Because they don’t want some of the money, or even enough of the money. They want all of the money, and think all you have to do is copy a successful game to get it.
Moreover, like Hollywood, the gaming industry is largely run by people who truly do not understand the thing they’re there to make. All of the C-levels still think it’s the early 2000s where you could shit out anything that looked like a popular game and make 20 billion dollars from it. They think their entire market is dumb kids who will mindlessly play whatever is put in front of them without regard to polish, story, or even playability.
And the market proves it’s true.
How in the hell is EA still not dead?
Many studios produce barely acceptable shit, yet people buy it in droves.
How in the hell is EA still not dead?
Sports games
WHY DO PEOPLE BUY THAT??!
The same reason there aren’t bear-proof trash cans. There’s a lot of overlap in intelligence levels between people and bears
Seems to be the basis for 90% of the economy at this point.
EA is a publisher that goes against that, bad publisher to use as an example
I don’t know what you mean.
Every sports game is barely an asset flip, sometimes even with wrong years.
Most recently Split Fiction would be an example of not trend chasing
Unraveled, Fe, the rest of Hazelight’s games, Knockout city
The Sims and the sports games also aren’t trend chasing
Sims and sports games are just rehashes.
Or re-releases.
And every AAA studio will slowly stop investing into new IPs.
And chasing trends when it can take up 5 years or more to complete a project is utterly moronic.
Stephanie Sterling has been saying this for so many years, and it’s only getting worse. at least in the “”“AAA”“” space.
I’ve been a fan since The Escapist days
I started watching shortly after the escapist… thank god for her!
My (completely uninformed) theory: It’s competitive advantage. Indies succeed on their creativity, but that works because there are thousands of indie devs out there and we get to see the best (and luckiest) ones. It’s not easy to replicate that creativity by just throwing more money at the problem. So what is a company with ooodles of money but no creativity to do? Make games that only a company with way too much money could make. No indie dev is going to make the next Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed or Fortnite because they just don’t have the budget to make that happen. So they know that even if they keep churning out generic crap, at least it’s generic crap with very little real competition.
Of course then all of them got the bright idea to compete in a game business model that is inherently winner take all with already well established leaders. So yeah now it just seems like they’re lighting money on fire for fun.
I mean… You could make a knock-off Fortnite with Minecraft level graphics, make the cosmetics unlocked by just playing, and give it away for free. That would probably be enough to topple Fortnite. It just also would net you exactly 0 profit.
Maybe. But you’d need servers. And that would cost a lot of money for something aiming to be that scale.
You do what games used to do: provide the server software to every player so they can run their own. This also means the game can never die.
I mean that’s literally just Minecraft hunger games at this point.
The reason Fortnite is popular isn’t it’s outstanding gameplay, it’s a network effect coupled with the sillyness of the various IPs interacting. People play Fortnite because their friends play Fortnite.
Doesn’t this already exist? I could have swore one of the open source Minecraft clones had a battle royale mod.
There are definitely free battle royale games out there though I don’t know of their cosmetic unlocks situation.
Heres a gamer-brained analogy:
You know how all the manosphere types describe 90% of women as only being willing to date the top 10% of men?
This is that.
90% of all the money in gaming is going toward developing a game with a 10% chance of being rhe next Minecraft, the next Fortnite, the next big huge thing that will generate a stupid amount of money by functionally acting as its own MTX ecosystem with widespread adoption.
It is: We don’t sell consumer model economy cars because our financial situation is so wound up in financing (read: debt obligations) that we can actually only afford to sell high end luxury models, otherwise our profit margin is too small, and then we can’t afford our operating costs and debt obligations, so then we have to downsize and fire everyone and most importantly, our shareholders don’t get as much
wealth extraction, I mean profit.)The … problem with this obviously is that if 90% of the money in gaming is shooting for making basically the same kind of game… well then it is all competing with itself, thus causing a gametheortic prisoners dilemma situation where everyone acting out of maximum self interest actually results in the worst possible outcome.
Another problem with this is that these games are very expensive to make, and they must be made very fast… so, everything other than the MTX system in these games will be buggy and sloppy and garbage tier…
So, yeah. Game companies are the same kind of delulu that the manosphere thinks 90% of women are, chasing a wildly unrealistic outcome via wildly unlikely to work means.
(Disclaimer: I am not saying I endorse or believe in this manosphere idea, I am using it as a gamer-brained analogy, assuming it is true for sake of argument and comparison.)
For the car analogy, the incentives are even more perverse than that!
I’d hate to say it, but look at any big publishers quarterly reports. Compare how much base games sell compared to micro transactions.
^ EA’sThey would all like to take the lead and have “the” live service game but unfortunately even their bland attempts still bring in a lot of cash. This is why the push to live service is so aggressive.
The only thing that’s been slowing the push down is these big live service failures, which is making big publishers a little stingy on what games to push.
You are correct though, the big franchises have a lot of name recognition and its really hard for a competitor to muscle in on that established space (though they do try). Established IPs is a safe bet that often pays off, despite gamers lamenting it.
Because they’re run by executives that have no fucking idea what game development entails.
That and everything now needs to be “disruptive”. An idea doesn’t see the light of day in a tech board room without explaining how it’s going to disrupt the market and create space for itself. So unless the game is pitched as a killer of whatever the competition has it won’t move forward. It’s the whole silicon valley mindset of move fast and break things in action.
Infinite growth mentality vs remembering the customer as a human
“I don’t understand what you’re calling the wallet piggies” - executives and the whole marketing dept
And honestly, they’re right. Games are fundamentally optional and there are so many to choose from but these garbage studios make garbage games and openly degrade their customers but people keep paying them.
Fiduciary duty to shareholders. Line must go up, as much as possible, as fast as possible.
The profit incentive is toxic to creativity. Try to imagine how much cultural value is lost every single day because of no UBI and having to worry about a survival job.
That.applies evrywhere, theres a.quasi famous quote from somone whose name escapees me, that opined they arent so muvh worried about the intracties of Einstein’s brian but the fact so many like it have had to work below minimum wage jobs picking starberries in fields just to survive and humanities future has been robbed becase of it.
Evil is banal.
No question that it’s a lot. The cost of a UBI would probably be more though, ($500/month/capita, maybe? $ 2.1 trillion per annum for the USA).
There isn’t a set in stone amount of UBI for it to be called that. Even $100/mo would be UBI.
the “B” stands for basic, as in basic needs, $100/mo would not cover the average americans rent, let alone other basic needs. You’re looking for Universal stipend/Guarenteed Minimum Income/Citizens dividend or other related concept
Is that a fun conversation for you? What are we after right now? I don’t get it.
They honestly need to look at Fortnite as the model. It wasn’t meant to be this massive AAA game. It was a modest game with a unique concept (building). Adding battle royal was done on a whim. It just happened to click with millions of people.
IIRC it was a joke mode to make fun of how popular BRs were.
I don’t think this is quite right as BRs were new at the time. When Fortnite released there was really only PUBG in the battle royale space.
I believe it was something closer to a prototype they made in a month or two simply because they liked Battle Royales and thought it would be a fun gamemode to add a side thing.
Excuse me, Minecraft Hunger Games maps were a thing as well! ☝️🤓
(But yes, I agree, BRs were new.)
ACKSHUALLY “last man standing” was a game mode in Unreal Tournament 1999, so the concept was there for a long time
I remember there being PUBG and some other twitchslop where the gas was neon green and exiting a moving car at any speed would down you. I think there was a third BR that was raging before Fortnite
Yeah PUBG wasn’t the only one on the market, but everything else wasn’t anywhere near the punching weight, as PUBG was breaking steam records.
There was an indie battle royale that was struggling, a Minecraft BR mod, and I think the one you’re describing though I can’t even remember it’s name. None of then were really competitors for PUBG and more of trying to edge in a little bit of their spotlight.
Until Fortnite, of course.
there was really only PUBG in the battle royale space
H1Z1 really having an Ozymandias moment rn
I couldn’t remember the name of this one, but looking it up, it actually had really good numbers in the range of 80-150k concurrent players.
So I was wrong, I recalled PUBG being the dominant game at the time with very little of anything else near its numbers.
No. I want an incredibly small scale indie game made by a tiny team and fills my desires for power and war/crimes. Rimworld, Kenshi, Factorio.
Any recs ?
Stellaris for proper warcriming.
Those three fill the bill pretty easily. I’d add Satisfactory for the snarky AI and the general disregard to anything not made of concrete or steel.
If you want snarky AI, can I recommend Portal.
Though that doesn’t really count as indie.
Portal started as a tech demo. 10 people worked full-time for 2 years and 4 month.
It’s pretty close to an indy game. But if HL2 development is included then it’s definitely not indy.
Dang, already played them all
Never enough, ik
Love me some Kenshi.
I cheated and used the recruitment mod and trained and equipped the hell out of a squad and went on a grand tour hitting every major settlement and freeing the slaves, because I wanted to better the world.
And then I put holy nation paladins in the peeler for my own amusement. That reminds me I think I still have Longen in a cage somewhere.
That’s the besr thing about it, it’s so good to make your own stories.
I like waging wars with the cannibals.
wtf does “AA” and “AAA” even mean, like, why do they need different batteries.?
besides, I thought, batteries were totally out…
AA is a game that is a normal full sized game, but was made on a budget that limited scope. Good examples are the Metro series or Balatro. AAA is your normal games with big budgets. AAAA is a special title for Skull and Bones, it means you spend a gigantic amount of money and make sure the whole thing sucks.
Balatro is indie, songs isn’t it? Developed by a single dude with probably zero budget
Yeah, maybe not a good AA example, just couldn’t think of a second one off the top of my head.
Basically everything Nintendo makes is AA, they just charge AAA+ prices for them.
Larian and Hazelight are AA
Dungeons of Hinterwald is a fantastic AA game, if you haven’t played it.
Hyperstrange games and Revolver Digital.
Balatro has a publisher, Playstack. While they put very little money into traditional advertising, Playstack absolutely had a calculated marketing campaign that nailed success by getting specific streamers on board.
This technically makes it not ‘indie’ as they have a publisher but the indie/AA/AAA labels are kind of ridiculous.
it’s how much shouting they do when developing and advertising the game
Studio size/development costs
Goku explained it once in front of Buu.
AAA is smaller, too, so I’m not sure why they think it’s better
I believe the AAA term actually originates from investing. In investing, a “AAA” investment is one where everyone is pretty confident that it’ll be a positive return. It got a bit of use in the games industry to mean games that were expected to sell well no matter the what. It eventually got warped into just meaning big games with big budgets, and people started using the “AA” term to mean “like AAA but not as much”
TIL, thanks!
They work for the shareholders, not the customers. For most publicly traded companies, the stock is completely detached from fundamentals, so they just do whatever the large investors like (often just hype the new hottest thing; such as marketplaces or “increasing efficiency” with layoffs), regardless if its good for the “real” business or not.
How boeing lost 11.9 Billion in one year, and then 11.8 billion a few years later. Is there anything people that have a lot of money can’t do? Yeah, stay in their fucking lane.
We’ve got the IP, why don’t we make the Smash Bros. killer? We can call it “MultiVersus”!
I’ve noticed that an increasing amount of games that I enjoy over the past decade have been indie games (or games with lax publishers.)
They’d rather oversaturate the fucking market place chasing an elusive Pot of Gold than go for the sure thing.
No, going for the sure thing is why we have EA pumping out COD and a dozon sports games identical to last years every year.
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If EA is making new COD games then Activision really needs to sue for copyright infringement.
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Which would you rather have? Yearly releases of beloved IPs or Rare sitting on Banjo Kazooie because this is totally the year when Sea of Thieves finally becomes Pirate Fortnite? Actually given how backhanded the Battletoads reboot was…
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I’d rather have The Sims 4 get endless expansions if the alternative is that it’s abandoned altogether like so many other IPs EA owns like Ultima, Command and Conquer, Sim City, and Wing Commander
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Sadly not every deserving AA studio gets to survive in the long term nowadays. Minimi Studios is my go to example for this. They made amazing niche games with no exploitative DLC/monetization that were widely praised but rarely played. Sometimes good, honest studios can’t make enough money to get by in this day and age and that’s a real tragedy.
Because we buy the games, the microtransactions, the cosmetics, etc. Even just one purchase multiplied by millions is a win for publishers. Whales and content creators fuel the cycle even more. Meanwhile, currencies get deliberately convoluted: you need stars for a pull, which require sparkle farts, which you can’t buy directly or in exact amounts. Out of sparkle farts? $14.99 gets you 6000—enough for three whole pills! Don’t worry, there’s a pity system, so the most you’ll spend is only $400. And then you’re left with 60 stars, and if you just had 40 more!
You’re not forced to buy, but they make the grind brutal and a slog. If you’re really unlucky, it can even make actually playing the came harder. And as long as this system makes money, it won’t stop. Games are turning into storefronts with a mini-game attached. Good games feel like rare blessings, and creativity is often found only indie studios. Big teams have talent—they’re just not allowed to use it, their companies don’t care about that. Gotta make money, more money, all the time, forever, or you’ve failed.
I say “they” like I don’t play a few gachas myself, but still.I do like the analogy of the ingame currency named “sparkle farts”
why are they like this?
Which would you rather have 1 million dollars or 100 million dollars?
That’s basically the thought process, if it bombs I can blame it on some other, if it doesn’t then I’m good
Which would you rather have 1 million dollars or 100 million dollars?
It’s not that straightforward, unfortunately. The real culprit is allowing all giant public companies to hoover up all the small companies. Now you’re not a 3 person team with a side job trying to pay the bills and getting lucky. Office rent, Unity/Unreal want their cut, app stores want their cut, Salary, IT, Healthcare. You end up needing to support quite a lot of infrastructure to make that 1 Mil game. That no longer ‘moves the needle’ on your company’s yearly income and the stock suffers.
Then, you can’t just make a game and release it anymore, you need live ops, sales, events, campaigns, otherwise you’re leaving money on the table.
otherwise you’re leaving money on the table.
This is the same argument as “would you rather have 1 or 100 mil”
But yes, you’re right to point out large companies who need to make big money to keep the lights on and, if public, stock profile. If the market perceives modest growth, it will not react kindly, leading to downstream financial losses. Some investors invest in ideas and products, most invest in perceived potential gains. No investment–>no funding–>no games.
