Demolishing The Excuses Made For 'AAA' Publishers' Exploitative Greed (The Jimquisition)

[Sheepinator]

I like Jim but I think he goes a bit over the top with these objections to micro-transactions.

On people defending publishers, I don't really care because if people are fans of a particular companies products then that's fine by me if they want to defend that company from criticism. It should be fine to say you love Ubisoft games and don't mind microtransactions because the money made from them can be invested in future games.

HOWEVER, I love Assassins Creed origins and Odyssey (so far) BUT the fact that they have an actual segment in their store called "time savers" is kind of fucked up. Fucking, TIME SAVERS! That's just such a bad look for me. Like "you could finish our game quicker if you pay us more". WTF? It implies that even the developer themselves see elements of their game as "busy work" and they can incentivise consumers to skip all that for a fee. If that's a part of their design philosophy then, as a huge fan of Ubisoft products, it's concerning to me.

I do not think it's about greed. I think a huge company tends to have huge investment commitments associated with it and they have to reward those investors or investment could dry up. Yes, they want to make more and more money. It's the entertainment industry. I don't know what can be added to that.

I don't think I can say to these companies "entertain me with bigger and better things" but then give them the stink eye when they are raking in the cash.

Yes, developers need to unionize. Can't argue there. Won't argue there. I'd like to know how much devs are being paid though because the way Jim sells it you'd think they were working for a pittance.

On microtransactions themselves, there seems to be a lot of different things that come under this banner. I've always felt MTs are not good value for money. If they are just for cosmetic items in game then fine. If it's for extra side content DLC following other characters and not related to the main story then that's OK too.

"Time savers". That's a bad look. DLC that is prologues or epilogues to the main story? That's a bad look.

The stuff EA puts in it's ultimate team section in FIFA is ludicrous though. Fuckin, 2.50 to get Ronaldo for 5 matches, piss off.

Does Jim Sterling REALLY care that much about people who are prone to gambling addiction etc? I mean, it seems to me like if he got this stuff out of video games he would not then try to follow through and outlaw casinos etc, right? Which means, really, what he should be asking for is regulation and then accepting this is part of video games now. This idea that the companies are predatory etc seems a little over the top. Jim is over the top though so maybe that's just his way of expressing things.

What would people's take on those Pannini football sticker books be? Is that just gambling for kids?

I think games like Magic the Gathering are based around a similar "microtransaction" model?

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That's a good post, with nuance too.

 

[daegan]

If they can't make it without microtransactions they don't deserve to be in business.

I'd rather EA, Ubisoft, and Activision go out of business than continue with microtransactions. The companies would be gone, but the devs would still have their skills and could form new studios with new ideas and new methods and not be hamstrung by predatory assholes.

Alternatively they could stop chasing the goose and budget games properly. We need more A and AA games. Hell, middleware needs to come back too.

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Companies need to sell things. These companies figured out a way to make a segment of their user base subsidize less successful games/a lower than desirable price point for most of their titles.

Also, "middleware needs to come back" in the age of Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, Havok, Euphoria, AiLive, Autodesk Gameware, Gamemaker, RenPy, Twine, etc. just may be the most head-in-sand thing I have seen on this site. Wow.

 

[Deleted member 135]

Man what is with the shitty attitude towards developers on here?

You'd rather thousands of talented people loose their job because you dont like MT's?

Last week it was "This developer doesnt have any talent because reasons"

This week its "I'd rather see big developers go under than continue supporting a practice I have no desire to participate in."

Jesus Christ.

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That post, wow. I mean where to begin. So much wrong in one place there.

'If a company can't deal with soaring costs without raising revenue then they don't deserve to be in business.'

That's basically what you siad. Good luck ever running a business. Your choices when faced with permanently raised costs are basically raise revenue or downsize/dissolve. You are against the former, so it looks like you're in favor of the latter.

"I'd rather EA, Ubisoft, and Activision go out of business than continue with microtransactions. The companies would be gone, but the devs would still have their skills and could form new studios with new ideas and new methods and not be hamstrung by predatory assholes."

And there it is. You come right out and just say it. You want all those tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs! You must have an extremely naive view of the industry too, because aside from a few tiny Kickstarter projects, the bulk of funding especially for AAA games comes from the publishers. With them gone, no more AAA games. You would rather have no games and see tens of thousands lose their jobs, than simply ignore optional MTX like rational adults easily do. Unbelievable. Where does that attitude come from? Naivete? Anger at the world? What?

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I see you completely ignored my last paragraph, maybe go back and read the post in full.

Companies need to sell things. These companies figured out a way to make a segment of their user base subsidize less successful games/a lower than desirable price point for most of their titles

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By exploiting them, which is unacceptable.

We need more games like Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Battlefield 1943, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, GTA Chinatown Wars, etc from big publishers instead of them always chasing the goose of the best graphics, the biggest worlds, the most lines of dialog, and so on.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Man what is with the shitty attitude towards developers on here?

You'd rather thousands of talented people loose their job because you dont like MT's?

Last week it was "This developer doesnt have any talent because reasons"

This week its "I'd rather see big developers go under than continue supporting a practice I have no desire to participate in."

Jesus Christ.

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as people love to point out, we live in a capitalist society and these corporations crave profits

consumers have a lot of power in such societies. if companies do something we do not like, we can choose to boycott their products and post about why on the internet. if the companies are unable to adapt to what their customers want, and therefore go under, then they deserve to do so, according to the rules of capitalism

'If a company can't deal with soaring costs without raising revenue then they don't deserve to be in business.'

That's basically what you siad. Good luck ever running a business. Your choices when faced with permanently raised costs are basically raise revenue or downsize/dissolve. You are against the former, so it looks like you're in favor of the latter.

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why are you misrepresenting his argument?

he is clearly implying a third option: reduce costs per game. there is no reason to assume that costs are permanently raised. they will only remain so if that is what developers choose

 

[Falcon511]

I see you completely ignored my last paragraph, maybe go back and read the post in full.


By exploiting them, which is unacceptable.

We need more games like Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Battlefield 1943, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, GTA Chinatown Wars, etc from big publishers instead of them always chasing the goose of the best graphics, the biggest worlds, the most lines of dialog, and so on.

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Your last paragraph sucks. You dont get to define industry trends and tell people what they need more of.

 

[Patapuf]

as people love to point out, we live in a capitalist society and these corporations crave profits

consumers have a lot of power in such societies. if companies do something we do not like, we can choose to boycott their products and post about why on the internet. if the companies are unable to adapt to what their customers want, and therefore go under, then they deserve to do so, according to the rules of capitalism

why are you misrepresenting his argument?

he is clearly implying a third option: reduce costs per game. there is no reason to assume that costs are permanently raised. they will only remain so if that is what developers choose

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As you point out in your post: consumers have a lot of power here. And consumers by and large reward the biggest games. And they do so at a rate that 10% of the games released make 75% of the money earned.

Should big companies, with lots of employees, go for the 75% pie or for the other one?

Edit: These numbers were for retail, it's even more skewed towards the top in digital markets like mobile.

 

[Crossing Eden]

rm, wait, I meant satire of the games industry, not of armchair developers. So it's meant to be a slightly facetious.

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I know, it's satire of the industry but not very good satire at all. The satire it's taken from was smart and funny.

 

[Deleted member 135]

As you point out in your post: consumers have a lot of power here. And consumers by and large reward the biggest games. And they do so at a rate that 10% of the games released make 75% of the money earned.

Should big companies, with lots of employees, go for the 75% pie or for the other one?

Edit: These numbers were for retail, it's even more skewed towards the top in digital markets like mobile.

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Do they reward the biggest games because they have the biggest worlds and prettiest graphics or because they are advertised to hell and back?

 

[Sheepinator]

Okay, I took the time to look at your post and the data and your first sentence is wrong. I'm not into financial lingo so I looked at Wikipedia and they defined Profit Margin as Net Profit (income) / Net Revenue. With the data you linked I get 26%, 20%, 20% for 2016-2018 and 13%, 20%, 16% for 2003-2005. And 2004 was a peak year before this generation. So they are not the same. The profit margins this generation are on another level, better than ever before. And revenues have been on a rising trend since 1998 (the oldest data I bothered looking up). It seems like the microtransaction time is very generous to EA.

And yes, corporations exist to make money and not to make consumers happy. But that does not mean you can't criticize their methods of making money.

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I don't mind the double check. It's good that more people actually look at the data rather than simply assuming their narrative. For instance, a common narrative is that the "greedy publishers don't need MTX because the industry is bigger than ever". OK, in that case you would expect record revenue, and therefore you would also expect record profits if healthy profit margins are maintained, but those people also insist that's bad because they sneer at the term "record profits".

Anyway, I see the potential for confusion there with different forms of margins. I did clearly state I was using operating income, which I prefer to use over net income because net income is after taxes and after interest from investments, both of which will vary based on tax rates and interest rates, and therefore distort YoY comparisons. The 2003-2005 and 2016-2018 periods are fair comparisons. They are both 3-5 years after the console cycle started. You should add the total operating income and revenue for the period, not averaging out the ratios after calculating for each year. If you do that, it comes out to something like 24% for 2016-2018 and 22% for the PS2 years. It's much harder to make a meaningful comparison for Activision's data with earlier gens due to their acquisition of King and merging with Blizzard.

The important takeaway from the data is that while you can't get an exact dollar figure on what the numbers look like without MTX, you can get fairly close. In EA's case if you assume the Ultimate Team revenue has say 95% margins, since it requires almost no development cost throughout the year, and remove that income from their total income, those profit margins would collapse to unhealthy levels, and that would likely result in more layoffs and fewer games.

 

[catswaller]

companies should redistribute 100% of profits to guaranteeing their workers good pay and benefits. This is an important moral stand and im glad jim stirling took a partial form of it, and advocates for unions.

However who cares about mtx consumers are such babies.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Do they reward the biggest games because they have the biggest worlds and prettiest graphics or because they are advertised to hell and back?

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Literally both.

 

[Deleted member 5167]

We need more games like Far Cry Primal

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The game that got raked over the coals as being an "asset flip" because it reused a height map

 

[Deleted member 135]

^Which is a shame because it's a fantastic game.

Literally both.

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Do you have the studies and market data handy to back up this assertion?

 

[Crossing Eden]

Companies need to sell things. These companies figured out a way to make a segment of their user base subsidize less successful games/a lower than desirable price point for most of their titles.

Also, "middleware needs to come back" in the age of Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, Havok, Euphoria, AiLive, Autodesk Gameware, Gamemaker, RenPy, Twine, etc. just may be the most head-in-sand thing I have seen on this site. Wow.

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It's honestly quite impressive.

Do you have the studies and market data handy to back up this assertion?

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You mean besides that part where each year the majority of the most financially successful game are among the prettiest, biggest, and most advertised?

 

[chezzymann]

The real issue is that companies view employment as a market and as long as they can get away with the high turnover they don't care how shitty they treat people. They don't view them as individuals who are being abused, but pawns in their sadistic game to get growth year over year at all costs.

 

[Crossing Eden]

The game that got raked over the coals as being an "asset flip" because it reused a height map

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GUARANTEED he doesn't even know what a height map even is. Hell, to be completely honest, gamers are incredibly fickle about when they should be angry about asset reuse.

 

[JustinP]

Do you have the studies and market data handy to back up this assertion?

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I missed your post where you shared market data and studies showing consumers don't generally prefer nice looking games with more content. Can you link me? Thanks.

 

[Sheepinator]

If publishers won't stop these predatory practices on their own then the government needs to step in any outright ban microtransactions.

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Bahahaha, wow. There are no words. You must be joking, surely.

 

[Deleted member 41271]

Since this gen the development costs even decreased, because all platforms (PC, XBox, Nintendo, Sony, even mobile) could be handled by a single engine (basically all platforms use the same architecture now, with different power levels, like PC).

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Despite that some publishers refuse to release their games on all platforms,

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This attitude is completely baffling. The ignorance about game development on display is staggering. Nothing you say is correct. Cost went up, and while an engine can technically handle multiple platforms, that's not how it actually plays out in reality. Optimization for multiple platforms at once is a nightmare! Think about what actually needs to be done. Suddenly you need to handle two COMPLETELY seperate builds of the game (if the more powerful platforms are supposed to have better fidelty) *OR* you focus on the weakest platform, creating a PR nightmare *AND STILL* face optimization issues you usually only see during FQA. There will be bugs unique to every single platform, and you absolutely can't fix one issue for all of them - every issue found requires more checks. Some platforms have issues that don't even affect others. Entire functions can be broken for specific platforms (just ask Unity devs that make IOS and Google ports of the same game), requiring refactoring of a whole feature in some cases. The more platforms you add, the bigger the mess gets.

Games development isn't magic. It's hard. The more platforms you add, the harder it gets. Do you know about certification? About the steps needed to appease each platform holder? it's not done just by hitting "build" and calling it a day.

Alternatively they could stop chasing the goose and budget games properly. We need more A and AA games. Hell, middleware needs to come back too.

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Have you looked at GoG or Steam lately? At nintendos store? At sonys? We've got MORE middleware games than ever before!

I don't buy AAA games, with extremely few exceptions. I'm swimming in games. You literally just have to turn around and grab them. It's never been easier! We have so much middleware to pick from, and so much of it is AWESOME. Tyranny is one of the most creative cRPGs we've seen in a while! Mechwarrior showed how turn based strategy can still be a wonderful experience. Senua's Sacrifice is a great experience. The Witness is a beautiful game with great puzzles.



The two posts I quoted are pretty much why Jims point just seems utterly inane to me. There's literally no problem. We have so many alternatives, nobody that wants to play games needs to even bother with AAA devs. I hate microtransactions, I avoid games with them on principle, but the outrage is just so nonsensical, like gamer outrage often is. You people rather want people to lose their jobs to appease your ego. it's just... Just completely baffling.

 

[Deleted member 8593]

Companies need to sell things. These companies figured out a way to make a segment of their user base subsidize less successful games/a lower than desirable price point for most of their titles.

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"Things" in the most liberal sense or the word, of course.

 

[Deleted member 135]

I missed your post where you shared market data and studies showing consumers don't generally prefer nice looking games with more content. Can you link me? Thanks.

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I didn't make any specific claims that gamers don't care about graphics. I posed a question. If someone wants to make the claim that they do care about graphics then they should provide evidence. The burden of proof isn't on me.

 

[Patapuf]

Do they reward the biggest games because they have the biggest worlds and prettiest graphics or because they are advertised to hell and back?

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There's no one factor that makes a game popular.

If you look at sales charts you'll notice following: Most - but not all - top sellers have top of the line production values. Most - but not all - had big marketing campaigns. A few will have sold due to revulotionary gameplay. Even fewer will have a revolutionary story or some other factor. And this has been the status quo for decades.

This means that you don't need to have top of the line graphics or a big marketing campaign to succeed. But if it's your job to make sure your games are successful good graphics and marketing seem like pretty good bets. It's also much more straightforward to realise than landing the next big gameplay concept.

Even indie games are affected by this now that the market for them has matured. If your game doesn't have good art and you fail to get attention for it chances are pretty big that it'll tank.

 

[aSqueakyLime]

Since you made the OP, I hope you are interested in engaging people on the subject, and not creating this thread just to take potshots at people when they do post.

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Hey guess what?

The OP hasn't responded since page 2.

What a surprise! lmao

 

[Falcon511]

Hey guess what?

The OP hasn't responded since page 2.

What a surprise! lmao

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Probably because he has no good argument and no solutions for the MTX problem.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I didn't make any specific claims that gamers don't care about graphics. I posed a question. If someone wants to make the claim that they do care about graphics then they should provide evidence.

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How is the following not direct evidence?

If you look at sales charts you'll notice following: Most - but not all - top sellers have top of the line production values. Most - but not all - had big marketing campaigns. A few will have sold due to revulotionary gameplay. Even fewer will have a revolutionary story or some other factor. And this has been the status quo for decades.

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[VyechnayaSlava]

A point that a lot of people are missing that Jim brought up in the video.

When Nintendo was having troubles, Iwata took a pay cut in order to make sure to take care of his employees.

You'd never see the same from Bobby Kotick or Andrew Wilson. There's need and then there's greed.

Of course there's also the fact that games are now designed around microtransactions to make the games themselves functionally worse, to encourage you to spend money to improve the experience. There's no defending of this.

I don't go all in for Jim, as cosmetics don't bother me in the slightest, but microtransactions on a full priced game that affect actual gameplay of the base experience are not okay.

 

[daegan]

We need more games like Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Battlefield 1943, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, GTA Chinatown Wars, etc from big publishers instead of them always chasing the goose of the best graphics, the biggest worlds, the most lines of dialog, and so on.

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It isn't like those publishers didn't make games of that scope/scale not that long ago. There are reasons why they don't anymore, and those reasons are unfortunately a greater likelihood of losing money combined with a lower ceiling if the title is successful. The only thing to be done is to seek out the titles of that scale you will dig and support them, whoever puts them out, instead of hoping for EA/Take Two/Activision to suddenly come back to that market.

 

[Sheepinator]

why are you misrepresenting his argument?

he is clearly implying a third option: reduce costs per game. there is no reason to assume that costs are permanently raised. they will only remain so if that is what developers choose

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That's just BS armchair developing. It's obvious that a PS4 AAA game is going to cost a lot more to create than a PS2 AAA game. There's so much data out there that it's common knowledge by now. More devs means more costs, and those devs likely expect to have had some cost of living raises in the last 15 years. The publishers have already done things to mitigate this trend like staffing up more in places like Montreal, Quebec, Shanghai, etc. which are cheaper than the US. They've already consolidated development around internally created engines. People don't buy PS4 Pro's or X1X's for games that look and play like PS2 games. Gamers constantly want more not less.

 

[JustinP]

I didn't make any specific claims that gamers don't care about graphics. I posed a question. If someone wants to make the claim that they do care about graphics then they should provide evidence. The burden of proof isn't on me.

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Why are you lying? This is not a question, it is a prescription based on an assertion that gamers don't care about nice graphics and lots of content:

We need more games like Far Cry Primal, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Battlefield 1943, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, GTA Chinatown Wars, etc from big publishers instead of them always chasing the goose of the best graphics, the biggest worlds, the most lines of dialog, and so on.

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[hydrophilic attack]

As you point out in your post: consumers have a lot of power here. And consumers by and large reward the biggest games. And they do so at a rate that 10% of the games released make 75% of the money earned.

Should big companies, with lots of employees, go for the 75% pie or for the other one?

Edit: These numbers were for retail, it's even more skewed towards the top in digital markets like mobile.

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what i take issue with is how people start whining when people try to talk about these issues

it reminds me of how reactionaries start whining when people bring up exploitative labour practices in the business, or when people bring up sexist or racist tropes in games

why are people trying to silence discussion?

 

[Deleted member 135]

That's just BS armchair developing. It's obvious that a PS4 AAA game is going to cost a lot more to create than a PS2 AAA game. There's so much data out there that it's common knowledge by now. More devs means more costs, and those devs likely expect to have had some cost of living raises in the last 15 years. The publishers have already done things to mitigate this trend like staffing up more in places like Montreal, Quebec, Shanghai, etc. which are cheaper than the US. They've already consolidated development around internally created engines. People don't buy PS4 Pro's or X1X's for games that look and play like PS2 games. Gamers constantly want more not less.

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They've done all of that to reduce cost and raise revenue, but they haven't cut executive pay. They take home hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet somehow games don't make enough money that they need to put MTX in them.

 

[Stardestroyer]

I didn't make any specific claims that gamers don't care about graphics. I posed a question. If someone wants to make the claim that they do care about graphics then they should provide evidence. The burden of proof isn't on me.

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Hey everybody is the person who spend the last two weeks whining about how nonintrusive mtx is the worse thing on earth and calling everyone a shill or at least tried to, but is somehow perfectly ok with a company whose last game sold 100m a feat that is impossible for 99.999% of all companies copies at the expense of essentially disregarding employees health and safety standards.

But it is ok because RDR2 is going to be released soon and Dan houser spent does it to.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Putting Far Cry Primal on the list of supposed examples of game devs not chasing the goose of the best graphics and biggest world is hilarious considering that it looks better than the FC that came before.

 

[Calverz]

I haven't bought NBA2K in 3 years despite becoming a bigger and bigger fan of the NBA. And let me tell you, that is a game that is in no need of financial funding via income from their virtual currency bullshit.

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Then I salute you sir/madam.

 

[Deleted member 41271]

why are people trying to silence discussion?

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There is no "discussion" that is being silenced. There's people loudly shouting things that are false.

Take you, for example.

he is clearly implying a third option: reduce costs per game. there is no reason to assume that costs are permanently raised. they will only remain so if that is what developers choose

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This is what you wrote. This argument is so *bad* that there's very little to even discuss. Costs are raised permanently because inflation, because if everything else stays the same, the cost of living goes up - and so wages do, too. The only way to stop this is treating developers like garbage. The very reason crunch is getting so bad is that companies are trying to reduce costs per game by reducing labor costs. It's just that developer wages are the only vector that can go down. Gamers expect higher fidelty now, that's simply a fact of the market - so that can't go down in the AAA market.

See the outrage when a game comes out with "only" 30 fps. Or when Far Cry Primal comes out and people complain about "asset flips". Or a game comes out and is trashed because it is "only 20 hours".

Nobody is stopping you from discussing this, but before we can even discuss anything, you need to accept the basic realities of the market. Inflation doesn't go away just because you don't like to hear about it. Nor does the reason for devs being treated terribly. Nor does the fact that graphic cost grows exponentially. Nor the fact that gamers demand more fidelty, more 4k 120 FPS, more platforms. Nor the fact that this has a cost.

A 60 fps game in 4k with beautiful graphics and 100+ hours of content isn't free.

 

[Crossing Eden]

what i take issue with is how people start whining when people try to talk about these issues

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Because this:

There is no "discussion" that is being silenced. There's people loudly shouting things that are false

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"JUSt rEDucE cOsTS gAis"

-Gamer who hasn't realized that devs are already doing several different things to reduce cost....almost as if game development isn't magic.

 

[Patapuf]

what i take issue with is how people start whining when people try to talk about these issues

it reminds me of how reactionaries start whining when people bring up exploitative labour practices in the business, or when people bring up sexist or racist tropes in games

why are people trying to silence discussion?

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I'm not for silencing discussion. But i'd like a bit more differentiation and nuance.

For example, some of the worst companies concerning labour are big studios like Rockstar. Yet some of the other big studios/publishers are among the best employers in the industry because they can offer security and benefits (and working hours) that smaller developpers will never be able to. Soul crushing crunch is a problem at all levels.


Ditto with the whole Microtransactions discussion. Some practices are genuinley concerning and need to be called out. But there's plenty of outrage that's mostly just people wanting the retail model of the 90's and early 00 to still be the dominant business model. That's a valid perspective, but it has nothing to do with consumer exploitation. It's just a changing business environment.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

That's just BS armchair developing. It's obvious that a PS4 AAA game is going to cost a lot more to create than a PS2 AAA game. There's so much data out there that it's common knowledge by now. More devs means more costs, and those devs likely expect to have had some cost of living raises in the last 15 years. The publishers have already done things to mitigate this trend like staffing up more in places like Montreal, Quebec, Shanghai, etc. which are cheaper than the US. They've already consolidated development around internally created engines. People don't buy PS4 Pro's or X1X's for games that look and play like PS2 games. Gamers constantly want more not less.

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there are plenty of games that look much better than PS2 games that cost a fraction of what these PS4 AAA games cost

 

[Naner]

For instance, one of the popular ideas in here is that "big corporations" make "enough money already." Let's remove big corporations and use Jim Sterling as an example. Currently through JUST his Patreon Jim is earning roughly $160,000 a year; his total pre-tax revenue is almost certainly well above that but let's use it as a starting point.

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I'm pretty sure a good chunk of that amount is lost to Patreon and payment fees. And why would his income be "well above that"? What other major source of revenue does he have?

Is there a line where Jim would be making "enough money already" and anything above that would be greed?

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Does Jim manipulate his audience into supporting him on Patreon? Does he underpay employees and then fire them without severance? He doesn't even lock content behind Patreon tiers (which is fine, but he doesn't do it). The money he earns comes from people who enjoy what he makes and voluntarily donate money for it.

 

[AnubisRising]

Companies can only get away with what the market allows. The market has decided that it is ok with mtx and lootboxes as long as they dont go past a certain point (ex:bf2)

 

[Sheepinator]

They've done all of that to reduce cost and raise revenue, but they haven't cut executive pay. They take home hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet somehow games don't make enough money that they need to put MTX in them.

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Wrong. Most exec pay is in the form of stock grants, not cash. It's also a common thing everywhere, which is not to excuse the inequality, rather to say I wonder why you think this industry should be exempt from that while many others are not. Look at Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner. It's a non-profit company and he makes about $40M per year. WTH does he even do?

 

[Potterson]

I agree with the fact we have to make something about work conditions, fight crunch and devs should unionize.

But I don't agree with "They make so much money we shouldn't have mictrotransactions". This is just so anti-capitalistic it's funny :P "Sure, I guess we make enough, let's just stop" - said no buisnessperson ever.

 

[Deleted member 5167]

there are plenty of games that look much better than PS2 games that cost a fraction of what these PS4 AAA games cost

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The game that took someone 5 years of their life to make and people whined endlessly that it had a $40 price point.

also included:
The "Indie AAA" people pointed to as such a huge success that the makers immediately jumped at the opportunity to become a hyper-mega-publisher acquisition instead of treading water trying to stay afloat
The indie released at a $60 price point to endless bitching and a hate campaign about what a liar the maker was

 

[Crossing Eden]

Does Jim manipulate his audience into supporting him on Patreon?

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Does lying and fear mongering about how things in the industry work to an uneducated audience count?

 

[honest_ry]

Totally agree with him.

Fact is he is not wrong.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

This is what you wrote. This argument is so *bad* that there's very little to even discuss. Costs are raised permanently because inflation, because if everything else stays the same, the cost of living goes up - and so wages do, too. The only way to stop this is treating developers like garbage. The very reason crunch is getting so bad is that companies are trying to reduce costs per game by reducing labor costs. It's just that developer wages are the only vector that can go down. Gamers expect higher fidelty now, that's simply a fact of the market - so that can't go down in the AAA market.

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salary increases because of inflation happens to every industry

like in every other industry, this challenge can be met, without exploiting labour (note: i'm a huge proponent of labour rights and unionization) by increasing productivity per hour of labour, with the help of improved tools

salaries in the game development business are higher now than in 1998, yes. but, simultaneously, tools have improved a lot since then

 

[Deleted member 135]

Wrong. Most exec pay is in the form of stock grants, not cash. It's also a common thing everywhere, which is not to excuse the inequality, rather to say I wonder why you think this industry should be exempt from that while many others are not. Look at Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner. It's a non-profit company and he makes about $40M per year. WTH does he even do?

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Executive pay is a gigantic issue across the board.

Psst... this is a gaming forum in a topic about game cost so naturally I'd be focusing on the video game industry and video game executives.

 

[Crossing Eden]

The game that took someone 5 years of their life to make and people whined endlessly that it had a $40 price point.

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And despite making a $5 mil during launch week, while launching on more platforms than Braid, that didn't recoup development costs.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

The game that took someone 5 years of their life to make and people whined endlessly that it had a $40 price point.

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some people did

some, like me, bought it on launch and played the hell out of it

something i will not do with the next assassin's greed or fifa game if they continue their business practices

 

[Sheepinator]

there are plenty of games that look much better than PS2 games that cost a fraction of what these PS4 AAA games cost

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Your first example is The Witness, a $40 indie game. The same devs previous game came out at $15 back when AAA games were $60 and are still $60. That's a 166% price increase. If AAA games did that they'd be $160.