So boardroom meetings can be quite the opposite from what many fans feel for sure. They make a killer profit, as for the selling of the company, their stock doesn't do shit based off that and face it for too many tycoons that's the more important part of the two. CRAZY I KNOW.
Glad to see some of you speaking up...I told you so's from years ago...
One thing for sure, the board of directors is not interested in making you a great game. They don't care about gameplay, physics, immersion, AI, engines, polish...
I yelled from roof tops for years for gamers not to ignorantly make gaming about greed by their financial support, but the genius's said "companies deserve to make a profit".
Gaming has been changed irreparably. The quality devs are coming around to kicking themselves in the head for not going themanipulation route, that is changing as we speak for the next console rollout.
F2P is the far smarter method to bilk people than an obvious monthly sub, if that is your motive. F2P can mask the money grab by subtleties of ongoing microtransactions far better, it's grey area.
It's about minimalism, learning to think like China has taught us well. That's the ways to make money now, but it will always leave the people wanting.
It's about the accepted lies of advertising and marketing taken to new heights...kids are too immature, too ignorant and often too stupid (by their own free will) to know any better. Kids, especially those that play games too much, are easily manipulated.
It leaves the people with shit, but as long as the businesses make money that is what is important for the society, that is until less and less freedoms are available everyday and individual quality of life declines.
From the very first days I yelled from the roof tops at how horrible MMO's were for gaming. It was obvious pure psychological manipulation that hooked people, not 'great' gaming experiences per se. Basing the game model on things like peer pressure is what everyone in online gaming has learned by now. You think it was the "great" game that kept you paying.
No! It was someone f'g with your psyche making you feel you weren't good enough until you reached that next level or got certain gear, that is what made you 'need' to play. They played to your weakness. It is called mind control pure and simple, and it is overt to all but the blinded followers. It's a good similarity to a digital slot machine in vegas, without the payoff, only the house winning. It also attracts the addictive psyche with a digital drug, taking advantage of that weakness. Digital crack was always a great analogy.
Blizzard understood they had to get 'friends' comparing themselves to each other and 'needing' to be better than their 'friend'. That's a twisted form of competitiveness based on an individual's insecurity. The better someone "really needs" to be than others, especially in inconsequential matters, the more insecure they are, it's ego. Word of mouth by this dynamic is a more power tool than any marketing or advertising. Proselyze one and motivate him to proselyze 10 of his friends, then those people are invested in that game because Johnny's 15yr old friends looks up to 16 yr old Johnny. Teaching kids to keep up with the Jones's, because that is how we want kids trained to think and live. Just look at my society, the USA, and how the people handle money. They usually don't, they mishandle it fundamentally, starting at the top, debt is ok. Having what you haven't earned or can't afford is ok, until someone comes and repossesses what never belonged to them in the first place.
People lost homes and livelihood because they believed the lie that credit rating and being in debt is more important than budgeting and controlling spending. Virtual numbers on a screen were more important than real physical assets, they believed the lies. That's why RMAH is so easy for kids to adopt, even adults fall for the lies. Good old money!
You were made to feel insecure, you obviously didn't have enough, and the MMO impressed that on you! Then a greener grass was shown to you and the eternal carrot was placed in front of you to follow around like a little rat in their monetizing cage.
Maybe these are the masochists of tomorrow, is the dominatrix business on the upswing these days too?
When will these foolish gamers stop turning my entertainment into commercialism of "let's see how we can lie BIGGER to people and make them buy."
Devs used to give us demos first, then we judge the game and buy accordingly, like just about any product. To all those developers that floundered and didn't have the skill to compete on that skillful level, they coudn't sell their game. When you don't have the best product, or skilled talented team, they don't just destroy the product and crawl off and die. They spin it and learn to craft better lies to make people buy it. MadeInChina 101. Lying and manipulation is always easier than maintaining high quality in a product, enter the MMO. When the MMO dies, enter F2P something much more grey, can be bad or good, but it's mostly going to be let's see how much we can get out of them before too many leave.
Now you get to someday play games like Mechwarrior Online for free, for only a $120 pre-order sight unseen. No release date even given except a summer open beta! You may even be able to spend a few hundred on a joystick for this FREE game. More money never made better games, we had those discussion ten years ago on the net, when they were going around. Most humans unfortunately tend to get fat and lazy when things are too easy for them, at least in some cultures. They take advantage of freedom, wasting it, rather than utilizing it to go after their desires with even greater personal drive.
I wish we could bring back vaporware to teach people a thing or two about "promises" and that quality development is a lot harder than people think. Yet it could be available if we took a stand on some standards like the PC Gamers in the old days held the devs accountable, and stopped supporting the posers and manipulators. But why produce quality if the last years clearly showed that manipulation and minimalism makes more money with less real technical effort and cost invested. Now online, it's just this promised feature or that feature that never gets in the game over it's lifetime, or never works right online, since the game is never really done people just put up with it waiting for the next patch, and next patch, and next patch...
Sorry, I had to rant...I'm sure people could write a series of articles on it.
This comment was edited on Jul 1, 2012, 15:11.