In all the posts I saw about Deus Ex, I noticed something. The people talking about it do not know marketing.
Used to be, people that loved video games made video games. They would put into the game what would make them happy.
Then along came quake and some other games that showed the greedy money guys there was money in video games. Greedy money guys don't do anything without marketing guys. Marketing guys now run the game industry.
Marketing guys are trained to sell "boxes". That is how they talk. They sell "boxes". They do not care what is in the box, only that the box is worth money. The marketing guys think, "how can I sell this box"?
Let's take Deus Ex. Game prices are at $50 and will never go higher. That is economic theory. How can a marketing guy make more money? He cannot charge more for the game. He has 2 choices; Sell more boxes, or sell the boxes cheaper.
It is hard to sell lots of video games. They have their niche markets. Only a few are really big hits, diablo, starcraft, HL. That leaves selling the box cheaper as the only alternative to the marketing guy.
We are talking about a computer game, not a box of nuts. With nuts, the greedy guys remove nuts from the box to save money. That cannot be done with a computer game.
What happens with computer games is that the marketing guys use some of their insidious marketing tactics on people. Let's use Deus Ex for an example.
If Deus Ex is sold to PC, there is a limited market. If they sell to Xbox, the market is much bigger. Think about the people buying the games. A PC buyer will probably be a gamer that has certain desires. Xbox is much more casual gamer oriented.
So Deus Ex starts to get bad press. "It is dumbed down, looks awful". There are two choices, fix it or not. This is where the marketing guy comes in. He says "why fix it?" The game guys say "Our fans hate the game. We must fix it". The marketing guy says "Why? How many fans you have"?
See. The way marketing guys think? They need to make money. So instead of doing what is right, fixing the game so that the developer retains dignity and the buyer recieves enjoyment, the marketing guy whips out the evil marketing theory. He tells the game developer...
Listen, christmas is coming up, if we slap some pretty graphics on the box and pay the reviewers to give us a 9 of 10, All the people buying presents for kids, and all of the kids with christmas money will buy the game. They won't know till they get it home that it is a junk game.
Marketing research says that only a low percentage of people will go to the trouble of returning the game. No one wants to tell grandma or mom or dad, "The present you gave me sucked, I returned it".
The marketing guy tells the game developer, "we can ship anything in this box, it does not matter, the point is to have pretty boxes in the store for people to buy. If they complain, you guys can always promise them a patch. Then we just wait till they get tired of bitching.
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From this point onward, the only good games will be home projects. Like Serious Sam. That was a home project and it worked out great. All corporate games will be poisoned and dumbed down and sold whether they are ready or not, just to make money.
This comment was edited on Dec 3, 12:31.