How does a real crony corpo game looks like and what all does it have? Let us talk about it. This is a small gist from my 20+ years of gaming. I am taking an example of an online multiplayer game as an example since this should cover the most scenarios.
- Keep it closed
The game should be closed source and preferably should have a launcher of its own to spy on users about their spending (time and money) habits related games or anything in general. - Both the game and launcher should have an update mechanism where the corpos can push a custom update to few people, groups, individuals.
- Collude with government, surveillance bodies through 3rd, 4th party investors where if and when needed, using step 2, you can push a custom update to spy, sabotage or do anything else.
- Have a boost hierarchy based on race, color, gender, geography, religion, region etc., Make a list of characters and each of these traits will have a +1 or -1 point. Higher points a person has (spending, gender, region, religion etc.,) he gets boosted, The more negative points they have, they get nerfed or crippled. ex: All top video game players, all top video game streamers, all top earning video gamers are all of a certain region, gender, race, color even though they are less than 10% of the world population.
Lets call the players in the boost list as E(lite) players, players to be N(erfed)players. - Extreme burden of proof for the victim. You have to ensure that the nplayers have an extreme burden of proof to prove that they are being nerfed. you can do this with extreme scrutinisation of their game play. ex:- If an nplayer throws a grenade, you do 10 checks per damage point, perform all possible checks but for an eplayer perform minimal checks. So, nplayers will have more animation tax, network tax which all might result in lag.
- Dynamic difficulty. The difficulty should vary based on how much of a player is an nplayer or an eplayer. The availability of items to play the game should be such that the nplayers face more difficulty and eplayers have it easy. Check the list of items with which a player has the most success in his gameplay. If it is an eplayer then chances of him getting his items with high success rate should be higher. It should be reverse for the nplayer. Ex: nplayer has least chances of getting his favorite guns than his favorite guns. eplayer has higher chances of getting his desired guns early than not so desired guns.
- Have many such dark patterns as possible. Whenever a user spends some money within the game, then give him a temporary boost, this is to ensure that he spends often not just once or twice or just a few times a year. The boost should be such that it should make them spend more & more.
- Non spenders should be used as a cannon fodder. They are getting your game for free, they are consuming your resources for free, what else do they want? They should be thankful that they are getting it for free. When it is free, then it is the consumer who is the product and they will be fed to spending player aka eplayers to stroke their ego.
- Have many bots of your own to control gameplay. Feed these bots as cannon fodder to eplayers and feed nplayers as cannon fodder to bots, this should ensure that eplayers, spenders are on top and others are at the bottom.
- The most valuable thing in anyone's life is time. Government should invest in games to consume the time, energy the youth of the opponent nations because in this modern world of economics, every productive citizen of your opponent country is a solider and it is only fair in a war to weaken the enemy's soldier, it is the most humane thing to do that killing a solider in a physical conflict.
