Cliffski's Blog - Kickstarting inequality.
Kickstarter is the absolute poster-child for inequality amongst gamers, based on income. Now I am definitely not a raging socialist, but I know a lot of gamers are, and I find it a bit weird that it doesn’t bug them that when these kickstarter games ship, not only will gamers with more money that them be swanning around with better outfits and weapons, (This already happens in F2P games), but some of the NPC’s will have the names of the ‘wealthy’ backers. Some will even have their digitized faces in the game. Elite is actually naming PLANETS after people who back the game with a lot of money.
Gamers say they hate in-game product placement and advertising. It compromises the game design for the sake of money. I agree. So why are we deciding that the best way to name our planets or design the appearance of our NPC’s is to put that part of game design up for auction? Why should gamers who are wealthy get more influence over a game that those who flip burgers for a living? The cold hard economic reality of the real world is bad enough without shoehorning it into games too.
EricFate wrote on Nov 24, 2012, 23:37:
Patronage is not product placement. May as well be pissed at a hospital for being named after the biggest donor, or at a portrait for being of the wife of the person who commissioned it. Having some pixels named after a dude with more disposable income than me doesn't disrupt my engagement with the game world in the slightest. Because that dude wanted the game to exist just as much as I did, but had more resources to help make that happen. He isn't trying to sell me something. Gamers aren't outraged because we know the difference.