I find this kind of thing hilarious.
He's another developer saying in his own way that games have become so expensive to develop that they do not make a profit at $60 a pop. He's basically argueing that either they need to stop making AAA games, or raise the prices for games. Or in short basically speaking in defense of the industry and it's growing tendency towards shovelware.
It's comedic because the gaming industry as a whole has been making monster profits, sure, specific studios and companies fall on hard times and lose money, but almost every year you hear about overall growth. The losses endured are entirely subjective, either being compared to peak earnings, or companies not making as much money as the bean counters think they should be making. In short if 5 years ago your company made 50 million dollars in profit, and this year you only made 5 million dollars in profit, the companies try and claim this as losses. What's more if the bean counters say that an IP should be making say 50 million dollars in profit and it only makes 30 million that is the same as a loss. The key thing here is when you look at profit reports, see by the time this is calculated they have already covered their expenses, what's why it's profit. Despite implications to the contrary it's actually fairly rare for a game to not make back what it cost to develop, fail to meet projections yes, but truly lose money? Not really. Of course that DOES happen from time to time and you see studios suffer for it and even get bought out or go out of business, but that's simply what happens in business.
What's more when I read this and he acts like we're actually expecting a lot in getting a 5-8 hour game, it demonstrates how utterly detached from reality he is. A 5-8 hour game is a complete rip off for 60 bucks, especially if your loading it with DLC and microtransactions as well. 20 hours should be the minimum, and 40 hours should be roughly average, with many games clocking over 100 hours. If you think a 5-8 hour game is generous and we're expecting too much, no wonder your noticing the companies you work for failing, your screwing people over and they probably stopped buying your products. Your that guy whose game comes out, people ask the first adopters how it was and get "well, it was okay but I finished it already, took me about 5 hours" congrats, you just ensured your game is on people's "I'll get it used" list of relegated to things people might try if they see it for 75% off on STEAM.
At the end of the day I still maintain the problem is industry bloat. At the end of the day the big battle cry from the same industry that gouges us with the most insane forms of monetization possible (and still QQs about too little money) is that games take so much money and so many people to develop. Something which makes no sense given that if anything games have been easier and easier to make over time. That's pretty much the whole selling point of new technology "better, faster, easier" and what's being touted every new technology generation, and drooled over by developers when they go off about what the new toolboxes are going to be able to do, and how much easier it will be to achieve effects that took so much work beforehand. Yet at the same time, we hear companies like Square-Enix claim they could not make a game with the detail of "Final Fantasy VII" under today's technology because it would be too expensive due to this allegedly "better" technology. Basically if the current tech is incapable of doing what older tech could do, it would not be better, and thus never would have been adopted. It's actually pretty simple logic. What's more it begs the question of why more powerful technology, that let's one person do more, has lead to more people actually involved in the design of each particular game, when there should be less.
Now here is where things always get unpopular, the answer is simply laziness and bloat. Where previously you'd have fewer graphics people who would do a bit of everything and have to crunch and work hard every day to get their product out on time, you instead see entire teams being dedicated to each aspect of a project. Instead of say having a few graphics people, you might have hundreds each with a very specific job like say "this guy is in charge of creating mustaches". Not only does this cause problems... like say 40 different specialist that work within their own specific domain and do nothing else (and thus suck up dev money while they twiddle their thumbs) it's also exactly why you see problems where your character's mustache might clip through the visor of his helmet when he puts it on, because the mustache department and the helmet department were entirely separate entities with their own domains and they never dealt with each other except at general staff meetings. I use this example (which some people hate) because it's exactly how problems with various games were explained, like for example how "The Old Republic" has half of it's models clipping into each other, and guys with robes (which is 50% of the classes in the game) have trouble riding a lot of vehicles without it looking stupid due to the graphics not meshing properly... something that continues years after release because the problem was so ingrained to the design that they would likely have to re-do all the models and even parts
of the central engine to get everything to work well together. A what, 400 million dollar budget, and they couldn't even deal with clipping on their character models, and god forbid, people criticize their game because of it (and
really they should, because it looks like crap).
This also goes hand in hand with another unpopular point in that there seems to be a minimum of professionalism in game development outside of the executive level. Some companies like Valve pride themselves on this, but at the same time while their stuff is surprisingly good, they tend to produce more ideas than actual products... for example people are still waiting for "Half-Life: Episode 3" while entire franchises have started, gotten sequels, and everyone is currently dancing around singing about the console market and VR technology rather than actually finishing what they started. Outside of Valve, which is a singular example representing the high end of things it seems, you'll notice during various "studio tours" done by game companies to promote products, the entire environment is unprofessional to the extreme. Desks cluttered with garbage, people slouching and not working, and similar things. It seems like a great place where you'd want to work (which is why so many people get upset by this point) but really this all influances the product, while some dude is say sitting around running a D&D game in the office on company time (I mean you see the crap for it on his desk) or even just reading the books, that's all dev money used to pay him going down the toilet which comes down on us. Sure that dude can argue "well, I'm the mustache guy and you need me on staff if somehow there is a mustache emergency in the game engine", but at the end of the day he should be doing something, collaborating with other teams, and pretty much having his nose to the grindstone every paid minute producing content, hunting bugs, and working on graphics even outside of his assigned area... then you know... maybe the handlebar mustache graphic won't clip through a combat helmet with associated problems so heavily intergrated into the engine by release that it can't be fixed without re-doing the entire thing. Indeed if you enforce professionalism, have everyone work constantly, and do general, non-specialized jobs within their department, you wind up with fewer people meaning better communication, less money being spent, and a superior product in the long run.
I mean honestly, with the length of some games you might see credits that last half as long as the actual gameplay. I mean really, watch some of these lists sometime, and think "they needed how many bloody people to do this?!?!? Is that 4 different FX studios?... and they are thanking their catering service? They cater their offices?... and wow, look at all the recognizable celebrities doing bit parts....". I mean honestly it becomes easy to see where the problems are in a lot of cases, half the problem with the industry seems to be that it likes to basically shoot Dev money out of a confetti cannon, and then try and make up the money by skimping on our games, and finding every dirty little trick they can to suck money out of people, before turning around and doing the same thing again.
I don't expect a lot of agreement with me this time, since I'm not exactly being diplomatic here, but really if we do see a video game crash I really think this kind of bloat is going to be a contributing factor to it. It's not just going to be the shovel ware and out of control profiteering, but the sheer amount of money being spent due to this bloat even on that shovelware, since a lot of game companies don't seem to know how to do anything without dumping 20 people and an additional specialized outside studio on it.
