I was a big fan of the game. Always thought it had potential to be great. I had already quit this wipe pretty much as soon as I hit Max traders. Don’t think I’ll be returning back next wipe.
I get that they’re successful, and it’d be fantastic if this became the trend. But Battlefield and Call of Duty sell consistently with much less development effort and a lot lower risk of flopping.
It looks like Call of Duty is typically 3 year development cycles, and one took only 1.5 years. Baldur’s Gate took 6 years.
Businesses think in quarters, seeing a cost centre through man hours is a huge no-no for boasting a healthy valuation. They use a model far more suited towards selling tangible products than something long term.
Just because a signal is sent, it doesn’t mean it’ll be received. We all know that practically any other major brand will still pump and dump e-waste, filled to the brim with mtx
So…I’ve lost count of how many Mission Impossible movies they made. At some point between 2014 and 2016 I think they made one, because for hundreds of youtube videos in a row I was shown an ad that had this irritating song that went “Ready or not, here I come” in a really nasally voice? Apparently advertising a Mission Impossible movie.
I have refused to watch any Mission Impossible movie, or any movie starring Tom Cruise made before or since, and to a degree the spy/action thriller/guy intensely running genre ever since. Because of how much they chose to irritate me about it.
If part of your strategy is to beat me into submission, I’m going to avoid your entire market segment forever.
Meanwhile a lot of my favorite games I never saw actual advertisements for, even if those ads existed. I learned about them from word of mouth, watching streamers/youtubers, or searching for “games like [game I enjoy]”
I categorically rule out a lot of big business practices because the era when “Hey you could make a fun game about flying an X-Wing” is over and the era of “Our business strategy leverages marketable properties in a variety of monetization verticals” is coming to a middle. So I tend to buy from smaller studios or solo developers.
Glorious American Capitalism. Enshittification is just a word for the financialization of everything. Finance Bros run the world, and they know you have another .0265٪ disposable income they can get to make their line go up another quarter.
On a completely different subject which I think is related: My parents want a cabinet and hutch for their dining room. I’m designing and building it. Looking on the internet for ideas, I like how that cornice is done. Can’t do those legs the way I’m going to build the side rails" type thing, I notice a trend: There is basically no documentation on the internet that anyone actually uses dining room hutches to store things they frequently use. Those that aren’t just blank to market the cabinet itself are crammed with random knickknacks or worse the White Woman’s Instagram tableau. A scroll sawn cursive word, some brand new ceramic containers with words printed on them in that thin tall font, especially a teapot with TEA written on it in which tea will NEVER be made, a statue of a pig, an old sifter, a fake plant…
I hate the idea of such a large, complicated and expensive piece of furniture used as a trophy case or a diorama of basic bitchery. In the words of George Carlin, “spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need.”
Fucken Rae Dunn, dog. I knew a girl who had two kids straight out of high school and blew her entire income on trendy housewares for the apartment she could barely afford. When I broke contact she was buying halloween variants of serving dishes she had already never used. Last I heard her parents have those kids now.
I wouldn’t say that past generations wanted to be marketed to, it’s just that before the internet, marketing was the closest a customer could get to being spoken to by a brand.
And at some point in the history of marketing, I think companies used to see it that way too, marketing was a means of communicating with potential customers what your product offered. But as capitalism progressed, and media outlets expanded (print, radio, film, TV, etc.), honesty was optimized out in favor of “bamboozleism”.
It’s now easier than ever for a brand to have a direct, two-way conversation with their customers at any time, but marketers are still stuck in that 20th century mindset of “we just say whatever we want, and you just accept it”. The internet is in the process of popping that bubble.
Largely agree. I think the bamboozlers were there the whole time - after all, a lot of early radio was for propaganda purposes. But I do think most companies try to do things the right way, and there was a point when marketing was seen as simple outreach.
I work in the industry, and yeah. Before, marketing was based on utility. “Buy this because it can do this and this and that”, basically marketing how effective or what it can actually do for you. Around the 50s (in the US) marketing changed to be based around lifestyle. “Buy this so you can be this”. Now nearly all ads appeal to emotion instead of reason, and it is very effective.
Researching about what a product offers is so much harder than just buying on a whim because the ads and the product are colorful.
You can see this change in old (really old) newspapers. Ad spreads were chock full of text about features. Now 3/4ths of the ads are an image of a happy woman if marketed for gals, or a stoic muscly man if marketed for guys.
I’m at least an average intelligence guy, not a genius, but I’m not some compelete idiot. Big game companies treat me like an absolute dumb ass so I don’t bother with their trash (the games are almost always mediocre anyway full of MTX). Just sell me a full working product at a fair price and then charge me for an expansion down the road if you want. Don’t nickel and dime me or promise me.shit I know you can’t deliver. Just talk to me like a human lol
Agreed, pre-orders are a thing after all…but it’s possible that it still works too often and also that gamers are becoming a bit more jaded about marketing. I don’t buy anything till the Metacritic and Steam reviews are out, and I only watch gameplay videos any more cause who cares about the cut scenes? I’m sure I’m not the only one. Consumers eventually learn their lessons but then a new crop of consumers comes up.
Call of Duty is a good game tho… I personally don’t like it but there is a reason it’s so popular. Outside of Battlefield there really isn’t much else out there on the quality level of call of duty as far as arcade shooters go.
Any other good quality shooters tend to be PC only and are a lot slower paced. Squad, hell let lose, escape from Tarkov are all great shooters but those games are very slow paced compared to call of duty.
Halo is similar as is Destiny but those are in a fantasy setting and a lot of people like the realistic setting of call of duty.
Its a good game but most releases are DLC level, yet they are forcing the player to buy, at least every few releases, because you slash the remaining userbase every time you release a new game.
I think the issue is there’s a constant influx of young gamers entering the market and all the old tricks are new to them. The teen to young adult age bracket is very lucrative and will never stop unless we stop having sex and procreating. If we all abstain for like 20 years, we’ll finally disrupt big gaming and also have no one in chat insulting anyone’s mother.
I wish this was true, but marketing is explosively effective. I have a top 10 VR app and it only gets sales when I market it despite the glowing reviews. Heck you cannot even sort by review on many sites as then you would not need to market if you title was great.
I was not a big fan of BG3 or even the divinity series, but I love Larian. Their products show clear passion for the budget they have, they don’t bad mouth other dev just to gain some brownie pts with gamers (CDPR) and their games are well supported.
To me it just felt like divinity with higher budget. It has Proper cinematic cutscenes and different rules to the combat. I guess I just don’t like CRPGs, I never properly feel immersed in the world.
Its weird because I loved dragon age origins and Pillars of eternity. I thought Wasteland 3 was ok.
I think with D:OS 2 I was annoyed that I didn’t choose a premade character at the start, and that the storyline was just, become a god. I don’t find that kind of narrative compelling. I also didn’t like the fairytale lighthearted vibes. The world didn’t feel “meaty” somehow.
You are giving me same vibes as myself, that meaty comment is spot-on. The game tell you that you’re traveling continents, but it never really feels like it, maybe we need a bit more imagination lol
The game has like four major maps, that’s why it feels tiny compared to your average CRPG that has dozens of smaller maps to create a sense of a big diverse world.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne