Of course, it’s not just that, in the past you as a consumer simply expected much less from a game. The Internet didn’t really exist yet, you bought a game on floppy disk or later on CD, and that was that. supports? No one talked about it. You’ve played the game, and if you encounter an error, that’s too bad, but start over in most cases.

Later, the Internet came along, and you could sometimes find patches, which was a great development.

But nowadays, players expect much more than that, at least I do. I’ll no longer be content with the game as is, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get a patch somewhere to fix some of the bugs.

It seems that people simply want more support for a longer period of time for their games in the form of (logical) bug fixes, but also content updates, balance patches to create variable metas in MP games, and what old school people (myself included) don’t like at all.While they They are waiting for cosmetic content and things like that, I see that young people like this and thus make their characters their own in different games. It seems logical to me that there would be a need for replacement cash flow for this support and additional content. After all, if there is no more turnover, at some point resources will simply be diverted elsewhere.

If you want to take WoW as an example, it’s not that bad, imho. I think Blizzard was too late, I thought Bethesda was first in 2006? With paid cosmetic DLC (the famous horse armor). The first WoW cosmetic item in the store didn’t exist until 4 years later, and I believe it was a first in Blizzard games. Additionally, I think these cosmetics in WoW at least ensured the sub-prices weren’t as high, and there were even cheaper options. Where I paid €26.99 for a two-month scratch card at my local game store in 2005, I now pay €10.99 a month via the bundle. But there was no (inflation) correction at all, which is also a good thing.

So, I certainly wouldn’t put it to shareholders who just want to see growth, because at the end of the day, unless of course it was different 20 to 25 years ago, it’s just that the market was (much) smaller then, so they also settled for a smaller piece of The cake has less growth in absolute terms. The larger the market becomes, the larger the piece of the pie they want. For example, Blizzard has not been an “independent” company since 1994 and is owned by (listed) companies that simply want to see a return on their investment.

But I also think that today’s younger consumer simply has very different expectations/desires for the game than I (and perhaps you) had when we were that age. My expectations have also been modified by these developments. Now you won’t see me buying loads of DLC or cosmetics, the only game I spend any money on a cool sub is Hearthstone, and even then we’re talking about a bundle and a battle pass for every expansion (once every 4 months). The cosmetics I generally leave there are also left in there, although I once bought a photo. But I can imagine that others think very differently about this and like to spend money on such things. After all, there will be no demand for it, there will be no developer who will release it and they will do other things to make money.

[Reactie gewijzigd door Dennism op 23 maart 2024 20:49]