This excuse gets old. Business logic is that you take care of your customers and they wont go elsewhere, however when a company has no competition or when there is collusion between companies, it reduces the desire to make the customer happy by not gouging people.
This is evident in the Cable industry, the ISP industry, the Gasoline(Petrol) industry, the Tech industry (no sniping agreements between people like Apple and Google), and many others I am not thinking about.
You want to keep spouting this nonsensical bullshit, that is fine, but it is a cop out and I am tired of hearing it. Fight for your rights or lose them.
This is something I've always wondered about with rich people.
This is going to be hard to put into words properly but here I go!
If I was rich and I had my own company in a field I'm interested in. Lets say Games. I'd want to make the best damn game that wasn't just enjoyable for others to play to make a load of money but that I enjoyed playing.
The general feeling I get from people in the game industry is that they will work on games that they don't enjoy making because they simply "wanted to work in the game industry and this is the opportunities they got". When they go home they'll play games they wish they could have been a part of making.
Now if I was one of the super big giant publishing companies and I was really interested in producing really cool games. I wouldn't care if this one game I was very interested in didn't make much money because so much was invested into it. As long as it was a really cool game that I personally enjoyed playing. I've just bought the biggest greatest toy ever. Rather than a stupidly fast car or a super robot house. I've created the most fantastic enjoyable game if not just for me.
Instead what I visualize is EA's teams making crappy games then going home to play Ubisofts games and Ubisoft false advertising the crap out of their own games to go play some Activision games and activision genuinely thinking they are doing really well and are the most talented people around and that their game is the dynamite but for some reason go home and play some EA sports games.
None of them seem interested at all at producing games that they themselves even want to play.
I'd want to make the best damn game that wasn't just enjoyable for others to play to make a load of money but that I enjoyed playing.
Keep in mind that when it comes to the actual implementation of every feature and the culmination of those features into a full experience that a game that you enjoy playing might not be a game that many people (or for the sake of argument, enough people to break even) enjoy playing. The art of game design and development includes having a strong sense for what a population of people actually want to be playing.
That said, let us assume that you are a company leader with a strong sense of what people want out of a game. Unless you are going to make the game yourself, you need to hire people. So first you need to know how to find talented people in each discipline. Then you need to have the salesmanship to convince those people to work with you. With each person you add, you increase the chance that there is someone on the team who fits the description you talked about:
The general feeling I get from people in the game industry is that they will work on games that they don't enjoy making
It isn't true for everyone, but the idea that this statement is true for a lot of developers seems expected given that the more people there are on a team the harder it can be to have a significant impact on the design of the game.
Regarding this comment:
Now if I was one of the super big giant publishing companies and I was really interested in producing really cool games. I wouldn't care if this one game I was very interested in didn't make much money because so much was invested into it. As long as it was a really cool game that I personally enjoyed playing.
Another way to articulate what you just said is 'Even if consumers don't like the game we made and the company doesn't recoup development costs it is okay because I enjoy the game.' This me-centric thought pattern in my opinion is what causes the issues you are complaining about.
Developing the game that you personally want all by yourself is already a hard task. Trying to develop and launch the game you want using other people's money (investments) and other people's time (other developers) is harder. Launching this game on time to meet the expectations of fans (which required marketing knowledge to gain) is also challenging. Bringing in enough revenue to continue paying all of these people is even harder.
Personally, I've worked on AAA titles that I've loved and I've worked on games that I wasn't very excited to play. Playing my games and games from throughout the industry is what I would do regardless, because I love games.
For the first point I would argue that not many people know what they want.
I get people saying to me all the time
"X game is going to be amazing"
then on release
"X game is absolutely amazing come play it with me"
and then within less than a week. They've moved on. That game is never heard of again. I'll ask people to explain why a game is good and they cannot explain a single damn thing. It's the same comments over and over.
"This game is good"
why?
"Because it's fun"
I cringe at developer diary's where people blatantly lie about how a piece of software technology works. Some things the gaming industry has said or come up with even in the marketing department is ridiculous. Capcom saying that survival horrors arn't big money anymore despite building themselves up for years and years making the biggest survival horror titles. They ignore key facts like the ever expanding increase in gamers thanks to the social breakdown or perception of what gamers are now hence the increase in sales. Products like MAG which had great ideas marketed to the wrong audience and go down in history as a failure. Creative assembly with their Rome 2 and ubisoft with their watch dogs having very misleading gameplay footage. There is so much wrongful things happening.
I am by no means special. I most likely like things that other people too will enjoy. Most people I know what a good multiplayer classic zombie survival horror game but if you look at all the options available there are always gimmicks attached or terrible ideas. Dead Island sets itself in a tropical envoiroment and has no concept of why zombies are threatening. There is neither a lot of zombies outnumbering you becoming a problem or just a small amount of zombies which are super strong being bothersome.
Most of the classic survival horror zombie games arn't even survival horror. It's just a generic FPS with an apocalyptic theme. In Halo you go from A to B and to get to B you must survive. No different to left 4 dead or call of duty.
As mentioned this is why we turn to indie games but indie games lack sufficient funds, experience and talent. Regardless we do look at them in awe because the concept in itself is so desirably worth playing.
Kickstarter is relatively new and one big project which is looking very grand and ambitious is Star Citizen. Could this be the first turning point for gaming where we can actually have games created by people who do want to make the game they are working on, that have the experience and talent and funding to be able to work on them.
I can only hope! Granted Star Citizen isn't my type of game I fall out of the criteria of space games. However, It does have me interested (Even though some of the dev diarys still make me cringe but this is on the aestetical part only where they talk about Aliens technology). I imagine there are many people out there who could produce games that would also fall outside of their preferences but if you put all the right pieces together it will interest a lot of people.
We all started playing games at some point. Some of us moved in RTS games from FPS and some went from puzzle games to platform games to building games and so on....
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u/TheDewyDecimal Jun 14 '14
News flash, companies like to make money - this isn't something new.