The AAA Game Market Crash of 2019

[FauxFurry]

2 hours ago, Kendo 2 said:

The new Instinct/Grapeshot game 'Atlas' has turned out to be a train wreck in early access.  It's not even at the stage of in-house beta and they're pushing it out anyway.  Compared to the 'big four', Grapeshot is minor league but they're pulling triple A level dev/publisher bullshit.  It's a private company but the budget comes from somewhere and if the game tanks that's money flushed down the toilet.  EA gets away with their financial antics because of FIFA.  There's going to be an industry-wide correction and one or more of the big companies might not survive it.  Blockbuster and Nokia used to be big market players but shifts in technology and buyer preferences cratered them.

Isn't ATLAS a re-skin of ARK more-or-less? Recycling content for a new release isn't exclusive to AAA games, it seems.

[Kendo 2]

Publishers want a quick buck and developers are uninspired and/or lazy.  This is an industry problem and consumers aren't taking it like they used to.  Information and bad PR spread quickly these days and that affects sales.  A game sucks and it's half price a week after launch day.  Projected profits don't materialize, accountants scramble and investors want answers.  It has the potential to become a cycle of events ad infinitum.  Do something quick to make a profit; it fails and the money evaporates.  Do it again...do it again...etc.  That's not sustainable and since corporate types won't take responsibility the blame falls on the developers, and then the publishers.  Gaming being main stream entertainment is hurting the industry.

[joemonco]

On 12/24/2018 at 6:25 PM, dagobaking said:

You really want to ruin games? Introduce unions to the equation. (See Detroit).

 

Would end up destroying the small companies that are really our best hope.

 

Collective bargaining did not kill D-town, funny that you think it did.  It's also funny that you imply 12-16 hour work days 7 days a week without overtime is a good thing.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

9 hours ago, shadowlord445 said:

Look at what EA has done.  They have ruined so many great studios that have made wonderful games, all because of their greed and hubris.  HURR Dead Space 3 didn't sell a bajillion, into the trash pile it goes.  Of course these dipshits didnt realize that was never a AAA game, it was a middle market A to AA horror game, a niche game and genre.  They are doing the same thing to Bioware.  Bioware is a company that made middle market, narrative focused RPG's.  Now EA has them making bloated, boring shit like Anthem.

 

Look at Bethesda.  All they had to do was make another Fallout that fixed the shit that was wrong with 4.  But nope, they had to try and get that Fortnite money, so they made F76, and look what happened, it bombed.  Did the Fortnite kiddies flock on over to F76?  Fuck no, they don't give a shit about Fallout, and now you've pissed your core fans, who just wanted another single player RPG.

Add Activision to that list. They've taken a company that used to decide against releasing video games because they weren't sure the public would like them, or they weren't ready for prime time, and forced them to release increasingly streamlined crap riddled with plot holes or focus on a platform their fan base didn't use. If you play(ed) WoW, you can actually see when the trouble started: 2008, the same year Activision "acquired" Blizzard. In reality it was more like a hostile takeover. They actually got booed off the stage at their own convention for trying to release Diablo for mobile platforms and their latest WoW xpac was so poorly received they're actually doing something some of us have been asking them to do for over eight years: create legacy servers.

 

As for Bethesda, they're getting nailed for another scam: Nuka Rum Dark. $80 for a plastic Nuka bottle encasing a bottle of lower shelf rum. For a company already being sued for deceptive business practices, they're doing an excellent job of destroying their case.

[dagobaking]

9 hours ago, joemonco said:

 

Collective bargaining did not kill D-town, funny that you think it did. 

Unions got what they wanted. And that killed D-town. They did this with poor, innocent, little "collective bargaining". Also known as "a monopoly of labor".

Quote

It's also funny that you imply 12-16 hour work days 7 days a week without overtime is a good thing.

I did no such thing.

3 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

Communism? Where? The whole union thing or population factors? I don't see anyone saying communism is the best way to go about it. 

Yeah. I'm not seeing where "Communism" came into play either...

[joemonco]

16 hours ago, dagobaking said:

Unions got what they wanted. And that killed D-town. They did this with poor, innocent, little "collective bargaining". Also known as "a monopoly of labor".

I did no such thing.

 

The Freep did a comprehensive write up of the timeline of D-Town's bankruptcy starting from 1950.  It's an incredibly detailed read that would allow yourself to stop believing such retarded nonsense that collective bargaining has the power to bankrupt cities. 

 

Oh, and you totally did imply the shit work conditions in the game industry are a Good Thing™. 

[dagobaking]

2 hours ago, joemonco said:

 

The Freep did a comprehensive write up of the timeline of D-Town's bankruptcy starting from 1950.  It's an incredibly detailed read that would allow yourself to stop believing such retarded nonsense that collective bargaining has the power to bankrupt cities. 

[Referencing handicapped people as an insult! Noble.]

 

Wake me up when you or The Freep (nothing in that article shed light on this) has an explanation for the simple bottom line facts that I've already given:

 

Unions demanded increased compensation, benefits, earlier retirement and more difficulty being fired. And they got it. On top of that, they squeezed out small, non-union shops to make sure they had total control of the industry.

 

And this led to the cost of labor per vehicle to be massively higher than the competition.

 

On which planet will paying almost double the competitions rate in expense per item not going to tank a company?

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Oh, and you totally did imply the shit work conditions in the game industry are a Good Thing™. 

I can let you know what my position is. Or, it sounds like it might be better for you to just continue pretending that you know what that is better than I do.

[Guest]

As usual a thread right this derails pretty quickly, And became a flame war.

So time to lock it down,

 

Let's wait at least six months of the forthcoming year before discussing if it will be a game crash or not.

 

Cheers.