23 Apr 2020 -
However, the economics of game development favor competitive gameplay:
If you cut NPC enemies and AI out of the game, they’re way cheaper to develop. Competition leads to gamers who like competition playing these games, and including some streamers. Streamers are free marketing for competitive games. If a streamer unlocks a cool skin, some of their fans will pay for loot-boxes in the hopes of acquiring the same skin (or a complementary one), so they can in turn get attention from someone they look up to. However, these incentives are short-sighted and always lead to a Tragedy of the Commons situation where the good players get better, and the bad players leave for other games.
You can see this in action when big competitive streamers decry a lack of “fresh blood” in competitive PvP.
The simple truth is, they don’t want fresh blood for the sake of sharing experiences of their favorite game with a diverse pool of newcomers. They just want more n00bs to score points on and inflate their own importance within the scene.
Coudn’t’ve said it better myself.