Zachary Amaranth said:
Waffle_Man said:
People have been saying that the video games industry has been headed for a crash for years. They usually would bring up the problem of video games being mostly derivative and repetitive garbage. I'd usually remain skeptical of these claims, but as DRM and companies blatently punishing the consumer becomes more and more of the focus, I can't help but agree.
You should continue your skepticism.
Believe me, I am.
The video games industry hasn't gone past a point of no return, but if you had told me just five years ago about some of the video game controversies of today, I wouldn't have believed it. I used to be skeptical of complaints of the past because they were vague and unqualified, as well as economically unsound. People used to complain about stuff like "games are getting worse and worse." Really though, companies have been mostly marketing stuff that people will buy, and stuff like crowd funding and more established indie developers have started to fill in the market void that big companies have left unfilled. I'm sure that people would continue buying new call of duties indefinitely if allowed to and I see nothing wrong with it.
Now, both the aforementioned DRM issues that we've come across, as well as the lesser touched on issue of budget inflation, we are seeing companies engage in very risky and concretely unsustainable business practices. It's kind of hard to argue about the games industry going out of of business because of bad design when people they are being sold more are more. What can be argued objectively is that if customers buy a game that they are physically unable to play, it doesn't matter how "low" their standards are.
People have started talking a lot of shit about valve lately, and some of it is very justified, but is it really that hard to understand why people are so in love with them right now?
Valve is beloved for the same reason they were when their client was a clunky, obtrusive piece of crap. You may have never had a problem playing a game offline, but I have, and so have others. "It never happened to me" is the kind of thing that demonstrates why anecdotes aren't really worth much. Meanwhile, EA takes shit for stuff they practically copied off of Valve, so I'm kind of glad to see people stop fellating Valve at this point. They've got a free ride for too long.
I'm not about to defend valve for some of the shit that they do. I refused to use steam when it first came out for various reason, and I still think all of them are true. The point was more to say that things are bad because valve does pretty much just a the base line of what you'd expect from a company, with a few good and bad things that balance each other out, but people treat it like it's some sort of saintly thing that they are doing. I also never made mention of Origin, because I don't consider it that much worse than steam as a service (steam makes far more from a pricing standpoint though, since deals are the only reason I ever started using the service.)
My concern was more along the lines of comparing it to the always on services that companies have been pushing lately. I guess I should have emphasis the "because of internet connection part" because I have had trouble launching steam games. However, I still think that it's worth recognizing that if my steam collection wants me to constantly verify the cache before launching, it's a problem that I can ask someone to help me fix. If I can't get an ubisoft game to work, not because I'm not connected to the internet, but because my isp is preventing me from connecting, I get told "tough shit." The distinction should be obvious.
What they aren't ignorant of is a loss in revenue, which at this point is going to happen.
Regarding SimCity, or in general? Because if it's the former, then no. Last I looked, SimCity is ne of Amazon's top sellers even after being DE-LISTED. If it's the latter, then when? Because people have been singing that tune for years, now, and it hasn't happened.
I'm sure that EA has probably made it's money back on SimCity by now. However, is someone who buys SimCity and left unable to play it going to be a repeat customer. To be economically successful, a company has to have repeat customers. Again, people had complaining about big companies for years, but I generally tuned them out because a lot of it was just serving a different audience. I used to always tune out complaints about DRM because the majority of users weren't affected by it. Now, it's gotten to the point where two different games within a year of each other where the DRM issues went from a user experience issue for the majority of users to a major usability issue. Having a product with an annoyance does far less to erode a customer base than a product that strait up doesn't work.
I'm not picturing a riot of organized players actively boycotting the games industry. I'm picturing a bunch of unconnected people giving up on games that they would have wanted to play, but just can't justify buying.
