Now that former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has free time on his hands, he’s apparently spending some of it pondering how to make our late-stage capitalist hellscape of a life worse, such as dreaming up ways for gamers to tip game devs. Here’s what he said on Twitter this weekend:
“When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I’ve often thought ‘I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn’t try to nickel and dime me every second.’ […] I know $70 is already a lot, but it’s an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special.”
Ybarra closes his shower thought tweet with acknowledgment that there are many gamers who won’t like the idea, particularly since he believes there’s a general sense of exhaustion with tipping for everything else, but he argues that tipping game devs is “different from a pressure to tip type scenario many face and give feedback on.”
While a few replies were on board with the idea, most pointed out that tipping game devs ignores the wider problem of publishers and studios not paying game developers enough for their hard work – and that the burden of doing so shouldn’t fall on consumers’ shoulders. “Silence, billionaire,” one gamer snarked.
I've thought about this idea for a while, as a player, since I've been diving into single player games lately.
When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I've often thought "I wish I could give these…
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) April 11, 2024
