Gaming
Video Game “Whale” Talks About Loot Boxes and Microtransactions
Let’s talk about Loot Boxes and Microtransactions once more. There have been some words spoken on this site in regards to these controversial objects. However, people who defend these transactions claim that companies don’t see customers as things such as “Whales”. However, Eurogamer brought to light a case where this is a wrong assumption.
“Whales”, as they’re disrespectfully called, are the big spenders when it comes to online and social games. Forking out roughly £25 a month on microtransactions and recently, Loot Boxes. In free-to-play games, the vast majority of revenue is generated by ‘whales’ who make up a supposedly small percentage of the player base.
Eurogamer took its time to talk with David “Siigari” Perez, a 34-year-old Twitch streamer from Oregon. This person claimed to be a video game whale in a Reddit MMA previously, and the account he brought about this is quite disturbing.
Let’s start with the simple questions about his background. David is a DJ and audio engineer. Currently pursuing other careers related to audio but still DJ’ing at restaurants. The man claims to have spent over $20,000 in the past five years on Loot Boxes and Microtransactions.
He also mentioned that he quitted League of Legends because of the approach they took. “I played League of Legends for years and when it started its own loot chest system I started losing interest in the game. (…) I was like, I don’t know if I want to see the game going down this path, because I know this path very well (…) It definitely discouraged me from spending and for the past few years I’ve said, ‘Riot, I’m not supporting you with money anymore.’”
He then talked about a game where he invested over $5000 USD named Atlantica Online. The reason why he did this was because it was an RPG that allowed for equipment upgrades, and he wanted to be the best. “I liked the game and I played it with some friends but, honestly, I just liked being powerful in that game. I liked kicking ass and it was really expensive to kick ass in it.”
He then talks about the reasons behind these investments and why people feel encouraged to purchase more. “Part of the reason these games have leaderboards is to make you feel like you’re competing against someone else. Leaderboards exist to pressure players to spend money. It’s a gentle pressure at first.”
He then talks about whether or not he thinks that Loot Boxes are gambling themselves. And the answer is pretty unsurprising if you know the content I have posted throughout the months. “Absolutely! It is gambling and the same feeling you get when you pull the jackpot on a slot machine is the same feeling these companies are aiming for whether you win or lose.”
He makes a few warnings to other “Whales” (Or dolphins, as he considers himself because he doesn’t spend as much as other people who shell out the cash.) “If you are not cognisant of the money you’re spending, you can find yourself in a hole really fast. Especially when these games aren’t offering you anything tangible you can actually put your hands on, you don’t actually realise the perceived, or the real, value of what you’re getting.”
You can read the interview at full right here, but this just goes to show that Loot Boxes and Microtransactions are done with these people in mind. And that even the “Whales” and “Dolphins” are starting to get sick of being sucked off their money as well.
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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