Also European here. They do. Certainly in the shops I've been in. Probably a country thing.
arkthos
Since it's free I will probably check it out. The style seems to be all over the place though, with little care for any kind of world consistency. Seems like a popular design choice with metaverse stuff, but that is usually because of user generated content, not just the developer throwing a bucket of paint on the wall.
Also that trailer is fucking awful lmao. Oh well, let's see if the game is any better than it. The concept of a vr mmo is admittedly alluring, I prefer a bit of gameplay direction rather than the total openness of vrchat etc. A world to get immersed into.
Usually microtransactions have such a low real price that it wouldn't make sense to make the bank transaction for just a single skin or whatever. I think you'd just end up with bundles instead where there's a single thing you actually want with a bunch of bullshit attached to justify a higher asking price.
It gets very blurry in the early days of video games. Ahoy made a great video about just that, actually: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc&pp=ygUYYWhveSBlYXJsaWVzdCB2aWRlbyBnYW1l
Basically, there's earlier games than pacman, but what actually constitutes a video game starts to become a much less trivial question.
I agree for the most part. A company holding an iron grip on the game and keep the competitive scene alive as a marketing tactic is a recipe for disaster if we are to take it seriously as a long term sport. A company will not hesitate to shut things down if they unanimously decide they no longer want it to exist.
Regarding whether esports are sports or not is kind of arbitrary. The same as how we call competitive chess and darts and formula 1 sports despite being more mental than physical in nature.
I play it with hotas and it works fine. You'll absolutely still want to keep a keyboard and mouse handy though because the RTS/management half of the game is really not that well controlled with a flight stick.