Preface - It's never cool to be mean to developers or the rando who is running an official social media account online. Be cool.
One thing I will never understand about gaming and gamers™® is that they always seems to justify their own poor treatment. Worse yet they attack others for pointing out the way they are mistreated. Whenever I see good honest players point out that a system is predatory or designed in a plainly unfair way, other gamers™® will undoubtedly come in and defend that bad thing. It's so odd that gamers™® can min-max everything but can't seem to factor in the fact they are getting less than they used to. It's like digital inflation. Games are more costly in upfront costs, hardware cost, time costs, and yet are getting worse in general.
I'm very much anti-battle pass/anti-season pass/anti-microtransaction all that sort of stuff. I'm old-school, just want to buy a thing and have the thing and have the thing be whole and complete. That said there are semi-decent ways to implement a system that is profitable for the vampire executives and also don't siphon every single coin players have. It's so weird to me that gamers™® not only keep buying into these systems but seem to defend them so vigorously online.
From "Pay to Win" to weird obtuse purchasable currencies/resources to needlessly limited time rewards to create artificial scarcity (pre-order, in-game store "deals", general fear of missing out practices), all dark patterns make games worse. Gamers™® defend these things saying "I DoN'T HaVe tHiS PrObLeM. iT MuSt bE A SkIlL IsSuE!" or whatever dumb shit. Every dark pattern in modern gaming is making the games people play worse intentionally. People talk about the enshittification of internet all the time but gaming as a medium/hobby has been enshittifiying since the advent of Xbox LIVE. The worst part about it to me is seeing such vocal defense for it online (social media at large, game forums, comment sections of gaming news/articles). It's not just that sort of conceding "well what can't ya do?", it's more so this spirited "This is good actually, and you're not a REAL GAMER if you don't like this."
For example a decent battle-pass (regardless of the game/genre) usually rewards players with enough in-game premium currency to buy the next one and maybe have enough left over for an item or two. That way it keeps you locked for longer and feeds into the habit forming design dark pattern we all hate. You're constantly having just enough premium currency to buy something, and topping off your balance is just a few extra coins if need be. Yes, people talk about the "whales" and "minnows" but even just the regular players and worse yet the gamers™® get a bad deal. Setting the fact this is a dark pattern aside (however I can't stress enough how mobile gaming's/casino gaming inspired dark patterns have made gaming worse), it's bonkers to me that gamers™® just say "VoTe wItH YoUr wAlLeT BrO!". They will say that or these sorts of things support the development of the game, knowing full well that that money isn't recycled and invested into the betterment of the game.
It's just so strange to me that gaming of all things has grown worse in just about every way since 2000's and yet the online culture around it seems to take pride in it being so bad. It's so strange that gamers™® can datamine the most Ph.D level mathematical optimal way to play through a game before it's even released but can't seem to parse that games should respect them. Games should treat them better. Games should be better.
: "Wow this system sucks. We should either get more rewards faster or things shouldn't cost so much. I like this game but damn this system blows, and it probably doesn't have to. The developers should be better to us."
: "If you don't like it don't play it. If it were bad it wouldn't be popular."
My larger point is gamers™® are bad, gaming should be better, player != gamers™®.
P.S. Check out this Dark Patterns Site. It explains all of the shit that makes games worse in a nice bullet point format
. However, but I was feeling like I wanted to get back into the old-school C++ programming rather than using a game engine and was looking for a primer as it's been a bit since I have done it. In my quest I discovered 
, 
and learning more about a theorist I never knew about.
Yeah. I read it junior year in college. I was in my peak young man hustle-grind mindset. I was lifting weights, reading 50 laws of power, and other dudebro stuff. I would say from my very limited understanding of Marx is that there is a lot of stuff in the book about understanding material and immaterial power dynamics/relationships and leveraging them for personal gain. Or to give you the mindset to see others doing the same thing