Oh I see. Sorry for the off-topic response then!

It’s a shame that multiplayer games really struggle with paid models these days. It heavily cut into a player base if things aren’t free to play. That kind of forces all but the biggest releases to turn to other monetization models in order to keep the base game free.

I think it’s tough with card games because they come from a physical form of lootboxes. Being expensive is kind of baked into their lineage. Collecting cards is a big part of the fun, and if you made it very easy to do I think it’s hard to say whether people would enjoy them as much.

I don’t play any collectible card games anymore because I don’t want to pay for it anymore, but there is something very entertaining about the model even if it’s easy to argue it’s a scummy business model by today’s standards.

I haven’t looked into this game beyond your description, but it does sound like a pretty weird model. Do you also have to pay for cards on top of that?

I remember kind of disliking the arena system in hearthstone because I liked the game mode a lot, but as a casual player it was really hard to get to play it much. I guess they wanted to keep people from spending all their time there since you didn’t need to buy cards to play. I much preferred magic arena’s drafts where you pay an upfront cost but get to keep all the cards you played with. Much more accessible for casual players and more satisfying, too, since you always get something out of it.

It’s not their fault they’re gatekeepers, it’s a symptom of their success. The biggest platform will have a much greater pull inherently, and it should be their responsibility to act fairly because of that position. Thankfully they seem to take that seriously so far. We can only hope it stays that way.

Having the biggest audience to the degree that they do absolutely makes them a gatekeeper. If Steam became predatory tomorrow it would have a catastrophic effect on the consumer friendliness of the current PC market because you wouldn’t have anywhere else to turn for many games. GOG and Itch don’t have nearly as large of a selection of mainstream stuff.

Doesn’t seem to be working considering this is a post about a major article about it.

It has a long way to go but it’s a good start. The community is very homogenous right now (maybe excluding some of the mainly politically focused servers). It’s predominantly male tech people right now and it shows in what is active and the general vibes of discussions. My hope is not only for more niche communities to grow, but also for a lot more diversity of interests and of people in general. We need more women’s voices on here for sure. I miss that diversity from reddit. Things have been steadily, if slowly, growing so far from what I can tell, so hopefully over time all this will improve.

And by core business they mean their ad platform presumably.

Its pretty crazy. I was very taken aback by the email. Dev accounts aren’t even free.

I see a lot of the other reasons mentioned, but one I don’t: on android you are required to release updates at least every year-ish or they will completely delete your developer account and app.

Source: got that message recently for an app I made and haven’t had a reason to update.

You’ve sent me down a rabbit hole with these. Super cool!

Are there others of these for different games? As far as I can see some of the connection types in the legend never appear (or I’m just blind)

I would like playing with people more except I like to go slow and thorough and really savor the experience. No one else I’ve met plays games like that. I just end up feeling rushed when I play with others and it’s not fun for me.

It’s talking about games that require an always on connection. You can save the installer for games like that, but the game still won’t work if it can’t phone home.

This game is excellent for anyone wondering. It plays like a heroes of might and magic overworld but with card game battles. The writing is also top tier and it presents many difficult morally gray choices with gameplay consequences.

The terms are just my own, so i wouldn’t expect them to make sense yet without explanation.

As i said many things blur the lines, just like you point out. The goal of these terms isn’t to put up barriers, but to make it easier to talk about the differences between things. My goal is to point out the core of interactive experiences can be fundamentally different from a game, and using that term as an umbrella for everything can create false expectations. Does that make sense?

Prince of Persia falls solidly into the game definition for me for the record. It has challenges, rules, and while the loss mechanic can be rewound, it’s still a loss mechanic. You don’t have to load a game for something to be a loss, in other words. A loss simply means the player has been given feedback that what they did is incorrect and they can’t succeed at the game or challenge by doing what caused the loss.

I think one thing that would help the discussion is acknowledging that there are now multiple kinds of interactive media, and not all of them are games.

The terms i personally use are:

Game: an interactive experience with rules, challenges, and the possibility of winning and losing.

Toy: an interactive experience where you are given tools and a space to play in, but which lacks a structured goal. Paper doll falls into this category.

Interactive Story: an interactive experience where you go through a linear or branching narrative, but which avoids mechanical or mental challenges and can’t be lost. Many visual novels would fall into this category.

I think a lot of tension between people who enjoy these different categories would be lessened if we talked about them as equally valid, but different, forms of interactive entertainment.

The boundaries can be blurred of course. There are many examples of mixed experiences that combined all of the above, but i think it’s still a helpful way to look at for me at least. Some people really enjoy toys but don’t like games, and that’s not just OK, it’s a good thing. It broadens the media pool and lets more people in.

Well, usually i take my underwear off first…

I stand corrected! I’m glad to be wrong about this one. Hard not to be cynical these days and it’s easy to assume ulterior motlves.

Can you explain it to me? I’m just repeating what I’ve been told and I’m not a financial person.

Edit: nvm, I just read the other responders links.

Edit: I’ve been corrected in the comments. Happy to be wrong about this so thanks to the correctors.

Charitable donations can be written off on the businesses taxes, so by having customers pay for the donations it means the company gets to double dip. They write it off and the customer reimburses them for it.

Moral of the story: don’t donate to corporations. Give it directly to a charity.