I actually would strongly disagree here. One of the best things that happened in gaming in the recent years surprisingly is Apple Arcade. A good selection of cute games bundled in one monthly subscription. No microtransactions (god save!), no need to bu a game just to play it.
It’s the best from all worlds and if I’d build another game myself, I would love for it to be on such services.
So huge props to developers. You are doing a great thing, many blessings and wish you great success!
Sure. To start with, a large selection of games for a flat monthly fee has the psychological effect of making players less patient because they have so many other options. When a game presents unusual mechanics, creates unexpected challenges, employs steep difficulty curves, deep completion campaigns, or even suffers from minor flaws or design issues, players are much more willing to simply leave the game behind rather than push through and actually experience the game as it was intended by the designers. This is especially true in an environment where new games are being added all the time. Yes, some games are removed over time as well, but that does little to mitigate the aggregate sum of the catalog acting as a cloying distraction that begs the player to just move on to the next thing. The inevitable result is a binging culture which gradually erodes the perceived value of games.
That's all without considering the economic incentive for a customer to play many games to get value out of the subscription, and the second order effects of a game's perceived value compared to an entire catalog of games for the same price - why gamble 8 bucks on this random indie game when I have 1000 other free options I've never tried. The result of this psychology on the market is that game producers will become gradually incentivized to optimize on quantity over quality - we've seen this pattern play out over and over again with the various streaming services. Yeah, you need one or two blockbusters to headline your platform, but consumers broadly perceive most of the subscription streaming services as shoveling trash peppered with a few occasional gems.
I know that's harsh, nothing personal, I dislike gamepass for the same reasons. Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad business model, it might even be an inevitable one, I just think it creates a lot of negative externalities for gaming.
