So this has bothered me all week to the
point that I felt commentary was necessary. What am I talking about?
The whole controversy surrounding EA and loot boxes in Star Wars
(EA) Battlefront 2.
The issue started when big game
companies like EA integrated mechanics that were initially devised
for the free to play model, into full retail games. These mechanics
include micro transactions and gachapon style vending.
I won't get into detail describing what
EA did as that was covered by various other reporting outlets and
indie YouTube personalities. But the part that disturbs me, is about
mid week it was reported that some governments were considering the
idea of getting involved to regulate/define the gachapon mechanics as
outright gambling, “for the childrens” sake. This was met with a
large amount of posters cheering and praising the idea.
As you probably already guessed I'm
part of the minority that feels it's a bad idea to let the government
handle this. While I don't feel that the government is evil, I have
lived long enough to know that if the government is brought in, the
whole situation will become political. And I have often observed
this to generally be a bad thing. Political situations have always
brought out the most useless and ugliest of debates on issues that
don't even effect the majority of people voting on it. Not to
mention that these kind of things always end up being about “the
children”.
So the problem is, that people feel if
they do abstain from buying bad products it will not change the AAA
gaming industry as people that either don't mind paying or are
desperate enough will buy it regardless and continue to feed into
this anti-consumer model. This of course is false, as it was
reported during the week that request for refunds and bad press was
having an effect. Voting with your wallet dose work.
The government may manage to tailor
legislation to our liking, but I'm very doubtful that would happen as
there are too many people in the government with their own agendas.
I feel that angry Star Wars fans are
not thinking straight, and fail to realize what inviting the
government into the gaming industry means. I think they have
forgotten in their hate filled rage that not so long ago the
government wanted to censor violent games. In some ways they still
do.
The thing you have to realize to see
were I'm coming from is that EA games are optional, the government is
not.
I can ignore EA but not the government.
I can decide that EA games are a bad
deal and not purchase them with no real repercussions. No matter how
unfair I feel my taxes are, I have to pay them, or armed personal
will come to take my property, freedom and even my life if it
escalates to that extent.
And I don't need 50%+1 of all players
permission in order to not play EA games.
Anyway that is all I have to say about
that.
LOOK! A loot box! Just kidding.... Or am I?! Dun-Dun-Dunnnnnn
So in game development news.
Godot has finally been feature froze.
With the anticipated release of Godot 3, enthusiast have been adding
a ton of new stuff to it, causing major feature creep. While I love
new features as much as the next developer wanna be, it was getting
to the point were no progress was being made due to constant bug
fixes and revisions.
Now that Godot is feature froze,
GDQuest (guy doing the course that I signed up for) can start working
on it again.
So for the next few months I'll
probably be doing that as well as practice my Blender skills.
