What are your "red flags" in gaming?

[patch.macho.2007]

Something that when you see it, it makes you skeptical of a game's success or quality.

Of course they're not 100% accurate, but when you follow the industry for a while, you notice some tells and patterns like these.

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS" or "The -popular game- Killer". That's a red flag.

When the DLC costs more than the base game and there is a ridiculous amount of it.

Early access survival.

[Silverkite]

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Something that when you see it, it makes you skeptical of a game's success or quality.

Of course they're not 100% accurate, but when you follow the industry for a while, you notice some tells and patterns like these.

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS" or "The -popular game- Killer". That's a red flag.

When the DLC costs more than the base game and there is a ridiculous amount of it.

Early access survival.

Anything from a woke company
Anything from a triple a company
In app purchases
Price higher than 30€

[wubbelflup]

if the developer has no experience whatsoever and self publishes.. 9 of the 10 times it's absolute garbage.

outdated graphics in a newly released game.

bad animations. (because asset flippers always forget they need to animate too...)

generic bald characters. (also common in asset flips)

released by EA.

overuse of effects to obstruct the gameplay in the trailer. (heroes and generals for example)

anything that is a horde mode is basically a asset flip at this point. unless it's from a major studio.

[Sir Dookface McFerretballs]

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

What are your "red flags" in gaming?

1. PvP

2. Visual "novel"

3. Card Game

4. Games with pre-release "Review Embargos" that have been otherwise hyped way too much.

5. ANYTHING FROM EA "Electronic Arts".

6. Any game that releases with "skins" as paid DLC, or ANY day one DLC that is purely cosmetic.

7. Any game that has more cost associated with DLC than the purchase price of the game itself. When a $60 game has $150+ of DLC, it is beyond TIME TO STOP!

8. VR-Only games. Sorry, VR is still too much of an overpriced gimmick, you get none of my money.

9. "Souls Like" This is just a term from lazy developers that made their games stupidly hard or clunky with terrible controls on purpose for the "gamer bro" crowd to brag about e-peen length.

10. Anything from "EPIC GAMES" or their Communist Dictatorship backed masters at "Tencent".

[Kargor]

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Something that when you see it, it makes you skeptical of a game's success or quality.

One thing is for sure: anything that's multiplayer is skipped immediately. Having some multiplayer tacked on doesn't matter, but a multiplayer-game is a no-go.

Success I don't really care about; I need games to play, not sell.

Quality... I don't think I know what I'm looking for. In many cases, I see a game and I just skip it because I assume it's trash. Nowadays, I skip Indiegala bundles almost by default, DIG bundles for sure -- I just don't expect anything from them.

In a more formal fashion, I don't care about things that label themselves as difficult, simulation, survival, visual novel (not games using VN style cutscenes, but games that actually claim to be VNs) and possibly a couple of other things I don't remember right now. Sometimes things are slightly more specific, like a WW1/WW2 styled game is almost guaranteed to get ignored. I'm very suspicious of "Open World", I don't look at certain franchises like Elder Scrolls or Dungeons&Dragons etc... there's probably a whole lot of stuff I'm not even aware of that determines whether I even want to take a closer look at a game. I also feel that "hyping" as the inverse effect on me.

[Tiberius]

Hiring celebrity for pr stuffs

Pay to play/subscription model

Energy system (ala mobile games)

[FAlty75]

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS"

Early access survival.

Didn't one of the lawbreakers dev say that?

[Jej]

"90's inspired"

"Rich story".

I see either of those two terms and that's an insta no-buy from me.

[patch.macho.2007]

Originally posted by Unicron:

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS"

Early access survival.

Didn't one of the lawbreakers dev say that?

no idea but the game IS dead soooo

[FAlty75]

Originally posted by Ganger:

Well, my only red flag in a game is if I don't like the gameplay e.g watching gameplay footage on youtube.

I see alot of people here dislike day one DLC, micro transactions, F2P, online only, loot boxes and so on but will still continue to buy said games that contain these elements. Clearly there is a fine line between not liking something and speaking up against it e.g loot boxes and hypocrisy by turning a blind eye to your favour games.

Agreed

[Radene]

Originally posted by Devsman:

Originally posted by Radene:

No, I just think they should be drawn and quartered for it.

Well, for what? For trying to sell the product?

No, for overblown advertising.

When it comes to marketing, I'm with Bill Hicks.

[LOWSPECLOWLYFE]

Originally posted by MikeBob2013:

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

What are your "red flags" in gaming?

My red flags:

"JRPG" ... 🚩

"Anime" ... 🚩

"Deckbuilding" ... 🚩

"MMO" ... 🚩🚩

"Multiplayer" ... 🚩🚩

"PvP" ... 🚩🚩🚩

"Early Access" ... 🚩🚩🚩

"Microtransactions" ... 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

(There are some others but those are the ones that come most readily to mind.)

🤔

mikes not wrong here. but is he right either?

[n#n#m#]

JRPG, as of late also open world (because every game has to be open world even If the world itself is empty, right?), huge amount of dlcs which cost more than the base game x2 even on sale

[Devsman]

Originally posted by Radene:

Originally posted by Devsman:

Well, for what? For trying to sell the product?

No, for overblown advertising.

When it comes to marketing, I'm with Bill Hicks.

I guess I don't necessarily disagree, but I think the only way you could handle something like that would be case-by-case. I mean, you can't really define "overblown" in any sort of objective way.

[Silverkite]

Originally posted by Unicron:

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS"

Early access survival.

Didn't one of the lawbreakers dev say that?

A certain idiot who got fired from Starbreeze said that, he never played PD2 yet he was insulting everyone bashing him for his stupid decisions, PD2 still sucks today because him and all the idiots who bought it.

[Fostin4]

Originally posted by Unicron:

Originally posted by pablo.macho.2007:

Like, for me when the devs try to force a hip label like "The Dark Souls of FPS"

Early access survival.

Didn't one of the lawbreakers dev say that?

Yeah, and that dunce is out of the gaming industry for good.