Author: A.K.H.

MMOs, or Massively Multiplayer Online games have been around since the 1980s in one form or the other, and still continue to enjoy a fair amount of popularity today. That said, some of the most played games in the world today are not MMOs, but games with a smaller scale like MOBAs or arena shooters. MMOs have always demanded a lot of time and money from their players. Money might not be a huge issue for some people, but time is certainly a valuable commodity that people don’t give to new games so easily, which is why it is much harder for newer players to start playing MMOs.

In the previous episode, we briefly talked about how FOMO tactics are used to encourage players into buying things they don’t really need. In this video, let’s have a look at what these items actually are, and if they are worth your money. Since there are a wide variety of games out there featuring different kinds of shops, I limited myself to a sample of three games, with three different business models, all of them featuring cash shops with expensive items.

The Fear of Missing Out. It has helped companies sell stuff to compulsive shoppers for a long time, and it is currently one of the things ruining video games at large. Some of the most played games in the market today use FOMO tactics to drive sales in their cash shops. And these cash shops are not limited to just free-to-play games. Even games that require an upfront pric e have fully stocked cash shops that let players spend obscene amounts of money, mostly out of the fear that they would not be able to buy these items again. I will talk about these items themselves in another episode, but in today’s video, let us look the most common FOMO tactics used by publishers and how you can avoid them.

Do you own the games you buy, and is it important that you do? In this episode we will try to tackle the issue of game ownership, and look at why it is slowly becoming inevitable that consumers will no longer truly own video games like they once did.

Pre-ordering video games is a touchy topic in the community. In general, it is agreed that pre-ordering games these days is a bad idea, because no matter how reputable the game’s developer is, there is no guarantee that a game will launch without any performance issues or will actually be enjoyable to play. The opposing argument for this is simply, “it’s my money and I will do what I want with it”. In this episode, let’s look at why pre-orders are a thing in the first place, and what are the pros and cons of pre-ordering video games.