| richardhutnik said: The videogame industry appears to be neither sane nor ethically pure. Anyone here stop to think what their hobby funds? I see this: * People are paying for inferior storytelling by wannabe filmmakers who weren't able to break into the movie business. * Razor thin margins that result in individuals seeing themselves not being sure if they would be let go, combined with insane crunch hours a lot of the time also. * Speaking in terms of their entertainment in terms of getting X hours out of a game. NO OTHER form of entertainment I know of uses this measure at all. It is used to rationalize $60 products that are usable for 10 hours or less and then are done. * Individuals who are incompetent at predicting get glorified as some sort of prophet and posted there thoughts over and over. * A journalist industry that has reduced itself to shilling and prostituting itself out publishers in order to get scoops and otjher goodies, which is supposed to act as watchdogs, which is the point of journalism. It is an industry that really can't afford to have real journalism, because the internet has devalued content to the place where you need to draw attention to yourself ot make it. * Fanboy, who end up on part with religious devotees to companies that want their money, but who are likely embarrassed by their existence. * Console makers who are increasingly appearing not to really care what the gamers want, but roll out features they expect people to buy... and an entire industry expecting this will end up restoring growth numbers to what is felt to be needed. * Individuals who actually argue FOR the inability to be able to sell content people purchases that they no longer want. * Sales numbers turned into a score card for fanboys in a religious war. * A business model that is leading to either micropayment to death smaller content, or increasing costs larger content, because so much competition either involves you out production valuing everyone, or hook people for free so that they then want to buy later. It increasingly is one of "get rich or die trying" and ends up with fewer and fewer breakout titles, which end up on the lower end, getting large number of clones and knockoffs. * Massive lying. Do I need to bring up THAT post on here also about some sort of weirdly ALIEN company.
I see cluelessness, incompetency, false nonsense and other unsustainable, and pretty crass things. Hey, maybe I am missing something, like all of the above is justfied, if we could just blast it, get Milo from the Microsoft Kinect demo, to work as advertised... and it have really good graphics to.
And I will give a Jimquisition rant that goes into this also: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6863-Previewed-Preordered-Prescrewed |
Your complaints can be boiled down to the following three categories:
1. Video game fanboys suck.
Yep fanboys suck. I agree with you on this one. But you can find fanboys in any and all fields. Some are called Wine Snobs, others are called Football hooligans, others fight over Ford and Chevy. It is not a phenomenon exclusive to video games.
2. Video game business is unethical.
Name one industry that doesn't treat it's employees like tools and it's customers like trained dogs. As for the whole Aliens CM thing. Where's the evidence that anyone lied. Just because a product doesn't live up to it's goals doesn't mean that the guy who told you about those goals was lying. He may have genuinely thought those goals would be met or at least hoped they would.
3. Video game journalists are on the take.
Name one real example of video game journalists getting paid for positive reviews or anything as unethical as that. The truth is that video game websites sell ad space just like newspapers and TV. A video game advertisement means nothing more than that the website is getting paid to display an ad. For more on this see Adam Sessler:
