So to all you gamers from tons of generations gone by that actually think that today's companies only care about dead presidents, NEWS FLASH! All companies in the gaming industry are out to make money! No exceptions! It was that way in the 8 and 16-bit eras and the same holds true to this day! The gaming business is not a charity organization. Oh, sure some companies may occasionally host a charitable event. But if you honestly think your favorite company from the past was not in it for the money, you are in some seriously deep denial.
"But there are tons of crappy games out today!" Hey, Sherlock, there was a ton of crap for the best consoles back then. Quick cash-ins were the order of the day for many developers/publishers in the golden age of gaming. Total Recall, Batman Forever, Cheester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool were nothing but licensed drivel. But it's not just licensed games that sucked. Sonic 3D Blast was a pitiful excuse for a Sonic game long before the gimmicky 3D outings came along (for the record, I don't think all 3D Sonic games are bad). The Nintendo 64 had a ton of racing games, but only a handful of them were any good. Sony's PlayStation was the most successful of the 32-bit consoles and because it of that, it had some of the worst titles you could ever imagine.
These "Money grubbing fat-cats" that certain idiotic old-schoolers speak of didn't crop up in the current gaming generation. They've been around for decades. Now there are lots of companies that are first and foremost concerned with giving gamers a quality title and appreciative of their fans. However, for these same corporations, making games for a living is what they do, so yes, they are in it for the Benjamins.
Sometimes despite a developers best efforts, a game just doesn't end up being good. Maybe the idea behind the game was executed poorly. Maybe the developers wanted more time to work on the game but their superiors wanted it out the door and on the shelves ASAP, which sped up the development. That last one happens more often than you think and would be a case of said fat-cats doing a little thing called executive meddling.
There a tons of great games across all platforms in the current generation of gaming and all the companies that put out these superb titles want money because without it, they can't keep going and entertaining us. There's no them without us. Sadly, the money grubbing execs do get their way sometimes, which can lead to bad games. It happens. Sucky games are inevitable, but honestly, why would any gamer have the stupidity to say that all the games of today are bad? The market may be saturated with FPS and war games but there's still a lot of variety out there, which is why it helps to own all the consoles if you can. I'm still missing out on a lot of cool games by not yet owning a PS3 and 360. It's not gonna make me say the games for those system suck because I only own a Wii and cannot play the exclusives on those platforms. That's fanboy ignorance of the highest caliber, which, ultimately is what I believe a lot of it boils down to.
First of all you read Youtube comments...... ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs you say they are all businesses that need to make money survive but I think these days (and for me personally) it's the obscene and arrogant way that they go about trying to bleed gamers dry.
Back in the 8 and 16 bit days to release a game on a Nintendo console you had to have the whole seal of improvement and were only allowed under the contract to release four games a year. Since that all ended you can now have at least four releases from the same franchise every year (looking at you Guitar Hero).
Along with Activision previously releasing god knows how many Guitar Hero games a year, along with yearly releases of call of Duty (alongside downloadable maps, weapons etc) you also have EA releasing yearly updates of every sport known to mankind and charging people to purchase a code to play online.
Plus (apologies for the long post) you also have studios announcing download stuff before the game has even been released, like with characters for Marvel vs Capcom 3 and the new Mortal Kombat, which of course costs extra money.
So going back to the original point, yes companies need to make money but they need to stop trying to bleed gamers dry before people get fed up and the bubble bursts.
I was just going to say, you can lose hours at TVTropes.
ReplyDelete@dste, your points are very valid. I probably would has posted something similar along those lines had I not been super tired when I wrote that. I was actually thinking of doing another post about DLC and yearly sequels, because that is definitely some stuff we could do without. Wish I had been thinking of it when I made the original post.
ReplyDelete@Tommy I've lost sleep because of TV Tropes!