Comment by skotobaza
6 days ago
But it's true. Most people pay for what's being currently promoted. So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into. That's why gacha games and other lootbox-heavy ones are most profitable. This is where "vote with your wallet" brought us.
You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
> But it's true.
It's not - you're talking about something else entirely. When @umvi says "vote with your wallet" they mean buy things whose values you support. You, and GP @thrance, are not describing that - you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values - the exact opposite. So, no, we haven't had decades of "unsuccessful voting with your wallet" because consumers have been mentally checked out for decades.
> So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into
That's literally how normal democracy works - if the majority of the populace is uninformed, then they'll vote in an uninformed way, and the solution is for them to get informed and start doing research and making conscious decisions. That's what @umvi means when they say "vote with your wallet." - active participation instead of passive existence.
You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
>You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
>You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
Probably.
>you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values
That is probably where I am confused - I'm not sure that people "do not respect the values". It's either that they have values, but those values are imposed, or it's what you describe, that people just don't think deeply about it. And from my personal experience I really can't tell. But when I read the web, everyone apparently figured it out, and do indeed consciously decide.
Then why do you call it "vote with your wallet" and not "buy stuff you like"? If you don't intend for your purchase to weigh in on anything, why do you call it "voting"?
If that's truly what you mean by "vote with your wallet", then yeah, we're on the same page. I almost only play solo games, most of them indie.
The problem with democracy: people on average have average intelligence and you don't solve difficult problems with average intelligence. That being said, it's still better than anything else we've tried.
Right - I'm also hand-waving a bit here and lumping democratic republics in with "true democracies" for the sake of simplicity, but you're absolutely correct.
Voting with your wallet does work, possibly others don't share in your tastes.
It would be fair, but when you go online, everyone (and I mean everyone) shares their distaste for modern gaming industry and its practices. Yet, those practices still bring the most money to this day. So does it mean that people go against their principles? Or is it just another "vocal minority" situation?
There's some evidence that it's a vocal minority. Taking a game made by a terrible company that has a lot of dark patterns, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has sold at least 491 thousand units (https://steamdb.info/app/1938090/charts/) (certainly far higher, but apparently they haven't published the sales figures, so this is the best lower bound that we get), yet you see far fewer than that number of Reddit posts and comments and upvotes, or upvotes on YouTube videos about these terrible practices.
I suspect that the majority of those who play games would rather these mechanics not exist, but don't feel strongly enough about it to boycott those games. I don't have evidence for this beyond my interactions with personal friends and their "mild apathetic unhappiness" for lack of a better term.
There's also definitely a number of people that are willing to accept some compromise to either play a very well-made game, or one that their friends are playing. I hate Epic Games and its practices, for instance, but I'm willing to play Fortnite with friends if they ask me, and I justify that by telling myself that I'm never going to buy anything with their premium currency.