5 ms·

... and inevitably, the C-suite is replaced by people with a management or finance background, and no game creation experience, who proceed to drive the company

by ethbr0 5y ago

... and inevitably, the C-suite is replaced by people with a management or finance background, and no game creation experience, who proceed to drive the company into the ground. Has been the story of game studios since forever.

vkou 5y ago
> ...who proceed to drive the company into the ground. Has been the story of game studios since forever. Has it? Everyone loves to dunk on EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Blizzard-Activision, etc, for producing mountains of AAA shovelware[1], but the big players in the industry seem to undergo a pretty normal rate of growth, death, and merger for large companies. It's entirely possible (Likely, even!) that under better management[2], they'd be more successful, but I wouldn't say that gaming firms are driven into the ground by managers any more frequently than they are in any other industry. There's certainly a high rate of bankruptcy and death in small and medium-sized gaming companies, but I feel that has more to do with the incredibly speculative and inconsistent nature of cashflow, and the high cost of securing funding in the industry. [1] Given that people have been dunking on these firms for that reason for the past decade, they sure are taking a long time to be driven into the ground... [2] The bar for 'better management' is pretty damn low for some of the firms I've mentioned.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'd argue that modern day EUSB etc. are what we see, precisely because they've eaten the corpses of the referenced failures. EA today isn't EA of the late-80s / early-90s. It's essentially something named "EA" that managed to smartly buy assets of failed companies. The funding difficulties and cyclical nature of revenue is real, but I guess that's why you see a similar model evolve in movie production. Take a look through the developers during the early part of EA's history (for example): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games:_1983%E2%80%931999 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_game... There were none that I could find that hadn't gone through this exact pattern: (1) be bought by larger publisher, (2) lose key creative talent, (3) close as an entity and have remaining employees folded into larger corporate teams. You'd think if average "big game publisher-developer" management were beneficial to developers, you wouldn't get subsequent failure so reliably.
  - vkou 5y ago
    The reason they were bought by a larger publisher is either because the owners got their exit, or, more frequently, because when you live publisher-paycheck-to-publisher-paycheck, all it takes is one flop to sink your development studio. Your publisher then buys your carcass, and its IP and team for a song. I don't think you can blame the management, as much as you can blame the funding model. (And the funding model is such because banks aren't interested in lending money for speculative creative projects, and neither are VCs.) > You'd think if average "big game publisher-developer" management were beneficial to developers, you wouldn't get subsequent failure so reliably. I wouldn't say it's beneficial, but it's the only way that most of them can get the money to fund their projects.
oarabbus_ 5y ago
The share prices and revenue numbers of these allegedly driven-into-the-ground companies seems to tell the opposite story.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Marvel movies are the top of the line financially, but they are all the same basic formula, and they're effectively film versions of old comic storylines. When was the last time you saw actually original (as in, not based on last year's surprisingly successful novel), creative, non-"mainstream" movies at your city's cinema? Interstellar or (to a certain extent, given that the plot was more or less copied from Pocahontas) Avatar, likely. Anything else is moved off to niche/arthouse cinema or straight to DVD/Netflix. With games, it's the same. Innovation has been sorely lacking in many genres from racing to shooters - it's all remasters, microtransactions, free to play and advertising bullshit these days or the atrocity that Rockstar made out of GTA 3/VC/SA. Last actually innovative game in the shooter genre probably was Borderlands.
  - oarabbus_ 5y ago
    >With games, it's the same. Innovation has been sorely lacking in many genres from racing to shooters - it's all remasters, microtransactions, free to play and advertising bullshit Sure, but that's just the thing, actually. Gamers overindex on what _they_ like, which simply isn't what the general public cares about. "Video game players" as opposed to "gamers" really want two things: they want to play Madden or FIFA with the newest rosters and the best graphics. And then they want to take a break and play the Call of Duty game with the best graphics. Why do these AAA studios need to innovate when this formula doesn't just work - it's doing absolutely excellent? We have indie studios to satisfy gamers' creative-game needs.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Avatar and Interstellar, both made with enormous budgets by overwhelmingly successful directors, are weird examples to use for "non-mainstream". In fact, most of the Oscar Best Picture nominees from 2020 [0] meet that description better than the movies you cited (not sure what was in theaters last year, but most of them were readily available from a mainstream source; I'm sure that in a normal year most would have been in mainstream theaters). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture#2020s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture...

by ethbr0 5y ago

vkou 5y ago

> ...who proceed to drive the company into the ground. Has been the story of game studios since forever. Has it? Everyone loves to dunk on EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Blizzard-Activision, etc, for producing mountains of AAA shovelware[1], but the big players in the industry seem to undergo a pretty normal rate of growth, death, and merger for large companies. It's entirely possible (Likely, even!) that under better management[2], they'd be more successful, but I wouldn't say that gaming firms are driven into the ground by managers any more frequently than they are in any other industry. There's certainly a high rate of bankruptcy and death in small and medium-sized gaming companies, but I feel that has more to do with the incredibly speculative and inconsistent nature of cashflow, and the high cost of securing funding in the industry. [1] Given that people have been dunking on these firms for that reason for the past decade, they sure are taking a long time to be driven into the ground... [2] The bar for 'better management' is pretty damn low for some of the firms I've mentioned.

ethbr0 5y ago
I'd argue that modern day EUSB etc. are what we see, precisely because they've eaten the corpses of the referenced failures. EA today isn't EA of the late-80s / early-90s. It's essentially something named "EA" that managed to smartly buy assets of failed companies. The funding difficulties and cyclical nature of revenue is real, but I guess that's why you see a similar model evolve in movie production. Take a look through the developers during the early part of EA's history (for example): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games:_1983%E2%80%931999 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_game... There were none that I could find that hadn't gone through this exact pattern: (1) be bought by larger publisher, (2) lose key creative talent, (3) close as an entity and have remaining employees folded into larger corporate teams. You'd think if average "big game publisher-developer" management were beneficial to developers, you wouldn't get subsequent failure so reliably.
- vkou 5y ago
  The reason they were bought by a larger publisher is either because the owners got their exit, or, more frequently, because when you live publisher-paycheck-to-publisher-paycheck, all it takes is one flop to sink your development studio. Your publisher then buys your carcass, and its IP and team for a song. I don't think you can blame the management, as much as you can blame the funding model. (And the funding model is such because banks aren't interested in lending money for speculative creative projects, and neither are VCs.) > You'd think if average "big game publisher-developer" management were beneficial to developers, you wouldn't get subsequent failure so reliably. I wouldn't say it's beneficial, but it's the only way that most of them can get the money to fund their projects.

oarabbus_ 5y ago

The share prices and revenue numbers of these allegedly driven-into-the-ground companies seems to tell the opposite story.

mschuster91 5y ago
Marvel movies are the top of the line financially, but they are all the same basic formula, and they're effectively film versions of old comic storylines. When was the last time you saw actually original (as in, not based on last year's surprisingly successful novel), creative, non-"mainstream" movies at your city's cinema? Interstellar or (to a certain extent, given that the plot was more or less copied from Pocahontas) Avatar, likely. Anything else is moved off to niche/arthouse cinema or straight to DVD/Netflix. With games, it's the same. Innovation has been sorely lacking in many genres from racing to shooters - it's all remasters, microtransactions, free to play and advertising bullshit these days or the atrocity that Rockstar made out of GTA 3/VC/SA. Last actually innovative game in the shooter genre probably was Borderlands.
- oarabbus_ 5y ago
  >With games, it's the same. Innovation has been sorely lacking in many genres from racing to shooters - it's all remasters, microtransactions, free to play and advertising bullshit Sure, but that's just the thing, actually. Gamers overindex on what _they_ like, which simply isn't what the general public cares about. "Video game players" as opposed to "gamers" really want two things: they want to play Madden or FIFA with the newest rosters and the best graphics. And then they want to take a break and play the Call of Duty game with the best graphics. Why do these AAA studios need to innovate when this formula doesn't just work - it's doing absolutely excellent? We have indie studios to satisfy gamers' creative-game needs.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Avatar and Interstellar, both made with enormous budgets by overwhelmingly successful directors, are weird examples to use for "non-mainstream". In fact, most of the Oscar Best Picture nominees from 2020 [0] meet that description better than the movies you cited (not sure what was in theaters last year, but most of them were readily available from a mainstream source; I'm sure that in a normal year most would have been in mainstream theaters). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture#2020s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture...