Jimquisition: Companies Exist To Make Money

Yellowfish

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There's quite an interesting dicussion going on in this thread, but the thing I really want to know right now is what in the name of God is that thing at 2:20?
 

Sheo_Dagana

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This is kind of why I've never liked DLC; it allows developers to be lazy. Less content available to the average consumer (who is paying $60) at the launch of a game, plus, you aren't even playing the FULL GAME. You're paying for a beta. Tell me, how many times have you put a brand new game into your system of choice and a few days, or even a week later, you're greeted by the "update available" screen? It happens with pretty much every single game I buy.

It's even more frustrating when publishers try their best to hamstring used game sales. Say what you want about GameStop (Best Buy has shittier trade-in prices, but I'll admit I'm sometimes equally baffled at GameStop), but I live on trade-ins and I'm thankful there's still one around me to be able to take my old games in and put the credit towards NEW purchases. I think that's the thing most publishers forget about when taking used games into account.
 

GonzoGamer

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The fact is that some people are suckers (especially fanboys) and when you call them out on it they will probably either stew in their shame or try and justify their exposed frivolity with any excuse they can think of...or laugh at you and light a $1000 cigar with a $100 bill.

We all know that the people who defend companies with statements like that just don't want to feel stupid for being a sucker so they're going to call you stupid for not bowing to our corporate overlords; because that's what capitalism means.
 

IronMit

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The price point for games is not flexible. What if someone wanted to make a £60 game? As in £60 of quality. 20% more effort and investment then deus ex/skyrim etc. They can't sell it for £60 ..no one would buy it. So they sell it for the typical rrp £40, add a dlc, weapons packs etc. That way everyone can enjoy it.

If other companies are pushing gaming to it's limit then they have to push it too.

Just something to think about. I hate dlc's /microtransactions...maybe the only way to do this is gaming regulators to ban dlc until 3 months after release or something....or the one company that doesn't add dlc's will suffer
 

Therumancer

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SNCommand said:
The argument is more complex than just "companies exist to make money"

It also means that companies need to make money, if a practice is deemed unprofitable they will of course try to steer away from it, they might not be correct in their assessment, but then it's up to the consumer to buy the product or not

The argument isn't about someone having to like or even accept why a company does what it do, but it is to make someone understand why they do it
Hmmm, I wrote a lengthy response to this video but apparently it didn't save properly, nothing I hadn't said before so here it is (in a more condensed form) in response to your post where it seems fairly relevent:

I think a lot of the issue comes from what people refer to as "the corperate mentality" more than a problem with businesses needing, or wanting to, make a profit. That is to say when it goes from producing a good, solid, product for a fair profit, and turning it into a situation where they expect to consistantly produce the least possible, for the highest possible returns. A mentality which has lead to a view where to succeed a company needs to constantly grow, instead of simply making money. Failing to make continually huger ratios of profit are considered the same as a
failure. Likewise if you say make 45 million dollars less this year than last year, that's considered catastrophic,
even if you might have still made hundreds of millions of dollars in excess of what you spent.

As I've said before as well, the problem isn't entirely the fault of publishers like EA, Activision, and their ilk. We as gamers like to lionize the developers, the ones who actually make the games, but they are part of what contributes to the problem. The actual cost to make a game is largely a matter of human resources, the cost of office space, materials, etc... are minimal compared to these game budgets. Publishers talk about how increasingly expensive it is to make games, and point to rising costs, it's important to understand that that rising cost pretty much amounts to some line coder or graphics artist demanding more and more money each year. By definition a professional keeps up with the latest technology and such as part of their profession and what they do, it's what makes them a professional. At the end of
the day the reason why one shooter winds up costing more money than a very similar one released the year before is because some guy is demanding more money to draw pictures and such with his computer. Success of course contributes to this as well, after all if a Publisher is making millions upon millions of dollars on someone's work, it only makes sense for the guys actually producing it to want to see more of that actual profit, of course this causes a cycle where as the successful developer asks for more, the publisher in response gouges more to cover it, especially as their demands for profit consistantly increase.

While it was years ago "Maxim" (I think it was) did an article called "Why Game Developers Drive Ferraris" or something like that. I believe The Escapist covered it at the time. The source was not one known for utter reliability, but it's own sources were supposed to be tax filings and earnings claims by individual people that wound up on public record if I remember, so that made it rather hard to dispute. The bottom line is that while we like to support the view of game developers as ordinary folks, who just happen to love games and make them, that's not entirely the truth, these are guys demanding top dollar for skills that they as ruthlessly promote as other professionals like Lawyers. A developer is going to demand as much money as it can possibly get, especially if it's working on a product like a sequel a Publisher specifically wants, which all filters down to the employees of that developer who tend to do quite well for themselves. To date I've never seen another breakdown quite like the one Maxim did, so I pretty much take that as a general indication of how much your line coders, graphics artists, etc... are making.

To be entirely fair also if you've seen studio tours and such put out by some development companies, it also doesn't paint a flattering picture from the perspective of cost, and what our money pays for. Rarely does such a video show anything like professional cube farms, with people hunched over computers working non-stop under the gaze of a relentless boss. Instead you see a bunch of people lounging around, relaxed, tons of clutter around their work space, and other things. Companies like Valve have even done things like show off their corperate snack bars and such in the past. An enviroment that makes me sort of "get" why you have complaints by groups like "Rockstar Wives" when there is actually a crunch, requiring people to work 12-16 hour days or whatever, since no game studio I've seen covered has exactly seemed all that productive to me, and it makes me wonder if that contributes to how long it takes for some
games to get made, and how sloppy and bug filled a lot are. In short, you see millions of dollars being throw into groups of people that are high paid, but seem to also be sloppy, unprofessional, and inefficient.

None of this would be a big deal of course, I mean I have no problem with low-stress work places that are high on comfort and low on productivity, or people enjoying the fruits of their work by having nice cars, houses, etc. The problem mostly occurs in a big picture sense when you consider that at the bottom line you, the customer, are paying for all of this, the cost for all of this goes into the development cost for the game, which then the Publisher has to make up with it's own inflated needs, and that all falls to you, with things like all that gouging taking place to support all of this along with the demands for ever increasing profits.

To some extent your on-disc DLC, microtransactions, and other assorted things, come so some graphics designer can sit back with his feet on his desk 8 hours a day, talking comics with the guy in the next cubicle over. I mean sure, he DOES eventually get the work done, but probably not to the extent he would otherwise, and your dealing with what probably amount to dozens if not hundreds of wasted man-hours. If they halved or quartered what these guys make down to actual "normal people" earnings (you know, like most of us, who also probably have degrees and professional level skills) and then cracked the whip to get these guys to actually work every hour they are paid for, we'd probably see higher quality games released in less time, for less cost. Of course at the end of the day the corperate mentality of the publishers would still be a problem, representing another mentality that needs to be dealt with, with a lower expectation on what a reasonable profit is.

I know a lot of people don't like what I have to say on these things when I talk about the business aspects, but I call it as I see it. Over the years various websites and magazines and such have done industry exposes on how it all works. To be honest a lot of my criticism of the developers comes from what they show of themselves in studio walkthroughs, videos, etc... in addition to financial reports. In a lot of cases these walkthroughs of studios and "meet the team" videos are probably intended to show them as "hey we're gamers just like you, and this is a nerd's paradise!", and on some levels they succeed, but when looked at as a group of professionals producing a product it doesn't always leave me with a good impression. Of course then again my own former employment probably has a bit to do something with that. Someone who was acting anything like the guys in some of those videos would have wound up in an unofficial security "pool" about how long until we were sent to walk them out. Our occasional walkthroughs back of the house oftentimes being a sort of "look a blazer, this is your get back to work warning" even if we had no direct authority there, you know "dog and pony show, security exists to be seen" schtick.

From a productivity perspective, the nervous mole-like IT guy in the white shirt and black pants who is always hunched over his computer typing furiously is a good employee and the guy who is likely to actually make a solid product. The dude who sits around in jeans and a geeky T-shirt, action figures on his desk, and chatters all the time display occasional bounts of doing something might be a nicer guy, and more fun for making a show about computer nerds, but at the end of the day he's more likely to fail to get either a quantity or quality (or both) of work done and need to be badged and sent packing. I've seen it for years. Some of these studio walkthroughs make me think "you know, I can see exactly why their last game took 3 years and was glitched to death".

In short I agree with Jim, and I guess with you, though the gist of what I'm saying is that I think I have a pretty good idea of WHY they do things, and even HOW. From my perspective identifying the problems isn't the issue, it's actually getting people to change without some kind of cataclysmic crash. This goes from developers who are both paid more reasonable wages and salaries, lowering the costs of games... combined with a demeanor that comes accross like a group of people I might actually want to hire if I was looking to invest my money in publishing a game (from most of the behind the scenes studio stuff, I wouldn't hire 90%+ of these guys if I was spending my own money), combined with publishers contenting themselves with a reasonable profit.... not setting the standard based on what was made last year, projected growth, or what the most successful franchise of all time has managed to pull down. At the end of the day if a product makes more money than it cost to produce, that should be considered a "win". It actually makes me angry when someone wants me empathize with their position when their company has only made a few hundred million or whatever... I mean "QQ, we've only got more money this one year than a person could ever reasonably spend... pity us".

It's one of those things where I'm actually extremely capitalist, as an idea I love it. The problem is when you inevitably wind up with a few greedy arseholes that ruin it for everyone else. I don't nessicarly feel that's inherant to the system, though, more of a matter of nobody keeping an eye on it, and the gradual erosion of the safeguards that were supposed to prevent this. Half the problem being that it's pretty much impossible to call a big company on thins they should be called on due to the expenses involved in the legal system... more of a general commentary than one on the game industry in paticular. Right now being RIGHT doesn't matter so much as your abillity to represent yourself in court, and by spending a few million dollars on defense casually, and making a potential loss (forcing you to cover their expenses) catastrophic, it pretty much means that the only one who can challenge a big company is another big company, rendering any safeguards almost entirely irrelevent, as that tends to only leave the goverments, and since big business can donate to political campaigns we know how smashingly that tends to go.
 

Your Gaffer

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I'll tell you nothing makes me estimate a poster's IQ on any forum to be roughly that of a week old mayonnaise than hearing this old tired line, "what do you expect bro, they're a company, they are trying to make money/stop piracy/eat your first born". Like that is supposed to make me OK with whatever BS customer unfriendly stuff they are trying to pull at the moment.
 

WanderingFool

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DVS BSTrD said:
WanderingFool said:
DVS BSTrD said:
I'd like to say: why is this up so early? And why do I have to keep reloading it?

Edit: Seriously you guys? First Escape to the Movies gets put out a whole DAY ahead of schedule and now this? This isn't the third season of My Little Pony you know.
What? I thought it came out on Friday like always...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.398782-Escape-to-the-Movies-Broken-City
Check the times on the first four posts.

Ohhhhhhh...

Thought that was a little weird...
 

j0frenzy

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Could we maybe get a warning about discussions of poop before a video? That would be nice.
 

Catrixa

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I feel like this argument exists because of the standard irrational internet argument feedback loop:

Company A does something intrinsically stupid (e.g. $70 DLC for a stately monocle) -> Internet calls them out on it (and is justified in doing so) -> Company B does something similar, but not quite as stupid (e.g. $5 for a hat) -> Internet overreacts -> Someone (games journalist or respected games authority figure on Twitter) calls them out on it, saying "Yes, it's nice that you're outraged that you won't get this hat just for being alive, but Company B is just trying to make money. No one is making you buy that hat." -> Company C does something that is debatably stupid (e.g. the decision to put DLC advertisements in Dragon Age as NPC conversations) -> Internet argues, but all arguments in favor are "Well, they're just trying to make money!"

As far as I can tell, this is pretty much par for the course. We could probably solve this whole issue by actually saying things like "I agree that Company [X] is being a greedy asshole, but Game [Y] is still a worthwhile purchase because [insert the game's merits here]." If you bought the game because you like it, you don't have to defend the company who is trying to squeeze every penny out of you (there's a good chance they aren't the ones who actually MADE the game). Hell, it makes a certain amount of sense to buy the game, then complain your butt off to the company about their predatory practices. Of course, if they ignore all complaints, it makes even more sense to stop giving them money, but that's just my opinion (and what I'd be most likely to do in that case. If your game isn't fun because you try to gouge money out of me, your future games will also probably not be very fun, either).
 

Ukomba

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A lot of the business practices are stupid and, in some cases, self destructive, but they can do what ever they want with their game. I don't think 'False Start' painted by Jasper John is worth 80 million dollars but I would never think to go rant about it on the internet. I think that Kick Starter Open Source Death Star is dumb and is just being done so some people can make money but I'm not being force to give money to them.

You know what I do when I think a game is too expensive or is doing Bull S*** dlc packages? I don't buy it. At least I don't buy it right away. I just wait for the price to come down, or for a steam sale, or for them to do a 'Game of the Year' edition that has all the dlc stuff bundled with it (That's how I bought both batman games).

So ya, kind of whiny. Give me, Give me, free, free, free.
 

CaptainKoala

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But companies do exist to make money, and as long as it stays within the bounds of the law they have a right to do any scummy business practices they want to. It's our job as consumers to not take part in the bullshit, because when we do, it doesn't happen anymore. If a company realizes that something is losing them money they will stop doing that thing.
 

Aaron Sylvester

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Hey Jim, could you please explain how your examples/analogies are even vaguely relevant to what gaming companies are doing? (I expand further on my question below the quote.)

The Grim Ace said:
I always did find the "they only exist to make money" argument crazy. I mean, if I went over and stabbed a man in the dick and he asked me why I did it, he wouldn't accept, "hey, I exist to stab people in the dick," as a reason. That might be an extreme analogy but when I'm spending sixty dollars on a game and only getting fifteen hours of content, my wallet feels terribly abused.
1) You stabbed a man in the dick - you broke the law, here come the assault charges.
3) You didn't give the man a choice, you didn't ask him whether he wanted a knife in the dick or not. You simply did it, implying force.
2) You severely harmed a human being. This is a very negative thing.

So your analogy, while extreme, wasn't even vaguely on the right track. Neither were Jim's terrorism, drugs and human trafficking analogies. They are devastatingly harmful, they are forced, they break the biggest of laws. How were they relevant in any fucking way?

While they're not exactly saving starving babies with their profits, companies aren't HARMING anyone either. They may be harming gaming as a whole but that is an extremely subtle and difficult-to-measure issue, because a lot of companies are doing really great stuff as well. The extreme analogies which imply forceful harm, destruction or lives, etc 100% of the time don't goddamn apply.

You don't live under their fucking iron-fisted rule, EA is not your abusive alcohol-drinking dad and you are not 10 years old. You have options - either don't bother with the product, or boycott the company and all it's products, or buy the product and give negative feedback. All 3 options are effective to varying degrees.

Companies make money because people GIVE them money. Do I feel it's right to abuse that power? No. But do I feel it's harming mankind and the companies should be HATED for it? Fuck no! They are only taking hints from the consumer, and the overwhelming hint companies like EA/Activision have received is that consumers will willingly spend money on anything if it is marketed heavily enough. Consumers willingly give money for poor DLC practices, consumers willingly spend money on DRM-infested games. They are simply testing what they can get away with, how far they can push the boundaries. But I repeat, they are not forcing you to buy their shit, they are not mass-murdering fellow human beings.

Companies will alter their practices according to how consumers react (sales, reviews, feedback, etc). It's that simple. No need to over-complicate it or use dumb analogies.
 

Vegosiux

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What can I say.

That whatever god you believe in for Jim. Me, I'm just glad he's around, as insufferable as he can be at times.
 

Callate

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Yes!

(To the refutation of "companies exist to make money". To the Dead Space scatological fanfic, not so much.)

I've done this before, but again (short form)- game companies shouldn't exist to make money; game companies should exist to make games. If they do that well, we should reward them with tons of money so they can continue to pay their people and make more games, but ideally, they should be able to make games even if there's a chance they won't make money; to try out niche markets, innovate, and take risks. That's what moves both the medium and the industry forward, and if they can't do that, well... we end up with a bunch of dead developers, and a handful of big players who make almost nothing but franchises and sequels loaded to the neck with every form of nickel-gouging DRM the marketing department can come up with.

Fortunately, we're way too enlightened to allow such a thing to happen, let alone turn a blind eye and make excuses for it...
 

Brad Gardner

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As an Economist, Companies aren't made to make money. Company are made to supply the demand. And if you have a money system often time profit does come in money form. Taking sysmatics out of the picture I doubt the gaming companies will do any different until there is a colapse in the gaming market, or at least, a mass migration in realization of the demand that they don't want 'Ea' (or other company)'s balls in thier mouth and find someone who will treat us nice with a product as good or better or even slightly worse than the product we now get with balls in our mouth.

But it would have to be at least 50% move or a 30% move with riots at E3 and other gaming convetions with reps of the companies haraassed and maybe assaulted. I'm sorry to be sinic.
 

DiMono

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I think you're missing the point of the "companies exist to make money" argument. It's not that we should bend over and accept whatever they do, it's that they're free to try whatever they think will make them more money, and we get to decide whether to put up with it.

Allow me to rephrase it into how it actually works, rather than the clumsy "exists to make money" wording:

EA is not in the business of making video games. Honda is not in the business of making cars. Sony is not in the business of making electronic devices. Every company on the face of the planet is in the same business: to make money. Everyone is in the business of making money, it's just the method that varies. EA makes their money by creating and selling games and game content.

Because they are in the business of making money, they get to try new ways to use their resources to achieve that end. DLC was the second such post-purchase effort that came about, after subscription play. The first time it was used, it was a gamble. Would people accept it? Turns out the answer was yes. And now post-launch DLC is almost expected from games.

The thing is though, the companies don't have any power whatsoever when it comes to people paying for DLC, wherever it's located - the consumer has all of the power. All that has to happen for a particular business practice to go away is for the people who buy the games to vote with their wallets, and not buy something they think is unreasonable. If people had rejected DLC the first time it happened, there wouldn't have been a second time.

Basically, because companies exist to make money, they're free to try whatever they want (within the realm of what's legal) to accomplish that end. It's up to the players to decide to support those efforts or not. If you want EA to stop doing the stuff you don't agree with, then gather like-minded people together with you and don't pay for it. It's not the company's fault that they're able to get away with stuff like that; it's the players' fault for letting them do it.
 

anonymity88

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IronMit said:
Marik2 said:
I may have missed this when playing through the MGS series, but why exactly was Solidus using child soldiers in that war? Did it have to do with fighting the Patriot system, what?

New to MGS here
Raiden was one of the child soldiers. It was supposed to mirror the player (you), as a kid playing a crap load of shooters.
Or was Raiden's VR training supposed to mirror us playing the previous MGS title? Anyway I think that story was more thermatic then anything.

I'm just going to assume it was one of many wars in the military industrial complex the 'patriots' wanted to continue. Solidus couldn't of been waging war on them for that long -they let him become president. It was only then he realised he was still just a 'pawn' and rebelled.


I have played through the game many times but try not to think about it. MGS2 was some giant 4th wall breaking experiment where you are constantly questioning weather it is real or not. Many die hard fans decided it wasn't real but then MGS4 decided it was real.

VR THEORY:
http://metagearsolid.org/reports_vr_theory_1.html

in depth review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8AVbjd94vc
I always thought it was a convenient way of having Solidus and Raiden already know each other. The same way that Solid and Liquid had a past.

I do like your theory better though!
 

II2

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Jimothy Sterling said:
Companies Exist To Make Money

Jim goes deep into the minds of publishers in this week's episode of Jimquisition.

Watch Video
I think implicit in the 'Companies exist to make money' argument, when presented by a thoughtful individual, is that their fist order mandate is to increase the value of themselves for their investors.

One of the reasons Valve can be Valve and do things their way is that they are (extremely uncommon for a company of their size) privately owned. Their decisions are not subject to review at shareholder meetings and there is very little noise the signal of their executive process.

I think a big root of some of the customer issue / customer service complaints that crop up are the result of the publishers existing in a completely isolated corporate bubble from their developers and retailers, each entity interacting via a toxic mix of rent-seeking and friction...

The free market in this case is not producing optimal productivity, in most cases, because the big money interests and investors that put white collar power players like Kotick or Riccitiello at the helm are establishing relatively effective executive decision makers who would be fine for a company like John Deer Motor, but don't really UNDERSTAND what they're trying to sell as anything other than 'entertainment media products' and think on how to push every angle to monetize them.

Gabe Newell, by contrast, IS / or at least was a gamer. I don't love or hate the man (G.N.) but he understands his business from a perspective "old money" doesn't comprehend. It can be seen in how he structured his company in it's incorperation to it's ongoing success. It's not an accident Valve does so well.

---

One final aside: I know people complain "when's halflife 3 coming", but compare Valve's slow and unreliable development vs Success against Activison and EA's "annual iteration" dev/sale cycle that's running studios, franchises and customers into the ground.
 

The Deadpool

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Companies exist to make money.

Consumers exist to demand quality.

That's the heart of the capitalist ideal.