Steam has a web-page listing the best-selling games of 2023, grouped
into various tiers (games within each tier aren't ranked, however).
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/BestOf2023

Top of the pack ("Platinum Tier") is Cyberpunk 2077, Sons of the
Forest, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Baldurs Gate 3, PUBG, Destiny 2,
Lost Ark, and Counter Strike 2.

Games like Elden Ring, GTA5, Dead by Daylight and Arnored Core 6 help
fill out the "Golden Tier".

Sadly, System Shock doesn't even make it into "Bronze".

There's also a 'most played' counter reporting which games had the
highest 'peak players', if that matters to you (unsurprisingly, it
pretty much mirrors the best selling list, at least at start).

On 12/30/2023 8:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Steam has a web-page listing the best-selling games of 2023, grouped
> into various tiers (games within each tier aren't ranked, however).
> https://store.steampowered.com/sale/BestOf2023
>
> Top of the pack ("Platinum Tier") is Cyberpunk 2077, Sons of the
> Forest, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Baldurs Gate 3, PUBG, Destiny 2,
> Lost Ark, and Counter Strike 2.
>
> Games like Elden Ring, GTA5, Dead by Daylight and Arnored Core 6 help
> fill out the "Golden Tier".
>
> Sadly, System Shock doesn't even make it into "Bronze".
>
> There's also a 'most played' counter reporting which games had the
> highest 'peak players', if that matters to you (unsurprisingly, it
> pretty much mirrors the best selling list, at least at start).
>

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that some of those don't match up
with ratings. Starfield is probably the least loved with an all time
Mixed 64% rating, and an abysmal recent reviews at Mostly Negative 28%.

Sons of the Forest is also early access, I'm not sure how or why it got
a platinum seller.

A lot of the games are MMOS or Multiplayer battlers, yeah I know they're
popular, but I don't want to play either, and think they're a scourge on
actually fun gaming.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 10:49:45 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>On 12/30/2023 8:27 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>> Steam has a web-page listing the best-selling games of 2023, grouped
>> into various tiers (games within each tier aren't ranked, however).
>> https://store.steampowered.com/sale/BestOf2023
>>
>> Top of the pack ("Platinum Tier") is Cyberpunk 2077, Sons of the
>> Forest, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Baldurs Gate 3, PUBG, Destiny 2,
>> Lost Ark, and Counter Strike 2.
>>
>> Games like Elden Ring, GTA5, Dead by Daylight and Arnored Core 6 help
>> fill out the "Golden Tier".
>>
>> Sadly, System Shock doesn't even make it into "Bronze".
>>
>> There's also a 'most played' counter reporting which games had the
>> highest 'peak players', if that matters to you (unsurprisingly, it
>> pretty much mirrors the best selling list, at least at start).
>>
>
>Perhaps more interesting is the fact that some of those don't match up
>with ratings. Starfield is probably the least loved with an all time
>Mixed 64% rating, and an abysmal recent reviews at Mostly Negative 28%.

Four of the nine games in the "Platinum" category are free-to-play. So
it is all about 'gross revenue', not just initial sales price. The
fact that free-to-play games rank so highly is somewhat disheartening,
as those lists are probable indicators of what sort of games we will
see more of in the future. After all, those are the ones that make
money, one way or another.

Post-sale transactions also mean that games with poor reputations and
a smaller audience can outperform better, more popular games... so
long as they keep their 'whales' satisfied. A whale who pumps $1000
into the marketplace is worth 200 'regular' gamers who just buy the
core game for $50... and some whales pour more than ten times that
amount into a game.

I'm not surprised to see "Starfield" on the premium category though;
that was a hotly anticipated game, and Bethesda had a very good
reputation prior to its release. So it's not very shocking to see it
rake in a lot of cash, even as reviews started coming in about how it
wasn't as good as people expected it to be.

And, in fairness, "Starfield" isn't a terrible game; it just isn't
great. It lacks that ephemeral essence that makes people want to play
it for hundreds - if not thousands - of hours. But for a single
playthrough before you move on to some other game? It's fine.

So, yeah, "Starfield" had a successful launch. But I don't expect to
see it still pulling in the cash in a year or two, the way "Skyrim"
still does. It's a flash in the pan.

Then again, most games are.

On 30/12/2023 18:49, Justisaur wrote:
> A lot of the games are MMOS or Multiplayer battlers, yeah I know they're
> popular, but I don't want to play either, and think they're a scourge on
> actually fun gaming.

Many years ago I used to joke about how long it would be before it
changed from games with a financial model attached to a financial model
with games attached. I no longer think it's a joke. Even worse is the
way that they play on people's flaws to get them to spend money instead
of just the old fashion idea of give us some money and we'll give you
something you enjoy.

For me the pinnacle of that is lootboxes (which aren't gambling but
instead surprise mechanics) as even though study after study has shown
the correlation between them and problem gambling companies still put
them in games knowing this.

One of the crappy things I saw was in World of Tanks after Belgium
classed lootboxes as gambling. They choose the easy route of just saying
you can't buy them if you lived in Belgium but you then had one of their
own community managers posting on the offical forum telling you how to
easily get around the restrictions they'd put in place - stay classy!

On Tue, 2 Jan 2024 10:55:18 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>On 30/12/2023 18:49, Justisaur wrote:
>> A lot of the games are MMOS or Multiplayer battlers, yeah I know they're
>> popular, but I don't want to play either, and think they're a scourge on
>> actually fun gaming.
>
>Many years ago I used to joke about how long it would be before it
>changed from games with a financial model attached to a financial model
>with games attached. I no longer think it's a joke. Even worse is the
>way that they play on people's flaws to get them to spend money instead
>of just the old fashion idea of give us some money and we'll give you
>something you enjoy.

<ramblin'>

While I get where you are coming from, I don't totally agree, but only
in the idea that this is somehow new. The video games industry (or at
least part of it) has always had a business-first orientation where
artistry and quality played second fiddle to 'will this make us oodles
of money with the absolute minimum outlay". It resulted in huge
swathes of absolutely terrible games that people paid good money for
and were incredibly disappointed when the game was a lazy port or
clone, or performed poorly, or didn't even run at all. These games
have - with a handful of exceptions - been forgotten, but there was a
glut of them.

Modern games use different tactics to make money but the core ideal
for too many games remains the same: make the cheapest game possible
and then market the hell out of it to rake in a lot of cash before
people wise up.

In earlier decades, it was easier to get away with this, not so much
because gamers were less sophisticated (although, to a degree, I think
they were, at least with regards to how corporations try to manipulate
them) but because information - about the product, about the business
practices, etc. - were harder to come by. It's not just the network
effect - where gamers talk to one another - but simply being able to
compare one game to the next. When you're limited to only what
magazines tell you, and only what the box-copy says, you're ability to
discriminate is limited. All the more when that information is so
ephemeral; often, you couldn't go back and compare what Game X against
Game Y because Game X was no longer on the store shelves. With
decades-old games still available on Steam, that comparison is much
easier.

Which means publishers have to be more sophisticated in their schemes.
Some of them, of course, are not (and it's not just limited to small
publishers; asset flip games are the epitomy of this problem). But
'give it away free and make up for it in post-sale services' is a
scheme that has a long history outside of gaming, and for good reason:
it works. It's no surprise it works against gamers too.

Fortunately, there are some developers who still care about gaming
enough to go 'old school' and try to develop a good product that will
sell on its own merits (see, "Baldurs Gate 3"). But the from the
beginning, the industry was rife with companies whose aim was
make-money-first, customer satisfaction whenever

>
>For me the pinnacle of that is lootboxes (which aren't gambling but
>instead surprise mechanics) as even though study after study has shown
>the correlation between them and problem gambling companies still put
>them in games knowing this.
>
>One of the crappy things I saw was in World of Tanks after Belgium
>classed lootboxes as gambling. They choose the easy route of just saying
>you can't buy them if you lived in Belgium but you then had one of their
>own community managers posting on the offical forum telling you how to
>easily get around the restrictions they'd put in place - stay classy!
>

On 02/01/2024 15:34, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Jan 2024 10:55:18 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>
>> On 30/12/2023 18:49, Justisaur wrote:
>>> A lot of the games are MMOS or Multiplayer battlers, yeah I know they're
>>> popular, but I don't want to play either, and think they're a scourge on
>>> actually fun gaming.
>>
>> Many years ago I used to joke about how long it would be before it
>> changed from games with a financial model attached to a financial model
>> with games attached. I no longer think it's a joke. Even worse is the
>> way that they play on people's flaws to get them to spend money instead
>> of just the old fashion idea of give us some money and we'll give you
>> something you enjoy.
>
> <ramblin'>
>
> While I get where you are coming from, I don't totally agree, but only
> in the idea that this is somehow new. The video games industry (or at
> least part of it) has always had a business-first orientation where
> artistry and quality played second fiddle to 'will this make us oodles
> of money with the absolute minimum outlay". It resulted in huge
> swathes of absolutely terrible games that people paid good money for
> and were incredibly disappointed when the game was a lazy port or
> clone, or performed poorly, or didn't even run at all. These games
> have - with a handful of exceptions - been forgotten, but there was a
> glut of them.
>
> Modern games use different tactics to make money but the core ideal
> for too many games remains the same: make the cheapest game possible
> and then market the hell out of it to rake in a lot of cash before
> people wise up.
>
> In earlier decades, it was easier to get away with this, not so much
> because gamers were less sophisticated (although, to a degree, I think
> they were, at least with regards to how corporations try to manipulate
> them) but because information - about the product, about the business
> practices, etc. - were harder to come by. It's not just the network
> effect - where gamers talk to one another - but simply being able to
> compare one game to the next. When you're limited to only what
> magazines tell you, and only what the box-copy says, you're ability to
> discriminate is limited. All the more when that information is so
> ephemeral; often, you couldn't go back and compare what Game X against
> Game Y because Game X was no longer on the store shelves. With
> decades-old games still available on Steam, that comparison is much
> easier.
>
> Which means publishers have to be more sophisticated in their schemes.
> Some of them, of course, are not (and it's not just limited to small
> publishers; asset flip games are the epitomy of this problem). But
> 'give it away free and make up for it in post-sale services' is a
> scheme that has a long history outside of gaming, and for good reason:
> it works. It's no surprise it works against gamers too.
>
> Fortunately, there are some developers who still care about gaming
> enough to go 'old school' and try to develop a good product that will
> sell on its own merits (see, "Baldurs Gate 3"). But the from the
> beginning, the industry was rife with companies whose aim was
> make-money-first, customer satisfaction whenever
>
>>
>> For me the pinnacle of that is lootboxes (which aren't gambling but
>> instead surprise mechanics) as even though study after study has shown
>> the correlation between them and problem gambling companies still put
>> them in games knowing this.
>>
>> One of the crappy things I saw was in World of Tanks after Belgium
>> classed lootboxes as gambling. They choose the easy route of just saying
>> you can't buy them if you lived in Belgium but you then had one of their
>> own community managers posting on the offical forum telling you how to
>> easily get around the restrictions they'd put in place - stay classy!
>>
>

The difference to me was however bad the game was it was still a game
whereas now it feels like more and more games are designed with MTX at
their core and it's the game that gets built around it.