You know who else curtails developer choice by setting arbitrary deadlines and pushing for aggressive monetization? Game publishers. Pretty sure the devs don’t want their game to be universally hated for lootboxes and bugs.
Except developers don't have the same incentives. Publishers are incentivized by profits. Developers are usually incentivized by wanting the world to see their artistic output.
Of course some of them will do it for money because some people are just like that, but overall the industry would probably be in better hands if the developers got the long end of the stick and the publishers got the short end. Right now in the AAA market it's the opposite and it shows.
Developers are also incentivized by profit when they’re entitled to keep it rather than a publisher, and this is the case regardless of being AAA or not.
And who was the CEO of Bungie during that period? Pete Parsons who had a senior marketing job at Microsoft before joining Bungie. Parsons also had no problem laying off hundreds of people at Bungie while continuing to expand his classic car collection. Dude has big publisher energy all over him. In fact he was the person I was thinking of when I said some people will do it for the money.
Which is a very different market. Mobile game developers couldn't even ask $20 for their game let along $60-$70. It's not comparable to the traditional computer gaming market.
I didn't say that. I agree that the first one counts and that's an exception to the rule. The second you better bring out point by point examples of how DE does monetization as horribly as EA or Ubisoft because I've heard otherwise. And I think with the third the vast majority of people would agree it doesn't count.
Any free to play game operates on the same principles that are as “horrible” as EA or Ubisoft, which honestly feels like a dated point of reference when your phrasing was “feels like you have to pay to have a good time”. First, it’s highly subjective. I came away from my time with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey feeling like I had a bad time because I didn’t buy their XP boosters, but fans of the game said they never bought one and had a great time, perhaps because they had more fun with the game’s side activities than I did, so they got more XP from content that I was more than happy to skip. I haven’t bought sports games in a long time, but if I still did, I wouldn’t touch Ultimate Team with a ten foot pole; not just because of the business model, but because the fantasy to me would be playing with the real teams as they actually exist; and the parts that I would want to engage with don’t ask any more spending of me. And for as much as you associate predatory monetization with those companies, they also put out the likes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and work with partners on Split Fiction and The Rogue Prince of Persia, which use very normal and ethical monetization strategies.
For as much as mobile games often can be a different market, plenty of times they’re not. Thatgamecompany may be known for Journey in our circles, but their big hit is Sky: Children of Light, which started on mobile and came to platforms you and I are more likely to play games on. Uma Musume is blowing up regardless of platform, but it’s a gacha that’s typically found on mobile, and Cygames expanded from their mobile market to putting out console and PC GranBlue games. Mihoyo’s games are in both places and found success using gacha. My point in all of this being these companies, all self-published successes, operate in both spaces, because building a game in either place requires much the same skillset, and they’ve found an audience in both, often with the same exact games.
The last thing I’ll say about this being developer vs. publisher is that if you’re successful enough as the former, you often become the latter, like with Cygames or Epic. These kinds of monetization methods are very feast or famine, so you’ll get survivorship bias of some games getting so big that they’re a publisher now, like Riot, for instance, or they get bought by a bigger fish like Microsoft.
There’s even an argument that SKG is a good financial motive for studios. Consumer electronics/entertainment spending is down, and it’s not hard to connect the idea that people are less enthused about video games when they aren’t sure they get to keep them. Which are you more likely to buy: Snake oil from a merchant on a turbo-driven truck ready to leave town? Or multiple panel-certified medicine from an extremely tightly-regulated industry.
Just look at Battlefront 2, arguably one of the best star wars games ever made and its reputation was irrevocably tanked because the publishers pushed the lootbox model on the game.
Not only did they push for it, but they also made the game extremely predatory by requiring players to grind for an excessively long time 40 hours for just one character. It’s nasty work.
Does the argument work both ways? If effort is the same as being paid for. Does that mean pirating a game is the same as buying it? After all it’s basically the same effort these days.
Of course the argument doesn’t fly, as you cant actually buy a game anymore, just a temporary license for an undisclosed amount of time.
Well it’s crazy that they’re accusing him of giving too much of his own time.
I really hope the Stop Killing Games initiative changes something as I want to own my (single player) games forever on every store (not only GOG as it’s not so Linux friendly despite the heroic games launcher).
I enjoyed playing this after it launched, great game with potential. My only complaint was the Ground Hog Day effect with monster spawns. You’d run into the same critters, in the same locations, over and over again. I figured the game was pretty new at the time, and hoped the devs would eventually randomize spawns to make it less monotonous. If they have, may need to start up a new game.
The last time I played, they had changed this: when you explore new areas, enemies from those areas will start spawning in old locations. I’d still like to see a randomizer option sometime in the future, but I like the new changes.
I believe he is the founder of “Stop Killing Games” however the EU petition is by “Stop Destroying Videogames” a different, but aligned org. They often just get lumped together as “Stop Killing Games”, hence the confusion.
Right, but the complaint is wrong. They are filing against the citizens initiative, which Ross is not the founder of. Then the media outlet is conflating the two in their article title, which makes things worse.
[…] violating EU stipulations requiring citizens to report any sponsor contributions over €500. If the initiative failed to disclose any such funding, that would be bad! However, the complaint argues that the initiative didn’t receive any monetary contribution; rather, it claims Scott simply volunteered too much of his own time to promote the movement, which—if you’ve decided words no longer mean anything—is basically the same thing.
So… Theyre complaining that his own time he put in was a donation worth over 500€ and he failing to disclose that, he’s made a mistake that can result in… dismissing the whole movement?
Seriously. How is it possible every fucking day there’s something that just steps over the line, despite the line moving every day.
It’s beyond impossible to do any sort of political satire currently ffs
This is just someone in the industry trying to buy time and throw gunk in the works of the initiative. Unless they are aggressively retarded they knew this challenge would fail, they just want to buy time.
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