• 1 Post
  • 60 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 9th, 2023

help-circle
  • Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

    It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

















  • I’m speculating, and certainly not a business expert, so heaping handfuls of salt comes with this statement: I think part of the problem that led to this is that each game was published by a different entity. Square published 2016, then put the devs up for sale the following year, citing underperformance. IO buys itself out and becomes independent, but needs capital to get Hitman 2 across the finish line. Enter a publishing deal with Warner Bros. That game proves successful enough that Hitman 3 is able to be self-published.

    Considering IO’s concept of this World of Assassination trilogy was always that it would have certain online-only or live servicey features, and I assume that publishers often provide the necessary infrastructure for these things, I wonder if the rotating chair of publishers is to blame for making this process so much more obtuse than it needs to be.



  • Cause it doesn’t matter if they are still profitable. If you aren’t MORE profitable than your last outing, then you aren’t growing, and if your business isn’t growing, it’s dying.

    However, I wonder if the premise is flawed here. In 1999, you could probably get a somewhat accurate idea of a game’s profitablity by comparing dev cost vs units sold. However, with live service being the AAA fascination du jour, and Call of Duty in particular having a whole game mode siloed off into the free to play space, I question if “units sold” is indicative of financial success anymore.