Originally posted by Mister lilligant:

greed.

They spend a good deal of time with their heads up investors bottoms, no way of seeing the real world.

https://youtu.be/HMuYfScGpbE
Bcoz of one thing.

their*

Money and profit is the sole cause of their problems and the likes of rockstar killing it just serves to egg them on despite knocking out duds.

They want money, but unlike many other companies, EA doesn't mind hiding it.

I think Bethesda got kind caught up in their own hype a bit.
Setting aside the fo4 v other fallouts debate, compare it to Skyrim instead.
The difference in care, world building, story etc is huge.
It's like a band that releases a couple albums, gets big then they just don't have the same hunger and drive they did at the start. It's hard to stay driven and motivated when you've "made it"
I'm sure there are a milliin other reasons as well but i think that's a big part of it.
EA literally just don't give a ♥♥♥♥. Blame The Sims, EA were nearly bust, released The Sims and at one point it made up like 70% of their revenue, brought them back to life and now we're here.

Because their decisions are made in corporate conference rooms by men wearing suits and ties, using market research data that's designed to maximize sales, not produce quality products. To a company like EA or Bethesda, they're not concerned with whether you like their products or not, as long as you buy them.

This is far from unique to the video game industry but the video game industry probably sees the most profit from it because of the number of kids they market to. Every large corporation is this way, though, and every small corporation that becomes large becomes this way. It has to or else it can't survive anymore than an MMO player that tries to play honestly can survive in a game full of hackers.

Blaming the corporations only goes so far because they wouldn't do business this way if people didn't buy their products. They do. They buy them even before they're released, a decision wholly based on effective marketing, and then it releases and they're all furious because the game sucks and they swear by the entire Hindu pantheon they're never going to buy another product from ______ company again. But it's BS and the company knows it. 99% of the people who say that will buy every single product that company makes, every time, at first opportunity.

If people don't like the way these companies do business, they need to stop doing business with them and the company will either change or go bust and the hole filled by a competitor that has to be treated the same way.

Once upon a time, video games were a niche because technological capabilities weren't very good. Typically, the people who started and ran these companies were computer geeks themselves, but the real deal, the people who settled the territory.

Of course, there were plenty of companies that were started or were founded by big corporations to create a brand-named game product based on a film or something. However, for every licensed Disney game developer, there were many others who gave out floppies of their games to try and get known, and so on and so forth.

Further out of the 80s and into the 90s, small "basement-devs" made of coders and programers still produced many breakout games - Id Software, Blizzard and so many others.

But then gaming started getting much bigger. More and more people were interested. Venture capital started getting involved. The playstation sold millions, the 6th generation brought the ps2 and Xbox and sometime in the mid 2000s, video games outperformed Hollywood for the first time.

So now, on the business side, you now have the interest of rich forty and fifty somethings who have never played a game in their lives, (the same kind of people who were helping ruin movies and television) now investing, financing, founding and running gaming companies.

The people who are at the heads of companies weren't tech savvy, they were gamers, they were just suits who wanted to make returns on investments like we're the beef industry.

So that's why we're here. At executive level are clueless rich people who don't understand anything about videogames, and at the production level are some really talented people who are either forced into unreasonable deadlines without any say in actual development, or are overshadowed by the talentless game school shovelouts who couldn't design a sidewalk.

Originally posted by Mister lilligant:

Apart from the money

Saying "apart from the money" while it is obviously the only reason why.

Because they're connected with money.

Bethesda is absolutely not as bad as EA imo, and their games are more interesting (but I don't like Fallout)

The problem with both companies it that they have shareholders and shareholders demand returns. This means doing their absoulte upmost to cash in at every chance.

Lets start with EA.

EA discovered years ago that that they can make more money from microtransactions than they do acctually making games. This is 100% true and there are articles galore about how Andrew Wilson (CEO of EA) has changed the company to do this.

That can be purely laid at the feet of casual gamers who played sports titles such as FIFA and where happy to pay micro transactions to accumalte the best teams. He simply took that model and found ways to incorperate it into all aspects of EA when he moved up from EA sports to running the whole company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wilson_(businessman)


As such, every EA game is a micro transaction maggot fest because of this guy. He gets mocked for it but he's proven himself to EA to be able to get blood from a stone and as long as people pay for said micro transactions (and they do) he'll be laughing about it. When EA very publicly said single player was dead last year, for them it is. All their money comes from their multi player games with a huge chunk of revenue being sucked up from micro transactions in games.

Their core audiance is no longer gamers that enjoy rich stories or giant world to explore. It's the short attention span or sports fan players who just want to be "the best" at the game they are playing. For EA everything is Multiplayer now as they've killed off all their single player IPs and even their last big single player (Mass Effect Andromeda) had bloody microtransactions it it.

As such I personally stay away from EA because their whole business model is repugnant to me.

Bethseda on the other hand is a company that traditionally is best known for it's single player games. However, even Bethseda is heading down a similar path. Again, shareholders want maximum return on their profits. Fallout 76 is, without a doubt, a joke (and I'm glad I opted not to buy it). It;s a rushed buggy mess that should not have released but Bethseda have higher ups to answer to and deadlines to meet. Online games are where they can milk some extra money from and as such, thats what they've tried to do......very badly. Had they gone the MMO route like they did with Elder Scrolls Online they could not have opened the game to modders (which is another potential source of revenue) but again...thats what the shareholders want and Bethseda has to deliver.

So.be wary of Bethseda going forward. Single player games might be ok but I expect them to do what everyone else is doing and thats milking everything they can out of online players.

To counter EA and Bethseda though we have Valve. Privately owned by Gaben himself. In Valves case, there's no one but Gabe to answer to and as such, we've ended up with a company that became ver experimental with hardware rather than games. Valve have headed down the VR path and as of now, about half the company is dedicated to that rather than making games (not even remotely kidding....you can go google Valve and VR headset to see whats coming) .. Artifact is the first big (and quite frankly boring to me) game we've seen from them in years and the next 3 are all VR titles.


You all think you're mad at EA and Bethseda but you're about to be furious at Valve for finally releasing another half life game....and it;s VR only!

You guys ever watch “The Wire”?

Imagine what would happen if it wasn’t about drugs, but about game publishing.

D'Angelo Barksdale: We'll be doing even better when we get that new [game].

Russell 'Stringer' Bell: New [game] same as old, man.

D'Angelo Barksdale: Say what?

Russell 'Stringer' Bell: Ain't no new [game]. Just gonna put that same [beta] out in a different [box cover] is all. Might spike that [with promises of future DLC, microtransactions, graphics upgrades], but otherwise it's the same.

D'Angelo Barksdale: String, man, people already coming back on us tellin' us that sh*t is weak.

Russell 'Stringer' Bell: I know; sh*t *is* weak, but, y'know, sh*t is weak all over. The thing is, no matter what we call [AAA game developing], it's gonna get sold. Sh*t is *strong*, we gonna sell it; sh*t is *weak*, we gonna sell twice as much. You know why? 'Cause a [gamer], he gonna chase that sh*t no matter what. It's crazy, you know. We do worse, and we get paid more. The government do better, and it don't mean no nevermind.

[pointing to the money]

Aren't they? Games a kind of drug I mean?