Turning Players Into Payers (The Jimquisition)

Just to clarify something... I think these "successful" practices are wrong. The good old days you bought a game and got every weapon and every skin and every vehicle as the next guy. It was a level playing field. Now that premium crates are coming out with boosts and upgrades this turns me away even more than I was with online PVP games. First it was aimbots. Now it's paying for OP weapons and increasing your chances with MM & RNG.

BoredSights

wasn't 100% on the cane at first but I gotta say it just works.....but it should have something on the other end as well.....gloss red dildo maybe? But on the topic - very simple people have voted with their wallets, this shit pops up everywhere BECAUSE IT WORKS! Its like ziggies ....people like to smoke so make them available everywhere and more people will smoke and u get tons of cancers....yesss

I'm not much for modern games. I seem to prefer titles from the 80s / 90s. But when I want to learn about new stuff I turn to "Jim fucking Sterling Son"! Been rewatching old episodes... Really like the red / hat + gloves + tie + glasses style as well. And Jimortan Jim is awesome. Can I thank Cthulhu? He's more my preference in the selection of fictional beings.

Having been at a tech company that was frequently audited, I can guess the IRS wouldnt have the faintest clue how to track the money through their systems. But I'd be interested in taking a look.....

Uh... Matching players with others that have a severe power misbalance is NOT how you retain players. In fact: It's how you chase people away. People who MIGHT pay for something.

I made the same comment on youtube but its true that big data analytics is now in the gaming industry and its here to stay still the industry breaks its own back. Now I could get into a lot of terms here but the jest of third party cloud analytics platforms like these ass hats have it that the more games use them, the more they know about you. So while yeah I'm sure EA and the rest of the pond scum have analytics its these ones that will be more effective as they can and will get a larger data set on their "customers" and will build better profiles on you to get more money out of you.

An article posted today on Eurogamer talked about people spending $15,000 on microtransactions. Kind of makes me worry that if Shadow of War gets enough bad press all of the bigger companies will just flatly abandon single player games since they can't just keep squeezing the players for money. Article link if interested: <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/amp/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.eurogamer.net/amp/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation</a>

Mobile gaming may have been doomed almost from the start- it originally seemed to come with the idea that smaller groups could offer high-quality games at a somewhat lower price point. But once the market decided that "free" was the acceptable price point for 99% of titles and the bottom fell out of ad-supported work, it became inevitable that the predatory pursuit of "whales" would become the default and almost all that was left was refinement of same. I don't buy into the "game companies exist to make money" line- I think if you're going into video games, you should exist to make video games- but I do think creators have a right to expect to make a living. And I won't scoff at "casuals" for liking match-three games or so-called "walking simulators" or hidden object games, but if being "casual" means you expect people to do good work for you for free, you pretty well deserve the same response you deserve from ANY artist for expecting to work for free. It's a messed up state of affairs, and I pity the people out there who are still trying to make real games in that mess. Now, as for the "$50-$60 PLUS loot crates, DLC, and in-game purchases" folks...

Kraken

Personally Identifiable Information: PII. Government workers, for instance, can lose their jobs or get charges pressed against them if they mishandle PII.

Iochannon

Nobody needs to be in the industry or see sales figures to know that crates, skins, dlc, premium currency, premium subscriptions are successful. If they weren't successful the industry would have dropped these practices years ago. Now they have evolved by creating more advanced tools to take more of our money. Thank you for the video.

BoredSights

Another piece of internet gold :)

i rarely comment or like videos. but ive been a patreon since last month because of the good, independent, well researched quality content like this. thx for you.

I'm dying to know how all the IN GAME revenue is tracked, validated, and accounted for? My gut tells me this is a gray area worm hole for these companies to bathe in their riches like Scrooge McDuck.

I'm sure its buried in their mile long EULA you have to agree to prior to playing one second of the game.

I think he uses Born Depressed for the intro and Stress for the outro.

PS -- Doesn't this technology violate the laws about mining data from kids without parental consent?

Andy

Good

Good show, some of us information security guys were wondering why the heck some mobile games were hoovering in PII, but never bothered to investigate it further. Sounds like you cracked the case. Based on what you discovered, I can at least confirm for you WB Interactive have been using these guys a long, long time.

Andy

Put a link in the description to their site with their answers and the comments :D Great work Jim. Keep up the good fight :)

Rawk Hawk

Absolutely wonderful!

David Porter

finally, this definitely flirts with the law on price discrimination, which is indeed a "legal framework which outlaws dynamic pricing in [a] significant way" :<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price_discrimination.asp" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price_discrimination.asp</a>

steve mcsteve

Is the intro music jumping back and forth between old and new? I'm confused.

Flamie

Theres also "There are lots of suppliers and lots of substitutes," in response to players rejecting "dynamic prices." First off, thats nonsense if you have an addicted captive audience (especially when there will only ever be one supplier for your preferred brand; they're essentially selling Cap'n Cook's crack diamonds), and second off that language sounds like its coming out of the drug trade moreso than any entertainment company I've ever heard, and that's horrifying.

steve mcsteve

I'm halfway through the Gamasutra article, and so far the most interesting phrasing they use is "price sensitive," which only has negative and insulting connotations.

steve mcsteve

This shit is straight diabolical. Thank God for Jim.

Wow. This right here is why I'm a fan. Great episode.

Great expose! Unfortunately, this is just a microchasm of what’s happening in marketing as a whole now. Big data Analytics, social media tracking, human psychology and greed combine to find ways to trigger our monkey brains into handing over our wallets and freedom.

Champipple