Software engineer (video games). Likes dogs, DJing + EDM, running, electronics and loud bangs in Reservoir.
It’s also the fact that AAA budgets demands a huge return on investment, so you end up with gross monetization schemes designed to keep players paying as long as possible. Imagine if Stardew Valley had a Farming Pass subscription each year.
I backed the Kickstarter, and oh wow did I get my money’s worth! I genuinely wasn’t expecting them to finish, and that’s fine - I was there for the support and the ride, however it turned out.
It’s been so long since I originally backed the project that I’m not really that interested in playing it any more, but I’m happy for them that they got it over the line… well, most of it.
Like many Kickstarters they promised a lot without realising just how difficult or expensive it would be. There’s still a lot of deliverables ahead for them, but they’ve been pretty open about running out of money and operating on pure good will at this point, and I can’t say I blame them with over a decade of their lives poured into it.
I hope it does well for them!
But is the overall market growing? What I’d love to know is if less people are playing non-MTX games now than before, or if we’re just getting more people staying to play games and they happen to be drawn to MTX games, ie. a broader target market, in the same way we saw mobile gaming explode with people who never played games before.
I really hope they come up with some kind of certification system for games targeting Steam consoles, in the same way Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo do. All the boring stuff like making sure controllers connect and disconnect gracefully, the console can be slept/woken at any point in gameplay without bugs, consistent language/UX etc. That stuff goes a long way to making things “just work” on a platform. IMHO it’s the one edge console still has over PC gaming. Even if it was an optional certification, it would give players some decent guidance as to what will work well.