Battlefront 2 PS4 scores 0.9 on Metacritic

[Cynthia-Roses]

I'd love to see people call out micros far more. This is a trend that needs to continue. Stop allowing companies to nickel and dime you.

 

For those claiming "but game development has gotten so expensive!" the companies making these claims seldom break down their numbers or give away their profit margins. They also are not telling us what the money for development is being spent on. For all we know there are tons of areas where they could save and they are likely making far more than they are letting on. The reality is, companies survived (and continue to survive) without micros, so the mantra of "they're needed to keep companies afloat" is likely total BS.

 

I honestly trust fan reviews more than critic reviews anyways because as I've seen over the years, critics go with what gets clicks. The modern critic business is all about revenue now. Many critics will be contrarians just to get more clicks and many will just go with the status quo to also get clicks. We also see so many of them "afraid" to be blacklisted even though blacklisting literally just means you don't get free copies of games, invited to release parties, get special gifts, etc. You can still review the game and do so more objectively. The fact that game devs try to marry free games and all this light bribery to critics is part of why I simply don't bother with them anymore.

 

Yes I get that review scores by fans can be padded, but honestly I trust people who paid money for a game and are regular consumers more than people being paid too much and given stuff for free to give more accurate reflections.

 

Whether or not the people downvoting Star Wars Battlefront II are people who own the game or not is irrelevant to me in this scenario though, because this is more about protest than it is about review. The micro practices of this game are very well known and it NEEDS to have attention brought to it in every way possible to let other developers know if they attempt this... It will blow up in their face.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

Someone just shared this one with me, figured I'd share it with you lot:

 

[Wandererster]

On 11/20/2017 at 10:27 PM, Cynthia-Roses said:

I'd love to see people call out micros far more. This is a trend that needs to continue. Stop allowing companies to nickel and dime you.

 

For those claiming "but game development has gotten so expensive!" the companies making these claims seldom break down their numbers or give away their profit margins. They also are not telling us what the money for development is being spent on. For all we know there are tons of areas where they could save and they are likely making far more than they are letting on. The reality is, companies survived (and continue to survive) without micros, so the mantra of "they're needed to keep companies afloat" is likely total BS.

 

I honestly trust fan reviews more than critic reviews anyways because as I've seen over the years, critics go with what gets clicks. The modern critic business is all about revenue now. Many critics will be contrarians just to get more clicks and many will just go with the status quo to also get clicks. We also see so many of them "afraid" to be blacklisted even though blacklisting literally just means you don't get free copies of games, invited to release parties, get special gifts, etc. You can still review the game and do so more objectively. The fact that game devs try to marry free games and all this light bribery to critics is part of why I simply don't bother with them anymore.

 

Yes I get that review scores by fans can be padded, but honestly I trust people who paid money for a game and are regular consumers more than people being paid too much and given stuff for free to give more accurate reflections.

 

Whether or not the people downvoting Star Wars Battlefront II are people who own the game or not is irrelevant to me in this scenario though, because this is more about protest than it is about review. The micro practices of this game are very well known and it NEEDS to have attention brought to it in every way possible to let other developers know if they attempt this... It will blow up in their face.

You should stop calling it micro since the prices aren't even micro.

Also

 

 

 

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

Well, the loot boxes are now officially considered to be gambling in Belgium. Holland started their own investigation.

https://nieuws.vtm.be/vtm-nieuws/binnenland/geens-wil-gokken-games-verbieden

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

 

"Wants them banned in Europe" is kind of a mistranslation, by the way. To get these practices banned, they pretty much have to go straight to the top instead of trying to keep it just out of Belgium.

 

@StrickenBiged looks like they saw through the "you always get something so it's not gambling" argument.

[MMDE]

Is this memes?

[StrickenBiged]

The game has just slipped below 70 on metacritic for both PC (66/100) and PS4 (69/100). XBOne still holding out at 70/100.

 

That's the critics, by the way... 

 

Ouch. Mass Effect: Andromeda scored higher. 

 

Not that I think Metacritic scores really matter because every site will bring their own scoring system to the game, but this thread was originally intended to discuss Metacritic score so... here we are. 

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

So, Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation doesn't do scoring as such, and hasn't done Battlefront II yet (he's still on the games that came out October 27), but somehow his review on Assassin's Creed Origins managed very early on to go on a tangent about how AAA gaming is becoming less about making good and fun games and more about getting as much money from people as they can, while he's using Battlefront in the video pictures.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/117156-Yahtzee-Reviews-Assassins-Creed-Origins

[Dangisuckatgamin]

As shitty as microtransactions are.. where was the GTAO hate several years ago? Did everyone just love buying cash then because they surely made millions off it.

[ragnarok2887]

2 hours ago, Dangisuckatgamin said:

As shitty as microtransactions are.. where was the GTAO hate several years ago? Did everyone just love buying cash then because they surely made millions off it.

 

I don't think the outrage has been about microtransactions as a general feature of games, but rather the different degrees to which companies use microtransactions to manipulate players.  GTA Online had microtransactions, which just equated to buying more in-game money, which in turn allowed you to buy whatever you wanted.  Games like Battlefront 2 have (or had, since they've been removed now) microtransactions that get you lootboxes, which give you a "chance" at getting the stuff that you want.  The developers dictate and can change the percentage change of any of the loot drops that you are essentially gambling for without needing to tell you.  The fact that BF2 progression system is built wholly around lootboxes means that players feel restricted to keep rolling the dice to get more loot.  It's restricting and manipulative.

 

And before you say, yes, you don't need to pay for microtransactions if you don't want.  But the fact that BF2 is so dependant on players opening lootboxes means that players are still limited and frustrated that the only way to progress is to keep rolling those odds of some good items/cards dropping.   

[You]

I think the BIGGEST thing we should all agree on here, is not if lootboxes are good or not, or whether they should be banned or not.

 

We need to all agree that if the way a game plays is effected by lootboxes, none of us should put up with that. I want lootboxes out of games not because they're bad, or even because they are gambling, it's because they are making the games less fun. I want games to have a level and fair playing field.

 

Can you imagine if loot boxes were a thing 20 years ago. Can you imagine if Quake 3 Arena or Counter strike, had Rail gun usage cool downs. Or you had to wait an hour before each match, or had to unlock or power up guns through random loot boxes. We'd all think how terrible that was. These games in a way had very little content and very little lastability in a way, but why did we all play them for years, consider them classic games? The game was fun, and it was FAIR. Meddling with the strength and effectiveness of guns and characters in Battlefront 2, online shooters are suffering because of lootboxes, lootboxes are making games less fun to play, it's not an opinion, it's just plain FACT.

 

Making games grindy and forcing people to play them for a long time is not a good way to retain a userbase. Perhaps the way we play games has changed, I don't know. How many of us stop playing a game when that platinum pops to move onto another game, a lot I would assume. I don't know what the answer is, but if companies need to put in shitty microtransactions and other awful game design decisions through loot boxes, then the AAA industry has a bumpy and uncertain future.

 

I'm not going to play this game even if it was given to me for free, just out of principle.

Edited November 24, 2017 by enaysoft

[Wavergray]

On 11/20/2017 at 9:27 AM, Cynthia-Roses said:

I'd love to see people call out micros far more. This is a trend that needs to continue. Stop allowing companies to nickel and dime you.

 

For those claiming "but game development has gotten so expensive!" the companies making these claims seldom break down their numbers or give away their profit margins. They also are not telling us what the money for development is being spent on. For all we know there are tons of areas where they could save and they are likely making far more than they are letting on. The reality is, companies survived (and continue to survive) without micros, so the mantra of "they're needed to keep companies afloat" is likely total BS.

Actually if you go looking for it you can find quite a bit of data on how much or how little some companies make each year, most just don't look and if they find it don't know how to read it.

 

In most cases they don't really need to "break down their numbers" that much. There are a lot of things I could bring up as an example, but the easiest one is the number of people needed to make a game nowadays compared to the PS2 days. Back then let's say 40ish people were needed to make a game, now we have games that need 200+ people to make it. In both cases all of those people have to be payed for their work for years at a time, plus things like insurance and overtime. Just that could make game development too expensive with how fast games get devalued.

 

And I know some will say indie games don't take as much to make, but in a lot of case indie developers are underpaid and overworked to make a passion project. Once again if you go looking for it you will find plenty of indie developers that went out of business after making one 2D game. 

 

This all comes back to the fact the a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore when really, in order to keep everything afloat, all games should cost like $20 more than they do now.

And what I mean by "a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore" is that a majority have picked up a "Just wait for a sale" mentality which is really bad for the health of the gaming industry.

 

Because of this mentality almost no game that is released at any time of the year has the perceived value necessary for this majority to buy a game a $60.This is hurt more by that fact that you can sometimes get a newly released game for less than $60 on it's release week. I could take 3 games that were released recently: Wolfenstein 2, Evil Within 2, and Shadow of War. All 3 of these games are less than 2 months old, but right now you can get them for $25 US. Black Friday or not, now that these games are this "cheap" anyone who doesn't buy it now will most likely wait until they are around the $25 price before they buy them. This means that the perceived value of this games have gone from $60 or less to $25 or less in just two months.

 

This is bad, because this means the games that took 200+ people to make can't even sale at the base $60 anymore. Which means it may or may not make enough money for it to offset the risk the game companies made to let the game be made. And even if those 3 games do, the other 100+ games made each year may not, which is really bad. Because if they can't make enough to off set the risk, the game companies may go bankrupt due to lack of funds to run the daily operations of the companies.

 

So yeah game development has gotten really expensive, in fact there is some proof out there the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year, and micros are one attempt to help solve that hemorrhaging problem. 

 

tldr: Yes you can find numbers/data on gaming companies if you go looking for it, game development has gotten really expensive, and because people don't value games the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year.

 

Data on companies:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/

http://investor.activision.com/

http://investor.ea.com/releases.cfm?ReleasesType=Earnings

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-US/company/investor_center/earnings_sales.aspx

Edited November 24, 2017 by soultaker655

[You]

2 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

This all comes back to the fact the a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore when really, in order to keep everything afloat, all games should cost like $20 more than they do now.

And what I mean by "a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore" is that a majority have picked up a "Just wait for a sale" mentality which is really bad for the health of the gaming industry.

 

 

That's unfortunately a fault with retailers and not customers. Black Friday is just one example, but since there are sales practically every week these days whether it be on PSN or in the shops, if the retailers weren't in such a hurry to try and undercut each other then the prices of games would stay high.

 

This isn't just a problem with games though, happens with music, movies, pretty much all consumables. Also the generation that grew up on free to play with mobiles, many of those people grew up and moved to consoles and you bet those people are gonna pay as little as they can for their games. I have a backlist of games I have yet to play but I bought on sales at 50% or less. They've flooded the market with an endless sale and underpriced games in general.

 

This problem though should NOT be solved with microtransactions and making extra "value" by slow grinds and microtransactions. I don't even think microtransactions long term is going to solve all their problems because people will get wise. People like Jim Sterling, and Total Biscuit, they get millions of views, and word of mouth spreads pretty fast.

 

This debacle has taken EA by surprise, they REALLY were going to continue on with their transactions, but the reddit backlash and then metacritic and then meme war campaign on twitter. EA thought they were invincible I think at this point. I have this feeling that with Star Wars (only) they might just leave the microtransactions off, because the sudden pushback of gamers and bas publicity will be immense.

 

I can see the headlines now "EA finally turns on Star Wars Casino world aimed at children"

[pinkrobot_pb]

3 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

And I know some will say indie games don't take as much to make, but in a lot of case indie developers are underpaid and overworked to make a passion project.

The video game crush is prevalent all across the industry though.

[Bullstomp]

On 11/20/2017 at 0:37 PM, Cubone said:

Someone just shared this one with me, figured I'd share it with you lot:

 

That is awesome, thanks for sharing?It really makes a great point; if we don't deal with this nickle-&-dime bullshit in other entertainment mediums then why should we have to with video games?

 

3 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

Actually if you go looking for it you can find quite a bit of data on how much or how little some companies make each year, most just don't look and if they find it don't know how to read it.

 

In most cases they don't really need to "break down their numbers" that much. There are a lot of things I could bring up as an example, but the easiest one is the number of people needed to make a game nowadays compared to the PS2 days. Back then let's say 40ish people were needed to make a game, now we have games that need 200+ people to make it. In both cases all of those people have to be payed for their work for years at a time, plus things like insurance and overtime. Just that could make game development too expensive with how fast games get devalued.

 

And I know some will say indie games don't take as much to make, but in a lot of case indie developers are underpaid and overworked to make a passion project. Once again if you go looking for it you will find plenty of indie developers that went out of business after making one 2D game. 

 

This all comes back to the fact the a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore when really, in order to keep everything afloat, all games should cost like $20 more than they do now.

And what I mean by "a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore" is that a majority have picked up a "Just wait for a sale" mentality which is really bad for the health of the gaming industry.

 

Because of this mentality almost no game that is released at any time of the year has the perceived value necessary for this majority to buy a game a $60.This is hurt more by that fact that you can sometimes get a newly released game for less than $60 on it's release week. I could take 3 games that were released recently: Wolfenstein 2, Evil Within 2, and Shadow of War. All 3 of these games are less than 2 months old, but right now you can get them for $25 US. Black Friday or not, now that these games are this "cheap" anyone who doesn't buy it now will most likely wait until they are around the $25 price before they buy them. This means that the perceived value of this games have gone from $60 or less to $25 or less in just two months.

 

This is bad, because this means the games that took 200+ people to make can't even sale at the base $60 anymore. Which means it may or may not make enough money for it to offset the risk the game companies made to let the game be made. And even if those 3 games do, the other 100+ games made each year may not, which is really bad. Because if they can't make enough to off set the risk, the game companies may go bankrupt due to lack of funds to run the daily operations of the companies.

 

So yeah game development has gotten really expensive, in fact there is some proof out there the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year, and micros are one attempt to help solve that hemorrhaging problem. 

 

tldr: Yes you can find numbers/data on gaming companies if you go looking for it, game development has gotten really expensive, and because people don't value games the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year.

 

Data on companies:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/

http://investor.activision.com/

http://investor.ea.com/releases.cfm?ReleasesType=Earnings

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-US/company/investor_center/earnings_sales.aspx

Hemmoraging? EA appreciates your concern but even with everything going on now they have come out and said that they will still make several hundred million IN PROFITS (NOT gross income)this quarter. See below-

 

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

13 minutes ago, Bullstomp said:

That is awesome, thanks for sharingIt really makes a great point; if we don't deal with this nickle-&-dime bullshit in other entertainment mediums then why should we have to with video games?

 

Hemmoraging? EA appreciates your concern but even with everything going on now they have come out and said that they will still make several hundred million IN PROFITS (NOT gross income)this quarter. See below-

 

 

 

Honestly, all this stuff makes me thinkof that image that circled the net years ago.

 

Found it:

 

 

It's weird how people say that the gaming industry is hemmoraging money. People have gotten complacent. They ignore red flags and parrot bland statements.

 

Horizon Zero Dawn made a nice profit for Guerilla Games and Sony, and they did it without microtransactions. Many more examples could be given. Publishers just need to make devs make a great game instead of one that's just addictive and costs additional money once you've bought it.

 

Personally, I still buy Assassin's Creed games because I like the games and the microtransactions don't get in the way (I never spend on them though), but you'll never hear me say that Ubisoft wouldn't be able to profit from the franchise without microtransactions.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Cubone
typo

[Ric]

3 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

Actually if you go looking for it you can find quite a bit of data on how much or how little some companies make each year, most just don't look and if they find it don't know how to read it.

 

In most cases they don't really need to "break down their numbers" that much. There are a lot of things I could bring up as an example, but the easiest one is the number of people needed to make a game nowadays compared to the PS2 days. Back then let's say 40ish people were needed to make a game, now we have games that need 200+ people to make it. In both cases all of those people have to be payed for their work for years at a time, plus things like insurance and overtime. Just that could make game development too expensive with how fast games get devalued.

 

And I know some will say indie games don't take as much to make, but in a lot of case indie developers are underpaid and overworked to make a passion project. Once again if you go looking for it you will find plenty of indie developers that went out of business after making one 2D game. 

 

This all comes back to the fact the a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore when really, in order to keep everything afloat, all games should cost like $20 more than they do now.

And what I mean by "a majority of gamers don't really buy games for $60 anymore" is that a majority have picked up a "Just wait for a sale" mentality which is really bad for the health of the gaming industry.

 

Because of this mentality almost no game that is released at any time of the year has the perceived value necessary for this majority to buy a game a $60.This is hurt more by that fact that you can sometimes get a newly released game for less than $60 on it's release week. I could take 3 games that were released recently: Wolfenstein 2, Evil Within 2, and Shadow of War. All 3 of these games are less than 2 months old, but right now you can get them for $25 US. Black Friday or not, now that these games are this "cheap" anyone who doesn't buy it now will most likely wait until they are around the $25 price before they buy them. This means that the perceived value of this games have gone from $60 or less to $25 or less in just two months.

 

This is bad, because this means the games that took 200+ people to make can't even sale at the base $60 anymore. Which means it may or may not make enough money for it to offset the risk the game companies made to let the game be made. And even if those 3 games do, the other 100+ games made each year may not, which is really bad. Because if they can't make enough to off set the risk, the game companies may go bankrupt due to lack of funds to run the daily operations of the companies.

 

So yeah game development has gotten really expensive, in fact there is some proof out there the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year, and micros are one attempt to help solve that hemorrhaging problem. 

 

tldr: Yes you can find numbers/data on gaming companies if you go looking for it, game development has gotten really expensive, and because people don't value games the gaming industry is hemorrhaging money each year.

 

Data on companies:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/

http://investor.activision.com/

http://investor.ea.com/releases.cfm?ReleasesType=Earnings

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-US/company/investor_center/earnings_sales.aspx

 

I appreciate your reasoning, but is that offset to the amount of gamers? 15 years ago, the gamer market wasn't as big. Today everyone and their granma is a gamer. The big companies will sell way more copies of their game now than they could ever imagine back then. If not for this massive growth, big gaming companies would have stopped pushing the boundaries years ago and just settled for the 40-man made games.

 

So yes, game development has become a lot more expensive, but it needed to be to appeal to the much bigger market. They still make more than enough profits. EA even stated that turning off the lootboxes for this game doesn't affect their earnings.

 

It's not easy for indies to get into this market, because the competition is insane amongst them. There are so many people trying to get a piece of the action. And then there's the massive load of garbage that gets thrown on Steam and the PSStore which makes it even harder for them to stand out with genuinly good games.

[StrickenBiged]

4 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

is the number of people needed to make a game nowadays compared to the PS2 days

 

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was made with a team of 13 on-site staff, and 20 ish overall (they outsourced music, for example). They used a number of ingenious tricks to make the game with such a small team. Just because AAA spends a lot of money, it does not follow that games of that graphical callibre need to cost that much money. (Side note: I think Ninja Theory said recently that Hellblade met their 6-month sales prediction in just 3 months, and they are now firmly in profit. Well deserved IMO.)

 

Witcher 3 is another example of a hugely ambition game made for a reasonable (by "AAA" standards) budget. 

 

Just saying, it's still the AAA publisher's choice to have the budgets that they do. Better games have been and will continue to be made for far less than "AAA" likes to spend. 

 

4 hours ago, soultaker655 said:

in order to keep everything afloat, all games should cost like $20 more than they do now.

 

Not necessarily. While some development costs have increased and, adjusted for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been (at the $60 point, not counting the DLC, etc) there are a number of things available now which massively reduce costs such as digital distribution, the internet more generally (meaning teams can be spread out globally, taking advantage of cheaper labour/regions), disc technology v cartridge costs, great middleware being available off the shelf, etc. 

 

I'd like to see more variation in price of "AAA" games too, but that doesn't mean it needs to go only upwards! 

 

 

[Wavergray]

12 hours ago, enaysoft said:

Snip

Which is why I said the gaming industry in not in a healthy position right now.

 

11 hours ago, pinkrobot_pb said:

The video game crush is prevalent all across the industry though.

Yes and for some of game companies that crunch doesn't pay off.

 

11 hours ago, Bullstomp said:

snip

PROFITS that have to be put back in the company in order for it to function for the next year. (ie. pay their employees for the next year of work plus other fees they have to deal with like paying for that Respawn buy out, if i'm remembering it was 150 million now and 350 million based on next four years.) Also EA made more than just SWBF2 this year so yeah they made money all year before this "Lootbox debacle". It won't really hurt them until the next fiscal year. Also of course they told their investors everything will be okay, they won't know if that's true or not until the next fiscal year. 

 

11 hours ago, Cubone said:

It's weird how people say that the gaming industry is hemmoraging money. People have gotten complacent. They ignore red flags and parrot bland statements.

 

Horizon Zero Dawn made a nice profit for Guerilla Games and Sony, and they did it without microtransactions. Many more examples could be given. Publishers just need to make devs make a great game instead of one that's just addictive and costs additional money once you've bought it.

 

Personally, I still buy Assassin's Creed games because I like the games and the microtransactions don't get in the way (I never spend on them though), but you'll never hear me say that Ubisoft wouldn't be able to profit from the franchise without microtransactions.

Sony is a huge company that makes more then games, while the PS brand makes money the other sony brands don't make as much. The money the PS brand makes is used to make sure all of Sony can run for the next year.

 

What is a great game and how can you prove it will make money? How many "great game" have never made enough money to offset the cost and bankrupted the company that made it?

 

You do know Ubisoft is really close to being bought out by Vivendi because they don't have enough money to stop it right?

 

11 hours ago, Ric said:

Snip

Yes the gamer market grew, but see the stuff I said to Bullstomp above. 

 

11 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

 

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was made with a team of 13 on-site staff, and 20 ish overall (they outsourced music, for example). They used a number of ingenious tricks to make the game with such a small team. Just because AAA spends a lot of money, it does not follow that games of that graphical callibre need to cost that much money. (Side note: I think Ninja Theory said recently that Hellblade met their 6-month sales prediction in just 3 months, and they are now firmly in profit. Well deserved IMO.)

 

Witcher 3 is another example of a hugely ambition game made for a reasonable (by "AAA" standards) budget. 

 

Just saying, it's still the AAA publisher's choice to have the budgets that they do. Better games have been and will continue to be made for far less than "AAA" likes to spend. 

Hellblade is an complicated exemption. Yes they made a 4K, 5-6 hour, corridor game with simple combat. Like you said they use tricks to make a nice looking, simple game that people liked, but it's also a 5-6 hour game with little to no replay value. Plus you have to think how big of a risk did they take to make the game and other things like the stuff I was saying above.

 

Witcher 3 is also a complicated exemption, but complicated or not. Exemption are still exemption not the rule. That's 2 game out off the 100+ games that have to follow the current normal rules.

11 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

Not necessarily. While some development costs have increased and, adjusted for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been (at the $60 point, not counting the DLC, etc) there are a number of things available now which massively reduce costs such as digital distribution, the internet more generally (meaning teams can be spread out globally, taking advantage of cheaper labour/regions), disc technology v cartridge costs, great middleware being available off the shelf, etc. 

 

I'd like to see more variation in price of "AAA" games too, but that doesn't mean it needs to go only upwards! 

 Where are you going with this thought? What you are saying here is that games are cheaper than they've ever been and we have things that reduce development costs, but still development costs have increased. Which means games cost more to make and don't make as much as they should even with the things that reduce development cost. Yeah this is true, what about it?

 

 

Also to all of you. You have brought up okay counterpoints, but they are to linear. I could write essays of counterpoints to your counterpoints, but I not. 
I will say stop looking at EA and other game companies as these one big things. Game companies like all companies are like buildings made of lego blocks, they are made of tons of little parts that all have to be taken care of or it will fall. Now if you are one of those people that want the companies to fall that's a whole other conversation.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

12 minutes ago, soultaker655 said:

Sony is a huge company that makes more then games, while the PS brand makes money the other sony brands don't make as much. The money the PS brand makes is used to make sure all of Sony can run for the next year.

 

What is a great game and how can you prove it will make money? How many "great game" have never made enough money to offset the cost and bankrupted the company that made it?

 

You do know Ubisoft is really close to being bought out by Vivendi because they don't have enough money to stop it right?

 

 

Sony is big, Guerilla Games isn't.

 

So you say better not make a great game, rather make a mediocre game with lots of microtransactions to trick people in making us a profit?

 

A company being bought out because "they don't have enough money to stop it" doesn't even make any sense. You never need to have enough money to stop a company from buying you out, you just need to say "no thank you" to the company that wants to buy you out. Ubisoft is a healthy company financially speaking, in the last thirteen financial years they made a loss in only three years, the last being 2014, and all three years that followed 2014 had more of a net income than 2014's loss.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/328303/ubisoft-net-income/

 

They don't need to be bought out. They could be bought out, but they don't need to be and they're not in any kind of financial troubles currently.

[Wavergray]

22 minutes ago, Cubone said:

 

Sony is big, Guerilla Games isn't.

 

So you say better not make a great game, rather make a mediocre game with lots of microtransactions to trick people in making us a profit?

 

A company being bought out because "they don't have enough money to stop it" doesn't even make any sense. You never need to have enough money to stop a company from buying you out, you just need to say "no thank you" to the company that wants to buy you out. Ubisoft is a healthy company financially speaking, in the last thirteen financial years they made a loss in only three years, the last being 2014, and all three years that followed 2014 had more of a net income than 2014's loss.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/328303/ubisoft-net-income/

 

They don't need to be bought out. They could be bought out, but they don't need to be and they're not in any kind of financial troubles currently.

Guerilla Games is a subsidiary of Sony which means Sony owns them which makes them part of the Sony umbrella.

 

Missing the point. What is a good game? Does it have to be good to make money? These are subjective things.

 

Ubisoft as a publicly traded company which means their shares can be bought. They can be hostilly taken over if another company buys too many of their shares. If they don't have enough money to stop it then they will be bought out.

https://www-polygon-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2016/12/8/13857230/vivendi-ubisoft-stock-takeover

 

https://www-rockpapershotgun-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/06/ubisoft-buy-back-shares-to-halt-vivendis-hostile-takeover/amp/

 

Edited November 24, 2017 by soultaker655

[Facas]

15 hours ago, enaysoft said:

 

That's unfortunately a fault with retailers and not customers. Black Friday is just one example, but since there are sales practically every week these days whether it be on PSN or in the shops, if the retailers weren't in such a hurry to try and undercut each other then the prices of games would stay high.

 

This isn't just a problem with games though, happens with music, movies, pretty much all consumables. Also the generation that grew up on free to play with mobiles, many of those people grew up and moved to consoles and you bet those people are gonna pay as little as they can for their games. I have a backlist of games I have yet to play but I bought on sales at 50% or less. They've flooded the market with an endless sale and underpriced games in general.

 

This problem though should NOT be solved with microtransactions and making extra "value" by slow grinds and microtransactions. I don't even think microtransactions long term is going to solve all their problems because people will get wise. People like Jim Sterling, and Total Biscuit, they get millions of views, and word of mouth spreads pretty fast.

 

This debacle has taken EA by surprise, they REALLY were going to continue on with their transactions, but the reddit backlash and then metacritic and then meme war campaign on twitter. EA thought they were invincible I think at this point. I have this feeling that with Star Wars (only) they might just leave the microtransactions off, because the sudden pushback of gamers and bas publicity will be immense.

 

I can see the headlines now "EA finally turns on Star Wars Casino world aimed at children"

 

it's not exactlly fault of the retaillers. games as well as a lot of things are mass produced and the more units you buy / produce will reduce the price of the single unit. i can't speak a lot about it because i work in a big retailer company in europe and my contract don't aloud it, but i ask.... do you guys think that they are losing money when they put games on sale?

no, they have less profit but they are compensated by the number of units sold.

my company as more then 500 stores across 6 or 7 countries and buy thousands of each game which make the price goes down. a big percentage of them are bought from another company that manage the distribution of this products to several retailler companies. thats why big companies want to stop whit the phisical games to make more profit, not to brake even... that is for indies and small publishers.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Facas
typo

[grbolivar]

- The average gamer age is 31, 70% of gamers are 18+ years old, that is, most gamers are way past the mythical "child that can be easily influenced to purchase" age (source)

- Little "susceptible to spend money" children (5-10 years old) should not play SW:BF2 as it is rated TEEN by ESRB, that is, suitable only for people 13+

- Only 2-3% of gamers make a purchase on F2P or similar model games (source). Only the so-called "whales" spend tons of money on a particular game, most of these whales are adults that pay with their own hard-earned money.

- Little children that spend a lot of money on a F2P a rare cases, and it's not the fault of the game/developer. Those news you read about a kid wasting $10K on a game? well, the only persons to blare are the parents. Parent's should be supervising what their children do and control the kids access to credit cards/money.

- The act of gambling is not addictive, if that were the case, anybody that touches a slot machine on a casino will be instantly hooked. Ludopathy/Ludomania is a rare psychological disorder that affect very few people. Anybody addicted to gambling (either on a gamer or a casino) is probably a ludopath, and it's not the fault of the game/casino. Gambling will NOT make anybody a ludopath.

- Do you remember those booster packs with baseball/comics/pokemon cards you bought when you were a kid? Yeah, those were old-school loot boxes. Were you addicted to them? Probably not. The concept of "loot box" is older than you think.

 

The real problem with SWBF2 is not "gambling" or the loot boxes, is including a F2P model to a fully-paid game. The progress system is clearly F2P (pay to get gear or grind countless hours to get them free). All EA has to do is replace the entire progress system and remove the F2P model.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

30 minutes ago, soultaker655 said:

Guerilla Games is a subsidiary of Sony which means Sony owns them which makes them part of the Sony umbrella.

 

But don't they still need to be profitable on their own? If they'd be making losses, Sony wouldn't say "èh, we've got enough other money sources", they'd either reorganise or just close GG.

 

Quote

Missing the point. What is a good game? Does it have to be good to make money? These are subjective things.

 

My original point was that less effort should be spent on creating money schemes and more effort should be spent on making games that are fun to play. Doesn't matter if "good" is subjective, you can spot passion. Witcher III might not look as amazing as some other games, nor has it got the best gameplay, but it's got a heart and a soul.

 

It's not fool-proof, but nothing is. Need to take some risks. Better take risks with making what you think is a great game than taking risks with how you think you can make as much money as possible. That's something I don't see enough with the big companies these days.

 

Quote

Ubisoft as a publicly traded company which means their shares can be bought. They can be hostilly taken over if another company buys too many of their shares. If they don't have enough money to stop it then they will be bought out.

https://www-polygon-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2016/12/8/13857230/vivendi-ubisoft-stock-takeover

 

https://www-rockpapershotgun-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/06/ubisoft-buy-back-shares-to-halt-vivendis-hostile-takeover/amp/

 

 

What? How the hell is something like that even allowed? If that company does a "public offer" as they call it, can't Guillemot just refuse the offer?

 

Who the hell would want to go public if something like this can happen?

[luckyluscombe]

I've played it but don't own it. Got to be honest I had fun, shame about the progression system really.

[Facas]

3 minutes ago, Cubone said:

 

But don't they still need to be profitable on their own? If they'd be making losses, Sony wouldn't say "èh, we've got enough other money sources", they'd either reorganise or just close GG.

 

 

My original point was that less effort should be spent on creating money schemes and more effort should be spent on making games that are fun to play. Doesn't matter if "good" is subjective, you can spot passion. Witcher III might not look as amazing as some other games, nor has it got the best gameplay, but it's got a heart and a soul.

 

It's not fool-proof, but nothing is. Need to take some risks. Better take risks with making what you think is a great game than taking risks with how you think you can make as much money as possible. That's something I don't see enough with the big companies these days.

 

 

What? How the hell is something like that even allowed? If that company does a "public offer" as they call it, can't Guillemot just refuse the offer?

 

Who the hell would want to go public if something like this can happen?

 

Sorry, off topic.

their are some rules to to it but yes it can be done in a hostile way. you buy the shares of the small share holders until youhave 51%