South Park Accurately Sums up Freemium Games

Did any of you guys watch this episode? Let it be a warning to any developers thinking about doing micro-transactions for their game, this episode convinced me even more that those publishers and developers who make this garbage and push it onto gamers are pure evil.

(Ahem …) Perhaps I am Dating Myself™, But™ …

I come from a world where the economic model of all video games was very simple: it consisted of a coin slot. You dropped your quarter into the slot, and you got to play the game for however-long your skill would take you. You walked into that arcade with a roll of quarters, “never minding, and never even thinking,” that this roll of quarters corresponded to $10.

And, if I may now be utterly frank about this, I must say that this business-model is, today, “just as battle-worthy” as it was <<never_mind>> :wink: years ago.

There never was any sort of distinction between “Pac Man™ if you did pay” vs. any sort of "Pac Man™ if you didn’t. You brought your roll of quarters, and you brought Your Girl™, and you then watched fairly-helplessly for 50 minutes during which she was still playing while you had run out of coins. :o

Let the record show, then, that you were back at that arcade, the next night, with another roll of quarters and the same girl. (Who, twenty-plus​-odd years later, amazingly still is: Your Wife.) :smiley:

Showed that ep to my roomie who has a microtransaction addiction problem. He said the EP is full of bs and last month we got our power shut off for lack of payment…As a side note, We seem to have problems right now locating 3-5k in house funds that supposedly went to bills this year.

…lol. We was called them tokens 'cause you exchanged your pingas for tokens then chucked ‘em in. We thinks that someone had chucked in washes that was the same size of pingas. Still happens when gyphoz git to the laundry mat before you…then you find that some machines are not workin’ (full of washerz) and those that is working is full of hair.

In todays world money means survival, that is you got no money you got no food or shelter, hence the term ‘breadwinner.’ Most species, not the least of which being humans, will do whatever it takes in order to survive. Some animals have been seen chewing their own leg off to escape a bear trap and, in fact, even a person has reportedly cut off their own leg with a pocket knife in order to escape a tree that had fallen and trapped him.

You can call it evil if you like, but the choice between right and wrong, good and evil pales in comparison to the need to survive. In an environment where we must compete for marketshare in order to obtain money, that is fight each other to survive, you will find that there are no holds barred.

this is why the world is often referred to as “dog eat dog.” It is kill or be killed, but what you need to kill is of the same species, human eat human.

“Everyone who’s alive right now. Everyone’s who’s made it this far. We’ve all done the worst kinds of things just to stay alive. But we can still come back. We’re not too far gone. We get to come back. I know… we all can change.” -Rick Grimes (The Walking Dead)