How Corporate Greed is Killing Your Favourite Video Games

Gray2233 said:
What on earth was new about Starfield compared to other Bethesda IP's par the spaceships and name?

The many, many loading screens? The worst parts of Mass Effect 1 (Bioware, I know, but the many soulless planets you could "explore" were hardly a high point) brought forward to present day?

It was shoddy formulaic Bethesda tripe from top to bottom.
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While it was certainly Bethesda in feel, you didn't actually address my point : this was new IP. The video is talking (correctly) about the AAA studios playing incredibly safe. Yet here is Bethesda risking a lot of money on new IP. M$ would have been breathing down their necks to bring ES VI forward, but Bethesda did not. I don't care that don't like the game, because there's a whole thread for people who think they are clever by slagging it off. My point was: it is NOT an example of the issues brought up by the video. A rushed out ES VI would be.
 
Meridian said:
While it was certainly Bethesda in feel, you didn't actually address my point : this was new IP. The video is talking (correctly) about the AAA studios playing incredibly safe. Yet here is Bethesda risking a lot of money on new IP. M$ would have been breathing down their necks to bring ES VI forward, but Bethesda did not. I don't care that don't like the game, because there's a whole thread for people who think they are clever by slagging it off. My point was: it is NOT an example of the issues brought up by the video. A rushed out ES VI would be.
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I was addressing your point/claim that Starfield added new gameplay elements, I was legitimately wondering what exactly the game did that was new from a gameplay perspective?

From my experience with it there wasn't any.
 
Mark A said:
I don't get why the industry doesn't see the success of games like Elden Ring and realise what they're doing isn't working. Instead you have greedy corpos like WB doubling down even after loosing 200 million on that Suicide Squad game. The first 3 batman games from Rocksteady were amazing and they would have made a massive profit if they just released another game like that.
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corporations have a habit of laying of thousands and thousands of staff, and then hiring people again.

Seems to be how they avoid pay rises or something, I bet the big dev companies just lay off the staff or most of them after every game, I bet tons of stuff gets outsourced too.

There's almost 0 passion anymore just inexperienced young people.


It's like movies and most music, just generic follow the formula, appeal to everyone, win no one.
 
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"Easy" solvable if:

- smaller companies don't sold out at some point for a big publisher or company which means losing creative control and freedom (basically some was their own doing/greed);
- actually launch finished games (from a technical view);
- bother to push things forward;
- don't overuse a "receive".

- gamers stop buying bad games or basically the same game over and over again (Far Cry, AC, etc), that at times even goes back with features;
- gamers stop buying into all sorts of DLCs and other crap.
 
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For the old guard amongst us will remember the stand out greedy company back then was EA, or as it was known by its full name Electronic Arts.

Buying up good games then merging them and never seeing the light again. I often wondered how they had so much money to do what they did.
 
Mark A said:
I don't get why the industry doesn't see the success of games like Elden Ring and realise what they're doing isn't working. Instead you have greedy corpos like WB doubling down even after loosing 200 million on that Suicide Squad game. The first 3 batman games from Rocksteady were amazing and they would have made a massive profit if they just released another game like that.
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The gaming industry doesn't work like that. It's all about the pre sales and early sales figures and nothing else. If a live service game fails, it's cut and dropped before given a shot. At least at the AAA (AAA... What a joke that term is now) level.

It's why the rise of 'indie' games is going to, or at least hopefully will shift the gaming market back towards creation reward rather than games aiming to please as much of the market share as possible, causing the games failure.

I've been gaming for 30+ years now, and the current gaming industry is nothing shy of a shell of it's former self. Communities are toxic, you don't own anything, and can you remember the last time a AAA game came out well? It's few and far between.

Greed is the driver and until people stop pre-ordering or buying already paid for content (micro transactions) it'll continue. I've moved away from gaming being a main hobby as it's nothing more than a consistent disappointment. And when it's not, it's now a genuinely enjoyable experience finding a gem amongst the buckets of ****.
 
There's a lot of issues in the industry at the moment.

Games have become colossally expensive to make, at the AAA end, with the sheer amount of content required. They are a huge risk, and failure of a AAA project will be terminal for most studios.

You have the Fortnite/Minecraft/Roblox segment which is hoovering up vast portions of the available revenue. For a lot of kids, that IS gaming.

Investors want the next breakout hit (Palworld/Helldivers/etc) or money printing franchise (COD/Fifa/GTA/etc)...but have little idea of how to get it.

Personally, I think developers should be aiming for smaller, focused, experiences, turning them round quickly, and executing them well, hitting a $20-$30 sort of price-point. With a narrower focus you're more likely to land the core experience, and if you do miss the target, maybe your studio survives to have another go.
 
Villan said:
Spotted this in Blues News; it's pretty depressing:

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This is ignoring the elephant in the room.

Yes its about cost to gamers, prices are going up, its about predatory monetisation and its about the quality of those games.

Its also about the politics, they think there is an untapped segment of society and they wish to appeal to them, the trouble is these people are an extreme minority with equally extreme politics, they are very unlikeable people, they are very obnoxious, the vast majority don't want that in their games in the same way they don't want to be around obnoxious people, by the same token obnoxious people don't play obnoxious games because they are too busy being obnoxious.
So in the end these games appeal to no one, i present to you Concord. Body types in place of gender, enforced pronouns, ugly characters no one wants to be.
Another example is Dustborn, a story driven game where being "Triggered" about millennial society tropes is a super power, that appeals to about 16 incredibly annoying people on Tiktok.
Firgames, an eat the rich payday style game where a group of diverse collage age people rob billionaires, cringe anti capitalist drivel that only appeals to people who can't afford a console or a gaming PC.

The uglification of woman in games because a very small number of obnoxious people think having beautiful curvaceous women in games is misogynistic. Look at how viciously these people went after Stellar Blade for having an attractive female protagonist.

I could go on.... and games that don't engage in any of these politics end up being extremely successful, because they actually appeal to gamers, not obnoxious activists who don't play games.

Hell Divers 2
Stella Blade
Boulders Gate 3
Black Myth Wukong
Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2

Gaming is a live and well, all they have to do is make good games for gamers, they can save money by sacking all the obnoxious activists.
 
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I feel another large factor is the gaming community itself. For many, especially those motivated to make a lot of forum posts, a game is either amazing or a load of rubbish, not much inbetween. Their opinion is very strong, to the point of videos and screenshot to prove the opinion is right.
I kind of think the community has stifled the creativity in some ways.
I'll often play a game the community says is amazing and think it is a good 8/10 game, then play a game that is panned, and think it is an OK 7/10. Nowadays, I look up the genre of a game and then decide if I want to try it or not. I won't go in the forums for others opinions, as I find my experience is quite often not as bad as Internet opinion is making it out.
 
humbug said:
This is ignoring the elephant in the room.

Yes its about cost to gamers, prices are going up, its about predatory monetisation and its about the quality of those games.

Its also about the politics, they think there is an untapped segment of society and they wish to appeal to them, the trouble is these people are an extreme minority with equally extreme politics, they are very unlikeable people, they are very obnoxious, the vast majority don't want that in their games in the same way they don't want to be around obnoxious people, by the same token obnoxious people don't play obnoxious games because they are too busy being obnoxious.
So in the end these games appeal to no one, i present to you Concord. Body types in place of gender, enforced pronouns, ugly characters no one wants to be.
Another example is Dustborn, a story driven game where being "Triggered" about millennial society tropes is a super power, that appeals to about 16 incredibly annoying people on Tiktok.
Firgames, an eat the rich payday style game where a group of diverse collage age people rob billionaires, cringe anti capitalist drivel that only appeals to people who can't afford a console or a gaming PC.

The uglification of woman in games because a very small number of obnoxious people think having beautiful curvaceous women in games is misogynistic. Look at how viciously these people went after Stellar Blade for having an attractive female protagonist.

I could go on.... and games that don't engage in any of these politics end up being extremely successful, because they actually appeal to gamers, not obnoxious activists who don't play games.

Hell Divers 2
Stella Blade
Boulders Gate 3
Black Myth Wukong
Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2

Gaming is a live and well, all they have to do is make good games for gamers, they can save money by sacking all the obnoxious activists.
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Great post!
 
JonRGV250 said:
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This guy has a Youtube channel, tho i disagree with him on some things he is brilliant, i think if the only way to stop this nonsense is to tear it all down then tear it all down... they are not producing products we like anyway so what's the point?
If you can't dislodge them burn it to the ground to destroy the lot if, others will rise from its ashes and learn from past mistakes.

All else.... he's dead on.

I am dancing on Concord's grave, and all the other garbage that has failed for the same reasons.

In Gamers the Woke culture has meet more than its match.

 
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I’d love to know just how long this madness will go on for and how long the shareholders will put up with it.
Meritocracy has always been the means of success in any business, why chose to completely ignore it?
That was kinda rhetorical, as we all know why they ignore it.
The sooner the DEI (didn’t earn it) brigade are banished, the better.
 
JonRGV250 said:
I’d love to know just how long this madness will go on for and how long the shareholders will put up with it.
Meritocracy has always been the means of success in any business, why chose to completely ignore it?
That was kinda rhetorical, as we all know why they ignore it.
The sooner the DEI (didn’t earn it) brigade are banished, the better.
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I think we are at the cusp of this reversing.

Making the argument that you can reach more people by appealing to more people, that there is an untapped segment of society so growing ones audience by appealing to them makes sense.

The trouble with this is its simply not true, people of colour, different genders and sexuality are already included in the gaming community, they are already buying the same games the rest of us are and playing them with us

These people who make these arguments are hustlers, they are creating a problem that does not exist and presenting themselves as the solution, for a hefty fee of course.
Once they get themselves embedded they actually create the problem they argue exists but never did, they do this by being obnoxious and divisive, that sets us against eachother and with that they have manifested the problem that was never there, now they can actually point to a problem and with that secure funding.

Well, at least that is how its supposed to work, but it didn't, why? Because we are better than that, we interact with people from all walks of life constantly, and for the most part we all get along, i'm not saying there is no bigotry in our community, of course there is but we are also pretty good at policing that ourselves.
No matter where you are from or how you identify we all have one thing in common, we all want the same thing, that is to enjoy a good game and these people are not making good games, their games are utter garbage, there is nothing more unifying than collectively seeing a problem and collectively fixing the problem.
We have our own movement to stamp this out, web sites and social media groups such as DEIDetected, streamers and Youtubers, from all walks of life coming together to "cancel" these obnoxious people, how ironic. And we are damned good at it, extremely effective, quite the opposite of the stereo trope of gamers we are actually professionals, intelligent, organised, motivated and highly skilled.

They are doomed, what will stop it is shareholders loosing their money and understanding why, that is starting to happen.
 
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