Stadia and Apple Arcade may benefit only mobile F2P-style games
Stadia and Apple Arcade will offer games money based on their subscribers' airtime. This helps them focus on trapping players in repetitive cycles rather than making good games.
Google Stadia will offer us the option to pay a subscription to have access to a series of games available while we have an active subscription, just like Apple Arcade. In principle, it is ideal for the player because it offers a series of titles at an affordable price, but the problem comes when the monetization depends on the playing time.
Stadia and Apple Arcade will be filled with Skinner boxes
“Skinner box?” you ask. Yes, it is the concept of having a pigeon peck a button once to get food, and then keep pressing the button by lengthening the number of times it has to press it or by randomizing it to get its reward. This type of design is what many games that rely on making the player repeat an action hundreds of times in exchange for rewards are based on. See Borderlands 3, Fortnite o World of Warcraft.
And what does it have to do with Apple Arcade and Stadia? Well, with the case of World of Warcarft we see it clearly when we see that it lives by keeping subscriptions and players busy as long as possible so that they renew. Either putting in a lot of quests and content that pressures the players to follow. Well, we will see many games like that on Apple Arcade and Google Stadia, designed so that you are long trapped and hooked in an endless cycle instead of giving a complete experience.
That's what analyst Mat Piscatella, an analyst at NPD that tracks game sales in North America, fears. According to him, games with addictive mechanics will be released to catch players more typical of free to play games than commercial games. And that will affect the more traditional games on Stadia and Apple Arcade. Indie games are hardly going to be able to make any money due to their short and limited play times, with little replayability. All because the services prefer to offer quantity of time rather than quality as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 approach.
Source: Mat Piscatella's Twitter
