VoidCommander wrote: »

CaptainVenom wrote: »

If you guys knew how many terrible companies are out there... you have no idea how good Zenimax is.

I made this thread because of the manipulative tactics I’ve seen other companies use. I desperately do not want zenimax to follow in their footsteps. Telling ourselves “well there are worse companies” anytime zos does something against the player’s best interests is how you GET those horrible companies in the first place. Change like that doesn’t happen overnight, it is a gradual process, a process I’ve witnessed zenimax following over the years. That is why its more important now more than ever before to make our voices heard and to hopefully convince zenimax that their ethical standards are worth more than a quick payout.

I obviously agree with the importance of raising awareness about this issue. It's true this game isn't the worst offender, but it's still a solid offender. It has very obvious hallmarks of cultivating "engagement" (aka, addiction or habit) and then focusing that attention towards cash shop microtransactions. Todays' games - especially GaaS games like MMOs - are not designed to be games you play, but games that play you.

One of the more accessible summaries of this issue can be viewed below, or here if you are someone who doesn't like watching videos.

https://youtu.be/77XCsUgp_es

Elder Scrolls Online ticks many of the boxes of addictive game design with the ultimate goal of coercing customers to spend more and more money on the game. Addictive gameplay design can be an issue in of itself, but when combined with aggressive monetization, the ethics of that are very suspect (and I'd personally call it bankrupt). None of this bodes well for future games developed by the company. Their fixation on quick payout has cost them future investment from me. Not that they care. Because this crap has gotten so normalized - and customers themselves play apologetics for bad game design - they'll get their profits anyway and keep doing what they're doing. That's fine. Other developers who don't do this crap will get my money instead. Hell, even EA has realized now that GaaS isn't all it's cooked up to be and that people do actually want just... regular games. But I digress...