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Major Games Publishers Are Feeling The Impact Of Peaking Attention (midiaresearch.com)
Some analysis from research firm MIDiA: Earlier this month Electronic Arts (EA) reported disappointing quarterly results, now Activision has laid off nearly 800 staff, mostly in marketing and sales. As MIDiA has reported multiple times before, engagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritizing between them.
This downward trend in engagement has persisted for a while now, and the latest quarterly results from some major games publishers confirm that a revenue slowdown will ultimately follow consumer behaviour. Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought. Publishers will be quick to blame declining engagement and revenues on Fortnite. While the title indeed intensified the manifestation of the peak attention economy dynamics among gamers, the coming slowdown is part of a much bigger challenge -- how to capture attention in an increasingly attention-scarce landscape.
Top publishers are facing several headwinds at the same time. Fortnite is only one of them, and arguably one of the less harmful ones to the long-term outlook of the games industry: Fortnite's model utilises the attention economy dynamics: It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play, which means there is little barrier for consumers to allocate attention to, compare to its paid counterparts. While it has undoubtedly cannibalised some revenue and engagement from other major publishers, Fortnite engagement still contributes to the bottom line of the global games industry.
More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite: Not only is engagement declining across mobile, PC and console gaming, at the same time, video is winning the race against gaming in capturing attention on multipurpose devices such as PC.
This downward trend in engagement has persisted for a while now, and the latest quarterly results from some major games publishers confirm that a revenue slowdown will ultimately follow consumer behaviour. Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought. Publishers will be quick to blame declining engagement and revenues on Fortnite. While the title indeed intensified the manifestation of the peak attention economy dynamics among gamers, the coming slowdown is part of a much bigger challenge -- how to capture attention in an increasingly attention-scarce landscape.
Top publishers are facing several headwinds at the same time. Fortnite is only one of them, and arguably one of the less harmful ones to the long-term outlook of the games industry: Fortnite's model utilises the attention economy dynamics: It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play, which means there is little barrier for consumers to allocate attention to, compare to its paid counterparts. While it has undoubtedly cannibalised some revenue and engagement from other major publishers, Fortnite engagement still contributes to the bottom line of the global games industry.
More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite: Not only is engagement declining across mobile, PC and console gaming, at the same time, video is winning the race against gaming in capturing attention on multipurpose devices such as PC.
It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play
So giving away games for free hurts the competition. Who knew?
couldn't have toned that differently? when way too much is never nearly enough? an imaginary digit based psychosis? somebody has to be in charge? they of psychotic inbred amoral selfishness for centuries now? mormons overtaking rome/italy? same style of underwear for all? pie charts? 11 year old busted in fl. for refusing to pledge?.. when in rome? cease fire stand down,, in the moms we trust.. thanks again
almost done; articles' intent of leaving sick people feeling hopeless new norm'? using our badly damaged connective spiritual acuity to defeat unprecedented evile is doable? cease fire stand down.. free the (also) innocent stem cells.. divest from deception, a greed fear ego based control (of everything) issue.. do it today..
This is meaningless:
"More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite."
There is no conclusion.
Makes the article worthless.
Bring The Buggles back for this, please. We need a new take on this ironic, but iconic, turn of events.
EA and Blizzard are publishing mostly shitty games. Indeed, aside Nintendo, I'm basically stopped playing "AAA" games (the ones that you'll be able to pay $10 in a promotion 3 months later) since 5 ago. I prefer play retrogames: as they're better games in their roots and for most of them a 30 minutes session will be enough. Old games you play to feel the hero. In modern games, you watch a CG of the hero in action. Videogames are about gaming, not about cinematic or storytelling.
Make a good game and then either
a: give it away for free and milk the whales with microtransactions & pay-to-win
or
b: sell it for $60 a copy,
EA has been trying to do both & the gamers have finally caught on.
are going to have to learn to code some other projects.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
EA, Ubisoft, et al. are not.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The game industry today desperately needs another 1983.
It would be nice to see something different, other than another CoD release, another FIFA or Madden, or more MOBAs, or yet another sequel of the same old stuff.
Only exception is Fortnite and Apex Legends. These two games have slurped up all the bottom-tier gamers, making every other game, be it MMOs, or other MOBAs a treat to play, as the players remaining tend to be a lot better quality, even on WoW. Hopefully those games can keep the 13 year olds occupied striving for the next tomato-head.
... the game industry succesfully got it's way to control software and by keeping half of it on their machines. They're finding out how gaming always was - most games will be played once, finished and then forgotten. It's hard for any game to keep players for a long time, which is why people need a rest from games between sequels instead of always online service base gaming bullshit. This is especially true for mobile games that survives off a tiny minority of whales. The sooner the game industry figures out we want good content for money and stop trying to turn every game into a service the better off we'll all be. People can buy multiple single player games they can't play every multiplayer game.
That means service based games are a winner take all market because free time is limited when many multiplayer games are released in the same period vying for player attention. The level of idiocy coming out of management selecting for short term profits instead of fixing the AAA game industries ability to make said games is the issue.
Responding to criticism with "Don't like it, don't buy it" definitely lessens the attention directed towards your game, even if customers have some in reserve.
peak attention, another way of saying theyre on to your shitty business practices.... fuck the suits
I think that they're probably right. The amount of entertainment that Americans consume today is insane. Most are badly, *badly* addicted to their screens. From what I see, those who are addicted are already spending as much of their time on these things as possible, already. At some point, there is going to be significantly more entertainment produced than can be consumed profitably. I think that people who are not going to be addicted to the inanity of having to be constantly entertained aren't likely to suddenly become addicted, so I think that we are probably at peak entertainment right about now, at least in the US. The only way entertainment companies could sell more useless garbage to Americans would be if people started doing this:https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/2172009173627.jpg
I don't respond to AC's.
What the actual fuck did you try and communicate with that sentence you uneducated, mouth-breathing, flared-nostriled, fat-lipped tree decoration? Shut the fuck up, or construct a legible sentence. Ebonics is not a language it's the lack thereof.
Fuckin naggers.
The best things in life are free
The amount of time spent on these games has nearly destroyed families and civic organizations. Congrats, I guess.
You send me your game and ill send you a mystery envelope.
It could contain a check for $6 $60, or $600, there could be a hat in there, a gift card, or maybe just some dog shit.
You keep sending me games & ill keep sending you mystery boxes... maybe some day youll get a decent payout from me.
You can still play old games. Loderunner and Sword of Fargoal are two games that are nice and slow and boring and entirely addictive. Loderunner especially, it's like a one-Lemming Lemmings with only one tool and the other Lemmings are trying to kill you.
Sadly there are very few people left who know what a Lemming was or were ever familiar with the game. It seems like everyone around now starts at Minecraft or WoW.
After Doom, I was already tired of the first person shoot em up. However because it was so popular, nearly all the games have been like that afterwords. Then World of Warcraft was a big hit, so all the game companies moved over to online games. Game makers gotten serious about their stories, so all the games started to have these big huge complex stories.
With the companies following these fads, we had a lot of good games genres die out.
1. Single player Adventure Games, these were once games with state of the art graphics and sound, it made progressing to the next screen and area a real joy, you weren't playing against people, or having to keep your twitch reflex on maximum all the time. You get into a place, you then can take your time explore the area find as many hints as your can. The 2016 new Kings Quest while not getting big reviews, I found was a decent attempt of a modern version of the adventure game, however could had been much better with more budget and planning. (There was a trend in it, to make some puzzles, actual puzzles, and not organic part of the game environment)
2. Platform Games. Sometimes we don't need to use all the buttons on our controller. No story to figure out, no moral ambiguities, you are the hero, everyone else is the bad guy.
3. Strategy Games. No rush, take your time, come up with a plan.
4. Building Simulators, no plot just keep of building and simulating
Sure they are Indy games like this, and on the mobile market they have more options. But most of the big name games are nearly all the same. It isn't that we have lost our ability to pay attention to a game, but the fact after playing a few of these types of games, there isn't much we want to pay attention too.
Fortnite, is one of those quick to play games with a combination of many genres. You Win, then you Win, if not then you play again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Simple, start making good games again like the ones from the 90's. Until then game companies can fuck themselves. No more shallow, linear, casual, garbage games. Invest in some proper authors, or go out of business. GG noobs.
Rather, they don't have time to waste it on the crap the major studios are peddling these days.
In addition to launching a half finished, bug riddled day one nightmare, the current focus is not to produce a game worthy of playing but rather designed
to wring out as much money from the end user as possible.
-nehumanuscrede
Care to explain what's wrong with starting at minecraft? I played lemmings as a kid, it was okay. Minecraft, I shudder to think how much time I spent in that game. It's basically digital legos, there's a reason it's made as much money as it has.
People are getting too lazy to play a game. They can only muster the attention to look at a crappy video on their phone.
Cyberpunk 2077 will have none of that BS and be on GOG DRM FREE!
So pedling shitty buggy unfinished games for cash grab focused on milking games with microtransactions or solo play that does not work without online connection or a solo game that cannot be finished without multiplayer accomplishments has nothing to do with it??? I think the gaming industry is very very very sick ... EA, Blizzard, Bethesda, Activision, Bioware, just to name these, really need to pull their head out of their asses
Just a thought. Activision hasn't released a good game in over a decade; all they do is pump out the same crap every year. Now you have EA that does the exact same thing. So, now they're wondering why? Well its literally because these companies are trash.
If they started focusing on good games and not bullshit snowflake metrics like 'attention' (Look at me! Look at ME!!) or squeezing every last dime out of players, they'd be in a better position. Can't say I have any sympathy. Games have been swirling the toilet of quality for some time, now. Oh, yeah? The timeline for that perfectly correlates with the timeline of millennials entering the field? GET OUT! ;)
Sounds like this is only a problem for online games, everything else should be fine.
Blame other people for your own incompetence. People can't take being annoyed to death forever, and I honestly don't believe that most millennials today know how to accomplish much of anything else. You all need to talk to the mirror, and possibly a drill sergeant, not the tech press.
Have gnu, will travel.
Problem for me isn't Uplay, but FarCry 5, AMD Phenom, and DRM. In a nutshell the included DRM uses SSE 4.1 which is an extension Phenom's don't have (SSE4A). Other games have had this issue until publishers applied patches. Guess who hasn't, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is the same issue. FarCry Primal is the latest of that series that'll run on Phenoms. If Ubisoft wants my money they know what they need to do. If not there's plenty of other publishers that'll take my money, and deliver.
I haven't looked forward to a game release in years. It's pretty simple...
-I don't game on my phone. ...So basically, 98% of new AAA games aren't written for me. And that's fine. I'm voting with my wallet; I've got green pastures of games in my Steam. Not everything has to be incredibly story driven or be some GPU workout, either. I have fun playing PinballFX and Sol Exodus, Game Dev Tycoon and Trine. I'm one of those people who still enjoys playing Unreal Tournament in all of its iterations - it's got the same concept as Destiny 2 ("Go to the place and shoot the lads"), but with far fewer annoyances, free DLC, and free multiplayer. And, of course, no matter how many times I play the Mass Effect trilogy (and even Andromeda), I come across a new thing somewhere.
-I don't want a game without a single player campaign (y'know, an actual campaign, not a 90-minute tutorial).
-I don't want a game with lootboxes.
-I don't want a game with microtransactions.
-I don't want a game with an always-online requirement.
I realize that saying "they don't make 'em like they used to" wreaks of nostalgia, but I preordered Andromeda, and on the sole basis that it was one of the last EA games that didn't wreak of microtransactions and lootboxes, I'd do it again if only to encourage that sort of model. Activision has the same problem - Starcraft isn't always my cup of tea, but when I'm in the mood, I'm happy with what it is, to the chagrin of Activision who would far rather I be a fan of CoD: BO4. I got that game for free and I still didn't find it to be fun at all, even though the first Black Ops game was one of my favorites of the series.
EA shifted their business model toward short term profits, and while it worked for a while, it's obvious to everybody with a brain stem that microtransactions and second-half-of-the-game DLC simply isn't going to garner loyalty in the long term. It's just that the chickens are finally coming home to roost, and while it's possible that they'll figure out what the rest of us already know, I wouldn't wager a counterfeit wooden nickel on it.
Gee have two choices:
1. Spend a bunch of money on a huge over-produced and buggy game that will lots of troubleshooting time. You know I'll have to wait for patch number 3 before it works well at all and by then I'll be over it.
2. I could get an ad filled mobile game that interrupts play every 5 seconds to show me an ad that I can't dismiss and any touch takes me to a place to pay for whatever is in the ad.
That is a bunch of crap. Game developers can keep their buggy crap and their ads - I'll find something better to do with my time. Make something playable and don't count on raping my wallet.
Fortnite is not the problem, and neither is a dwindling interest in video games.
It's a dwindling interest in paying again and again and again for getting the same video games.
Does EA even have a line of games anymore that doesn't have the current year in the title? Or does any major studio still offer games where you actually get to buy the whole game for 60 bucks instead of buying a husk that you can then fill with zero-day DLC and "season passes"? Only to eventually find out that you shelled out about 200 bucks for game you already had, just that back then you actually did get the whole game for those 60 bucks (aka what today passes as a "sequel")? But it has a new gimmick and worse, dumbed-down mechanics because crippling games so they run on consoles was not enough, today's gaming market is cell phones so enjoy playing games with mouse and keyboard on your 30" screen that were designed for stamp-sized touch screens.
EA, it's not that people don't want to play games anymore. You just don't produce the games anymore that we want to play.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just as what happened with the mobile market, now that most AAA games have microtransactions in them, people are losing interest and thus engagement is waning. Developers saw that they could get more money for less work by cramming high priced cosmetic items into all their games and so that's what they did. What ended up happening is that gamers became disillusioned.
I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed 2 and was ecstatic that I could get it for the PS4 that I bought for my kids. So I bought the whole Ezio collection for my PS4. Then I just found out that the next two games were basically the exact same game with some minor elements added. I won't be buying the rest since I have lost interest.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The micro transaction is a way to ensure the gamer returns to the same game to take advantage of the costly little things they have added. This adds revenue, but also increases the returning player base as those players want to utilize their investment into their game.
This means that for the next big game release, those same users who invested additional money realize that they would have to do the same again... and again... and again... significantly lowering the ROI of each game's annual release after having spent $100+ on the game plus micro transactions. This makes the game much more difficult for a user to justify the cost of leaving the old game for the new one.
Some people have finally realized this, and the marketing guys are losing their collective bonuses to their own success for getting those players to return to the game by increasing the cost and adding to it such "a sense of pride and accomplishment."
Gamers are sick of the SJW Virtue Signaling bullshit in "AAA" company games.
That's it. Their attention is diverted to things that aren't trying to push a lefty agenda, which luckily smaller indie devs understand and benefit from.
"Don't like it, pirate it" sends a more accurate message about one's audience, as well as the value of the content.
From their financial statement:
Selected Financial Highlights and Metrics
All financial measures are presented on a GAAP basis.
Net cash from operating activities was $954 million for the quarter and $1.563 billion for
the trailing twelve months, a record third quarter trailing twelve months.
EA repurchased 3.2 million shares for $292 million during the quarter and 9.0 million
shares for $1.039 billion during the trailing twelve months.
The reason why they failed to meet analysts expectations was because no one expected them to keep blowing all the cash on share buybacks. But yeah, tell the employees that you're firing that it's because the realignment towards attention economy dynamics or whatever requires it. FOH.
I'm not saying they weren't overstaffed and some of those people didn't need to be there but goddamn this shit is disingenuous.
During high school, my friends and I joked that one day, every book that needs to be written will have been written. then we will not need to write any more books! Joking aside, maybe video gaming is getting there. If I had infinite free gaming time right now, I want to go back and play the Bioshock series, and the Doom expansions I never played, and a bunch of adventure games that my friends played and I didn't, and the Final Fantasy games I missed, and the Frictional Games (SOMA, Penumbra). Yes, I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 ... but that's $60, whereas the other games I listed are like $10 on Steam. So... why buy a new game?
I know this talk frightens the game companies and they try to make it hard on me. But they finally discovered it is better to sell old games than to have people pirate them.
Has nothing to do with the market doing anything.
"Home prices NEVER go down" -- typical real-estate agent in 2006
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The whole gaming industry needs to go through massive a overhaul. The whole model has been straight fucked by mobile and micropayments. Burn it all down, send most every new company out of business, leaving the quality operators like Nintendo and Sega behind.
In addition to some of the other good points made in the comments here, another reason I avoid big game publishers is the bugginess of the games. The publishers push deadlines to make quarterly profit targets, rushing the devs to put out a product while it is still a buggy piece of crap. Those bugs may or may not ever get fixed. Once they already have everyone's money what incentive do they have to fix the bugs? The fact that people keep pre-ordering games from companies with such track records just reinforces that behavior from publishers. The worst is when a previously good game development company gets acquired by some scum-sucking entity which then ruins them (ahem, EA and Bioware, ahem).
Hopefully these big publishers will finally be punished sufficiently by customers going elsewhere so they learn their lesson.
Battlefield V sold 7.3 million copies. Far Cry 5 was the best selling game in the franchise.
These companies are doing insanely great. But it's never enough. If you grew 600% last year you better grow 700% this year.
It's a symptom of a larger structural problems with our economy. Like Payless Shoes and Toys R US. It's why we're about to go into a (completely avoidable) recession...
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By Game Boy, I especially mean something inexpensive. Like, in the 90s specs and technology were important but they knew about putting an 8bit CPU (or perhaps some slow 16bit) and a few K of RAM in random consumer electronics. By the end of the decade we had portable CD Audio players that cost nothing, made of a drive a few buttons and a few digit of LCD monochrome segments. Now everything has to be an Android smartphone-like packed with gigabytes, gigahertz, an OS and multiple standards of wireless networking. Game controllers are not made of a handful microswitches and buttons, they are mandatory overengineered $80 beasts. Idiots whine that 720p is "low dpi".
This might be fine but I would like to cut that noise. Here is my list of requirements : buttons, graphics, sound.
Analog stick shouldn't even be a requirement, it's a perfect example of something that's more expensive and might break and is just not as satisfactory in a handheld or low cost version as the real thing.. Use D-pad instead. Can have basic tilt/acceleration sensors as found in lowest end phones.
Which OS would it run : what about no OS? Why do I need an OS to play games? I don't. Some ROM routines I guess. Good news, if there's no OS you don't need to develop an OS. (well, some dev tools and a dev kit). You may object you need an OS to run a GPU driver. Don't include a GPU - problem solved! Likewise, only one CPU core (if your chip is a dual core, you may be free to use only one of them). Have a 640x480 LCD maybe, or less. Can you make a ~$60, or $70, or $50 product? Handheld a bit bigger than necessary, so it's comfortable to handle.
tl;dr I'm bored, nothing to play. I want some little console, but it should cost less than a controller for a Switch, Xbox or Sony.
Thank spaghetti monster I never went back.
Looks like you have all been played for marks lolololol
still not their fault, it's the consumer who doesn't have more time.
The consumer chose to forget about them, something entirely different.
BINGO!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Indie developers publish free games to Kongregate pretty regularly. Most of the newer games are HTML 5 (i.e. not Flash). Nearly all of those games are free so there's little reason to pay for a bit of entertainment.
sold just fine. Far Cry 5 was the top selling Far Cry game in history and a spin off game was green lit. BF V for all the talk still moved 7.3 million copies. Not bad for a year when everybody was going up against the twin juggernauts of Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2.
The article is more about growth. The games industry has grown like crazy thanks to micro transaction bullshit. Seriously, these companies are all hitting record profits with insane valuations.
The YouTuber Jim Sterling has been pointing out this is not sustainable. There's only so many hours in a day for these crappy "live services" games. Plus a recession is coming and while recessions normally are good for the industry (folks cut back on vacations and play games at home) nobody knows if that'll hold true for Micro transactions and loot boxes.
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There's amazing games in all those categories. Hat in Time, Shantae Half Genie Hero & Sonic Mania, The Crash Bandicoot remakes, Life is Strange, there's a pixel art cyber punk on I can't for the life of me remember the name of and while I don't play strat games my bro who does tells me it's a golden age.
As for city builders There's 3 or 4 good ones, a couple new Theme Park style games and even a theme hospital style game. Again, I don't play 'em so it's word of mouth.
The only downside is they're really only getting the Indie and/or AA treatment. None of these genres get the AAA treatment they used to. So the set pieces are a bit less spectacular and the graphics a little less polished. Also if you're a PC gamer expect to spend an extra $500 bucks on your rig for a better CPU & GPU.
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The other day, I dug up my original Game Boy. I got the right kind of batteries (4 x AA) and have been hooked on Dr. Mario since. It's the very same cartridge I had as a kid. Vastly superior to anything made in the last 18 years, and that's with 160 x 144 pixels on a primitive CPU. It's a real game. Not the stupid bullshit that they call "video games" these days.
I don't even understand what I'm seeing on the screens anymore when people play these "modern" so-called "video games". They are just a bunch of weird shapes and colours to me. (Literally.)
That's the Lemmings' fault. If they had breed instead of walking off cliffs, more people won't know about them. Instead they all died out.
I refuse to pay to have a random, small change to get what I want. See Walking Dead: Road To Survival for a particularly egregious example.... Or Neverwinter Online or League of Legends ^W PimpleCreamMAFIA assholes.
The industry itself is collapsing under it's own liberalism. It started with pushing the envelope on acceptable content. Then it drifted into new business models to make profit, starting with expansions, and then leading to micro-trans where people are willing (or stupid) to pay 5 to 15 USD for a cool looking re-texture, model, animation, or visual effect. One nail in the coffin from the carpenter.
While focusing on making money, we lost sight of new gameplay. In truth it has been two decades of improving graphics while rehashing the same gameplay and story lines. Nothing really new and innovative has come from big gaming companies in the last 10 years. The new COD or BF is going to be just like the other one but runs shitty on older hardware and has new models, weapons, and perty things to look at. Fortnite is one of those clicks where something a bit different was tried, on top of the micro-trans business model and it has worked. But what is next? 500 more clones? One nail in the coffin from the carpenter.
Then we have the injection of SJW culture into gaming and this my friends is about the worse thing that can happen to an industry. Trying to make 1% of the most obnoxious and idiotic market happy is the final nail in the coffin for the industry.
If you want to save gaming;
Craft new, deep, and interesting worlds. Fuck the 1% of delusion morons and their sensitivity. Stop exponentially increasing graphics requirements. Everquest, which is as old as dirt, is still played ritually and still has active expansions to this day. The graphics are fucking terrible in today's standards. But people don't seem to care.
Craft new gameplay types. Fortnite has accomplished at least that.
Maybe rewind some of our business models and find ways to put more content together without the use of so many artists, programmers, and bloat. Some of this shit can be automated.
Just make up a new term and start writing bullshit about it. Laughable.
and I would gladly spend it on new games if most of them weren't so bad and uninspired.
Everyone just hops onto the latest trend (*cough battle royale *cough) and hopes they'll make a fortune. I could not care less about the 1473th reincarnation of PUBG.
I'm desperately yearning for a nice economic simulation, but what do I get? Two Point Hospital. Is it good? NO! NOT AT ALL!
Maybe if they would make products more people are interested in, they wouldn't have to let people go. But quite frankly, they don't need those marketing people anymore anyway these days.
that was one of the craziest things they ever got away with. When I was a kid a stock buy back wasn't just illegal it was considered a ridiculous form of market manipulation.
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There's a way to make most factions happy, but it takes some careful juggling to do so.
Leisure industries should be campaigning for reduced working hours in developed economies if they want people to spend more money on things.
A week has 168 hours. If I'm lucky, 40 go to work. Let's say 5 hours to commuting (for me) and is much worse for many. Let's say 7 hours a night for sleep but round to 50 hours. Right there I'm at 73 hours. But I also have meals, hygiene, and other errands to run - let's call that 25 hours. I'm down to 48 hours to spend on other things. You're competing with everything else, including reading/movies/tv/naps/friends/exercise! If I had kids and a worse commute? I basically don't have any time to relax!
One thing that stops my significant other and I from playing as many games as we could is lack of local multiplayer. We don't live together so we're not going to schlep bigger consoles back and forth. The Switch sort of works as a solution but Steam or Playstation ain't happening unless we move in.
Seeing a game is being released by EA or Activision puts a red flag on the game for me. I either don't like the games they are releasing, or I don't like the monetization or reward schemes in their games. I feel the same about other publishers too. I'm also tired of all the nickel and dime DLC that so many games release. Now I put off buying so many games that have DLC until the final complete version is released. I also hate loot boxes and the ridiculous pricing of skins. Three skins in a game can cost the same as a new AAA full game.
Obsidian and inXile joining Microsoft have moved them from my must check it out list to my I'll get around to it if it's good, the complete version is out, the price has been reduced, it goes on a deep sale, and lacks any DRM scheme I can't stand.