Unity is also just a broken mess under the hood, so they’ve got a long technical road ahead of them to actually improve in addition to the reputational damage. CEOs usually don’t understand technical issues so I’m not holding my breath.
I’m from the US and this also sounds extremely puritanical to me. I don’t know why this OP thinks they’re somehow being liberal about it.
I was convinced there was gonna be a slender man at the edge of the trees or something
Bad policies don’t make it OK, and blaming the victims also doesn’t make it OK.
Good correction, thanks! I didn’t know about that. I suppose the key there are google play points. Do you know if you could do it separately from that?
Not in google play or iOS I don’t think. Someone else may know more, though.
Store credit is not necessarily simple. There are tons of laws about that kind of thing that differ country to country and in the US state to state. For example in my state, gift certificates can’t expire, so once you give one away as the dev you have to track that on your books forever, even if no one ever uses it. In your free example it’s even worse, because the company has to write that money off as real money, because it can never expire. It’s basically the same as giving away real money from a bookkeeping perspective (at least in my state). Someone with more bookkeeping knowledge can probably give a better answer but that’s my limited understanding of that as a sole proprietor who does my own books.
I would also question if store credit is actually any less predatory than a premium currency. If the premium currency is transparent and easy to understand it’s basically the same thing, no? Hypothetically, if I’m a scummy developer, I could sell $5 in store credit, and then make all the items on the store cost $8. That’s the same result for the player as bad monetization schemes with premium currency. I know in your example you’re saying give it away, but somewhere in there the developer is going to need to make money. They can’t give credit away for in-game currency and hope to stay afloat as a business for long without some deeply predatory stuff going on like in roblox.
At the end of the day I think everything you’re saying is probably feasible in some form for a AAA dev, but not for small devs. Personally I’m also thinking about small devs without an army of compliance specialists and lawyers. I’d like indies to also be able to make money, not just the conglomerates.
For example, saying a system could be worked out to localize an in-game economy is a hand wave. Every game works differently under the hood and in how it paces things, and this would be a huge undertaking to implement and maintain (probably a nonstarter for a small team). It involves more than simple conversion.
Does someone from a weak currency country get different rewards by playing the game than someone from a strong currency? How does that work if that reward is a whole item, not a bit of currency? Do we really want capitalistic shenanigans to extend into the gameplay directly? Personally I prefer that stuff to be cordoned off in the in-game shop.
That’s my take on all that. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t work for a AAA dev, so take this stuff with a grain of salt. My experience comes from having to tackle all these issues as a tiny indie dev.
Can you give me an example of one you’ve seen?
The original poster was saying paid currency shouldn’t exist, so I think in that scenario, you could only have vouchers for a whole in-game item. So for example if an item costed $5, then yes you could give away codes to redeem that item.
There’s also an operational overhead to doing it that way compared to in-game currency though, because setting up products in google play/iOS can be kind of a pain compared to adding them to your own systems. Generally the dev wants as much to be under their control as possible because they have more flexibility that way compared to making products in the app stores.
Also worth noting that iOS will block your app if you provide ways to get products (meaning things that cost real money) through ways other than the app store. So that means the dev wouldn’t be able to ever give you something in the game itself if that thing can also be bought. They could only give coupon codes (these are manually generated) for products to use in the app store interface.
I’d be interested to hear an example of one you’ve seen because it might be a way to approach it that I’m not thinking about.
When I personally use it it means “OK, sounds good, I have nothing more to add but I read your message.”
There are many many examples of predatory uses of in game currencies, but here are some big reasons devs use them besides being scummy.
Transparency is good, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Have you tried getting flavored syrups and making your own? That would let you fully control the amount.
No, don’t you see? This person knows better than your lived experience. /s
I think they have this in a Thai cookbook I have. The guy called it 'strip club fried rice" iirc
Yes! Great example of it done right.
Making a second comment to answer your actual question:
For me it’s when technology is very uniformly high tech. So for example in the real world technology advances but it doesn’t advance everywhere at the same speed. There might be high tech versions of things in cities while you still find old or ancient equivalents out in the countryside (or just both types existing alongside each other all over). I really like it when SciFi can capture this nonlinear pace of technological advancement.
If you read books, check out Embassytown by China Mieville. As far as I could tell the point of that book was to envision a truly alien species and how diplomacy would work with them. Super interesting book and unlike anything else I’ve read in scifi
Does this have screen sharing?
Thanks for the reply.
It feels to me like tech has been trying to remove humanity from every part of daily life it can. I don’t think technology is bad but I do think that goal is bad. It’s often done with good intentions, too, like making things more convenient. We lose a lot of opportunities for connection because of it.
It’s a quirk of human nature though, clearly. We need socialization but we don’t like to instigate it (at least many don’t). If you look at old photos of trains or busses everyone was reading the paper or a book. Phones aren’t that different, except the content never runs out. You can look at it forever and you’ll never see it all.
I heard someone describe looking at social media as a state of engaged distraction, and that really fits I think. A book is something you have to engage with and process in your mind in order to follow it. Social feeds are sort of the opposite. They take your attention, but it’s a constantly changing thing you’re looking at, often trying to get an intense emotional response. Your brain is just jumping all over the place (I’m using the general you in all this, so not trying to speak for you specifically). You can spend hours on a social feed and barely remember anything.
I think hearing takes like yours is a good thing for older people like me cause there’s way too much rhetoric about how the youth are phone addicted. You’re not the first person I’ve heard have this negative or mixed response to it, and your feelings about it are totally valid. I honestly feel really similarly. I don’t hate all of it, but I definitely think there are some major problems with what we currently have.
I hope eventually we create some apps that encourage human connection off the phone. There’s clearly a very human need for distraction and entertainment, so I don’t think abstaining from that is the answer. Pokemon go is probably one of the most successful examples of an app doing something like that. I never used it, but I’ve heard lots of people made friends that way.
I’ve wondered this too. I’ve seen more and more places where you’re supposed to use your phone with seemingly no other option. For instance restaurants that only have digital menus, or I’ve seen things like promotions or giveaways that require a phone as well. I know I’ve seen some other spots that seemed more critical too, like a public service kind of thing, but I’m forgetting now what they were.
I have a phone, so it doesn’t affect me, but I still always wonder what they do if someone doesn’t have one. It feels like another vector for wealth inequality. Not to mention the fact that if cell service and internet went down anything that’s phone/computer only will instantly stop working entirely. It just seems like a problem waiting to happen to me.
So I’m a millennial, and it’s interesting to hear what you said about every dull moment being phone time. I was just talking with some friends yesterday about that and trying to remember what we used to do instead. To be honest there were plenty of times where we were really bored, and I don’t know if that’s better or not. I do feel like there is so much stimulation now that my brain never gets a chance to rest and decompress without making a very conscious effort to take moments like that. Can’t say I’m very good at that either. So maybe the boredom was a good thing in a way? I’d be curious to hear your younger perspective on that if you read this.
Money is unavoidable but you don’t have to do a typical career. Maybe you could try one of those English teaching jobs overseas, or be a nomad doing odd jobs here and there and traveling around. Lots of paths out there, and some might be more care free than a typical 9-5.
Have you considered becoming a student? You might be able to get financial aid. It might not cover 100%, but you’d get to be around young people also discovering themselves.
You definitely didn’t deserve what you got. I hope you can find a path that feels at least a little more like what you want to be doing.