When you love the games but hate the company
- Thread starter FakeSympathy
- Start date
Apparently it didn't even make a profit, that's probably why they added Duke Nukem.
The original release did not bomb, but under performed. Sold under a million copies, EA considered it "below expectations", EPIC says it did not sell well, and the PC version performed the worst, as it was not a good port. The 360 versions sold the most at 300,000 copies in its first week.
The Full Clip Edition sold a lot better claims People Can Fly.
Bulletstorm - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Supposedly Performed 'Really Well' - PlayStation LifeStyle
According to developer People Can Fly, Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition sales went "really well." The studio may consider bringing the series back.
www.playstationlifestyle.net
People Can Fly CEO Talks Bulletstorm Sales, What's Next for the Company - PlayStation LifeStyle
In an interview with Games Industry, People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski spoke about Bulletstorm sales, what the company is up to now, and more.
www.playstationlifestyle.net
I mean I would say I am dispassionately indifferent to almost every company. They're not people, they're not moral entities and they don't care about me or indeed anyone. They want money, they want to maximize profit, and there isn't a company in the world that would turn down charging $1000 for a spec of dirt if they could get away with it. That any company claims they want satisfied customers is simply because they haven't found a business model where customer satisfaction is superfluous to profits. Lots of companies have. Internet providers, insurance providers, car companies, anyone with a Government contract.
In that light any video game purchase I make I hold my nose at because I know my enjoyment of a game isn't the purpose of this transaction. The company hasn't monetized my happiness, they've monetized the hope of my happiness.
Taking a moral stand against say Blizzard is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. But Blizzard isn't the only company that does shitty things, or has employees committing crimes against each other. And if we're looking for moral consistency I think Jim Sterling has the right of it that the gaming industry as a whole is predatory and problematic and it needs to be rebooted.
But that's not going to happen.
I would say take each individual game as its own and weigh the potential enjoyment you would get out of it vs the company and the transgressions. Diablo 2 remake for example, I don't know where I fall anymore. I loved the OG Diablo 2, and I LOVED playing it with friends online. Depending on if my game group can stomach buying it, I have a very hard decision to make and I don't know how it'll turn out.
In that light any video game purchase I make I hold my nose at because I know my enjoyment of a game isn't the purpose of this transaction. The company hasn't monetized my happiness, they've monetized the hope of my happiness.
Taking a moral stand against say Blizzard is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. But Blizzard isn't the only company that does shitty things, or has employees committing crimes against each other. And if we're looking for moral consistency I think Jim Sterling has the right of it that the gaming industry as a whole is predatory and problematic and it needs to be rebooted.
But that's not going to happen.
I would say take each individual game as its own and weigh the potential enjoyment you would get out of it vs the company and the transgressions. Diablo 2 remake for example, I don't know where I fall anymore. I loved the OG Diablo 2, and I LOVED playing it with friends online. Depending on if my game group can stomach buying it, I have a very hard decision to make and I don't know how it'll turn out.
I dunno how that is the developer's fault. But fair enough i guess.
Adding Duke Nukem - who’s own recent game bombed hard enough to be worthy of the name nukem - is literally the last thing a sane person does to attempt to relaunch an already mediocre to failed game.
It isn’t so much the “company”, as it is human nature at its worst, when seduced by the lure of success; which in our society’s case is dictated by monetary wealth and the social status it provides.
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I have very little knowledge of the neptunia games(almost entirely limited to Unskippable making fun of the opening cutscene of the first game) so I'm spitballing here. I can see that complaint if the devs cater to the worst excesses of fans or set bad examples through their actions/words. I have no idea about the Neptunia devs in this context though. As I have no interest in ever playing or buying the games, I'm not going to go research it either.
Last I remember checking which was back in 2017 or 2018, the guys who developed those games don't really cause much trouble nor placate negative attitudes in the fan base. I've met plenty of Neptunia fans that are sensible and just decent guys and gals. You're always going to have your jackass fans, but that's nearly any fan base. You have to remember that this is Gyrobot. The self-hating weeaboo that tries to hard to act as if he doesn't care about anybody that likes most things anime, and is ashamed of his past too much. I've seen and played some bad anime games too, but I'm not going to let it rule my life. There's plenty of crappy non-anime games, Western animated stuff, and live action TVs and movies that are crap and wasted my time too.
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@Johnny Novgorod that pretty much sums it up, and kinda reflects the amount of change we can expect to see on the consumer end at least.
I'm surprised that cesspool actually did that. The last time I ever logged into GameFAQS was March of 2009. I never looked back since then.
Comment I got from twitter(retweeted by Jason Schreier):
It makes sense to me. Boycotting certain companies is a very blunt tool. If your efforts actually hurt the bottom line of the parent company they might as well interpret it as "Oh, we screwed up with *this* aspect, the overall culture of the company is A-OK".
Assuming it's the company culture you're actually protesting.
It makes sense to me. Boycotting certain companies is a very blunt tool. If your efforts actually hurt the bottom line of the parent company they might as well interpret it as "Oh, we screwed up with *this* aspect, the overall culture of the company is A-OK".
Assuming it's the company culture you're actually protesting.
It's what I've been saying, boycott is about making the consumer feel better doesn't help the devs in anyway and at best does nothing and at worst harm them, which is very counter productive when your reason for boycott is that the dev are treated badly.
I do. Either that, or how they go way beyond overboard to screw over the consumers and treat everyone like thundering dumb asses.
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I hate all companies, so I'm used to it, I personally don't bother with boycotting as I don't think it achieves anything, all I can say is to try to be more politically active and to make sure to promote politics that hold companies accountable for their actions, I mean let's be honest here there are no good companies, particularly in the triple A space, all of them underpay their employees, and promote a culture of job insecurity which is precisely what leads to the abuse as devs are less likely to defend themselves when they think their livelihood is at risk thus making them more vulnerable and susceptive to these abusive behaviours, I mean if you ask me the problem is Capitalism and unless people are willing to increase regulations or better yet, abolish it this kind of shit is going to continue happening in the scale that we've seen in cases like Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft, I mean let's face it, it even isn't much of a PR disaster, people don't give a shit almost nobody cares anymore about what happened with Ubisoft and besides people that are really into game news nobody gives a shit about Activision/Blizzard, hell even the horrible treatment of employees that CD Projekt Red engaged in didn't affect them, what affected them was the poor quality of the end product with Cyberpunk 2077, had the game been fine nobody would've given a shit at all, just like no one gave a shit about bad business practices on Red Dead 2, because the game was good, for example people didn't care about the horrible treatment of employees in Bioware until they striked twice with Mass Effect Andromeda & Anthem.
My point is that individual boycotts achieve nothing, if we want to end these practices we need to push for actual systematic change in general because these problems aren't exclusive to the games industry.
Also I feel someone should say the obligatory "There's no moral consumption under Capitalism", so here it is, and that's you know true, I bet all of you own multiple things that were made in sweat shops and never think about it, which is fine because if you thought about everything you'd be morally agonizing all the time and I can tell you from personal experience that's not healthy.
My point is that individual boycotts achieve nothing, if we want to end these practices we need to push for actual systematic change in general because these problems aren't exclusive to the games industry.
Also I feel someone should say the obligatory "There's no moral consumption under Capitalism", so here it is, and that's you know true, I bet all of you own multiple things that were made in sweat shops and never think about it, which is fine because if you thought about everything you'd be morally agonizing all the time and I can tell you from personal experience that's not healthy.
You're not "part of the problem." The fact that you recognize and condemn these companies yet buy their games anyway is simply pragmatism. The reason these companies do this anti-consumer crap and get away with it is because for every 1 person like you that actually knows and cares that they're doing these things there's 10,000 who don't know or don't care about it and buy their games anyway. Those 10,000? THOSE are the ones these companies care about catering to.
All you would be doing by not buying the games of these companies is depriving yourself for the sake of pretending like you're doing something, just like everybody else who boycots. In short, if you like the games just buy them, and ignore the crusaders who just delude themselves by screaming "VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET" as though they actually believe that we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place if that would actually work.