the overlap of polisci education + skidoo references + overwatch is so niche but man you've hit the right audience. keep it up man these videos are radical
@@handsoaphandsoapif you use your reading comprehension you'll notice that they didn't say that Overwatch iself was niche, but rather the overlap of topics
Whenever I see a £20 or so for a skin, I remember I have about 90 games on my Steam wishlist, and most of those sell at times for under £20. It's why I never bought Time Keeper Kiriko.
I cannot wait for the video about how multi-player gaming has basically become chore lists This video was amazing! Can't wait to see what comes next. ❤
ikr? I literally said this to my friend trying to explain why i dread playing fortnite, because i have to spend my time doing boring, recycled and repetitive chores to slowly progress bit by bit. My friends said I was lazy but it's not that, I love 100% stuff when the quests are fun and engaging, not just a cheap trick to get more playtime.
This video kinda made me take a step back and appreciate that I do have the time to game and that I do have the money to buy some shiny skins (k-pop collab gives me serotonin) I keep holding out hope that with the new Microsoft deal that maybe Blizzard will make things more affordable. But I know that’s just a silly little hope.
Oh, we've already seen this in Fortnite. You see folks mistreat people who have the defaults or the free skins. While people fawn over folks with the pricy, rare skins.
At the very least with Fortnite, you can see your skin at all times because it's a third-person shooter rather than first-person. You can at least say you're buying it for yourself there.
great video as per usual! 😊 Especially love the point about not letting being ”broke” get to you. It really really feels like you can’t do ANYTHING when you don’t have disposable income and it’s really tough.
I feel like there's always an underlying feeling of unease I feel when finding new creators since I have no idea who the creator actually is. We've all been burned once or twice /by a creator we enjoyed that turns out to kind of be a jack ass. And this video is like. Idk. It's educational but also a peek into you and your worldview. Like obviously I don't know this person, but I have trust that they won't turn out to be another bummer that'll let me down. This video rules.
This video is fucking amazing and genuinely the way that skins work now genuinely turned me off from playing ow2 (among other things) I'm poor and the money I do have goes towards bills and food but in ow1 I was lucky and could grind for lootboxes I was always able to have what I wanted but in ow2 more and more I'm reminded that I"m poor, I play a lot of apex nowadays and I can't tell you the last time I even looked at it's disgustingly overpriced shops, it sucks that so much of gaming nowadays is focused on just draining out our money.
Hey, I just wanna say thank you for making this video, since this was the video that eventually led me to uninstalling Overwatch and letting my bank account have a bit more in the bank each month. The specific point you made about how the skins aren't for you, but are to show off to other called me out in a way I was NOT prepared for. That + how I realized that that's how I treated the gameplay too, it wasn't for fun anymore, it had long ceased to probably around hour 600, but it was to ventilate anger or frustration or to dominate other people made me realize OW was no longer healthy for me, and probably stopped being healthy for me YEARS ago. So, thank you.
Good video! I will say (as someone who doesn't play a lot of other games with these issues-) it seems to me like Overwatch, specifically the community, hasn't bought in so much to the classism compared to other games. I'm thinking mostly what I've heard about Roblox and Fortnite - a mixture of these systems were in place to start, and most of the players being younger children. I believe it's more former than latter. The trend I've seen more on Overwatch is new vs old players, speaking toward someone playing in default skins (especially ow2 defaults) vs someone with normal ow1 legendaries. To some extent, they've shot themselves in the foot to leverage more of the classism into the community - making the base skins fundamentally harder to acquire means someone having them to new players is notable. There's also the fundamental lack of excitement about skins than there was in ow1, holidays/events were major draws to look at the new stuff and I don't get the feeling much of that has been kept alive. I worry more about the younger generation of overwatch players in regards to classist bullying and feeling alienated. What happens in five years when we have as many new ow2 characters as original ow1 characters and default skins are non-existent? Assumedly there would still be the older guard of original players, but like. I'm graduating from college soon, and I'm gonna be busy afterward, and that's the trajectory of most people who got into overwatch 1 in their mid teens and got most of the skins. I've been lucky enough to know this shit is stupid and not worth caring about, frankly I often end up mildly judgemental towards the people in my games with premium skins, but I neither act with malice or have seen anyone else do so for the opposite reason. But, all of this is assuming goodwill from the OVERWATCH community, and to say I haven't seen it therefore it doesn't exist would be asinine. I'd like to think with the number of people who were really into ow1 and are constantly the ones criticizing ow2 on reddit and youtube, that most of this won't take root as badly as it has in other games because the people who are vocal and care know this is a sham. Ultimately We Live In A Society TM and shit like this is gonna make for worse outcomes socially. I've hated the way they monetized ow2 from day 1 (remember when pink mercy was like, the only exclusively real world money purchase? And it was a fundraiser for breast cancer instead of one to line blizzard executives pockets?) and I have to hope the community at large avoids buying into ideas that skins mean anything. Then again, I'm one to talk, I'm a mercy main w Pink and Atlantic mercy skins. I'm lucky I don't play Hanzo, or the Valentine's day skin would've been problematic for my wallet. It's gonna be a shitstorm once Mercy gets a mythic or really solid legendary skin. Thanks for the content and take care of yourself. ❤
I think Overwatch is still in a weird place because it's only recently adopted this model, whereas Fortnite or Valorant or Roblox have had it baked in since day 1. I'm honestly really glad that the channel members didn't pick this topic until after the Le Sserafim collab, though, because between that and the One Punch Man collab I felt like you could really see people's reactions shifting from "Awe, Witch Kiriko is cute but I can't afford it, oh well" to feeling genuinely left out because they couldn't participate in them as much as other people.
@@TheViveros not to be a silly little guy but thanks for the heart and reply 😳 I hope that it doesn't take hold, but certainly with more collabs and good skins people are gonna start feeling it. F in the chat for the completionists (me included) as I had all the Mercy skins before OW2 and I'm... Not gonna have that anymore. Let alone the people who will be compelled to buy every battle pass/get every mythic skin. Best way imo to hold onto the less classist community is to point at and make fun of anybody who tries to leverage skins as proof of being better or worse - discredit the dipshits who try and hold it over people. I think we can manage it for a while, but overall it's a disgusting and disquieting trend for all of gaming that companies are trying to utilize class warfare/privilege to compell people to buy fucking video game skins. Surprising? No, late stage capitalism will eat us alive. Gotta do our best to not let it influence us where we can and fight for better in our daily lives. Mad respect for the work that you do, introducing these ideas to the Gamer population, always enjoyable and informative! Wish I could become a member and participate in the polls, but I'm living the poor college student life til I'm out ✌️ Big ramble, but tldr capitalism bad >:(
24:00 yeah, as someone who works on site in fort Mac doing crazy hours at a time, the battlepass holds me hostage to overwatch. To be fair I only play overwatch and minecraft but why would I play anything else when I have a mythic to unlock… That being said I am a slut for exclusive cosmetics unfortunately
Learning about classism in this manner really put my high school years into a new perspective. Both the bullying I received cuz I was the kid that bring a 3ds to school when everyone else was using the switch (I had both but preferred my 3ds for practicality reasons, something I had no idea that's why I was getting bullied for) and why I was an asshole when i played wow. I WAS THE TOP 5% IN THAT GAME. and being like 15-16 lead me to thinking I was hot shit for having more time than people older than me. Huh every step of my life just outside of high school is learning step by step how I was an asshole and why I was an asshole. Also probably mildly weird to think of high school me as being such a peace of shit when that was only 3 years ago for me........huh. uh anyways great video as always. (Now if only I could be in the "in" crowd that can support you on channel memberships :P)
You weren’t an ass hole just ignorant everyone does it as a kid. The difference is as you learned you actually reflected. Don’t beat yourself up because of how different you were only three years ago, instead think how quickly you’ve been able to grow. Good person - information = uninformed good person Bad person + information = asshole
nah, it's normal as hell to think "wow i used to suck" about yourself from 3 years ago when you're that age! it's because your brain is still developing and you're still growing and learning, so you're becoming a better person so quickly that it's hard not to look back on stuff you did not long ago and think "yeesh, what a jackass." it's basically your job in high school to be Kind Of The Worst so that you can learn how bad that feels and how *not* to be like that in the future. this is a good sign :)
You bring up great points, and I can see how most people feel this way about skins and how people can feel a sense of “oh we both have the money to pay for this”. I don’t really feel this way. Much like your Vtubing model, I purchase digital 3-D assets to create characters that represent my personality and have learned 3-D modeling extensively. I know it takes work, time, love, art and dedication to make models that are unique. On my main model I use in most 3-D social vr games, alone the base was $50, hair $10, hat, clothing and accessories $40-50. That’s not including the labor it took to rig the armature and the hours of labor it took in photoshop to get the textures, emissions and UV mapping correctly. To quantify, that’s more than $300 with assets plus labor. I spend money on skins because I want to showcase my personality in games and can appreciate the work that goes into them. I don’t care what other people think at all! It’s art and I like to appreciate and enjoy it.
I really enjoyed this video. I do have to say, with about 200 hours of Overwatch 2, and thousands of hours in other multiplayer games that abuse microtransactions, I have never felt any classism or experienced any sort of discrimination because I don't have a specific cosmetic. Maybe, I'm just lucky and in the minority, but most of the toxic or discriminatory interactions that I come across are rank/player skill based. The only time that I have ever heard anything about the skin that Im wearing is when I'm joking around with my friends. I don't feel like the classism that people experience irl translates very much to videogames. Honestly I see way more people making fun of those who DO spend money on videogame cosmetics then people who don't.
Agreed. Interesting video but I can also confirm that with ~1500 hours in OW, no one in my comp games (master/gm) or just chilling in qp has ever cared about a skin ever. The only skin people ever drool over is that old pink Mercy from the breast cancer awareness campaign in OW1 and it's because it's more of a FOMO thing than a class thing. People are way to busy to tell you how trash you are to look at the skin you have.
the only thing that happened to me in 6 years that stood out to me was when I loaded into a comp game with my k-pop collab banner and someone in match chat said “(my username) spent 40 dollars on skins” and then threw the match (blatantly afk for most of the match) which was a bizarre experience lol
This video was so good It brought a lot to my attention that I hadn't noticed before and this issue has been under our noses the whole time. Keep it up
While I myself never felt this classism from not having certain items in OW2. I fully agree with this video just because you mentioned the year 1 OW1 Loot box for certain cosmetic you where looking for but just ended up getting something else doubly worse so if it was an event skin like my favorite D.va skin Palanquin (swear I gain like 100 level just from grinding for that) and the "time is money" part mentioning the dumb challenges & stuff needed for getting all the stuff in the battle pass if you don't do tier skips. I swear if I wasn't such a D.va simp (with Reaper and Zen also being my bros) I would have quit playing OW2 as fast as I quit OW1 mid 2018.
it's funny, just the other day I was talking with a friend I play OW with about this subject. And this video here puts into words what I wasn't able to fully express. And in an eloquent way to boot lol
I feel like this argument could be better suited for a different game like Fortnite. It doesn’t work that well for Overwatch 2 because it would imply that the store cosmetics are a source of envy to others, but they are nothing special. Whenever I see a guy using a store skin I either don’t think about it or think “that guy actually wasted $20 on a subpar overwatch 2 skin smh” Specially when a huge percentage of the games’ population hates the game and blizzard, they are just not gonna care about that one player with a $20 skin and think “man I’m lame”, if anything they would think that of the one that bought the skin, unless the skin is REALLY nice. Idk I never saw this classism in OW2 so I thought it was kind of odd that it was mentioned.
wonder if you got to the part where i specifically said “my friend bought me the bundle as a gift and it helped reinforce my opinion on this bc i immediately got into a game where i was with somebody else who bought one of those bundles and we did the emotes together”
I commented this before I got to that part but didn't delete my comment because I feel its still relevant. Surely classism through association is still classism? Like when people get pulled into prestigious jobs by having rich friends for example. I should probably specify I don't care if people spend money to make their video game characters look cooler, I have as well. We do agree on a basic level on this topic but I never saw people doing K-pop dances together in any game and assumed they were better than me or I was worse than them in any way just because I couldn't join in. That point missed the mark a little for me. Overall good video though. I do wish gaming companies would think about those who don't want to spend money on a game on a regular basis but in the end of the day overpriced cosmetics are what turn in the big profit margins it seems.@@TheViveros
Man it was so wild I was not expecting you to bring up my country and the United Fruit company thing in a video about OW skins. Great video, really interesting.
When I heard you so eloquently explain Marx's theory of class in a video about OW2 of all things I legit tried subscribing to you AGAIN lmao Keep up the good work fr
i miss common/rare lootboxes so much. even during OW1 they were my favorite because "free coin." i think i had like 10k coins at one point. even if I didn't get a skin or other cosmetics i liked in a box, i always had the coins to buy it or could grind for the coin to buy it/more boxes. it was just nice.
This is a problem in many cosmetic having games. Roblox ("bacon hair"), Fortnite, TF2 (the "gibusvision" stereotype) etc etc. The F2P is often a target for bullying because they wear the default, "boring" skin. In case you don't think I experience the other side of this: in Warframe, I own a crapton of cosmetics (some of which I have spent money on, because I enjoy the game and want to support the devs). But the game's culture is much different, since it's PvE and has a community of cooperation. A default color Excalibur is cute at best and infantilized at worst.
I am rewatching this video and one thing that made me think was that Riot for about 3 years did not offer any free cosmetics for League of Legends. But I didn't amd still don't see a culture like this. And IMO the thing that exasturbates this issue is the limited time FOMO store. In League a skin is between 5 and 30 USD but you dpn't have this situation where a skin can only be bought when it's available so not only do you need the disposible income but also have to have it ready when that skin comes to the store. Also the fact that they are 20 usd each
My phone listening to me in my pocket for my recommended feed is getting scary accurate. Had a conversation today with my overwatch playgroup. Long story short I mentioned "ooh shiny pink reinheart skin. I am tempted to buy it." And a guy in the playgroup was like "No don't give Blizzard your money they are a bad company." It sparked a whole discussion. Its not exactly the same as your video as it had more to do with consumer ethics. But at the end of the day I spend a long time playing this weird line where I didn't want to spend money on the game because there are morally dubious things happening in the industry. However here we are still playing the game. Either we are gonna play the game or we aren't. In for a penny in for a pound or we quit the game. Having the conversations and figuring out where we stand on the issues is important though. Scary how that conversation was what? Five hours ago and I see your channel for the first time now.
I’d pray for a new alternative to live games, but I don’t know if the new thing could be even worse. It seems they are betting on Cloud gaming? God! That would be horrible! Imagine all the new ways they could monetize games. It’s not looking good, fellas 😭😭😭 Btw, I should have said something earlier since it always bothered me when I saw the thumbnail in the poll’s announcements, but Hanzo is behind Liveweaver’s flower. If it’s some good ol’ Hanzo hate, I respect that, I stand by you, and you’ve done nothing wrong 😌 Edit: Forgot to congratulate you on another great video. Only hits on this channel. Line up for your weekly reminder of capitalism wrongdoings presented as pop culture commentary! 💅
I wouldn't call it Hanzo *hate* necessarily - it was initially an accident and then I thought "Wait, it's funnier if Lifeweaver's just trying to steal the scene and block out the others" so I left it in lmao
call me cringe for this but, the moment you name dropped the GOAT Terry P. i literally chanted aloud, "he's based!! he's based!!" and by "he" i mean YOU, Viveros! i'm a new watcher/subscriber currently picking through your videos old and new, and having just come over from the "omnics are shallow" video where i was already thinking to myself, "huh, he's pretty smart", i can now add "and has good tastes" to that assessment haha. i'm a voracious binge watcher so i know i'm going to tear through the rest of your videos all too soon, thus i say, i look forward to your next videos!
You perfectly summed up a feeling I've been having since the release of OW2. I buy the skin, I love the design, the lines, everything but when I use it... I feel kind of bad. In the past, when an event came out you would see a lot of people with the new skin and you could even appreciate the skin more (since in OW2 it's in first person, you don't even see the skin itself), now it's about you having an expensive skin. Too boring.
To throw in my two cents, compared to Valorant, Overwatch players that I've come across don't care about skins. In Valorant, I've seen people get shit talked for what skins they use or lack. Again, in OW, that's not something I've really experienced.
@@KingAssRipper69likewise, i dont know. Ive been wearing default lifeweaver skin since his release LOL. Even if someones terrible and theyre wearing a mythic or an expensive shop skin, no one comments about it as an insult. I think ive only looked twice if it was a pink mercy or that widow skin, but its more because theyre rare.
I will say, they have updated their weekly challenges and made it way easier to complete challenges. Making it so weeklies stack if you haven't finished them, and making it so completing 3 weeklies gives you 20k exp. Still doesn't help the fact that if you play DPS, you're gonna have to off-role to complete the "Complete 20 games of All Role Queue" and if you're a Quick Play sweat, you gotta play 30 comp games a week if you really wanna keep up.
The fact i started OW1 in 2019 and got basically every skin and cosmetic that i still use now… i can say they at least did the lootbox system “right” if that is the proper word to use lol
this video is summed up pretty well from when I was watching a streamer play overwatch 2 earlyish on and they died to someone with a paywalled skin and said "I just got deleted by a credit card, chat"
One little thing I would add is that this did exist in overwatch one to a small degree, since while after the fact you'd never know what someone spent on lootboxes, if you saw someone rocking the new legendary on day one of it being added one would often assume that it wasn't just sheer luck. Of course, any accusations of being a spender were often shot down by it being a mere accusation if it wasn't instantly admitted to.
if the switch from lootboxes to bundles and battlepasses helped some people get out of a gambling addiction, then good for them. but as someone who played overwatch 1 for a long time and never bought a lootbox, i VASTLY prefer the lootbox system. it was fun opening them when you leveled up and you could get a lot of super cool cosmetics without ever spending a penny. even if the intention on blizzard's end was to maximize profits or whatever, it was still nice to have a system where players who didn't wanna spend any more money could still get the same cosmetics as everyone else through chance and/or grinding for currency
i bought the battle pass maybe 2-3 weeks in of playing every day. my mate buys it when he gets to level 80. we literally completed it within a week of each other, even w the xp boost (i also don’t pay to skip levels and it annoys me that you can) it’s really not that hard, if you pay attention to the challenges and play in a party it’s even easier. half the time i don’t even notice the challenges, i complete them as i go and occasionally look at the end of a game at what needs to be done next if ur working a full time job w a family you probably don’t need the battle pass or to play 😂 if u have the time then fair but if they don’t they don’t that’s not class i’m lowest of the low, on mental health benefits and paying taxes, and all day i play games lmao. it’s not class based it’s person to person basis. if u rlly don’t have time to play overwatch and take care of ur kids or go to ur birthday it’s rlly not anyones problem but theirs
20:51 this is such a good fucking point! Like! That skin is very fun! I'd (hypothetically cause I haven't played OW in forever) use it! But because its a skin everyone gets for "free" after buying the battlepass it makes me less likely to want to use it. Whereas before I'd use any skin I had if I thought it looked cool even though they were all technically "free".
TBH, sometimes I take off cosmetics I have and put on the default skin because they still look cool. Also, I wear more recolors than rare skins. I mostly have OWL skins, and I do it on purpose.
I also love the streamers defending the skin prices. “It’s not that expensive” $20 for a skin is rediculous. Skins should cost $10-15 max. Then flats on his shilling arc coping about the $68 bundle. “They gave you a discount so it was cheaper.” Thank god the people that set the price gave us a discount so they’d make more money. The bundle was $68 but you could get it for 50$. It’s a good discount but the bundles should’ve never cost that much especially the individual ones.
You tackling racism & classism but in ways that just isn't "this bad" that shows you've actually given these things in depth analysis, deserves a follow. I come from your other video regarding the Omnic being a shitty racism allegory (but also animals / robots in general in place of black people and other minorities) And I'm just happy with the way you seem to engage with the world. 20-40 dollars would only be okay if the artists were depending on the revenue, but the fact that we don't see them in gameplay much makes it a risky buy. I bit the bullet and got two skins for illari because I love her, and I personally just get more motivated when I look cute (which is a problem) Capitalism is a plague upon life. To keep it strictly about OW though, This isn't to say those who work hard on these games (I aint talkin about a ceo ever.) don't deserve anything for the fruits of their labor, but squeezing money out of its userbase is soulless.
The mass appeal of gaming and its consequences. If you fall for "I have to buy thing to not look poor" in games (or being fr even in life) you are only pretending to be something you aren't. The identity through products is so cringe and I will never understand how people fall for it.
I miss the days where I just could fire up Overwatch, grind Quick Play for coins regardless if I win or lose, buy the stuff I want from those coins and enjoy the game with my other tank friend...
When OW2 dropped i fucked up my account transfer and lost several years of stuff including my 2017 Halloween icon and now I get called a poor loser by people. Blizzard didnt help because they basically told me “tough luck buy the skins.”
I got all the pop star skins, not because I wanted all of them, but because it was better to just get all of them. Basically, you know how there was a bundle and then all the separate skins? Well I figured out very quickly that getting 2 of the skins separately, costed the same amount if not more then the bundle itself. I only wanted sombra and kirko, but I ended up getting all of them cause of this realization. Though I don’t get why people keep saying it’s 68 dollars, it’s actually 50 to 54 dollars due to the bonus 50% you get.
It's actually kinda funny, being a part of a lore-junkie friend group, which kinda always sticks to the default skins, since the very beginning. They feel authentic af, and, after all, were the defacto look for the character when coming up with their concept and overall design. That's why I don't feel the classism so much, and until I came into some other games ahem-ahem, gacha, ahem, I didn't even consider that it was a big issue. I was like "Bro, I love playing my DPS Sucrose in hit videogame Genshin Impact and I don't need you to tell me to try smth else".
It's funny because the same thing happened in fortnite for an obvious reason before they gave a bunch of free skins , the term "default skin" was a stigma given to new players wich in part was used to ridicule them
Honestly I think it’s funny that my Overwatch videos outperform all my non-Overwatch content by such wide margins since functionally none of what I do is actually about Overwatch.
The loot boxes could be earned. About 90% of my currently owned skins were from those things, and I never bought any of them. Out of every lootbox system in games Overwatch had the most f2p one at the time.
It’s crazy cuz because of the new shop I haven’t spend literally any money on overwatch. I’m still mad about the new system tho especially considering I’ve started maining kiri. Idk it’s just kind of frustrating
newcomer here at first I saw the vtuber and I was like wtf but then I realized I sound like an old man not willing to change as technology advances and should be more open to vtuber models ok bye
My hated part of the BP is that there's skins that don't even have anything to do with BP's theme. For example. Greek Gods BP what does botanist Ana have to do with Ancient Greece? Cyclops Roadhog Reinhardt Minotaur and Hermes Lucio. Felt like they where deliberately put in the shop to be sold separately and they put skins like botanist Ana in an attempt to get mor money out of you. Which I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
same with the first BP for ow2 like it was cyber themed and things like edm dva commando sojourn didn't make sense all the other cyber themed skins were in the shop except Hinotori kiriko and cyberdemon genji
When they finally made all the characters free, I jumped back into the game deciding I would never buy anything from the game. Every game to ever do a battlepass system has burned me, Gundam evolution, destiny 2, halo infinite, in all these games, the live service elements killed all enjoyment of the games. I’d rather pay 60 or 70 bucks for a game without a battle pass because I’ve never seen a battlepass be good. It actually has aided me because I get underestimated running nothing but default skins and basic recolors. I’ve clutched a lot of fights because people see me, a tank main that looks new because I’m running all default skins, and not realize I’ve been playing the game on and off since 2016 (I only don’t have my old skin on my dad’s Xbox account). It’s pretty funny.
This reminds me slightly of the Trust Thermocline that is mentioned in this Disney Parks-video (ua-cam.com/video/w-4k9c8LZU4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=PoseidonEntertainment), with how there is a threshold before goodwill is lost to a quick and "unexpected" degree. With OW1, I spent money on loot crates. Not always, but I had paid for the game and every now and then I figured I would buy lootbox, or gift them to a friend. It was fun, and it happened every now and then. I wanted the new skins and emotes and everything. I might not whale it, but it was something. Now? Well, I need to give not only my money, but also my time, in order to get what I want, and it annoyed me, and then, I realized... why do I care? I cannot see the skin, emotes and voice lines are hardly useful outside of the sparse time in the beginning of the battle. Same with all the other cosmetics, they are effectively useless, and like you said, if I want to watch skins, I just go watch them in the gallery. Also with the emotes, it was fun to celebrate the new stuff with others, if someone also had it, but now nobody bothers because if I see a skin there is always the thought "oh, cool skin you bought". Suddenly I just realized I don't need to use money on it. And OW lost a somewhat small customer who will probably not use any money at all, instead of someone who might now and then. Their greediness got to the point that I genuinely wonder if they lost more people than they gained, especially considering they said the PvE-mode didn't "sell well", as if people would be happy that they would have to buy the story-mode besides having to buy premium battle-pass and all other cosmetics. Honestly, at this point I wish they had implemented something like what Gimkit.com is doing (I use it for my job); when you gain a level you get a set amount of fake coins, and you use them to buy skins, stickers or trails. If they need microtransactions, then have it possible for us to buy more fake coins, whatever. You can still have the temporary events so that some people panic and buys fake coins, or those that don't but simply play enough over time that they buy what they want. It is "boring", but gets the job done, and I think that is least amount of scummy tactic where they still have option to use money but isn't predatory (except event skins which will always invoke MOFO, but they return next year, no big deal). I don't know, it all just is tiring. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they never tried with OW2, and just kept it like it was. Lootboxes were predatory, but this is worse, and I don't think they will ever give it up, even if only to remove Premium Battle Pass and have everything accessible. For me, they were too greedy and too aggressive, and as a consequence I just don't engage.
TBH it is astoundingly pathetic to feel threatened by this state of affairs. You really got so little going on that someone else's skin in a F2P game makes you feel less than? For real? Whew lad. Get therapy.
You're acting like I'm describing some made-up grievance when this is literally one of the cores of marketing as a concept - exploiting feelings of FOMO and haves vs have-nots to make people feel pressured into purchases and feel bad if they can't afford them. It's not about feeling "threatened" by this state of affairs, it's about criticizing how this practice is shitty in general and particularly absurd in a field where the companies are openly and explicitly doing this despite not having the same production costs/limitations of physical goods. Frankly, the astoundingly pathetic thing to do is to jump to a company's defence when they're going out of their way to screw over regular people like you by exploiting the social pressures people feel to fit in and not be seen as less-than which has been well documented in research on this subject, especially when it comes to children - and hey, would you look at that! Only one of us here is doing that, and it's not me!
I bought one skin, and three battle passes. If they lowered the price of skins by $7 I'd have spent so much because I love theor design but their marketing lies on greed over oakyer happiness and it's insane. If you bought mercy flat out you need some financial therapy
The only good thing that comes out of the current system is that it makes the game free to play, paid for in large part by the rich. It's got it's drawbacks, but I don't necessarily despise this system in the context of Overwatch (in society it sucks.)
On the whole shoes analogy. Class has never affected my enjoyment of overwatch. I've worn crocs long before they were cool because they're comfy. I wear the black metal Junker Queen skin for a similar reason. Sure, there are "expensive and classy" skins, but I'll wear what I like, rather than an expensive, $900 pair of shoes.
Gotta be honest, never have I experienced any of this skin-classism in OW2, hell I've never experienced it in life either and I'm lower bracket of middle class, but I'm not american so maybe thats why.
Classism as a result of buying some pixels is just a war of who's retail therapy hits harder
the overlap of polisci education + skidoo references + overwatch is so niche but man you've hit the right audience. keep it up man these videos are radical
@@handsoaphandsoapif you use your reading comprehension you'll notice that they didn't say that Overwatch iself was niche, but rather the overlap of topics
Winton doesn’t approve of classism I hope
Watch him get the next mythic skin 🤞
lmfao if that happens i will change the comment
if winton gets a mythic i’m giving blizzard my money for the first time (since buying overwatch 1)
Can't believe I forgot to consider whether or not Winton is classist in the philosophy videos from October :(
Winton is monke he eat bana
Combining Vide Game Cosmetics with material analysis , where has this content been all my life.
Whenever I see a £20 or so for a skin, I remember I have about 90 games on my Steam wishlist, and most of those sell at times for under £20.
It's why I never bought Time Keeper Kiriko.
I cannot wait for the video about how multi-player gaming has basically become chore lists This video was amazing! Can't wait to see what comes next. ❤
ikr? I literally said this to my friend trying to explain why i dread playing fortnite, because i have to spend my time doing boring, recycled and repetitive chores to slowly progress bit by bit. My friends said I was lazy but it's not that, I love 100% stuff when the quests are fun and engaging, not just a cheap trick to get more playtime.
That’s why I only play online games with friends now, and just play my JRPGS when they’re not on.
This video kinda made me take a step back and appreciate that I do have the time to game and that I do have the money to buy some shiny skins (k-pop collab gives me serotonin) I keep holding out hope that with the new Microsoft deal that maybe Blizzard will make things more affordable. But I know that’s just a silly little hope.
I hope blizzard will make it cheaper but i also rendorse them not making it cheaper! Haha i know its a sad hope!
Oh, we've already seen this in Fortnite. You see folks mistreat people who have the defaults or the free skins. While people fawn over folks with the pricy, rare skins.
At the very least with Fortnite, you can see your skin at all times because it's a third-person shooter rather than first-person. You can at least say you're buying it for yourself there.
great video as per usual! 😊
Especially love the point about not letting being ”broke” get to you. It really really feels like you can’t do ANYTHING when you don’t have disposable income and it’s really tough.
As a Guatemalan I loved the inclusion of the united fruit company situation of 1954.
I feel like there's always an underlying feeling of unease I feel when finding new creators since I have no idea who the creator actually is. We've all been burned once or twice /by a creator we enjoyed that turns out to kind of be a jack ass. And this video is like. Idk. It's educational but also a peek into you and your worldview. Like obviously I don't know this person, but I have trust that they won't turn out to be another bummer that'll let me down. This video rules.
This video is fucking amazing and genuinely the way that skins work now genuinely turned me off from playing ow2 (among other things) I'm poor and the money I do have goes towards bills and food but in ow1 I was lucky and could grind for lootboxes I was always able to have what I wanted but in ow2 more and more I'm reminded that I"m poor, I play a lot of apex nowadays and I can't tell you the last time I even looked at it's disgustingly overpriced shops, it sucks that so much of gaming nowadays is focused on just draining out our money.
same it’s so ridiculous
Live service games suck single player games some are good and you get what you buy for.
Just dont buy any skins
if you don't take the bougie-bougie-bourgeoisie bit and make it a sound bite i will go feral
Well….you ate that.
Reinhardt is the only character worth buying skins for because you get to see the whole skin for about half of your gameplay as Reinhardt
2:18 I just wanna say the thumbnail of the green video is absolutely adorable, 10/10 art
Honestly it made me realize I want a lot more cute art of my model, it's one of my favourite pieces
Hey, I just wanna say thank you for making this video, since this was the video that eventually led me to uninstalling Overwatch and letting my bank account have a bit more in the bank each month. The specific point you made about how the skins aren't for you, but are to show off to other called me out in a way I was NOT prepared for. That + how I realized that that's how I treated the gameplay too, it wasn't for fun anymore, it had long ceased to probably around hour 600, but it was to ventilate anger or frustration or to dominate other people made me realize OW was no longer healthy for me, and probably stopped being healthy for me YEARS ago. So, thank you.
Good video! I will say (as someone who doesn't play a lot of other games with these issues-) it seems to me like Overwatch, specifically the community, hasn't bought in so much to the classism compared to other games. I'm thinking mostly what I've heard about Roblox and Fortnite - a mixture of these systems were in place to start, and most of the players being younger children. I believe it's more former than latter.
The trend I've seen more on Overwatch is new vs old players, speaking toward someone playing in default skins (especially ow2 defaults) vs someone with normal ow1 legendaries. To some extent, they've shot themselves in the foot to leverage more of the classism into the community - making the base skins fundamentally harder to acquire means someone having them to new players is notable. There's also the fundamental lack of excitement about skins than there was in ow1, holidays/events were major draws to look at the new stuff and I don't get the feeling much of that has been kept alive.
I worry more about the younger generation of overwatch players in regards to classist bullying and feeling alienated. What happens in five years when we have as many new ow2 characters as original ow1 characters and default skins are non-existent? Assumedly there would still be the older guard of original players, but like. I'm graduating from college soon, and I'm gonna be busy afterward, and that's the trajectory of most people who got into overwatch 1 in their mid teens and got most of the skins. I've been lucky enough to know this shit is stupid and not worth caring about, frankly I often end up mildly judgemental towards the people in my games with premium skins, but I neither act with malice or have seen anyone else do so for the opposite reason.
But, all of this is assuming goodwill from the OVERWATCH community, and to say I haven't seen it therefore it doesn't exist would be asinine. I'd like to think with the number of people who were really into ow1 and are constantly the ones criticizing ow2 on reddit and youtube, that most of this won't take root as badly as it has in other games because the people who are vocal and care know this is a sham.
Ultimately We Live In A Society TM and shit like this is gonna make for worse outcomes socially. I've hated the way they monetized ow2 from day 1 (remember when pink mercy was like, the only exclusively real world money purchase? And it was a fundraiser for breast cancer instead of one to line blizzard executives pockets?) and I have to hope the community at large avoids buying into ideas that skins mean anything. Then again, I'm one to talk, I'm a mercy main w Pink and Atlantic mercy skins. I'm lucky I don't play Hanzo, or the Valentine's day skin would've been problematic for my wallet. It's gonna be a shitstorm once Mercy gets a mythic or really solid legendary skin.
Thanks for the content and take care of yourself. ❤
I think Overwatch is still in a weird place because it's only recently adopted this model, whereas Fortnite or Valorant or Roblox have had it baked in since day 1. I'm honestly really glad that the channel members didn't pick this topic until after the Le Sserafim collab, though, because between that and the One Punch Man collab I felt like you could really see people's reactions shifting from "Awe, Witch Kiriko is cute but I can't afford it, oh well" to feeling genuinely left out because they couldn't participate in them as much as other people.
@@TheViveros not to be a silly little guy but thanks for the heart and reply 😳 I hope that it doesn't take hold, but certainly with more collabs and good skins people are gonna start feeling it. F in the chat for the completionists (me included) as I had all the Mercy skins before OW2 and I'm... Not gonna have that anymore. Let alone the people who will be compelled to buy every battle pass/get every mythic skin. Best way imo to hold onto the less classist community is to point at and make fun of anybody who tries to leverage skins as proof of being better or worse - discredit the dipshits who try and hold it over people.
I think we can manage it for a while, but overall it's a disgusting and disquieting trend for all of gaming that companies are trying to utilize class warfare/privilege to compell people to buy fucking video game skins. Surprising? No, late stage capitalism will eat us alive. Gotta do our best to not let it influence us where we can and fight for better in our daily lives. Mad respect for the work that you do, introducing these ideas to the Gamer population, always enjoyable and informative! Wish I could become a member and participate in the polls, but I'm living the poor college student life til I'm out ✌️
Big ramble, but tldr capitalism bad >:(
24:00 yeah, as someone who works on site in fort Mac doing crazy hours at a time, the battlepass holds me hostage to overwatch. To be fair I only play overwatch and minecraft but why would I play anything else when I have a mythic to unlock… That being said I am a slut for exclusive cosmetics unfortunately
Learning about classism in this manner really put my high school years into a new perspective. Both the bullying I received cuz I was the kid that bring a 3ds to school when everyone else was using the switch (I had both but preferred my 3ds for practicality reasons, something I had no idea that's why I was getting bullied for) and why I was an asshole when i played wow. I WAS THE TOP 5% IN THAT GAME. and being like 15-16 lead me to thinking I was hot shit for having more time than people older than me.
Huh every step of my life just outside of high school is learning step by step how I was an asshole and why I was an asshole.
Also probably mildly weird to think of high school me as being such a peace of shit when that was only 3 years ago for me........huh.
uh anyways great video as always. (Now if only I could be in the "in" crowd that can support you on channel memberships :P)
You weren’t an ass hole just ignorant everyone does it as a kid. The difference is as you learned you actually reflected. Don’t beat yourself up because of how different you were only three years ago, instead think how quickly you’ve been able to grow.
Good person - information = uninformed good person
Bad person + information = asshole
nah, it's normal as hell to think "wow i used to suck" about yourself from 3 years ago when you're that age! it's because your brain is still developing and you're still growing and learning, so you're becoming a better person so quickly that it's hard not to look back on stuff you did not long ago and think "yeesh, what a jackass." it's basically your job in high school to be Kind Of The Worst so that you can learn how bad that feels and how *not* to be like that in the future. this is a good sign :)
You bring up great points, and I can see how most people feel this way about skins and how people can feel a sense of “oh we both have the money to pay for this”. I don’t really feel this way. Much like your Vtubing model, I purchase digital 3-D assets to create characters that represent my personality and have learned 3-D modeling extensively. I know it takes work, time, love, art and dedication to make models that are unique. On my main model I use in most 3-D social vr games, alone the base was $50, hair $10, hat, clothing and accessories $40-50. That’s not including the labor it took to rig the armature and the hours of labor it took in photoshop to get the textures, emissions and UV mapping correctly. To quantify, that’s more than $300 with assets plus labor. I spend money on skins because I want to showcase my personality in games and can appreciate the work that goes into them. I don’t care what other people think at all! It’s art and I like to appreciate and enjoy it.
I really enjoyed this video. I do have to say, with about 200 hours of Overwatch 2, and thousands of hours in other multiplayer games that abuse microtransactions, I have never felt any classism or experienced any sort of discrimination because I don't have a specific cosmetic. Maybe, I'm just lucky and in the minority, but most of the toxic or discriminatory interactions that I come across are rank/player skill based. The only time that I have ever heard anything about the skin that Im wearing is when I'm joking around with my friends. I don't feel like the classism that people experience irl translates very much to videogames. Honestly I see way more people making fun of those who DO spend money on videogame cosmetics then people who don't.
Agreed. Interesting video but I can also confirm that with ~1500 hours in OW, no one in my comp games (master/gm) or just chilling in qp has ever cared about a skin ever. The only skin people ever drool over is that old pink Mercy from the breast cancer awareness campaign in OW1 and it's because it's more of a FOMO thing than a class thing. People are way to busy to tell you how trash you are to look at the skin you have.
the only thing that happened to me in 6 years that stood out to me was when I loaded into a comp game with my k-pop collab banner and someone in match chat said “(my username) spent 40 dollars on skins” and then threw the match (blatantly afk for most of the match) which was a bizarre experience lol
your analysis are always top notch.
you deserve: Way more viewers, way more subscribers and to be on Nebula
This video was so good
It brought a lot to my attention that I hadn't noticed before and this issue has been under our noses the whole time. Keep it up
When I see someone with the $40 Moira skin, us other nine players in the lobby just spend all match roasting them
"It's not that serious, bro" is usually the call of the smooth brain.
I've been waiting for this video ! Can't wait to watch it.!
What a wonderful way to wake up! Thanks for another amazing video :D
While I myself never felt this classism from not having certain items in OW2. I fully agree with this video just because you mentioned the year 1 OW1 Loot box for certain cosmetic you where looking for but just ended up getting something else doubly worse so if it was an event skin like my favorite D.va skin Palanquin (swear I gain like 100 level just from grinding for that) and the "time is money" part mentioning the dumb challenges & stuff needed for getting all the stuff in the battle pass if you don't do tier skips. I swear if I wasn't such a D.va simp (with Reaper and Zen also being my bros) I would have quit playing OW2 as fast as I quit OW1 mid 2018.
it's funny, just the other day I was talking with a friend I play OW with about this subject. And this video here puts into words what I wasn't able to fully express.
And in an eloquent way to boot lol
I feel like this argument could be better suited for a different game like Fortnite. It doesn’t work that well for Overwatch 2 because it would imply that the store cosmetics are a source of envy to others, but they are nothing special. Whenever I see a guy using a store skin I either don’t think about it or think “that guy actually wasted $20 on a subpar overwatch 2 skin smh”
Specially when a huge percentage of the games’ population hates the game and blizzard, they are just not gonna care about that one player with a $20 skin and think “man I’m lame”, if anything they would think that of the one that bought the skin, unless the skin is REALLY nice.
Idk I never saw this classism in OW2 so I thought it was kind of odd that it was mentioned.
How do you not have more views and subscribers your content is amazing
babe wake up new viveros video just dropped
bro was spittin in this video i gotta subscribe
Your channel is so underrated, very well done class analysis. Love from Saudi Arabia
saying all this while there's le sserafim sombra background footage is so funny lmao
wonder if you got to the part where i specifically said “my friend bought me the bundle as a gift and it helped reinforce my opinion on this bc i immediately got into a game where i was with somebody else who bought one of those bundles and we did the emotes together”
I commented this before I got to that part but didn't delete my comment because I feel its still relevant. Surely classism through association is still classism? Like when people get pulled into prestigious jobs by having rich friends for example.
I should probably specify I don't care if people spend money to make their video game characters look cooler, I have as well. We do agree on a basic level on this topic but I never saw people doing K-pop dances together in any game and assumed they were better than me or I was worse than them in any way just because I couldn't join in. That point missed the mark a little for me.
Overall good video though. I do wish gaming companies would think about those who don't want to spend money on a game on a regular basis but in the end of the day overpriced cosmetics are what turn in the big profit margins it seems.@@TheViveros
Man it was so wild I was not expecting you to bring up my country and the United Fruit company thing in a video about OW skins. Great video, really interesting.
Amazing video Viv.
Thank you Hartz!
When I heard you so eloquently explain Marx's theory of class in a video about OW2 of all things I legit tried subscribing to you AGAIN lmao Keep up the good work fr
I have never seen classism in overwatch. I see people that I make fun of for buying cosmetics and thats about it.
I need to watch through all of your videos because you have been making some really interesting points about stuff like this. o.O
Oooooo this video, it’s been long awaited for me W
i miss common/rare lootboxes so much. even during OW1 they were my favorite because "free coin." i think i had like 10k coins at one point. even if I didn't get a skin or other cosmetics i liked in a box, i always had the coins to buy it or could grind for the coin to buy it/more boxes. it was just nice.
I was at work when I watched this and I low key wanted to start a union by the end of the video 😅
Smh I'm never beating the socialist propaganda allegations
22:03 hey girl
This is a problem in many cosmetic having games. Roblox ("bacon hair"), Fortnite, TF2 (the "gibusvision" stereotype) etc etc. The F2P is often a target for bullying because they wear the default, "boring" skin.
In case you don't think I experience the other side of this: in Warframe, I own a crapton of cosmetics (some of which I have spent money on, because I enjoy the game and want to support the devs). But the game's culture is much different, since it's PvE and has a community of cooperation. A default color Excalibur is cute at best and infantilized at worst.
I am rewatching this video and one thing that made me think was that Riot for about 3 years did not offer any free cosmetics for League of Legends. But I didn't amd still don't see a culture like this. And IMO the thing that exasturbates this issue is the limited time FOMO store. In League a skin is between 5 and 30 USD but you dpn't have this situation where a skin can only be bought when it's available so not only do you need the disposible income but also have to have it ready when that skin comes to the store. Also the fact that they are 20 usd each
My phone listening to me in my pocket for my recommended feed is getting scary accurate. Had a conversation today with my overwatch playgroup. Long story short I mentioned "ooh shiny pink reinheart skin. I am tempted to buy it." And a guy in the playgroup was like "No don't give Blizzard your money they are a bad company." It sparked a whole discussion. Its not exactly the same as your video as it had more to do with consumer ethics. But at the end of the day I spend a long time playing this weird line where I didn't want to spend money on the game because there are morally dubious things happening in the industry. However here we are still playing the game. Either we are gonna play the game or we aren't. In for a penny in for a pound or we quit the game. Having the conversations and figuring out where we stand on the issues is important though. Scary how that conversation was what? Five hours ago and I see your channel for the first time now.
I’d pray for a new alternative to live games, but I don’t know if the new thing could be even worse. It seems they are betting on Cloud gaming? God! That would be horrible! Imagine all the new ways they could monetize games. It’s not looking good, fellas 😭😭😭
Btw, I should have said something earlier since it always bothered me when I saw the thumbnail in the poll’s announcements, but Hanzo is behind Liveweaver’s flower. If it’s some good ol’ Hanzo hate, I respect that, I stand by you, and you’ve done nothing wrong 😌
Edit: Forgot to congratulate you on another great video. Only hits on this channel. Line up for your weekly reminder of capitalism wrongdoings presented as pop culture commentary! 💅
I wouldn't call it Hanzo *hate* necessarily - it was initially an accident and then I thought "Wait, it's funnier if Lifeweaver's just trying to steal the scene and block out the others" so I left it in lmao
call me cringe for this but, the moment you name dropped the GOAT Terry P. i literally chanted aloud, "he's based!! he's based!!" and by "he" i mean YOU, Viveros! i'm a new watcher/subscriber currently picking through your videos old and new, and having just come over from the "omnics are shallow" video where i was already thinking to myself, "huh, he's pretty smart", i can now add "and has good tastes" to that assessment haha. i'm a voracious binge watcher so i know i'm going to tear through the rest of your videos all too soon, thus i say, i look forward to your next videos!
Omg I was NOT expecting the Telfar callout! As a Telfar obsessed OW player never expected this crossover
You perfectly summed up a feeling I've been having since the release of OW2. I buy the skin, I love the design, the lines, everything but when I use it... I feel kind of bad. In the past, when an event came out you would see a lot of people with the new skin and you could even appreciate the skin more (since in OW2 it's in first person, you don't even see the skin itself), now it's about you having an expensive skin. Too boring.
That transition at 2:55 was clean
To throw in my two cents, compared to Valorant, Overwatch players that I've come across don't care about skins. In Valorant, I've seen people get shit talked for what skins they use or lack. Again, in OW, that's not something I've really experienced.
Yeah most people who use the new characters either use the default or any free skin,I've never really been impressed by someone who had a premium skin
@@KingAssRipper69likewise, i dont know. Ive been wearing default lifeweaver skin since his release LOL. Even if someones terrible and theyre wearing a mythic or an expensive shop skin, no one comments about it as an insult.
I think ive only looked twice if it was a pink mercy or that widow skin, but its more because theyre rare.
I will say, they have updated their weekly challenges and made it way easier to complete challenges. Making it so weeklies stack if you haven't finished them, and making it so completing 3 weeklies gives you 20k exp. Still doesn't help the fact that if you play DPS, you're gonna have to off-role to complete the "Complete 20 games of All Role Queue" and if you're a Quick Play sweat, you gotta play 30 comp games a week if you really wanna keep up.
The fact i started OW1 in 2019 and got basically every skin and cosmetic that i still use now… i can say they at least did the lootbox system “right” if that is the proper word to use lol
good video essay i will be rethinking my spending this season (not sarcastic)
this video is summed up pretty well from when I was watching a streamer play overwatch 2 earlyish on and they died to someone with a paywalled skin and said "I just got deleted by a credit card, chat"
One little thing I would add is that this did exist in overwatch one to a small degree, since while after the fact you'd never know what someone spent on lootboxes, if you saw someone rocking the new legendary on day one of it being added one would often assume that it wasn't just sheer luck.
Of course, any accusations of being a spender were often shot down by it being a mere accusation if it wasn't instantly admitted to.
if the switch from lootboxes to bundles and battlepasses helped some people get out of a gambling addiction, then good for them. but as someone who played overwatch 1 for a long time and never bought a lootbox, i VASTLY prefer the lootbox system. it was fun opening them when you leveled up and you could get a lot of super cool cosmetics without ever spending a penny. even if the intention on blizzard's end was to maximize profits or whatever, it was still nice to have a system where players who didn't wanna spend any more money could still get the same cosmetics as everyone else through chance and/or grinding for currency
Nice ContraPoints reference!
High price limited time is basically Supreme brand business model
i bought the battle pass maybe 2-3 weeks in of playing every day. my mate buys it when he gets to level 80. we literally completed it within a week of each other, even w the xp boost (i also don’t pay to skip levels and it annoys me that you can) it’s really not that hard, if you pay attention to the challenges and play in a party it’s even easier. half the time i don’t even notice the challenges, i complete them as i go and occasionally look at the end of a game at what needs to be done next
if ur working a full time job w a family you probably don’t need the battle pass or to play 😂 if u have the time then fair but if they don’t they don’t that’s not class
i’m lowest of the low, on mental health benefits and paying taxes, and all day i play games lmao. it’s not class based it’s person to person basis. if u rlly don’t have time to play overwatch and take care of ur kids or go to ur birthday it’s rlly not anyones problem but theirs
Mmh, materialism explained through the lens of a hero shooter video game - my favorite~
Really good video, keep the good work
20:51 this is such a good fucking point! Like! That skin is very fun! I'd (hypothetically cause I haven't played OW in forever) use it! But because its a skin everyone gets for "free" after buying the battlepass it makes me less likely to want to use it. Whereas before I'd use any skin I had if I thought it looked cool even though they were all technically "free".
TBH, sometimes I take off cosmetics I have and put on the default skin because they still look cool. Also, I wear more recolors than rare skins. I mostly have OWL skins, and I do it on purpose.
This is where the fun begins
I also love the streamers defending the skin prices. “It’s not that expensive” $20 for a skin is rediculous. Skins should cost $10-15 max. Then flats on his shilling arc coping about the $68 bundle. “They gave you a discount so it was cheaper.” Thank god the people that set the price gave us a discount so they’d make more money. The bundle was $68 but you could get it for 50$. It’s a good discount but the bundles should’ve never cost that much especially the individual ones.
You tackling racism & classism but in ways that just isn't "this bad" that shows you've actually given these things in depth analysis, deserves a follow. I come from your other video regarding the Omnic being a shitty racism allegory (but also animals / robots in general in place of black people and other minorities) And I'm just happy with the way you seem to engage with the world. 20-40 dollars would only be okay if the artists were depending on the revenue, but the fact that we don't see them in gameplay much makes it a risky buy. I bit the bullet and got two skins for illari because I love her, and I personally just get more motivated when I look cute (which is a problem)
Capitalism is a plague upon life. To keep it strictly about OW though, This isn't to say those who work hard on these games (I aint talkin about a ceo ever.) don't deserve anything for the fruits of their labor, but squeezing money out of its userbase is soulless.
The mass appeal of gaming and its consequences. If you fall for "I have to buy thing to not look poor" in games (or being fr even in life) you are only pretending to be something you aren't. The identity through products is so cringe and I will never understand how people fall for it.
I miss the days where I just could fire up Overwatch, grind Quick Play for coins regardless if I win or lose, buy the stuff I want from those coins and enjoy the game with my other tank friend...
And Venture dropped with a whopping Z E R O legendary skins
When OW2 dropped i fucked up my account transfer and lost several years of stuff including my 2017 Halloween icon and now I get called a poor loser by people. Blizzard didnt help because they basically told me “tough luck buy the skins.”
12:40 cue Sigma's WHAT ARE THOSE?!
I got all the pop star skins, not because I wanted all of them, but because it was better to just get all of them. Basically, you know how there was a bundle and then all the separate skins? Well I figured out very quickly that getting 2 of the skins separately, costed the same amount if not more then the bundle itself. I only wanted sombra and kirko, but I ended up getting all of them cause of this realization. Though I don’t get why people keep saying it’s 68 dollars, it’s actually 50 to 54 dollars due to the bonus 50% you get.
Previously it was loot crates, today it's $20 skins, tomorrow it's buying loot boxes for 1/100 shards of skins.
One of the strange things about class though is that you can be born and raised one class socially but be in a totally different financial class
It's actually kinda funny, being a part of a lore-junkie friend group, which kinda always sticks to the default skins, since the very beginning. They feel authentic af, and, after all, were the defacto look for the character when coming up with their concept and overall design. That's why I don't feel the classism so much, and until I came into some other games ahem-ahem, gacha, ahem, I didn't even consider that it was a big issue. I was like "Bro, I love playing my DPS Sucrose in hit videogame Genshin Impact and I don't need you to tell me to try smth else".
Based dps sucrose
SEATED
Very cool video!
It's funny because the same thing happened in fortnite for an obvious reason before they gave a bunch of free skins , the term "default skin" was a stigma given to new players wich in part was used to ridicule them
I’m beginning to think that your channel is a critique on society and using overwatch as a starting point
Honestly I think it’s funny that my Overwatch videos outperform all my non-Overwatch content by such wide margins since functionally none of what I do is actually about Overwatch.
The loot boxes could be earned. About 90% of my currently owned skins were from those things, and I never bought any of them. Out of every lootbox system in games Overwatch had the most f2p one at the time.
It’s crazy cuz because of the new shop I haven’t spend literally any money on overwatch. I’m still mad about the new system tho especially considering I’ve started maining kiri. Idk it’s just kind of frustrating
40$ us for an ow bundle is crazy but I don’t mind 10 bucks for the battle pass here and there like every 3 months it’s not too bad
newcomer here at first I saw the vtuber and I was like wtf but then I realized I sound like an old man not willing to change as technology advances and should be more open to vtuber models ok bye
im just happy that i played ow 1 so i dont have to deal with feeling like shit as much when seeing other people wearing skins
My hated part of the BP is that there's skins that don't even have anything to do with BP's theme. For example. Greek Gods BP what does botanist Ana have to do with Ancient Greece? Cyclops Roadhog Reinhardt Minotaur and Hermes Lucio. Felt like they where deliberately put in the shop to be sold separately and they put skins like botanist Ana in an attempt to get mor money out of you. Which I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
same with the first BP for ow2 like it was cyber themed and things like edm dva commando sojourn didn't make sense all the other cyber themed skins were in the shop except Hinotori kiriko and cyberdemon genji
And now The Call of The Hunt BP too. It bothers me how people can't see that. @@Vomit_Power
When they finally made all the characters free, I jumped back into the game deciding I would never buy anything from the game. Every game to ever do a battlepass system has burned me, Gundam evolution, destiny 2, halo infinite, in all these games, the live service elements killed all enjoyment of the games. I’d rather pay 60 or 70 bucks for a game without a battle pass because I’ve never seen a battlepass be good.
It actually has aided me because I get underestimated running nothing but default skins and basic recolors. I’ve clutched a lot of fights because people see me, a tank main that looks new because I’m running all default skins, and not realize I’ve been playing the game on and off since 2016 (I only don’t have my old skin on my dad’s Xbox account). It’s pretty funny.
yeah, but bathtime zenyatta
Glad to see I'm not the only one who got suckered into the K-Pop skins
This reminds me slightly of the Trust Thermocline that is mentioned in this Disney Parks-video (ua-cam.com/video/w-4k9c8LZU4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=PoseidonEntertainment), with how there is a threshold before goodwill is lost to a quick and "unexpected" degree.
With OW1, I spent money on loot crates. Not always, but I had paid for the game and every now and then I figured I would buy lootbox, or gift them to a friend. It was fun, and it happened every now and then. I wanted the new skins and emotes and everything. I might not whale it, but it was something.
Now? Well, I need to give not only my money, but also my time, in order to get what I want, and it annoyed me, and then, I realized... why do I care? I cannot see the skin, emotes and voice lines are hardly useful outside of the sparse time in the beginning of the battle. Same with all the other cosmetics, they are effectively useless, and like you said, if I want to watch skins, I just go watch them in the gallery. Also with the emotes, it was fun to celebrate the new stuff with others, if someone also had it, but now nobody bothers because if I see a skin there is always the thought "oh, cool skin you bought".
Suddenly I just realized I don't need to use money on it. And OW lost a somewhat small customer who will probably not use any money at all, instead of someone who might now and then. Their greediness got to the point that I genuinely wonder if they lost more people than they gained, especially considering they said the PvE-mode didn't "sell well", as if people would be happy that they would have to buy the story-mode besides having to buy premium battle-pass and all other cosmetics.
Honestly, at this point I wish they had implemented something like what Gimkit.com is doing (I use it for my job); when you gain a level you get a set amount of fake coins, and you use them to buy skins, stickers or trails. If they need microtransactions, then have it possible for us to buy more fake coins, whatever. You can still have the temporary events so that some people panic and buys fake coins, or those that don't but simply play enough over time that they buy what they want. It is "boring", but gets the job done, and I think that is least amount of scummy tactic where they still have option to use money but isn't predatory (except event skins which will always invoke MOFO, but they return next year, no big deal).
I don't know, it all just is tiring. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they never tried with OW2, and just kept it like it was. Lootboxes were predatory, but this is worse, and I don't think they will ever give it up, even if only to remove Premium Battle Pass and have everything accessible. For me, they were too greedy and too aggressive, and as a consequence I just don't engage.
TBH it is astoundingly pathetic to feel threatened by this state of affairs. You really got so little going on that someone else's skin in a F2P game makes you feel less than? For real? Whew lad. Get therapy.
You're acting like I'm describing some made-up grievance when this is literally one of the cores of marketing as a concept - exploiting feelings of FOMO and haves vs have-nots to make people feel pressured into purchases and feel bad if they can't afford them. It's not about feeling "threatened" by this state of affairs, it's about criticizing how this practice is shitty in general and particularly absurd in a field where the companies are openly and explicitly doing this despite not having the same production costs/limitations of physical goods. Frankly, the astoundingly pathetic thing to do is to jump to a company's defence when they're going out of their way to screw over regular people like you by exploiting the social pressures people feel to fit in and not be seen as less-than which has been well documented in research on this subject, especially when it comes to children - and hey, would you look at that! Only one of us here is doing that, and it's not me!
I bought one skin, and three battle passes. If they lowered the price of skins by $7 I'd have spent so much because I love theor design but their marketing lies on greed over oakyer happiness and it's insane. If you bought mercy flat out you need some financial therapy
The only good thing that comes out of the current system is that it makes the game free to play, paid for in large part by the rich.
It's got it's drawbacks, but I don't necessarily despise this system in the context of Overwatch (in society it sucks.)
Are you now, or have you ever been a member of Null Sector?
On the whole shoes analogy. Class has never affected my enjoyment of overwatch. I've worn crocs long before they were cool because they're comfy. I wear the black metal Junker Queen skin for a similar reason. Sure, there are "expensive and classy" skins, but I'll wear what I like, rather than an expensive, $900 pair of shoes.
Local Vtuber discovers the woes of capitalism for the first time /j
Gotta be honest, never have I experienced any of this skin-classism in OW2, hell I've never experienced it in life either and I'm lower bracket of middle class, but I'm not american so maybe thats why.
Everytime someone says something like "but I'm not american so maybe that's why" I lose 10 years of my life