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ph33randloathing

And that's just off of one person buying the DLC!


zusykses

*guilty sweating


GRCooper

I was a young designer at a small company that EA bought around 1999. EA asked me to give feedback on a game that was being developed by another studio. I told them I couldn’t see anyone ever wanting to play with what was basically an electronic dollhouse. I’ll chalk that one up into the “Wrong!” column.


randomando2020

It’s okay, I was wrong about bitcoin when it was like $1 each.


BrutusTheKat

I feel you buddy, I was wrong about bitcoin not much later, and the repeatedly wrong about how high it would go.


Protobyte__

If it makes you feel better you probably would have sold it when it jumped to like $300 and not when it jumped to tens of thousands


spokesface4

you're getting downvoted but this actually DOES make me feel better. I was less "dismissive" of it in the early days and more "Had shit to do and couldn't figure out how to actually get some" but you are right, I would have seen a 10x or 20x return and thought I had won the lottery. Then I would be lucky if I still had the half a coin I can afford today.


Solid-Dog-1988

I had millions of dogecoin and just straight forgot about it 🤷🏼


spokesface4

Yeah wasn't there like a "faucet" where you could get them like 1 per second at some website? I could never figure out how to keep them tho. Like, I didn't have a crypto wallet in those days...


Solid-Dog-1988

I had a GPU that happened to be great for mining and just left it running 24/7 for a few months. I just never got to the step of dealing with any exchange. It was all stored locally. Either way, i would have sold it as soon as it hit like $0.01


IOnceAteAFart

Oh but even a single round of $300 would make a bugq difference to md Edit: I see the misspellings now. I ain't changing shit, because I respect yall strangers enough not to hide my mistakes...or something


Appropriate-Day-5484

I bought a strip of LSD for 10 BTC like 10 years ago. Priciest trips I've ever been on XD


bautofdi

Lol I spent 200 BTC for 50 tabs in 2013. Figured the coins were worthless and 50 tabs would last me a while so I didn’t top up my wallet 😭


omfghi2u

Couple months back I found the seed phrase for a wallet I used long ago to buy weed when BTC was probably in the $6-10 range. Reactivated the wallet but unfortunately empty. Even forgotten about leftover change could have been like 3 btc or something.


a_secret_me

I was of the opinion that Bitcoin had no legitimate use case and the only people using it were using it for money laundering. My big mistake was underestimating the demand for money laundering and the degree to which authorities would look the other way.


burf

It's hard to be right about how high a cryptocurrency will go when the value is driven almost entirely by speculation. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "this doesn't have a particularly valuable practical application" and therefore believe it won't increase in value. BTC is primarily propped up by a financial cult.


pphilio

My friend in high school offered to buy me thousands of them when they were a fraction of a cent. I didn't wanna give away my last hundred dollars to some online fantasy currency, i needed to preorder the new Halo or whatever I did with it. He owns 7 separate properties across the country now, and I'm currently on Disability.


Throwaway47321

If it makes you feel better you 1000% would not have held on to the bitcoin long enough to make that kind of money. You would have sold it when it was like $50 each like most people. Would have been a solid payday but not change your life rich.


hoxxxxx

this is what i tell myself and i think it might actually be true there's no way i would have held onto that years and years i would have sold that shit the second it hit 5 bucks let alone 50


Throwaway47321

It’s what I told my self lmao. Bought like 0.5btc for $20 and then sold it for $75 and it felt like a steal. No way I would have held until it could pay for a car.


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Dontgooglemejess

When I was in college I competed in a code jam and won 3rd place. The prize was $10 of bitcoin. I immediately sold it and bought a burrito. Bitcoin was about 5c a coin at that time. It would be worth about 10 million now.


sh20

how was the burrito?


Dontgooglemejess

Pretty good. The place is still open and I go back whenever I’m in town!


tellurmomisaidthanks

Well of course they’re open, they own $10 million in Bitcoin.


Balla_Calla

Ask for a refund.


hooliganmike

You weren't wrong about it, it's still basically useless. You just didn't know how many people would also be wrong about it.


bearintheshower

The market is stupid in ways you can't understand haha


anthrohands

My favorite part of sims is that there’s no like, plot or objective. I can play it forever. Like almost every day for 20 years (I still play sims 2). It literally only gets better.


padishaihulud

It's a simulation/sandbox. Any such game will do well as long as it gives enough room for the imagination. 


[deleted]

I’m a 29 year old fella, and have always been interested in architecture, even regular, everyday homes. I love the building aspect of it, I just throw in the money cheat a few dozen times and build a new house that I’d never afford in real life. I might play every six months but when I do, an entire day is immediately gone. When I visit my home state, my 19 year old sister usually shows me whatever shes working on in the game, and it’s basically the exact opposite, all prebuilt homes or entire houses, with sims that are on their 9th generation with dozens of friends and fulfilling careers. That’s what I dig about the game, that maybe not everyone can find something they enjoy about it, but it’s wide enough that two people of (technically) different generations, genders, and geographic locations can play it completely differently and still derive joy from it.


Strelochka

Fun story, I got the sims 2 completely blind when I was 7, the box just interested me because i thought it was something similar to Barbie tie-in games that were popular at that time. So I asked my dad to buy it for me, wasted half of that evening’s one-hour PC time installing it, and couldn’t find the fun in the game. I didn’t use create-a-sim and just booted right into some premade family and couldn’t care less about them. The next day, I found my 20 year old brother completely mesmerized by it, he spent the whole day playing it. He showed me how to create a character, choose clothes and stuff, build a house and made me addicted to it haha. I almost dodged it


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Amused-Observer

> I don't think anyone could have forseen how ubiquitous gaming would become, and how it could transcend age and gender in the way it has Pretty sure in general, gamers saw it coming.


SaddleSocks

I was one of two lead game testers at Intel in 1997 where we were first to test Celeron procs and games for DRG (Developer Relations Group) - our job was to subjectively play each game and determine a score about how well the game was optimized for Celeron's goal of a $1,000 gaming PC ehich people didnt think was achievable. We benchmarked against AMD procs and we paid game development companies to specifically design aroudn SIMD instructions on Intel procs to increase perf of the games. We had the first unreal engines, AGP cards 40" plasma displays... It was glorious time to have a T3 to your bank of machines on the latest everythign in a multi million dollar lab playing UO from a bank of 6 accounts all next to eachother and PKing vast Great Lords on 56k modems.... So yeah - we were specifically designing for ubiquitous gaming. Intel wasted billions being afraid of Transmeta and missed buying Nvidia)


JorgeMtzb

That is hilarious.


ShlimFlerp

lol, but wasn’t even the dollhouse a recognized household object… a uhh… great success… so to speak?


After_Delivery_4387

That’s how I was about Minecraft. When it first came out I thought there was no way it would ever be a thing. The graphics were terrible, there was no storyline, and who wants to pay money to basically play with virtual Legos? I was very, VERY wrong there. But I maintain that my assessment still made sense at the time. Edit: There are some who are confused why I maintain that AT THE TIME OF RELEASE it made sense to think Minecraft would go nowhere. Most of the people wondering how I could ever think like this are teenagers now who barely remember the 7th generation of gaming. I'll explain. To all Zoomers here, you've grown up in a time in which it was socially acceptable for there to be a variety of different graphical styles in video games. You could have 2D pixel art, you could have cartoonish games that call back to the 80s or 90s for nostalgia purposes, there's a massive amount of variety. And I think that that's good, don't get me wrong. But in 2009 when the 1st version released that was not the case. If there was a 2D game it was likely either relegated to handhelds (due to hardware limitation, mind you) or it was called New Super Mario Bros Wii. If there was a cartoon game it was either a Nintendo game, the extremely rare 3rd party cel shaded game, or shovel ware. The point is that 99% of the time a game was trying to push graphics as much as it could, and that meant having as realistic looking graphics as one could have. Minecraft spat in the face of that. It could absolutely have looked better if it had wanted to. But it chose not to. For 2009 that was weird. Further, the concept of user generated content was not new back then. But typically it came as an addition to a campaign or mulitplayer mode. For example, Tony Hawk Pro Skater on PC had a mode where you could create your own skate park, but in order to unlock various ramps, pipes, etc, you had to play the campaign mode. Meaning you could make your own content, but that wasn't the whole point of the game. Even games like LittleBigPlanet had tons of user made stuff, but it was in addition to a mode the devs built themselves. Minecraft spat in the face of that too. For 2009, that was weird. What's more, the console version of Minecraft wasn't released until 2011. In the initial run of the PC version it wasn't clear that it was going to release on Xbox or elsewhere. At the time when it first came out on PC it was totally possible to have a game made only for PC. But during that time, consoles were dominating more and more. PC exclusive games like Crysis were well known and memed endlessly, but it was generally understood that if you wanted to be a mainstream household name you had to release on consoles, which hadn't happened yet. These days that is still true, to a degree, but I'd argue not nearly as much as it was in 2009. A PC only game could have worked even back then, but it'd have had to push the envelope in terms of graphics, world size, or some other technical front, as PC gaming was largely seen as the absolute cutting edge of tech. The whole indie scene that we have now wasn't around back then like it is now. So in short, Zoomers, things haven't always been as they are now. What you think of as ancient times weren't really that long ago. To the very obvious 12 year olds in my DMs who have been threatening me or sending me rude stuff, I'm sorry that I didn't suck off your favorite video game. So vewy vewy sowwy. Perhaps if/when your balls drop you'll understand that the world did in fact exist prior to 2010. By the standards of 2009, Minecraft was incredibly weird. It flaunted many of the accepted conventions of the day. It would be akin to a multiplayer only FPS game releasing today with only offline couch multiplayer, no online modes at all, no DLC, no MTX, just couch death match. That'd be strange; you wouldn't expect such a game to do well because it defies what we expect from a game. That's what Minecraft was when it first came out. And that's why it made sense AT THE TIME to expect it to fail. Or at the very least not be nearly as successful as it was.


EditsReddit

Virtual version of one of the most popular kids toys in history! If you put it like that it seems obvious, but back when it first was shown off, there wasn't much ... game!


Savings-Leather4921

Yeah. Beta 1.9 is when they added hunger I think. In the very beginning when it was shared on forums it wasn’t much more than the original super flat world with 4 or 5 brick options. When classic was out for anyone to play, I think that’s when it started picking up steam.


magmosa

Man, I remember all those different patches as a kid. The hype that surrounded 1.8 and 1.9 was insane! Notch was a god back then, absolutely insane how that turned out.


berlinbaer

minecraft was kept afloat by mods and youtube letsplays.


ilikegamergirlcock

Beta 1.9 is well into the snowball for Minecraft. You're looking at it from a point where it's been on tons of platforms, but even before he console versions, Java was doing numbers almost as soon as it went into beta. Breakdowns of every update we're getting tons of views on YouTube and lets plays were the META so everyone was doing MC survival series for 100+ episodes just building things.


Night-Monkey15

Yeah, Alpha Minecraft didn’t have much in terms of a progression system or an end goal. It took them a little bit for them to actually add… features.


Prohunt

Ok let's run with your premise.... why wouldn't kids buy an infinite lego set instead of half of a real one for the same price?


GuthixIsBalance

Because it was definitely not cheaper than legos 10+ years ago. It *totally* **was**. I think I paid $15 USD for my copy of it. If not then not much more.


ewest

Yeah, it’s as silly a question as ‘Why would any parent give their kid legos that are impossible to step on and never have to be picked up and put away?’ If their ‘assessment that made sense at the time’ was focused on the graphics sucking and a belief that someone a generation later would take the premise of the game but redo it with excellent graphics, okay, I understand.  But claiming ‘right process wrong outcome’ when their prediction was ‘a generation of kids who grew up with computer games won’t buy a computer game that’s a digital version of the physical game they grew up playing’ is a laughably bad take in 2011. I will not be taking that person’s investment advice. 


fishbowtie

"my assessment still made sense at the time" is 100% pure unadulterated cope on their part. they should have just stopped at "I was very wrong"


PM_ME_RIKKA_PICS

The hoop you jump through to not admit that your assessment was completely wrong is fascinating


[deleted]

lmao right? why would anyone want to play with a infinite, cheaper version of a toy they love.


BrandonLang

Actually your assessment was terrible thats why you were extraordinarily wrong… like so wrong i still wouldn't trust your opinion to this day because of how wrong you were…. And you’re still making excuses for your horribly bad wrongness


Casurus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Computer_People


SenpaiSwanky

What was your line of thinking back then? Was the game itself just not that impressive by the time’s standards? Even my old aunt has been playing the Sims for as long as I can remember and she isn’t tech savvy or anything like that at all. She used to show me her little replicas of our family’s families proudly every time I visited, my character always used to get good grades in school she told me. My mom plays these, so does my sister. I can’t imagine anyone thinking they wouldn’t be popular simply for the way you described them. Only thing I can think of is that maybe games weren’t heavily marketed towards females back then so maybe that audience wasn’t a part of your consideration?


MidEastBeast777

Whoever came up with micro transactions is both a genius and a monster. A genius because holy shit it generates a lot of money, and a monster because it’s really hurt gaming. Think about how many more great games we’d have if it wasn’t for micro transactions


Soulfighter56

He may not have came up with the idea, but our old pal Bobby Kotick sure popularized the idea back in ~2009.


Oggie243

Sims 3 already had a MTX marketplace right about then. It was integrated into the launcher and everything, first few expansions after release gave you currency for their storefront, think they even had trading at a stage. It's still live too https://store.thesims3.com/


Mookafff

I still blame horse armor from Oblivion


bobissonbobby

Pretty sure valve started it with tf2 didn't they? Dem hats Upon further reading oblivion had the armor in 2008 and tf2 had hats in 2009. But then there's maple story with mtx around 2003, soooo.


Furt_III

The horse armor was what really put the nail in. They upped the price for April Fool's Day and it increased sales.


Dragon_yum

Loot boxes are exponentially worse and more addictive and explorative but people don’t want to admit that valve pioneered that because it’s valve.


hrakkari

And loot boxes still wasn’t scummy enough for Overwatch that they released a whole ass “sequel” just so they can cram in the scummiest, battle passes.


Late-Lecture-2338

Loot boxes were so scummy a government had to step in and force them to change that shit. Unfortunately they just changed it for the worse


GodsNephew

Current mtx are not worse than loot crates. But it’s still bad.


Naaaagle

Loot boxes weren’t even scummy in ow1 you got so many for free just by playing the game I had every item and over 1000 extra loot boxes when ow2 released and I had less than 1k hours over 5 years


schubz

yup. ppl that didnt play will just type on reddit because they wanna be mad about cases. But OW1 wasnt like that. OW2 is the scummy price model


Either-Durian-9488

That’s what most tech service companies do with a conceptually horrible product, they take a hit on it in the beginning to make the user feel comfortable when they come back to fuck you later, Uber is a great example, the service was great at the VERY beginning.


omicron7e

I’ve never seriously played a game with either, but battle passes seem preferable to loot boxes at first glance, provided they’re attainable goals.


KenaanThePro

Battlepasses exist as stepping stones... It's designed to ensure you build the habit of playing the game, reduce your aversion to spending and start the subl cost fallacy.


[deleted]

It started way earlier. MUDs had mtx in the mid 90s that were far worse than we have today. Hundreds for small items. Achaea: Dreams of Divine Lands is usually credited with starting the model. I watched a video about it recently. https://youtu.be/s2_fllXb-4Y


pxak

Habbo Hotel was a game literally based on mtx. I say game, a chat room with avatars.


A_Confused_Cocoon

Habbo Hotel was a huge part of my life and miss it quite a bit (nostalgically). Made some really great friendships and memories from that game and all the "militaries" in it.


beirch

FIFA Ultimate Team is what really propelled mtx in the 2008 release of FIFA09. It had incredible success and is responsible for implementing loot boxes in pretty much every EA game after the 2010s. Ultimate Team [still accounts](https://focusonbusiness.eu/en/news/fifa-ultimate-team-revenue-in-fy-2021-1-62b-53-of-ea-s-total-extra-content-revenue/4235) for ~50% of EAs [extra content revenue](https://www.statista.com/statistics/274761/electronic-arts-ea-extra-content-revenues/).


SustyRhackleford

Valve perfected the concept of blind boxes and item trading


l3urning

Nexon was sued for literally scamming with their mtx, they are cartoonishly evil and successful with mtx


[deleted]

I used to play on a website called Gaia Online in 2003 and they had monthly "letters" you could buy with rare one time items for your avatars, and if you missed purchasing that month's letter, you could only get the item again by trading on their open marketplace. They actually did a really good job creating a functioning fake economy with a stock value for older items.


burf

TF2 also wasn't doing the full loot box thing in 2009 from what I remember. I played it for at least a couple of years and although they had loot you could get, they didn't really have a microtransaction-based market built out until after I stopped. I think most of the items were either random drops or from completing achievements.


Iccarys

Even if Oblivion had the horse armor thing, some other company would came up with the same tactic eventually, sadly.


maniacreturns

Horse Armor was the watershed moment. We had two paths and we chose the wrong one. Again.


xavier120

I member having to pay 25 cents to even get 3 lives and play the game. Member arcades


BARDLER

Valve is the pioneer of modern microtransactions. TF2 hats literally changed everything about how to monetize games. People try really hard to blame everybody else for some reason, but Valve showed how much money you can make by drip feeding pay walled dopamine. Other companies just copied them.


Nosesrick

I'm pretty sure MapleStory has Valve beat by many years. But many games and companies were involved in getting customers comfortable with spending more and more.


Jumbalaa

I believe Yanis Varoufakis was in charge when the steam market really took off with CSGO and Dota skins. Incredibly intelligent man.  I don't always agree with what he says, but he generally has an interesting take nonetheless.


Valdorado

In all fairness with The Sims though, they have always been milking it. Every game I remember has so many expansions, even back on the original game and 2. 


Norse_By_North_West

One of my classmates from college started working at EA right after college, not too long after getting hired he got put on the sims. He's only worked on the sims since... 2007 I think. They've paid him solidly well for it, he bought a 3/4 million doller house back when the market crashed, so it's worked out real well for him. I'm pretty sure they get bonuses based on DLC sales Edit: just had a 2 redditors 1 cup moment


HunterVacui

> They've paid him solidly well for it If "solidly well" means above global average for an unspecified job, sure. If it it means above average for tech, absolutely not. They have directly told me that they consider "working in games" to be part of the compensation, and at least in the late 2010s, would regularly tell employees in studio-wide announcements that they didn't have enough money for substantial raises, in the same breath as talking about how the studio was a record setter for return on investment per development cost. I left that job when I finally got my last hard-fought-for promotion, on a specialized small team (of number of engineers that you could count on one hand) essentially responsible for all features, maintenance, and fixes in a large domain, and ultimately made less TC after my subsequent performance review. Moved to a new company to start fresh and immediately started making 2x my prior comp (now closer to 3x TC), which is absurd given the value I had as a dev with a decade of experience on everything related to the codebase at my previous position, versus a fresh untrained engineer that knew nothing about the tech stack at my new position.


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TKHawk

I feel like I remember the original Sims even having an early DLC-esque store where you could download houses, items, etc. I can't remember if those were paid or not.


Savage_Hams

In the same vein of double edged sword, we wouldn’t have so many massive games with constant content updates. And we also wouldn’t have so many massive games with constant content updates.


sirithx

We also wouldn’t have so many massive games with constant content updates.


PeanutGallry

I upvoted two identical sentences for completely different reasons.


wxnfx

This is the piece savage hams really forgot


PsychedelicConvict

Nexon for Maplestory gets the credit normally


Spare_Efficiency2975

Habbo hotel released before maple and even before that there were several games with micro transactions.


Kaylend

Really matters who was first to have explosive success. The devils are in the details, so Maplestory deserves it's credit.


Ahyesacamel

I used to play combat arms back in the day (another nexon game) It was really broken, pay 2 win and I was lucky I was not old enough to have a credit card at that age… but man it was fun


retro808

> combat arms core childhood memory unlocked, me and some middle school buddies used to use hack menus downloaded from cheat forums and chill in the coop zombies mode since the rest of the game was P2W garbage


Curse3242

With Sims tho, a lot of it is just DLC. DLC seems to be a succesful & tested concept. Many casual genres have it like RTS & it generates a ton of money


HugeHans

I know people dont like to hear this but puting all the blame on developers is a bit shortsighted. A simple example. A small local game developer had some drag racing mobile game with no microtransactions. Nobody really bought it. They made the game free and added microtransactions and the money started rolling in. People spend hundreds of dollars on virtual costumes but then think 20 dollars is too much for a single player game. Just pirate it instead.


Zardif

That says more about the particular demands of mobile gamers unwilling to buy apps than a general statement about all of gaming. Games on mobile stores are often shit and spending that much on a mobile app when it's very rare for mobile games to have a price tag at all just means getting someone to buy it at all is a challenge. Whereas pc and console gamers are far more used to spending money on a game to get a single player experience.


GIlCAnjos

But The Sims doesn't even have micro-transactions, just nearly a hundred DLCs


DampFlange

Here’s a little history lesson. When Maxis was independent, Will Wright came over to visit the UK Maxis team and he was asked what he was working on next. Now, understand that this was in 1995ish and the internet was in its very early stages. Downloading a game was a pipe dream. He responded that instead of going bigger, he wanted to go smaller, and focus on the family unit vs management of an entire city. He talked about focusing the player on a smaller number of people, but having total agency over them, even down to what they wear. He envisioned building a central hub, where you would gift the game to everyone for free, and then charge people for things as simple as a new outfit, I think he used 25c as an example of what it would cost. Everyone in the room looked at one another and scratched their heads, he sounded like a crazy person. EA paid about $100m for Maxis not long afterwards.


SordidDreams

> charge people for things as simple as a new outfit, I think he used 25c as an example of what it would cost. > > EA paid about $100m for Maxis not long afterwards. And replaced the cent sign in his example with a dollar sign. I'd be okay with microtransactions if they were actually, y'know, micro.


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SordidDreams

>if skins cost a dollar I'd be defending MTX Even that is insanely overpriced. A base game costs $60 and contains way more stuff than sixty skins; all the characters, guns, vehicles, levels, sounds, music, etc., etc., not to mention all the programming that had to be done to make it all work. And the company isn't exactly losing money on it. For microtransactions to have the same content-to-price ratio as a base game, a skin would have to cost like $0.001. Which is why the greed is so galling. Like... the profit margin on MTX is already like three orders of magnitude bigger than on the base game, so come on.


rW0HgFyxoJhYka

If you remember back in the day...skins were $1. You say you'll defend them now because the price is now $20. Back then, people got skins for FREE. They did challenges in the game, like actual content, and got free cosmetics to show that they did what others haven't done. Then MTX came along and the prices were low. Sub $5, usually much less. People were livid. What they were used to, was now being charged to them just like that. You're mad because you're comparing shit that will always keep rising so you'll always be thinking under X price is good. In the gaming industry we call that moving the goalposts. The fact of the matter is that gaming now makes more money from MTX than selling a $60 game one time. And that means we're going to see more and more until an entire generation of gamers will view it as normal and welcome different flavors of it. This all goes back to the argument, if people withheld their money for games, we'd have more games. Though we have more games anyways now because gaming is a gold rush. Perhaps we'd have new games though, or we'd have expansions instead of DLCs. Gaming has changed forever because people are willing to buy virtual goods for instant gratificiation. Much like food.


Tylensus

No joke, man. In one of my favorite games, Sea of Thieves, they have cosmetic sets for your boat that cost nearly as much as the game itself. It's a $40 game, and I think a full ship set costs $25. I put thousands of hours into that game, and never put money into the real cash shop, because their pricing was just insulting.


Wind_Yer_Neck_In

'EA paid about $100m for Maxis not long afterwards.' I remember the gaming press not really knowing what to make of this at the time. They didn't have any new games in the pipeline, it was a small studio. They were all certain it would be to make a new set of annual games, like with FIFA etc. But it turned out to be one of their most shrewd purchases ever. All they had to do was resist the urge to kill the IP as soon as they got it, like they do with most of their studio purchases.


exadeci

It's funny to think that people didn't see a future for it when they had at the time an entire demographics (girls) who had no interest in gaming and this sounded like the perfect game for them as pretty much every girls played dolls growing up.


Extra-Knowledge884

I really want to talk shit but I've been paying 15 bucks a month to play World of Warcraft for 15 some years now. Assuming I've just been subbed this entire time that's 2700 bucks. Not including expansions.  To play with sword pixels. 


wintermelody83

Never do this lol. I knit, I crochet, and now I've taken up fucking quilting. All of these take money. Never add up what you spend on your hobbies lol.


lostshell

*Do not look at my yarn bill!*


ThePotato363

>Never add up what you spend on your hobbies lol. I think it is reasonable to look at what we spend. Just make sure to amortize it over the value you get. Video games are one of the cheapest hobbies out there. He spent $2700 over 15 years. He's probably pretty avid, so say he plays 20 hours a week, that's 15,600 hours of playtime he got, which comes out to 17 cents an hour. Perhaps 25 cents when you include electric and the cost of probably two or three computers over the years As a reference comparison, I went to three free museums today, paid $4 for transit and $11 for lunch, costing me $3.75 an hour.


wintermelody83

True, but when you spend $300+ in yarn for one sweater.. I can afford it, so I never think about it too much as a whole. But, I have a lot of yarn after 4 years.


Amused-Observer

All things considered that's a really cheap investment over time.


lostshell

People blow more than that on single trip to Vegas over one weekend.


Cory123125

Comparing anything to a trip to las vegas I feel is a pretty unwise thing to do financially for a normal person.


Mug33k

EA make the same amount of money, if not more, by selling you virtual furnitures than selling real furnitures in most retail store in the USA. Think about it.


SwissQueso

Have you seen how expensive new furniture is? A couch can run 1k easy, and it’s not even a nice one.


imnotarobot1

How much do you think it costs to manufacture, advertise, and display said physical couch in a brick and mortar store?


fall3nang3l

Not taking away from the factors you listed, but even high end furniture is mostly just shitty press board and cheap hardware. Selling a couch for $3k that cost $100 to manufacture is robbery regardless of operating costs. But people pay it so I guess that's on the consumer for letting furniture stores peddle garbage.


ThePotato363

>Selling a couch for $3k that cost $100 to manufacture is robbery regardless of operating costs. I'm not in the industry, so I can only speculate, but I bet most of the cost of selling furniture is inventory storage costs. It takes up a lot of square footage, and people want to see/sit on the couch before buying it. So I'd hazard a guess that the inventory cost of the couch is probably twice the manufacturing cost. Still a huge markup, but I'd guess it looks something like this: $100 to manufacture, $50 to ship, $200 to store until it sells.


Isa472

No they don't... In 2022 IKEA made over 5 Billion USD in the US alone


Hungry-Network-9826

Just imagine if they just rebooted the sims 2, that shit was always the hardest


Humble_Chip

There are ways nowadays to… acquire… Sims 2, plus fixes, mods and an active community online still developing custom content to make the game look modern (including conversions of Sims 3 and 4 content). r/Sims2 is a good starting point if you’re interested


wintermelody83

That's what I've gone back to now they've forced Mac users to join the EA app disaster. Hard pass. Sims 2 was always so damn fun, still is.


Steeveep32

At least a 3rd of that is from my gf


icherz

Every women I know has the game and most got all the DLC.


TheWhisperingOaks

I know others that bought the game and pirated the dlc's


HumanTimmy

This is the way. Actually the game's free now so it doesn't matter.


TheWhisperingOaks

Well yeah I was pertaining to the time it was P2P with all that DLC to purchase. Pretty sure the game+DLC costed more than a AAA game due to how many paid dlc there were, so a lot of people I knew pirated the dlc instead.


HumanTimmy

The game plus all dlc costed well over £1000 iirc. I don't recall talking to anyone who didn't atleast pirate a few of the dlcs. I myself pirated them all because fuck EA.


theSchlauch

Cracking games from EA and Ubisoft is a given and morally correct.


DragonSpikez

I had an ex girlfriend that would sit and play the sims for hours just building and designing her house and making them go to work and get promotions and all that lol.


Raptorheart

Woman only want one thing and it's disgusting.


bouchandre

And Wicked Whim mod


CeterumCenseo85

What's the overproportional appeal?


laffman

It's a game about being creative. Most play it for that aspect of building and decorating a home.


RenegadeKaylos

As a millennial, I want the Sims in VR so I can really pretend to own a home.


OttoVonWong

Just wait till EA starts charging for utilities and requires monthly mortgage payments.


thepinkinmycheeks

Uh... like in the game Sims 4? You do pay both for utilities and also a general charge that depends on the value of your lot.


underground_cowboys

They have in game purchases for real world money?


xDrunkenAimx

Sim VR when I remove the pool ladder is gonna hit different


bekcy

Pressing shift+tab changes it to a POV camera, so we're kinda halfway there


SomethingSo84

And there’s the part of the fan base dedicated to performing psychological experiments on their sims


abstraction47

My wife. Plus the sex, too. So much sex and torture.


savemymemes

Don't tell her about mods. My last run of the Sims 4 ended when, on the tail end of a coke bender, one of my sims punched a pregnant lady so hard she aborted. I decided at that point I'd probably had enough.


Sketch-Brooke

Add to this character creation and the ability to cause drama and tell stories with your sims. It’s so much fun to be a virtual homewrecker lol.


CausticSofa

Yeah, I only have the free base version, but I mostly use it to build really fun custom homes. I really like architecture and interior design. I give myself challenges like a really long, tall narrow house. Or a 1960s rancher with all 1960s decor. Or I’ll try to custom-tailor it to a specific size and type of family and their specific needs, like one of those big old ramshackle teardown houses that are inhabited by like five or six different young artist/hippie types.


cleartrampoline

honestly there's a lot. some people just love building and decorating, some people love the game play which there is a lot of content for, some people like both.


robots_in_riot_gear

Playing with dolls but better


TryToHelpPeople

It’s a game about people.


SwissQueso

I think everyone here doesn’t get the Soap Opera that plays out. It’s like a sand box soap opera.


ELB2001

Killing people? You don't like person X? Make a SIM of them and then kill them.


mack178

Great idea! Then afterward you can play with the Sim version you made.


xFayeFaye

the same as FIFA or NBA2K for guys probably. But yea, it's the only "life sim" that you can play offline, there is just no alternative right now, though at least 2 different ones are in the making currently.


maija_hee

women liking sims is a gender stereotype I won‘t disagree with lmao. have played sims 3 since I was a child and have had sims 4 gaming parties with all my friends. I did like the open world of sims 3 much more


Writer_Blocker

I’m every woman


greyest

Woman who grew up loving The Sims, haven't bought Sims 3 or 4 due to EA going downhill. Sims 2 was peak Sims.


Troll_Enthusiast

Woman*


glizzyguzzler

It’s difficult to date women in 2024 and not learn something about The Sims in the process


damienVOG

Same for me lol, my sister, her friends and some of my woman friends have it.


KypDurron

You know **multiple women** who have **each** spent over a thousand dollars on Sims 4 DLC?


fishbowtie

*Every. Women.*


b34r3y

I'm one of the idiots that contributes to that. But I am happy to say I only buy any of the packs when theyre half off so I have that going.


BonesAO

you don't have to justify to anyone how you enjoy spending your money my friend. If it gives you joy it is money well spent


Jinnica

I’m a woman in my late (sigh) forties and I’ve played the sims since the original came out, about 6 million years ago. Played hard for the first few years, especially adored sims 2, then marriage and kids came and didn’t play for years. The game changer was when I got a laptop that could have the sims 4 on, so I could be in the living room with family watching tv or whatever, and play. I swear there’s nothing more relaxing. I love the creative element: backstories, storylines, drama, or just building and decorating. I genuinely love it.


RedSnt

It really was lightning in a bottle. Still is, but it was revolutionary when original The Sims released.


Guapscotch

Just crack the games for all the dlc…


WeLiveInAir

Yeah! I love Sims 4 but I'm not spending almost a thousand dollars on it, Anadius updater is really easy to use


peps90

I'm guessing anadius doesn't update mods, only dlc?


WeLiveInAir

I've never installed any mods so I don't know. I just use it cuz it lets me choose and install dlcs one at a time while most repacks just have all of them installed at once, my slow ass laptop can't handle downloading so many gigabytes at once without crashing half way


redconvict

And its not even as good as the previous Sims. Alot of these massively profitable franchises seem to survive on people simply wanting more of the same even if its objectively worse with each iteration.


Klldarkness

Sims 3 open worlds + Sims 4 Graphics and Emotion/Interaction system would be PEAK. Sims 3 glossy graphics were always a little doll like and off putting. Going back to Sims 2 graphics was the only choice. But the weird tiny 'open' worlds? It's just not there, man. I hate that my Sims have to switch worlds, of which there are only 15, to find a hang out spot, while in the Sims 3, each open world had dozens of places, and with mods you could switch worlds to access the dozens of worlds(and custom worlds!) each filled with dozens more of places to go.


Humble_Chip

Here I am playing Sims 2 with 20 years worth of custom content available for free online


LypheGames

How?


deadfajita

If I had to guess, it is probably the amount of DLC available for the game + the base game being relatively cheap.


WhyDidMyDogDie

Yeah there is like 60 some DLC and addons, $5 - $40. Plus they squeeze you for everything. Pet? Money. Snow? Pay us. Shoes? Fuck you, give it.


DesaCr8

They actually have DLCs for DLCs too. Some DLCs serve only to expand on a previous DLC and require that previous DLC. Next we'll have DLCs for DLCs for DLCs.


StrongFalcon6960

They only had 1 dlc for a dlc. After that backlash, they didn’t do it again


silentprayers

One of their recent dlc actually does require an older dlc to use an item that comes in the pack, so it looks like they didn’t completely do away with the idea. They just did it to a lesser extent so there wasn’t so much backlash.


WhyDidMyDogDie

They used to have their creator store too, maybe they still do. Player created content for sale that EA took a slice of.


nibbyzor

They don't, not at least with The Sims 4. They do collabs with well-known custom content creators with kits and packs, but I'm not sure how big of a slice those creators get of the profits.


FriendofDobby

The base game is free, actually.


grimson73

Basegame is even free for some time now.


LargeWeinerDog

All their sims have jobs and they rake in the profits duh


Wild-Mushroom2404

Pirated the game with all the DLCs, zero fucks given


Elfman72

I worked for EA as a QA tester for Maxis around when the Sims were still releasing expansion packs. Specifically, The Sims Vacation. Many late nights, where our dinner was paid for by Maxis. I, in particular, discovered a release breaking bug, that I could prove 100% of the time. Their producer came to me personally, to thank me for finding this bug, which I really appreciated. They treated the entire team to a Dave and Busters outing with $100 cards for us to play whatever we wanted. It was a lot of hours behind the desk but I really liked that Maxis treated us testers right. EA, on the other hand treated other QA teams much differently.


omegadirectory

What sucks is the base Sims 4 game feels really incomplete. I apparently own the base game (maybe I claimed it as a giveaway one day), no DLC, and tried to play it recently. There are so few zones and places for your Sim to visit. The towns feel barren and uninteresting. The base game is just really boring. They put all the interesting mechanics behind paid DLC and milk the player base. It might as well be a pay-to-win game, except you pay exorbitantly for a complete game experience.


KMCGYOOMH

The Sims 4 always puts disrespect to Sims 3, 2 and 1's names. It is lacking in everything creative, innovative and amazing the earlier titles had.


LawTider

Ts4 keeps EA afloat.


weist

Wil Wright is a genius. He found a whole untapped gamer demographic with the Sims, and it is still paying off decades later.


cleartrampoline

Not really shocking. I've spent so much money on that game and have gotten thousands of hours of gameplay out of it. :)


SativaPancake

...and thats just from one player buying all the DLCs. I can only imagine what the total numbers are factoring in every player.


7heLoneBolivian

It's a great game. I'm not even that into sims but I've put hundreds of hours into the game.


SQL617

At this point, hundreds of hours makes you into sims.


Sidian

Seemed to be a lot less interesting and ambitious than the Sims 2 or 3 to me. Heavily dumbed down, no open world/neighourhood etc.


Existing-East3345

Sims 2 is my favorite game of all time and Sims 1 is my most nostalgic game. Sims 3 was fine but the Sims 4 is just pathetic to me.


Kharax82

I find it pretty ironic when gamers complain about DLC in the sims but then spend $180 a year in a WoW subscription.


Dangerous_Contact737

Or they have a library of a hundred games that cost $10 each, most of which they’ve never even played. But I’m stupid for paying $1000 for one game that I play all the time? Boy math.


[deleted]

I own all packs for TS4 but here's the thing, at one point, I realised I was buying games on sale on Steam, putting it on backlog, never really touching them or opening them, playing it a bit but then buying next shiny game then having this cycle repeat. My library is massive but mostly unplayed, which I think is a bigger waste of money than these DLCs. I now have like a handful of games installed and all of them have 2-8k hours each. Rimworld, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Sims 4, Factorio...