I was talking just today with some coworkers about how having subscriptions instant of owning is what is normal to kids now - not just games, but things like Netflix and Spotify. So this doesn’t surprise me, but does depress me. Technofeudalism is the new normal.
Comment on US kids want games subscriptions and virtual currency more than games this Christmas
Boozilla@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Evil genius marketing, working as it always does. The kids don’t know any better, so they are being exploited and conditioned to think the horrible new normal is just the way things have to be. And most parents are too tired and busy to find better alternatives.
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 10 months ago
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 10 months ago
In my teen years I spent a large fraction of my disposable income on music. A Spotify subscription is a vastly better value than buying whatever I could scrounge from a used CD store. Back then it was common for me to read about some semi-obscure recording and just have to wonder what it sounded like, because I had no hope of finding it in a store, and a special order was way out of my budget. Now I can listen to damn near anything that’s ever been published for less than I spent as a teenager.
A lot of subscription services suck and are just a way to milk customers, but streaming audio and video are not in that category.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I keep hoping–perhaps naively so–for a major backlash against this. Sometimes consumers have power, and sometimes they don’t. But maybe we’ll all get fed up with this bullshit and start just dropping any and all unnecessary subscriptions from our lives. The big problem is when a brand becomes synonymous with a product (like fucking Adobe and ProTools, for two examples).
GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m an adult and I play a few different games like this.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s simple, the games that appeal the most to kids require some form of subscription. If those games didn’t, then they wouldn’t want ones with subscriptions.
Orbituary@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The games that appeal most to kids play upon their dopamine response and generate addictive patterns.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Correct, and if they didn’t have subscriptions, subscriptions wouldn’t be popular.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Putting it like that makes it sound that this is incidental, but the conditioning techniques baked into the design of these games are included for the sake of selling battle passes and virtual items. If they didn’t have subscriptions and virtual currency, they would have been built entirely differently.
Wrench@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And target that critical mass where you don’t want to be the only kid that doesn’t have access to the game every other kid is playing.
Not having cable TV growing up definitely caused me to be the odd man out on pop culture references. A lot.
AnonTwo@kbin.social 10 months ago
Thats just most games though
How did we think Arcades worked?
Psychodelic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No you don’t understand! The kids are enjoying themselves when they play these veedeeyoo gaymz. It’s horrible!
Nacktmull@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Did it never occur to you that this might not be just coincidence?
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It did. I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying, or adding more to it than there is.
Children do not desire subscriptions as a superior model to owning games. The model of access is not something they are comparing and contrasting. They are simply going for the games they prefer, which get locked be subscriptions. I never implied that games popular with kids aren’t intentionally put behind subscriptions, I was arguing that the subscription model isn’t actually preferred but kids.
Nacktmull@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Apologies, I obviously misunderstood your first comment.
Astaroth@lemm.ee 10 months ago
How you worded this makes it seem like “if those games didn’t” refers to requiring subscriptions.
I would suggest editing it to “If those games didn’t appeal to kids” or similar; if what you meant was that kids just plays what appeals to them, and those games “just happens” to be subscription games.