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Try harder, you can do better than this.

I did also mean first party content. To my point though was that popular mods were often also rolled into titles as officially sanctioned expansions later on. But first party titles also featured significant amounts of unlockable and customizable content. This didn’t begin with the monetization era.

Travelling, but start by looking up Doom wads and Duke Nukem Build engine mods.

These were so plentiful they were put into compilations, and the best were even repackaged with the game in later releases.

Again, tons of playformers and fps titles would previously offer characters as unlocks as well as customization equipment. The Tekken series up through 5 had SO MUCH GEAR. Virtual Fighter up to VF 4 EVO. Fighting games were actually huge with this, and only Soul Calibur seems to have kept it around a bit. They still sell customizatipn packs I believe, but they offer FAR more out of the box than average.

Could list more but unfortunately about to lose signal.

Sorry man, this is just counterfactual.

I’m glad you feel this way I guess, but before you were born and well into the PS3 and 360 gen, games were still releasing with tons of cosmetic unlocks.

The RPG leveling system of Modern Warfare and the push to tie in game unlocks to your online progression dovetailed with selling skins and cosmetics across the industry. If you were a gamer on the PS2 and the 360 era the difference was like night and day. It’s why people were bowled over when games like Spiderman included so many costumes because the pressure to monetize these would normally be massive.

But somehow, they included dozens of unique designs and outfits without it bankrupting the company. Just like the decades of games prior to the DLC era had. Like magic.

You’re not getting that the microtransaction system replaced free unlocks in most devlopments.

Fighting games used to let you unlock costumes through gameplay. Dozens of them per character.

Now you buy sets of 5 for $12.

This spoken like someone who never experienced mods and entire unlicensed expansions to games being made well before DLC was a thing. I’m sorry but again, this is counterfactual to the reality of decades of PC gaming prior to the launch of the Playstation and Xbox stores where everything was locked down and customization was turned into DLC.

I still can’t believe we sell fucking skins for guns. It’s so callously exploitative.

Somehow it existed for decades prior to DLC and online shops existing.

The Timesplitters series was practically founded on having so many characters and variants to unlock.

This argument just doesn’t hold water.

You are the threat to games like Monster Hunter being fun and having community armpr unlocks for free.

This exact goddamn attitude is why execs think things like the costume selection in Spider-man on PS4 is a waated monetization opportunity.

I stl don’t understand how this is better/different than EmuDeck, a project I heard much more about.