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Execs and the late stage capitalism game they play is ruining everything.
Seriously. They’re actually betting against their own long term survival and it’s baffling.
They don’t care about their own long term survival. Their goal is to boost the next quarter and collect their bonuses, and when things go south, they jump ship with their golden parachutes and head to their next executive job.
if capitalism was designed in a way that long term was relevant, we would have this conversation…
Stop
Buying
AAA
Games
Stop
And don’t confuse high budget indie studios with AAA game developers
I think I’m doing my part as a patient gamer.
Same, bonus points if you don’t even buy the AAA game when it’s on sale, instead buy an indie game with that money.
Man this is the way… I just started fo4. Got the bundle with all dlc for like $30.
2 days later got the massive patch.
And if runs on Linux… patient gaming is the best way
patient gaming is the best way
I think being a patient gamer makes more sense nowadays (or at least since PS3/PS4 days) than it did before.
Many games are unfinished, unoptimized or need patches, and all this annoying experience is for the users which I like to call “unpaid beta testers” then when all the needed fixes arrive we can fully enjoy the best experience, at the best price.
I recently played RDR2 and Witcher 3. They’re very good AAA
That’s what I tell myself mostly, though I want to get better at buying indie games new.
If you are gonna play them right away, I don’t see why you should not!
This is a nonsense take.
The Last of Us, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, God of War, Doom. There are plenty of AAA games worth your time and money. Every bit as lovingly crafted as your precious indie darlings.
Maybe stop buying them blindly because you’ve seen a flashy ad for them on TV. There’s plenty of bad AAA games that do all the gameplay competently but have literally nothing to say. Where you can’t feel the touch of the designer at all, and all you can hear in it’s place is a hubbub of design-by-committee noise. The only thing those games have to say is “give me your money”.
Larian Studios who made Baldur’s Gate 3 could technichally be called an Indie dev despite the big budget and employee count. The company is privately owned by its founder and the games are self published.
Notice that other than Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring, those are pretty old titles at this point. The AAA studios are doing everything they can to make sure those nightmares never happen again.
I would argue elden ring (haven’t played, not my style but heard many good things about it) and bg3 are not AAA studios, they don’t release high budget games frequently, they focus on one genre, and don’t have much (especially large budget titles) outside of that area of focus.
That list is also staggeringly small compared to The list it’s derived from, and I would say whatever list includes those games has a much larger “awful titles” section to go along with it. If anything I would say the games you listed (that are from multi title developers) are the exceptions that proves the “don’t buy AAA titles” rule.
He’s referring to the working conditions.
And don’t confuse high budget indie studios with AAA game developers
On the other hand, there are a lot of publishers out there who really shouldn’t have things called indie when they’re involved.
The ones who have struck gold (perhaps multiple times) and are already worth multiple millions, publicly traded or even owned largely by investment firms. Some like this still footing everything on the players (crowdfunding and then early access) and on top of all of that going onto places like Imgur and Reddit and doing unpaid marketing there (doesn’t seem great for the actual devs, and then there are things like multiple accounts/sockpuppets/deleting+reposting etc).
And even without the unpaid marketing stuff, a publisher has a lot of ways to screw over developers and/or players usually with the goal of money in some form.
Are you going to be brave enough to name and shame?
Are you challenging me?
For the most part, it’s not hard to find them if they’re doing the things I said and you pay attention while they do it. Look at how many titles a publisher has on Steam, see if they have a wikipedia page and if so if there’s monetary info involved. Recognizing a dev/publisher might also be part of it.
Also with self-publishing never being easier, some of my skepticism starts there. Another is games seeming somewhat shovelware-esque or like they’re trying to ride the wave of some other successful game/trend and that’s why targeting consoles early-on is likely important to them for the money.
I originally wasn’t, but off the top of my head some of the stronger examples:
Just because something is cute pixels that does not mean it’s indie. A good introduction to this is the existing discussion of Dave the Diver and its ties to Nexon. EDIT: Also, lootbox controversy with Nexon and Maplestory
One involving unpaid marketing and crowdfunding/early-access: tinyBuild. ~$473m IPO. Publisher of Hello Neighbor, which also has some controversy around it on quality (also mobile games with micro-transactions, because kid audience). While searching on this, I also saw someone angry about them doing testing on Steam and then a post-launch Epic exclusivity. EDIT: Also one of their games not having all content available on GOG.
The game Roots of Pacha had a license dispute (I do not know the cause, but the dev did end up getting the Steam rights) their original publisher had at least 6 different accounts on Imgur (and they also did the crowdfunding/EA thing too, and no it was not like 1 game per account either and some of those accounts are mysteriously gone now). Same publisher was in the news about controversy over boob physics, and I don’t doubt it was either suggested by the CEO for the headlines or just marketing clicks if controversy hadn’t have happened.
Even if people don’t care about stuff like this enough to stop buying the games, I hope they at least try to not enable or reward blatant self-promotion (particularly the more dipping and questionable practices involved) on the fediverse
🏴☠️
Best I can do is preorder day 1 DLC.
Indie games are the best!
Believe it or not, video games are art, and art is no longer for art’s sake. It’s for shareholders. That’s when these decisions happen.
Return to Obra Dinn is some quality piece of art. There are still people making art instead of marketing.
You say that, but not all art is made solely for money. Just take a look at the indie scene (games, music, film, TV, etc) as an example.
Right! Can you imagine if Rembrandt had an executive committee behind him dictating what to paint a picture of, then micromanaging brush strokes? That’s the games-for-shareholders model, and it’s fucked. Games are best when made by people who are passionate about the project, not solely about the profit. My big hope now is the publishers learn from the Sony debacle and simply publish the game, be happy with their profit cut, and shut the fuck up.
Can you imagine if Rembrandt had an executive committee behind him dictating what to paint a picture of
I get what you’re saying, but you realise all the great renaissance painters worked on commission, right? So yes that’s exactly what happened.
When someone comissions a painting, they choose the subject and that’s about it. Sure if they didn’t like it they might not pay, but that’s probably already more hands off than any publisher in the games industry.
AI making art while humans turn the gears, sounds like the future we all wanted.
That’s true, and it’s a subset of another reality: execs are ruining life.
It’s the unchecked capitalism.
Better labor protection and antitrust laws would help, but the fundamental push is towards maximum exploitation of worker and customer. Power consolidates and then abuse for profit becomes easy.
Whereas in a communist economy where people didn’t have to struggle to survive, game developers could focus on improving their craft and telling whatever the funnest story they can think of is. We can already see this on a small scale with the difference between indie passion projects like Hades, and AAAA cash grabs like suicide squad. Imagine if everyone could afford to chase their passion instead of money.
You could also probably get there with universal basic income
Don’t understand why you’re being downvoted. The only thing there I disagree with is the use of the word “economy” 😂
Probably because leftists use “communism” like it’s an immediate and obvious goal, but dismiss any criticism of past efforts to actually get there. It effectively becomes an unquestionable fantasy.
It’s unchecked because customers don’t really care. When is the last time there was a boycott of a game due to how the developers are treated?
Capitalism doesn’t get checked by consumers, there are a billion things too much to properly pay attention to and no viable alternatives.
It gets checked by either regulations and laws or replacing it with something else.
There are so many viable alternatives. I’ve got an increasingly long list of things I won’t tolerate in games anymore, and I’m nowhere near running out of games to play. The big problem is being able to identify which of those checkboxes are checked or not; PC Gaming Wiki is working for this purpose lately, though it shouldn’t be necessary.
Boycotts work when people care enough: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/boycotts-shocked-world-439e32fbe0a9487f
Boycotts are only one tool in the box. Legislation should be addressing things like consolidation of power and anti consumer practices.
Unfortunately, the US has one far right party that has many lunatics that don’t believe in government (along with other insanities), and one center-at-best party that does that wield power effectively.
Boycott is a strong word, but I know that I and many, many others decided not to purchase Disco Elysium based on how all that drama went down. And I know I’ll never buy HiFi Rush after the way Microsoft closed that studio while simultaneously lamenting how they wish they had more games like that, because I don’t want to reward bad behaviour.
Same reason I haven’t bought anything from EA in a decade, and I’m really on the fence about supporting Ubisoft at this point too.
Capitalism ruins everything, news at 11.
I’m trying my hardest to not buy any “AAA” game. The major corporations have lost me as a customer, I’ll only be buying indie games.
… except monster hunter… It’s been part of my life too long and it’s one of like 3 game series I always play with an old friend lol
I excuse only two produces of capitalism: chocolate, and Monster Hunter!
Yeah capcom is one of those weird ones. Really aggressive monetization but god damnit the games are good.
Water is wet, the sky is blue, capitalism ruins everything.
Capitalistic motives is incompatible with any art form. Executives are the harbingers of the mindless greed of it.
The good art we see under capitalism is in spite of it, not because of it.
Capitalists ruining things for everyone else? Gasp!
Capitalists are people. People will always corrupt a system for personal gain. Which is why communism is such a silly idea. It’s always immediately corrupted. Capitalism assumes people are corrupt and has provided the greatest standard of living in history. It saved China.
People will always corrupt a system for personal gain
Now you are just making stuff up. People are selfless all the time. But in a capitalist society you are punished for being selfless and awarded for being selfish. It’s a highly anti social ideology.
Many people can be selfless and wonderful, true, but the people who are selfish and cruel often work hard to be in positions of power and authority regardless of the system.
Yes, and we have systems in place that makes I more likely that selfish and cruel people, get to have power. We award power hungry people with power.
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“People will always corrupt a system for person gain”
No, only people who would do this sort of thing accuse everyone else of doing it
It’s related to the bonus system. Execs are rewarded for share price increases instead of making good games. They’ll alienate the whole playerbase and ruin 30% of future sales for 5% increase in revenue for current sales. The 5% is enough to increase the share price so that CEO’s are entitled to compensation. So to min-max as a CEO it’s best to alienate the playerbase.
Also spending more money on marketing than on the game will result in more games sold at the cost of next games sales in the same franchise.
The games industry is well overdue for a more product focused approach for brand building. Diablo 5 will probably never be made since polling will suggest no interest. It was a major cash cow and Diablo 3 sold like crazy because Diablo 2 was great. It’s the enshittification of video games in full swing.
The entrenched Blizzard Activision is getting out competed by Paradox but Paradox is starting to screw up in the same ways by releasing Cities Skylines 2 without mod support. Cities Skylines 1 was good because of mods and Cities Skylines 2 is good, but not as good as 1 with mods.
Big companies should take a lesson from the indie book and do more closed betas, more early access and more mod support. Sell DLCs that improve a complete game instead of it being the last 10% of the unfinished game. Adding a map section like in Horizon Zero Dawn is great.
Meanwhile, a potential game of the year, Animal Well, was made by one dude and put out by a publishing company started by a goofy YouTuber.
I’m 4hrs in and it’s been a very rewarding experience so far! More heart than the last Assassin’s Creed I played, which I don’t even remember which one it was
It’s dominating the well-like genre like no game has before.
What’s happening to games in this gen is just what happened to the larger tech industry before, MBAs that pretend to be human are put in charge of a product after creators already made it successful.
Execs are ruining
I wonder… does anyone know how many shares in a company you have to own before you can call-in during shareholder meetings to ask questions? I’m wondering if we could push back against this by “”“asking questions”“” that make majority shareholders aware of the damage companies are doing to their own brands. I know modern capitalism is all about “money today, fuck tomorrow”, but I wonder how many shareholders would be happy knowing that companies would probably make more money if they’d stop cannibalizing studios and franchises.
You know, play into their greed and make convincing arguments about how their decisions are ultimately robbing them of money.
There was a guy a few years ago who spent $40k on Nintendo stock in order to ask about a new F-Zero in a shareholder meeting. They said no at the time but we did get F-Zero 99 last year so maybe he did make an impact.
They have a term for that type of shareholder… that I can’t think of right now, sorry. A lot of big companies have things in place so ‘disruptive’ shareholders don’t ruin their plans.
Edit. Exxon calls them “activist shareholders”
You’re assuming that they don’t know that, lol. They do. It does not matter because people keep shoving money up their ass and number goes up.
Ultimately, do they care? Most shareholders are in it for the stock price, this kind of thing might affect it slightly but I doubt it’d shift the needle much
Execs should be made to provide benefits to society. I saw we blend them into nutrient paste and use it to make food for our hungry people.
Take this with a grain of salt because I can’t think of the proper search terms to verify what I think I remember reading:Once upon a time corporations couldn’t be created unless they proved a benefit to society. We really need to go back to that…
Edit: with more time I found something.
"In the United States, the first important industrial corporation seems to have been the Boston Manufacturing Co., which was founded in 1813.
Experimental in nature and spaced out in time, these early ventures grew mostly independent of one another (the article mentioned older companies from around the world that I left out) But they had one thing in common: even as for-profit ventures, they were explicitly required to serve the common good.
For the first companies, the privilege of incorporation, often via royal charter, was granted selectively to facilitate activities that contributed to the population’s welfare, such as the construction of roads, canals, hospitals and schools. Allowing shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. Companies were deeply interwoven within the country’s or town’s social fabric, and were meant to contribute to its collective prosperity"
Source (I know, it’s not a source I’d use for a college paper): https://qz.com/work/1188731/the-idea-that-companies-should-benefit-society-is-as-old-as-capitalism
I mean, the earliest corporations were colonial expeditions, so it would depend on your definition of “benefit to society” to say if that was really a good thing.
Well at leads “youur country’s” peasants benefited some how… We can’t even get that from these parasites
It was good at the time because it was an improvement from the feudal system that basically said the king owns everything and allows subordinates to manage things for him with more layers down to serfs who were bound to the land they lived on. The people benefited because initially ownership spread out and different owners would compete with each other to attract workers or renters.
At this point, the issue is that things are getting consolidated and looking more and more like the feudal system, only with corporations at the top owning most assets instead of kings (which also creates a layer of indirection obscuring the true owners behind the corporations, other than some of the more attention seeking ones like Musk, Gates, or Bezos).
The exploitation of the colonized people and stealing their resources acted as a multiplier to this. Supply increased, so prices decreased for demand to meet the new supply.
why? oh, it’s got a million and one uses!
Thanks Todd
