“People with income are good targets, both on the economical and ethical standpoint”
Isn’t a very ethical take.
That’s essentially going “as long as they have an income, even if they are below the poverty line they are ripe for predatory and manipulative marketing in the pursuit of profit.”
How very capitalist.
Personally I believe free to play games and their systems of “generating income” are nothing but hyper-capitalist conditioning and bait and switch by companies gouging out more money from consumers. Free to play wouldn’t have materialised if there wasn’t insane potential for returns (otherwise no company would take the risk) so by your assessment its fine to exploit people for profit if they have an income? That seems very cynical.
I respect your argumentation, but I believe you slightly twisted mine. By “people with income”, I wanted to say “people with enough income to spend some on recreational activities”.
Concerning the “insane potential for returns”, I’m sorry to say that the company that I worked for and for which I developed a f2p game was a small company of 5 employees that never took off all that much. It is a business model. It is not a miraculous business model.
by your assessment its fine to exploit people for profit if they have an income
That’s the basic concept of a salary. I would agree that there are unfair salaries, sure. That’s when we can start talking about exploitation. I’m ok with salaries. I’m not ok with exploitation.
But who defines what’s an acceptable and available amount of income to spend on recreation vs maintaining your standard of living and who defines what arbritary level of income is ripe for manipulation?
If you wanna grift capitalists then you have all my support but regardless of someone’s income, if they are working class then that’s just preying on the people if you use manipulation and addictive game mechanics to accomplish it.
There’s isn’t any informed choice or agency when the consumption is psychologically manipulated out of a consumer.
I get where you are coming from but free-to-play isn’t just the adorable indie studio everyone’s rooting for, it’s fortnite, app games, software that essentially relies on whales to lose out for you to win.
Exploitation in this sense doesn’t just account for wage and labour exploitation but the exploitation of people’s agency and decision making through predatory marketing and psychology.
“People with income are good targets, both on the economical and ethical standpoint”
Isn’t a very ethical take.
That’s essentially going “as long as they have an income, even if they are below the poverty line they are ripe for predatory and manipulative marketing in the pursuit of profit.”
How very capitalist.
Personally I believe free to play games and their systems of “generating income” are nothing but hyper-capitalist conditioning and bait and switch by companies gouging out more money from consumers. Free to play wouldn’t have materialised if there wasn’t insane potential for returns (otherwise no company would take the risk) so by your assessment its fine to exploit people for profit if they have an income? That seems very cynical.
I respect your argumentation, but I believe you slightly twisted mine. By “people with income”, I wanted to say “people with enough income to spend some on recreational activities”.
Concerning the “insane potential for returns”, I’m sorry to say that the company that I worked for and for which I developed a f2p game was a small company of 5 employees that never took off all that much. It is a business model. It is not a miraculous business model.
That’s the basic concept of a salary. I would agree that there are unfair salaries, sure. That’s when we can start talking about exploitation. I’m ok with salaries. I’m not ok with exploitation.
But who defines what’s an acceptable and available amount of income to spend on recreation vs maintaining your standard of living and who defines what arbritary level of income is ripe for manipulation?
If you wanna grift capitalists then you have all my support but regardless of someone’s income, if they are working class then that’s just preying on the people if you use manipulation and addictive game mechanics to accomplish it.
There’s isn’t any informed choice or agency when the consumption is psychologically manipulated out of a consumer.
I get where you are coming from but free-to-play isn’t just the adorable indie studio everyone’s rooting for, it’s fortnite, app games, software that essentially relies on whales to lose out for you to win.
Exploitation in this sense doesn’t just account for wage and labour exploitation but the exploitation of people’s agency and decision making through predatory marketing and psychology.
Those are good arguments. I need to take some time and think on them. Thank you.
You’re welcome. I don’t mean to come across so snotty if I have.