I heard a second-hand account that Paradox Interactive (the publisher of Cities: Skylines) only greenlit Cities because of the Sim City debacle. And Cities went on to become a big success, which probably wouldn't have happened without the Sim City debacle. So if this is true, then it cost EA their monopoly in that particular genre.
There’s a point where saturation occurs, like away FPSes today, but city builders aren’t there.
Maxis is gone, I'm not sure I care to play another city sim made by EA without the creative team that made SimCity 1-4 such a joy.
It bugs me that the video games industry (both production and consumption side) seems to have a looser relationship with creative talent than, for example, the movie industry. A Quentin Tarantino or Guillermo Del Toro can get all kind of pet projects greenlit within the movie industry and on the consumer side fans of these directors will show up to anything with their name on it (I know I will). That doesn't happen as much in games where even a hit-maker like Kojima gets treated pretty poorly by his studio meanwhile the franchise he's known for shambles on like a zombie after his departure - still making money. See also: Call of Duty after Vince Zampella and Jason West.
I'd like games to be more like movies in this respect. I can imagine spending a lot of time browsing an IMDb for games....
When pablo escobar sees $800 from cocaine sales in the US he didn't see just "hey this works, lets try to make it work elsewhere" he sees "hey this cocaine shit is addictive, lets sell them more and kill anyone that gets in our way".
This is why we tend to make predatory things illegal, because they use their vice to corner the market and control the user.
> In other forms of media, the audience vehemently defends their chosen medium, combatting censorship, responding to exploitative practices with substantial actions to back up their complaints, fighting for the rights of the audience over those of the publishers, etc.
Eh, I don't really think you know too much about other mediums then. Television and Radio have had massive amounts of censorship in US history. Between the FCC and MPPC the government has been very hands on in those industries.
The reason it seems different in video games is sales are not restricted in the same manner. There were only a limited number of radio stations, television channels, or movie theaters in the past. With games, especially recently, digital distribution is effectively unlimited. You don't have to fight for the medium because there an unlimited number of games you can play or places you can find them. Why fight, you'll just die tired and have less time to play a different game.
And at every step there has been aggressive active resistance to that by the audience. Even just recently, book publishers floated an idea a few years ago to put recommended age ratings on books aimed at the childhood and adolescent markets. Readers, authors, and all fans of literature exploded. They launched boycotts (and unlike gamers they're not lying when they say they'll boycott something), they got loud. Publishers quickly backed down. Gamers would never think of resisting age prohibition rankings. In the movie industry, we had the Hayes Code for awhile and movie fans opposed it unceasingly until it was eventually repealed.
And with games we face higher censorship than in any other medium. In movies, for instance, if the movie features animated characters rather than real people (as all videogames do), you can get away with essentially anything at all. Just look at the South Park creators and their movies. And you can get an unrated movie and pop it into your player and watch away. With videogame consoles the console makers have all declared they will never permit an unrated title to be licensed, nor will they ever permit any title given a rating that restricts it to an audience of 18+ gamers. And thanks to the DMCA section 1201, that edict of the publishers gives the ratings handed down by the ESRB the full force of federal law.
And you have to consider the 'Chilling Effect' as well. You can't even propose beginning a project in the gaming industry that has a significant risk of being black-balled with an AO rating. Most gamers look at M-rated games, which are equivalent to PG-13 blockbuster action movies at their most 'extreme', and think its equivalent to an R rated film. They would never think of standing up and saying 'content on a screen is not harmful. Ratings are restricting what we have access to in significant ways and need to be stopped.'
We don't have ratings on books. When you go to a bookstore, there is a 'childrens section'. That is sufficient, and no more is needed. No prevention of kids from grabbing books intended for an older audience, no group of 'concerned parents' declaring the appropriate age range of readers, no ratings agency charging tens of thousands of dollars to grant a rating which is used to determine whether a reading device will permit it to operate. Gamers are downright scared of such a system for games, though. And for no legitimate reason.
I'm pretty sure that the executives at EA are in touch enough to know that gamers aren't happy about it.
That said, one of the first things about being an executive in a business is understanding that your customers are your customers as long as they like the product more than they dislike it. The gaming community has a bad case of being extremely vocally critical (which may just be a very loud minority) yet still paying for the game, so there's a big disconnect between how much people complain vs. how much people actually still buy the game.
$800 million in loot boxes from FIFA says "yes, we can get away with it and keep our customers." And then EA steps over the line on a game and learns "ok, now we know there's a line here somewhere, we're going to get as close to it as we can."
Mostly because western video games seems to be tied to one demographics. Both culturally and business wise. In Asia, you have games for young people, games for old people, games for stereotypical boys and stereotypical girls. For people with a lot of time on their hands and for workaholics quick playing on their way to work.
I don't means just by themes or story lines. Witcher may have adults themes, but try to play it while having full time job and family. A game review written from point of view of someone employed is almost guaranteed backslash with a lot of yelling about "not a gamer" and reviewer not being qualified - because the review would have to be done from point of view of someone with time limitations.
While there are easy to find books and movies for adult employed audiences, it is not nearly the same with games.
I disagree. There are tons of puzzle games which can be played by anyone. Lot of e-sports focused games can be played fast like Rocket League. Point and click games are still alive and kicking. Things like "Long live the queen" or "Black Closet" can be played in 30mn sessions.
But yeah, that's not AAA games so when you have to check some game store and not expect ads to get drilled into your eyes about those games. You have to open Steam or GoG at least one time.
They don't need to dig through pile of barely reviewed games and genres targeted at niche fans (which usually means more hardcore taste in some regard). Any game can be played by anone, technically speaking.
Not sure why puzzles would be the thing for other demographics. However, assuming it is, Steam sux for finding good puzzle games. It does not really allows you to distinguish puzzle from rpg or adventure with a bit of puzzle bent.
Playstore much less so for that matter, but then again, steam audience is quite hostile toward games that seems to them too much mobile like. It is ok, it is their playground, it is not like west would have millions of retirees waiting to buy on steam.
Which is back to my point. Culturally, in the west, games are meant for and consumed by much different demographic then movies.
I am a player of a number of Wargaming products and they have all sorts of ways to get money from players yet the EU forums are quiet compared to the NA forums with regard to bellyaching over pricing; though reddit is just mad all the time with players from all regions chiming in.
I am more worried about the political class getting involved and running under the the for the children umbrella. nothing good can come of that and might give them inroads on more aspect of gaming that one segment or another finds offensive
Also, I'm a little unsure about some of the things said because I don't have a ton of knowledge about the performance of the different games discussed. Like at one point the author mentions "The SimCity backlash."... I do know a bit about that one. That SimCity game that got all the backlash? It immediately became the best-selling game of all time on the Origin service right after its launch. There is simply no way to classify that as anything except a resounding success from a business perspective. It is a fundamental mistake to listen to online talk from gamers as the audience has proven themselves to be their own worst enemy. They shovel mountains of money at the things they claim to hate, and withhold money from anything that deviates.
It's not like there aren't games that don't follow these predatory practices. There are tons of them. And they don't make very much money. How can you back up a claim that gamers actually do want those different practices followed if every game which follows them languishes miles behind the titles which don't? If the public pronouncements of gamers actually mirrored their actions, listening to backlash might make sense for a company. But as it is, when the gaming community lights up with anger and "boycotts", that is the most reliable indicator of stellar sales. There really isn't a solution to this problem outside of gamers doing the one thing they seem constitutionally incapable of - not playing the games. Not preordering them, not buying them after release, not even pirating them, straight up not playing the games. (Buying the game and then stopping playing it shortly after release is actually the ideal situation for any publisher, it enables them to more rapidly reduce their spending on server resources and even piracy drives other sales.)
I'm not sure why videogames have such a different audience compared to all other forms of media. In other forms of media, the audience vehemently defends their chosen medium, combatting censorship, responding to exploitative practices with substantial actions to back up their complaints, fighting for the rights of the audience over those of the publishers, etc. But we see no significant amount of any of that when it comes to videogames.