The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not the demand for AAA games, except in the case of Star Citizen. By definition, unless you have a AAA budget, there is no AAA game ... and no indie game has that ... except star citizen.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not the demand for AAA games, except in the case of Star Citizen. By definition, unless you have a AAA budget, there is no AAA game ... and no indie game has that ... except star citizen.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
I think the case of Star Citizen was an extraordinary unmet demand which allowed it to secure the funds. Ofcourse that isn't the whole story, they ran and continue to run an excellent crowdfunding campaign. Will it happen again? I don't know but can it happen again? I would think so if the same conditions present themselves.
The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
Originally posted by mmorobo It's the lack of education about Other Peoples Money. Mostly the goverment fails on this hard, but in this conversation it's the creative / artsy / consumer types that fail to understand. You only get a say so when its your money or time. You agree to work for someone else or take their money there will be strings attached!
I don't think this will go down well but here goes "It is the workers that control the means of production"
Don't flame me too hard.
Seriously as best as I can tell and as some have already said it's not black and white. You can't blame the suits, the devs or the players. If you know enough about a specific circumstance than maybe you could for that circumstance but it's unlikely to hold up to scrutiny in all circumstances.
I am unsure of your quoted line. Even unions have trouble "dictating" the means of production, ie: strikes and such. I have not experienced this philosophy myself.
There used to be an old business adage that has been long forgotten, it seems: "Make a good product or worthwhile service and consumers will reward you." (or something similar.) One of the problems with this adage is that consumers have lost their ability to think critically, believe what they are told, and lost the value of their own money. If "us consumers" started to act with some semblance of brains, we could take back control. We just can not seem to do so. So "bad" products and services get rewarded because "we" like shiny things.
Look at how well a good CGI video sells an unknown game. We gamers, as consumers, watch these videos and start to "imagine" what the game will be like, as it is not shown in the videos. But our characters are not able to cross huge chasms on a rope while getting shot at (like TES:O) or jump meters through the air and land a massive overhand attack on our opponents (like too many games to single out one). Our characters do not look anything like the CGI models shown. Still, we buy game after game, because we "imagine" a great game, getting caught up in the emotion those videos sometimes evoke.
What I am long-windedly saying is that in order for capitalism to work (suits), it needs the check of consumer intelligence, which is failing spectacularly right now, especially in the video game market. We consumers have given up all control.
I must agree, though it is often due to boredom and settling until something better comes along. Why do other things when you can play a shit game, but game nonetheless?
Originally posted by mmoroboIt's the lack of education about Other Peoples Money. Mostly the goverment fails on this hard, but in this conversation it's the creative / artsy / consumer types that fail to understand. You only get a say so when its your money or time. You agree to work for someone else or take their money there will be strings attached!
I don't think this will go down well but here goes "It is the workers that control the means of production" Don't flame me too hard.Seriously as best as I can tell and as some have already said it's not black and white. You can't blame the suits, the devs or the players. If you know enough about a specific circumstance than maybe you could for that circumstance but it's unlikely to hold up to scrutiny in all circumstances.
I am unsure of your quoted line. Even unions have trouble "dictating" the means of production, ie: strikes and such. I have not experienced this philosophy myself.There used to be an old business adage that has been long forgotten, it seems: "Make a good product or worthwhile service and consumers will reward you." (or something similar.) One of the problems with this adage is that consumers have lost their ability to think critically, believe what they are told, and lost the value of their own money. If "us consumers" started to act with some semblance of brains, we could take back control. We just can not seem to do so. So "bad" products and services get rewarded because "we" like shiny things.Look at how well a good CGI video sells an unknown game. We gamers, as consumers, watch these videos and start to "imagine" what the game will be like, as it is not shown in the videos. But our characters are not able to cross huge chasms on a rope while getting shot at (like TES:O) or jump meters through the air and land a massive overhand attack on our opponents (like too many games to single out one). Our characters do not look anything like the CGI models shown. Still, we buy game after game, because we "imagine" a great game, getting caught up in the emotion those videos sometimes evoke.What I am long-windedly saying is that in order for capitalism to work (suits), it needs the check of consumer intelligence, which is failing spectacularly right now, especially in the video game market. We consumers have given up all control.
It's just a way of saying that the real power/skill to produce is via the workers. Look at the indie scene in game development. They can make the games because they have the skill. Some CEO who can't code or do art can't make the game, they need to rely on others. Similar statements are used as a rallying cry for trade unions. Trade unions can ofcourse cause entire industries to grind to a stand still but it's often not in their interest to do so because they are hurting the industry which employees their members. Anyway it was a bit off topic.
As for your statement about there needing to be checks for "consumer intelligence" I wrote this in another thread but think it's relevant here so I'll paste it in quotes.
"Whilst it is possible to blame the millions of consumers I would much rather 1.more sensible and accountable marketing practices be used. 2. To have media independent of advertising things which they are reporting on. 3. It would also be good if people stopped taking it upon themselves (or maybe from someone elses authority) to hype (excessively promote) games in forums and so on. 4. To expand on 3, if someone had financial links to that which they promote, it would be good if they exercised some integrity and disclosed it in the form of a signature or something of that nature.
PS Now 3 might seem like I am still blaming the consumer but I'm not. It is the lack of 1,2 and 4 that I think creates the problem in the first place."
Everyone has a price; devs would make shit if paid enough, even if they have a good project on the go. CEOs don't personally need talent, they need money. Their money, their rules.
It takes Artists of many different types of Genres, in order to make an MMORPG especially.
Visual, Literary, Sound and yes... even the systems and how they are implemented within an MMORPG, take an "Artistic-type" to truly understand how they work best. Any idea just how many "Systems" are involved?
The Suits need to not interfere where they have no business interfering.
How does villainy relate to artistry? In many ways business intervention is a necessity, especially as things scale. Want more creativity and results? More means more management and higher costs.
They look like fucking monsters to me. Sure their job is to make the company bigger seems easy enough, but do they have to rely on cowardice and do THE SAME FUCKING SHIT over and over? They have ruined MMORPG's because of this and gaming doesn't seem to move as fast as it did. The most interesting games that actually come out end up to be Indi ones (most likely 2-D) because of the freedom they can take. Sigh, if only a 3-AAA title didn't deliver same old schlock. I'd be sooo happy.
They look like monsters because devs paint that picture during interviews with "They made us..." Someone has to manage finances and people when someone quits, calls in sick, goes on mat-leave, wants a raise... Sometimes people have to program 16 hour days during crunch time because people are enraged when 2 year delays are announced.
I do not think anyone is saying, or has said, "DO NOT MAKE ANY MONEY! NONE!"
You can't have a cake an eat it whole.
Your reply to AlBQuirky here, tells me you are speaking out of your hind quarters. His post here, that you quoted mind you, is exactly dead on. How you can possibly justify your reply to it? Oh yeah, you can not.
MMORPG companies need to make money... and lots of it. However, there are correct approaches to doing so, which do entail providing products in a proper manner. And then there is what we see in overwhelming majorities throughout the MMORPG market.
You CAN have an MMORPG created correctly... AND it can still make plenty of profits. Period. To state otherwise is just outright ridiculous.
"correctness" is debatable based on motivation and perspective. Better game or more profits. Profitable or really profitable. Good game vs. perfected but released 10 years late (WoW still has many game play issues to date).
The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not the demand for AAA games, except in the case of Star Citizen. By definition, unless you have a AAA budget, there is no AAA game ... and no indie game has that ... except star citizen.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
I think the case of Star Citizen was an extraordinary unmet demand which allowed it to secure the funds. Ofcourse that isn't the whole story, they ran and continue to run an excellent crowdfunding campaign. Will it happen again? I don't know but can it happen again? I would think so if the same conditions present themselves.
No argument there .. but no matter how you cut it, even with a new game like SC, it is still a rarity. 99.999% of the AAA games are funded by huge companies with lots of suits involved.
The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
I'd prefer to play Elite Dangerous personally.
sure .. for you .... but indie gaming does not replace AAA for everyone .. or even most gamers. Otherwise AAA gaming would have died already because it has such a big cost disadvantage.
There is nothing wrong with some business guys coming in and and saying "Guys we are outta money" and then closing shop. Yeah it sucks, but that is the way it is. I have personally experienced this as a dev at a startup. There are no infinite resources. That's life.
Similarly there is nothing wrong with a business guy saying "Guys your burn rate is too high, you have like 1/3 done given the set of things we all agreed we need for minimal success and you have burned through 2/3 of the money. We gotta make more with less." Now understand that last statement may not be possible, but it is a cold hard fact that this situation will lead to the situation above it is nor or cannot be altered. This is bit here is one of the most important things the "suits" should be doing. They need to do it VERY early on, they need to stay on top of it during the course of the whole project, and they need to have established someone way to ascertain whether things are on track from very early on. Many "suits" are far worse at this than many of you seem to realize. It is also the case that development itself is very hard to accurately project out, so for all people involved there is a certain amount of leeway we should give them.
It is not perfectly ok to have marketing dicks or executives force in a DRM on a game that actually fucking deletes people's save games using a completely unnecessary "cloud" implementation that actually prevents standard functionality like saving locally. In fact this is not just not OK it is wrong. It is wrong on many levels. Its a bad implementation. It is an attempt to herd and collect people into a utility based paradigm. Don't confuse a "free market" and business. They are not the same thing. Many business people are constantly trying to make their business model as uncompetitive as possible. That is what that Ubisoft DRM was. Half of the justification has nothing to do with actually stopping piracy, rather they want to lock you in and make opting for a competitor harder and harder for you. You understand they had to actually implement EXTRA crap to do this to you right? This is not business, this is not trade. Its an attack. It is an attempt to dominate.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
There can be a lot of gray area about things like shutting down games or releasing "too early" since resources are finite.
As a dev you honestly very much desire a "suit" and/or feature manager who can stay on top of the money considerations in a sane and competent manner. Its really quite a wonderful and key thing, it makes you so much more confident in the future of the project. As a dev with a decade+ experience you understand that getting a suit who is sane, competent, and on top of things is very very rare. Don't believe it? Think only the cream rises to top? Never heard of the Pareto rule? Cool. Good luck with that.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
The point is Indie stuff can step in when publishers and suits fail to meet demand and they have been.
Not the demand for AAA games, except in the case of Star Citizen. By definition, unless you have a AAA budget, there is no AAA game ... and no indie game has that ... except star citizen.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
I think the case of Star Citizen was an extraordinary unmet demand which allowed it to secure the funds. Ofcourse that isn't the whole story, they ran and continue to run an excellent crowdfunding campaign. Will it happen again? I don't know but can it happen again? I would think so if the same conditions present themselves.
No argument there .. but no matter how you cut it, even with a new game like SC, it is still a rarity. 99.999% of the AAA games are funded by huge companies with lots of suits involved.
Then we really aren't in disagreement. You don't deny the potential for indies to meet demand should AAA companies fail to do so and I don't deny that it is extremely rare that indie companies secure AAA budgets.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
In theory yes...But we really dont have much of a "free market" anymore.
Not sure about gaming (in general) but from what I have seen,if enough people are employed (to garner attention) the government will step in either directly or indirectly to help keep them afloat. This makes competiton have a much harder time even finding an even footing.
An example that is recent (and again...Not about gaming) My city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping a certain downtown Bar/restaraunt open along with tax abatments and interest free loans. Finally after 15 years of runningin the red it closed for good. During that time other eataries and bars failed in the same area which did not have preferential treatment and could have had more customers had our money not been lost keeping a failing business afloat...Thats just a small example of many from my city. We throw money at certain businesses and end up losing (and its dirty too..But that a seperate topic)
I am sure gaming(and every corporation) also works under unfair competition with help from tax money... I havnt researched it but I have researched how this is working with corporations and businesses in this supposidly "free market"... They even hide in the CAFRs but its happening...everywhere.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
In theory yes...But we really dont have much of a "free market" anymore.
Not sure about gaming (in general) but from what I have seen,if enough people are employed (to garner attention) the government will step in either directly or indirectly to help keep them afloat. This makes competiton have a much harder time even finding an even footing.
An example that is recent (and again...Not about gaming) My city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping a certain downtown Bar/restaraunt open along with tax abatments and interest free loans. Finally after 15 years of runningin the red it closed for good. During that time other eataries and bars failed in the same area which did not have preferential treatment and could have had more customers had our money not been lost keeping a failing business afloat...Thats just a small example of many from my city. We throw money at certain businesses and end up losing (and its dirty too..But that a seperate topic)
I am sure gaming(and every corporation) also works under unfair competition with help from tax money... I havnt researched it but I have researched how this is working with corporations and businesses in this supposidly "free market"... They even hide in the CAFRs but its happening...everywhere.
Yes there are a lot of areas which are not "free" markets either because they never truly were or have become slanted for one reason or another unfortunately in the USA the discourse is so propagandized that there are a number of people who have been convinced by a certain political set that anything non-governmental is auto-matically part of the free market.
Healthcare in the USA is not a free market. Its barely even a market. Its price setting cartel. The inception of this cartel was created via governmental interference in the 1950s but did truly becomes a cartel until a couple decades later. Yet the side of the political "spectrum" (in quotes because its all bullshit) that says free markets are good and work constantly tries to tell you the USA healthcare system great because its a "free market". What a laugh. Then the other side pops in with their bullshit about price controls etc, which never ever have worked in the entire history of the world. So we get one side that is so delusional they think up is down and the other side that is so delusional that they think things that don't work and never have somehow do.
You can form a cartel of one sort or another in various ways and it doesn't take government interference for it to happen. It simply takes power. More often than not is is a government, but it doesn't have to be simply look at the history banking.
Read up on the history of the Bank of England and how and why it was founded. Then tell me banks as they exist today are part of a "free" market.
I think the idea of a free market is fine, and I wish we had more. But I find a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking they actually exist in places they don't and are commonplace.
And if you haven't noticed there is all sorts of cartel forming behavior going on in the gaming industry.
Thats because people arent stupid. The really large financial powers ARE evil. Thats the only way to become and stay such a large financial power. Its called capitalism.
Small likeable gaming companies like Obsidian and Bethesda also exist, but they arent the big winners.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
In theory yes...But we really dont have much of a "free market" anymore.
Not sure about gaming (in general) but from what I have seen,if enough people are employed (to garner attention) the government will step in either directly or indirectly to help keep them afloat. This makes competiton have a much harder time even finding an even footing.
We have a free market in entertainment. Governments are not keeping game devs afloat .. just look at how many have gone down over the years.
In fact, that is pretty good evidence that free markets work in gaming. Produce a popular game, and you survive, produce a bad game that does not sell, and you are gone.
Originally posted by Gaendric He is right in this point:
You can not judge the objective quality of a product/method/whatever just based on your personal taste and preferences. This ofcourse applies to everyone. Doing it is a fallacy called mind projection.
Liking something different doesn't mean better or worse, just different. Taste is subjective.
I never said he was wrong in that point. I actually agree 100%.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
If "suits or management types" in the MMORPG industry knew what they were doing, they would know which few artists were worth having onboard. In my own experiences, I have often found that less people involved actually means more accomplished, with the only exception being gruntwork or menial tasks (and even then people botch things up). More people involved often means more chaos and less efficiency. At least, that has always been my experience. I always hated group projects back in school for this reason. I ended up bringing to the table, while others were all "la-dee-da".
Larger projects are less efficient, but hopefully you understand there's no escaping the fact that MMORPGs are very large projects. You can produce a low-quality thing like Haven & Hearth was with a smaller team, but between having AAA-quality assets and scaling to true MMO size a large team is required for anything serious.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
How does villainy relate to artistry? In many ways business intervention is a necessity, especially as things scale. Want more creativity and results? More means more management and higher costs.
Villainy relates to artistry like this: any artist who attempts to avoid starvation while creating their art is a villain.
...at least that's my impression of how a very vocal group of players feels about it. And in this case "artist" basically applies to the entire dev team (including myself as a designer) because in the end we're all part of producing a finished entertainment product which is essentially art.
Personally I view it all in cold capitalistic terms: if a product is worth buying at its price, I'll buy it. If it's too expensive (for the amount of entertainment expected), I won't. A company would have to be truly underhanded to be considered villainous to me.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Thats because people arent stupid. The really large financial powers ARE evil. Thats the only way to become and stay such a large financial power. Its called capitalism.
Small likeable gaming companies like Obsidian and Bethesda also exist, but they arent the big winners.
No its not capitalism. Its called capitalism by a lot of dishonest and/or ignorant politicians and there attendent fellow travellers.
Your description can as easily apply to mercantilism as it does to capitalism. These are NOT the same thing even though they both apply to commerce.
Don't let these people make you stupid. I understand that the current education system re-enforces and and indoctrinates most people in the USA to this. This .... confusion ... is not most people's fault.
But, seriously, look into these things. You are if you want to be optimistic being regularly told wrong things or you want to be pessimistic (although I would say realistic in this case) being lied to.
Capitalism is a quite specific scheme with particular traits. When you see people claim, for example, the capitlism was a main cause or contributor to colonialistic exploitation of various areas, these people are often simply calling what is obviously mercantilism; capitalism.
Sadly no one even acknowledges that mercantilism is widely in use today, including (really especially) people that are free-market advocates. Even worse capitalism and specifically laissez-faire was a direct repudiation of mercantilism and yet today the two are virtually synonymous.
The whole thing fucking stinks. Like lambs to the slaughter.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
In theory yes...But we really dont have much of a "free market" anymore.
Not sure about gaming (in general) but from what I have seen,if enough people are employed (to garner attention) the government will step in either directly or indirectly to help keep them afloat. This makes competiton have a much harder time even finding an even footing.
We have a free market in entertainment. Governments are not keeping game devs afloat .. just look at how many have gone down over the years.
In fact, that is pretty good evidence that free markets work in gaming. Produce a popular game, and you survive, produce a bad game that does not sell, and you are gone.
Sure about that? have you studied this extensivly? Looked at the CAFRs and such?
I'mnot being a dick either- I havnt. But I have looked at the CAFRs for software develpoers and we sure as fuck are supporting some to the detriment of others. In fact, The US Government might as well own Microsoft , and dont get me started on Apple.
Plus if you get back into older gaming(something I do know about) Nintendo was a dirty company whicvh totally destroyed "free market"competition and was actually sued for it.
So dont be so so sure....
Once you look into the CAFRs it becomes evident that our tax money picks winners and losers in MANY businesses.
Again, dont know about gaming in specific but I am pretty certain we have our hand in it in some way, shape or form which kills the freemarket.
Someone also mentioned capitalism vs mercantilism and I would say they made a pretty stellar point.
Thats because people arent stupid. The really large financial powers ARE evil. Thats the only way to become and stay such a large financial power. Its called capitalism.
Small likeable gaming companies like Obsidian and Bethesda also exist, but they arent the big winners.
No its not capitalism. Its called capitalism by a lot of dishonest and/or ignorant politicians and there attendent fellow travellers.
Your description can as easily apply to mercantilism as it does to capitalism. These are NOT the same thing even though they both apply to commerce.
Don't let these people make you stupid. I understand that the current education system re-enforces and and indoctrinates most people in the USA to this. This .... confusion ... is not most people's fault.
But, seriously, look into these things. You are if you want to be optimistic being regularly told wrong things or you want to be pessimistic (although I would say realistic in this case) being lied to.
Capitalism is a quite specific scheme with particular traits. When you see people claim, for example, the capitlism was a main cause or contributor to colonialistic exploitation of various areas, these people are often simply calling what is obviously mercantilism; capitalism.
Sadly no one even acknowledges that mercantilism is widely in use today, including (really especially) people that are free-market advocates. Even worse capitalism and specifically laissez-faire was a direct repudiation of mercantilism and yet today the two are virtually synonymous.
The whole thing fucking stinks. Like lambs to the slaughter.
Without citations or definitions, this is just a tantrum.
As it stands, the definition of capitalism found on the internet very accurately describes the method of trade in the games industry. ("an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.")
In the context of the earlier poster, some companies are evil (or at least "detestable", if we want to distance ourselves from awkward good vs. evil labels.) However the amount of gamer outrage I see over EA's relatively harmless microtransactions (charging for content!? Worst company ever.) is ridiculous compared with companies out there doing genuine harm (and the detestable companies in agribusiness, financial, and energy sectors are probably only the most noticeable of the hard-to-notice companies doing real harm.) This doesn't excuse the mild amount of detestable things that can happen in the industry, but really that's all pretty minor compared to truly detestable companies.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Not the demand for AAA games, except in the case of Star Citizen. By definition, unless you have a AAA budget, there is no AAA game ... and no indie game has that ... except star citizen.
Not that i don't play indie game ... but playing something like Mark of the Ninja, a great indie game, is not the same as playing say Dishonored, a AAA game.
I think the case of Star Citizen was an extraordinary unmet demand which allowed it to secure the funds. Ofcourse that isn't the whole story, they ran and continue to run an excellent crowdfunding campaign. Will it happen again? I don't know but can it happen again? I would think so if the same conditions present themselves.
I'd prefer to play Elite Dangerous personally.
I must agree, though it is often due to boredom and settling until something better comes along. Why do other things when you can play a shit game, but game nonetheless?
Everyone has a price; devs would make shit if paid enough, even if they have a good project on the go. CEOs don't personally need talent, they need money. Their money, their rules.
Suits are evil in the sense that they would be happy if you could just die and send them all your money.
But they know people refuse to do this, so instead they are trying to tempt people into giving their money to them.
And thus capitalism was born.
How does villainy relate to artistry? In many ways business intervention is a necessity, especially as things scale. Want more creativity and results? More means more management and higher costs.
They look like monsters because devs paint that picture during interviews with "They made us..." Someone has to manage finances and people when someone quits, calls in sick, goes on mat-leave, wants a raise... Sometimes people have to program 16 hour days during crunch time because people are enraged when 2 year delays are announced.
"correctness" is debatable based on motivation and perspective. Better game or more profits. Profitable or really profitable. Good game vs. perfected but released 10 years late (WoW still has many game play issues to date).
No argument there .. but no matter how you cut it, even with a new game like SC, it is still a rarity. 99.999% of the AAA games are funded by huge companies with lots of suits involved.
sure .. for you .... but indie gaming does not replace AAA for everyone .. or even most gamers. Otherwise AAA gaming would have died already because it has such a big cost disadvantage.
There is nothing wrong with some business guys coming in and and saying "Guys we are outta money" and then closing shop. Yeah it sucks, but that is the way it is. I have personally experienced this as a dev at a startup. There are no infinite resources. That's life.
Similarly there is nothing wrong with a business guy saying "Guys your burn rate is too high, you have like 1/3 done given the set of things we all agreed we need for minimal success and you have burned through 2/3 of the money. We gotta make more with less." Now understand that last statement may not be possible, but it is a cold hard fact that this situation will lead to the situation above it is nor or cannot be altered. This is bit here is one of the most important things the "suits" should be doing. They need to do it VERY early on, they need to stay on top of it during the course of the whole project, and they need to have established someone way to ascertain whether things are on track from very early on. Many "suits" are far worse at this than many of you seem to realize. It is also the case that development itself is very hard to accurately project out, so for all people involved there is a certain amount of leeway we should give them.
It is not perfectly ok to have marketing dicks or executives force in a DRM on a game that actually fucking deletes people's save games using a completely unnecessary "cloud" implementation that actually prevents standard functionality like saving locally. In fact this is not just not OK it is wrong. It is wrong on many levels. Its a bad implementation. It is an attempt to herd and collect people into a utility based paradigm. Don't confuse a "free market" and business. They are not the same thing. Many business people are constantly trying to make their business model as uncompetitive as possible. That is what that Ubisoft DRM was. Half of the justification has nothing to do with actually stopping piracy, rather they want to lock you in and make opting for a competitor harder and harder for you. You understand they had to actually implement EXTRA crap to do this to you right? This is not business, this is not trade. Its an attack. It is an attempt to dominate.
Fortaunately in their attempt to end run around competition they actually made themselves weaker against the competition and they have continued to sabotage their own products as we can see with AC:Unity. Hopefully eventually Ubisoft will go out of business as more and more people get a heavy feeling of "Caveat Emptor".
There can be a lot of gray area about things like shutting down games or releasing "too early" since resources are finite.
As a dev you honestly very much desire a "suit" and/or feature manager who can stay on top of the money considerations in a sane and competent manner. Its really quite a wonderful and key thing, it makes you so much more confident in the future of the project. As a dev with a decade+ experience you understand that getting a suit who is sane, competent, and on top of things is very very rare. Don't believe it? Think only the cream rises to top? Never heard of the Pareto rule? Cool. Good luck with that.
This shows that free market works.
Companies can try .. but if they are not entertaining customers in ways that customers want, they have no business soon.
Then we really aren't in disagreement. You don't deny the potential for indies to meet demand should AAA companies fail to do so and I don't deny that it is extremely rare that indie companies secure AAA budgets.
In theory yes...But we really dont have much of a "free market" anymore.
Not sure about gaming (in general) but from what I have seen,if enough people are employed (to garner attention) the government will step in either directly or indirectly to help keep them afloat. This makes competiton have a much harder time even finding an even footing.
An example that is recent (and again...Not about gaming) My city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping a certain downtown Bar/restaraunt open along with tax abatments and interest free loans. Finally after 15 years of runningin the red it closed for good. During that time other eataries and bars failed in the same area which did not have preferential treatment and could have had more customers had our money not been lost keeping a failing business afloat...Thats just a small example of many from my city. We throw money at certain businesses and end up losing (and its dirty too..But that a seperate topic)
I am sure gaming(and every corporation) also works under unfair competition with help from tax money... I havnt researched it but I have researched how this is working with corporations and businesses in this supposidly "free market"... They even hide in the CAFRs but its happening...everywhere.
Yes there are a lot of areas which are not "free" markets either because they never truly were or have become slanted for one reason or another unfortunately in the USA the discourse is so propagandized that there are a number of people who have been convinced by a certain political set that anything non-governmental is auto-matically part of the free market.
Healthcare in the USA is not a free market. Its barely even a market. Its price setting cartel. The inception of this cartel was created via governmental interference in the 1950s but did truly becomes a cartel until a couple decades later. Yet the side of the political "spectrum" (in quotes because its all bullshit) that says free markets are good and work constantly tries to tell you the USA healthcare system great because its a "free market". What a laugh. Then the other side pops in with their bullshit about price controls etc, which never ever have worked in the entire history of the world. So we get one side that is so delusional they think up is down and the other side that is so delusional that they think things that don't work and never have somehow do.
You can form a cartel of one sort or another in various ways and it doesn't take government interference for it to happen. It simply takes power. More often than not is is a government, but it doesn't have to be simply look at the history banking.
Read up on the history of the Bank of England and how and why it was founded. Then tell me banks as they exist today are part of a "free" market.
I think the idea of a free market is fine, and I wish we had more. But I find a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking they actually exist in places they don't and are commonplace.
And if you haven't noticed there is all sorts of cartel forming behavior going on in the gaming industry.
Thats because people arent stupid. The really large financial powers ARE evil. Thats the only way to become and stay such a large financial power. Its called capitalism.
Small likeable gaming companies like Obsidian and Bethesda also exist, but they arent the big winners.
We have a free market in entertainment. Governments are not keeping game devs afloat .. just look at how many have gone down over the years.
In fact, that is pretty good evidence that free markets work in gaming. Produce a popular game, and you survive, produce a bad game that does not sell, and you are gone.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Larger projects are less efficient, but hopefully you understand there's no escaping the fact that MMORPGs are very large projects. You can produce a low-quality thing like Haven & Hearth was with a smaller team, but between having AAA-quality assets and scaling to true MMO size a large team is required for anything serious.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Villainy relates to artistry like this: any artist who attempts to avoid starvation while creating their art is a villain.
...at least that's my impression of how a very vocal group of players feels about it. And in this case "artist" basically applies to the entire dev team (including myself as a designer) because in the end we're all part of producing a finished entertainment product which is essentially art.
Personally I view it all in cold capitalistic terms: if a product is worth buying at its price, I'll buy it. If it's too expensive (for the amount of entertainment expected), I won't. A company would have to be truly underhanded to be considered villainous to me.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No its not capitalism. Its called capitalism by a lot of dishonest and/or ignorant politicians and there attendent fellow travellers.
Your description can as easily apply to mercantilism as it does to capitalism. These are NOT the same thing even though they both apply to commerce.
Don't let these people make you stupid. I understand that the current education system re-enforces and and indoctrinates most people in the USA to this. This .... confusion ... is not most people's fault.
But, seriously, look into these things. You are if you want to be optimistic being regularly told wrong things or you want to be pessimistic (although I would say realistic in this case) being lied to.
Capitalism is a quite specific scheme with particular traits. When you see people claim, for example, the capitlism was a main cause or contributor to colonialistic exploitation of various areas, these people are often simply calling what is obviously mercantilism; capitalism.
Sadly no one even acknowledges that mercantilism is widely in use today, including (really especially) people that are free-market advocates. Even worse capitalism and specifically laissez-faire was a direct repudiation of mercantilism and yet today the two are virtually synonymous.
The whole thing fucking stinks. Like lambs to the slaughter.
Sure about that? have you studied this extensivly? Looked at the CAFRs and such?
I'mnot being a dick either- I havnt. But I have looked at the CAFRs for software develpoers and we sure as fuck are supporting some to the detriment of others. In fact, The US Government might as well own Microsoft , and dont get me started on Apple.
Plus if you get back into older gaming(something I do know about) Nintendo was a dirty company whicvh totally destroyed "free market"competition and was actually sued for it.
So dont be so so sure....
Once you look into the CAFRs it becomes evident that our tax money picks winners and losers in MANY businesses.
Again, dont know about gaming in specific but I am pretty certain we have our hand in it in some way, shape or form which kills the freemarket.
Someone also mentioned capitalism vs mercantilism and I would say they made a pretty stellar point.
Without citations or definitions, this is just a tantrum.
As it stands, the definition of capitalism found on the internet very accurately describes the method of trade in the games industry. ("an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.")
In the context of the earlier poster, some companies are evil (or at least "detestable", if we want to distance ourselves from awkward good vs. evil labels.) However the amount of gamer outrage I see over EA's relatively harmless microtransactions (charging for content!? Worst company ever.) is ridiculous compared with companies out there doing genuine harm (and the detestable companies in agribusiness, financial, and energy sectors are probably only the most noticeable of the hard-to-notice companies doing real harm.) This doesn't excuse the mild amount of detestable things that can happen in the industry, but really that's all pretty minor compared to truly detestable companies.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver