News: Daybreak Games Hit With Layoffs, Matt Higby resigns

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Calista

Kinda off-topic but I have been reading about an upswell of angst over f2p. Parents are getting tired of seeing these micro-transactions on their CC bill for "free" games. It seems there is growing sentiment of some sort of regulation of the industry in regard to f2p but we will see how that goes in the near future.

Why do parents give their kids access to their bank account in the first place?

Would you? No. Why? You know what microtransactions are. These parents that have concerns never played games with those (probably mostly one time purchase games IF ANY AT ALL). I mean, players like us, who have grown up with online gaming, will have a different view from these parents that are indirectly exposed to it.

The answer is not necessarily to change the format through the company, but parents teaching their kids the value of money. And maths (that small purchases add up) and budgeting.

[Calista]

Originally Posted by Figment

The answer is not necessarily to change the format through the company, but parents teaching their kids the value of money. And maths (that small purchases add up) and budgeting.

Well that would be ideal but it doesn't always work that way. I guess I could go on a while about family dynamics in modern culture but I think I will pass.

I read http://www.gamesindustry.biz a good bit to get the viewpoint of game developers on a variety of topics. A lot of the articles are originated from other websites and aggregated there but the thing is only verified members of the game development community can post comments. It's interesting and enlightening to see the viewpoints of those folks. A couple of them expressed a feeling of guilt of mining children for money and realize that f2p is headed for regulation. Exactly how is anybody's guess.

Also Higby mentioned on occasion he had discussions with the business folks where they wanted more focus on revenue generating features because they missed the revenue goal for a previous month. So they couldn't really address some content additions like they wanted to when they had targeted them. That's just sad.