Sure but when you have an established successful franchises with a working recipe. Like. Just release the next ace combat I swear to God it’s been 6 years without a peep about ace combat 8 despite ace combat 7 being by far the best selling in the franchise.
Comment on Anon pitches a new game
darthelmet@lemmy.world 4 days ago
My (completely uninformed) theory: It’s competitive advantage. Indies succeed on their creativity, but that works because there are thousands of indie devs out there and we get to see the best (and luckiest) ones. It’s not easy to replicate that creativity by just throwing more money at the problem. So what is a company with ooodles of money but no creativity to do? Make games that only a company with way too much money could make. No indie dev is going to make the next Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed or Fortnite because they just don’t have the budget to make that happen. So they know that even if they keep churning out generic crap, at least it’s generic crap with very little real competition.
Of course then all of them got the bright idea to compete in a game business model that is inherently winner take all with already well established leaders. So yeah now it just seems like they’re lighting money on fire for fun.
decipher_jeanne@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Let me ask. Do you really want another ace combat after half a decade without information? In all likelihood, the team has been gutted twice. The only similarities to its past might end up being art direction and the name.
Like, I enjoyed the new armored core and duke nukem, but they weren’t quite continuations of the previous games. Mecha sekiro and generic cringy subpar shooter 485 weren’t worth the wait. Though, I admit, I’m a hypocrite and holding my breath for silksong.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Exactly. The team(s) that made the stuff we love are usually long gone by the time we get “the next” whatever. My go-to for that.isnCriterion Games going from Burnout Paradise to… well, basically not doing anything anymore. Thanks, EA. Some of the devs left, and Wreckreation is on the docket. It’s due to be a spiritual successor, but I’d he willing to bet nowhere near as charming as Burnout. Damn, I hope I’m wrong, given “Dangerous Driving”…
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Heres a gamer brained analogy:
You know how all the manosphere types describe 90% of women as only being willing to date the top 10% of men?
This is that.
90% of all the money in gaming is going toward developing a game with a 10% chance of being rhe next Minecraft, the next Fortnite, the next big huge thing that will generate a stupid amount of money by functionally acting as its own MTX ecosystem with widespread adoption.
It is: We don’t sell consumer model economy cars because our financial situation is so wound up in financing that we can actually only afford to sell high end luxury models, otherwise our profit margin is too small, and then we can’t afford our operating costs and debt obligations, so then we have to downsize and fire everyone and most importantly, our shareholders don’t get as much
wealth extraction, I mean profit.)The … problem with this obviously is that if 90% of the money in gaming is shooting for making basically the same kind of game… well then it is all competing with itself, thus causing a gametheortic prisoners dilemma situation where everyone acting out of maximum self interest actually results in the worst possible outcome.
Another problem with this is that these games are very expensive to make, and they must be made very fast… so, everything other than the MTX system in these games will be buggy and sloppy and garbage tier…
So, yeah. Game companies are the same kind of delulu that the manosphere thinks 90% of women are, chasing a wildly unrealistic outcome via wildly unlikely to work means.
(Disclaimer: I am not saying I endorse or believe in this manosphere idea, I am using it as a gamer-brained analogy, assuming it is true for sake of argument and comparison.)
Disaster@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
For the car analogy, the incentives are even more perverse than that!
Justdaveisfine@midwest.social 3 days ago
I’d hate to say it, but look at any big publishers quarterly reports. Compare how much base games sell compared to micro transactions.
Image ^ EA’s
They would all like to take the lead and have “the” live service game but unfortunately even their bland attempts still bring in a lot of cash. This is why the push to live service is so aggressive.
The only thing that’s been slowing the push down is these big live service failures, which is making big publishers a little stingy on what games to push.
You are correct though, the big franchises have a lot of name recognition and its really hard for a competitor to muscle in on that established space (though they do try). Its a safe bet that often pays off, despite gamers lamenting it.
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
If only we had a way to put that chocolate into the peanut butter…
Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 days ago
I mean… You could make a knock-off Fortnite, make the cosmetics unlocked by just playing, and give it away for free. That would probably be enough to topple Fortnite. It just also would net you exactly 0 profit.
darthelmet@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Maybe. But you’d need servers. And that would cost a lot of money for something aiming to be that scale.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 days ago
You do what games used to do: provide the server software to every player so they can run their own. This also means the game can never die.
themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I mean that’s literally just Minecraft hunger games at this point.
The reason Fortnite is popular isn’t it’s outstanding gameplay, it’s a network effect coupled with the sillyness of the various IPs interacting. People play Fortnite because their friends play Fortnite.
Justdaveisfine@midwest.social 3 days ago
Doesn’t this already exist? I could have swore one of the open source Minecraft clones had a battle royale mod.
There are definitely free battle royale games out there though I don’t know of their cosmetic unlocks situation.