At the start of this year I implemented a policy for myself through which I would commit to not buying any more videogames until I had "finished" 5 games in my current library. I did this because honestly I'd really overspent on games out of my Christmas gift money (I wanted a new graphics card, but the parts shortage and the crypto situation makes that currently impossible). Currently I'm only 2 Completions into this goal, after almost 7 months.
This is largely due to the fact I mainly play games that don't have fixed end states. Some of the least evil of the "Live Service" model. My most played game is Vigor, followed probably by Dragonball Fighterz, then a bunch of stuff I play with friends at weekends (Among Us, Geoguessr, Unfortunate Spacemen, etc). While I'm allowing the maxing out of a Season on Vigor to count as one completion for the purpose of this policy, overall it remains a very effective way of stopping me from spending money I don't have on vidgams.
However, as this policy was financially motivated, that does nothing to stop me downloading and playing Free to Play games. You just get them and play them and they try to get you to give them money and you say "NO. I've been playing Vigor for a year and haven't given those guys a penny, there's no way you're getting paid before they do!" I've taken on a few new ones recently due to a weird confluence of circumstances, and have been thinking a bit about how F2P ecosystems tend to work and the influence they try and have on you.
After all, despite being free to get started and continue enjoying for the most part, ultimately these games want your money, and by getting you hooked first and then trying to push you to pay for them, tend to be a bit more sneaky about it than most.
I started playing CSGO a bit after I accidentally downloaded it when I was supposed to be getting Counter Strike: Source, in order that I might eventually play Trouble In Terrorist Town with some friends. This isn't the best start for any game, to be downloaded by accident, but I still decided to give it a bit of time and see if I could get into and enjoy the game.
I played for a couple of hours,the gunplay is pretty solid and the casual competition fairly enjoyable. I imagine this is pretty good in teams where you know people and can talk, and probably can do proper teamwork to accomplish an objective. All that seems to be for people who are already commited to the game in some way though, and I don't really see what is supposed to keep a filthy casual like myself engaged in this property.
The game doesn't explain itself very well and seems to take for granted that if I'm playing CSGO, I'm already very into CSGO (a game I would remind you I downloaded by accident). There's obviously no real cosmetics as this is a first person game so what's the point in customising a character you can't see, and the point of paying for this game seems to be... access to titles? Different stuff for dedicated players?
Honestly CSGO seems kind of pointless, and though I haven't purchased or played it yet, I can kind of see why so many of the reviews recommend you just play CS: Source instead. Plus you can mod that to get a bunch more free games.
Overall I think it's nice that the paid features aren't super intrusive, but this does seem to come at the expense of me still not being sure what they are or why I'd pay for them. But regardless, CSGO is not for me.
Rogue Company is a 3rd Person Team based Hero Shooter, a little bit like Overwatch, but with a lower skill ceiling, less exciting gameplay, and less than half as much personality. I downloaded this one on purpose this time, in fact I'd deliberately NOT downloaded it before as the extremely generic name meant I confused it with "Tom Clancy's Elite Squad" a Ubisoft game of somewhat similar basis, but with loads of bullshit marketing implying Black Lives Matter is an evil conspiracy, and made by Ubisoft, a corporation that has covered up for and promoted serial abusers for years. Fuck Ubisoft.
Anyway, Rogue Company. I downloaded this as it was being advertised as currently having a free Battle Pass, which I guess you'd usually have to pay a few quid for, so it's free for the last few weeks of the in game Season. It's reasonably entertaining, although honestly as a 6 v 6 team game where you don't have access to 3/4 of the cast, it does feel kind of random whether or not you're winning sometimes. Is it because I don't have access to the paid heroes that have more interesting skills and gear? Am I losing because I'm bad at the game or am I getting matched with people who suck? Am I winning because my opponents are bad or because I've picked a loadout that isn't terrible? Why am I allowed to buy gadgets that appear to be totally useless?
It's not that the game doesn't have a tutorial or explain itself very well, it's that the meta is kind of inscrutable beyond "Automatic Rifles are the only gun really worth using and that new girl with the rocket launcher is obvs OP".
There's 3 currencies in the game and 3 different types of XP gain, and while the currency is relatively easy to track and doesn't actually do that much outside of just letting you buy stuff, the XP gains seem to be where the actual psychological magic goes on, as many of the rewards are temporary XP boosters which improve your gains for a set period of time and therefore reduce the amount of grinding to get new stuff. It's an effort to get you to spend more time thinking about the battlepass and other rewards for sinking time into the game.
It's at least functional in most areas and the cast has some charm in places, but ultimately it feels like this game wants me to just spend ages playing it rather than get invested in the characters or community. Just spend more time looking at all the cool stuff I *don't* have and thinking about if I should spend money on it.
Although, if that really is the goal, they need some non-shit premium content. Most of the cosmetics in this game are arse.
I expect I'd enjoy the game more playing with friends, but right now I'm actually getting more satisfaction out of slagging off Rogue Company than I am playing it, which doesn't strike me as a good sign.
Last recent Free to Play effort I've been looking at recently is Pokemon Unite, a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, which remains an undescriptive name for the genre) where you play a pokemon going around lamping other pokemon in an effort to score points in an expansion of the endless multi-species cockfight that is the pokemon universe. I've only played a couple of other MOBAs in the past, neither of which I enjoyed at all (Heroes of the Storm and something else I can't remember the name of) but the mechanics seem pretty typical to the standard tropes. I at least had sort of a good time playing Pokemon Unite for the first few hours, so at least that's a step ahead of my previous experience of the genre.
I've been maining Snorlax, because he's a big soft guy who just slaps folk and then goes to sleep, which is honestly a pretty appealing gameplan. And as far as I can tell, outside of being able to maybe strategise with friends outside of the game, there's not that much more to it than going around doing MOBA stuff. Victory or defeat feels more random than it does in Rogue Company, with the added complicator that you're almost certainly playing with and against several bots in any one match (all those identical profile pics are not convincing me I'm playing 100% human opponents). If we're playing both with and against varying numbers of bots, then whether or not we win really isn't up to us, is it? Particularly not in this sort of game where 1. Perfect knowledge is more valuable than technical skill, and 2. Manufacturing an emotional response to the game is an important component of convincing you to pay for it.
For example, in several of the games I've played, I've been the MVP with Snorlax despite having no idea what I'm doing, and have carried the team to victory. This isn't a brag- as mentioned I've no real clue what I'm doing, have no experience with MOBAs, and team mates often seem to be either super competent or entirely hopeless. I want to use this to illustrate that steamrolling the enemy team *felt good*, and made me want to play more. This was particularly the case for the first few games I played, when they're showering you with rewards just for going through the menu and you're being told that you were an essential asset to the team, a key player in a definitely-not-rigged game. It's nice feeling like your efforts made a difference, even in this absurd context. And it encourages people to spend more time in the game.
Most matches I've been in have been an absolute washout for one side, although the extent to which either team is winning seems heavily obfuscated for the most part- you'll get warnings based on overall points but you can't see the whole battlefield at a glance to track scoring properly, and the endgame scores are always something of a surprise, with it still feeling like maybe you could turn things around at the 11th hour. But if part of victory and success is controlled by the bot AI, then isn't this just another illusion? Another mind game designed to make the game *feel* engaging without providing any real experience or depth.
The game is also drowning in gamification, which seems a weird thing to complain about in a videogame but here we are. Alongside the 7 different currencies and 2 types of XP, there are rewards for all sorts of in game activities, including logging on, playing a certain number of battles, using items, buying clothes, buying pokemon licenses, doing the tutorials, and sometimes rewards for doing these multiple times across consecutive days. You are constantly being bombarded and bamboozled by a dumping of rewards for just interacting with the game, all the while being reminded that you could get *more* rewards if you were willing to cough up some real cash and buy some Gems, the game's premium currency.
My big takeaway from playing Pokemon Unite is that while I felt compelled to keep playing, I didn't think I was really enjoying it. And this was after playing for a few hours across several days. Already the dopamine hits from contantly checking boxes and getting given positive feedback in the form of fictional clothing and a number going up was starting to make me want to play more of this. A game I didn't really enjoy that much and find somewhat bewildering to operate. I don't like Pokemon Unite. But somehow my brain wants me to keep playing it, and that feels like a problem. A problem I'll aim to talk on in more detail in future, but for now you should know- I don't think Pokemon Unite is a good game.
In fact I think it's probably evil, a form of predatory monetisation skinned up with simple but habit forming gameplay loops and microtransactions out of the arse. In case the game changes in future, I intend to log into it to grab some starter rewards every day and then probably delete it. I might eventually want to play with friends which might be the only way this game becomes enjoyable, but the fact I don't even like the game and still want to log in so it can give me stuff should be an indication of the potential effect this can have on certain people.
As somebody with not a lot of disposable income and a reasonable amount of free time in the evening, I've tried quite a few free to play games. One of my most played games of the past year, Vigor, is one. I've also enjoyed Apex Legends quite a bit, Spellbreak was a fun diversion for a while, and Pokemon go was a lot of fun back in the summer of 2016. But outside of Fortnite, I've never been confronted with such aggressive and insidious F2P mechanics as those in Pokemon Unite.
It's clear there's a vast scope of variance in microtransactions, psychological mindgames, and habit building mechanics across the F2P space. I've played plenty of them on console and PC, and if I was more of a mobile gamer I'm sure I'd have played several on there too. It just seems that in Pokemon Unite, I've accidentally subjected myself to some of the worst elements of that space. As a game specifically marketed at children as their key audience, this seems like a concern that is likely to grow in future. I sincerely expect to hear about similar spending on this property to compare to that of the FIFA games, despite whatever assurances Nintendo may give to the contrary.
And that's not a good thing.
(Originally posted 03/08/2021)