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S1 Ep8: When It's Done
73 Plays8 years ago
Join as Dave and Jake talk about Early Access, DLC, microtransactions, and what it means for a game to be complete!
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Transcript
What makes a game complete in 2018?
00:00:20
Speaker
Hey Dave, I've got this game I really want to tell you about. Alright, um, I'm skeptical. I have a couple questions then. Yeah, that's fine. Shoot.
00:00:31
Speaker
Day one DLC? Nope. Full game on release? Yep. Is the story derivative? Nope. Does it have a good narrative? Yep. Do your saves cost money? Nope. Is the song really punny? No. Is it always online? Nope. Was it released on time? Yep. Stealing models from games? Nope. Getting 60 plus frames? Yep. Is the game still in beta? Yep. Seriously? I kickstarted that like two years ago. What the hell man? Seriously, what the hell?
00:01:01
Speaker
Hey everybody. Welcome again to another episode of The Soapstone. I am Dave joined as always by my co-host, Jake. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going right, buddy. Uh, today I was hoping we could talk a little bit about when it's done, what makes a game complete in this current year. Yeah. What year is it? 2018. I'm told by sources. Good year. Maybe.
00:01:29
Speaker
We'll see what happens. There's a lot of games I'm looking forward to this year that hopefully don't end up as negative examples. I like how your optimism spiraled into a very conservative cautiousness. Yeah. You gotta be a little cautious. Well, I fucked up that sentence. But basically I kind of wanted to talk about some of the goods and bads of how games get released and what we expect from games that come out
00:01:58
Speaker
some of the diversity and disparity between indie games, free to play, early access, something that like one sole developer does and makes their passion and make a great game versus some of the other ones which are just flops.
Consumer disappointment with incomplete games
00:02:15
Speaker
I actually like that. I like that diversity and disparity. We should have named the podcast list.
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, disparity is such a good word in general. Yeah. I mean, it's not great, right? It doesn't mean anything. Disparity. I love the difference in wealth between classes. There's no class warfare. No. But yeah, we have talked about this just a little bit kind of on the side, and it's
00:02:46
Speaker
something that we all have to deal with I think as gamers now we've all I think made a purchase at some point probably recently where we're like
00:02:55
Speaker
I wish this game was just a little bit more done and a little bit less rare, you know? It doesn't have to be all the way thoroughly cooked, but... The only way that's okay is the old Rareware days, back on N64.
The evolution and value of DLC
00:03:11
Speaker
Not even a big Rareware fan, but... They had some good games, though. There were some classics in there, for sure. You know what made those games good, Dave? They were feature complete.
00:03:21
Speaker
You mean you just got everything on a disc or a cartridge and that was that? Yeah. Holy shit. You literally couldn't add more features. Yeah. Except for Game Genie, technically. Yeah. That was more of a cheat to work around, not necessarily extra content. It usually probably wasn't providing DLC level stuff for your game, but... So while we're on the topic of DLC, what are your thoughts and prayers about it?
00:03:48
Speaker
So I probably, when DLC came out, I was a massive skeptic of it, as I think many people were. I was like, all right, there's already been some precedent for games releasing free content, uh, post-launch, uh, to kind of like round out their product a little bit and more common than that. You'd probably see like full expansion packs. Um, as it's gone on, I've become more and more, I don't know if the word's conditioned.
00:04:16
Speaker
but I can kind of accept that DLC is part of the ecosystem
Microtransactions and early access debate
00:04:20
Speaker
now. It definitely is now. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think it's just a different thing. I don't think it on its own makes it good or bad. It's just a very different change. Cause when we grew up, you'd go to blockbuster to get a movie and the movie was what it was. It's just a feature length film. Right. And that was that there weren't,
00:04:45
Speaker
additional things you would get afterwards. If you were renting a DVD or you had the DVD, you did get special features on the side to get a little bit of a behind the scenes. But that was all again one package. And if they made a sequel, at that point it's considered a separate transaction.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of distinct products that are available for you there. And usually like if DLC or something like that or an expansion came out back in the day, it could add a significant amount of content to your game. If it didn't, it was seen as like a huge ripoff. Whereas right now, I feel like we have
00:05:25
Speaker
a pretty huge range for what's considered acceptable for DLC. Like sometimes it's just a couple extra characters in a game, maybe their skins. Like microtransactions have broken everything down to scale ridiculously. Yeah. And you couldn't do microtransactions with the N64. Not easily. They did have those hotlines, which probably, for tips and stuff, those probably were as expensive on a bad day.
00:05:56
Speaker
I forgot those existed, actually. I know. Yeah. No, they found their way to make money even before all this DLC stuff. But to begin, how it's some of the good possible things for DLC. Because sometimes a game is fully released or it's just it's out there free to play. It is what it is. And the DLC is just something that the creator wants to add on for the experience of the player. Right. And it's not necessarily
00:06:27
Speaker
extra story or gameplay, but it might just be something cosmetic or going back and like fixing things. Like you see it with a lot of indie games, I feel. But do fixes usually come through in DLC? I don't mean fixes as in like hard patches for bugs, but something I've been playing like Slay the Spire.
00:06:50
Speaker
I guess it is just patches that they keep updating things. Right. They're adding content to it. Yeah. And it's kind of just because the game's still early access and still under development. Yeah. Which is nice because you're in on that, quote, ground floor and things are still improving. So you are getting even more of a return on your investment. Yeah. And I think Slay the Spire is like probably one of the top recent successes with
00:07:18
Speaker
kind of the early access model. There's a lot of games I think that haven't necessarily done it as well. Do you have an example in mind? I do have an example in mind. It's not even a game that's necessarily bad and I think we, well I know we both played it recently. Seven Days to Die is another game that's been in early access for
00:07:38
Speaker
a long time. Seven Days to Die has been in Early Access for five years, which is half a decade, and it's kind of, I think, representative of this model where games just don't get finished, and they stay in Early Access forever.
00:07:55
Speaker
Is there a benefit to them doing that? Besides the tagline of, well, it's not done yet. Don't give me your harsh judgment and criticism because it's still in early access. I think that's most of it. I think you basically nailed it.
00:08:13
Speaker
The community can like rush to defend a game if they have the ammunition. Hey, it's like, it's still an alpha. It's still a baby. It's just a baby. Yeah, I know. Why are you picking on it so much? In another five years. See, they never say in another five years. They're like, they'll get around, they'll wrap this up. But it's, sometimes you can be dangerous with that optimism when it comes to early access games.
00:08:39
Speaker
And other ones, I mean, like have been in early access for a while that are pretty successful or still fun. And I feel like they're using the constant development model to more success. Um, two examples I have for that are a Factorio, which is like overwhelmingly positive on Steam. Oh yeah. And it's just like the love child of the creator, right? It's just absolutely amazing how much work has been put into that game.
00:09:09
Speaker
But Factorio, without getting too deep into the game, is clearly one that was designed in the sustainable, continual development structure, basically. It's a creative game. It's a very free-form game. It's a game where that type of... There's no necessarily goal-ending narrative that you're working towards. And so it's a lot easier, I feel, to pull off that kind of game in Early Access.
00:09:38
Speaker
So similar to Minecraft, you don't necessarily have, at least it didn't initially have an end goal. You're just going there to be creative and explore what mechanics you can exploit in the world. Yeah, it's kind of like, I feel like sandboxy games are probably way easier to pull off with early access. There's...
00:09:58
Speaker
I actually have another example for this. We didn't really talk about, but Slime Rancher was actually early access for a while. It was overwhelmingly positive even in early access. I picked the game up because it looked super chill and it was actually quite fun.
00:10:14
Speaker
But it does have, even though it's very open, it has a narrative. It has a story. And I got like partially kind of through this and I was like, oh, the next area like hasn't been opened yet. It's not implemented. And you kind of just get like this downer, right? Like if you've ever played an early access game and you reach the end of the narrative content,
00:10:36
Speaker
It's like, why isn't there more? It's like you started a Netflix season, you're like, I'm binging it, I'm binging it. They're like, hey, the other episodes aren't out yet. You're like, what is this, HBO? It's weird to have what you'd consider to be, as a player, an abrupt stopping point.
Challenges of early access games
00:10:54
Speaker
taking from content because you're not going to you might schedule for like updates like hey let me know if things change for this right but typically it's me waiting three months somebody messaging or reading a subreddit offhand oh hey this thing updated like oh I had no idea right now I'll go back and I'll play it for a little bit but the initial enjoyment of wanderlust has been segregated a little bit right
00:11:22
Speaker
Because now you're kind of going back to checkup versus I'm getting into a game. Right. And for a narrative game, that could mean that you've lost your progress because the save game format has changed or something like that in a recent update. And not all games are conducive to starting over from the beginning with full motivation.
00:11:45
Speaker
I feel like Slime Rancher is fine for that because it's like a farming game somewhere. It's very whimsical. Yeah. But if you had like, God forbid, a first-person shooter or something like that, or some other linear story-based game, and you're just like, all right, new content drop. Everybody's saves are cleared. Play through it again. It's like, that's rough. Yeah. Thankfully, I can't think of any examples where that happens. Right. We might have weeded them out.
00:12:14
Speaker
I don't know if that's true though, but I think early access even though it has its faults and I mean there's plenty of games that Don't kind of lend themselves to the format Or one of the biggest issues I think I mean we didn't even address this games can go into early access people can buy in because they're like this is a great concept and then it gets like abandoned and
00:12:41
Speaker
That can definitely happen. I don't know the current development status of a game like DayZ, but I think the consensus is basically that a lot of people enjoyed the mod significantly more than this full standalone release. There's some very jarring reviews in there about how they feel like this is just never going to be completed.
00:13:05
Speaker
Now would you say that there's an onus on whoever made the standalone game to complete that or because it was early access they've kind of set up front this may or may not be completed and that's enough for them to kind of cut ties if they feel like it. I think you could definitely make an argument that a lot of it is on the consumer here.
00:13:25
Speaker
because at the start of at the front page of all of these early access games you have that disclaimer why is the game in early access and it's almost always the same thing we want to fund development we expect it'll be done at some point within the next however long and we want the community to be the community to be a part of the development process that's the most positive spin you can put on it literally everyone uses that message though so it doesn't necessarily mean anything and to a certain extent i feel like the
00:13:55
Speaker
really fun games that kind of get full value of early access are propping up some of those like garbage games because you're like, man, yeah, I love Factorio. Like that's still an early access. It's been, you know, around for two years and it still hasn't released. And I think it's I've gotten my 30 bucks out of that. Right.
00:14:15
Speaker
new game comes out and you're like, sweet, I love like first person shooter deck building games. This is exactly what I want. And it's just not a game. That would be really weird.
00:14:29
Speaker
unless it's a great idea in which case I called it. But I think that they kind of write off of some of that hype. Like the fact that some games are amazing and in early access, Slay the Spire is really good, props up the whole industry.
00:14:47
Speaker
I mean, I think you have to take each one as an individual case. Also what you described sounds a little bit like Paragon, which is why it got flamed into the ground and abandoned. I thought it was because nobody played it. That too. It was just me and a bunch of bots. But it's like saying.
00:15:08
Speaker
Oh, I saw this really great YouTuber. YouTube must have a lot of good content. But as you've seen from YouTube, because it is a very free form, you can kind of upload almost whatever. It will range entirely. It has everything. It's not controlled by a single source. It's not gated off.
00:15:30
Speaker
Like if you have a television show on a network, they say this is okay to be content This will be able to generate ad revenue for us, right? And this is content that we want to be associated with
00:15:44
Speaker
So when it's early access in Steam, you're kind of just, hey, it's here. It's like the wild west. There's some good cowboys out there, so I'm fine with all cowboys. Yeah. And then, you know. It really depends. And I think a lot of that would then come down to, like, I for myself as a Steam user, I'm like, oh, let me see the reviews. Is this wildly positive?
00:16:06
Speaker
Okay, so maybe there is something to it. Maybe we should look into it a little more, watch some of the trailers, see if it's my type of gameplay, and go from there. I think that's actually a really good point. Community reviews without community reviews, you wouldn't have this kind of first layer shield against early access games to say like,
00:16:30
Speaker
Is this really the valuable, interesting, engaging game that it looks like based off of the trailer? I would say even past those types of games, or even games in general, how likely are you to see a movie by the trailer alone without checking its Rotten Tomatoes score or looking other comments about it online? Right.
00:16:52
Speaker
I don't actually see that many words. Or a book. Or anything else. It would have to be pretty hype. You usually need some type of recommendation or word of mouth. I feel... I think that's true. I think that's definitely true.
00:17:07
Speaker
That's probably how I've avoided being, for the most part, burned on early access games. I don't want to just sit here and trash a bunch of games, but I mean, I've had some misses where even if the game had a really good premise or it comes out and it's like, you know, got positive reviews or whatever, like I played Conan Exiles, it's kind of like a
00:17:31
Speaker
Survival, crafting, PvP experience, building fortresses and stuff. Yeah, it's like that. It had really good graphics and a bunch of bugs. But FunCom was like, hey, early access model is going to fund this development. And I know it's got a lot of expansions since then, or not expansions, but patches since then.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I'm sure it's added like a lot of interesting content. They fixed a lot of problems I had with it. But the problem I had with it was I jumped in too early. If that game would have been so much more close to completion and then I jumped in and I'm like, man, this is so exciting. And I got all that like.
00:18:12
Speaker
Something you kind of touch on a little bit the hype that comes the first time you play a game you don't get that again like you get one chance at that and Unless the game like blows your mind You're not gonna revisit it and be like alright hype v2. Let's do this
00:18:29
Speaker
And so, I mean, if you have a really shallow early access launch and people just don't like your game or it has some issues, that can be the end of it. Like, there's not a lot of second chances when it comes to game launches.
00:18:44
Speaker
So what would you say is something you could do to avoid that situation going forward? Would you just read more reviews? Would you always just wait maybe like two or three weeks to see as things progress?
00:18:59
Speaker
I think, as the consumer, that you have to read a lot of reviews if you're going for picking up an early access game. If you're picking up something in development, I mean, platforms like Kickstarter are usually shot in the dark unless you know the people running the Kickstarter, and that's different, right?
Game satisfaction and refund policies
00:19:24
Speaker
But early access, you immediately have something playable, right? And the nice thing about that is you do get those reviews. I think you basically have to use those. And it's a little bit depressing, but you kind of have to temper your hype for some things. Because I know I'll impulse buy games if I'm just like, man, this hits all of the categories I care about. And I'm just like, this looks awesome.
00:19:52
Speaker
And if the community gets there before me and was like, that's what we thought. We played it. It's not that great. That can be the thing that actually saves me there. If I listened to them, if I'm willing to let my hype be curtailed just a little bit.
00:20:12
Speaker
So you'd say that there's some good in being the person on the ground floor, if you're actually leaving reviews on his feedback. Yeah, I think about two. Thumbs up and thumbs down. Two separate games. Two reviews since my student account started in like 2008. So, you know, that's pretty good. One every five years. I'm not sure to tout your legacy's theme status.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, for every seven days to die, early access period, I release a newer video.
No Man's Sky and post-launch improvements
00:20:50
Speaker
Though that's still an early access, so that might not feature. There's this weird bug where zombies keep spawning a lot on the seventh day. Developers, feature? Bug? Get on that.
00:21:05
Speaker
But obviously early access isn't the only thing that could kind of hold a game back, you know, keep it from feeling complete in R.I. is right. I played many other games that weren't part of the early access system at all and definitely didn't feel like they were feature complete at release.
00:21:26
Speaker
Oh, really? Do tell. Well, thanks for asking. To be fair, my thought was just going transition and then just talking, so I think yours worked out pretty good. Yeah. Anyways, the game I was thinking about was No Man's Sky. I picked it up at launch. A couple of my friends picked it up at launch. Why?
00:21:48
Speaker
Basically the hype, right? This actually ties back to the previous point. Maybe this is one of those games that actually helped me learn that lesson. The hype around the game was unreal. And part of that was because developers, Hello Games, were just talking about it constantly regardless of whether the features were in the game at launch or not. And the space simulation genre of games is struggling a lot right now.
00:22:18
Speaker
There's really not that many out there that are fun or good, especially at like the large scale.
00:22:27
Speaker
And No Man's Sky was kind of an entry into that that was supposed to like bring the genre back basically. Other things in that field or kind of, they're always kind of like a little crappy or they never like get really thinking of like the X series, X2, X3, where it's like huge scale, super, super buggy, barely playable till it's been patched like over the course of several months.
00:22:55
Speaker
or other games that have a lot of backing like Star Citizen where it's like, maybe it'll come out someday. But this one was like, yeah, it's actually coming out and it's coming out on PlayStation, which means it'll probably come. Yeah, it'll probably actually come out. But I should have been a lot more cautious about it when those first reviews started to like be like, it's kind of not really sure. I should have paid more attention to that.
00:23:25
Speaker
But that was definitely a game that's a perfect example, one that wasn't complete at launch based off of everything that was on the box. And the fact that there is actually on the back of the box and like the EU, they had like stickers over the multiplayer, uh, like rating basically, um, for like the first run of boxes and things. You're like, Hmm, okay. Yeah. It seems like they promised a lot and then didn't deliver on a whole lot.
00:23:55
Speaker
insert politics joke here, but I had a very healthy dose of skepticism, but I'm cynical by nature anyway. Right. And it didn't, not a huge space buff myself. Like I don't care about Star Trek, Star Wars, anything like that. Anything with star in it, really? Yeah. Starrcade, Starbomb. Well, Starbomb's pretty decent, actually. Starbomb's pretty good. But it didn't peak my interest just from like a genre perspective.
00:24:24
Speaker
And it seemed like a better version of Minecraft to a degree. You have some exploration, you have some crafting, some building survival. You get to play with friends and such, but it didn't seem enough for like a new release purchase at a $60 price point. And then I still think to this day, it's not actually multiplayer. Is that correct?
00:24:47
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it's it's basically correct. I think there's I think you can share like templates so you can visit other people's Bases like when they're not there basically so like they and I could be wrong because I'm tracked all of the updates So I don't want to say something that's completely out of place, but I believe that you can visit Their structures or whatever while you are not there because that information is kind of shared in the cloud They can pull it down and render it locally
00:25:15
Speaker
but they don't do like two people being rendered in the same universe at the same time. It's easier to share like level data than entities.
00:25:27
Speaker
So theoretically, could your friend be building a house and you go, you're at that same location and you're seeing just a space house being built by magic. It's not like real. It's not like real time. I think it's like snapshot. So you'd get a cash version. Exactly. I believe every so often something like that. Okay. If it's in there, that's, that's probably how it works. That sounds. Multiplayer in the same way that animal crossing is multiplayer. As in if you go over to your friend's house.
00:25:54
Speaker
They play, they go on and show you their house, they log out, you log in, go visit their house, start dropping trash in their house. I actually don't remember if you can drop items in other people's houses.
00:26:06
Speaker
Maybe you could give it to their, uh, gyroid. I couldn't tell you. I haven't really played Animal Crossing. All I know about that game is that all of the animals are trying to convince you that there's a world beyond your area, but it's actually like post-apocalyptic death zone. I'm pretty sure that's canon. What? I miss part of that game. Back to, uh, whatever we normally talk about. Um,
00:26:37
Speaker
No Man's Sky was kind of a good example of that for me. There's been other games like that where I was dissatisfied with the state-out launch, and I think the game became better over time. Because No Man's Sky right now is actually pretty decent. You can actually play it, and it still has a lot of the issues it had at launch, and it still is not what they promised at launch.
00:26:58
Speaker
but it's like not terrible maybe it's not worth 60 bucks but okay so you're not really giving it very high praise no i think it's a good game no i'm not knocking the fact that you're doing it
00:27:12
Speaker
But it seems like overall you were not happy with your purchase. Would you say that's true? That's true, yeah. I actually tried to refund it. And did you try and refund it through Steam? I did. Or through other services? Yeah. OK. So were you able to? I was not able to. OK. And then I didn't follow through on that. I was a little beyond the minimum amount of time played, or a couple hours beyond it. And I was just like, you know what? Yeah. I mean, it's their policy. That's fine.
00:27:40
Speaker
Because when I did play the game before I realized how limiting it was and this is I think one of the tricks when you're playing games like this is that early ramp up kind of into the game that does not necessarily have to
Evaluating game value and entertainment
00:27:56
Speaker
It's not necessarily indicative of what the rest of the game is gonna be like. I know Man Sky was like that. You're just like, holy crap. Unknown universe, all this stuff. I've been from planet to planet. And then you realize that the fact that everything is kind of randomly generated makes it all really samey.
00:28:13
Speaker
And there's not that much to title together. Yeah. And sometimes games have that. They have that initial high into a low peak. And then you're just like, oh no, there's the drop. And it doesn't come back. So what do you think would be an adequate amount of time to assess a game? I think. With No Man's Sky being the example for this.
00:28:40
Speaker
So this is like kind of a trend that's happened a little bit more recently, where I'm going to tie this back to it. But in the past, review copies of games were basically the way that your game gained any visibility, right? The fact that your game was on the front page of GameSpot, IGN, Destructoid, whatever, Joystick would
00:29:05
Speaker
Basically be your advertisement. Yeah, and unless you were just like the top of the top Triple-A game and whatever gaming magazine That was you know, that was the way you got people to know about your game So you didn't want reviews to happen after your game launched because you want people to buy your game, right? but with like the hype machine that is the internet and like personalized subreddits everything like that, it's really easy to
00:29:35
Speaker
over promise on a game and have that like perpetually push hype forward. And you don't need to rely on reviews as much. Like No Man's Sky actually sold really well at launch, even though some reviews are starting to come out and it's like a little sketch.
00:29:53
Speaker
I think that you need to complete a game in most cases, unless it's like Minecraft to really get an idea for what the review for a game should be. Well, I'm saying more is of your evaluation as the consumer or the player. Okay. Do you think there should even be an evaluation period?
00:30:20
Speaker
What do you mean for like, for like the option to like refund a game or something? So it's, it's pretty much impossible to do a hundred percent, right? Because there's games that are less than two hours long. So there's some games you could literally complete them and then refund them on Steam, which, but to be fair, a soccer clicker was only like two bucks to begin with. Right. Yeah. I mean, how many hours do you have, you have on that one? Can you refund that one? Or is it a thousand times over?
00:30:50
Speaker
It is in its way its own scar on my body. It's a decision I made and I have to stick with it. Everybody's got their tattoos. But I think a lot of it depends on the game and the price because say you paid like 10 bucks and that was your like MSRP, that was your retail price for a game.
00:31:13
Speaker
And it was like really great for the first five hours and then it kind of like trailed off into an ending. A lot of games don't really know how to close out, right? You could be like, well, the fact that the ending was garbage kind of brought the game down a bit, but I got all of this enjoyment out of it and it was really cheap.
00:31:32
Speaker
I mean, in like a perfect society where money doesn't mean anything, you could judge games entirely based off of their content and not how much they cost. But until then, you know, we're competing against $200 collector's editions with statues and stuff in them and all of this. Yeah, as soon as you put a price point on it, you're saying, I think it is worth this. And you have to agree to actually purchase into it unless there's like a sale or something.
00:32:00
Speaker
So price will always definitely be a part of it. I like to think of it even if it wasn't the best $60 game that I bought into. If you think of like how much a movie costs if you go see it or even just buy it. Like let's say you get like a Blu-ray I think is the current media. That's what I hear from the kids. 2018.
00:32:24
Speaker
Like let's say it's 15 bucks and it's like a two hour feature film. 15 bucks? I mean it depends on what it is. I don't know, I don't know. But let's say 15 to 20. Okay. So you're at 750 to like 10 bucks an hour per entertainment unit, right? Right. If I go out to eat for like any decent meal, I'm paying at least 10 bucks. But do you eat for entertainment? Because I know I do. It's not specifically entertainment, but you are getting
00:32:52
Speaker
enjoyment from you are benefiting from it right you pay for happiness in a way it's just small bursts not the long-lasting happiness jake are you trying to sell me drugs i've got some happiness here opens trench coat not that happiness but if you think of it from like a movie standpoint it's always going to be like a pretty high ratio but let's say you
00:33:20
Speaker
I'm going to pick the recent game God of War. I haven't played it myself, but it looks pretty good. But it's around like $60 new release, right? But that has to have at least 10 hours of content in the game. Right. At least. So now you're about $6 an hour, which for an enjoyment ratio is pretty inexpensive.
00:33:45
Speaker
And in the U S is a terrible wage. Yes. But if you have minimum wage, you can afford to Blake out of where all the time, pretty much. So it, it does depend. Like let's say you don't have the money to always get new releases. You need to wait. Maybe you're going to judge things a little more harshly, try and find something in your price point, but that would still get you enough enjoyment. Right.
00:34:12
Speaker
Like maybe you do subscribe to an MMO and you just have that monthly fee and that is your game. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's fair. I.
00:34:23
Speaker
I have played a lot of MMOs, but I tried to, or recently I'm not as much, but one thing that has happened is I have so many other games that are both either just in the backlog or they're what I'd like to call like staples, basically. Not to mean that's a derogatory term, but games that like hold their fund value. So like I can play Overwatch whenever, you know, I can play other games like that, like whenever.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, something is... DOTA. Not single player content. Yeah. It has a multiplayer element and it's fresh every time you go into a match or a game. It's good to have something like that. If you have like a couple of those and you're working like a nine to five, then you find that you don't necessarily need an MMO. Like if I didn't buy any games for the rest of this year, I would still have plenty of games to play.
00:35:17
Speaker
And I have so many games that the ones that I have played that are like single player wouldn't be staples. I've actually forgotten about them by the time they come back up, I could play them again fresh. You have enough games and a short enough memory that. Yeah. That's the gifts. But jumping back a little bit to games on release and we're talking about No Man's Sky.
Acceptable launch issues and game stability
00:35:42
Speaker
What would you say is a hard no?
00:35:48
Speaker
from something that would be coming out. Like, is it okay if a game does have a couple of issues day one? Is there any like forgiveness buffer there?
00:35:59
Speaker
I think you have to have some forgiveness buffer, but a lot of it depends on the type of game. Kind of talking about MMOs for a second. I know that you're talking about No Man's Sky, but almost every MMO has had a really tough launch because it's actually really hard to anticipate that much network traffic and scale everything for it. And I don't think many people hold that against the games.
00:36:25
Speaker
But I mean, talking about other games, like a single player game, it's actually a lot easier to think of things that are completely unacceptable. I mean, baseline, game doesn't run. There you go. Yeah, if there's any crashes, that's something that's like a hard break in the game where it literally stops you playing. Mm-hmm. Definite no. Yeah. I would say a lot of graphical glitches that you see come up in a lot of Bethesda games.
00:36:55
Speaker
I also think that's unacceptable. Yeah. Like I understand, like, let's say you have a game as big as Witcher 3 and there's some really obscure interaction that you didn't think about. Granted, it happens. Horse physics mostly for that one. Yeah. But if I'm going through what I consider to be normal course of gameplay or just tangenting off to like some degree of exploration, I'd expect things to run smoothly and behave.
00:37:24
Speaker
as a normal game. Yeah. I'd say graphical glitches don't necessarily bother me as much, unless the game's trying really hard to be immersive and it's just undermining itself. And maybe that's just conditioning on the part of the Elder Scrolls series and the game bureau engine in general, where it's just like, yeah, some stuff's going to be wonky. It's just the reality of it.
00:37:52
Speaker
And maybe I give them more slack for that. But yeah, I mean, 100% crashes just. If I was a kid, that wouldn't bother me nearly as much because it'd be like, I have so much time to do this. But if you're in the middle of the game and you're really into it and then straight up crashes, you're just like, oh, and I now have to wave playing this game against all of my other responsibilities again. Yeah.
00:38:15
Speaker
I'm trying to think that's a tough question. I'm trying to think of things a game could do wrong that I feel like they could fix later that wouldn't bother me as much. Because I feel like for the most part, if you're looking like a single player game.
00:38:32
Speaker
Your game should be done when it launches. If you have to have some technical patches or things to improve performance a little bit, I would like that your initial performance didn't tank gameplay. If I'm sitting at 40 frames and you release a patch and now I'm at 50 frames, sweet. I can play the game at 40 frames. But there's, I don't know, beyond that, it's really tough to do. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
Because I like analogies so much, I'm going to relate this back to food to show my interests. It'd be like if you had a meal out at a restaurant and it wasn't the best in the world, but it was still decent. If you were to like play and say, Hey, this was kind of a bit below what expected for like price point. Maybe they gift you like, Hey, here's a complimentary dessert. Right.
00:39:30
Speaker
but you can't go back and fix the food I already ate. It has already been eaten. You can't put in things afterwards to just fix it.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's true. And games have, there have been examples of games where they like give players free things or whatever. If it's got like a micro transaction based component, they had some technical trouble or something like that. But for the originals, we're just getting a game on a CD. I mean, it's on you as the developer to make sure that it works when you like put that CD in whatever drive. Yeah. Like what are your options? Go back to the store. Hey, this, um,
00:40:10
Speaker
this doesn't work. It's bad. It's bad. It's no good. I mean, they could maybe give you a different copy of the disc and hope that runs better on your machine. But with the day and age we're at currently, technologies progressed far enough. People have enough experience making games where
00:40:31
Speaker
I consider at this point to be unacceptable for day ones who have that many issues. I mean, it's kind of, it's interesting because not everybody has all of that experience. It's still like a constant market. It's like a free market, a constantly changing environment. Uh, and people are coming in all the time. Yeah. I think if you're indie or a small team, you definitely get a degree of leeway.
00:40:57
Speaker
And also people want to see you succeed. You don't have the same financial backing and amount of resources. So people want to see you like, oh, they're getting better, they're improving.
00:41:11
Speaker
They've taken themselves from lowly commoners into game developers. I get to enjoy their cool product that they worked hard on. But it has to be a cool product, and you have to work hard on it. Those are the keys. Yeah. Because otherwise, I don't care if you're indie. If your game's garbage, I'm still going to get upset. If you're flipping assets and it should basically be a mobile game, fuck right off. Not to say all mobile games are bad, but
00:41:35
Speaker
We are heavily implying it though. I mean we grew up on PC games and console and something that you play on mobile like for example like a Flappy Bird or something where you click or something like FarmVille is not an engaging thing that you'd be paying
00:41:54
Speaker
Like $15 you're up for. I pay way more. For the microtransactions, yeah, it adds up. I get what you're saying, though. There's no easy outs for it. It's really tough. It's really hard. You have to have a lot of passion for it. You have to follow through on all of the aspects. Just because you have a great story, if your game has crashes, it's going to ruin the experience.
00:42:20
Speaker
i wanna site real quick larry in studios i'd love you to death divinity to originals in holy fuck did i enjoy that game i still want to play it again with some people and start a new campaign he's gonna give it a three but when i was uh... playing with my friend we did experience uh... random crashes at
00:42:47
Speaker
points to the game. And we had gotten it on release. So we kind of chalked it up to, oh, we're probably like the first people to get to this area. There's content they haven't worked out this kink yet, right? The developers didn't even make it this way. I guess not. But that was something that really detracted because you'd go through like a fight and take maybe like half an hour or something else. And then the game would crash.
00:43:11
Speaker
And you're not doing like constant quick saves. Right. Nor do you want to. If the game is immersive, then quick saving all the time actually takes you out of it. So if you lose progress like that, it is a huge fucking kick in the balls because I've lost the progress. I don't want to immediately repeat what I've done. So I'm kind of like tapped out of the game for the day. Yeah. Wait a week.
00:43:34
Speaker
I've had other things with that for PC releases like Bioshock 2. I encountered that a lot and I still haven't gone back to complete it because it's too much effort that I'm putting into it. Which is a shame because actually I'm one of three people in the world that really like Bioshock 2. At some point I would like to get around to it. But in short, Divinity 2, reach out to us, get our DX dialog files, we'll get this wrapped up, get this fixed.
00:44:04
Speaker
want to make it a better game for our listeners. It's probably already patched, like, ridiculously. They really stay... Oh, I'm sure it is. version of the game, I think, at this point. The mandatory year of the game release.
Impact of loot boxes and microtransactions
00:44:23
Speaker
Right now, I want to switch to talking about loot boxes a little bit. Oh. Or not necessarily loot boxes in general, but any type of. It checks the clock. Any type of Bible content you can get for a game. Okay. So like some randomization microtransactions.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah. Certain things, though, like we've talked about Payday 2 before, has a shit ton of DLC packs where you can get custom weapons, skins, characters, maps, other things. But you're buying it like a piece at a time. You at least know what you're getting in the pack. So you're talking about like chests, randomized drops. Well, we can talk about both. Yeah, I mean, well, it's fine. I think... Yeah, go ahead. I'll let you finish your thought.
00:45:16
Speaker
My current opinion is that while I'm not a fan of most things in general, I like being able to unlock things. Like, oh, hey, cool, I unlocked the skin for this character I play a lot. It makes me appreciate the game a little bit more. It'll be a little more invested.
00:45:33
Speaker
I don't like if I have to spend money and hope to get that thing. Most recent example being Dota 2 Battle Pass, which I did invest in. I like playing Dota 2 with people, so I like investing in the stuff. I like the cosmetics they do, usually really cool. But there are certain ones that I have to either wait for it to go on market, in which case it'll be
00:45:58
Speaker
spiked up to like $200. They don't always go on market either. But I kind of have to keep buying the same chest and essentially rolling for it. Yeah. So that kind of sucks. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very topical right now. The gambling in games. I think it isn't nicer though. If it is something, it's just cosmetic.
00:46:27
Speaker
Like League of Legends has a decent model where if you want to unlock certain skins for a character, you can use like actual in-game points that you've accrued from playing to like further your investment on a given character or champion. Right. Which I'm fine with having it that way. Or like I said with Dota 2, I am even fine going out and just buying it for my own enjoyment to get that cool cosmetic effecting game.
00:46:57
Speaker
but as long as it's not something that's mechanically locked behind a paywall or actual game content.
00:47:06
Speaker
kind of funny and I mean like I know we both heard this argument before and maybe we'll have a dedicated episode to loot boxes at some point but the argument against that of course is that cosmetics are content which you know like that argument and I was you know
00:47:28
Speaker
I fall basically in the same camp where I'm just like, I'd rather it be cosmetics because I mean, like I know development takes time. I know it takes money. I want to see the games that I really love be successful and be around for a long time, provide me lots of content. Right. But I don't have to like I don't have to dump a lot of money for. So I don't feel bad when I buy up, you know, treasures or loot boxes or whatever.
00:47:56
Speaker
Cause I'm like, I get some cool stuff. None of it matters. Um, and I feel, I feel almost like I, you know, I'm supporting the developer in that, which is what I'm doing. But I do concede that I spend a lot more money in games where they have these random roll systems. And I, maybe, maybe it's more than I should, right? That's, that's the caveat, right? Is that people spend more money when it is random.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think the hope is that you always, you can get something cool, right? So the same with like having like magic card booster packs, there's always going to be a guaranteed rare in that 15 card pack. Right. But maybe it's like the legendary, maybe it's the mythic one, maybe it's one that's worth like 40 bucks. It's the same way in Hearthstone. Yeah. Guaranteed rare. But it's obviously going to be
00:48:55
Speaker
more typically like a shitty one versus an amazing one. Cause they want to keep that incentive like, Oh, maybe you'll get something cool. But if you constantly got cool things.
00:49:08
Speaker
There wouldn't really be a point for you to do it as much. It would kind of devalue a lot of those rarer items. Being like Hearthstone, rares are not usually nearly as impactful, and there are obviously exceptions, but usually impactful or nearly as expensive as epics.
00:49:28
Speaker
Which is like, even if you didn't have any legendaries or like mythics, kind of like any, your magic deck, like there's better cards than the quality you're guaranteed to get for sure. Oh yeah. They still make shitty mythics for rares. But I mean, like the things that you build your deck around, you're not guaranteed whenever you open a pack, obviously, which is just reinforcing your point.
00:49:54
Speaker
And I think this kind of ties back to our original, uh, like topic here of like when a game is actually done and that sometimes it can feel like you're playing a game. And because there's so much content out there that you don't have, or that it's like locked behind money, even if you have all of the content, all of the like mechanical content, you can feel really far behind.
00:50:23
Speaker
Like TF2, obviously. Starting in TF2. I mean, TF2 is probably a better example because there was actual mechanical content locked behind random drops. And, um, I mean, most of the items you could craft pretty easily, but you didn't have them at some point. And that matters. Like if you play a game for the first time and you don't have access to, you know, the back burner or whatever meta weapon exists right now in TF2, I don't know. Um,
00:50:51
Speaker
It sucks really, it sucks a lot to die to something you can't field, right? Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I've always hated TF2.
00:51:01
Speaker
This is just like a personal thing. I've never had a huge enjoyment for it. But then going in and playing against people who have these different items which behave differently and have the potential to do more damage and other things. I'm just like, okay. Like somebody left click on me. I can't really stop that. So you're at like a severe disadvantage. And if you're just coming into a game, it sucks.
00:51:30
Speaker
It sucks to have that huge disparity between like, from a multiplayer context, like a new player and your friend who's covered in like neon, it's like, I will show you the way by pounding you into the ground repeatedly. And it's worth noting for our TF2 fans that listen, I recognize that most of the default kit is actually like statistically the best or in certain play styles, like the best way to actually play.
00:51:59
Speaker
Like all of that's fine and great, but when I play, I play with like a spy with a dead ringer and the spicycle and like a custom gun and all this stuff. And it's like, if you're just a new player and you don't have access to any of that and you're playing the spy like he's originally meant to be played, that's not the way I come at you. And that's not the way you can come at me. So that's the part that sucks.
00:52:28
Speaker
Yeah, ideally it would be nice to have a lot of a playing field for new and legacy players alike. It's part of the reasons why I like Dota. It's fresh each time. It doesn't have the runes or mastery systems that League of Legends did. So even if you've been playing for a while, you're still at that same point as a new player. Obviously you're going to be a little bit more better.
00:52:53
Speaker
more better, Jesus Christ. You're going to be more practiced, more experienced. You should be better at the game. You should almost consistently kick that person's ass, but it's a fresh start every time, a clean slate, which is nice.
Game progression, cosmetics, and spending
00:53:06
Speaker
And I think, I think that the industry has decided and the community has decided it is fine to have unlocks in your game. Like they've been around as far as like when I've been gaming since like
00:53:20
Speaker
you know, modern warfare, whatever, like you play through, level up, get new guns, whatever. And I mean, that's not hugely off from, you know, what we're describing because new players don't necessarily have that. But I think part of the difference there is there's this
00:53:37
Speaker
a sensation and reality that progressing through the game gets you that, right? And you know that you're going to unlock that next perk. You're going to get that next weapon. That's one of the things that really sold that game was this sense of progression, why so many people played multiplayer. If everybody had everything and it just was down to just the gameplay, it would have still succeeded because God's fun to play. But I mean, for me personally, as a progression guy, I like working towards something.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah, it is definitely nice to unlock something. Like, I remember I had prestige recently. I'm like, oh, wait, I don't have the, ah, shit. So I had to go back in and grind out getting back to an AWP or something. But it was fun to start over again at that point. I know Payday 2 also has a prestige system. Right, infamy.
00:54:39
Speaker
So it's nice to, Titanfall did as well. Like, you've earned your stripes, go back in with the pubs, and you get to earn your way back. Right. But you could keep getting these unlockables with Infamy for Payday too. Where like, oh, you've reached Infamy twice, you can now unlock this super cool mask. Oh, that's pretty dope. Yeah. But what's nice about that is it's not gated behind.
00:55:04
Speaker
any monetization. Right. You have to earn your way there. And it's not content. It's just cosmetic. Right. It's your way of saying like, Hey, I play this game a shit ton. I'm good at it.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, pity gives you like a slight bonus and that your skill trees are a little bit, the prerequisites to hit the next tier is like a little bit lower. So you didn't have to invest as many points and things you didn't like, but it was a very minor bonus. And the game's like a cooperative game. So it's like, oh, this guy put one less point in.
00:55:40
Speaker
the ghost tree and he has the max skill. Who cares? Yeah. You're not going to fuck over yourself or your team based off that. Yeah. I think, um, I think that that's the important distinction is in these games, the progression is gameplay. Whereas if it's just blocked off by a wall
00:56:02
Speaker
Um, like money shouldn't be an alternative to gameplay is the key underlying thing here. Like the progression itself is your gameplay and cod. You're always getting new stuff. Um, always pushing forward where it's like, Hey, I just started playing this free to play game. And if I drop 20 bucks on it, I can have an end game weapon. You're just like, that's not gameplay and it's not fun.
00:56:30
Speaker
And we do put up with it. And I mean, like, not that I've trying to think if I ever spent 20 bucks on a weapon that was just statistically better for no reason, but I can't think of an example for you. I do know you invested cosmetically into Dota 2 for Enigma's Golden Bracers. That is true. A lot of money that year, actually. Are you comfortable saying how much it was? It was over $100. I spent on that compendium.
00:57:01
Speaker
So what would you say the maximum you ever spent on a compendium was, Jane? Well, I usually buy in like the $10 price point or the Battle Pass, whichever it is. You pick up the additional levels for $10 each. I have definitely sunk some additional levels in. Yeah. Because this time I did just buy in it like the $37. It's like, give me some starter levels, give me some of those unlockables. And I still want to go in and unlock more things through progression and doing quests.
00:57:30
Speaker
and have my own achievement, but I also don't have the time to play a shit ton of it. So I see that as obviously the cosmetic stuff for me, for my own added enjoyment of the game, but also it's going towards the prize pool with an XTI. Awesome, more power to it. I try not to sink a shit ton of money into it, because I realize at the end of the day,
00:58:00
Speaker
It's nothing. Right. But it is entirely your prerogative. Like if I were to cut out all the games in my life, because I mean, tomorrow, if I don't play games at all, then it would be like, I don't have a steam library. It'd be like, you know, it's it's all it's all temporary. It's all temporal. None of it matters. Spend money on whatever makes you happy, I guess, unless that hurts other people or yourself. But the the the thing here is
00:58:30
Speaker
I don't actually like, I've grown a little more disillusioned with the whole setup for Dota as time goes on, especially at the fact like, yeah, some of the money does go to the prize pool and that's sweet. And that's one of the reasons I like, I never felt bad throwing money at it.
00:58:46
Speaker
unless it was like really crazy, like over a hundred dollars like that one year. But it's 25%. It's 25% of what you spend is what goes to the prize pool. And so the people benefiting from 75% of that happiness is about 25% of that is the players.
00:59:09
Speaker
I couldn't tell you what the ratio should be, and I don't know what they spend on events and stuff like that, but I suspect they make money. And that's not evil, you know? No, it's companies like that, they're always businesses, they're trying to make money at the end of the day. Which is fine, it's fair. That is how they make their money. But if you have 17 people who are trying to get your money,
00:59:36
Speaker
you have to be a little bit discerning of who should get it and why. Now part of that comes down to what I'm in the mood for when I want to go out to eat. Part of it is which games I want to play based off what my interests are or which games look good. Because sometimes I will see like a triple A $60 game like that looks fucking woof. I'll pick it up and I'll have a great time.
01:00:06
Speaker
So Monster Hunter was one that I recently got when I was playing on PS4 with you and some other people. And I still have some issues with the game, like unskippable cutscenes. But I've really enjoyed that game. I spent a decent amount of time on it, and I plan to continue to do so. And I will always consider that a good purchase. But there are other things I've got, which was based off of almost just hype alone, Mighty No. 9.
01:00:35
Speaker
Oh, there's going to be a spiritual succession of Mega Man. Thank God. That's going to be awesome. Original developer. Oh, I'm so excited. And it was a piece of shit. So as always. So where divinity got a three, mighty number nine only gets a two. For sure. There's always one of those things where you want to keep an eye out and try and go off of.
01:01:01
Speaker
A combination of like, what's the reputation of this company? Have I had good experiences with them before? Are they well-rated? Is this something I'd be willing to invest in? Because anytime you make a purchase, unless it's like groceries, which you can actively see and feel, there's a possibility it's not going to be up to snuff. Maybe you order something on Amazon that doesn't fit quite right. So basically, listeners, I'm just saying, go out with a discerning eye.
01:01:31
Speaker
Yeah. I would, uh, bring this back to the, the, the Dota thing. Yes. The Omni Knight praise the sun emote is really cool. I want it to, is it worth $300 to get your level that high to get it?
01:01:51
Speaker
That's up to you, I'm gonna go with no. And I'll hold it against Valve that they put it that high up. That's my job. But I think altogether, we probably painted a decent picture of what makes a complete game and what we're willing to put up with and what we wouldn't anymore, even as adults with occasionally money, working jobs and things like that.
01:02:18
Speaker
I'd like to thank everybody for listening to yet another episode of soapstone I'm really glad that you guys have stuck with us this long or if this is the first time that you've Listen that you stuck with us to the end of this long. Yeah, exactly I feel like I know you some at this point. We got this heart to heart But until next time I'm Jake and I'm Dave and we'll see you in the next one. Bye