lot of games these days are made, I'm starting to miss the older days of gaming, without all of these microtransactions being shoved in your face every 5 seconds.
i mean like the old days of gaming are still here, and they're in the form of not free games. with some expections *cough cough*
Yup, ive dropped a few bucks on lil extras n perks in games but quickly realize whats going on and just toss the game aside
That's the perks of being a 13 yr old child who can't buy anything on the shop because the card is not from USA ig.
15:45 - This rings more true when I say this: There are skins in Eve Online... spreadsheets in space... where ships are mostly seen as little icons and capsuleer portraits are often disabled because it lets you see who specifically is in chat better. Some skins can cost over $15. For your 8x8 pixel icon. In Space.
"Have you ever played a game with multiple different currencies? It can get very confusing"
Anyone who's played any mmo-style game; WoW, FF14, ESO, even something like Fallout 76 which has like 8-10 different currencies for varying specific purposes:
Yes, but continue.
@@mogalixir exactly
The worst part for me is that gambling addiction runs hard in my family, and it was Pokemon that saved me from it. I would spend hours as a kid losing all my money at the Goldenrod Game Corner and then reloading my save. Whole weekends like this. And then one day I realized "Wait, there's no savescumming in real life! I should just never do any real gambling or I will surely make some very bad decisions."
Video games were a safe space to practice things and see how your brain reacts to certain scenarios without the danger of real life. This is an incredibly useful tool for a developing brain, because the thought patterns we establish early life become physically imprinted upon the folds of our brains. I work in childcare, and you can see this happen over the course of a couple years, as behaviors and ways of thinking are or aren't enforced.
Then came the microtransactions.
I would pay Jaleel White do voice Sonic again just to teach kids how to avoid spending money on micro-transactions
Arlo has Big Sterling Energy lately and I am here for it.
Bahaha I basically said the exact same thing and it's weird.
I mean, it's called having common sense
@@Moltarable Yeah. So proud I commented this before he had been watching Sterling, so I was happy to have the confirmation on the spotted influence.
I love how yoshikiller used Snaggem's Hidout music for the shadiest practices. XD
That’s actually Team Snaggem’s hideout theme.
@@Hyper_Drud Ur right. I fixed it. X)
I’m always happy when people talk and explain the psychology behind free-to-play and incentive to buy stuff on them.
So more people can understand the trap of theses tactics to milk more money of players as they can.
(+ a MOBA being a pay-to-win is just a bad game, to my opinion).
What happened to the glory days of legitimately great Pokémon spinoffs like Snap, Mystery Dungeon, and Conquest? Can we just go back to that era, please?
If the fans were more powerful like with sonic or starwars maybe you could establish a baseline. But that's still a ways away cause they keep pulling the "it's a kids game" excuse. Well I'm really sad this is what "kids games" are now. A bunch of microtransaction pushing low effort moneyprinters
@@AlphaladZXA you're dead on. This is a pretty predatory game even by more adult-oriented game standards, but this is more focused towards kids as a sort of "baby's first MOBA." It's so sad to see how far the big N has fallen in the last decade...
there was a snap bandai namco this year...
Sucks that Let's Go Pikachu isn't accurate with adult voices lol
@@caderomine8331 this isn't exclusively them, I'd say it's more the pokemon company than nintendo since their own mobile efforts have been dwindling. It's more like why can't the big N step in and more directly help pokemon and get us off this path?
How can you say that cosmetic microtransactions are harmless when you acknowledged that children have been bullied based on what skin they have if any and self expression is extremely important to mental health.
i feel like cosmetics being okay or not depends on the context. in unite, it encourages people to keep buying and is part of a very sinister model. and in a game with lots of nasty kids like fortnite, people will get bullied for not having skins. But in a game like smash with allows you to buy mii costumes, that’s its only source of extra money aside from DLC fighters. In such a high quality game, I don’t feel so bad about buying cosmetics, but I’m also not going to be shamed for not getting them.
Kids getting bullied for not having X been happening since ever
@@denzellizasuain563
And that makes it ok…?
@@denzellizasuain563 Developers KNOW this. And that's why they design their games to leverage that fact and monetise the hell out of cool skins.
Every single aspect of these games has been designed to extract as much money as possible from people. Its utterly insideous.
Becoming invisible to enemy players while walking through tall grass in the game where you play as Pokemon is the most genius mechanic I've ever heard of.
I'm really happy that none of these predatory gambling games are in my wheelhouse. Aside from Overwatch (which initially won me over with its Hollywood-level animations, kept me around with its surprisingly engrossing gameplay, and then lost me immediately after the Blitzchung incident), I've never had any interest in MMOs, MOBAs, Battle Royales, sports titles, etc. Maybe it's just because I'm not _that_ competitive of a gamer, or maybe I'm just someone who likes to sit down and play something inherently fun instead of inherently frustrating? Regardless, it's nice to watch videos like these, watch the gameplay footage, and be immediately relieved that I wouldn't have touched these games even if they weren't gross.
These games are designed to keep you around, but not to be fun. That's the only way I can describe it. They assume you can't have both, that it's one or the other. ignoring how often people revisit games BECAUSE they're fun.
They also tend to be run by actual psychopaths who enjoy human suffering and are physically incapable of feeling pity or bad for another being, so that doesn't help.
Nice prejudice you got there. These games are FREE. Of course they'll have to in some ways earn money. Eitherway in the dozens ofpopular MOBAs, MMOs, Battle Royales I've played, they haven't ever felt "pay to win" ever. "Loot boxes" exists, but those are only for cosmetics which honestly doesn't sound predatory at all.
@@rooks9430 Did you… not watch the video at all? Especially the part where Arlo addresses every single point in the comment that you just made?
what does inherently fun and inherently frustrating for games mean? lmao
The fact that it was made by Tencent immediately turned me away from it. I don't think installing anything from a company that is essentially the tech branch of the Chinese government is a good idea, let alone the game being pay-to-win as heck.
@Dice The game is still very immoral for how it targets children and tries to get people addicted with its monetization, but you're right that it is not pay to win.
@Dice So you can't pay for items that give an advantage?
@@cortster12 there is nothing you can pay money for that you can not earn for free. Someone wasting $20 on gems to buy items is not an advantage over someone who buys the same things with coins.
@@UltraBall23 Most p2w games you can earn them for free. That's not the point.
I am so very happy that you are spreading the good word of The Jimquisition in a package that is accesible to kids. That series is a bit much for youngsters, but the truth in it is E for everyone. Folk like you and Jim are doing actual games journalism.
I have my defenses for the model as a whole when used properly, but unite is another story all together. Take the MOBA genre, which has a reputation for being one of the most toxic and unfriendly to noobs, slap pikachu's face on it to attract kids, then use the f2p model on top of it? 3 strikes, you're out. I have no intention of touching the game, and MOBA alone was enough to convince me. Add in the factor of making whales of kids and introducing those same kids to one of the most toxic genres, even if unite is generally clean and i cannot get behind the hype.
Frankly, this is the only moba I've really enjoyed. The gameplay is quick and a blast give it a shot. Like arlo said, its REALLY easy to play this free
@@alicewonder259 I will admit, my stance mostly comes from being burned before. I did not try one of the big ones like DOTA or League, but the one i did try was impossible to learn when the pros are mad that a noob made them loose, and i cant stand a chance against even bots. Ever play a game and be met with "i would rather have a bot. leave noob."? How is one supposed to learn the game if they cant make mistakes or even play, as everyone would rather have a bot. If i started with unite, i might have had a warmer perspective for MOBAs in general, but i didnt, and i experienced the toxicity first hand from an off brand one that did not even have the audience of League or DOTA.
@@cullenlatham2366 ngl there's no chat so give it a shot its the least toxic moba i know. Just pure fun
@@alicewonder259 dont get me wrong, it is tempting to some extent, but i am not dealing with it. If i like it, that just means i will go back into trying the more toxic ones, and for my sanity i choose not to. Unite isnt without its own faults, and this entire video is pointing out some of the worst ones. Pokemania can only last so long before it wears thin, and giving children a gambling addiction is still pretty condemning.
If you want a great example of game companies putting on a happy face to manipulate reviewers, then turning evil on their fan base, look no further than CTR: Nitro-Fueled, which had zero microtransactions until the review scores came in.
None of them were bad or predatory.
Literally playing 10 races every weekend would get you enough coins to buy everything in the current season AND the next season. You could even get 20 weekend + daily bonuses if you knew a trick.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 The point is they added it Post-Launch is scummy enough as is.
I saw TenCent was involved and stayed faaaar away. Seeing other TH-camrs demonstrate how much you can power level by means of Mom's Credit Card just reinforced my decision.
I'm surprised the videos of James Stephanie Sterling are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Their video format is a bit weird at times, but totally worth it if you want to know the dark truth about this industry.
No, their name is "James Fucking Stephanie Sterling Son" Get it right!
@@Toonrick12 I actually looked up their name before writing my comment and I still made a mistake smh
Got to love Nintendo. They save the most predatory monetization methods for their youngest customers
Blame tencent
Tencent is the reason why this exists
Tencent made this game, one of the two publishers in the world that's now bigger than Nintendo
@@yue7507 Still, it's Nintendo's fault for partnering with them. Sure, I understand they want to make money, but it's still bad what they are doing.
@@MrPenetroso the Pokémon company and Nintendo are two different things🤦♂️
I with 100% you, Arlo! Thanks so much for telling it like it is and calling out those micotransactions. People
s complacency with the practice led to this almost as much as the developers themselves.
"Do Pokémon have blood?"
Yes, it's referenced many times, and you can even see blood in the Dengeki Pikachu manga.
Pokemon manga in general is grim as hell. The pokemon adventures manga (specifically the kanto ones following Red) had some gnarly stuff, I mean Giovanni's Cloyster fucking froze and snapped a Magmar in half, and thats probably one of the more tame things in it.
@@ComradeCorvus everyone always brings up the Arbok even though you see that same Arbok alive and well several chapters later.