The state of the Industry and Capitalism

[EricHiggin]

Chazore said:

EricHiggin said:

Gaming is at it's core an art form, and everyone knows art isn't the easiest sell and when it does sell, it never really sells for much. Not unless it's found to be truly unique or special and even then, it tends to take decades or centuries to become ultra valuable.

Having massive Corps running gaming companies is already a problem. The more they consolidate, if they go that route, the worse it get's as they get larger and even more corporate. It's a bit different if the Corp grows internally or is gaming only and nothing else, but even then it can become a problem if unending greed sets in.
If one Corp is much larger than a competitor and they decide to just use that money to buy their way to a massive advantage, it also makes things worse because they eventually gain too much control, plus the smaller Corps have no choice but to focus on profits so they don't have to just sit there and watch the industry get gobbled up. Even worse, if a Corp cares more about instant profits, they are likely to just axe whatever isn't making "enough profit" so they can "cut losses" or redistribute resources to whatever else is making large profits. This is basically incompatible with art, if you truly want to spread that art to the masses.

Good gaming management requires being run by a fairly reasonable Corp, and those are getting fewer and fewer by the day, especially in the western world.

You know, the more I look back on our gaming history, the more I start to realise Steve Jobs was right, in that we are seeing suits replacing the people that loved making the products, and all we're being left with are people who only care about the money, not the customer, not the product, not the long-term success and reputation gains. 

I feel like the games industry right now is more cut-throat than it has ever been before. 

Something like this happened to the first company I ever worked for. Small, but large for a mom and pop business. The majority of the management were all fieldstaff who worked their way up the chain and eventually became office staff, etc, and most were good at their jobs because of it and the company did quite well and was growing. The company got bought up, along with a bunch of others, and were all brought into the larger company and things became corporatized relatively quickly. After the first year, most of the office staff got canned, were replaced with half as many people, and all of them were suits with some type of degree. Our pricing went way up for everything and the fieldstaff tools, equipment, and vehicle purchases and repairs were cut back on by a lot, to a detrimental degree. Some of the best fieldstaff left during this time, and the new fieldstaff who were brought in as replacements and to grow the company asap were not dependable or hard working. All it took was 3 years and the company was ran into the ground.

The company had been around for 40 years prior, and was relatively well known in the industry, even being a smaller company, for reliable quality reasonably priced work. The final year I worked there, the work became more and more scarce because the company had become seen as sloppy and incompetent, and fewer and fewer customers wanted to hire us again and potential customers weren't at all interested. They were right to think that. It ended up being broken into pieces and sold off. Since then another smaller company in the same sector was started in the same town as the one I worked for, and has found success. They cater to many of the same customers I used to work with, because they offer the same type of reliable quality service for a reasonable price.

I'd say you're right about Steve. The guy wasn't just a visionary, he knew his stuff.

If XB and PS were their own entity, no ties to MS or SNY, things would be much better off.