The stock market is a joke. Basing the entire economy of the western world on it is even dumber.
Basing our economy on the health and value of our businesses is a joke?
If you think the stock market is a health indicator of businesses that's even funnier.
Big business is based around investors. (Like it or not that's the truth) If investors are selling stock its an indicator of their insecurity in regards to a business. Investors are privy to information not available to the public so them selling out is indeed a decent indicator of the health and profitability of a business. Atleast in the short term.
People are voting and striking with their wallets. I bought destiny when it came out, I felt tricked...never bought another destiny game again. Same with battlefield, never bought another battlefield after bf4. I understand Ea and activision are a business, but if you don't cater to your consumers..well you won't be getting good business.
And that's the root of the problem. Gaming is a business industry now. We spend more time pretending to be financial experts then actually playing games. Hell half the people here refer to games as a "product" now.
Now before some pseudo-intellectual tries to remind me about business and economics, it is my opinion that if the game is good enough, that studio is going to do well. Some people are willing to pay any price for a good game (cash shop, subs, etc.).
I can't even name a developer today. Why? Because they don't make games, people in boardrooms do. Developers are bottom of the barrel, janitor-tier, today. They are expendable.
I am still having fun buying and playing video games. I don't understand your doom and gloom assessment.
Negativity gets them upvotes/like/agrees. Some people just need that sense of inclusion and forums like this and social media in general is their place to feel apart of something. It's why they bash Developers and games, they very very rarely actual make a positive comment on something they enjoy.
People are voting and striking with their wallets. I bought destiny when it came out, I felt tricked...never bought another destiny game again. Same with battlefield, never bought another battlefield after bf4. I understand Ea and activision are a business, but if you don't cater to your consumers..well you won't be getting good business.
And that's the root of the problem. Gaming is a business industry now. We spend more time pretending to be financial experts then actually playing games. Hell half the people here refer to games as a "product" now.
Now before some pseudo-intellectual tries to remind me about business and economics, it is my opinion that if the game is good enough, that studio is going to do well. Some people are willing to pay any price for a good game (cash shop, subs, etc.).
I can't even name a developer today. Why? Because they don't make games, people in boardrooms do. Developers are bottom of the barrel, janitor-tier, today. They are expendable.
I am still having fun buying and playing video games. I don't understand your doom and gloom assessment.
Negativity gets them upvotes/like/agrees. Some people just need that sense of inclusion and forums like this and social media in general is their place to feel apart of something. It's why they bash Developers and games, they very very rarely actual make a positive comment on something they enjoy.
People are voting and striking with their wallets. I bought destiny when it came out, I felt tricked...never bought another destiny game again. Same with battlefield, never bought another battlefield after bf4. I understand Ea and activision are a business, but if you don't cater to your consumers..well you won't be getting good business.
And that's the root of the problem. Gaming is a business industry now. We spend more time pretending to be financial experts then actually playing games. Hell half the people here refer to games as a "product" now.
Now before some pseudo-intellectual tries to remind me about business and economics, it is my opinion that if the game is good enough, that studio is going to do well. Some people are willing to pay any price for a good game (cash shop, subs, etc.).
I can't even name a developer today. Why? Because they don't make games, people in boardrooms do. Developers are bottom of the barrel, janitor-tier, today. They are expendable.
I am still having fun buying and playing video games. I don't understand your doom and gloom assessment.
Negativity gets them upvotes/like/agrees. Some people just need that sense of inclusion and forums like this and social media in general is their place to feel apart of something. It's why they bash Developers and games, they very very rarely actual make a positive comment on something they enjoy.
Yeah they are just negative people who need attention. That's what I said same as a cigar is just a cigar.
BF5 is actually quite fun and entertaining, its a mix between bfbc2 and bf3, some people say bf4 is better, but forgot about the mess bf4 was at launch when you couldnt join a server. Its the best battlefield launch of all the games, you have free dlc, no lootboxes and yeah the origin access premier had some bugs, but most of them are solved.
Some people just go with the hate badwagon and say that black ops 4 is better and sells better, of course its sold if you invest money into recycling old content with 20hz tick rate servers and the most of it into publicity.
People are voting and striking with their wallets. I bought destiny when it came out, I felt tricked...never bought another destiny game again. Same with battlefield, never bought another battlefield after bf4. I understand Ea and activision are a business, but if you don't cater to your consumers..well you won't be getting good business.
And that's the root of the problem. Gaming is a business industry now. We spend more time pretending to be financial experts then actually playing games. Hell half the people here refer to games as a "product" now.
Now before some pseudo-intellectual tries to remind me about business and economics, it is my opinion that if the game is good enough, that studio is going to do well. Some people are willing to pay any price for a good game (cash shop, subs, etc.).
I can't even name a developer today. Why? Because they don't make games, people in boardrooms do. Developers are bottom of the barrel, janitor-tier, today. They are expendable.
I am still having fun buying and playing video games. I don't understand your doom and gloom assessment.
Negativity gets them upvotes/like/agrees. Some people just need that sense of inclusion and forums like this and social media in general is their place to feel apart of something. It's why they bash Developers and games, they very very rarely actual make a positive comment on something they enjoy.
Freud said that? I thought it was Bill Clinton
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Remember the days when ppl didnt care how long it took Blizzard to make a game because whatever they made was fire. Nowadays ppl dont care if they make a game its gotten so sour. Today the developers i look most forward too are CD Projekt Red and a up and comer in the rpg segement with RDR2 Rockstar games.
Blizzard's problem is they try to drag everything on for soooooo long.
There's too many options these days to just keep playing something like Overwatch over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Why would you want to do that? Why are Blizzard so stupid that they think people want to do that? They set their expectations high.. and expect people to just play their games forever with hardly any proper updates. If you are that kind of gamer, you're missing everything about gaming... you're ancient.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
The truth of the matter is that good games are not as important as good marketing. Both Activision and Blizzard have had major marketing fiasco's this year. The game (or monetization) wasn't really any worst than in previous years... but the marketing for these was. If the marketing teams had been doing their jobs, then there would have been issues (like always) but they would have been minor, and they would have passed. Only because the people responsible for marketing were not doing their job did something different happen this year.
The conclusion is solid enough but what is missing, imo, from the article is what EA and Activision Blizzard's stock was in 2017.
EA's stock - despite the recent drop - is trading around what it was in the first part of 2017 and is still higher than what is was at the end of 2016. The same is true of Activision Blizzard.
According to "analysts' " commentary shares in both company's rose in the last c. 12 months a) on the back of "potential" income on the back of gaming as a service plus b) the borrowing funded corporate tax breaks.
The rise due to "potential" gaming as a service revenue can be attributed to what the company's tell investors / analysts. Not the corporate tax break stuff though.
And now there are concerns about economic slowdown as the flip side of the tax (tax breaks ending basically, higher deductions kicking in etc) along with the impact of sanctions etc which "potentially" (is expected) to hit discretionary spending next year.
And investors deal in "potential" - potential growth = rise; potential slowdown = fall.
The conclusion is solid enough but what is missing, imo, from the article is what EA and Activision Blizzard's stock was in 2017.
EA's stock - despite the recent drop - is trading around what it was in the first part of 2017 and is still higher than what is was at the end of 2016. The same is true of Activision Blizzard.
According to "analysts' " commentary shares in both company's rose in the last c. 12 months a) on the back of "potential" income on the back of gaming as a service plus b) the borrowing funded corporate tax breaks.
The rise due to "potential" gaming as a service revenue can be attributed to what the company's tell investors / analysts. Not the corporate tax break stuff though.
And now there are concerns about economic slowdown as the flip side of the tax breaks kicks in (tax breaks ending basically) along with the impact of sanctions etc which "potentially" (is expected) to hit discretionary spending next year.
And investors deal in "potential" - potential growth = rise; potential slowdown = fall.
Good points. I think the economy is slowing down a bit as well. Housing market is slowing down and the stock market has been in self correction mode for a few months. This might be more of reflection of the economy.
While I'm sure there are a few gamers with substantial stock portfolios, I think game developers lost track of their target audience. When you make games for a living, you listen to gamers, not people on wall street. In fact, it's become so blatantly bad, I'm surprised there hasn't been a Wall Street MMO yet.
Developers don't create games. People in boardrooms do. Developers are no-name, disposable, low-level employees today. Their role is to build money making mechanisms around business models, not fun.
Most tech stocks took a digger, Nvidia is -40%. It will rebound, that's what the market is all about, emotions. It gets rid of the stock holders that don't have the balls to hold on. They sell and take a bit of a loss to recover anything and put it somewhere else. While the market benefits those that stick in for the long gain.
pray tell me, what gain is there on a company who is not selling products and they next line of products are marked was not good enough and likely to fail? even if is the season for low, you don't lose half your value, if you was going well, tru stock market is based on otimism and projection, but we know very well then ea and blizz ther eis not nothing good going on on then, even teh most rabid fanboy are shaken, thanks for the bug riddle bf5 and diablo mobile
Kinda hard to understand what you are trying to say but market swings can just devalue stock as the fear that company x will be the next downtrend and is then traded at the same time. Like I said it is all emotions.
I have a portfolio of many tech companies and a few game developers. For the past 2-3 weeks it's been a decline and usually is around this time like most people said, it is kind of predicted. If Blizzard went down and the rest didn't follow then it would all make sense, but that is not what it is.
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
Remember the days when ppl didnt care how long it took Blizzard to make a game because whatever they made was fire. Nowadays ppl dont care if they make a game its gotten so sour. Today the developers i look most forward too are CD Projekt Red and a up and comer in the rpg segement with RDR2 Rockstar games.
The AAA game companies are the worse now. And you can add Bethesda to that list now. I remember how all these companies were when they started out. They cared what their player bases had to say and would always have forum sessions with players. But now they are these giant money making companies and its all changed. Its more about shareholders now and gamers come second or third. Time for gamers to quit these companies.
Blizzard imo hasn't made a good game yet.IMO EA has made far more games that look like some effort went into them,aside from testing/bugs which we all realize now has been bad all across the board. Now Activision of course when the deal was signed was huge with COD,not sure how that is doing anymore considering i gave up on the cheat fest.
Blizzard has been making cash shop games,so yeah low end,EA is a mixed bag of loot box crap and some good games.
Overall the whales have kept the dream alive for devs and their crappy low end cash shop games but i see the blemish starting to show and more people are saying NO to their crap.
IDK or care what people think about me personally but i do spend money,i do buy games but i see a whole lot of crap come into this industry since the crowd funding Early Access crap started.
I want developers to SELL their games because i want them to be held accountable for selling unfinished crap.They have had it far too easy with their Early Access claims but still taking your money like it is a finished product.They have had it too easy using the FREE to play moniker ,that way they can sell "we didn't sell them anything,it is free".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
My 2 cent on this article, well anything in the "stock market" is for the most part, irrelevance to a gamer unless youre econ gamer and buy stocks. As some had said, stock market is not an all in one good indicator of anything real, not unless youre a stock mastermind. Still take whatever little pleasure to see them losing money.
At any rate, as a gamer at least feel somewhat happy that their stocks had fallen, the lower the better. Oh wait, why would anyone wish for our beloved game companies to fall and be anything but happy? If you ask I guess your the type still would think your best friend takes out a gun on you and shooting you AND you would still think he's your best friend, right? NO, not even close ppl.
However, game companies of today aren't like in the 1995s, game company today only thinks and care for money not games. Game dev, however, think games are a fine works of art, >_> while the game company only see dollar sign and exploited as much as they can get away with. AND for the life of me how the hell ppl thinks game company is your best friend who abuse and USE you? That not even equitable, I know I did use it as an analogy but the point is, game company over the years haven't done anything to make my gaming experience any happier by adding additional cost like DLC and MTX and loot boxes o.o who knows what else in coming? Are ppl so blinded they NEVER had our interest not even for a sec so why would I believe they ever will? Again game company is not the same as game dev. at the very least not how each would view video games as a product or a work of fine art.
Yes some game company can be both and those that is, their games is not as good as pure dev vs suit useless ppl xD in my view. Off subject, marketing and Business ppl are THE most useless ppl ever to allow to exist on earth. Simple argument; without them I believe Elon would have help humanity move to space age long ago and we might have full VR drive rather than still using screen and what not now.
The only reason we are still crawling on the ground is because of Business ppl are always opposite of progression. After all their motto is rather sell more of the same for long time and profit than selling you the best once. HOW could anyone even remotely like such vial creature like biz ppl. Sure its arguable in reality our world is run by them, but don't you see that is why we are still in the stone age when compare to say aliens? I would never ever like to defend ppl or things that DON'T help ppl to move up but in this case the suit ppl are pulling us down o_o no less.
So white knight all you want, they (game companies) are not making you any happier or improve the gaming art when in fact they want to degrade it so they can profit from our desperation, it shows ppl, so just open your eyes, game play in 2018 is going backwards. Example, Destiny is good? but Des 2 should be way better than one? Sure subjective I'll give you that. BUT what if Des 3 is even worst than Des 1 and 2 combine? SO is the game improving or degrading? In general its not improving so what does that say?
SO once again FALL game companies FALL like a blight that you are!!! Not game dev. mind you, not to say there aren't any bad dev, they de exist but far from any game companies ever will. Real game developers want to make the games as fun as possible so they're well loved and not wanting ppl to hate it by adding pay wall/loot boxes/dlc or mtx to degrade their hard work of art into a mix buggy pile of poop. Looking at you Bethesda.
Well on the last poster's comment,not entirely true.
If the big guys are big because they manipulate and move numbers around to various quarters for various reasons,then perhaps when the investors catch on and see the trending patterns.They then realize,these businesses are finding ways to over rate their studios and deceive stock holders and other investors. I don't even remember what develoepr it was but a week or so ago on this site there was some numbers floating around/posted but when i actually read the official papers, i didn't see the same claims. Oh yeah it was Funcom,claiming best profits ever or maybe they worded it nicely to fool people.When i looked at the data sheets i saw them spending every last cent to the point of a negative number or right around break even.Operating at a loss or break even does NOT equate to BEST ever imo and even if it was is very misleading.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
EA has been doing all sorts of scandalous stuff for decades. If it were really going to hurt them beyond minor blips here and there, you'd think it would have done so by now. The latest examples will be no different.
At one point in time I was a "loyal" EA and Activision customer. However, they both have let down the PC gaming community in major ways in the more recent past opting to pander to the investor more then to their once loyal fan base's. I currently only own one Acivision product and it is somewhat disappointing and I haven't played it in a while. I have no current EA products and no desire to purchase any of their future products.
Frankly, too much attention has been given by many of these larger gaming companies to either mobile games or free to play games or both. If they would just get back to basics and make good quality games for console and PC they might have a chance of winning back fans. Until then, see ya.
Warcraft Battle Royal. Wtf is blizzard doing, that’s the only to get me back to Azeroth. To hell with their quest and scripted bosses. It’s 2018 ffs get with the times.
Well maybe a Warcraft 2 that’s FFA with player formed alliances, player voted on rulers,, player enforced laws, player driven economy, territory control... stuff like that. I’d probably come back for that.
As long as these companies put the bottom line first this is going to happen. Playing fast and loose with the business models, ripping the players off with loot crates or launching your next big (PC) title on mobiles to make a fast buck are not going to endear anyone to their fans.
If these guys want to make money they need to stop acting like a bunch of pirates and start listening to their fans. They need to stop churning out "good enough" games and start making games people want to buy, preferably of their platform of choice, not the one they think will achieve them the most profit.
Make good games, on platforms players want to play them on, lighten up on the micro-transactions and they will sell, then they make profits. Alternatively, carry on gouging the playerbase and releasing mediocre games and mobile trash and watch stocks tank.
I feel sorry for the developers. I think they want to make good games but the publishers are pushing for release dates, cutting out content to monetise as DLC on day 1, adding loot crates and other micro-transactions and basically destroying what good work the devs have done or would want to have included.
Comments
Big business is based around investors. (Like it or not that's the truth) If investors are selling stock its an indicator of their insecurity in regards to a business. Investors are privy to information not available to the public so them selling out is indeed a decent indicator of the health and profitability of a business. Atleast in the short term.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Some people just go with the hate badwagon and say that black ops 4 is better and sells better, of course its sold if you invest money into recycling old content with 20hz tick rate servers and the most of it into publicity.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
There's too many options these days to just keep playing something like Overwatch over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Why would you want to do that? Why are Blizzard so stupid that they think people want to do that? They set their expectations high.. and expect people to just play their games forever with hardly any proper updates. If you are that kind of gamer, you're missing everything about gaming... you're ancient.
EA's stock - despite the recent drop - is trading around what it was in the first part of 2017 and is still higher than what is was at the end of 2016. The same is true of Activision Blizzard.
According to "analysts' " commentary shares in both company's rose in the last c. 12 months a) on the back of "potential" income on the back of gaming as a service plus b) the borrowing funded corporate tax breaks.
The rise due to "potential" gaming as a service revenue can be attributed to what the company's tell investors / analysts. Not the corporate tax break stuff though.
And now there are concerns about economic slowdown as the flip side of the tax (tax breaks ending basically, higher deductions kicking in etc) along with the impact of sanctions etc which "potentially" (is expected) to hit discretionary spending next year.
And investors deal in "potential" - potential growth = rise; potential slowdown = fall.
I have a portfolio of many tech companies and a few game developers. For the past 2-3 weeks it's been a decline and usually is around this time like most people said, it is kind of predicted. If Blizzard went down and the rest didn't follow then it would all make sense, but that is not what it is.
Now Activision of course when the deal was signed was huge with COD,not sure how that is doing anymore considering i gave up on the cheat fest.
Blizzard has been making cash shop games,so yeah low end,EA is a mixed bag of loot box crap and some good games.
Overall the whales have kept the dream alive for devs and their crappy low end cash shop games but i see the blemish starting to show and more people are saying NO to their crap.
IDK or care what people think about me personally but i do spend money,i do buy games but i see a whole lot of crap come into this industry since the crowd funding Early Access crap started.
I want developers to SELL their games because i want them to be held accountable for selling unfinished crap.They have had it far too easy with their Early Access claims but still taking your money like it is a finished product.They have had it too easy using the FREE to play moniker ,that way they can sell "we didn't sell them anything,it is free".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
At any rate, as a gamer at least feel somewhat happy that their stocks had fallen, the lower the better. Oh wait, why would anyone wish for our beloved game companies to fall and be anything but happy? If you ask I guess your the type still would think your best friend takes out a gun on you and shooting you AND you would still think he's your best friend, right? NO, not even close ppl.
However, game companies of today aren't like in the 1995s, game company today only thinks and care for money not games. Game dev, however, think games are a fine works of art, >_> while the game company only see dollar sign and exploited as much as they can get away with. AND for the life of me how the hell ppl thinks game company is your best friend who abuse and USE you? That not even equitable, I know I did use it as an analogy but the point is, game company over the years haven't done anything to make my gaming experience any happier by adding additional cost like DLC and MTX and loot boxes o.o who knows what else in coming? Are ppl so blinded they NEVER had our interest not even for a sec so why would I believe they ever will? Again game company is not the same as game dev. at the very least not how each would view video games as a product or a work of fine art.
Yes some game company can be both and those that is, their games is not as good as pure dev vs suit useless ppl xD in my view. Off subject, marketing and Business ppl are THE most useless ppl ever to allow to exist on earth. Simple argument; without them I believe Elon would have help humanity move to space age long ago and we might have full VR drive rather than still using screen and what not now.
The only reason we are still crawling on the ground is because of Business ppl are always opposite of progression. After all their motto is rather sell more of the same for long time and profit than selling you the best once. HOW could anyone even remotely like such vial creature like biz ppl. Sure its arguable in reality our world is run by them, but don't you see that is why we are still in the stone age when compare to say aliens? I would never ever like to defend ppl or things that DON'T help ppl to move up but in this case the suit ppl are pulling us down o_o no less.
So white knight all you want, they (game companies) are not making you any happier or improve the gaming art when in fact they want to degrade it so they can profit from our desperation, it shows ppl, so just open your eyes, game play in 2018 is going backwards. Example, Destiny is good? but Des 2 should be way better than one? Sure subjective I'll give you that. BUT what if Des 3 is even worst than Des 1 and 2 combine? SO is the game improving or degrading? In general its not improving so what does that say?
SO once again FALL game companies FALL like a blight that you are!!! Not game dev. mind you, not to say there aren't any bad dev, they de exist but far from any game companies ever will. Real game developers want to make the games as fun as possible so they're well loved and not wanting ppl to hate it by adding pay wall/loot boxes/dlc or mtx to degrade their hard work of art into a mix buggy pile of poop. Looking at you Bethesda.
If the big guys are big because they manipulate and move numbers around to various quarters for various reasons,then perhaps when the investors catch on and see the trending patterns.They then realize,these businesses are finding ways to over rate their studios and deceive stock holders and other investors.
I don't even remember what develoepr it was but a week or so ago on this site there was some numbers floating around/posted but when i actually read the official papers, i didn't see the same claims.
Oh yeah it was Funcom,claiming best profits ever or maybe they worded it nicely to fool people.When i looked at the data sheets i saw them spending every last cent to the point of a negative number or right around break even.Operating at a loss or break even does NOT equate to BEST ever imo and even if it was is very misleading.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Frankly, too much attention has been given by many of these larger gaming companies to either mobile games or free to play games or both. If they would just get back to basics and make good quality games for console and PC they might have a chance of winning back fans. Until then, see ya.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Well maybe a Warcraft 2 that’s FFA with player formed alliances, player voted on rulers,, player enforced laws, player driven economy, territory control... stuff like that. I’d probably come back for that.
If these guys want to make money they need to stop acting like a bunch of pirates and start listening to their fans. They need to stop churning out "good enough" games and start making games people want to buy, preferably of their platform of choice, not the one they think will achieve them the most profit.
Make good games, on platforms players want to play them on, lighten up on the micro-transactions and they will sell, then they make profits. Alternatively, carry on gouging the playerbase and releasing mediocre games and mobile trash and watch stocks tank.
I feel sorry for the developers. I think they want to make good games but the publishers are pushing for release dates, cutting out content to monetise as DLC on day 1, adding loot crates and other micro-transactions and basically destroying what good work the devs have done or would want to have included.