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Voting with Your Wallet
Tomorrow is election day over here in the States, so I wanted to talk about a tangentially related topic:
“Stop complaining and just vote with your wallet.”
Sometimes I wonder whether people understand how voting works. Even if we assume that not voting (i.e. not buying a game) counts as a No vote in any meaningful sense, a single vote in isolation is functionally irrelevant. Beyond that, your No vote is indistinguishable from the same No vote from someone who simply can’t buy the game until the next payday. Or the person who never realized the game was coming out. In other words, your No is actually a Potential Yes. There is no “other person” you can vote for instead, no other means of actually expressing why you voted in the manner you did other than actually talking about it.
All of this is besides the extremely relevant fact that if I spend time on a soapbox complaining about something, and I convince other people to (also) not buy that something, the size of the wallet I am voting with has increased exponentially. Not voting is meaningless; conversely, removing Yes votes is priceless. Your opinions, positive or negative, have currency only when you voice them. So get out there and get dirty.
Anyone telling you to be quiet and simply vote with your wallet is actually getting you to vote with theirs.
In An Age 
Vote with Your (Whale) Wallet
Jul 10
Posted by Azuriel
There was an interesting, albeit depressing, exchange on Reddit concerning the release of Dr. Mario World, Nintendo’s latest foray into mobile nihilism. Basically, it’s Dr. Mario meets Candy Crush (e.g. stamina meters) with a dash of gacha game lootboxes. Which is a little weird, considering Nintendo seems to make a point about not being too greedy with their monetization strategies. What changed?
$$$$$$
Five years ago, I made the point that “voting with your wallet” was a losing strategy, in comparison to complaining about things and thereby possibly voting with other peoples’ wallets. That sentiment seems almost quaint these days. The current reality we inhabit is one in which the mere existence of people willing to drop $100 (or $1000) in a sitting dictates how mobile games are developed.
I would like to believe there is some kind of silver lining in all this. And maybe there is. If you are just looking for something to do on your phone, there are tens of thousands of options available for free. Not all of them are even horrible. Hell, go play Dr. Mario World if you want!
As someone who loves the purity of elegant game design though… I’m fucked. I could vow to never play these games again, convince thousands more to join the boycott, and it wouldn’t matter. When 90% of the playerbase is already not paying for anything, and the average lifetime value of paying customers is single digits, one $99 purchase justifies a lot of nonsense. Not just in one game, but every game. There will be exceptions, but they exist as deliberate acts, fighting the ocean current.
When money is speech, the richest speak the loudest.
…er, when did we decide that was a good idea, again?
Posted in Commentary
8 Comments
Tags: Gacha, Lootboxes, Mobile, Nintendo, Vote with Your Wallet