Sadly not every deserving AA studio gets to survive in the long term nowadays. Minimi Studios is my go to example for this. They made amazing niche games with no exploitative DLC/monetization that were widely praised but rarely played. Sometimes good, honest studios can’t make enough money to get by in this day and age and that’s a real tragedy.
Because they want to chase that annual recurring revenue stream. Make game once - make money forever. What these executives don’t realize is how hard it is to make such game. They seem to believe if they throw just enough money at it, a profitable game will come out.
We’ve got the IP, why don’t we make the Smash Bros. killer? We can call it “MultiVersus”!
I’ve noticed that an increasing amount of games that I enjoy over the past decade have been indie games (or games with lax publishers.)
Because they don’t want some of the money, or even enough of the money. They want all of the money, and think all you have to do is copy a successful game to get it.
Because sometimes that’s all it takes… See dayz vs pubg vs h1z1 (vs original fortnite to some extend). Or valorant vs overwatch (and csgo to an extend).
Spins with just a little bit of change can be a massive success.
That “little bit of change” is what these greedy cunts don’t get, though. You need creativity for that to work.
Moreover, like Hollywood, the gaming industry is largely run by people who truly do not understand the thing they’re there to make. All of the C-levels still think it’s the early 2000s where you could shit out anything that looked like a popular game and make 20 billion dollars from it. They think their entire market is dumb kids who will mindlessly play whatever is put in front of them without regard to polish, story, or even playability.
And chasing trends when it can take up 5 years or more to complete a project is utterly moronic.
And the market proves it’s true.
How in the hell is EA still not dead?
Many studios produce barely acceptable shit, yet people buy it in droves.
How in the hell is EA still not dead?
Sports games
WHY DO PEOPLE BUY THAT??!
The same reason there aren’t bear-proof trash cans. There’s a lot of overlap in intelligence levels between people and bears
Seems to be the basis for 90% of the economy at this point.
EA is a publisher that goes against that, bad publisher to use as an example
I don’t know what you mean.
Every sports game is barely an asset flip, sometimes even with wrong years.
Most recently Split Fiction would be an example of not trend chasing
Unraveled, Fe, the rest of Hazelight’s games, Knockout city
The Sims and the sports games also aren’t trend chasing
Sims and sports games are just rehashes.
Or re-releases.
And every AAA studio will slowly stop investing into new IPs.
Stephanie Sterling has been saying this for so many years, and it’s only getting worse. at least in the “”“AAA”“” space.
I’ve been a fan since The Escapist days
I started watching shortly after the escapist… thank god for her!
Fiduciary duty to shareholders. Line must go up, as much as possible, as fast as possible.
The profit incentive is toxic to creativity. Try to imagine how much cultural value is lost every single day because of no UBI and having to worry about a survival job.
No question that it’s a lot. The cost of a UBI would probably be more though, ($500/month/capita, maybe? $ 2.1 trillion per annum for the USA).
There isn’t a set in stone amount of UBI for it to be called that. Even $100/mo would be UBI.
the “B” stands for basic, as in basic needs, $100/mo would not cover the average americans rent, let alone other basic needs. You’re looking for Universal stipend/Guarenteed Minimum Income/Citizens dividend or other related concept
Is that a fun conversation for you? What are we after right now? I don’t get it.
That.applies evrywhere, theres a.quasi famous quote from somone whose name escapees me, that opined they arent so muvh worried about the intracties of Einstein’s brian but the fact so many like it have had to work below minimum wage jobs picking starberries in fields just to survive and humanities future has been robbed becase of it.
Evil is banal.
But what if number bigger?
Because money isn’t real if you have enough to lose. You can just put the blame on someone else and then get your shareholders to fund another project that will be “different”, just like all the other cash cows on the market.
Because we buy the games, the microtransactions, the cosmetics, etc. Even just one purchase multiplied by millions is a win for publishers. Whales and content creators fuel the cycle even more. Meanwhile, currencies get deliberately convoluted: you need stars for a pull, which require sparkle farts, which you can’t buy directly or in exact amounts. Out of sparkle farts? $14.99 gets you 6000—enough for three whole pills! Don’t worry, there’s a pity system, so the most you’ll spend is only $400. And then you’re left with 60 stars, and if you just had 40 more!
You’re not forced to buy, but they make the grind brutal and a slog. If you’re really unlucky, it can even make actually playing the came harder. And as long as this system makes money, it won’t stop. Games are turning into storefronts with a mini-game attached. Good games feel like rare blessings, and creativity is often found only indie studios. Big teams have talent—they’re just not allowed to use it, their companies don’t care about that. Gotta make money, more money, all the time, forever, or you’ve failed.
I say “they” like I don’t play a few gachas myself, but still.I do like the analogy of the ingame currency named “sparkle farts”
Infinite growth mentality vs remembering the customer as a human
“I don’t understand what you’re calling the wallet piggies” - executives and the whole marketing dept
And honestly, they’re right. Games are fundamentally optional and there are so many to choose from but these garbage studios make garbage games and openly degrade their customers but people keep paying them.
I mean it doesn’t look so good for the AAA studios tho
They’d rather oversaturate the fucking market place chasing an elusive Pot of Gold than go for the sure thing.
No, going for the sure thing is why we have EA pumping out COD and a dozon sports games identical to last years every year.
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If EA is making new COD games then Activision really needs to sue for copyright infringement.
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Which would you rather have? Yearly releases of beloved IPs or Rare sitting on Banjo Kazooie because this is totally the year when Sea of Thieves finally becomes Pirate Fortnite? Actually given how backhanded the Battletoads reboot was…
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I’d rather have The Sims 4 get endless expansions if the alternative is that it’s abandoned altogether like so many other IPs EA owns like Ultima, Command and Conquer, Sim City, and Wing Commander
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They work for the shareholders, not the customers. For most publicly traded companies, the stock is completely detached from fundamentals, so they just do whatever the large investors like (often just hype the new hottest thing; such as marketplaces or “increasing efficiency” with layoffs), regardless if its good for the “real” business or not.
How boeing lost 11.9 Billion in one year, and then 11.8 billion a few years later. Is there anything people that have a lot of money can’t do? Yeah, stay in their fucking lane.
Because money.
Those execs are only concerned with turning the quickest profit so they can move to another company with another hiring bonus
Dont forget the golden parachute they get when they piss off the consumer base with several $60 games that turn out to be incomplete garbage and get themselves fired.