Happy New Year :)

I want to thank Asmongold for helping me overcome gacha addiction. Simply just reminding me how stupid these purchases are makes me doubletake my buying decisions, and allow me to sit on them for a while before ultimately deciding it's not worth it.

Imagine if a grocery store did this. No one buys anything in our store, they purchase "buyer tokens" outside, and than once inside they transfer those into "grocery bucks."

The fact that you make so many references to your mom is heart warming. I had a brilliant relationship with my mom; not necessarily out of a shared interest like you, but nevertheless a great relationship. In addition, the fact that you speak openly about it makes it all the better. 👊🏻

My personal approach to what I call 'pleasure buys' (ie. things I want but don't need) is to wait 3 days after seeing the thing. If after that time it's still on my mind, then and only then do I even consider buying that thing. It is *EXTREMELY* rare that I buy something more than $10 on impulse. Even with small, inconsequential things like candy and soda. I've made the decision to not let myself get used to buying _anything_ without sitting on it for at least a little while, all to keep me from overspending and falling into this corporate trap that is so prevalent in video games (and beyond) these days.

Without giving Maple Story too much credit here, while explaining the Maple Story problem the narrator even said "while investors..." So if we really want to track the source of the problem here, its when game companies turn to be publicly traded and need positive stonks year after year. Pushing more and more devs to go for the Fifa model because people are stupid. Maple Story was merely the vessel to which stocks could always go up while product quality goes down. In the early days people didn't make shitty games because no one wanted to play shitty games. The devs were making games as passion projects. Doom, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Starcraft, Halo.. literal classics. When the devs lost passion about their projects, thats when their games went down hill in quality and to make up for that they just add more and more monetization just doubling down on the horrible bullshit. For profit soulless games will always be garbage.

Dude looks like MoistCriticals Alolan form

I think that they should just pass a law that aggressively taxes game companies on the money they make from transactions after the initial game purchase or past a specific amount. That will encourage game companies to try to get more people to buy their game rather than get a small amount of people to spend a life-ruining amount of money on it.

gaming? nothing. monetization? everything

Asmongold, that story about your fan interaction in the grocery store is the gold standard for how to act. You probably made that dudes day. Good on you

I have never spent money on a single micro-transaction. They tick the same boxes in my mind that gambling does and I have never been a gambler. When I was little I saw those little coin-op toy machines, saw on the little display sheet what I wanted, put the coin in, did not get what I wanted, and immediately thought "Well that was a waste of money." and never looked back. My first reaction was not "It didn't give me what I wanted, I had better try again." It was "It didn't give me what I wanted, this is unreliable, fuck this." This sort of thinking colors a lot of my consumer habits.

i think the best thing to do for battle passes is they give it to you at the end of the duration but if you want to unlock it early you either play and do the missions or every play you get xp to unlock the bp tier its like those things that is a calendar that have gift for everyday of that month

Born in 95, grown up with cod 4/5 and mw2 as my first multiplayer games ever and simultaneously playing wow for the first time in wotlk - best time ever. I miss this kind of playing games so much, just simple, straight to the point. If you were good, you were good. If you were bad, you were bad. And thats it.

59:15 „these have not been added to make the game better, they‘ve been added to make the game money.“ sums up game development, well, life in 2022 perfectly…

Question, what its the volume addon you control your firefox there? thanks

Maplestory is the only game I've played for 18 years. It's amazing and wonderful. I'm completely free-to-play and love it. Never paid a single dollar for the hobby, and play on a cheap laptop with 0 lag. Any complaints about this game shock me.

We ruined video games by continuing to give these companies our money and not holding the dev studios accountable when they don't deliver on advertisements, promises, or take advantage of consumers. Stop buying crap and they'll eventually go away or stop...

I'm so grateful to have grown up in the NES/SNES era so I have no issues going back to those games and enjoying them for the complete artistic masterpieces that they are. And I will always support indie developers who share that same passion and gamer first mentality which has given us such gems as Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Blasphemous etc.

90's games were some of the best. Red alert, command and conquer, dune, mech warrior, earth siege :D

The only battle pass system I like is in conquers blade. Where even after a season ends, you can go back and play prior seasons and still earn them. It takes a little more effort that doing them when they are active but they can still be earned.

I played Facebook games. I played Farmville. The name of the game was free gaming. How far can you get before you run into the pay wall. How comfortable is it to scrape against it until you get around it. If you couldn't get around it go play something else. There was a massive pool of Facebook games. I never gave them a dime. I had a 400 person friend list just to play these games. I played mafia wars too.

oh man, some of the absolute best memories I have in gaming were around the time where I only played maplestory and runescape all day. My god just the pure ecstacy of joining the unknown world and becoming the best out of your friends and having the coolest stuff, exploring and flexing together was just the purest fun of my life.

the awesome part of loot boxes is also that it's all digital at anytime they can take it from you they can even ban your account and make you start over

I liked it when Soulcaliber/Ultimate Alliance (or any game) had a unique character on each system. Or how they each had a unique level/area/boss.

The problem is with the consumers that keep spending money on clear predatory monetization, which incentivizes companies to make more and more predatory monetization methods. It wouldn't be such a problem if people didn't consume it. More often than not lazy games that are predatory end up getting more money than masterpieces that have no monetization.

My all-time favorite arcade game(which we also had at home on the Commodore) was Asteroids. That was such a fun game. So simple yet satisfying.

If the gaming is top tier, no one would complain about paying money to play. -For example arcade games, pay quarter to revive, continue but the game doesn’t get easier.

48:15 Chivalry 2 does a decent job of this, the battle pass levels up whether you have it or not and once the season ends the battle pass stays and gives you the option of which battle pass to put your xp towards

When PC games started finally getting good for me was when I got Command and Conquer for Christmas in like 96 or 97. I had an old Packard Bell computer with Win 95 on it. I thought the cut scenes were absolutely amazing. Also it being the early days of RTS and just coming off playing Dune 2 on Sega Genesis made it even sweeter. The fact that you could control multiple characters in a game, build a base, and build armies was revolutionary for the time.

I always thought it was pretty ironic that my ti-83 calculator, the ultimate mathematical tool capable of solving all of the math, was the direct reason for my not understanding math. Drug Wars, Baseball, and Tetris I remember wreaking particular havoc on my GPA as the graphing calculator started to find use in my other classes as well. So much fun. So much getting yelled at by my parents.

Its none of these companies faults, it is ours for buying into these kind of things with our wallets.

Son original MapleStory was the best leveling experience I have ever had in an MMO EVER. every 10 levels felt like and entirely new game without getting to complicated. Back tracking and throwing down 35k down in hennessy on the orange mushrooms was the most fulfilling.

I was always under the impression that the fake ingame currencies were a work-around against some kind of illegality. I think I remember watching a video explaining that casinos don't allow people to wager real money on gambling as it's against the law, so they sell chips as a "service", and then there's no laws about what people do with the chips. I figured microtransactions followed that same path.

Imagine what kind of games we would have if all companies were trying to create the best game possible

An ideal battle pass for me would be, it is free for everyone. But it is time gated, but if you decide to buy it you don’t have a time limit. You just keep leveling it up along side any new one that comes up. So if you play a lot you can potentially unlock everything but if you have a life outside gaming like a family you can opt to buy it and get everything at your pase.

49:17 COD elite was the first battle pass style system I ever noticed. It wasn’t exactly a battle pass. But gave access to challenges and prizes as well as exclusive tags and badges. In 2011

Gatcha-pon is actually something they have as physical items for kids over in Asia. Its been like that for decades. Not arguing it's not gambling but that "chance" style of earning something has been a part of their culture for a long time.

It's a nice feeling to tell someone "I told you so", but it's not that nice when the thing I was talking about for over a decade means one of my favorite hobbies got ruined. The sad part it, we're currently on the edge of another great fall of video games and people are just as stupid as they were. Microsoft wants to monopolize game sales but in the same time you're not going to buy or own any of your games. Only your corporate overlords from MS decide and you have to keep paying. What's the people's reaction? "Shut up, and take my money!" Again... I remember when I was younger and I wished people didn't have to wait untill they make a mistake to learn, but today I'd wish they learned a lesson at all.

i know it might be massively difficult to go past lvl 12 for baldurs gate for a game because of some of the spells, but id buy a small dlc for lvl 12-15 like a single area for 15 even if it's balance was ass lol, just to give it a try

i think one of the next way game companies could monetize games but prob just more so seen in mmos would be to monetize player bots. i dont know if its been done already but companies could just make a game super grindy and then sell an auto feature that plays the game while you cant. its like taking the idle system from mobile games away from the game and selling it separately.

I miss the old wizardry series and dnd pc games. I remember playing neverwinter nights for years. Had a blast making my own games (mods) and playing with others with what I made.

When me and my friends played maplestory almost 20 years ago, we didn't touch the pay elements once and it was still one of the best games out there. I feel like it gets a lot of slack for being that gacha game but coming home after school to hang out with friends and exploring over leveled zones was so much fun :)

Hahaha that exhale after Farmville invite from hotty

theres bands that played on those xbox ones too. introduced to some new music

47:00 What you have to remember about the OG gameshark is that it actually wasn't developed by any dev as a pay to win solution too their own game. It was a tool developed by 3rd partys that basically allowed you to hack your games. So it's not like devs were selling the pay 2 win solution too their own games like they do today.

I had some really dope old school PC games though.. There was one with like time travel, and another one with like chess and battles.. There was also that one Spider-Man game with all the unlockable suits.. that was really dope (I think I got a free CD of it inside a box of cereal..) Adventure Pinball: Forgotten Island was mad dope too. But the golden age of gaming didn't come until Warcraft 3 Custom Games.

Nobody seems to mention, before horse armor, MapleStory also had cosmetics you could buy except they were rentals so that cool shirt and hat were only temporary and then youd need to buy them again to keep the look (I think they charged a larger price for permanent)

The sad part about the bit about the people being responsible is that they had the odd stacked against them. Predatory practices. Imagine kids being told not to talk to strangers, especially ones that offer candy for a ride in their white van. The problem was, the predator(gaming companies) and the candy(loot boxes/gacha system) and the white van(battle pass system) came before the warning that no, these people should not be trusted, do not take the candy, do not ride the white van. So many were tempted by the candy. By the time people realized how dangerous the predators were. It was too late. It had taken root and was earning money. By the time people sounded the alarm and started speaking out, a formula for getting people addicted was made and written down. yes, to a certain extent people can be blamed for making the purchases, but its kinda hard to have expected them to say no. I mean, as Asmongold had said, most of the buyers were kids who didn't care enough about the purchases. The only reason people became aware was that some had started to become mature. Some earlier than others.

That's what I really like about the new wow expansion. It actually feels like they cared for a good experience again and not just about creating content that gains a lot of player hours because time spent on content equals to a good game for some people. One good experience was in a "battle pass" and I mean faction rep levels that resemble it a lot. It unlocks that people from that faction treat you nicely. When I read that I thought: "yeah... that's cool. why waasn't that here before? I can remember being called the hero of whatever in every cinematic, but everytime I cross those npcs over there I get some line about how they dislike me. cool idea." So it's not like they can't use those mechanics in a way that enhances the experience for players. It's just that they choose to instead prefer to make money with it.

It really makes me sad, extremely sad , to see how bad things are. I hate to imagine where we would be in next 10 years.

"just cant wait to be king" level of lion king for NES is intentionally an arbitrary memory-puzzle on a timer, where you end up in one-way-loops and death traps. It is also visually VERY unique and pretty, so it looked nicer to observers, while the players got stuck in this "level of chance", till they memorize the correct path. It was designed with game rentals in mind.

the thing with fifa is if you are a good player you can get a high value team pretty quickly, for exemple i play on the elite division wich every week gives me really good rewards, then i play WL and get at least 9 playoff wines and 17 final round wins and then if i have time ill do squad battles to get even more rewards so by the end of like 2 months i had a team worth around 30M and ive never spent money on it

agree with asmongold’s point about personal accountability but i would appreciate it if he led the charge on getting streamers to stop spending money for content. if every streamer said “im not gonna pay for microtransactions and you’re a loser if you do” it would lessen it to some degree

What I like about Asmongold is that he draws more attention to videos that should be seen, he actually promotes his fellow youtubers.

Energy system and timer in a game usually keeps me there for the first couple of timers and then when the time gets too long the game gets uninstalled.

1:00:50 The next game predatory step; throttle controller/keyboard functions so they work only about 50% of the time until the players pay $100 to have the inputs restored to normal function for a few days (real world time).

depending on how you look at it... the most fun / disgusting thing about all of this... imagine all this money going straight to developers ...instead of the pockets of investors / shareholders / management

We used the blockbuster rental slang but...that meant you could rent it and beat it on a rental..double dragon 3 in the arcade was pay to win look it up I rember it was crazy

The one advantage of the in game currency is when games have the currency be earnable through whatever seasonal content they have, like some games do with their battle passes. Not saying its right but theyll probably argue that

32:00 another advantag is that you don't have to make the money procedure everytime you buy something in game, you don't have to think about it

Fix is simple, people got to stop spending money on bad games designed just to rake in huge money year after year. But people won't. People could have collectively not spent any money on Diablo Immortal but they spent tons, justifying its existence and rewarding this behavior. That's the problem in gaming, people aren't going to stop rewarding the shitty developer behavior so it will keep happening and keep getting progressively worse.

My 90's mall had a software store where you could "rent" games, and it was about 1/2 the price of what it cost to rent a console game.

In Deep Rock Galactic when the equivalent of the battle pass ends all the cosmetics stay in the game and can still be aquired but through different means. Plus all the battle pass rewards are already unlocked from the get go.

What went wrong with gaming? Greedy companies Greedy consumers Lazy developers Overworked developers Free to play model Early access model Micro transactions

The bit about separating real world currency from game currency is really interesting because it mostly targets people who are functionally mentally handicapped. There was a study published in a journal of psychology which studied inmates in the American prison system and gauged their IQ and then asked some interesting questions. By and large, people in jail have very low IQs. Bellow 90 with a large portion of those being around 80. And they discovered something very interesting. They asked inmates to make up a story about 2 people which they name and each of those people have a line of dialogue. For instance: Mary and Joseph meet in a stable. Mary: I am pregnant. Joseph: Who's the father? Simple right? Well, for you and me, yes. But if you have an IQ around 90 you take your time, around 80 and you can't do it. Then they asked to tell a new story with 2 new characters talking about the original story. If you have an IQ around 90, you are completely lost by now. If you have an IQ of around 100, you can just about do it. And then they ask for a new story with yet 2 new characters talking about the previous 2 characters talking about the original story. If you are struggling with this, it is very likely your IQ is bellow 110. So when Diablo Immortal has like 3 different premium currencies, they are basically targeting everyone of average intelligence and below. It is the same principle. You basically stop being able to attribute real value to the in game currencies. If you are below average, you are even more screwed and you are likely unaware that there is a link between real world money and whatever currency you are buying with the other premium currency. And that is very interesting.

I feel like it's the same thing with certain food. We used to have an issue (still do with certain brands) where the amount of hot dogs you get doesn't match the amount of hot dog buns that come in a package 😒

Use to love going to the arcade, I remember cutting the coupons out of our local tv guides and going to a place called magic mountain which was like a mini waterpark/arcade. Played games like golden axe, the original street fighter 2, TMNT if I recall was one of the first original 4 player arcade games. Home console wise the Atari and pitfall took many hours of my life😂

There’s a player in my rise of kingdoms clan who spends £1500 a day on chests 😂😂😂🤡

Legend has it asmons copy of asteroids is still making its rounds on the school calculators

So I did it again. Watched Josh Stryfe Hayes, loved what he had to say, then was hopping Asmongold would react, which he did, and here I am watching this video again, but with some Asmongold sparkles on top

A remake of the Legacy of Kane games would be absolutely amazing. That was my favorite series ever as a kid (Soul Reaver 2 in particular). That would be so good with current gen graphics and mechanics made by a competent studio.... Vicarious Visions comes to mind.

sweet video. Lots of huge points and it definitely is depressing seeing games come out how they are lately. Even more sad knowing its the norm and will get worse.

Amazing video. Sad times for gaming man, indeed. Very sad to see how far we have come as humans in making all these things....

1:01:00 selling energy too for farms/farming, some sort of refueling.

First ever time I got the horse armour was because I got the version that's on steam with it, it does give your horse more health but it's so little of a boost that it's hardly noticeable in game and definitely not even worth £1 should have always been just an update instead of its one dlc content

The problem with mmo's and even most games made today is they make a game that is good enough to get you hooked, but frustrating enough to make you want to buy 'lootboxes'. Back in the day, Gaming devs would make games they themselves would want to play, but now those devs are leaving and now we have a new bunch of devs who only see working in gaming as a job rather than a passion.

I fell out of love with games years ago sadly as well as watching sports except big games I may show interest but idk to me regardless how good they look it doesn’t feel the same I’m 29 and haven’t owned a system since 2015

wow nice throwback Soul Caliber reference I remember that

Or just a battlepass that isn't bound to time, which is more conveniant. Although your sacrificing global/public events what you could do to prevent it is giving the community the power to host events themselfs without the need of dedicated homebrew server. For the events for example they could make it so it plays through a list of gamemodes with custom rules and a mixup of stuff already present in the main game. So anyone can play how they want with everyone and also an optional idea is to increase difficulty for factions/gear/items you unlock behind paywalled content. So experienced players can still have fun in pvp with friends who never played. But also have something more difficult endgame then the battlepass content, to make players content who don't have enough money, which will be good in the long run for the company if this player buys a new release. And the battle pass stuff needs to look unique instead of better, which is a grey area to some extent which why its almost impossible to really draw the line and it also depends on art style/genre. Im really trying here to justify a battlepass, what has happened. What if all dlcs where only standalones? I will (try) do that in our game and im hoping it will be reverenced in a future video as an example that reversed engineerd gaming to be good again. lol

Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, Metal Slug, Galaga, Resident Evil, and Gauntlet Dark Legacy were some of my favorite arcade games. I got the hidden rank of Grand Admiral on the Star Wars game once. Broke 15 million on Galaga and was so proud of that achievement. No one in my town or maybe even the entire county could top that score.

Gauntlet was lit af. One of the best games at all time.

The next step to make money i think could be, you remember in d2 horadric cube you could make insane items. So why not sell the items in game but you still need to find something while playing.

The Farm Ville hit hard, my grandma was obsessed with it.

Thank you for saying what a lot of youtubers/streamers are afraid/ignorant to say. It's the player's fault. We need to hold ourselves accountable.

Tf2 was the first western game to do full scale loot boxes

Platform exclusivity can be a positive thing in certain scenarios: (1) The game might never be made otherwise in some cases, such as Bayonetta 2 on WiiU. (2) It's much easier for a developer to properly optimize a game for one platform at a time. (3) It allows a developer to take full advantage of a specific platform's unique capabilities (when those exist).

In addition to all of this, I feel like people often forget about the external factor. I think that having player count trackers for every onlihe game is a huge reason why games just waste your time now. Because the devs know that tons of people wont even buy a game unless it has 50-100k players on steam, so obviously they are gonna stretch it out.

AAA gaming has gone to shit, but I am old and there is so much stuff I still have to play... And are still new indies and the rare AAA games that is still worth playing, so I am not too worried.

I was just discussing this with my best friend of 28 yrs. We're both 38 and have both been gaming since NES was new(ish). Asmond made a good point at the start - this isn't new, but it used to be that you would get tangible rewards for your efforts or very small monetary expenditure (I still have the Tshirt with 8-bit Link on it, holding up the Master Sword that says "Sword Play" on it that came with a pre-order of TLOZ: The Wind Waker and still wear the fucker lol). Anyways, gaming has NEVER been cheap, but it was a one-time expenditure. Now, you like a game and want to "buy" that game? Then you better be ready to sign on for a 2 yr long expedition of spending. Gaming has become pretty trash, at least in a vacuum, but in today's late-stage Capitalist society, it still beats the fuckin' pants off of most other hobbies. Does that make us yearn for the gaming of yesteryear? Of course. But gaming is still fun for the most part. They need to do away with pay-to-win microtransactions. That would be a massive step toward gaming getting back to what it used to be. Or, as close to it as is possible in this day and age.

You know, I never really thought of the player to user thing till now😔

Blockbuster hard games are the ones that forged us in the fires of gaming hell and made what is around now a trivial inconvenience at best.

Ahhhhhh Oblivion. Great fucking game. The Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles came with my game of the year edition I got in High School. All the other DLC I downloaded for free off the internet. If anyone still plays Oblivion there is a fully voiced guild/quest chain mod on Thenexus with an archiology guild and interdimensional beings. Was pretty bangin'.

Timestamp: 1:03:30 These moments when he talks about something and then something else confirms the thing he was just talking about. This got me thinking about what I know about psychology and the human brain. We live in this world and make predictions, and sometimes our observations and what we think of those observations turn out to be correct. This reminded me about a scene in the 2nd movie (I think) of national treasure 2, when nicholas cage and the women were locked in a cell after having a fake argument and they talked about making guesses and turning out to be right. That got me thinking about a poem made by Bobby Sands called- "Rhythm Of Time". Then ALL of this got me thinking about infants not knowing anything at all to them acquiring information as they get older, and this led me to the realization of one thing....when you have figured out how the world works holistically, you are presented with two choices, sacrifice your morals for profit in some way, or keep your morals and live a role that you've convinced yourself belongs to you.

regarding battle pass halo infinite did something nice which was no battle pass would be outdated and you can chosse which one to progress at any time. dont know if it still is the same

Command and Conquer for life, I have the entire collection on my steam now. But I'm a die hard boomer shooter. Started with Wolfenstein and Doom and haven't quit since. So thankful for the reboot of the style with the new upgrades of modern hardware. I remember when gaming went pretty much was only on console, and I'm only just coming back to pc in the last few years. But middle school lan parties with Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior were clutch.

about battle passes, I think more could be done like deep Rock galactic: when the pass expires, all items within become added to some loot pool, nothing becoming unobtainable but the pass being an easier way to access those items and allowing you to do so early. then again i guess it works in deep rock because of how the loot mechanic is, and both the access to said loot and the pass itself being completely free.

That's really depressing...what a way to end a year XD

One of those sketchy demo disc's that came with the gaming magazines crashed my ps2 or maybe it was my Xbox I can't remember which but it completely bricked my console I think it had viewtiful joe on it and it makes me mad till this day

carmageddon splat pack, this game had the biggest box for 2 or 3 cd's, GOOD TIMES ! i don't remember much older games coming in boxes, maby age of empires which came with massive expantion cd's, tomb raider, dungeon keeper

Funny hearing Asmon say "console games in the 90's where expensive, man". When all across my entire country , you got 50 videogames in one cassette for 10 $ . I am serious , my mom bought me one cassette that had the original Super Mario Bros , Contra , the sequels of Mario and Contra , Ninja Gaiden , Bomberman , Tertris , Pacman , the Omympics games , Motocross race , that Kung Fu game , and many others and it cost her the change after buying groceries... such good times