The Video Game Industry

Honestly, all of these sound positive. A far cry from chasing microtransactions (yes, I did read how the Dragon Quest producer is now in charge of the smartphone division, but still) and dumb trends. It seems like they're now starting to think more long term.

Decentralizing power sounds great, as it could result in more originality by not having a small number of people in charge of as much stuff. And more in-house production could be a good thing as well, as the company hasn't always had great results with outsourcing.

Look. I just want Square to remake The Bouncer but with the vision the team had in the beginning of development. So maybe we can get it with the new changes.

A man can dream, right?

Edited by omega2900 on Apr 5th 2024 at 10:48:05 AM

Well that isn't going to let them squeeze every penny out of the proles, so no.

It's all just lip service — they'll go back to their old ways in a week or two, if that.

Edited by Cordite-455 on Apr 6th 2024 at 2:42:41 AM

I know one webcomic artist to at would absolutely love that too.

I wonder if the failures of their live service games might actually be getting to the leadership and making them realize that's not a good long term strategy for them. Warner Bros. Games hasn't gotten the hint yet, but maybe Square-Enix is starting to recognize that the networking effect works against nearly every newcomer into the live service space.

WB's lesson from a huge singleplayer success and a huge liveservice flop in the same year was literally "let's do more of the thing that flopped".

Of course, WB in general is being run by a total idiot making insane and nonsensical decisions, so it's not too surprising.

It's less insane when you consider such corps are not looking to make money by making games and turning a profit, but by raising their valuation on the stock market. Turning a profit is one way to do that, but then you'd have to actually increase profits each year, which is difficult and will run into a wall eventually.

It is much easier to convince some suits that never touched a videogame in their lives that you are about to make huge profits by chasing some trend that made someone else a lot of profit. Said suits won't understand the industry enough to judge whether said trend would actually work for them, but they do understand biiiiiiig numbers.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 6th 2024 at 7:32:32 PM

So, in other words, they are disconnected from reality and effectivelly self destructing.

The corporations? Sure. The people in charge of the corporations? They know exactly what is going on and are getting very, very rich.

Just graphically updating Racing Lagoon, adding analogue control support, and paying Hilltop for his english transaltion, would make me happy.

Edited by HashiriyaR32 on Apr 6th 2024 at 5:39:10 AM

Suicide Squad strikes me as having been made with a very heavy Investorist mindset. It's a game that people don't seem to have really wanted but hits a lot of buttons that might get investors interested in.

"Hey, Guardians of The Galaxy is popular, right? Here's our equivalent! We have a Live-Service Game, those are big, which users our brands, which are also big. See, we're a big company! This will make bank!"

All this implies a product that was made less to be sold to consumers and more to be invested in.

Having said that, I do think it's likely that Suicide Squad has "overshot" its Investorism and that this will backfire on them horribly, if it isn't already.

With Investorism, your goal is to look like a successful company that's a good investment. A significant enough lack of sales and lack of enthusiasm really hurts that image. While Investorism is a bit of a Cheese Strategy, it is actually something you can fail at.

With them continuing like it isn't a disaster, I suspect part of it is Sunk Cost Fallacy as well as damage control. It actually might not be the dumbest move either: When you're stabbed, you don't necessarily want to pull out the knife right away.

If WB were to say "Welp, that was a mistake, let's shut Suicide Squad down" then they'd probably have to explain to Investors why the game was a failure. So instead, they just pretend everything's peachy-keen, then wait for investors to move on before they pull the plug.

The only thing I care about video game industry nowadays is "When is the next Video Game Crash coming, so that the corpos can starve away and die out without their precious money cows while the passionate devs and honest folk can pick up the pieces and make videogames flourish?"

Edited by Cordite-455 on Apr 7th 2024 at 12:01:58 AM

As much as people lionize the prospect, another crash is... probably unlikely (partly because the PC market is growing and partly because some AAA studios, like Capcom or aforementioned Square Enix, seem to be prepared for changes in trends and not putting their eggs in one basket).

That, and it's worth noting a crash would affect indies the most- they'd lose out on the console storefronts and support that help give their games more visibility than if they released just on PC and had to do the advertising through pure word-of-mouth.

I don't think a market crash is likely or even desirable.

What's far more likely is just competition, with people simply moving onto play better games. There are games that are good and making bank.

I'm not sure about a full-on crash, but some AAA studios are definitely treading towards some sort of reckoning with bloated budgets leading to poor returns and the lack of quality in their games.

Honestly, I think there's merit to a straight-up Borderlands clone staring the Suicide Squad. DC has a big whacky universe. The problem was the got the wrong studio on the job on top of the live service stuffing.

(I know all the Borderlands games have a ton of DLC but they never used the standard GAAS model with battle passes and stuff. God I hate battle passes.)

i am pretty sure if they made a Suicide Squad skin bundle for Fortnite, that might have been more likely for profitability than what this game had

Outsource the skins to Fiverr for a few hundred bucks, sell 'em for $20 apiece (or whatever Fortnite charges), make a hundred million easy.

There won't be another 1983, because the market is too big for the entire industry to turn into a tulip bubble and because the PC won't be discontinued. The AAA companies might suffer a funding crisis if investors decide that video game money isn't worth chasing (because of the issues with big-brand games being sold to investors rather than customers). The mobile microtransaction model might get banned. But the indies aren't going anywhere. They have an open platform to make games for, a storefront to sell them on and customers who want to buy their product.

Likewise, I predict that Nintendo will be fine for the moment, because they're institutionally oriented around making games. Iwata was One of Us, and while Furukawa is a finance guy, he isn't going to interfere with Miyamoto-sensei so long as awesome games and films are coming out. Also, Nintendo is mostly owned by Japanese investors, despite JPMC being involved. The companies who invest in Nintendo understand that Nintendo's IP is nearly as bankable as the House of Mouse, that they have game designers who know how to consistently turn those IP into good games, and they just need to let those designers make them money.

Wishing for another video game crash is just..really juvenile,because another big crash would take down everything else with it,not just video game companies

Nah. We can wish for the AAA market to crater precisely because it wouldn't hurt much.

Advocating for industry-wide economic harm is not chill, no matter how strongly we feel about capitalism. The executives will sail away and the people who will be hurt most will be the employees.

Also indies wont fare as well as you think they will, there already running into huge issues with funding as of the last year due to the investors getting cold feet.

And people now being adverse to kickstarter.

The sad fact is most "indies" need investment too because unless your already rich you cant afford to put your life on hold to develop a videogame, especialy one that might not even pay your light bills.

A collapse in AAA (minus Nintendo) would not be an industry crash and people should not conflate the two.

I think it's worth noting that the original crash in 83 only hit the console space, and was mostly localized in the American market. (An important market, admittedly, but just that one.) PCs were very much still fine, if not nearly as profitable as consoles were at their peak back then.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 7th 2024 at 11:08:13 AM

I honestly can't tell how adverse people are to kickstarters or not since the projects still seem to be getting funded