Path: ...!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2024 17:33:41 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: Are 'we' too negative? Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2024 13:33:41 -0400 Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 85 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-cCqVDk9T3CFqQb/IcEYL++ysV6OOmSJSVPZcW7YRr2ltxGr2mxvElvx29ALrK65VWzj6JHJ4y2X6DdB!Z4MSLzyAxItSqt0FrKgEiAiW0krsiPCGacXXAWl8BSQRPEO9KISCMHmKK3vZT9x7fEtqswBc X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 4854 On Mon, 2 Sep 2024 09:49:29 +0100, JAB wrote: >So first up is 'we' in this context refers to gamers in general and not >this group. So with that out of the way, this comes from Spall's >'Favourite Era of Gaming' thread and something I watched (don't worry >about the video as most of it is irrelevant). Something that was talked >about was is the current gaming industry really that bad or is our >perception of games skewed by information available to us. My two cents: I don't think that the gaming public is too negative. Rather, I think it's a negative reaction to some awful trends in the industry. There are lots of examples of gamers being extremely positive about games, after all. Gamers WANT to love their games, but they're too often being disappointed by the people selling those games. Because the industry has a problem. It is an issue recognized not only by its customers, but many of its developers too. Too much of the industry is focused on money making part and not enough on the creation aspects. I get it; video game development is a business, and at the end of the day you need to make a profit to keep the lights on and get your employees paid. The traditional way of solving this problem was to create a product _so awesome_ that people throw money at you because it's just _that good_. But these days, publishers seem more interested in releasing a half-assed product and then milking its customers for more and more money with the promise that if they just keep paying more they'll actually get something worth playing. Sometimes the publishers even follow through on this promise; as often as not, though, they do not. And frankly, people are getting sick and tired of this approach. They don't like being essentially lied to by publishers who promise the world and then release half-finished games, or games with content sold seperately, or games that are just rehashes of what was released a year ago. [To be fair, the publishing industry has it tough too. Costs are going up, consumer expectations are through the roof (although those expectations are partly to blame on the publisher's own hype), and competition is fierce. Publishers are fighting not only against other new retail games, but a plethora of free games and a HUGE library of old games that are still available for sale. Not to mention the horrid sickness of modern day capitalism where "the line must go up" stock valuations pre-empt any sort of rational thought. [But knowing WHY the publishers release the schlock they do doesn't make me want to play that schlock, and doesn't make me any happier when -having stupidly paid for some of that schlock- I don't feel like I've gotten my money's worth.] All the more so when there are some developers who actually manage to 'do it right', and push out a game which is not only fun to play, and not only lacks the greed-induced monetizations, but also makes a profit. "You're a multi-billion dollar organization, EA (or Ubisoft,ActMicroBliz or whomever)," we cry. "Why -with all those resources- are you putting out worse products for higher prices than Larian (or Hello Games or CDProjectRED)?" Calling publishers out on this behavior isn't negativity. It's a justified review of their shitty practices. Because when a game comes out _without_ all those bad traits, people can't help but praise it. If games like "Star Wars: Outlaws", pumped out by one of the big-four publishers, coupled to one of the biggest licenses attached to it, and made with a budget in the hundreds of millions is getting slagged, maybe it isn't the gamers who are the problem?