How much do you believe game company's are only in it for your $$$?

scarecrow350

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Apr 4, 2010
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Agreeing with previous posts, it depends on th company, on one hand you have companies like EA with first day DLC and who spam out over 20 AAA titles a year, and on the other you have companies like valve and blizzard who make good games, but only once every couple of years. We really need some sort of happy medium, the closest we've got at the moment is rockstar
PS: indie developers have to make their games good otherwise they dont eat
 

Rivenart

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Feb 1, 2012
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I think some still do it for the original purpose, providing entertainment (though art or story or whatever), and do very well for it, while others only do it as they see how lucrative it can be.
Sadly it's not always the case, but when a game has had a lot of love put into and took the risk of doing something a bit different it pays off and they do well. Although sometimes when that happens thier investor may push them towards doing something not out of love but just as a cash grab.
It's like Pixar for movies, you can tell alot of love has gone into it, everything you hear about the studio screams it's a fun friendly place to be, they spend lots of time and money to send an animator out to actually take part in something they are researching and not just some course or videos, something many wouldn't do as it is wasteful of time and resources to them, but all they need to do it look at Pixar, see how well respected they are, how happy the employees tend to be and well they've done for money, have they even blinked at the past few years of financial trouble? Although I wouldn't go as far to say every movie they make is the same, some do seem like they where done just for the sake of it. But the rest create such an amazing experience, so emotional and just amazing to watch they survive.
Bastion was one of those games to me, even as short as it was, it didn't need more, it didn't need to be a £40 game and if it was made as one it may have lost so much of what made it a great journey.
Where as a game released in the same year by a far larger company with a bigger bugdet and development time, was a horrid journey to attempt to take for me, it all felt so soulless and frankly like Shovelware with it being so much like 5 other games they've made before. A lot would argue with me there, even hate me for saying it, but to me that company has seemed to have lost thier love for games, story telling and bringing entertainment into peoples homes.
Alot hate bioware since the EA merger but I don't see DA2 as that bad a thing, sure I'd rather 3 be much better and more like origins but all things considered it done a job, it told a story that needed to be told and couldn't have that much variation beyond the side you pick, it needed more sure, I guess it's comparable to a primer in painting but having the primer and rest of the picture may have been too much to do, and at least it wasn't the same story as origins, that would have meant no real progression, the game would have felt all to familar. I hope though it was a lesson to EA to back off Bioware and let them do more of thier thing, pressuring them into something else, a clone of another company will only ruin thier investment and not make money from it.
It's yes and no really, I can understand where investors and publishers come from in some respects but frankly when they call millions in profit as not worth it, a loss or whatever and sack people while scrapping an idea, it's really hard not to hate them. I brought up Recettear in the jap dev thread, the original company didn't make that much money from it and didn't see it as profitable to bring it overseas, one small team decided to take the risk out of love for the game and both have ended up better off for it, if anything it's a sign of how out of touch marketing is with the world over, but they have no interest in changing even to thier benefit which is just moronic.

Edit: Lol at lord of the MMo making good games, they used to sure but WoW has been nothing but a cash cow they are milking every drop out of for years. It's a due a fall which will shock Blizzard any time now, Catacylsm was such an app title maybe they saw it coming themselves.
 

PotluckBrigand

No family dinner is safe.
Jul 30, 2008
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I would say I believe that just about all of the big companies are just concerned with the bottom line. Much of the quality that goes into modern big-box games seems almost accidental most of the time, and without any really recognizable pattern.

Movies are much the same way. If you want a quality product that was made with genuine emotion by someone who genuinely wants you to enjoy yourself you should look for the smaller-time developers/filmmakers. Big-budget shoot-em-ups can be entertaining, but I don't feel like there's any real heart there. It's all wallet.

I know it's cliche to talk about how much better indie games are than mainstream ones (if there even is such a thing as mainstream anymore), but I'm not necessarily saying they're BETTER... just less... blatantly capitalist, I suppose. That's not really the right word, but it will suffice.
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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The people you need to point fingers at for being money-grubbing assholes are the publishers. The developers either do what they're told or pitch an idea and hope that someone in Corporate is going to find it sufficiently appealing to warrant a green light.

I couldn't really think of a *developer* that absolutely doesn't give a fuck and who's in it solely for the purpose of siphoning cash-monies out of my pockets. As for the notion that EA or ActiBlizz are heartless corporate moguls smoking cigars made up of rolled Benjamins... I think it's also more than a little misguided.

The real problem is that Corporate-level focus groups focus on what's *likely* to sell. They look at charts and projections and quarterly sales or profits because those are quantifiable. Asking them to put their chips into something that's motivated by a lot of good intentions, strong motivations and a desire to chart new territory is usually quite the gamble.

Betting on Call of Duty 45 is always going to be easier for EA than financing some smaller studio's off-kilter project. Cult hits have plenty of cultural value for the gaming industry and culture, sure, but cult hits tend not to make mucho dinero.
 

Strain42

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Mar 2, 2009
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I believe it fully, wholeheartedly and 100% that all game developers just want my money. No matter how different they may seem, they are companies, they are businesses, and no matter how different they seem, whether it's Bungie or Burger King, at the end of the quarter, they want profits. Now that's not to say that I believe developers will just slap together whatever they think will sell and forsake any artistic vision they may actually have. But look at it this way...once you buy a game, do you really think it matters what you thought of it?

HOWEVER

I do think that some companies do a better job at connecting with their fan base and actually making the fans feel better about giving money to them.

Let me compare two companies: Capcom USA and Atlus USA, and two games: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 and Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon.

Now lets look at this. Both games were sequels to games that only sold average, and both were on consoles that were considered to be on the verge of dying out upon their release (DS and PS2 respectively)

Despite hardcore fans of the series begging for it, Capcom USA simply went "Sorry, the money we'd get for this game isn't worth it." which may or may not be true. I'm hardly an expert on the business, and I'm gonna try to not go all Cliff Clavin here. But the message they sent to the Ace Attorney fans was "Your money is pointless. Buy Street Fighter IV for the third time and maybe we'll care about you."

Atlus on the other hand were smart about it. They localized the game, but they did a limited printing so that it wouldn't set them back too much, and the people who really wanted the game could enjoy it (the printing was so limited that each copy was actually numbered.

Atlus wants my money, there's no doubt about that. I don't see Atlus as my friend, I see them more like a business partner. They want my money, but they make me feel better about giving it to them.
 

Manji187

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Jan 29, 2009
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It's not a question of belief. Even the most innovative developers (who are in it for making great games) would like to stay in business and that means making a certain amount of money.

And then there are the publishers....well you get the idea.

If Valve is seen acting as selfless, make no mistake, it is only because they can permit themselves to act so from a business perspective. Most likely there is a strategy of greater future returns behind it. You know, goodwill with customers really helps.
 

GonzoGamer

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Apr 9, 2008
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Caleco said:
How about Bethesda? it seems like all their games are really good but very similar. Do you think their just pumping them out?
It seems that Bethesda is just in it for the money but that's not why I think so.
They seem to have very little interest in the integrity of their products. They don't seem to care that the ps3 ports they make don't work as long as enough people buy it at launch.
They keep saying they'll fix it and everything but never do.

Devs don't make much money; they also work long hours and get crappy benefits so I would hope that most of them want to entertain people but at the end of the day, the publisher decides what parts of the game get carved away for dlc, pre-order bonuses, and/or online passes and they seem to be getting increasingly aggressive about it.

Then there are companies like gamestop that thrive on ass-raping both the consumers AND the publishers.