Preface - It's never cool to be mean to developers or the rando who is running an official social media account online. Be cool.
One thing I will never understand about gaming and gamers™® is that they always seems to justify their own poor treatment. Worse yet they attack others for pointing out the way they are mistreated. Whenever I see good honest players point out that a system is predatory or designed in a plainly unfair way, other gamers™® will undoubtedly come in and defend that bad thing. It's so odd that gamers™® can min-max everything but can't seem to factor in the fact they are getting less than they used to. It's like digital inflation. Games are more costly in upfront costs, hardware cost, time costs, and yet are getting worse in general.
I'm very much anti-battle pass/anti-season pass/anti-microtransaction all that sort of stuff. I'm old-school, just want to buy a thing and have the thing and have the thing be whole and complete. That said there are semi-decent ways to implement a system that is profitable for the vampire executives and also don't siphon every single coin players have. It's so weird to me that gamers™® not only keep buying into these systems but seem to defend them so vigorously online.
From "Pay to Win" to weird obtuse purchasable currencies/resources to needlessly limited time rewards to create artificial scarcity (pre-order, in-game store "deals", general fear of missing out practices), all dark patterns make games worse. Gamers™® defend these things saying "I DoN'T HaVe tHiS PrObLeM. iT MuSt bE A SkIlL IsSuE!" or whatever dumb shit. Every dark pattern in modern gaming is making the games people play worse intentionally. People talk about the enshittification of internet all the time but gaming as a medium/hobby has been enshittifiying since the advent of Xbox LIVE. The worst part about it to me is seeing such vocal defense for it online (social media at large, game forums, comment sections of gaming news/articles). It's not just that sort of conceding "well what can't ya do?", it's more so this spirited "This is good actually, and you're not a REAL GAMER if you don't like this."
For example a decent battle-pass (regardless of the game/genre) usually rewards players with enough in-game premium currency to buy the next one and maybe have enough left over for an item or two. That way it keeps you locked for longer and feeds into the habit forming design dark pattern we all hate. You're constantly having just enough premium currency to buy something, and topping off your balance is just a few extra coins if need be. Yes, people talk about the "whales" and "minnows" but even just the regular players and worse yet the gamers™® get a bad deal. Setting the fact this is a dark pattern aside (however I can't stress enough how mobile gaming's/casino gaming inspired dark patterns have made gaming worse), it's bonkers to me that gamers™® just say "VoTe wItH YoUr wAlLeT BrO!". They will say that or these sorts of things support the development of the game, knowing full well that that money isn't recycled and invested into the betterment of the game.
It's just so strange to me that gaming of all things has grown worse in just about every way since 2000's and yet the online culture around it seems to take pride in it being so bad. It's so strange that gamers™® can datamine the most Ph.D level mathematical optimal way to play through a game before it's even released but can't seem to parse that games should respect them. Games should treat them better. Games should be better.
: "Wow this system sucks. We should either get more rewards faster or things shouldn't cost so much. I like this game but damn this system blows, and it probably doesn't have to. The developers should be better to us."
: "If you don't like it don't play it. If it were bad it wouldn't be popular."
My larger point is gamers™® are bad, gaming should be better, player != gamers™®.
I think it's partially that it's all they've ever known/can remember, and partially behavioral conditioning. They've been conditioned to think that number go up/"progress" systems are essential to gameplay and cannot remember a time when they were a bizarre, confusing, and unwelcome addition. This bullshit started, afaik, with Battlefield 2 all the way back in 2005 when each class had 1 (one) single alternate unlockable weapon. It's been 20 years but I remember being confused and wondering what the point was. 2006 gave us Oblivions horse armor, and after that everything gradually went to hell.
There was a time when PvP players were viscerally angry about anything that gave mechanical advantages to one player over another. Now people broadly support "progression" systems that require to play for dozens of hours to unlock doodads that make weapons mechanically better, meaning that new players are playing at a disadvantage for a long time, probably much longer than the average player's total play time, before they're on equal footing.
That is frustratingly accurate. I know that tech advances at hyperspeed but it's wild that this much has changed in 20 years. This is some real hauntology/lost futures shit man.
It happens with so many things. Kids who came of age post 9/11, well white kids anyway, have no conception of a time when flying didn't require you to be herded in to a federal checkpoint. Zoomers don't remember snow falls from before the extreme climate fluctuations. They don't remember a world with far, far more insects.
People are continually shocked when they learn that the US had free college and it was deliberately dismantled to keep black people out of higher education. They don't realize that Welfare has been deliberately dismantled since the 80s. They don't remember a world before "Shareholder value" and "Fiduciary Duty" kicked capitalist auto-cannibalization in to high gear. They don't remember a world before "No Child Left Behind", tech billionaire pushes to turn schools in to coder assembly lines, Christian fascist assaults on education, and massive de-funding transformed US schools in to a continual process of cramming for useless standardized tests.
All this shit is just normal to them, and always has been, and if you don't read old novels and watch old movies and understand that many of the things depicted in them really were normal you'll never know it was ever like that.
I don't know if it's more cursed to have lived in a time before all that shit kicked into high gear and to remember it, or if it's worse to have no memories of it at all.
I think the worst would be seeing the social benefits and free education before being old enough to use them and then needing them after they were gone.
Social Security: "Hehe, I'm in danger!"