easily one of the most dishonest live service thing games are doing this days is filling your first few games with bots disguised as real players that just fucking let you kill them so you go "wow I'm good at this, I should keep playing." god that's so manipulative to me
like monetization is gross but that's out in the open, the bot thing is just straight up lying
Sometimes I think about how in the Gears of War days a dev openly said that if you hadn't been playing for awhile the matchmaking system would throw you a couple softball games so you'd feel good about coming back strong and be more likely to keep playing and then compare it to how many ppl got back into Fortnite over the past year and were like "WOW I got a victory royale already I guess I'm pretty good??"
We're taking baby steps towards removing gambling from gaming but there's an entire extra layer of lying and user manipulation that hasn't even been touched yet.
Seg's point is key, though I wanna elaborate on some details.
I think a lot of things people take issue with in modern games, or social media sites, or whatever are, in a healthy environment, good. Like you know what? I think throwing players matchmaking softballs or giving them bots sometimes is, in plenty of potential contexts, a good, defensible decision. But in a lot of real world contexts it's paired with fucking money.
Not every skinner box is built the same. We used to call games like Diablo II skinner boxes, which in the modern day seems quint. You can find old games with cosmetic unlocks, goofy gachapon features and all sorts of other 'toxic' features that... when removed from in-app payments, are... fine?
Like yeah, the bot thing is lying, but that's what games do. They lie to you, in all sorts of ways. But depending on the context, the same mechanic can be like your DM lying about what they rolled behind the DM screen, or as bad as a scam phone call, asking about your car's warranty. Are you lying to enhance the fun? Are you lying to encourage a struggling player to stick it out in the hopes they can get over the hump and actually learn the game? Or is it just that every precious second they play is more of a chance for you to extract value??
Sadly as time goes on, it's almost always the latter.
