Gaming and industries, does great success ruin everything?

[phoneyLogic]

Are we talking about success or greed here. Success is like progress. It builds upon itself and is only good if you continue to create an outstanding product or service.

Good question.

On the one hand all great publisher take many billions of dollar into hands to make very expensive games. On the other hand, they are cutting down lots of franchises we used to love.

 

I'm not entirely certain how they define success.

In a technical sense "success" would mean sth like "it works like intended".

 

Did they intend to make a lot of money? Well, it would be naive to deny that.

I believe success most of the time is a financial term in their calculations.

 

So why exactly they are cutting down games the same time they spent more and more money on?

Because certain elements are not as providable enough in their eyes?

Isn't this just the usual process of profit maximization?

Therefore they may spent the most money into things, what are suspected to pay out the most.

 

If money dictates the direction a game is going, then we most likely are talking about greed.

[brokenergy]

People are usually blind to what the developers want their company to end up, so they rant because they feel that the company has "failed" them. Others fall for every single word that the developer says because they believe everything that the company "says". In otherwords it's more of a perception issue as well as some developmental issues as well. Some like Valve and CDPR are really good at marketing their brand while others like EA and Ubisoft are not. It's not helpful when the Internet still brings out the "Ubisoft hates PC" and "EA is the devil" and it isn't helpful when they don't realise that they are two big publishing firms that are publicly owned. Making games isn't an art, is business.

[sukeban]

One other thing that I sometimes wonder with these large studios is about the caliber of employees that they begin to hire once they reach a certain size. I'd imagine that once (nearly) any institution (in this case, a company) gets to a certain size, personnel can begin to "relax" and coast off of institutional inertia, knowing that their action or inaction likely won't be noticed--prompting them to not really give it 100% (for example, look at the textures/meshes fixed by the Static Mesh Improvement mod--that the vanilla variants made it into a AAA game in 2011 is jaw-dropping).

 

Some other thread that I was reading about Skyrim's "lack of polish" (e.g. vast number of simple-to-fix bugs) really made me think about this. I don't know how many employees Beth has, but I would make a huge wager that their median employee ISN'T as dedicated to the RPG genre as they used to be back when they were smaller. Now they might have guys from FPS backgrounds and other genres, guys (and girls) that never played any of the classic games and are thus largely blind to the aspects of traditional RPGs that they are now happily axing in the favor of graphics and "action" elements. I'm sure that their employees really like making games, but I would question whether the "culture" of the company is still the same (games made by RPG buffs for RPG buffs) or if now it's just like any other big corporate office where people just do what's asked of them (and not much else) and then look forward to pay day. Based on the volume of fixes in the Unofficial Patches (and many of them being quick, 2-second CK fixes), I don't know if Beth is as passionate as they used to be, nor do I know whether or not their employees are willing to put in the unpaid overtime necessary to take their games to the "next level" in terms of polish and depth. Or, to couch it in cliche sports terms, whether or not Beth is as "hungry" now that they're a big fish as they were when they were nothing but a minnow.

 

Anyway, that same thing could probably also be said about Bioware and (especially!) Blizzard, basically that your "vision" and enthusiasm get diluted the more "other people" you bring in to help make your games. There's definitely magic in a small, cohesive team (doing anything), and that's just hard to maintain when a group starts to get too large.

Edited February 18, 2013 by sukeban

[HeyYou]

Success of the company ruins the games? Yeah, that would seem perfectly reasonable. Edited February 18, 2013 by HeyYou

[phoneyLogic]

Depends on what you see as success. If you aim to make a game for everyone, then you most likely throw out too "complicated" things. It's like doing a job for the broadest (average) audience, basically delivering average stuff. This may ruin a franshise which was top-notch before. Edited February 18, 2013 by tortured Tomato

[Vagrant0]

One other thing that I sometimes wonder with these large studios is about the caliber of employees that they begin to hire once they reach a certain size. I'd imagine that once (nearly) any institution (in this case, a company) gets to a certain size, personnel can begin to "relax" and coast off of institutional inertia, knowing that their action or inaction likely won't be noticed--prompting them to not really give it 100% (for example, look at the textures/meshes fixed by the Static Mesh Improvement mod--that the vanilla variants made it into a AAA game in 2011 is jaw-dropping).

 

Actually, it usually ends up being the opposite. Once a company gets to a point it becomes harder for them to make all their deadlines and keep up quality, leading to a sort of sweatshop type situation that working for EA is known for. Rather than let the coders and designers sit down and vomit up gold, they micromanage the hell out of whatever talent they have, pressure for more, and usually pull them to work on several different projects. With a smaller company, deadlines usually aren't rushed since those smaller companies are usually working for themselves through most of the initial development, and then only polishing things once they have a publisher on board.

[JimboUK]

Micromanaging the creativity out of people is just poor management, Google are a massive company, they don't have this issue, in fact they pay armies of people to do nothing else but think and be creative.

[Ihoe]

People are usually blind to what the developers want their company to end up, so they rant because they feel that the company has "failed" them. Others fall for every single word that the developer says because they believe everything that the company "says". In otherwords it's more of a perception issue as well as some developmental issues as well. Some like Valve and CDPR are really good at marketing their brand while others like EA and Ubisoft are not. It's not helpful when the Internet still brings out the "Ubisoft hates PC" and "EA is the devil" and it isn't helpful when they don't realise that they are two big publishing firms that are publicly owned. Making games isn't an art, is business.

 

It is the nature of every consumer in every category of any market to have a form of sympathy/antipathy towards a company they supported through purchase of their goods, and every consumer has every right to rant about it, be blind or otherwise just ignoring the fact of how many happenings happen internally in the Co. which has nothing to do with any customer's business.

 

Valve has PC gamers EARNED respect. EA has, through many past actions, shown themselves to be untrustworthy. Valve has not.Valve, being privately held, is immune to the shareholder activism that prompts companies as big as EA to become idiotic in their treatment of paying customers. In short, EA had made their bed and can lay in it, while Valve has impressed us generally and until they do something flagrantly wrong, they will continue to be well-regarded by gamers. and this not only relates to their marketing schemes, also with how they treat paying customers. I don't understand this "Suck it all up, Don't coplain you fell for it" attitude companies or even people, expect other people to have. so, Being a big publisher gives publishers the Right to take advantage of some (read most) people's lack of perception (as in lying)?

 

(Oh damn I hope this doesn't start a flame war...)

[Ghogiel]

One other thing that I sometimes wonder with these large studios is about the caliber of employees that they begin to hire once they reach a certain size. I'd imagine that once (nearly) any institution (in this case, a company) gets to a certain size, personnel can begin to "relax" and coast off of institutional inertia, knowing that their action or inaction likely won't be noticed--prompting them to not really give it 100% (for example, look at the textures/meshes fixed by the Static Mesh Improvement mod--that the vanilla variants made it into a AAA game in 2011 is jaw-dropping).

If I were the art lead on Skyrim, I would have had to reject a lot of that work. I would have to turn around and say, this isn't a PC mod, this is an XBOX360 game. And if he kept ignoring the guidelines I had laid out for my team I wouldn't be happy...

 

He can do things the designers can't.

 

Also deadlines.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Ghogiel

[sukeban]

@Vagrant

 

That makes an enormity of sense, TBH. I suppose that it answers affirmatively the OP's original question, that once a studio gets to be a certain size and their quest for Septims begins to outstrip their desire to make the best game that they can, you get the management situation that you mention. Makes one pine for the old Blizzard approach of "it's ready when it's ready" rather than aiming for artificial marketing type launch dates of 11/11/11 and such. And if your studio doesn't have the manpower to accommodate working on a game of that size while not sacking polish... why not hire more employees. I read somewhere that Skyrim grossed one billion in sales--somehow I think Beth could have afforded to hire a couple more writing/art/quest design guys and foregone ~150k in profits. Or just use interns to identify and squash the zillions of quick-fix CK bugs mwaha.

 

@Ihoe

 

Agree with everything that you said. I wonder if standing pat as a privately held company is the only way to go if a studio's intention is to maintain a uniform standard of quality rather than focus on profit maximization (and paying out dividends to investors), especially nowadays when going public isn't the only way to secure funding for a project when you're relatively new.

 

@Ghogiel

 

That makes sense to a degree (in that it makes complete sense from a cynical business standpoint while making no sense from a work-ethic standpoint), but the "buck" has to stop somewhere when it comes to such breaches of quality. If it really is the designers and the management team condoning all the corner-cutting (spurred on, no doubt, by the executive team and their desire to satisfy shareholders), common sense would seem to indicate that these individuals be replaced and the philosophy of the studio reevaluated. Or at least it would if consumers didn't reward such bad developer behavior (obviously guilty myself of this...) with unprecedented levels of sales. One potential silver lining perhaps with the mainstreaming of gaming (and the general decline in quality that this trend has ushered in) might be the mushrooming of studios, creating more genuine competition within a given gaming genre. That's why I am really excited to see, for example, what CD Projekt will do in their open-world Witcher 3--hoping that it will build upon Skyrim's flaws and force Beth to "up their game" if they desire to remain the kings (sitting all slouchy on the thrown like a Skyrim Jarl...) of open-world RPGs.