in 2009 i got tf2 for $20 and put my first 1k out of 4.8k hours in that game that year. i kept coming back to play the game. there were barely any unlocks back then and you had to get them through achievements (at least for some of that year). but there was no incentive to come back other than the game itself. every server was a different experience run by different people with different players. did you want a super serious game? there were servers for that with people who tried hard. and if you didnt want to do that, there were a bunch of other community made game modes and maps that were fully of silly fun ♥♥♥♥. you could actually make some pretty decent random friends this way! and if you didnt like a server you could just hop around for hours, or quit. there was nothing to compel you to keep playing, you just Did.

today, i buy a multiplayer game, i know exactly what maps it has, what gamemodes it has, every item in the game has been shown to me and their progression line is already outlined for me. i will not see anything out of the ordinary unless the developers mess something up and promptly patch it. if i go too far out of the map im told by the game WHERE ARE YOU GOING GET BACK IN THE FIGHT and if i dont it just straight up kills me. if you somehow manage to run a modded server of the game the developers send someone to your house to break your knees.

i know that its going to incentivize me to keep playing by giving me xp for every little thing i do to make sure that if im not good at the main objective in the game i still feel like my performance is good enough to not give up and find something else to do. its going to give me "daily challenges" that are just "do thing that happens naturally in the game x amount of times" that give me more xp and if i grind away at it hard enough maybe i'll get the golden rifle bullet gun they're only giving away for THIS WEEK ONLY and i dont want to miss out on having my Video Game Master Status Symbol.

when i join a lobby, everyone has one goal and it's Win. everyone has chosen a character or loadout that is considered borderline broken to almost everyone but You Gotta do it because its the only way to Win. i am grouped up with 5 random people who have all been playing for 7 consecutive hours like its their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ job and they have clearly exhausted every ounce of fun out of the game for the day (and their life probably) and are already really frustrated but are grinding away anyway just to say they did so. if i decide to play outside of The Meta™ i will probably be votekicked from the lobby, forcibly removed from the match and penalized because some guy who's gone 0-14 and hasn't figured out when to quit decided that's my problem now.

but its okay if all thats too frustrating, because you could spend 3 weeks doing menial video game chores OR you could spend $20 and get the thing they're hanging over your head right away which will eventually be worthless once next weeks Thing comes out and everyone's grinding a game they no longer find fun out of obligation. it is great how multiplayer experiences have just decided to become skinner box jobs you pay to work at.