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Penny Arcade - Comic - Second Opinion
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Second Opinion
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Sport, this is dumb even for someone's who uses "SJW" as a pejorative.
For one thing, there's nothing "SJW" about this situation. It's some corporate suit who said some dumb shit about why he was shuttering a studio. That's it.
For another, Söderlund is a public figure and a big boy, he can defend himself.
Finally, the comic is free so if you don't like it you're not losing anything.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Maybe figure out what the comic is about before spouting off this tired, lame bullshit?
that no one at PA condones such an action.
They've had a long history of their criticism within their comic being used as a launchpad by dicks, for serious harassment, and they've spoken out repeatedly against it.
They've also have had a long history of facing harassment themselves. It's a shitty practice of escalation that can cause serious harm to someone.
It's kinda ridiculous that my gut check to a pa comic criticizing, (an EA VP boasting of creativity while shuttering a kickass studio and game)
,was to remind folk to be empathetic.
Then again it's 2017 ya'll. We know the rodeo.
As for the comic, it's not super hilarious or anything, but Mike & Jerry do draw an interesting parallel between "inchoherent rhetorical salad bar creatvity" and a history of shuddering a long list of studios.
Sometimes a good takedown is good for a chuckle. Though the subject matter is a studio being closed down, so it's hard to imagine the situation being "funny"
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
You could say that Jerry's reaction was
sourced from his gut.
The game development was being headed by a woman. To some people, liking something that a woman is in charge of is "being an SJW."
On the one hand, it's a purely business decision to not do something less profitable instead of doing something more profitable. On the other hand, folks certainly look askew at the concept of only focusing on games that players return to "again and again" for another wallet dip.
But while business can be cowardice, it doesn't have to be, and a real problem in the current gaming environment is that kind of entitled thinking that leaves no room for practicality. The argument often runs that because I, myself, wanted a thing, that when you didn't give it to me you've ceded some kind of morality. And that's the point in conversation where the consumers usually lose me.
Honestly, I think Bioshock Infinite broke the industries back for big expensive single player experiences. The industry as a whole is just moving away from games with those sorts of production values but without the potential to hook a whale. It really is just unsustainable.
It's too bad they can't just give us a single player Star Wars game with lower production values. Go with some style over detail. Make it look like the Clone Wars or Rebels cartoons or something. Or just make another X-Wing or Tie Fighter game. Not everything needs to be an endless, open world, parkour, vehicle stealing, skill point allocating skinner box sandbox.
Yeah. I'm not happy to see anyone lose their job—and it seems that some talent was redistributed or whatever—but I don't see the outrage in it.
I strongly prefer singleplayer games over multiplayer and "co-op", and I dislike seeing multi and co-op achievements in games, but those are things that people want. For me, if the revised Star Wars game is too multiplayer/co-op, it just means I won't be buying it.
From Eurogamer & Dev interview for further reading.
Their current statement on closing Visceral Games and this Star Wars games states
Though in 2017, in a world of Destiny and such, it might turn out to be a more profitable story than Dead Space 3.
Especially if they see that Star Wars Destiny money.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Once it became clear that her game wasn't the kind of thing you can sell a season pass/loot boxes for, they decided to shutter the studio and transfer the game to another team that will implement those things. Which is a dick move, not only to the people at Visceral who were working on it, but to fans that wanted to, after far too many years, have a single player Star Wars game whose entertainment factor goes beyond messing around with lightsabers. And to talk about what being a creator means to you when you destroy something like that? Yeah, that's worthy of a hearty "fuck you" in my book.
One way to view what happened: Some executives with golden parachutes who get paid millions and millions of dollars and will never want for anything. In the interest of making more money, which is what companies do, those guys fired about 300 people because the game they were making couldn't be monetized properly in the current market.
Sucks.
*sad trombone*
Naturally, PA predicted this, over ten years ago
and again
This is exactly my issue with the current state of game creation and delivery. AAA publishers are all about squeezing every possible cent from their games. And to be honest, that's kind of their job, so I don't fault them for it. I fault them for how they are going about trying to squeeze every possible cent from their games/players: which is by sacrificing long term gamer enjoyment for the short term draining of their pockets.
I guarantee that they can make money from good games that aren't littered with microtransactions or loot boxes. Will they make as much money from an individual game as they make right now? Probably not. But they will make enough to exist and grow. And by doing this, they will gain a rabid fanbase like Bungie and Blizzard did before Activision and like CD Projekt Red has right now. This leads to a more guaranteed install base from the get go in all future games and it snowballs from there.
The first AAA publisher that sacrifices a bit of money now (by getting rid of predatory loot boxes and microtransactions) will earn the loyalty of the gamer population and will also eventually, as a result, make more money than the AAA publishers that don't.
AAA games are unsustainable, the cost of development have risen to the point where even a hit can tank a studio for not being ENOUGH of a hit.
Do you have any evidence of this?
Yeah, that's more a thing of how publishers treat studios they own than an actual thing. Activision is in no danger if the next Call of Duty only makes most of the money instead of all the money. Infinity Ward, however, might be in dire danger if that happens, but that has nothing to do with how much or little money was made but in how much the serfs were able to scratch from the dirt for their masters. If the next Call of Duty actually bombs, Activision is going to do some belt tightening and some people are going to lose their bonuses, but they are in no significant long term danger. Infinity Ward, however, in this scenario, is as good as dead.
Yes, costs have risen and prices have not, however, sales have, and revenues have even more so thanks to proliferation of DLC, loot boxes, merchandise deals, product partnerships, etc.
If games were really such a razor thin margin as that, we would never see a fraction of the AAA titles abandoned at the 11th hour that we do.
Thats kind of the point I am making and its endemic in nearly every business right now. Businesses care more about posting an unsustainable, painfully forced, and questionable short term growth number to their shareholders than they do cultivating and properly growing their customer base with more realistic long lasting growth numbers along the way. Its all about short term numbers regardless of if it hurts in the long-term rather than vice-versa.
Loot boxes and Microtransactions are rarely implemented because "If we don't then we wont have enough money to survive" and instead are usually pushed by publishers because "If we don't then we won't make greedy/maximum levels of profit which is required to show another +X% growth so that our investors are happy."
Yeah, but that big future install base means money is coming in later. They want money coming in now.
Edit: forgot to refresh before posting, see this point has been pretty much made. To what extent can crowd funding overcome the issue of developers being beholden to investors' profit demands?
Resident Evil 6 sold close to 5 million -- yet it was considered a disappointment as Capcom had set a target of 7 million. Given the lavish production values and the skyrocketing cost of the average AAA game, it's possible RE6 managed to lose money even selling that much. And that was four years ago.
It's no wonder AAA devs are microtransactioning like crazy. Honestly, $60 is an unsustainable price for AAA games given the bargeloads of money required nowadays.
OK, but did that tank Capcom?
Yeah, I don't buy this. Films still cost more on average to produce than games and the labor involved is more Unionized, which means profit margins are even slimmer. Yet, they manage to get by just fine without a structure than continuously bilks their clientele for additional money after their initial movie ticket.
Developers paid for the poor Metacritic score and the game failing to be their best selling game ever with lower pay and lost bonuses and jobs, but the publisher made incredible profit from it.
So again, AAA games are not unsustainable, publishers are just dicks.
Edit: source, to help
http://gameranx.com/updates/id/12500/article/capcom-posts-revenue-and-profit-growth-despite-resident-evil-6-sales-not-meeting-expectations/
RE6 and DmC both did not meet expectations, but still took Capcom to a growth in revenue and profits.
It seems to me that a big part of the problem is obvious: There are still plenty of gamers who are willing to pay for this stuff. If they weren't, then companies wouldn't be going down this road because it wouldn't be profitable. Unfortunately, many gamers nowadays are all about getting to the "uber" phase as quickly and efficiently as they can. For many of them, if that means paying extra to buy their way to the top, they are more than willing to do that.
-Tycho Brahe
DOOM
Horizon Zero Dawn
Fallout 4
GTA V
Nier: Automata
Some of them maybe didn't make gangbusters but the idea that single player games aren't profitable is sheer nonsense.