#the1overmind

     I haven't done a legit blog in a while and have shamelessly been plugging my let's play videos on the site (check it out if you like it, why not subscribe and share your newfound let's player, hehe). Although that will continue I still like to blog occasionally. This time it's a little different. I'm going to reflect on how my gaming has evolved over the last 25 years touching on what I feel is important. To give you an answer as to why I'm blabbing about this, it's all in response to the latest craze publisher cooked up in the kitchen, loot boxes.

"The NES came with Mario and Duck hunt bundled in the same cartridge. We sunk hours into it that game."

     Let's start with in the beginning… no not that far back, let's say 1991. Me and brother got the NES for Christmas. Oh the freakishly high pitched vocals our little voice boxes shrilled, when we thrashed the wrapping paper off of the box like the Doom Guy does to the flesh demons with a chainsaw, was magical and probably headache inducing to the rest of my family. The NES came with Mario and Duck hunt bundled in the same cartridge. We sunk hours into it that game. We didn't know about any of the secrets or hidden world warps or even the negative world (which technically is a bug but meh, whatever). So much fun, I tell you. Back then company's obviously were very different when it came to video game development. Sure they wanted to make a profit but they knew that was far fetched with a relatively new industry that was beginning to hit its first stride after the infamous video game industry crash. Innovation was at the heart. If you had an idea and a dream to do something in the industry there was a pretty good chance that with a little luck and know how you could make whatever the heck you wanted and boy did it show. I won't lie, looking back, there were a metric-ton of shovelware and forgettable titles but in that same moment, when those floodgates opened there were a lot of good games that floated to the top. Everything from the first Final Fantasy to Excite bike, Paperboy and obscurities like Nightshade were all fantastic games that ALL played very differently from one another. They're what paved the way to literally everything we have today.

“It has always been about the money."

    True enough those were simpler times. The industry started evolving. Hardware first followed by innovation with said new hardware. 16 colors to 256 colors, sprites to pixels to polygons. Anti-Aliasing, Bump-mapping, Tessellation, I could go on. One innovation after another but at some point it started to change. When was that? When did it go from “making a game because it's fun or because you want to tell a story with this new median.” to “make a game so our investors are happy with the return they were promised on that last investors call.”? Well the answer is both simple and straightforward. It has always been about the money. That's right, you heard me. The bottom line is that company's exist to make money. Shocker I know but it's the truth. If Nintendo, a 200 year old company, knew that they would never make a dollar on the gaming industry as a whole, I guarantee you they would've never made the console. The difference that we see today is now creative development of a game doesn't always match up with the budgets and funds provided. So they have to scrap that “new dynamic weather system” or bleeding edge “water and fire” engine as it'll cost 900k and 6 months of development time.

“It's very common place for these development teams, along with publishers, to require millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of years to make a single game.”

    So, let's fast forward to today. Why do we have games that you pay $60 for and then pay additionally for loot boxes/DLC/season pass/collector's editions for all the big titles? That boils down to cost. Whether we like it or not games, AAA titles specifically, have gotten stupid expensive. It's very common place for these development teams, along with publishers, to require millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of years to make a single game. If you take an average annual salary of a entry level programmer at  $60,000/yr for 3 years, that's $180,000 for that one person on that game. It would take 3000 purchases to cover that one person's wages for that one game. That's not including marketing, which would basically double that number or any retail store markups or digital stores taking their own cut nor is that including whatever investors agreed upon for their ROI (Return on Investment). If you have a hundred man team it adds ups quick. Of course I'm pulling the wage out of thin air so you can give or take 15-20k. Regardless it's still expensive.

“Let me be clear, I do not condone loot boxes as a means of game/character progression...”  

     Now that I have that out of the way. Where do I sit in all this? Single player? Multiplayer? Casual? Competitive? E-Sports? Let me be clear, I do not condone loot boxes as a means of game/character progression, having said that, for me I've learned as I get older that the fast-paced, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants multiplayer games are typically not my style. I find them shallow in the long run and view them in the same light as casual phone games that you spend a few minutes on every so often. That's not to say the game play is that of the casual nature but in most circumstances I'm not going to get the same enjoyment on a multiplayer game (driven by loot boxes that you have to purchase in order to keep up with everyone) as I will a single player story driven RPG. To put some examples out there, I don't mind playing games like The Forest or ARK Survival Evolved or even 7 Days to Die so long as I'm playing on a private server with my close friends. I won't play those games on a public server nor do I care anymore to play the Call of Dutys or Battlefields or Overwatch or League of Legends or DOTA2. They're just not fun, to me. The game communities are too toxic for my taste. Now I find myself playing games that were independently developed (indie) or are small passionate teams with publishers that give more freedom to the dev teams. They make a simple concept game that can be quite deep in its gameplay and in most cases turn a profit for both themselves and their publisher (if they have one). An example would be Factorio. Anyone that knows this game knows it's concept simple but gameplay depth is deeper than the Marianas Trench. Others like Cryptark, Rimworld, Diluvion, Cortex Command are all good examples, for me at least, of games done right. To me, these games represent what I enjoyed about videogames, they're not as mainstream or developed with huge budgets, comparatively speaking. They have quirks and weirdness and do things that triple-A titles would rip their hair out over. They make their games and patch them afterwards and their done. If the game was popular enough and had a story that could be expanded upon or if there was more mechanics that they wanted to try out that they couldn't do with the last game then I can see a sequel being produced but their production costs are never ridiculous.

“Basically vote with your wallet.“

    Okay, okay, okay, I've word vomited this whole time. In the end I can't say that I will never play a game that has loot boxes. I think that's a dumb thing to say. I like to keep my options open for whatever reason. Middle-earth: Shadows of War looks quite fun as I played the first game quite a bit. What I can say is that it's extremely unlikely that I will buy loot boxes for a game to make it less grindy and would rather use that money to buy a indie game that will give me the same amount of hours of entertainment. Basically vote with your wallet. I like Shadows of War, I'll buy it, I don't like loot boxes, I won't buy loot boxes. Eventually this controversy will stop. People won't complain about the loot boxes and they will be a way of life. All this will be irrelevant to me though because I'm focused on preventing my prisoners from escaping in Prison Architect or hijacking a glitch ship in Heat Signature because I bought those games instead of incremental improvements via a loot box.