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Great products loved by customers don't seem to be what the free market rewards. It's almost looks like customer passion is an inefficiency which the market ten

Great products loved by customers don't seem to be what the free market rewards. It's almost looks like customer passion is an inefficiency which the market tends to eliminate and not as an accident but rather as a general rule. Customers love your product? Great, here's a very attractive offer, we buy the company and make it "efficient" which somehow tends to make the product shitty and the customers unhappy.

coldpie 2y ago
I think one way to phrase this in a way that reflects how the market works is that sellers often very much under-value the worth of the brand itself, and buyers know this. If you can buy a brand for X and exploit the customers who trust that brand for 2*X, then it's worth it even if it destroys the brand that was truly worth 10*X in the process. The trouble comes when X is large enough to buy (almost) literally anyone out -- "F-You Money" -- and the seller don't care what the true value of the brand is because it's yacht time, baby. And the employees & customers get screwed. If this is a problem we want to solve, the answer IMO is stuff like employee-ownership & unions.
- dbspin 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - jszymborski 2y ago
    I'm happy to hear this sentiment echoed here. My mind has been on this quite a bit lately.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    > It's too abstracted from externalities - from slash and burn asset sweating, to environmental damage to abusive employment practices offshored or put at arms length through contractors None of this is intrinsic to corporations, and all of it can be legislated away without changing what it means to be a "corporation". This is just thinly-veiled advocacy for communism.
    - dbspin 2y ago
      Hard disagree - communism and under-regulated financialised free-market capitalism are not the only alternatives available. Numerous potential political and economic systems, and combinations of those systems have and will likely exist in the future. There's literally nothing inevitable about the particular mixture of state backed shareholder corporate structures that currently hold sway. The international order as it stands today radically differ in substance and practice to the corporate, legal, tax and intellectual property laws of even a half century ago. Although of course the idea of a corporation dates back at least to the sixteenth century - when they were explicitly created as vehicles of colonization - East India Company, Virginia Company etc. I'd go so far as to suggest we literally cannot continue as a functioning civilisation under the current international order. We likely agree on one point though, we're more likely to fail as a society than change it without violence.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        Can you provide a single example of an economic system that's not capitalism or socialism/communism?
- tracker1 2y ago
  I think that having corporate charter/bylaws include things like company long term health as a guiding principal over short term gains may do it. Along with explicit limitations on the money an executive can take in any given fiscal year.
dhosek 2y ago
[flagged]
- praptak 2y ago
  I was promised customer satisfaction because better products win in the market so I'm just thinking out loud about the discrepancy.
  - tracker1 2y ago
    The cool thing about capitalism is you can start competing companies to offer better products. At least so far as the industry is or isn't highly regulated.
- chollida1 2y ago
  I get you're probably being sarcastic and this was a throw away comment, but capitalism is also why we have all the nice things in the world that we do.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - gottorf 2y ago
      To paraphrase, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
    - rob74 2y ago
      I'm still thinking capitalism used to be best during the Cold War, when there was a competing system in the eastern bloc - this led capitalist countries to try to prove that they can increase the standard of living for all, even the less better off. Since that alternative turned out not to be long-lived, capitalism has been growing more and more ruthless...
joneholland 2y ago
The last few products from Sierra were a far cry from great. Kings Quest 8 was shambles.
- ben7799 2y ago
  FTA Kings Quest 8 was completely derailed by the acquisition and the crooks basically trying to cut Roberta Williams out of the design.
bane 2y ago
I love Sierra games growing up, but I've come to understand that they were not great games and often quite user hostile, but benefited more from being early movers in an underserved market. They rightfully deserved all of the success they had at the time, but as the market shifted, they eventually just fell to those changes as most privately funded companies do. Not enough capital to pivot, and not enough capital to improve their core technologies through sufficient R&D. Ken Williams tried to innovate into new underserved markets (e.g. dial-up gaming services pre-Internet), and "buy R&D" by acquiring other companies, which worked for a while. But his core founding game designers had been surpassed in the industry, and their location made it very hard to recruit new talent. The shift to higher resolutions and 3D obsoleted their core technology and the technical talent they had just couldn't keep up. (source: there's a few very good long-form interviews with Ken Williams on these business realities). Sierra was not going to make it as a software house, the writing was on the wall for a while. They tried to switch to using their established sales channels and turned to distributing and did really well for a few titles like Half-Life and Homeworld, but then those companies went elsewhere with the market. By the "end" Sierra itself was mostly making card games, and then blowing most of their budget on buggy, late to market, and underperforming 3D versions of their main series. Selling the company was really the only alternative for them, but once you do that you give up vision and control. It's sad how they ended up, and I'm thankful for the memories, but things move on.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  I love Sierra games growing up, but I've come to understand that they were not great games and often quite user hostile, but benefited more from being early movers in an underserved market. Harsh, but so true. (And I'm somebody who was absolutely enthralled by about a half dozen of their adventure games back in the day) Even if Ken and Roberta hadn't lost control of the company, I'm not sure what Sierra would have offered the world creatively at that point. They were eclipsed by LuscasArts in the world of point-and-click adventures, and it's not really clear they had another core competency on the game development side of things. If Phantasmagoria was any indication, they seemed to want to go in the direction of "Digiwood" games with FMV but that whole genre of games turned out to be a massive dead-end for the industry and is not particularly fondly remembered. I still celebrate Sierra, though. They absolutely moved the industry forward, and were at the pinnacle of the industry for a decade or more. Few have achieved as much, or entertained as many! Roberta in particular is a bit of a hero of mine and on a personal note I love that her and Ken are still together after all these years.
LocalH 2y ago
[flagged]
Aerroon 2y ago
This is one aspect that Tencent has done very well on. They've put a lot of money into various (western) game companies and those game companies don't seem to have flourishef with it. I can't really think of a western investor that does the same.
broken-kebab 2y ago
>Great products loved by customers don't seem to be what the free market rewards Dunno, if I read the same text, but Williams retired early, and rich. Good reward if you ask me >tends to make the product shitty and the customers unhappy. Experimentation, and advancement makes one to step in the wrong direction more often than not, and it's absolutely fine. A product, or a brand may expire, and diminish, but gaming in general does pretty well, and offers more today compared to 90s

coldpie 2y ago

I think one way to phrase this in a way that reflects how the market works is that sellers often very much under-value the worth of the brand itself, and buyers know this. If you can buy a brand for X and exploit the customers who trust that brand for 2*X, then it's worth it even if it destroys the brand that was truly worth 10*X in the process. The trouble comes when X is large enough to buy (almost) literally anyone out -- "F-You Money" -- and the seller don't care what the true value of the brand is because it's yacht time, baby. And the employees & customers get screwed. If this is a problem we want to solve, the answer IMO is stuff like employee-ownership & unions.

dbspin 2y ago
[flagged]
- jszymborski 2y ago
  I'm happy to hear this sentiment echoed here. My mind has been on this quite a bit lately.
- throw10920 2y ago
  > It's too abstracted from externalities - from slash and burn asset sweating, to environmental damage to abusive employment practices offshored or put at arms length through contractors None of this is intrinsic to corporations, and all of it can be legislated away without changing what it means to be a "corporation". This is just thinly-veiled advocacy for communism.
  - dbspin 2y ago
    Hard disagree - communism and under-regulated financialised free-market capitalism are not the only alternatives available. Numerous potential political and economic systems, and combinations of those systems have and will likely exist in the future. There's literally nothing inevitable about the particular mixture of state backed shareholder corporate structures that currently hold sway. The international order as it stands today radically differ in substance and practice to the corporate, legal, tax and intellectual property laws of even a half century ago. Although of course the idea of a corporation dates back at least to the sixteenth century - when they were explicitly created as vehicles of colonization - East India Company, Virginia Company etc. I'd go so far as to suggest we literally cannot continue as a functioning civilisation under the current international order. We likely agree on one point though, we're more likely to fail as a society than change it without violence.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      Can you provide a single example of an economic system that's not capitalism or socialism/communism?
tracker1 2y ago
I think that having corporate charter/bylaws include things like company long term health as a guiding principal over short term gains may do it. Along with explicit limitations on the money an executive can take in any given fiscal year.

dhosek 2y ago

[flagged]

praptak 2y ago
I was promised customer satisfaction because better products win in the market so I'm just thinking out loud about the discrepancy.
- tracker1 2y ago
  The cool thing about capitalism is you can start competing companies to offer better products. At least so far as the industry is or isn't highly regulated.
chollida1 2y ago
I get you're probably being sarcastic and this was a throw away comment, but capitalism is also why we have all the nice things in the world that we do.
- coldpie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - gottorf 2y ago
    To paraphrase, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
  - rob74 2y ago
    I'm still thinking capitalism used to be best during the Cold War, when there was a competing system in the eastern bloc - this led capitalist countries to try to prove that they can increase the standard of living for all, even the less better off. Since that alternative turned out not to be long-lived, capitalism has been growing more and more ruthless...

joneholland 2y ago

The last few products from Sierra were a far cry from great. Kings Quest 8 was shambles.

ben7799 2y ago
FTA Kings Quest 8 was completely derailed by the acquisition and the crooks basically trying to cut Roberta Williams out of the design.

bane 2y ago

I love Sierra games growing up, but I've come to understand that they were not great games and often quite user hostile, but benefited more from being early movers in an underserved market. They rightfully deserved all of the success they had at the time, but as the market shifted, they eventually just fell to those changes as most privately funded companies do. Not enough capital to pivot, and not enough capital to improve their core technologies through sufficient R&D. Ken Williams tried to innovate into new underserved markets (e.g. dial-up gaming services pre-Internet), and "buy R&D" by acquiring other companies, which worked for a while. But his core founding game designers had been surpassed in the industry, and their location made it very hard to recruit new talent. The shift to higher resolutions and 3D obsoleted their core technology and the technical talent they had just couldn't keep up. (source: there's a few very good long-form interviews with Ken Williams on these business realities). Sierra was not going to make it as a software house, the writing was on the wall for a while. They tried to switch to using their established sales channels and turned to distributing and did really well for a few titles like Half-Life and Homeworld, but then those companies went elsewhere with the market. By the "end" Sierra itself was mostly making card games, and then blowing most of their budget on buggy, late to market, and underperforming 3D versions of their main series. Selling the company was really the only alternative for them, but once you do that you give up vision and control. It's sad how they ended up, and I'm thankful for the memories, but things move on.

JohnBooty 2y ago
I love Sierra games growing up, but I've come to understand that they were not great games and often quite user hostile, but benefited more from being early movers in an underserved market. Harsh, but so true. (And I'm somebody who was absolutely enthralled by about a half dozen of their adventure games back in the day) Even if Ken and Roberta hadn't lost control of the company, I'm not sure what Sierra would have offered the world creatively at that point. They were eclipsed by LuscasArts in the world of point-and-click adventures, and it's not really clear they had another core competency on the game development side of things. If Phantasmagoria was any indication, they seemed to want to go in the direction of "Digiwood" games with FMV but that whole genre of games turned out to be a massive dead-end for the industry and is not particularly fondly remembered. I still celebrate Sierra, though. They absolutely moved the industry forward, and were at the pinnacle of the industry for a decade or more. Few have achieved as much, or entertained as many! Roberta in particular is a bit of a hero of mine and on a personal note I love that her and Ken are still together after all these years.

LocalH 2y ago

[flagged]

Aerroon 2y ago

This is one aspect that Tencent has done very well on. They've put a lot of money into various (western) game companies and those game companies don't seem to have flourishef with it. I can't really think of a western investor that does the same.

broken-kebab 2y ago

>Great products loved by customers don't seem to be what the free market rewards Dunno, if I read the same text, but Williams retired early, and rich. Good reward if you ask me >tends to make the product shitty and the customers unhappy. Experimentation, and advancement makes one to step in the wrong direction more often than not, and it's absolutely fine. A product, or a brand may expire, and diminish, but gaming in general does pretty well, and offers more today compared to 90s