US kids want games subscriptions and virtual currency more than games this Christmas
US kids want games subscriptions and virtual currency more than games this Christmas
A report by the Entertainment Software Association has found that 72% of children in the US want games-related products…
Evil genius marketing, working as it always does. The kids don't know any better, so they are being exploited and conditioned to think the horrible new normal is just the way things have to be. And most parents are too tired and busy to find better alternatives.
It's simple, the games that appeal the most to kids require some form of subscription. If those games didn't, then they wouldn't want ones with subscriptions.
How you worded this makes it seem like "if those games didn't" refers to requiring subscriptions.
I would suggest editing it to "If those games didn't appeal to kids" or similar; if what you meant was that kids just plays what appeals to them, and those games "just happens" to be subscription games.
I was talking just today with some coworkers about how having subscriptions instead of owning is what is normal to kids now - not just games, but things like Netflix and Spotify. So this doesn’t surprise me, but does depress me. Technofeudalism is the new normal.
In my teen years I spent a large fraction of my disposable income on music. A Spotify subscription is a vastly better value than buying whatever I could scrounge from a used CD store. Back then it was common for me to read about some semi-obscure recording and just have to wonder what it sounded like, because I had no hope of finding it in a store, and a special order was way out of my budget, especially for something I had no idea if I'd even like. Now I can listen to damn near anything that's ever been published for less than I spent as a teenager. I find new music by listening to personalized recommendations instead of local radio stations. It's just better in every way (except probably for the artists, but music has always been a cutthroat business so who knows).
A lot of subscription services suck and are just a way to milk customers, but streaming audio and video are not in that category.
I keep hoping--perhaps naively so--for a major backlash against this. Sometimes consumers have power, and sometimes they don't. But maybe we'll all get fed up with this bullshit and start just dropping any and all unnecessary subscriptions from our lives. The big problem is when a brand becomes synonymous with a product (like fucking Adobe and ProTools, for two examples).
I'm an adult and I play a few different games like this.
Here are some relatively cheap games to give kids that aren't fortnite or roblox and dont run on some subscription/internal monetary currency:
- Risk of Rain 2
- Minecraft (Java)
- Tunic
- Stardew Valley
- A Hat in Time
- Baba is You
- Fate (Wildtangent)
- Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Not the Skywalker Saga)
- Chip's Challenge 1 and 2
- Shovel Night (Treasure Trove)
Here are some good Free Software games that cost nothing at all:
- Hedgewars
- Mindustry
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon
- Minetest (with MineClone2 mod)
- 0 A.D.
- SuperTuxKart
- Freeciv
- FlightGear
- Battle for Wesnoth
What about Veloren?!
I wish more people helped fund the development of open source games, if wesnoth had a real budget then it could be huge
But I want FortNite V-Buck's! I only have the default skins and people are making fun of me at school!
Exactly! This is more about the social aspect of these games. Kids are playing Fortnite/Roblox/Minecraft because that's where their friends are hanging out after school.
- Death's Door
- Celeste
- Party Animals (you can buy a bunch of skins, but you don't need to)
- The Outer Wilds
I would like to add Outer Wilds to this. No combat, virtually no violence, and adult themes are aimed at mild existentialism. Great exploration game with fun physics and puzzles.
For older kids I'd suggest: Satisfactory. Essentially first person Factorio with mild combat vs fauna.
Astroneer: exploration and advancement.I don't like how much Minecraft has me by the balls. With all my hatred for Microsoft, I can't let that game go.
On that note, install MineClone first, see if your kid likes it. Can't hurt to try.
(Edit: MineClone2, the mod for Minetest, as seen in the reply below)
MineClone
The top DDG search result for that (on crazygames . com) looks like a rip-off or something. I'm going to assume the thing you mean to recommend is MineClone2, a mod for MineTest, which is the most prominent Free Software Minecraft-style game.
Missing Risk of Rain Returns smh
Minecraft was probably among the best 25$ I've ever spent. So many fun hours just messing around with friends.
geometry dash
don’t let play if anger issue
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Not the Skywalker Saga)
Clone Wars is also really good, plus it has a lot better split screen which is great for 2p coop playing with your kid/nephew/niece or just being able to have 2 children play together instead of fighting over who gets to play and who has to wait for their turn that never comes
Too bad. They’re getting copies of Burger King’s Sneak King and they’re going to like it.
"ESA survey showed" -- not exactly an unbiased report
That is super dystopian.
I wouldn't say its that bad. Various forms of collectibles/cards have been around for a long time. Asking for gametime for a game like WoW isn't exactly a new phenomenon.
I think it's just that there are a few specific examples that stand out. Some aspects of Roblox can be pretty concerning.
But if a kid just wants some money for a skin for Fornite, or to buy a specific world setup for Minecraft, I don't necessarily see that as some scary new thing.
While I hate slippery slopes, this is an historic trend. They squeeze in little ones that don’t seem so bad. I accept no games with these predatory or greedy models and I’d argue that kids shouldn’t be subjected to them.
That's what a lack of street drugs does to the youth, the OG subcription services.
Hot take: this is better than them getting a bunch of plastic crap that will end up in a landfill in 6 months.
Yeah, but that is kinda like saying US healthcare is better than it was 50 years ago. You're correct, but why make the comparison?
It would be best if game developers didn't encourage kids to subscribe to their games. Just buy them like we did when I was growing up.
This presumes that disposable plastic crap is the only gift alternative. I still have most of the books I got for christmas as a kid
For sure there are alternatives, but I doubt there's a lot of overlap between kids who want books and kids who want some e-currency. Probably not much overlap with gift givers either.
Games are digital now, folks.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be harder to get addicted to plastic toys?
Where did we go wrong?
Unchecked "free market" capitalism, if I had to guess.
Companies should never have been able to run outside of a very tight yoke. Yeah sure, capitalism. But not unchecked and especially not unchecked-across-borders so they can start escaping shit by moving legal entities around. Oh and speaking of that, maybe "corporations as entities" is another really really big one we fucked up, allowing the people who make the truly shitty decisions to shirk responsibility for them.
Relevant article: https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/
TL;DR: the way it was supposed to work is that entities that wanted limited liability were granted corporate charters in exchange for providing some large, tangible public benefit (and very much not just "shareholder value", BTW). This post-Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. world where corporations are essentially mandated to be sociopathic is an absolute 100% perversion of what incorporation was meant to be for!
In case you are wondering this because it seems children actually prefer subscriptions to owning games, they don't. Out of what is offered to them, the most desired choices happen to be subscription models of some form. If those games were something you just bought then the desire would be for games that were purchased in full.
We've been hooking kids on gambling since (at least) baseball cards, which -surprise!- were heavily lobbied to convince law makers to let it fly.
Consumers were doomed the instant we failed to torch and pitchfork that shit.
It's never too late for torch and pitchforks
This type of games are free to play. So a bunch of kids who are friends can start playing at any time even without money. If some of them like the game, they'll stay as a group for the social aspect.
I don't see any wrong in it. Its just different of what I did 30 years ago.
I'm gonna have to disagree. As somebody who was an Overwatch addict, these games are designed to effectively be like drugs. They are not meant for children and shouldn't be purported as such.
These are casinos playing in simple.
In fact, it's much less incentivized for a game that is one and done, even multiplayer titles if they are a paid game.
@panchzila @PopOfAfrica pretty much sounds like when I was addicted to Ever quest and didn't care for offline games.
When we evolved out of the water.
Not teaching kids thr value of money imo is the main one. They dont understand the cost of subs because its not their money they are spending.
I have a half brother whose on the sensible side of buying games. He doesnt get a lot of money, hell he got a 20$ steam card from a friend, and hes saving it for an indie game that doesnt even release till 2025.
Not pushing harder against subscriptions and scummy practices.
I can understand the sentiments of the thread to offer alternatives
Just remember whats going to happen based on your own christmas as a kid, when you got "The next best thing"
Given there's a lot of good picks, it's still a tale as old as time.
My parents refused to enable me to get into the glorified gambling of trading card games and frankly I was better off for this. I've seen people waking up realizing they had spent hundreds to thousands on cardboard designed to be replaced and deeply regretting it. That is while having cardboard to regret buying. Imagine what happens to these kids if the game they spent all their gift cards on closes down and takes it all down the drain.
Meanwhile there were gifts like games and D&D books that let me have fun for a long time as complete packages without needing additional expenditures to enjoy.
There are things kids can like and dislike, and we should keep that in mind. But as adults we should also take some responsibility for cutting through the bulshit of manipulative marketing. They aim these things at children because children only see their immediate excitement and wonder, but not the sleazy business behind it.
Just dropping a gift recommendation for younger kids with a Nintendo Switch. Kirby and the Forgotten Land. A few years old at this point, but my two younger kids still play the heck out of it. It’s wholesome, and doesn’t have any in game purchases or online subscription.
Better idea: Get them a ton of classics from the Steam sale, put them on a fresh acct, and then give them hundreds of hours of good shit for like $50. You could get 5 copies of Undertale for the equivalent price of 1 Fortnite skin.
I share my steam linrary with my two kids. Gave them 200+ games. They still play Fortnite and Roblox because that is what their friends play. When I was young the biggest games were single player and you shared stories with your friends. Now you play with them online.
Strictly speaking, I'm not opposed to monetization in f2p games but the pricing is egregious.
When the le seraffim bundle for overwatch 2 dropped they also put their in game currency on sale so you could get enough currency to get the bundle for $50 instead of $70 and people were calling it a great value.
Even at $50, that's enough for 4 months of humble choice which would net you 32 games and 6-8 of them would be AAA games.
Everyone's wondering where we went wrong as a society but honestly a year of game pass during a time of my life where I didn't get new games very often sounds way better than getting like three games for Christmas.
gestures at the outside I am not surprised. Outside is a McDonald/Starbucks laden hellscape. There are a dwindling number of places for kids to get enrichment outside their own homes. People in general spend increasingly long times in front of screens for various activities. Gaming is an activity that they can do alone or with their friends that doesn't require them to pay for things to enjoy them. Some of them don't even recognize that there is a real world cost for things like vbucks and so on.
Toy stores are few and far between. We don't watch media that has significant commercials anymore. What did we expect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
The death of the third place has been happening in a thousand ways for a while now. Fewer and fewer places you can just be without paying to do so. Even now we see one of the last ones, libraries, targeted more and more by certain groups.
Thank you. I knew there was a name for this phenomenon but didn't know what it was. I'm also pissed about the libraries. I don't understand why people want to get rid of them.
As long as FFXIV exists, I can understand the desire for a game subscription over literally every other paid game.
I got into it a few years back and nearly finished ARR. I found the storyline and cut scenes really engaging, and felt like I was a part of something. But I tried to pick it up and start fresh about a year ago and the bastards oversimplified my class (Summoner), and I swear they even further nerfed the low-mid level difficulty, making me feel most days as though I was playing on creative mode. For those who don't care, though, the storyline, world and music (holy fuck, Limsa at night and Ul'dah at night are absolutely soul stirring) are really something special.
I will likely try the game again with the upcoming graphical upgrade, but I fear I will always feel too behind on the story and won't be a part of the entirely new storyline/age that is slated to begin with the next expansion. That graphical upgrade will be huge, though. I play a ton of old games myself, but sometimes FFXIV feels like it's running modern character models over PS2 environments and grass textures. It deserves to cast off some of that jank and show how beautiful it's natural world can be.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I want game subscriptions to be deeply discounted for cyber Monday.
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I understand the sentiment but big free games with storefronts aren't pay to win anymore.
Fortnite, roblox, apex, cod and rocket league are some examples.
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Why are you censoring words on the internet. This isn't tictok. You can fucking swear.
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baise*
No they don't
I hope if I ever have a hell spawn or adopt, that I can teach them the ways of not getting addicted to those types of games.
We refuse to let our 7-year-old play Roblox, but she's definitely complained that she has classmates that do. It's an endless battle for sure.
As a 27 year old who used to love Roblox you probably made the right decision. It's no longer a good platform.
Gamepass is an absurd value. I've saved literally over $3,000. There is very very little reason to purchase games.