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US kids want games subscriptions and virtual currency more than games this Christmas
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Evil genius marketing, working as it always does. The kids don't know any better, so they are being exploited and conditioned to think the horrible new normal is just the way things have to be. And most parents are too tired and busy to find better alternatives.
It's simple, the games that appeal the most to kids require some form of subscription. If those games didn't, then they wouldn't want ones with subscriptions.
The games that appeal most to kids play upon their dopamine response and generate addictive patterns.
Correct, and if they didn't have subscriptions, subscriptions wouldn't be popular.
Putting it like that makes it sound that this is incidental, but the conditioning techniques baked into the design of these games are included for the sake of selling battle passes and virtual items. If they didn't have subscriptions and virtual currency, they would have been built entirely differently.
That's because I am not speaking on the corporate point of view here, I am discussing the kids'. Every time I see this subject come up there seems to always be people who think that the move to subscriptions are due to a preference of access model upon the consumer, naively ruining their own capacity to own things, namely kids/young people, thinking it's just the modern, and thus better, more convenient, way to go.
Even the article's headline is written in a manner that suggests that kids prefer the subscription model it's self, not that they are choosing based on the game without thought to the access model.
I see what you mean. Far from me to want to blame the kids for it, but I don't think we can just overlook how corporations are deliberately funneling them towards these models through marketing and manipulative design. The kids' perspective is one of just being excited for things they want in these games, but this happens due to habitual conditioning of a neverending threadmill of virtual rewards and Fear of Missing Out. Not to mention semi-organic peer pressure among kids, over who has the fanciest or default cosmetics. Which wasn't deliberately created by the corporations, but they are definitely benefitting over it, and nobody is dissuading that from happening.
The kids are not at fault, but I don't think this is a "just let kids be kids" situation. They are being exploited.
And target that critical mass where you don't want to be the only kid that doesn't have access to the game every other kid is playing.
Not having cable TV growing up definitely caused me to be the odd man out on pop culture references. A lot.
Thats just most games though
How did we think Arcades worked?
No you don't understand! The kids are enjoying themselves when they play these veedeeyoo gaymz. It's horrible!
Did it never occur to you that this might not be just coincidence?
It did. I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying, or adding more to it than there is.
Children do not desire subscriptions as a superior model to owning games. The model of access is not something they are comparing and contrasting. They are simply going for the games they prefer, which get locked behind subscriptions. I never implied that games popular with kids aren't intentionally put behind subscriptions, I was arguing that the subscription model isn't actually preferred by kids.
Apologies, I obviously misunderstood your first comment.
It's cool, happens
How you worded this makes it seem like "if those games didn't" refers to requiring subscriptions.
I would suggest editing it to "If those games didn't appeal to kids" or similar; if what you meant was that kids just plays what appeals to them, and those games "just happens" to be subscription games.
I was talking just today with some coworkers about how having subscriptions instead of owning is what is normal to kids now - not just games, but things like Netflix and Spotify. So this doesn’t surprise me, but does depress me. Technofeudalism is the new normal.
In my teen years I spent a large fraction of my disposable income on music. A Spotify subscription is a vastly better value than buying whatever I could scrounge from a used CD store. Back then it was common for me to read about some semi-obscure recording and just have to wonder what it sounded like, because I had no hope of finding it in a store, and a special order was way out of my budget, especially for something I had no idea if I'd even like. Now I can listen to damn near anything that's ever been published for less than I spent as a teenager. I find new music by listening to personalized recommendations instead of local radio stations. It's just better in every way (except probably for the artists, but music has always been a cutthroat business so who knows).
A lot of subscription services suck and are just a way to milk customers, but streaming audio and video are not in that category.
I keep hoping--perhaps naively so--for a major backlash against this. Sometimes consumers have power, and sometimes they don't. But maybe we'll all get fed up with this bullshit and start just dropping any and all unnecessary subscriptions from our lives. The big problem is when a brand becomes synonymous with a product (like fucking Adobe and ProTools, for two examples).
I'm an adult and I play a few different games like this.