The "player" spending this money is the content creator Jtisallbusiness. Self professed as "THE NUMBER ONE YOUTUBER FOR CASTLE CLASH & OTHER MOBILE GAMING CONTENT!", this looks like a business pouring expense money into a micro-transaction game and drumming up PR.
It would be more disturbing if players at this end of the spending curve _didn't_ encounter game-breaking issues. I'd be more alarmed if the headline read: "After $100K, YouTuber professes, 'This is where the game gets fun.'"
Considering it costs a shameless $600,000 to max out a character, it's pretty surprising that the game breaks when you're only a fraction of the way there.
I dunno. 600 grand feels like such an obviously unrealistic amount to spend I automatically assume there's no in-game expectation that a player should _actually_ hit that goal.
Would it be less worrisome if the game "only" required, say, $600 to max out?
It seems in both cases consumers are at the precipice of a digital money pit and it's not clear whose responsibility it is to keep people from falling in.
The game will be designed to make people spend the maximum amount either way, so your question is if it is worse to make a few people loose a lot or some people loose less.
The lessons from gambling say that the maximum profit is gained from a few addicted high rollers, so I guess that's the route blizzard went.
Big spenders love VIP high stakes tables with only fellow "elite" players to compete with. Blizzard probably just needs to make it an official tier, call it the Penthouse Club or something, and make some shiny in-game ads for it to attract more whales.
I'm half-joking, but the joke is based on sad truths.
In my dream world the profits from this sparkly, gold-plated tier would be split between charities and huge bonuses for all the people who labored to make this game. Welcome to the Wealth Redistribution Club, Mr. Jtisallbusiness. Pardon our dust, we didn't expect anyone to meet the sky-high entrance requirements so fast.
That's related to why so many US states have struck devil's bargains with lottery companies. The lottery companies promise to give a percentage of profits back to public funds (often state education funds) for the rights to operate in that state. On the one hand it is nice to imagine that money going to fund education programs. On the other is the realization that gambling addiction affects every class of people, not just the super-rich and that if those lottery funds are broken down in comparison to other taxes they are often egregiously regressive (the poor buy a lot more lottery tickets than the average rich person, and worse spend a much larger share of their disposable income).
It's hard to imagine pay-2-win not having similar devil's bargain problems for "wealth redistribution" that some of the players most interested/encouraged to pursue it aren't always the players that can truly afford it.
It's beyond P2W and closer to a slot machine that rewards you with items. Consumers are easily fooled because it's a very blurry line. Games are meant to reward skill first, while slot machines reward the "roll of the dice".
Even attempting to parse the psychology of this is turning out to be a maddening experience for me.
I am a hyper-competitive gamer, but I would never participate in a pay-to-win ecosystem. It's the last place I would want to spend my time.
When I lose a game, I want to feel full responsibility for that loss so I can improve. I want the win to feel entirely of my own doing. By shelling out cash for "wins", I am completely destroying this experience.
How long can someone pay for fake outcomes before they get bored and move on? I can't imagine you will find a long term community around titles like this. All you are doing is extracting money from people who forgot how to have fun.
These horrific pay to win systems aren't meant for gamers, they are meant to find, hook, and milk gambling addicts. They aren't fun for the same reason that most people don't buy slot machines and put them next to their Xbox. The steps you take to make a system that leans into gambling addiction eventually start making it less fun for normal "gamers"
They're entire purpose, all the effort in engineering and designing them, is to push the dopamine response of people who have brains that are prone to gambling addiction. These companies hire psychologists to help them find ways to push that button harder. Every beep, every flash, every diagram on them, the way payouts are structured, the way the buttons feel, the NAME, is meant to take advantage of people who get dopamine responses from exactly that.
They are digital heroin, except they've been engineered instead of a quirk of evolution. And it is perfectly legal. We KNOW that certain people get addicted to these machines, to the point of being basically physically unable to control their interactions with gambling machines, and it is perfectly legal to start a company and hire psychologists and build machines with the sole purpose and goal of milking these problem gamblers for every cent they have access to, including debt they could conceivably take on.
They are intentional experiences with lights, sounds, colors, haptic feedbacks ("chair shaking" is a modern feature often big on the "features list"). It's a lot of the things that make a good pinball machine without the skill needed to play pinball for divergent evolutionary reasons (early slot machines were pinball machines and pachinko machines are still huge in Asia). The sensory overload lights up a lot of interesting parts of the brain all at once.
It's like food science trying to meticulously create all those "super addictive foods" that hit salty/savory/sweet/umami/fatty taste buds all at once in wild combinations. Overwhelm the senses and tell people they are having an exciting time doing practically nothing.
Is there actually some way to win real money in this game? Seems like you can only win in-game stuff and cannot cash out?
Traditional gamblers seem easier to understand. All you need is some magical thinking about randomness or probability to convince yourself you'll come out ahead. It would appear to me the trick here is much more about getting people emotionally invested in the game first. I'm not sure how many people you could get addicted to a slot machine if the money wasn't real.
Much of the gaming industry uses this model. All those free to play games with skins/cosmetic things to buy are there for the sole intend of separating people from their money for things that are probably really low cost for a game studio compared with creating new content.
At least cosmetics do not affect the gameplay or fairness in any way. I think that's an important distinction to make. In Diablo Immortal you're paying for actual gear or items that help enhance that gear.
I have no problem with people buying fancy skins (or companies making money on them) because it doesn't provide players any advantage.
However, do I think sometimes even cosmetics can get rather expensive / predatory / addictive? Yes, they're not immune to other problems. Especially when they come in loot boxes. Rocket League has some neat cosmetics but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $20 for a neat looking goal explosion or whatever...
This is NOT aimed at people like you. Tons of folks out there who either 1) don't have the skills to be competitive without pay2win, or 2) don't want to waste time on useless grinding and have the money to buy items outright.
So the game is pay to win - otherwise some 16 year old would be at the top of the ranks with no money invested.
I heard a rumor the match making service is wholesale copied from StarCraft 2 - on that game if you win about 10 times in a row you’re facing world champions - the match making really wants you to play against players better than you.
If the gear didn’t help the top of the ladder would be packed full of crazy talented kids.
Sounds like excellent match-making. If you're winning 50% of the games you play that's perfect match-making.
In Hearthstone that you'd trounce new people while you move up the ranks after the monthly rank reset. It had to be demoralizing for the F2P Hearthstone users that are losing 10 games in a row.
LMAO I know Diablo Immortal was pay2win but it also places you against people who are as strong as yourself? What kind of devious circle is this. You pay hard cash to get stronger but that only results in you playing against people who have invested the same thing. Leading to you... having to pay more hard cash. Incredible.
It's probably like the typical matching engines that maintain player ratings based on win/loss record and pair you with people of similar rankings.
He presumably wanted to be able to stomp on everyone, not realizing that the game would quite correctly not pair people with him that he could stomp all over. It's based on a reasonable distribution of ability levels, he's enough of an outlier that there's nobody near him and thus no matches.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - Alice in Wonderland
The protagonist spends Yuan 30 billion in a game. The game currency looks a lot like bitcoin and after the initial purchase no further purchases can be made. So, he controls the in-game premium currency market and owns the vast majority. That unlocks all kinds of shenanigans. The longer it goes on, the more he alters the game mechanics. Dungeon bosses recognize him as their master and he owns entire cities, for example.
"Not an issue" in the sense that he's engrossed in video games to the point that he wouldn't care for one or in the sense that he's wealthy enough to obtain one on demand?
Well I suppose there is some positive spin on this story as he seems to be unique in his ridiculous spending. There may be some hope for humanity after all.
It would be more disturbing if players at this end of the spending curve _didn't_ encounter game-breaking issues. I'd be more alarmed if the headline read: "After $100K, YouTuber professes, 'This is where the game gets fun.'"