Activision has fucked Warzone 3 so badly, and it’s actually so incredibly improved from what it was during the disaster that was WZ2 but still a far cry from the peak that was WZ1.
Better labor protection and antitrust laws would help, but the fundamental push is towards maximum exploitation of worker and customer. Power consolidates and then abuse for profit becomes easy.
Whereas in a communist economy where people didn’t have to struggle to survive, game developers could focus on improving their craft and telling whatever the funnest story they can think of is. We can already see this on a small scale with the difference between indie passion projects like Hades, and AAAA cash grabs like suicide squad. Imagine if everyone could afford to chase their passion instead of money.
Probably because leftists use “communism” like it’s an immediate and obvious goal, but dismiss any criticism of past efforts to actually get there. It effectively becomes an unquestionable fantasy.
There are so many viable alternatives. I’ve got an increasingly long list of things I won’t tolerate in games anymore, and I’m nowhere near running out of games to play. The big problem is being able to identify which of those checkboxes are checked or not; PC Gaming Wiki is working for this purpose lately, though it shouldn’t be necessary.
Boycott is a strong word, but I know that I and many, many others decided not to purchase Disco Elysium based on how all that drama went down. And I know I’ll never buy HiFi Rush after the way Microsoft closed that studio while simultaneously lamenting how they wish they had more games like that, because I don’t want to reward bad behaviour.
Same reason I haven’t bought anything from EA in a decade, and I’m really on the fence about supporting Ubisoft at this point too.
Boycotts are only one tool in the box. Legislation should be addressing things like consolidation of power and anti consumer practices.
Unfortunately, the US has one far right party that has many lunatics that don’t believe in government (along with other insanities), and one center-at-best party that does that wield power effectively.
Right! Can you imagine if Rembrandt had an executive committee behind him dictating what to paint a picture of, then micromanaging brush strokes? That’s the games-for-shareholders model, and it’s fucked. Games are best when made by people who are passionate about the project, not solely about the profit. My big hope now is the publishers learn from the Sony debacle and simply publish the game, be happy with their profit cut, and shut the fuck up.
When someone comissions a painting, they choose the subject and that’s about it. Sure if they didn’t like it they might not pay, but that’s probably already more hands off than any publisher in the games industry.
I think being a patient gamer makes more sense nowadays (or at least since PS3/PS4 days) than it did before.
Many games are unfinished, unoptimized or need patches, and all this annoying experience is for the users which I like to call “unpaid beta testers” then when all the needed fixes arrive we can fully enjoy the best experience, at the best price.
And don’t confuse high budget indie studios with AAA game developers
On the other hand, there are a lot of publishers out there who really shouldn’t have things called indie when they’re involved.
The ones who have struck gold (perhaps multiple times) and are already worth multiple millions, publicly traded or even owned largely by investment firms. Some like this still footing everything on the players (crowdfunding and then early access) and on top of all of that going onto places like Imgur and Reddit and doing unpaid marketing there (doesn’t seem great for the actual devs, and then there are things like multiple accounts/sockpuppets/deleting+reposting etc).
And even without the unpaid marketing stuff, a publisher has a lot of ways to screw over developers and/or players usually with the goal of money in some form.
For the most part, it’s not hard to find them if they’re doing the things I said and you pay attention while they do it. Look at how many titles a publisher has on Steam, see if they have a wikipedia page and if so if there’s monetary info involved. Recognizing a dev/publisher might also be part of it.
Also with self-publishing never being easier, some of my skepticism starts there. Another is games seeming somewhat shovelware-esque or like they’re trying to ride the wave of some other successful game/trend and that’s why targeting consoles early-on is likely important to them for the money.
I originally wasn’t, but off the top of my head some of the stronger examples:
Just because something is cute pixels that does not mean it’s indie. A good introduction to this is the existing discussion of Dave the Diver and its ties to Nexon. EDIT: Also, lootbox controversy with Nexon and Maplestory
One involving unpaid marketing and crowdfunding/early-access: tinyBuild. ~$473m IPO. Publisher of Hello Neighbor, which also has some controversy around it on quality (also mobile games with micro-transactions, because kid audience). While searching on this, I also saw someone angry about them doing testing on Steam and then a post-launch Epic exclusivity. EDIT: Also one of their games not having all content available on GOG.
The game Roots of Pacha had a license dispute (I do not know the cause, but the dev did end up getting the Steam rights) their original publisher had at least 6 different accounts on Imgur (and they also did the crowdfunding/EA thing too, and no it was not like 1 game per account either and some of those accounts are mysteriously gone now). Same publisher was in the news about controversy over boob physics, and I don’t doubt it was either suggested by the CEO for the headlines or just marketing clicks if controversy hadn’t have happened.
Even if people don’t care about stuff like this enough to stop buying the games, I hope they at least try to not enable or reward blatant self-promotion (particularly the more dipping and questionable practices involved) on the fediverse
The Last of Us, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, God of War, Doom. There are plenty of AAA games worth your time and money. Every bit as lovingly crafted as your precious indie darlings.
Maybe stop buying them blindly because you’ve seen a flashy ad for them on TV. There’s plenty of bad AAA games that do all the gameplay competently but have literally nothing to say. Where you can’t feel the touch of the designer at all, and all you can hear in it’s place is a hubbub of design-by-committee noise. The only thing those games have to say is “give me your money”.
Larian Studios who made Baldur’s Gate 3 could technichally be called an Indie dev despite the big budget and employee count. The company is privately owned by its founder and the games are self published.
I would argue elden ring (haven’t played, not my style but heard many good things about it) and bg3 are not AAA studios, they don’t release high budget games frequently, they focus on one genre, and don’t have much (especially large budget titles) outside of that area of focus.
That list is also staggeringly small compared to The list it’s derived from, and I would say whatever list includes those games has a much larger “awful titles” section to go along with it. If anything I would say the games you listed (that are from multi title developers) are the exceptions that proves the “don’t buy AAA titles” rule.
Notice that other than Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring, those are pretty old titles at this point. The AAA studios are doing everything they can to make sure those nightmares never happen again.
Capitalists are people. People will always corrupt a system for personal gain. Which is why communism is such a silly idea. It’s always immediately corrupted. Capitalism assumes people are corrupt and has provided the greatest standard of living in history. It saved China.
People will always corrupt a system for personal gain
Now you are just making stuff up. People are selfless all the time. But in a capitalist society you are punished for being selfless and awarded for being selfish. It’s a highly anti social ideology.
Many people can be selfless and wonderful, true, but the people who are selfish and cruel often work hard to be in positions of power and authority regardless of the system.
Take this with a grain of salt because I can’t think of the proper search terms to verify what I think I remember reading:
Once upon a time corporations couldn’t be created unless they proved a benefit to society. We really need to go back to that…
Edit: with more time I found something.
"In the United States, the first important industrial corporation seems to have been the Boston Manufacturing Co., which was founded in 1813.
Experimental in nature and spaced out in time, these early ventures grew mostly independent of one another (the article mentioned older companies from around the world that I left out) But they had one thing in common: even as for-profit ventures, they were explicitly required to serve the common good.
For the first companies, the privilege of incorporation, often via royal charter, was granted selectively to facilitate activities that contributed to the population’s welfare, such as the construction of roads, canals, hospitals and schools. Allowing shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. Companies were deeply interwoven within the country’s or town’s social fabric, and were meant to contribute to its collective prosperity"
I mean, the earliest corporations were colonial expeditions, so it would depend on your definition of “benefit to society” to say if that was really a good thing.
It was good at the time because it was an improvement from the feudal system that basically said the king owns everything and allows subordinates to manage things for him with more layers down to serfs who were bound to the land they lived on. The people benefited because initially ownership spread out and different owners would compete with each other to attract workers or renters.
At this point, the issue is that things are getting consolidated and looking more and more like the feudal system, only with corporations at the top owning most assets instead of kings (which also creates a layer of indirection obscuring the true owners behind the corporations, other than some of the more attention seeking ones like Musk, Gates, or Bezos).
The exploitation of the colonized people and stealing their resources acted as a multiplier to this. Supply increased, so prices decreased for demand to meet the new supply.
“Even when you believe you’ve found yourself the right job, it can evaporate in an instant, and then you are suddenly competing against hundreds or thousands of people for every job position,” Kai said.
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Activision has fucked Warzone 3 so badly, and it’s actually so incredibly improved from what it was during the disaster that was WZ2 but still a far cry from the peak that was WZ1.
It’s the unchecked capitalism.
Better labor protection and antitrust laws would help, but the fundamental push is towards maximum exploitation of worker and customer. Power consolidates and then abuse for profit becomes easy.
Whereas in a communist economy where people didn’t have to struggle to survive, game developers could focus on improving their craft and telling whatever the funnest story they can think of is. We can already see this on a small scale with the difference between indie passion projects like Hades, and AAAA cash grabs like suicide squad. Imagine if everyone could afford to chase their passion instead of money.
You could also probably get there with universal basic income
Don’t understand why you’re being downvoted. The only thing there I disagree with is the use of the word “economy” 😂
Probably because leftists use “communism” like it’s an immediate and obvious goal, but dismiss any criticism of past efforts to actually get there. It effectively becomes an unquestionable fantasy.
It’s unchecked because customers don’t really care. When is the last time there was a boycott of a game due to how the developers are treated?
Capitalism doesn’t get checked by consumers, there are a billion things too much to properly pay attention to and no viable alternatives.
It gets checked by either regulations and laws or replacing it with something else.
Boycotts work when people care enough: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/boycotts-shocked-world-439e32fbe0a9487f
There are so many viable alternatives. I’ve got an increasingly long list of things I won’t tolerate in games anymore, and I’m nowhere near running out of games to play. The big problem is being able to identify which of those checkboxes are checked or not; PC Gaming Wiki is working for this purpose lately, though it shouldn’t be necessary.
Boycott is a strong word, but I know that I and many, many others decided not to purchase Disco Elysium based on how all that drama went down. And I know I’ll never buy HiFi Rush after the way Microsoft closed that studio while simultaneously lamenting how they wish they had more games like that, because I don’t want to reward bad behaviour.
Same reason I haven’t bought anything from EA in a decade, and I’m really on the fence about supporting Ubisoft at this point too.
Boycotts are only one tool in the box. Legislation should be addressing things like consolidation of power and anti consumer practices.
Unfortunately, the US has one far right party that has many lunatics that don’t believe in government (along with other insanities), and one center-at-best party that does that wield power effectively.
Ruining franchises. Games are the best they’ve ever been.
True, play animal well.
Execs are ruining
VC money dried up. Time to fire everyone.
Believe it or not, video games are art, and art is no longer for art’s sake. It’s for shareholders. That’s when these decisions happen.
Return to Obra Dinn is some quality piece of art. There are still people making art instead of marketing.
Right! Can you imagine if Rembrandt had an executive committee behind him dictating what to paint a picture of, then micromanaging brush strokes? That’s the games-for-shareholders model, and it’s fucked. Games are best when made by people who are passionate about the project, not solely about the profit. My big hope now is the publishers learn from the Sony debacle and simply publish the game, be happy with their profit cut, and shut the fuck up.
I get what you’re saying, but you realise all the great renaissance painters worked on commission, right? So yes that’s exactly what happened.
When someone comissions a painting, they choose the subject and that’s about it. Sure if they didn’t like it they might not pay, but that’s probably already more hands off than any publisher in the games industry.
You say that, but not all art is made solely for money. Just take a look at the indie scene (games, music, film, TV, etc) as an example.
AI making art while humans turn the gears, sounds like the future we all wanted.
Stop
Buying
AAA
Games
Stop
And don’t confuse high budget indie studios with AAA game developers
🏴☠️
I think I’m doing my part as a patient gamer.
I recently played RDR2 and Witcher 3. They’re very good AAA
That’s what I tell myself mostly, though I want to get better at buying indie games new.
If you are gonna play them right away, I don’t see why you should not!
Man this is the way… I just started fo4. Got the bundle with all dlc for like $30.
2 days later got the massive patch.
And if runs on Linux… patient gaming is the best way
I think being a patient gamer makes more sense nowadays (or at least since PS3/PS4 days) than it did before.
Many games are unfinished, unoptimized or need patches, and all this annoying experience is for the users which I like to call “unpaid beta testers” then when all the needed fixes arrive we can fully enjoy the best experience, at the best price.
Same, bonus points if you don’t even buy the AAA game when it’s on sale, instead buy an indie game with that money.
On the other hand, there are a lot of publishers out there who really shouldn’t have things called indie when they’re involved.
The ones who have struck gold (perhaps multiple times) and are already worth multiple millions, publicly traded or even owned largely by investment firms. Some like this still footing everything on the players (crowdfunding and then early access) and on top of all of that going onto places like Imgur and Reddit and doing unpaid marketing there (doesn’t seem great for the actual devs, and then there are things like multiple accounts/sockpuppets/deleting+reposting etc).
And even without the unpaid marketing stuff, a publisher has a lot of ways to screw over developers and/or players usually with the goal of money in some form.
Are you going to be brave enough to name and shame?
Are you challenging me?
For the most part, it’s not hard to find them if they’re doing the things I said and you pay attention while they do it. Look at how many titles a publisher has on Steam, see if they have a wikipedia page and if so if there’s monetary info involved. Recognizing a dev/publisher might also be part of it.
Also with self-publishing never being easier, some of my skepticism starts there. Another is games seeming somewhat shovelware-esque or like they’re trying to ride the wave of some other successful game/trend and that’s why targeting consoles early-on is likely important to them for the money.
I originally wasn’t, but off the top of my head some of the stronger examples:
Just because something is cute pixels that does not mean it’s indie. A good introduction to this is the existing discussion of Dave the Diver and its ties to Nexon. EDIT: Also, lootbox controversy with Nexon and Maplestory
One involving unpaid marketing and crowdfunding/early-access: tinyBuild. ~$473m IPO. Publisher of Hello Neighbor, which also has some controversy around it on quality (also mobile games with micro-transactions, because kid audience). While searching on this, I also saw someone angry about them doing testing on Steam and then a post-launch Epic exclusivity. EDIT: Also one of their games not having all content available on GOG.
The game Roots of Pacha had a license dispute (I do not know the cause, but the dev did end up getting the Steam rights) their original publisher had at least 6 different accounts on Imgur (and they also did the crowdfunding/EA thing too, and no it was not like 1 game per account either and some of those accounts are mysteriously gone now). Same publisher was in the news about controversy over boob physics, and I don’t doubt it was either suggested by the CEO for the headlines or just marketing clicks if controversy hadn’t have happened.
Even if people don’t care about stuff like this enough to stop buying the games, I hope they at least try to not enable or reward blatant self-promotion (particularly the more dipping and questionable practices involved) on the fediverse
Indie games are the best!
This is a nonsense take.
The Last of Us, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, God of War, Doom. There are plenty of AAA games worth your time and money. Every bit as lovingly crafted as your precious indie darlings.
Maybe stop buying them blindly because you’ve seen a flashy ad for them on TV. There’s plenty of bad AAA games that do all the gameplay competently but have literally nothing to say. Where you can’t feel the touch of the designer at all, and all you can hear in it’s place is a hubbub of design-by-committee noise. The only thing those games have to say is “give me your money”.
He’s referring to the working conditions.
Larian Studios who made Baldur’s Gate 3 could technichally be called an Indie dev despite the big budget and employee count. The company is privately owned by its founder and the games are self published.
I would argue elden ring (haven’t played, not my style but heard many good things about it) and bg3 are not AAA studios, they don’t release high budget games frequently, they focus on one genre, and don’t have much (especially large budget titles) outside of that area of focus.
That list is also staggeringly small compared to The list it’s derived from, and I would say whatever list includes those games has a much larger “awful titles” section to go along with it. If anything I would say the games you listed (that are from multi title developers) are the exceptions that proves the “don’t buy AAA titles” rule.
Notice that other than Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring, those are pretty old titles at this point. The AAA studios are doing everything they can to make sure those nightmares never happen again.
Best I can do is preorder day 1 DLC.
Capitalists ruining things for everyone else? Gasp!
Capitalists are people. People will always corrupt a system for personal gain. Which is why communism is such a silly idea. It’s always immediately corrupted. Capitalism assumes people are corrupt and has provided the greatest standard of living in history. It saved China.
https://twitter.com/XVanFleet/status/1791505040831639835
Now you are just making stuff up. People are selfless all the time. But in a capitalist society you are punished for being selfless and awarded for being selfish. It’s a highly anti social ideology.
Many people can be selfless and wonderful, true, but the people who are selfish and cruel often work hard to be in positions of power and authority regardless of the system.
Yes, and we have systems in place that makes I more likely that selfish and cruel people, get to have power. We award power hungry people with power.
https://youtu.be/PpyIZ4DGIK8?si=yJQqoCcYDvP6NERJ
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I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“People will always corrupt a system for person gain”
No, only people who would do this sort of thing accuse everyone else of doing it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Execs should be made to provide benefits to society. I saw we blend them into nutrient paste and use it to make food for our hungry people.
why? oh, it’s got a million and one uses!
Take this with a grain of salt because I can’t think of the proper search terms to verify what I think I remember reading:Once upon a time corporations couldn’t be created unless they proved a benefit to society. We really need to go back to that…
Edit: with more time I found something.
"In the United States, the first important industrial corporation seems to have been the Boston Manufacturing Co., which was founded in 1813.
Experimental in nature and spaced out in time, these early ventures grew mostly independent of one another (the article mentioned older companies from around the world that I left out) But they had one thing in common: even as for-profit ventures, they were explicitly required to serve the common good.
For the first companies, the privilege of incorporation, often via royal charter, was granted selectively to facilitate activities that contributed to the population’s welfare, such as the construction of roads, canals, hospitals and schools. Allowing shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. Companies were deeply interwoven within the country’s or town’s social fabric, and were meant to contribute to its collective prosperity"
Source (I know, it’s not a source I’d use for a college paper): https://qz.com/work/1188731/the-idea-that-companies-should-benefit-society-is-as-old-as-capitalism
I mean, the earliest corporations were colonial expeditions, so it would depend on your definition of “benefit to society” to say if that was really a good thing.
Well at leads “youur country’s” peasants benefited some how… We can’t even get that from these parasites
It was good at the time because it was an improvement from the feudal system that basically said the king owns everything and allows subordinates to manage things for him with more layers down to serfs who were bound to the land they lived on. The people benefited because initially ownership spread out and different owners would compete with each other to attract workers or renters.
At this point, the issue is that things are getting consolidated and looking more and more like the feudal system, only with corporations at the top owning most assets instead of kings (which also creates a layer of indirection obscuring the true owners behind the corporations, other than some of the more attention seeking ones like Musk, Gates, or Bezos).
The exploitation of the colonized people and stealing their resources acted as a multiplier to this. Supply increased, so prices decreased for demand to meet the new supply.
That’s true, and it’s a subset of another reality: execs are ruining life.
Capitalism ruins everything, news at 11.
Water is wet, the sky is blue, capitalism ruins everything.
I’m trying my hardest to not buy any “AAA” game. The major corporations have lost me as a customer, I’ll only be buying indie games.
… except monster hunter… It’s been part of my life too long and it’s one of like 3 game series I always play with an old friend lol
I excuse only two produces of capitalism: chocolate, and Monster Hunter!
Yeah capcom is one of those weird ones. Really aggressive monetization but god damnit the games are good.
Just play Hades 2. It’s fucking amazing
Capitalistic motives is incompatible with any art form. Executives are the harbingers of the mindless greed of it.
The good art we see under capitalism is in spite of it, not because of it.
Thanks Todd