Now you're just being disingenuous (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Saturday, October 19, 2019, 10:26 (1871 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Ragashingo, Saturday, October 19, 2019, 10:36

No, this entire post is shit.

Why? Because I used some hyperbole. Like you haven't done that, too. I just summed up statements that were already out there.

Intentionally taking advantage of people with mental health disorders:

Offloading the responsibility onto me to seek help however doesn't change the fact that the business model is designed to apply additional pressure from external social factors and influences. Which yes does include intentionally taking advantage of people with anxiety or other mental health disorders, and can have extremely negative effects.

Now let's say I knowingly take advantage of this and take him for a wild ride at the poker table. Sure its hard to argue that its not Cody's responsibility to say no to me. We made an agreement and it was all legal; the fact that he has a mental health issue isnt my failt and I cant be blamed for it.

Intentionally target the young:

As much as we dont want to associate individual humans with predatory business practices (because John Smith the QA tester is a lovely dude!), it's still going to be someone at Bungie's job to think about how to maximise profits from people within specific subgroups. And among those subgroups will be the young, the impressionable, those with impulse control issues, those with anxiety issues.

Shady, predatory, underhanded:

I dont know about bootlicking, but definitely shady, predatory, underhanded. Not even intentionally, necessary. But intent doesnt change the reality.

The part about the ideal store was certainly hyperbole, but based in things said around this thread. The fear of missing out. The social pressure that comes when everyone buys the broom emote except you. The way stores have forever used item placement and packaging to entice shoppers to make a purchase favoring a product they might not have considered otherwise. I did this because I'm of the opinion that these kinds of things are being blown way, way out of proportion.

In these web arguments, it is so easy to throw around vile accusations as if they were a part of a polite conversation. But they're not! Claude put the best face on it. Destiny's developers are real people doing their best to balance entertainment, profit, and surprisingly limited amounts of development time. They don't deserve even half of the things said about them in this thread.

If there are errors, or issues, or even unfairnesses with Eververse, it is far more likely that it's just that good intentions viewed from one side in this debate (give our biggest fans some cosmetic items they can buy and have as kind of exclusives to show that they were present at certain time periods since those cosmetics rotate out) are being viewed as dastardly (Bungie is hiring psychologists and preying on people with addiction issues just to make more unnecessary profit) by the other side. But which side should be the default here? The one that trends towards paranoia and name calling and thinking that there's someone within the company intentionally trying to exploit people? Or the one where we first assume that developers are just people like us, and that even though an online store might not meet our every expectation, it also wasn't set up by assholes working in bad faith.

Now, someotherguy, in case it's not clear, I appreciate your willingness to dive into this debate. If I didn't, I wouldn't respond to you at all. That I do means I find your arguments and voice very valuable to the discussion as a whole. Sure, I am of the opinion that you pushed too far in your accusations of developers' and marketers' behavior. But you have some great points too. Some that we haven't really touched on as strongly. For instance:

Especilly in a young industry that has only recently discovered they can pull this stuff off. If you dont have the energy to be mad about everything, be mad about the newest, most malleable version of it thats corrupting a honby you love and a developer you've followed for years.

Within the last few years, there's been some developers who really have violated their players' trust. That Star Wars Battlefront game from a year or two ago that went straight up pay to win, for instance. Suddenly players with more money to spend didn't just have some fancy hat or emote. They had superior weapons and powers and whole characters. I find that far worse than anything Eververse has done.

Likewise, I take a very, very dim view of platform exclusive in-game items like what Sony and Bungie did for Destiny and Destiny 2 up until Shadowkeep. I think a PlayStation player and Xbox player who pay the same $60 should get the same content. Instead, the PlayStation players got extra guns, extra multiplayer maps, extra Strikes, and some extra cosmetics. Entire games locked to a platform permanently or temporally (like The Last of Us, or Halo) are fine. Taking money from two people and giving one noticeably less isn't.

Thankfully, all these things are not yet ingrained in our gaming culture and thankfully we still have time to change them when they do pop up from time to time. These kinds of issues have received a ton of pushback from gamers in recent years. The Star Wars game got it's micro transactions essentially ripped out. Destiny (finally) treats Xbox, PlayStation, and PC players equally. And we, as gamers, can hopefully use our voices to keep in-game stores from straying too far into negative territory. But the accusations and finger pointing needs to be kept reasonable. And I don't think it has been here.