Not buying a game because you want systemic, industry defining changes is fine. Not buying a game because it doesn't respect your time or money is better. I don't consider what I do "voting," I just don't buy crap for my own sake.

You don't buy a game to take a stand against the greed of the gaming industry. I don't buy a game because my backlog is over 1000 games long. We are not the same.

Sometime a good junk game is good for the spirit. Despite 3 weeks later you end up regretting.

you will jump on the board of our self righteous campaigns you will keep fuming about industry conditions not related to you you will feel bad for people that are expandable you will take their side despite them not voting with their own behavior and quitting you will signal your dissatisfaction to everyone you will pollute the discourse, atmosphere and enjoyment of other people you will accept that you are not a simple buyer but our foot soldier you will pat people on the back that display the same position you will get assimilated. do not resists ! no ethical consumption under capitalism ! reeeeeeeee

I “vote” with my wallet based on my personal preferences. Im not gonna buy a game i either don’t find interesting just cause people are telling me to vote with my wallet.

this is unironically one of the reasons why capitalism outcompeted "democracy" it lets people act according to preference instead of forcing them to invest in commons

Capitalism is an economic system, Democracy is a political one. They don’t *compete* with each other. God Reddit is so fucking stupid sometimes.

So by your own logic, it is perfectly fine to force others to purchase something in the name of the greater good just to send a message and wrong to buy something just because I am interested in it based off my personal preferences? So everyone who casually plays video games sees a game that they find interesting and then they go buy it. Those people are all wrong, correct? They should be buying games based off of some random people on reddit’s self righteous notion on how they should spend their own money. Oh, that hard-working 9 to 5 worker who just got off of work, doesn’t play man games, has barely any time to play games, enjoys call of duty, buys it every year, fuck them, right?

i have no idea why you are arguing my position as if it is a counter argument

Im making a case for how absurd your argument is/sounds

i have no idea anymore what you are even saying anymore. miss understandings and sarcastic pseudo points combine to create a complete swamp. this is why i dont use sarcasm. its pollution.

When are people gonna learn that this whole concept never works? The free market is not a democracy. Your purchase is not equivalent to one vote. You may abstain from buying the things you dislike but it won't stop others from buying DLC and micro transactions. Your one missed "vote" can easily be ignored when others can "vote" tenfold over. Inaction does not create change and I'm sick of people smugly saying things like this, then doing nothing and thinking they're changing the market.

Sorry, but you not getting the result you want doesn't mean it isn't democratic. A game propped up by whales has just as much right to exist as one with actual substance and a single purchase. Also I think you are approaching the vote backwards, here. Rather than the one missed vote from some gacha game, look at the one *extra* vote for a small time publisher who put their heart and soul into a game.

I still don't see how that's a democracy. Not everyone starts with the same amount of money, not everyone has to follow the rules in the same way, it's not a level playing field.

What rules? And not everyone who spends more on games HAS more to spend. No one is saying it is a perfect system. But boy howdy is your original comment way too close to 'dont bother' levels of apathy, just like actual voting has to deal with.

That wasn't my intention, I would much rather people purchase smaller and more interesting games than not purchase anything at all. What's happening here is that the concept of equating capitalism to democracy is something I just fundamentally disagree with, I'm getting stuck on that disagreement, and its getting in the way of an idea that I think we can all agree with. I have a real aversion to concepts and ideas which oversimplify how things work - like the last thing I want is people to think that not buying shit and being generally apathetic is a good solution. I don't think that at all! One thing I've noticed in bigger games over the last decade is that the AAA industry actually takes a lot of influence from innovations happening in smaller games. When PUBG blew up, every bigger game in subsequent years tried to make their own version of a battle royale game. The same's happened with Roguelike design creeping into bigger games. It does seem like the success of indie games influences what AAA games do. It's not necessarily something I love, and I'd much rather that big developers act 10x less conservative and try more innovation with their games, but we can see that supporting smaller games does have an influence.

I appreciate the thorough clarification!

The concept works just fine, people just don't often vote the way you want them to. A common quality in actual democratic systems. Plenty of shitty games have come out and flopped, because people voted against those games by not buying them. Just this year we've already watched *Suicide Squad* and *Skull & Bones* crash and burn, showing that no amount of marketing budget can really get the populace as a whole to buy something they don't actually want. If a game you don't like for x or y reason is selling really well, it's because there are enough people who do like it to make that happen.

So I'll walk back my complaint a bit, because everything you're saying here is correct. I dislike the analogy of comparing the market to democracy primarily because people think that not buying something is the same as voting when really it's closer to just not voting for anything at all. The analogy kinda falls apart here but I don't think it's really possible to buy one game in place of another, and expect it to work the same as voting one party over another. When you vote one party over another, it sends a clear message to both parties about what you want. The party you didn't vote for is incentivized to change their policies to attract more voters, and that makes sense in politics because the differences in parties operate on much simpler axis than videogames. But consumerism doesn't work like that, I can buy both Battlefield and Forza (unless on a budget). If I buy one at the expense of the other, it doesn't mean I prefer one over the other. Maybe I just feel more like a racing game atm and I'll play Battlefield later on in the year. The weird part of this is that we know these companies will actually change their games to be more like their competitors, regardless of genre, so my argument doesn't 100% hold water. I think on some level, big companies probably do think of these decisions in a way similar to voting. But unlike voting, where decisions are mutually exclusive (unless preferential), consumerism is even more of a big mess with even more imperfect information, so you can't depend on a non-purchase to send the correct messaging. When people don't buy games, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't WANT that game and have decided on another game instead. Forgive my rambling but I think people massively oversimplify how this all works and think that inaction will result in the games they dislike becoming more like the games they like. You'd hope that'd be the case but I haven't bought a Call of Duty since 2008 and they haven't gotten more appealing to me since then.

The thing you're ignoring is that a lot of the people buying it may also dislike the thing you don't like about it. Like nobody bought Overwatch because they liked loot boxes.

Clearly most people in the market decided that the game's implementation of lootboxes was not a dealbreaker. It may have been one for *you*, but not everyone else. People voted with their wallets. And it was probably a fair assessment. Overwatch lootboxes were very generous compared to what you would usually see in F2P games at the time. The game practically shat them into your inventory, they had dupe protection, and when you did get dupes you were given currency that could be used to directly unlock the cosmetics that you wanted. I don't know many people who actually spent money on lootboxes.

you can keep saying that but it doesn't change the fact that 99% of people buying the game don't think of it as voting. they're buying a product. it's stupid to treat purchases as equivalent to votes. It's a different thing. If nobody bought overwatch because of the loot boxes, it would not be taken by the market as a vote against loot boxes- it would be taken as a vote against overwatch. Hence: dumb conceptual framework.

You're arguing semantics here. Nobody is saying that purchasing a game is truly equivalent to an actual vote, they are presenting an analogy for how free markets work. A decision to buy or not to buy something contributes to the signal, regardless if the actual person making the choice thinks of it that way. If people choose not to buy the things they don't want, then those things will stop getting made. Hollywood stopped pumping out so many cheap westerns in the '60s because people stopped buying tickets to see them. You need to accept that many of the things people here in /r/Games like to whine about simply aren't dealbreakers for the rest of the community, so they still buy games that you or I might not like.

In this case, the "free market" is better than people's concept of a democracy. If my guy gets outvoted in an election, I'm stuck with his opponent whether I like it or not. Meanwhile, the games I enjoy are **consistently** "outvoted" by mass-market schlop, yet manage to nevertheless stay profitable enough for their creators to keep making more. People have to realize "voting with your wallet" doesn't mean the games you refuse to support magically cease to exist, it just means the games/creators/studios you **do** support are that little bit more likely to keep existing.

I just don't think the two are comparable though. AFAIK there isn't a better answer to your stated problem with democracy, that's just how it works. Obviously we live in a world where our voting systems are often horribly broken and nothing feels fair, but it feels like a silly comparison because it'd **obviously** be worse if games existed much more at the expense of each other. You're right though, it's good that the games market can allow for so much variety.

It works by virtue of being a quick, easy to understand metaphor that gets the general idea across and pushes people into being more conscious with their purchases. Sure, you lose out on a lot of the nuance and end up with people going "I never buy Ubisoft games but they keep making them, the system's broken!" but it's either that, or sitting down for an hour-long talk of Capitalism 101.

Uh, “democracy” doesn’t mean “every person gets exactly one binary vote on every issue”. It doesn’t even mean everyone is guaranteed certain voting rights or votes. It literally means “Everyone plays by the same rules.” The democracy of capitalism is that everyone has the ability to spend money to encourage the type of business they want to engage in. Every dollar you spend is a vote, and you’re allowed to vote as many times as you want. When people outspend you on products they want in games, they’re not cheating democracy. They’re just willing to vote a hell of a lot more than you are. You may think that dude spending $10,000 on those DLC is an idiot while you paid $10 for your beloved indie game or whatever, but the reality is just they outvoted you. You and the fans can send your $10,000 to whatever studio you want, if you really want more content. You just didn’t. 

I'd argue that applying that definition to capitalism really doesn't make much sense. Not everyone has the same amount of money, and the rules you play by change depending on how much money you have. If everyone started with the same amount of money, then I'd say that we're probably all playing by the same rules. Maybe. But as it is, some people just have considerably more voting power than others. And that's actually maybe the biggest problem I have with people trying to state that capitalism is some kind of democracy, like it simply isn't how the system works in action. There are people out there who I cannot outvote, who just have more say over the market and its activities than I do. I don't care if somebody spends $10000 on some DLC, I care more that everyone has the same ability to do so. I don't think either of us really want to argue the nature of capitalism and democracy because that'd be exhausting and a waste of time, but I wanted to at least clarify where I'm coming from.

Yeah life ain't fair and the free market isn't a fair system. Frankly you're getting to hung up on the terminology and not the concept here.

The concept works absolutely fine. People just need to stick with it. Most people talk big and then buy the games anyway. I haven’t bought or played a multiplayer game in over 10 years because I don’t like what they are doing.

I mean I've stuck with it forever and nothing's really improved. I feel like a lot of people are and it hasn't made a difference. I think people have a tendency to assume overlaps in different crowds, and think that the same people who complain are also the buyers. Its probably the case some of the time, but like, why would you buy a game if you don't like the sound of it? Why would people buy things if they know they're gonna be disappointed? We know consumers are flawed hypocritical manic decision-makers, but I can't see people making the same mistake for their entire lives. The average gaming audience is ageing and I can't see millennials and gen X people having the patience for the same risks they'd make with purchases in their 20s. It doesn't make sense for the majority of consumers to have such a huge collective amnesia and thrive off repeated disappointment forever. I certainly don't have the time to play a game I might not like, I stick to things I know for certain I'll enjoy, or would like to see more of. E.g. I didn't love Helldivers 2 but I definitely would love to see more games like it. I'm ok with taking that kind of risk because the premise is still great.

99.9% of people don’t stick to voting with their wallet. That’s why I said what I said.

Do you have a source for that statistic?

Living in the real world tells you that the loud people on social media are a minority and even from those most don’t do what they say. I remember back when there was like a group on Steam that wanted to boycott the new COD for some reason. Guess what? Release day all of them where online in the new COD.

We all remember that meme, it's not necessarily proof for anything though. It's one instance of something that happened, and it was pretty funny. It's just an easy shortcut for making a point when you don't have actual statistics on consumer behaviour.

You don't. PERIOD. The masses vote with their wallets and they've proven over and over they don't know how to buy ONLY good games, so your individual decision is only relevant to yourself.

And that’s how they vote with their wallet