Category Archives: Games

The Gacha Connumdrum

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Free to Play is a lie. It really means “pay what you want”. It’s a more effective business model because 1 whale can compensate for hundreds of freeloaders, and in 99% of cases, the games are predicated on sheep for the wolves.

As a guy, there’s this interesting thing about being buff or having a suped up car. When you’re younger, you think these things will impress potential mates. As you grow older, you realize that the only other people who care are other males. The intended audience is in fact not the true audience.

F2P games are not made for me, they are made for whales. The largest incentive for whales is showing off how much of a whale they are, yet they need an audience for it. For PvE games, you would think this is cosmetics (it can be sometimes), but it fact it’s ladders. A smart developer will include the ability to view a character from the ladder… then you see cosmetics take a whole other meaning. PvP games are somewhat similar, but now we’re really talking sheep vs. wolves. I am not dismissing the talent that top level players have, but they need targets to practice. And those targets needs targets, and so on.

In both cases, there’s a feedback loop where the bottom of the pole sees the top and has some incentive to say “hey, they did this with X, I should buy X too!”. The monetization model is simple on the surface, but can get extremely complex as more and more systems are developed. The kicker here is that eastern developers have figured this out a while ago, and they have practically perfected it. Puzzles and Dragons is probably one of the most popular ones, and it’s 8 years old.

Which leads me to Genshin Impact. The bait of the game is amazing, I only hear positives. There’s a lot of good content until AR30. The money aspect up until then is mostly around wishes – loot boxes for characters and gear. It appears optional since progress is so quick. The switch that occurs past that point is that the fun things people were doing are now time gated (bypassed by money or waiting a day for resin to recharge). There are hundreds if not thousands of other games that use this exact same business model of energy / loot boxes (who hasn’t seen Raid ads on mobile?). Genshin Impact is different in that it looks amazing, is multi-platform and does an ok job on multiplayer. It’s lipstick on a pig. Nothing wrong if you like pork, but there’s no sane argument that it’s not pork.

All of this and I didn’t even get into the moral aspects of supporting a Chinese company. I’ll leave that to smarter folk.

I will end on saying I’m happy folks are enjoying it for the time being. Dollars to donuts it crashes before end of calendar in the west. As much because it’s a gacha game, compounded by our infinitely small attention spans.

God of War – Return Again

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I came in late to the PS4 era. There wasn’t much there at the start, plus I have a PC that covers a seemingly infinite amount of games. I did come in for Horizon: Zero Dawn. And God of War. And Read Dead Redemption 2. And Spider-Man. And Monster Hunter World. Some good games in there, but at the aggregate, less worthwhile to spend $400 in order to have access to half a dozen games. Hell of a cover charge. It does make for a decent media server for my basement projector though.

I have a top notch gaming laptop – there’s very little that consoles can provide that I can’t get elsewhere. Having Horizons show on PC is an eyebrow raiser – I’d expect more of that down the road. Maybe as my kids get older they’ll find more things to do with consoles, but for now Minecraft and Stardew Valley keep them going. Until then, I still can replay the games on PS4.

Spider-Man was a quick jaunt. NG+ means you start off at full power and a mini-map of things has little value. The main storyline is at best 8 hours, and on a second play through, struggles to hit the same beats as the first time through. The Peter/Doc Ock relationship is still solid, but by plowing though the quests, you don’t get the time to digest the results of the previous one.

God of War is different in quite a few respects. The game includes a sidekick (your son) and uses the story as a backdrop for the challenge of a relationship between father and child. Even the side quests have story dialogue attached, and none of it feels procedurally generated. They aren’t just icons on the map, they have a purpose. It also helps that all of these side activities provide additional rewards, even in NG+. The best items in the game are only seen in NG+, to the point where even the basic currency (hacksilver) still has a TON of value.

Rewards aside, the story line continues to really be the standout. All the roles are well written and acted. The arcs are character driven rather than simple plot devices – you can look back after a time and see the dominos that led to a given conflict. It examines the concepts of duty and sacrifice, the ramifications of trying to protect someone without their understanding of why. And it looks amazing. Jormungandr is still a sight to behold.

So I’m giving it another go. It’s entire package is like a warm bowl of homemade soup, it just feels like it hits all the right spots. I could use some of that today.

FF7 & PTSD

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This is going to be a weird one.

The Final Fantast series has quite a few tropes that keep it going. There’s nearly always a crystal, someone named Cid, and chocobos. They all showed up at some point in the series, and they’ve stuck around. Thematically, they also tend to focus on redemption, righting some wrong. FF4 really hit that one strongly (Cecil the dark knight / paladin) and it took FF6 to really start digging into the grey of morality. The storyline got much more complex.

FF7 was the first in a lot of respects, certainly in terms of visual representation. The swap to 3D brought an in-game perspective change, and with that, a more focused view on the drivers of the individual characters. Cloud is brooding because of guild. Barret is trying to find the balance between revenge and justice. RedXIII trying to find solace as the last of his kind. The story certainly took some long steps through, and while you start off thinking it’s an eco-heavy plot, after about 5 hours you realize that was just the appetizer. The literal world itself is at stake, and you plunge into its heart to save it. You win, but just. Game over.

Except this is where Squenix saw an opportunity to expand the storyline, to look at what happens after the heroes save the world and people try to get back to normal. Advent Children is 15 years old and focuses on that basic question – what do people do after the heroes save the world?

As corny as the idea was at the time, and as fanboy-ish I was when it came out, the film still stands up. The world is dying from a mysterious disease, there are whispers from ghosts that Sephiroth is still around, and CGI battle cinematics abound. Cloud pulls himself out of people’s lives as he’s infected, and eventually you come to terms that while the large battle was won, the war never really ended. The characters all have regrets of what happened, people they lost, and need to come to terms with it all.

The climatic scene puts a face to all of Cloud’s fears, and through clarity and support, he vanquishes it for good. The film could have simply ended with Cloud waking up from some coma, and the storyline would have worked just as well, as his demons are all internal.

There’s a reason that FF7 sticks so darn well in my head. The stakes were relatable, there were timely, the characters acted in a consistent fashion. Cloud was brooding without being a full on arsehole (*cough* Lightning *cough*). The FF series often talks about redemption, of justice. It’s a rare thing for the characters themselves to go through a personal journey. A journey that most of us will go through in our lives – just without giant dragons.

Small Goals

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Like getting out of bed.

I know I’m in a funk. That makes the funk even funkier. I have a pretty good idea why I’m in a funk. Kids and wife are back in school and it took all of a day for issues to pop up. Learning curve, and we need to adjust – fine. Work is in full transform mode, trying to take advantage of the work from home model to finally implement some much needed changes. Then there are some friends who are going through health issues – seems I can’t go 2 weeks before some sort of major health event going on. Normally I can box these items up and manage them. Those boxes are overfull, and my normal coping mechanisms are lacking.

Writing helps. Talking too. The ideas in my head need to come out, and both are effective ways to do so. Another technique I’ve tried with some success is setting small goals. Things that, on a normal day, are benign and simple. They are simple things, and the act of doing them brings some amount of pleasure.

Getting in and out of bed by a given time is a simple thing. The morning wash. Ensuring I take the time to eat a healthy breakfast. Pausing from desk work and stretching. Taking a few minutes to clean up the kitchen counters. Prepping coffee for tomorrow. Normally I wouldn’t even think of them, I’d just do it. Now it’s conscious.

To move into gaming for a minute, Stardew Valley is pretty much based on small goals. Waking up and watering my garden. Petting my animals. Repairing a fence or clearing the field of weeds. Making mayonnaise or truffle oil. Collecting roe and pickling it. It sounds ridiculous, but the act of plucking a field of blueberries just feels fun.

The larger goals are there. I’ve fully upgraded the farm house, but I’ve yet to furnish it with all the casks/kegs I want to build a winery. I’m 1 harvest away from finishing up the community center packages. I’m at 5 hearts (of 10) with a few villagers, so lots more talking and presents to go. I’ve got all the rarecrows (meaning access to the casino too!). I have chests and chests of stuff that may have some use, but I’ve yet to figure it out. I’ve got about 200k in the bank. I know I need to reach floor 100 in the Skull Cavern, so I’ll need a ton of bombs and a few healing pots to get there. None of these items can be done in a single day, week, or even a month of game-time. It will take multiple play sessions to get there, and each one still feels good to get through.

Stardew Valley (like Minecraft and similar) is not a game about the end, or major cinematics, it’s entirely about the journey. It’s chocked full of tiny little things to do, mundane even. But they are all linked together in some way. It’s like a dance, where you know the basic steps, but it takes music and a partner to really see it shine. You don’t wait for the music to end, you enjoy it while it plays.

It’s sometimes hard to explain why gaming is such a therapeutic thing for me. Most people only think of FPS/gore when they think of games. But in truth, I don’t play games to see the end credits. I play games to experience small joys. The best games have those joys intertwine into an experience that just doesn’t let go. And even when you do see those end credits, you feel like you just took the most amazing of journeys. It’s a damn good feeling.

Back Into the Fire

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Two weeks of vacation isn’t enough – I’ll just put it as plain as that. The first week was all renovations, the second was rain pretty much every day. It wasn’t office work, granted, and I was able to disconnect from email/chat for that time, but it wasn’t what I’d consider a break. When I did get back to the house, the back to school stuff was needed, our fridge needs to be replaced, and my Raider laptop has 4 faulty keys. First world problems much.

The Laptop Keyboard

I have a GE75 Raider, it’s a bit over a year old. The ESC, ~, Y and numpad 5 are not working for some reason. I checked the mechanical parts, everything is fine. The backlight is fine too. I figure I’ll order a new keyboard and replace it. But the GE75 is too new, so I’m rather looking for replacement parts for a GE73 (1yr earlier model). Most ship from China, but I did find one at a reasonable price nearby.

I’ve built my own PCs for years. I’ve repaired numerous laptops. Keyboard on laptops are the absolute worst thing to replace, since you need to take everything out. The GE75 has 2 hidden screws, or hidden in a way that you can’t really get to them without taking more parts first. I was really hoping not to have to take the fan off, and just the board, but everything is glued to something else. The form factor is so small, there are cables connected to both sides of the main board, and I always felt like I was breaking something. Finally get to the keyboard case and there’s a damn shield covering it. One that’s set with plastic rivets. It’s impossible for me to repair without breaking a pile more.

So now I need to find a shop that can do the work for me.

Stardew Valley

I use gaming as stress management. I picked up Stardew Valley for my tablet a while ago, never really got into it. Given the past few weeks, I took it for a spin.

It’s certainly calming. Managing energy levels to get through a day is a fun set of constraints. It’s impossible to lose, which is also good for stress. What it has a bit too much of is breadth to start. There are so, so many objectives that are possible, and nearly all of them are gated behind multiple days of work. They are optional, but they often unlock some other activity – like a greenhouse that grows plants year long.

The gameplay is such that you always get that “one more day” drive. Nearly every action can be automated in some manner, but that requires materials/money. Getting that also takes time and months of in-game effort. The systems are intertwined, and not easily explained, making wiki almost mandatory.

Not saying that’s a bad thing, just that sometimes I end up hitting a wall cause I can’t figure out how the next step completes. Say like a fish that only shows up when raining in the summer, at night, at a lake. How am I supposed to know that?

It is fun to discover new things. Realizing that almost everything has a value aside from money. It’s a drastic departure from most modern games, what with the grey/green/purple quality info. Once into the groove, things start working out.

I’m starting Spring in year 2 now. I understand enough of the mechanics now to close out the community Center this year and those extra unlocks. It’s fun setting up long term goals, then the short term ones as steps.

Plus it has fishing.

Shadowlands – Meh

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Legion worked primarily because it was a fresh breath of air on the WoD structure.  It had a big focus on the world and story, added new life to dungeons (with keys), and had a pile of horizontal stuff along the way.  The main gaps were around the abundance of RNG on game-changing items (good vs. bad legendaries).  There were challenges when it came to alts, and even larger challenges when it came to different specs.

BfA rubbed the wrong way because rather than build on that model, it opted to add multiple levels of RNG to pretty much every system.  Instead of targeting vertical progression, a wide swath of activities actually had a negative progress curve. The balance from launch improved the RNG, dramatically.  Multiple activities provide progress towards goals, which is mechanically solid.  What remains is Blizz’s frankly bonkers approach to balancing those options.  Multi-spec characters really took a beating here, since skills were locked into gear.  Felt like time travel.

Which brings me to Shadowlands.

There are multiple systems here that appear solid at the conceptual level.  It appears to be the merger of factions and talents, which seems a somewhat logical point in 2020.  It appears to provide rewards outside the gear, also good.  It has a visible progress line, compared to a roll of the die for the next upgrade, great.

Where the gap is for me, and from various blogs I appear to not be alone, is in the Blizz approach to balancing these choices.  Sure, there’s the meta, and there will always be a meta.  It’s 2020 for crying out loud.  No, what I’m getting at is that the illusion of choice due to poor balancing.  If your job is healing, then there are no choices but those that increase healing.  If you need movement for 1 fight out of 10, but it takes you a week to get access to that skill… well then you don’t take that skill.

I keep using the word balance, but we only ever think of one side of that scale – the one we are evaluating.  The measure on the opposite end is even more important.  If I am balancing a skill, we all have to agree on what’s the counterweight, the baseline.  Blizz has a habit of making that weight equal to 100% optimal use in mythic difficulty.  They will eventually reduce that, but it takes time.  The amount of time that takes, and the level, directly impacts the importance of the meta.

Further, the internal testing/beta process is clearly broken.  The massive nerfs applied to corruption effects once live show that clearly. Everyone was given a choice between a tactical nuke, and a rake.  I get that nothing is perfect, I more than get that.  That’s my everyday life, ugh.  You need to iterate, that’s normal.  But BfA didn’t have a single system that launched in an “acceptable” state, everything felt rushed.  I will be the first to admit that nearly every system improved over time, but that level of improvement is typicall in the beta process… not live.

My newsfeed has a ton of Shadowlands stuff.   Beta is live.  Core systems (like conduits) are already going back to the drawing board.  The speed of that change means that Blizz didn’t really think it was going to fly anyhow.  The selling features of this expansion are really twofold.  That this covenant system works (and is therefore balanced) and that the Maw has some sort of attraction to do on a regular basis.  As of now, in beta, where the excitement should be high, it’s instead very muted.  It’s very reminiscent of the BfA beta vibe.

Maybe we do end up with the A/B cycle of good/bad expansions.  I hope so more for Blizzard’s sake than my own.  There are a lot of eyes on this expansion, and if the cash cow that is WoW no longer produces, we are all aware that Mr. Kotick is more than willing to take action to solve it.  Way too many people lose in that event.

Heirlooms in BfA

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For a very long time, the entire point of heirlooms was to bypass the wonky leveling mechanics in WoW.  Mainly the fact that items scaled in power, smoothing (?) the power curve.  The % increase to xp gain has been a perk on top of that, and of larger and larger benefit as the leveling experience has gotten longer.  From level 100+, there’s really nothing in game that provides any character growth, it’s just a time tax.  Every expansion just adds 4 hours or so to the leveling period.

Shadowlands aims to reduce that time tax – with something near the 20hr mark to get from 1-60.  That’s in the realm of most single player games, so not too bad.  Heatmaps are going to be interesting… I don’t see why anyone, anywhere, would want to level in any zone that was NOT Legion / BfA.  Anything pre-MoP feels horrendous – and unless you’re really strapped for attention, you’re best playing the LFD roulette.

But 20 hours, that’s doable I guess.  Certainly less than the current pace of leveling, even with heirlooms.  So I guess that’s why Blizz is not planning to have an %XP boost anymore.  The item scaling appears to still be there, but I’d be wildly surprised if anyone thinks that’s enough of a motivator in a single expansion cycle (where I assume item levels make sense).

Taken from another lens, I see heirlooms as a band-aid for the larger problem – time to level.  That problem generated other problems, primarily the value of a level.  The level crunch should get rid of the value problem, where you spend 20 hours and get nothing for it.  The time to level reduction is pretty much required, given Blizz’ persistence to only put relevant content at max level.  I mean, aside from the art, what’s different from a player at level 30 and 119?  The rotation is 95% the same, there’s no real grouping aside from guilds, crafting is entirely meaningless.  The Class Trial option gives you nearly every permutation of gameplay for a class – and it doesnt take 20 hours to complete.

But that’s a larger rant.

Right now, Blizz is cutting leveling time, reducing a significant problem’s impact.  Removing %XP from heirlooms, in this expansion, removes the practical need to buy them.  Curious if they will do the same to the Refer a Friend bonus…

 

Offline Puzzles

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Internet at the cottage isn’t the best, and it’s not like we have rigs to manage the load here anyway.  I can work off my phone for the majority of the day, and there’s a need to decompress a tad between work and life.

There’s a couple tablets we have with, and in this ever-connected world, it’s a challenge to find things that work offline.  I’d hazard to say that most things work better offline, since they cannot access the ad servers – and nearly everything mobile has ads.  You end up losing an ad banner, or some injected ad in the middle of play. (Side note, if more than 10% of my time is spent watching ads, then that’s an uninstall.)  There are games that simply will not work offline – Super Mario Run is certainly one of them.  I get multiplayer / server hosted games… but others make less sense.

I end up with puzzlers instead, since they are rarely online.  There are some good ones out there.

The Room Series by Fireproof Games is a solid choice.  They last about 4-5 hours each, use touch controls, and have some decent puzzles.  Often there are branching choices near the end.  They are big games, so you want to be on wifi to download them.  Easy to be engrossed.

The House of Davinci by Blue Brain Games is also quite good.  The overall design is quite impressive, and most of the puzzles follow a logical flow.  It’s a notch under the Room series, but still incredibly higher than the next ones you can find.

Wordscapes has an absolutely horrendous ad system when you’re online.  When offline, it’s serene!

Sudoku puzzles abound, and it would be hard to make any serious recommendation.  They fit the niche between crosswords (which I find purposefully obtuse) and find-a-word.  The best part here is the option to select a difficulty.  Sometimes I want stupid easy, other times a tougher go.

Hidden Folks is awesome.  Like a monochrome Where’s Waldo.  Not terribly long, but very easy to get through – and the art is neat.

Monument Valley (and sequel) are great picks.  Escher paintings have always intrigued me and its even cooler to see them in motion.

Guild of Dungeoneering is a rogue-like card based dungeon explorer.  The game is somewhat simple, with a lot of unlocks along the road.  Its presentation values are astounding – like you were in a P&P game.

There are others that I flit to/from.  Puzzles/sims seem to be the ones I enjoy the most.  There’s a few idle games that come up, but I’d prefer to play than to wait for some cooldown to be available.

 

You’ll notice that nearly all these recommendations are games you need to pay for.  It’s impressive how much quality you can get for $5.  I can’t stand gatcha games, or the crazy grind / f2p bullplop that permeates mobile gaming.  You won’t find me downloading a Square Enix game at $30 (!!) but the $5-7 range seems to provide the best bang for the buck.  And it’s not like anyone is ordering a coffee anymore…

Leveling Speed

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What feels good for someone could feel off for another.  And in a game with multiple options, leveling between choices can vary wildly as well.

There’s really nothing that replaces the first time for pretty much anything in life.  It’s all shiny and new.  Games certainly have that in spades, where it may be mechanics that open up over time, or a story that just hits all the right notes.  Horizon: Zero Dawn was a damn feast in both those spaces, where more and more things just kept coming at you.  God of War’s story is just mind boggling the first time you run through it.  While both are made to play be played a main time, then perhaps a New Game+ (or much later), MMOs are instead meant to be replayed ad nauseum.  The leveling portion (getting another class/character to top level) is a part that just really struggles to come close to the first time.

Most MMO’s today suffer from this fatigue, not so much because the of the repetitive nature of the game, but because the games themselves are so old and that the leveling portion itself is a fraction of the totality of the game.  Since I’m leveling alts in WoW, I’ll pick on that for now.

There are few milestones in the leveling portion

  • 1 to 20 – starting experience
  • 21 to 60 – core skills (~24 hours from 1 to 60)
  • 61 to 80 – Frozen Throne + flying! (15 hours)
  • 81 to 90 – Pandaria (4 hours)
  • 91 to 100 – Warlords (4 hours)
  • 101 to 110 – Legion (4 hours)
  • 111 to 120 – BfA (12 hours)

Character progression-wise, 1 to 60 is where the real meat is.  You get pretty much the entire toolset by 30, and flying at 60, so the rest is all filler.  I still like to think that each milestone should be of similar duration, simply because the expansion mechanics do some somersaults.  I mean, you KNOW you’re in WoD because of the unskippable intro quest.  All told, it’s about 50 hours to get to 110.

Assuming you have heirlooms, war mode, and flying unlocked for every zone.

81 to 110 is all done within a similar timeframe – but only if you’ve unlocked flying everywhere – takes maybe 2 hours to get through each phase.  The 61 to 80 portion feels like it takes longer than the 21-60 part, but that’s not at all true.  Catalcysm was just after WotLK and we were still in the hub/fetch quest model.  There’s an insane amount of backtracking that is jut completely ignored once you can fly – and if you have any plans of visiting that content at all, it’s worth every second to unlock flying (remember to use a Human for any rep-based gains).

Now, the differences between classes is absurd.  A Hunter with War Mode skills (2 massive DPS boosts on relatively short cooldowns) can take out absolutely anything – even the 3+ targets in BfA.  It’s right on the edge of being a complete joke.  The other side of that spectrum is something like the Shaman, where even a single regular target can kill you.  I get the concept that each class has strengths and weaknesses, and for the most part they sort of all fit into this middle pack.  And because the class kits are determined way back at the start of the journey, the rest of the ride can be quite painful.

Now, the fundamental question here is Does It Matter?  In the context of leveling alts, not at all.  It’s just a repeat of what came before (minus the Legion Class Hall stuff, which can be awesome).  It’s a speedbum.  Where it does matter is in the goal of bringing in new main characters (either new players, or existing players changing classes).  The player’s enjoyment of the toolkit + leveling experience has a pretty big impact on the viability of that class long term.

If you have a chance, play a DH for an hour or so.  Then play any other class in the leveling process.  Or a WW Monk vs. a Rogue (or cat druid).  Some classes/specs have such a dynamic toolkit that moves beyond 2-3 keys, and their abilities just look damn cool.  Hate on Pally if you want, but there’s no denying that it looks like a Paladin should look.

Long post to short point.  I dont for a second imagine that Blizz has the resources necessary to re-jig the leveling experience or class kits.  I am hopeful that they address the time-to-level portion so that people can get to relevant content and current mechanics sooner.  Right now, Shadowlands seems to clock in at 1-50 taking ~20 hours – I still think that’s twice as long as needed.  It would be amazing if they somehow made the older content relevant again… but in nearly every respect that matters, that ship left port years and years ago.

 

 

Throttling the Market

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WoW had a stealth fix applied that impacts people who play the Auction House, effectively throttling the number of transactions after a certain limit is reached.  High level

With this hotfix, we’ve implemented a new system that effectively gives each player a “budget” of AH actions per minute, and only kicks in once that budget has been exceeded. The system is tuned so that is should never affect players using the AH typically: buying consumables, listing gathered or crafted goods for sale, searching for specific items you want to purchase, etc. It should be essentially impossible to encounter the new limits for most players.

The first question I have is why?  I can only assume this is a throughput/TX issue where the servers were taking a major load and impacting other parts of the game.  It’s entirely possible that a very small fraction of players are causing a majority of the game load.  This is sort of like how time dilation works in EvE, where there isn’t a hard cap, simply a soft one that allows things to move at a snail’s pace.  Degraded service, rather than failed service.

Balance-wise, I am more curious as to where this threshold exists.  Long gone are the days where people posted single items rather than stacks, clogging up the AH space.  It was why I stopped playin a Hunter – getting ammo was stupid complicated.  Getting rid of thousands of individual posting isn’t a problem that needs solving anymore.

A long time ago I used to play the AH, maybe 30 minutes a day or so.  Made enough money to get a dozen+ WoW tokens.  I can’t see how anyone would have the Brontosaurus mount who wasn’t using something like TSM to make money.  It’s entirely the purpose of that mount after all.  Entirely normal to run a few hundred changes in a few minutes – cancelling auctions and reposting at a different price.  Filling up in materials.

The sidenote here would be snipe scans.  That takes a look across the entire AH for things that are well below market value.  It’s nearly impossible to find these manually.  Someone continually polling the entire AH would be a massive drain on server.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term market value.  It’s certainly a number Blizz can change over time, and I’m sure they are seeing server TX volumes take a massive nosedive.  Even more curious if this is account-wide, or character specific.  If there’s a hard drop (e.g. cap goes away after an hour) or if it’s a variable rate limit.

There’s a real world analogy here, where the majority of stock market transactions are high volume automated systems, making pennies a trade, but having millions of transactions a day.  It would be something to see what TX throttling would have as an impact to the market volatility.  Course that won’t ever happen, for reasons that are clearly obvious that the people making the most money in this behavior are also the ones who make the rules…