Tuesday, April 16All That Matters

The problem of the game companies

by Doctor_Omega


The problem of the game companies



View Reddit by Doctor_Omega – View Source

44 Comments

  • akrobert

    This is the problem with rampant corporate consolidation, hedge funds and all the other ways corporations squeeze every penny out and leave a husk behind as much as a game company problem

    Reply
  • Kozzzman

    Where’s the sell out by cashing in and giving your company to a cash driven mega corp and let it be taken over by sexual predators?

    Reply
  • orderoverchaos

    24 millions in 2 week for diablo immortal suggest gaming is about to be a casino with a decent indie from time to time.

    Reply
  • Nacly_AF

    Think of WoW classic. It was so huge they’re spamming us with WoW Classic SoM instead of giving us a 4 year break until the end of classic WOTLK. If they took a classic break, it’d be really hyped again after WOTLK. As is, everyone’s over it.

    Reply
  • Sycherthrou

    Are the games really half finished, or is there a point where they think the brand name can carry them across the finish line, and increased development would only cause a loss in profits?

    Gaming companies are no different than other companies. When they have no reputation, they work hard to give you deals that benefit you. Once they have reputation, they attempt to use their brand and customer trust to make deals that benefit them.

    Some companies do this successfully, like Bethesda, while others such as Ubisoft seem to be failing in recent years. Outside of gaming, you can think of companies like Logitech or Louis Vuitton or L’Oreal, whose products are truly no better than decent, yet make huge profits because their customers trust them.

    This is how you get rich after all. You take an idea, you invest and pray people like it, if you’re lucky you build a reputation, you increase profit margins by making mediocre products while people buy into it based on brand trust. You use your increased profit to run ad campaigns to mitigate buyer’s regret and you always try to tap into the emotion that your initial product(s) caused.

    Reply
  • Valerian_

    Game companies either die a hero by getting bought by EA and then forced to close, or live long enough to become the villain.

    (R.I.P. Mythic, Westwood, Bullfrog, …)

    Reply
  • Kimihro

    Being publicly traded is the fastest way to guarantee people will hate you in the future

    Fun, complete games and profit motives are at a fundamental odds.

    Reply
  • getyourcheftogether

    Is there any company that doesn’t follow this curve? At least one that’s been around for over 15 years.

    Reply
  • feyyd

    its not just vidya games, its all corporations doing this. Once a corp goes public, they have a financial OBLIGATION to maximize profits.

    Reply
  • leblee

    I worked in gaming for a few years (too many). While that chart is technically correct it misses the big picture: it’s incredibly hard to be successful (make money) making new games.

    Most new ideas flop, even before release. For one company/studio to go through that cycle you have many others that close after the second step and never reach the “golden age”.

    It’s a hit based business and it’s impossible to know what is going to work. If you want to survive as a gaming company you either release a bazillion small games (like the mobile game farms) or you milk your franchises like most big companies do because it’s more predictable. Every now and then you can try something new but the cost is very high and a bit of a luxury. Concentration in the industry actually helps because with a bigger portfolio you’re more likely to take more risks and do new stuff.

    Reply
  • Schneebaer89

    Big shoutout to Nintendo for still beeing one of the largest ships in the sea for decades and still publishing lovely major games regulary.

    Yes and they have problematic stuff aswell, but not exclusively like EA.

    Reply
  • zdakat

    The worst thing to hear is “We’re excited to announce our new partnership with [bigcompany]”.
    Despite their assurances that everything “will remain the same” the product will rapidly go downhill as every penny is squeezed out of it. Or even just plain shut down completely within months of the announcement.

    Reply
  • IamSuperLaxative

    The praise/reward laid out to sales/PR/management and lack of recognition to the development teams causes good developers to leave is often cited as the failure of a considerable amount of technology firms.

    Steve Jobs wrote about this to a large extent in his memoirs.

    Reply
  • Richard_Dick_Kickam

    Well, there are many graphs to take, for example laurian never getting enough money or time to make a finished game untill dos2, and then not making anything for years because you want to make quality games which take a lot of time.

    Or GSC who made stalker which are great games, they are a buggy mess that looks more like an experimemt than actual games, and then due to internal struggle were never able to finish a whole stalker game, and when they got bought by microsoft, war hit ukraine.

    Or from soft who is constantly releasing flawed, but definetly good games. I dont like themy but i do respect the creativity, the fact that i dont like them doesnt mean they are not good, in fact i respect that because they release games they like making and their audiance likes playing.

    Or maybe bethesda who has ups and downs specifically because it has favored franchises. Before skyrim only good games they made were elder scrolls main games, and fallout 3, and after skyrim they had fallout 4, dishonored, and a lot of other good games, but now i suspect we might not get anything that good before elder scrolls 6 or potentionally starfield, which is exactly the same as before, make money grabbing bs games while at the same time giving love and care for cranchises you like.

    Reply
  • myyummyass

    i feel like people on this sub are either 45 years old and think that fortnite and call of duty are the only video games available…or the people on this sub are 15 years old and just make memes and graphs like this to draw in the 45 year olds.

    Reply
  • TigerXtrm

    This boils down to public companies always ending up producing shit quality over shareholder profits. This is the same in any industry. It’s the reason Valve is still a private company, and that is the reason we aren’t up to a mediocre Half-life 7 by now. They have the freedom to do what they want, when they want, how they want, and they don’t care how long it takes. As a result they nearly always delivery grade A quality.

    Reply
  • Habelx

    I just gave up on Triple A titles. Honestly if more indie games could port over to consoles a lot of the big names would hurt from it. Way cheaper and way more variety. You could buy stardew, valheim, terraria, and factorio for the price of a triple A on steam but they’d likely hike the price on the console store.

    Reply
  • Ragnar_Dragonfyre

    Problem is the latter half of the curve is where the most profits lie.

    Why build a game with passion when a soulless F2P game with bite sized stages and gacha mechanics makes way more money for less effort?

    Reply
  • Ghostbuster_119

    Ironically enough, Steve jobs had a really good point on how this happens.

    Basically pencil pushers who have no effect or idea on the product they sell get promoted then rely on their pencil pushing numbers to make something they have no clue about.

    End product is a lifeless husk that checks all the “current market” boxes.

    Reply

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