I'm hearing a lot about game addiction in the last few days the BBC and British press has been reporting a rise in children with the issue and recognising it as a real mental illness due to games such as PUBG and Fortnite, here's my two cents and it's a long one;
Gaming addiction seems to be reported widely and seems to stem from multiplayer gaming and specifically online gaming and apparently trigger the same brain activity of that of serial gambling. I myself am not an online gamer, over the years, I have found online gaming to be nothing but a novelty and not a necessity, but the industry sees it the other way due to rising trends.
How online gaming addiction can be solved;
Match limiters: Instead of leaving your kids to safety shoot other people around the world in the face match after match after match (which is morally questionable in the first place)...developers need to implement a match limiter system which is activated with either a controller based input (like a long button pressed cheat) or a PIN.
This works two ways. Online gaming cannot be paused, so match after match can happen, hopping lobby to lobby and this is where the addiction happens. Win or lose, gamers jump into another game and another game after a short period of waiting and simply, it's a trap, as they say, time flies when you're having fun. Put an optional limiter on how many matches people can play win or lose as a system of control, this can be used for parents or a kind of alarm system for grown adult players, the timed PIN system or long winded button press system after a certain amount of matches would make it more difficult to keep playing after a match, most people would be impatient and not bother to input it and be automatically kicked by their own system, not the server. The developers need to do their part too and not punish any players kicked out due to the limiter and perhaps cater special servers just for the match limit players.
The wide reports of game addiction seems to be online games and single player games are very rarely reported, single player and online games are not the same. People have more control over leaving a singleplayer game because of saves and being able to pause the game. People can choose to leave a game or just turn it off because they are stuck in a part, tired or have no pressure in choosing to leave a game unfinished at a certain part. Online gaming is missing this kind of 'endgame' point and needs to address it soon as possible before children and adults start showing the same brain activity symptoms as gambling.
Gamesbeat caught up with Blackley to extract some wisdom about Microsoft’s journey in games, what he thinks Sharma should do, and where gaming can go next. Part of his message is hopeful, but Blackley sees a lot of peril on the road that Microsoft is following. And it makes him worry about the future of gaming.
Sarah Bond's "Xbox everywhere" strategy and controversial "This is an Xbox" campaign have been blamed for alienating Xbox employees and failing to deliver results, with multiple sources telling they're relieved by her departure.
This adds more clarity to the situation. She was in charge of marketing so I 100% do. Believe this was her. The fact that she pissed off a lot of ppl with this campaign was interesting. The kicker she kicked you out if you questioned her moves. Sounds like a Satya move to me.
Ok when it comes to the marketing of the Xbox maybe not get rid of where Xbox is at but advertise the console, bundle 1 month of GP and have "xbox everywhere" as a side thing or just a minor thing. It's too late for Series consoles but do this with their next console. If GP is 30$ this needs to justified ASAP put all of ABK. Remake remaster popular games and put those out on the service. Have a handful of AAA games come day one even. Perma exclusivety is dead however they can be timed. The would at least give ppl a somewhat of a reason to invest. Satya will not allow permanent exclusives again.
Do I still think Xbox is dead? Depends, how much will Satya not get involved and let Asha and Matt figure something out. The more I think about it, I think Satya only really gets involved if the financials aren't lookin so hot. I think Xbox going multiplat was a result of wanting make their money back from ABK and of course raise their unreasonable and near unrealistic margins.
Anyway, things did get interesting and adds nuance just how Xbox is ran.
I’ve read that article they put out on this and it just sounds like a massive hit piece on her. They’ve basically thrown her under the bus.
I highly doubt all of this was just her idea, especially the multiplatform stuff.
Ever since the Zenimax and Activision deal all eyes have been on the Xbox department. There’s no way she’d have acted alone with decisions as big as these, Phil Spencer and Satya Nadella would have been all over this aswell, especially with them both being higher than her.
When they brought her in I thought to myself she’d be used as a scape goat and here we are.
It’s the exact same thing they did when Don Mattrick left “oh it wasn’t our idea, it was all Don, our new leader Phil Spencer is a gamer and will turn things around”.
Exactly, they always have to pin it on someone. Everything was Don Mattrick's fault before. Now everything is Sarah Bond's fault.
People act like these companies don't have focus groups, board meetings, focus testing, etc for these ideas before they hit.
They'd rather blame her rather than the product they asked her to market. How else was she going to market playing your xbox games on any device? Has anyone stopped to think that the marketing was bad because the product itself was bad?
But I don't feel sorry for her, she knew the kind of people she was working with
Would it still be a hit piece if it was actually true? If she really was behind the whole everything is an xbox... then I say they took the chance and it didnt pay off. Most companies let people go over bad decisions like that.
That's just it darth72, it more than likely isn't the truth because we know she didn't have control over everything at Xbox. That would be Phil Spencer, who has Don Mattrick's old position.
And to be fair, even he can't be blamed for everything since it's highly unlikely all this goes on without Nadella's blessing at some point
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard returns the series to its horror roots, and on the Nintendo Switch 2, you can take those frights everywhere.
