The spongebob game wasnt so bad. It had like a login bonus but it didnt seem to be too bad But once we got into the lego star wars game the f2p bullshit started. And oh god. This game clearly designed for kids had all the f2p bullshit. Login bonuses. Gridnyness. Multiple in game currencies. The daily/weekly ect missions. The unlockables

But god the racing game was even worse. 100000 things to unlock and basically nothing is by default basically. Sooooooooooo absurdly grindy. And most harrowing of all… i swear to god… 5 seperate in game currencies.

I want to reach out and scream to him “games werent always like this maaaaan”

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    One of Fortnite’s most insidious cultural influences is that other kids are just about expected to bully “defaults” for not wasting enough money on that hypermonetized piece of trash. debord-tired

    • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Valve TF2 allowing users to buy hats circa 2008 -------> 2024 and children have gambling addictions that their parents and teachers have little to no resources to cure.

      If there’s one thing you can rightfully slam China for is allowing G@mer gacha into their country I would have purged that entire industry and jailed its ringleaders as child predators.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        It was an insidious crawling march of normalizing horrible monetization practices and it’s gotten to the point that younger people just accept it because they haven’t ever known a different way. doomer

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I’ve always hated Overwatch, mostly because it was so cynically designed from the start to press every button in freeze-gamer possible about the le sexy waifu archetypes that would get sucked in and keep paying for it.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Some of them are so incredibly painfully Blizzard-generic from the start that they feel like parodies of previous Blizzard slop. “Widowmaker” comes to mind especially.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                3 months ago

                That’s fine. That was a personal taste rant there, entirely subjective.

                It doesn’t help that I found previous Blizzard waifu characters grating… especially what they did with Kerrigan over time.

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    3 months ago

                    She was always kind of a cliche, but a fun cliche, in the earlier Starcraft game/expansion. Blizzard really, really, likes its “corrupted waifu” cliches and has pushed that button many times since, especially in World of Warcraft.

                    Kerrigan was basically destroyed by waifuication in Starcraft II.

                    I could rant for hours about a similar waifuication of Cortana in the Halo series (yes, even when trying to kill Master Chef peppino-run in a horny way that counts as waifuication)

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    3 months ago

                    Agreed. But Blizzard was a cultural monolith that was almost impossible to directly criticize, even for storytelling cliches, until a relatively recent tidal shift where all the sex pestery and general assholery in those offices came to light.

              • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                3 months ago

                I guess I have to give them credit for having non-white characters who mostly aren’t teenagers or early 20s, but most of the women still have the same awooga body type (and I definitely remember Mei being called fat for not fitting that mold exactly, just g*mer things).

                • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  3 months ago

                  and I definitely remember Mei being called fat for not fitting that mold exactly

                  I’ll believe it, and that’s fucked up. It’s part of that “HIRE GAMERS” brainworms that was that mad that Aloy looked like an actual redheaded human being that lives in a post-apocalyptic society that doesn’t have easy access to Hollywood tier makeup.

                  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                    3 months ago

                    I have a theory that a lot of the capital G gamer hate for the Horizon Zero Dawn game series and Aloy is a subconscious thing given the themes of the game, at least in the first game. Without spoiling anything, masculinity and femininity are some of the main themes present in the first game, often in opposition to each other, and more often than not the “masculine” side is in the wrong. This kind of thing probably annoyed a lot of gamers even if they didn’t pick up on it themselves.

                • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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                  3 months ago

                  Mei’s my favorite actually.

                  Im less put off by body type’s fitting that certain mold than you are really. And the one that does the most to me, Mercy, is my least favorite design lol. And then you got charachter like the body builder one and uh… the tall and lanky one (forgot names) that arent even waifus in the traditional sense.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      In early league of legends I feel there was the opposite culture, where you would get clowned on for using a skin especially if you performed badly