No, it isn't really the players' fault that gacha games prey on our monkey brains' worst impulses to spend, and even if everyone stopped spending and supporting it, they might temporarily make it less predatory, but really, it'll revert back to being more predatory very soon because the power of the purse is mostly a myth in a capitalist system.
Originally Posted by Deathhappens
You can't just blame capitalism for everything. Just because capitalism is easily and justifiable blameable, doesn't mean that you have a get out of jail free card to participate in it just as well. This isn't like residing in a nation where you have no choice but to live with it, this is a video game that you and everyone else can uninstall.
Fair, but there's nothing stopping companies from transitioning to all-gacha, therefore removing the choice entirely. Really, you think we have anything more than the illusion of choice in capitalism? We're less participants, more victims, especially since gacha outright prays on us.
What does gacha pray to?
You are choosing to be a victim. You could always play other games. This is not like living in the USA or something where you are within a nation and incapable of immigrating to another one without going through meticulous hoops and legal+financial checks. Other larger games have tried to heavily monetize in this evil way like EA with SW:Battlefront's p2w lootboxes, they were met with such intense backlash that they had to step the business model back. Consumers in gaming are not powerless, but as long as they choose to frolic in mosquito infested swamps they will be drained of every last drop of blood.
That's only half true because while EA did back off, companies like Nintendo have remained absolutely unmoved despite backlash towards their more anti-consumer practices. For the most part, people raising a stink doesn't influence a company's bottom line that much, and if it does, they'll give the smallest concession possible before hoping people move on. Besides, it's not like FGO and games like it offer nothing to players at all, and they are fun in their own way. That doesn't excuse companies whatsoever. The only way to actually stop this in any meaningful way is to do what some countries have done and ban gambling elements in video games using real money. Even then, companies will find a way around it because the business model is so lucrative. I mean, look at tech giants getting around our old anti-trust laws like they're nothing.
If, in your opinion, even legislative intervention is not enough to cure the gacha business model, then you inevitably must relent that the only way to spare yourself of it is to not let it make a victim of you via non-engagement.
Nintendo is an entirely different beast, and honestly not on topic. Their bullying business practices are not the kind of predatory bloodsucking that we're talking about. They are aggressively defensive with their IPs, but the magnitude of their evil is many leagues below the extreme ends of the gacha business model, and FGO is in all honesty one of the most extreme gachas I've seen.
Yes, in an ideal world video games with chance-based microtransactions would be labelled as gambling games and have access to them heavily restricted. Unfortunately we live in the real world. Instead of theorizing and fantasizing about how to improve it the best option you have is to quit these games entirely, and then to bully people online until they quit them too.
I think legislative action can stop the gacha model of today, but it does nothing to prevent the gacha system of tomorrow in a capitalist system. Non-engagement also doesn't solve any problems, and no matter how many do so, it doesn't change the incentive for companies to make and market these kinds of games.
Actually, Nintendo is very much a part of the bloodsucking gacha ecosystem with games such as Fire Emblem Heroes and Dragalia Lost, and for the former at least, Nintendo or IntSys or both quietly made changes so that disabling in-app purchases would disable the summoning mechanic altogether, which is super predatory and got backlash. In addition, IP as it exists now is an absolute travesty and Nintendo's relentless bullying with regards to IP protections often manifests itself in incredibly cruel ways, often shutting down non-monetized fangames or even the Eticons, where all the proceeds were going to charity. Not to mention, Nintendo seems to enjoy quashing any competitive communities that it doesn't directly control, which is absolute nonsense. Their level of cruelty is on another level, and we as consumers can do nothing about it.
If you think bullying and focusing your ire on players can substitute for actual activism or solutions, you're the one who's part of the problem and not the solution. The overall solution would be to abolish capitalism in all its forms, but there are things we can do in the meantime to stop the ones who have direct control over the business of video games, the corporations, and not the ones who have indirect boycott power at best, the players.
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One last thing, but complacency is what allows evil to flourish, and no matter how harshly you word your critiques against players for buying in, your position is one of utter complacency, so evil will continue on.
Ah but I am not being complacent at all. I have achieved nothing and have no feeling of superiority over people still playing this game, because I too once played it. That is why I actively tell people that these games harm them and that they should get out. I am doing everything I can to make a difference the only way I know how short of changing my career path to politician so that I can make these games a crime to even think about.
That sounds fairly complacent to me. You've given up on any meaningful change, so you've decided to be an asshole to people who still play because they're the easiest target. If you want to be an asshole, why not yell at DW or TM online? What else is Twitter for? Still, being an asshole online doesn't substitute for real policy activism or efforts to force companies to change, and there's no use pretending otherwise. You don't need to become a freaking politician to make a difference.
Hold up, let me call up my friend who has DW's number and tell them to fix their game. I'll be back soon.
How have you made a difference today?
None, and I know it. However, that doesn't mean I don't want to try.
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Better use of your time than haranguing players, that's for sure.
Same. That's why I keep trying.
Nah, you've given up before you even began.
You know, you called me an asshole, but I think I've been entirely civil and haven't insulted anyone while laying out the problems with the game. It feels petty to tell me that I'm some smug doomer who's given up when I earnestly explain to people that the best thing they can do is stop touching these games, while admitting yourself that there's nothing you can do.
At least I try.
I never said there's nothing we can do. The thing to do is encourage bans of microtransactions and gambling elements in games on an international level, which will at least reduce the current problem, and it's possible in our capitalist system, even if it will likely be temporary. Besides, you ignore that I have earnestly said we need to get rid of capitalism, not in some doomer sense, but in a sense where I genuinely believe in revolution and how it can free people from the systems of capitalist exploitation, represented here as gacha. We are quite a ways a way from that necessary revolution, BUT in the meantime, relentless online and offline activism is the solution. People have gotten much worse shit done that way. Trying to preach to players to give up the gacha and belittling them and their intelligence for continuing to play is as counter-productive as can be. You may not have insulted anyone, but you have self-reported as an smug asshole doomer in that way.
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That doesn't count as trying. That's just smug doomerism.
These kinds of threads are normal. It's only abnormal if you think of the forum as a place to just post facts and information, like a wiki. But this is a community -- a unique advantage offered by forums, something that was captured and peaked in a specific slice of time, that other social media like Twitter and reddit doesn't capture. Sure, on reddit, the overall sub has a definite sense of what kind of posts are the norm, but here, it's like a village. People get to know each other. You have a distinct identity. People get to follow along the trajectory of your thoughts. Threads like this are the perfect place for the community itself to weigh in on the fandom itself, not just answering Noble Phantasm question #193984. This site has led to numerous life long friendships formed and offline meetups. In that perspective, someone saying they're bowing out isn't just saying they're losing interest in the franchise, but also stepping out of the community here, which has an impact on everyone.
This is why FGO has always been so contentious here. Part of it is the franchise and what changes it brought to the series itself, but part of it is also what it means for the identity of the community and fandom, and like people upset that a village of theirs is getting turned into a big corporate landscape as old stores shut down and get replaced by Wal Mart, you have the same sense here. It'll always be a part of the discourse and having an opinion on whether it's for the better or worse is part of the community's endless conversation and on what its relationship is to the properties and itself.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
Not sure whose intelligence I belittled unless you are hyperfocused on mentioning low self-control coomers, which made no mention of intelligence, just self-control. I even mentioned that in the same breath as legit gambling addictions. Two target audiences that the games predate upon who need saving.
This is my relentless activism, I am cutting off the source of the game's success one customer at a time.
How would this compare to other prototypically unhealthy habits like smoking or excessive drinking? Presumably in those cases a lot of the blame also lies on predatory industries for encouraging those habits, but it doesn't seem right to say that individual intervention (i.e telling/cajoling/persuading someone to quit) is always misguided. Collective action is of course good and necessary, but by definition it's the kind of thing that can't be achieved by any one person and so can kind of instill complacency on an individual level. I feel like a lot of people thinking your way could easily end up just hoping for collective action while in practice not doing anything.
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