Franchises can change, yes. How often did they do it successfully? More important, how often did it happen with large corporations, and how often when they were acquired by large corporations? Because after the acquisition, they don't change anymore. Ever.
And yes, Electronic Arts did actually create a few memorable, great games.
Yes, Westwood lacked the experience with FPS and it showed. But I dare say that even if they knew the "magic formulas" for making good FPS games it would not have changed anything. C&C fans expect a RTS game, selling someone something that pushes him out of his comfort zone is always a hard sell.
Personally, I'm a big fan of the Civilization series. At least until V, didn't look at VI yet because I'm not done with V yet. So I honestly don't know what VI will be like yet, but I can only say if they went from turn-based to real time, I would definitely be unhappy. It's not my game anymore. I, like most gamers, have a certain expectation when I hear about a game. Offering something else, even if announced as such, will ruffle gamers the wrong way.
This is why it's so terribly hard to break out of franchises. You can't just make the next installment something different, you'll piss off your fans BIG time. Creating a spinoff is always a gamble. So what's left if you don't want your players to complain about having to buy the same game again (which they will very likely refuse to do when the next incarnation is due)? Well, better graphics, better sound, better AI,...
I'm certainly not EA's target audience, caring more for gameplay and innovation than graphics. It just pains me that a company that I used to like for their games has turned in the past 20 years or so into something that does nothing but crank out one cookie-cutter copy of games that I used to like every single year, with zero innovation or any kind of initiative to improve.
Though I'd like to know where you see me putting up a strawman. What did I misrepresent?
Bicycles are hardly something that needs a lot of innovation, aside of better materials and some advances in technology. You don't have to put "fun" into them, that's something the user brings along himself. Board games in turn are suffering from pretty much the same problem computer games are, with most of the more interesting games that push the envelope being developed by independent developers that either kickstart their idea themselves or sell it to MB or Hasbro, who in turn only buy into it once they noticed that the product has a market.
Preorders and Early Access orders are still widely used.
The "still" is the critical part in this sentence. If you take a closer look at sales numbers, you will notice that they are very much in decline.
What can be observed in the past year is that people get more wary of preordering titles. Too many crappy knockoffs have been littering the gaming landscape lately, the only things that still sell very well in preorder are multiplayer titles that entail some kind of early access which grants competitive players an edge by learning the maps and gameplay details before the ladder starts. Else you can see a lot of games getting most of their sales 3-5 days after initial release when the first verdicts are in.
I was about to ask this. Why the fuck would anyone buy stuff from them? Or any other large game studio.
I have gone indie years ago and never even looked back. They are cheaper (way cheaper actually), provide at least as much entertainment, don't have any ridiculous DRM schemes (i.e. you can actually play them from the moment you buy them, not only after the initial rush makes the "always online" server actually available) and the good ones actually have an active modding community.
Yes, you can mod those games. Legally. Because the maker doesn't want to gouge you blind for DLC.
There is a very simple way to make people feel "special" in a multiplayer environment like MMOs: Special loot that you have to "earn". Whatever "earning" it may mean. Throwing insane amounts of time into grinding the same mob until it drops it with its 0.0000000000001% chance, besting some tough dungeon that you need a very well equipped and cooperating group for, winning many PvP battles (and more than 90% of the playerbase), whatever. What's important is that everyone thinks they can get it but only a handful really can.
Why do you think EA gives a shit about Star Wars? To them, it's just another franchise with a fanbase that will pay them money. They will milk it dry and throw it on the garbage heap as soon as the brand is tarnished beyond repair.
Interesting, engaging and witty games that don't follow the cookie-cutter scheme of "crunch out one per month" are still being made. Of course not by the likes of EA. Large corporations don't dare to risk something like this. We have arrived at the point where you cannot even expect a "new" kind of RTS, FPS or 4X game from a major studio. All they produce these days is the next installation of their established franchise.
If you want new and exiting, you have to turn to those that you dismiss: The game developers. Not the studios, but the single developer or the tiny studios that consist of 4 developers and that one guy doing the "business stuff" for them. They can (and do) take risks, dare to create something clever and new, dare to leave the trenches and carve out a new path. Yes, 9 out of 10 of the things they produce will be "meh" at best, but the tenth is this year's Minecraft or KSP.
This is a little like getting into a discussion with a religious nut, they spout SO much bullshit that you waste 90% of your time talking for debunking it...
This is why I refuse to debate religious zealots. Or people on a crusade against something in general.
So... this DLC-at-release day nonsense, pay-to-stay-competitive multiplayer, microtransactions for content that is required to play the game, that's all due to copyright law?
I think I need more information, for some odd reason I can't make that connection.
Yeah, but that can actually be a good thing. I am playing a few early access games that change every other month, get better and better, get more and more features, some of them being a totally new game every half year or so, all for the price of a pizza.
Granted, sometimes I get a stale pizza, but in the end, I come out ahead. And way ahead of any AAA titles I ever bought.
What we deal with here is something that is, essentially, an impossibility. A gaming corporation. The combination of "gaming", an activity that requires something that is fun, exciting, interesting, and engaging, and "corporation", which is the exact opposite thereof. The reason it managed to stay afloat is in the case of EA mostly that they keep hoovering up studios and franchises that actually give players fun, exiting, interesting and engaging games and "corporatize" them, i.e. milk them dry and shell out lines of rehashed sequels that are, essentially, the same game with some minor, insignificant gimmick, sold to fans of the line as new angle. That works for some time, and afterwards, they just throw away the franchise and studio and continue with the next.
All this only works if they up the technical angle. Better graphics. Better sound. Better physics. Better textures. Better AI. Because the game is still essentially the same. It has to be. They bought the franchise and players do have a certain expectation for it. Dare to make a RTS Battlefield spinoff? Remember how Command & Conquer: Renegade was received when Westwood tried the opposite? Don't even think about it. There is no way to "improve" the gameplay.
And all these things, graphics, sound, physics, textures and AI, they are prohibitively expensive. Note how those Indie-Games you like so much all come with mediocre graphics (if they're not even one of those "pixel graphics" rubbish that for some odd reason is so en vogue right now) and generally tech specs from the 2000s? Unlike EA, indies can actually go for "better gameplay". EA has to toss funds into the graphics/sound/physics/AI money sink.
This is why the 60ish bucks you can ask for a game isn't enough. Not even close. But 100 bucks isn't a price tag even the most devout fanboy would pay for a game. So they go for boiling the frog slowly. Pay 60 now, then 5 bucks here, 10 bucks there, 20 for the DLC (that is oddly available from day 1 and the game can't sensibly be played without), then every other month another 10 for the new guns that you need if you want to play online and don't want to be cannon fodder.
This does still work. Or rather, as we see right here and right now, it does not anymore. Gamers are not only fed up. They start voting with their wallet. They don't want to play games that cost them 200+ bucks only to find out that they threw that money into the gutter eventually because EA turns off the servers to play it because you're supposed to buy the successor for 60 bucks that is essentially the same game but with another 150 bucks of DLCs waiting to be bought.
I have this feeling that we're about to see this business model come to an end.
At the same time this could well be the death spell for corporations like EA. Their business model is, as stated before, watching which franchises work, buy out the studio, then milk it. This isn't viable anymore if people don't accept the "pay while you play" model with upfront costs that cannot be covered with a price tag of 60 bucks.
And corporations are like oil tankers. Hard to turn around once they have a course set.
Care to explain how this story has anything to do with copyright in general or Steam in particular? Or were you just looking for some story that has remotely anything to do with games so you can rant?
That's why sensible laws are written not with fixed fines but with fines based on your income. That's how a speeding ticket can cost more than your car.
Don't want to tell them how much you make? No problem. They'll "estimate". And trust me, you do not want them to. I think the formula is roughly "estimate annual income = how much someone in such a position could possibly make in a lifetime times however pissed the judge is at you"
But second, if I had to vote in the last US election, I honestly would have stayed at home. There was simply no viable candidate that was worth my vote.
Then again, I'd have that problem in pretty much any election in the US. All things considered, I usually could not vote for either of the (usually two) offered candidates. What kind of choice is this? It's like the choice between shooting and hanging, what kind of fucked up choice is it if the end result is the same and not choosing the result is not an option?
No longer you have to tinker around and find an app you can install to root your device, now you can root it out of the box, delete the app to root it and you have a rooted device.
And even one where OnePlus cannot complain about you voiding your warranty by rooting it. Because who said you did it and not some malicious actor, using what they themselves handed to him?
Sadly, in this kind of democracy, while we get to choose between the candidates, the corporations get to choose what candidates there are in the first place. I think it's called the separation of powers or something like that, to separate you from the power.
When I hear hooves, I think of horses, not zebras. Why? Because in the past, when I heard hooves hit the ground, it invariably meant a horse is coming. Not a single time I spotted a zebra coming around the corner.
When I see a force of nature that I don't understand, I expect it to have a natural explanation and do not consider magic as a viable alternative? Why? Same reason. Any phenomenon we saw that we eventually found an explanation for had a very natural, mundane reason for it. Never, not a single time, magic or supernatural causes were the explanation.
That I, personally, don't understand it doesn't change anything. I don't know how the glasses I wear work. I know THAT they work, but not how. A friend of mine does. He went to school to know how to put glasses on people that correct their faulty eye sight. I should probably consider him some sort of high wizard because it is beyond my understanding how this is possible.
Gravity works according to laws that we do actually already understand. We can predict what gravity will do to bodies. Even though we still have a bit of a problem if more than two bodies are involved. Then again, I also consider it a bit confusing if more than two bodies are involved in my bedroom, and yes, that can very well be considered magical.
Technology if advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic. And random effects if chaotic enough are indistinguishable from a bene- or malevolent intelligence.
Just because we do not have a sensible explanation for something yet doesn't make it mysterious or magical. It makes it unknown. And a pretty good field for further study so we have a chance to learn more about it, with the goal of understanding it.
400 years ago the forces behind lightning were mysterious and terrifying. We knew that there was something powerful coming down from the sky that could start fires and even kill you if it hit you. People had no idea what electricity is and attributed it to some supernatural being or a force beyond our world. Today we know that it's simply charged particles that interact. Nothing mysterious, no magical, supernatural forces.
Why should it be different with things like gravity? So far we found a very mundane explanation for every kind of event that used to be magical, mysterious, spooky or even "godly" to people in the past. And so far nobody gave me a good reason why this shouldn't also be the case in the future with things we do not know the underlying principles just yet.
There are forces we don't understand yet. Yes. That's why we do science. I dread the day we know everything, I can only imagine that the world becomes incredibly boring and dull, with nothing to learn and nothing to explore. But I don't go from "I don't know" to "a wizard did it". That's an easy cop-out, not an explanation. Where does the universe come from? A wizard waggled his wand. Where does life come from? He said abracadabra. What kind of an explanation is that supposed to be?
The donkey of the democrats is a symbol. Ok. It stands for... well, essentially nothing. It doesn't mean that they are stubborn, it doesn't mean that they carry a lot of weight and it doesn't mean that they all have massive dicks. Symbols have no meaning. They get a meaning by us giving them one, but by themselves they have no meaning. Humans create symbols because we think easier in images and can operate with abstract concepts more easily if we give them a symbol or icon to represent them. But by themselves, they have no meaning at all.
I agree that there are forces that are stronger than what I can do. I cannot create hurricanes. That this force is in any way anthropomorphic is silly, though. Wind has no persona.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I do. And do you know the origins of GTA?
Franchises can change, yes. How often did they do it successfully? More important, how often did it happen with large corporations, and how often when they were acquired by large corporations? Because after the acquisition, they don't change anymore. Ever.
And yes, Electronic Arts did actually create a few memorable, great games.
EA hasn't.
Yes, Westwood lacked the experience with FPS and it showed. But I dare say that even if they knew the "magic formulas" for making good FPS games it would not have changed anything. C&C fans expect a RTS game, selling someone something that pushes him out of his comfort zone is always a hard sell.
Personally, I'm a big fan of the Civilization series. At least until V, didn't look at VI yet because I'm not done with V yet. So I honestly don't know what VI will be like yet, but I can only say if they went from turn-based to real time, I would definitely be unhappy. It's not my game anymore. I, like most gamers, have a certain expectation when I hear about a game. Offering something else, even if announced as such, will ruffle gamers the wrong way.
This is why it's so terribly hard to break out of franchises. You can't just make the next installment something different, you'll piss off your fans BIG time. Creating a spinoff is always a gamble. So what's left if you don't want your players to complain about having to buy the same game again (which they will very likely refuse to do when the next incarnation is due)? Well, better graphics, better sound, better AI, ...
I'm certainly not EA's target audience, caring more for gameplay and innovation than graphics. It just pains me that a company that I used to like for their games has turned in the past 20 years or so into something that does nothing but crank out one cookie-cutter copy of games that I used to like every single year, with zero innovation or any kind of initiative to improve.
Though I'd like to know where you see me putting up a strawman. What did I misrepresent?
Bicycles are hardly something that needs a lot of innovation, aside of better materials and some advances in technology. You don't have to put "fun" into them, that's something the user brings along himself. Board games in turn are suffering from pretty much the same problem computer games are, with most of the more interesting games that push the envelope being developed by independent developers that either kickstart their idea themselves or sell it to MB or Hasbro, who in turn only buy into it once they noticed that the product has a market.
So ... no.
Preorders and Early Access orders are still widely used.
The "still" is the critical part in this sentence. If you take a closer look at sales numbers, you will notice that they are very much in decline.
What can be observed in the past year is that people get more wary of preordering titles. Too many crappy knockoffs have been littering the gaming landscape lately, the only things that still sell very well in preorder are multiplayer titles that entail some kind of early access which grants competitive players an edge by learning the maps and gameplay details before the ladder starts. Else you can see a lot of games getting most of their sales 3-5 days after initial release when the first verdicts are in.
I was about to ask this. Why the fuck would anyone buy stuff from them? Or any other large game studio.
I have gone indie years ago and never even looked back. They are cheaper (way cheaper actually), provide at least as much entertainment, don't have any ridiculous DRM schemes (i.e. you can actually play them from the moment you buy them, not only after the initial rush makes the "always online" server actually available) and the good ones actually have an active modding community.
Yes, you can mod those games. Legally. Because the maker doesn't want to gouge you blind for DLC.
There is a very simple way to make people feel "special" in a multiplayer environment like MMOs: Special loot that you have to "earn". Whatever "earning" it may mean. Throwing insane amounts of time into grinding the same mob until it drops it with its 0.0000000000001% chance, besting some tough dungeon that you need a very well equipped and cooperating group for, winning many PvP battles (and more than 90% of the playerbase), whatever. What's important is that everyone thinks they can get it but only a handful really can.
You want to know why they are "EA" now and no longer "Electronic Arts"?
They wanted to get rid of the quickly catching on moniker of "Electronic Rats" before it got into widespread use.
Why do you think EA gives a shit about Star Wars? To them, it's just another franchise with a fanbase that will pay them money. They will milk it dry and throw it on the garbage heap as soon as the brand is tarnished beyond repair.
Like every single time before.
Interesting, engaging and witty games that don't follow the cookie-cutter scheme of "crunch out one per month" are still being made. Of course not by the likes of EA. Large corporations don't dare to risk something like this. We have arrived at the point where you cannot even expect a "new" kind of RTS, FPS or 4X game from a major studio. All they produce these days is the next installation of their established franchise.
If you want new and exiting, you have to turn to those that you dismiss: The game developers. Not the studios, but the single developer or the tiny studios that consist of 4 developers and that one guy doing the "business stuff" for them. They can (and do) take risks, dare to create something clever and new, dare to leave the trenches and carve out a new path. Yes, 9 out of 10 of the things they produce will be "meh" at best, but the tenth is this year's Minecraft or KSP.
This is a little like getting into a discussion with a religious nut, they spout SO much bullshit that you waste 90% of your time talking for debunking it...
This is why I refuse to debate religious zealots. Or people on a crusade against something in general.
So... this DLC-at-release day nonsense, pay-to-stay-competitive multiplayer, microtransactions for content that is required to play the game, that's all due to copyright law?
I think I need more information, for some odd reason I can't make that connection.
Yeah, but that can actually be a good thing. I am playing a few early access games that change every other month, get better and better, get more and more features, some of them being a totally new game every half year or so, all for the price of a pizza.
Granted, sometimes I get a stale pizza, but in the end, I come out ahead. And way ahead of any AAA titles I ever bought.
I think we are currently witnessing it.
What we deal with here is something that is, essentially, an impossibility. A gaming corporation. The combination of "gaming", an activity that requires something that is fun, exciting, interesting, and engaging, and "corporation", which is the exact opposite thereof. The reason it managed to stay afloat is in the case of EA mostly that they keep hoovering up studios and franchises that actually give players fun, exiting, interesting and engaging games and "corporatize" them, i.e. milk them dry and shell out lines of rehashed sequels that are, essentially, the same game with some minor, insignificant gimmick, sold to fans of the line as new angle. That works for some time, and afterwards, they just throw away the franchise and studio and continue with the next.
All this only works if they up the technical angle. Better graphics. Better sound. Better physics. Better textures. Better AI. Because the game is still essentially the same. It has to be. They bought the franchise and players do have a certain expectation for it. Dare to make a RTS Battlefield spinoff? Remember how Command & Conquer: Renegade was received when Westwood tried the opposite? Don't even think about it. There is no way to "improve" the gameplay.
And all these things, graphics, sound, physics, textures and AI, they are prohibitively expensive. Note how those Indie-Games you like so much all come with mediocre graphics (if they're not even one of those "pixel graphics" rubbish that for some odd reason is so en vogue right now) and generally tech specs from the 2000s? Unlike EA, indies can actually go for "better gameplay". EA has to toss funds into the graphics/sound/physics/AI money sink.
This is why the 60ish bucks you can ask for a game isn't enough. Not even close. But 100 bucks isn't a price tag even the most devout fanboy would pay for a game. So they go for boiling the frog slowly. Pay 60 now, then 5 bucks here, 10 bucks there, 20 for the DLC (that is oddly available from day 1 and the game can't sensibly be played without), then every other month another 10 for the new guns that you need if you want to play online and don't want to be cannon fodder.
This does still work. Or rather, as we see right here and right now, it does not anymore. Gamers are not only fed up. They start voting with their wallet. They don't want to play games that cost them 200+ bucks only to find out that they threw that money into the gutter eventually because EA turns off the servers to play it because you're supposed to buy the successor for 60 bucks that is essentially the same game but with another 150 bucks of DLCs waiting to be bought.
I have this feeling that we're about to see this business model come to an end.
At the same time this could well be the death spell for corporations like EA. Their business model is, as stated before, watching which franchises work, buy out the studio, then milk it. This isn't viable anymore if people don't accept the "pay while you play" model with upfront costs that cannot be covered with a price tag of 60 bucks.
And corporations are like oil tankers. Hard to turn around once they have a course set.
Care to explain how this story has anything to do with copyright in general or Steam in particular? Or were you just looking for some story that has remotely anything to do with games so you can rant?
That's why sensible laws are written not with fixed fines but with fines based on your income. That's how a speeding ticket can cost more than your car.
Don't want to tell them how much you make? No problem. They'll "estimate". And trust me, you do not want them to. I think the formula is roughly "estimate annual income = how much someone in such a position could possibly make in a lifetime times however pissed the judge is at you"
First, I didn't. Not everyone lives in the US.
But second, if I had to vote in the last US election, I honestly would have stayed at home. There was simply no viable candidate that was worth my vote.
Then again, I'd have that problem in pretty much any election in the US. All things considered, I usually could not vote for either of the (usually two) offered candidates. What kind of choice is this? It's like the choice between shooting and hanging, what kind of fucked up choice is it if the end result is the same and not choosing the result is not an option?
No longer you have to tinker around and find an app you can install to root your device, now you can root it out of the box, delete the app to root it and you have a rooted device.
And even one where OnePlus cannot complain about you voiding your warranty by rooting it. Because who said you did it and not some malicious actor, using what they themselves handed to him?
I will. Provided I ever get to.
Sadly, in this kind of democracy, while we get to choose between the candidates, the corporations get to choose what candidates there are in the first place. I think it's called the separation of powers or something like that, to separate you from the power.
When I hear hooves, I think of horses, not zebras. Why? Because in the past, when I heard hooves hit the ground, it invariably meant a horse is coming. Not a single time I spotted a zebra coming around the corner.
When I see a force of nature that I don't understand, I expect it to have a natural explanation and do not consider magic as a viable alternative? Why? Same reason. Any phenomenon we saw that we eventually found an explanation for had a very natural, mundane reason for it. Never, not a single time, magic or supernatural causes were the explanation.
That I, personally, don't understand it doesn't change anything. I don't know how the glasses I wear work. I know THAT they work, but not how. A friend of mine does. He went to school to know how to put glasses on people that correct their faulty eye sight. I should probably consider him some sort of high wizard because it is beyond my understanding how this is possible.
Gravity works according to laws that we do actually already understand. We can predict what gravity will do to bodies. Even though we still have a bit of a problem if more than two bodies are involved. Then again, I also consider it a bit confusing if more than two bodies are involved in my bedroom, and yes, that can very well be considered magical.
Or at least a miracle.
Hey, if I wanted a 20 year old Toyota with worn tires and no brakes I could as well stay at home and drive myself!
Well, then I guess I managed to break mine... Guess I have to get a new one?
Technology if advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic. And random effects if chaotic enough are indistinguishable from a bene- or malevolent intelligence.
Just because we do not have a sensible explanation for something yet doesn't make it mysterious or magical. It makes it unknown. And a pretty good field for further study so we have a chance to learn more about it, with the goal of understanding it.
400 years ago the forces behind lightning were mysterious and terrifying. We knew that there was something powerful coming down from the sky that could start fires and even kill you if it hit you. People had no idea what electricity is and attributed it to some supernatural being or a force beyond our world. Today we know that it's simply charged particles that interact. Nothing mysterious, no magical, supernatural forces.
Why should it be different with things like gravity? So far we found a very mundane explanation for every kind of event that used to be magical, mysterious, spooky or even "godly" to people in the past. And so far nobody gave me a good reason why this shouldn't also be the case in the future with things we do not know the underlying principles just yet.
But ... but who's gonna do all the work then?
There are forces we don't understand yet. Yes. That's why we do science. I dread the day we know everything, I can only imagine that the world becomes incredibly boring and dull, with nothing to learn and nothing to explore. But I don't go from "I don't know" to "a wizard did it". That's an easy cop-out, not an explanation. Where does the universe come from? A wizard waggled his wand. Where does life come from? He said abracadabra. What kind of an explanation is that supposed to be?
The donkey of the democrats is a symbol. Ok. It stands for ... well, essentially nothing. It doesn't mean that they are stubborn, it doesn't mean that they carry a lot of weight and it doesn't mean that they all have massive dicks. Symbols have no meaning. They get a meaning by us giving them one, but by themselves they have no meaning. Humans create symbols because we think easier in images and can operate with abstract concepts more easily if we give them a symbol or icon to represent them. But by themselves, they have no meaning at all.
I agree that there are forces that are stronger than what I can do. I cannot create hurricanes. That this force is in any way anthropomorphic is silly, though. Wind has no persona.