7 ms·

> There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now. There are studios that routinely put out games that people

> There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now. There are studios that routinely put out games that people love. For example, my wife and I will happily pre-order the next co-op game from Hazelight Studios. FromSoftware, Ghost Ship Games, and others fall into the same boat for many people. The difference, in my opinion, is that games from these studios don't focus on creating an "always on" service, microtransactions, day-1 DLC, MRR, etc. Those things that blight games made by corporate studios are evidence of corporate executives putting their thumb on the scale. There's only so much you can do, as a developer, to polish a turd.

TheTon 2mo ago
At one point you could have said the same thing about Blizzard, that everything they did was gold. It’s hard to pinpoint where they went wrong, but it’s not clear to me that it was business model or game format related. Like, WoW was a fabulous success from day 1 and it was a live service game.
- gmadsen 2mo ago
  It was when the amount of lattes overtook the amount of Mountain Dew
bmurphy1976 2mo ago
With the obvious exception of Elden Ring, most of the games from these studios are quite modest small to medium sized projects. I wish devs would stop trying to make every game an uber-game. They need all the monetization because they've already blown the budget before work even started. Nintendo figured this out. When will the other big players?
- brianwawok 2mo ago
  Nintendo is selling first party games for $80. No thanks.
account42 2mo ago
For games like Starfield, monetization isn't even the main issue but rather political ideology. You can only do so much ESG-approved preaching before customers go elsewhere.
- tpxl 2mo ago
  For games like Starfield, the problem is the game is bad, it has nothing to do with politics or ESG.
  - 3997531578 2mo ago
    [dead]

TheTon 2mo ago

At one point you could have said the same thing about Blizzard, that everything they did was gold. It’s hard to pinpoint where they went wrong, but it’s not clear to me that it was business model or game format related. Like, WoW was a fabulous success from day 1 and it was a live service game.

gmadsen 2mo ago
It was when the amount of lattes overtook the amount of Mountain Dew

bmurphy1976 2mo ago

With the obvious exception of Elden Ring, most of the games from these studios are quite modest small to medium sized projects. I wish devs would stop trying to make every game an uber-game. They need all the monetization because they've already blown the budget before work even started. Nintendo figured this out. When will the other big players?

brianwawok 2mo ago
Nintendo is selling first party games for $80. No thanks.

account42 2mo ago

For games like Starfield, monetization isn't even the main issue but rather political ideology. You can only do so much ESG-approved preaching before customers go elsewhere.

tpxl 2mo ago
For games like Starfield, the problem is the game is bad, it has nothing to do with politics or ESG.
- 3997531578 2mo ago
  [dead]