The Video Game Industry

The power of marketing is insane.

With graphics, my understanding is that they're one of the things more likely to sell your game, because they are easy to advertise. Also it helps that it's a quantifiable thing you can just throw money at.

I've long suspected there would be some kind of wall where you can't really improve graphics any further and they can't really be a selling point, but I would have expected that to have already passed.

Actually I think it's possible we are starting to hit that wall. We're just seeing the consequences of game companies not adjusting to it.

Basically, we are getting to a point of diminishing returns where game companies have to spend an exorbitant amount of resources for the smallest improvements.

IMO, we did hit that wall with the advent of the PS4/XB1 generation, and towards the tail end of that generation is when we started really seeing the consequences of it - though the chip shortage certainly didn't help

x4

I don't believe it's a generational thing because I see many my age who hated how gaming is currently

I feel like a game with groundbreaking 2011 graphics (e.g Skyrim tier to reuse that example) is pretty much fine? Sure it's not super duper lifelike like say RDR 2 but both their trees and bushes will probably end up looking samey in the end.

We've well gotten past the point where art design is a lot more important than graphical fidelity.

For one I'm glad we're past Oblivions and Fallout 3/NVs potato people character creators.

Until we see people's pores clearly when we zoom the camera in, it's not good enough.

If I was a game company who outsources, then I would invest in specializing optimization and data compressing if devs do not want to do it themselves. Not even for ports, just the release and updates themselves.

How can the masses play... Redfall if their computer is chugging at the downloads?

That's the masses' problem.

Sure, but there's a charm to Oblivion's potatoes that has an appeal that is hard to explain if you weren't playing the moment it came out.

Yet when people could see Aloy's fine facial hair people freaked out about her being too "manly".

Why would the masses play Redfall if the alternative was playing something other than Redfall.

In all seriousness though, if companies don't see optimization and compression as important enough to do themselves, they're unlikely to see it as important enough to pay someone else to do it.

Bobby Kotick gave an interview on Variety.

Apparently the key points are...

• that his greatest regret is to have failed the Time Warner merging
• that he doesn't apologize for the "culture" within the Activision-Blizzard work environment
• that all those accusations were false or blown out of proportion
• that for a company that large, there aren't actually that many harassment accusations
• that it's all a plot from the unions to unbalance the company
• that accusations against him are antisemitic

Apparently the journalist says Kotick behind the scenes is a funny guy who reminds her of Mickey Rooney.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Jun 2nd 2023 at 11:52:39 AM

Fuck you, Bobby.

"There actually aren't THAT many harassment accusations." Are you fucking kidding me? He doesn't see what's wrong about that statement?

Why would he? People like him genuinely believe such things are normal.

Yuji Naka faces a 2.5 year sentence for insider trading.

Is it weird that when I first heard about this case, my response was "Thank God, it's "only" insider trading".

Edited by windleopard on Jun 2nd 2023 at 3:40:07 PM

Still cant believe a thing Yuji Naka got himself arrested over was that FF VII battle royale smartphone game that shut down in less than a year

Trading not Training.

About Kotick: what the fuck is he talking about with unions trying to destabilize the company? The company doesn’t really have any unions, unless he’s accusing like…the Teamsters or the Hollywood guilds or something of randomly exceeding their mandate?

I think he's complaining about one of the Blizzard-affiliated studios that formed a union last year-ish.

Edited by Resileafs on Jun 2nd 2023 at 10:18:06 AM

Also, he probably believes that employees complaining about their mistreatment is just uppity behaviour encouraged by unions in general.

Most rich folk hate unions because it give plebs the power to fight back and the plebs fighting back means less money, and in some cases its an ego thing as well.

Hell, a lot of these companies/rich people refuse to pay their employees better, but are willing to spend a ton of money to fight the unions or even close some stores outright (like what Starbucks was doing) to prevent unions from forming.