The Corporatization of Gaming
The video game industry has come a long way from scaring busy-body homemakers into boycotting the indecipherable pixelated horror of bloody titles, like Mortal Kombat and Doom. By the time the first Half-Life came out in 1998, video games outpaced the movie industry in dollar profits. Nowadays, triple AAA video game development studios continue to see outstanding sales and success, raking in more money than movies and North American sports. Their flagship titles can easily command seven figure budgets, far exceeding film production budgets. Great strides and success cannot be maintained forever, and corporate practices have permeated their way throughout the industry so much so that it is in danger of complete collapse.
Successful video game institutions have gone public, securing market dominance and capital, like regular Wall Street hedge funds. AAA studios are now employing corporate practices to such a degree, that they have forgotten what is most important — even more important than the video game itself — the players. I am not against the rise and success of a dominant game developer. Rockstar and Blizzard were at the forefront of the video game revolution of the early millennium, and every gamer can recall a time when the 2K sports series was worth playing. Loot boxes and DLC that should have been part of the standard release, are now part of the foundation of modern corporate gaming practices. Players hate these mechanics with so much passion it is a wonder the game developers have not ceased their inclusion in their titles.
The art of wooing a casual customer into a regular one can’t be taught, and those at the corporate level rarely have the gift of the silver tongue. Salesmen are born, not made. You can say the same thing about coders and game developers. The big picture is never as important as the task at hand. Without the individual bricks, the house would not exist; without a salesman working on commission, Nordstrom would just be another over-priced retailer. Customer satisfaction is the grease that keeps a corporate machine from grinding to an abrupt halt, and it is a necessity that has to be manufactured in-house. The reason Nordstrom has been able to withstand three economic recessions in twenty years is because they put the customer first, and that means paying your sales team well. To justify some of the highest wages in retail, Nordstrom will hire only the best and most professional sales men and women to represent them where profits are made: on the sales floor. The video game industry used to take care of its customers in such a fashion. The tactic nowadays is to satisfy customers with gimmicks instead of gameplay mechanics. Loot boxes have ruined the customer/developer relationship in the last decade, and DRM access finished off what was left.
Modern titles from large studios are being released unfinished. Battlefield 2042 and CyberPunk 2077 immediately come to mind. These were not cheap games, and when you pre-order their “Ultimate-Limited-Launch Day-Snazzy-Pack”, you could potentially pay hundreds of dollars. It may seem unrelated, but look at the situation in China with the real estate giant, Evergrande. They were pre-selling homes to customers and investors that didn’t even exist. This is what pre-ordering is doing to the gaming industry. It is a slimy corporate mechanic that has etched itself into the heart of game development. A scam and hustle to end all cons; get the player to pay more now for less later. Then comes the widening of the profit margin, and the idea slowly creeps into the minds of the controlling board, “why pay for Beta testing when we can have the players do it for us for free?”.
The corporate mindset is all too prevalent with major release titles like Call of Duty: Vanguard and Battlefield 2042. These two games had Beta versions of their titles released a few weeks prior to their official release date. This leaves absolutely no room for any coding or glitches to be fixed by the developers. These Beta sessions act as the “recall coordinator” in Fight Club. They monitor complaints and bugs, and if the cost of fixing them now outweighs the cost of fixing them later, they do exactly that. Imagine the lack of incentive a corporate machine has in fixing a product that the customer already paid for. The state of the gaming industry is under attack from within, and the silver-lining to this transformative change are the number of independent developers and small studios that have produced incredible games.
Coffee Stain Publishing and developer Ghost Ship Games have improved and actively worked with their player bases to perfect Deep Rock Galactic over the last five years. Their title has over 98,000 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews and an army of fiercely loyal customers who have been involved with its production since its pre-Alpha state in 2016. Deep Rock Galactic spent nearly two years in (Steam) Early Access before it launched in May of 2020 and retailed for an attractive price of $30. Battlefield 2042 spent a year and half in production and was a recycled battle royale game that was re-tooled into the half-hearted disaster that it is today. EA has millions to invest into a flagship series which garners millions of players around the globe, so this should have been a windfall for the company. Instead, we see corporate practices all but castrate a nearly twenty-year title that has become an institution in of itself.
Battlefield 2042 retailed for $70 and has 110,000 “mostly negative” reviews on Steam. Behold, the gross effects of corpocracy in game development. EA has a market capitalization of nearly $36B and churned out a desiccated flop with Battlefield 2042, which has the potential to sink the entirety of the genre and could ultimately push even more gamers away from their already toxic brand.
The positive side is that consumer-driven changes are being considered by the entertainment industry as a whole. Netflix, most notably, has changed the game with their metric for determining whether or not a show is worth keeping on their platform. It is still a closely guarded industry secret, but the broad strokes have been made apparent to production companies across the board. Twenty years ago, a television sitcom had to bring in the “ratings”. Parent companies demanded millions of viewers or it was the axe. Today, that metric is shifting to, “whatever gets them to watch on our platform, consistently, is worth the investment.” The AAA studios of the video game industry need to be brought back down to Earth like their film and television contemporaries. Players have tolerated loot boxes and micro-transactions for too long goliaths of the industry to evolve their approach to the video game industry with the player as a priority instead of profits.
Originally published at https://www.farfromprofessional.com on February 2, 2022.
