Phil Spencer Blames Capitalism For Bad Games

Most gamers have zero self control, are an easy mark, are brand zombies and suffer from uncontrolled fomo. Old ladies infront of TV evangelist have more control over their money.

This is why the industry is as bad as it is, cause the customers are stupid.

I don't read game journalist articles, or go to their sites. I am sure a lot of articles would have told me yoko taro is the creator of neir. I am just not the audience of those articles and I am trying to point out that other "people" are going to be like me as well surface level details only, I would rather spend my time on other things, then learn more about the people behind the games I enjoyed.

Sure, you are not in the diehard fan group nor reader of articles, but that doesn't mean they are rare. Or else who paid for those Kickstarters campaign if they made so much money?

I was only trying to illustrate hardcore fan group existed and their numbers aren't low using KS pages, not denying the fact that people like you also exist too.


It depends on the position. If you are a programmer then yeah, nobody cares if you wrote the engine or shaders for a game. If you are in a junior or mid level position, you are probably faceless too, as you don't get to make decisions.

For artistic roles like designer, artists and composer, who also get to make the decision, their names matter because of their "style" and personal input affecting the game. And people like their games because of their style.

This is why the core resource of a game company is often people. And buying a studio is often a bad investment if the core team leaves. Even if you recruit new employees their "style" just won't be the same anymore.

Art industry has been working like this since forever. In a lot of ways games are closer to art than software.


They are inventors, not writers, artists nor composers. If I buy a car I don't care about art style. But I do care for games.

A multitude of industries are the same way

My point is they are where celebrities of their times, their names were known across the world, but then we transitioned to places like bell labs and general electric where those same innovations and inventors become the faceless cooperate entity. The same thing happens to games, some people just don't care about the details.

Counter arguments exist, but they don't last. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, all get replaced with Microsoft, Apple, Linux who run these things now who are the innovators?

Games may have credits but not everyone reads them, I never have. I have no idea who directed Final Fantasy Crystal Chronical my actual all time favorite game, because it does not matter who made it, just that I love it.


At the end of the day it really doesn't matter the market just fractures into smaller and smaller section, diehard fans track down their favorite designers and throw money at them for a game. Or people walk into a gamestop(or login to steam) see a SE game they haven't played and buy it. Both groups will have millions of mindless money bags supporting them that is why nothing changes.

Also being "known" is not all it's cracked up to be, suddenly people can send you specifically death threats cuz you killed off their favorite character or because you did or didn't "bent the knee"

Sorry, someone starts dropping names with that "OF COURSE you know" tone behind it, and I never get a sense of respecting that person's fandom...I just get the impression they want a little "look at me" moment for being in-the-know of a niche field. I see it among my friends with avant-garde composers or trendsetters in competitive sailing.

And I'm well aware that the vast majority of people I pester with such interests of mine aren't really interested at my level, and never will be. So going deep-dive like that never works to attract new fans...I try and find common threads between their known likes and what I'm trying to sell and link them. Its why when I post all those damn sailing videos on ffxiah, I'm trying to point out all the teamwork between the athletes and the tech happening in the background; its why when I bring up a new composer I heard a concert of I'm talking about the mixture of world music into western traditions or the blend of eletroacoustic performers with classic artists to show the growth of a centuries-old art form.

So for those who think that dropping names that a fraction of the world even knows helps their cause...understand that it does nothing except propagate a feeling that your world is elitist. I'm speaking from experience here being an avid fan of something very niche- if you want to share that world with others unfamiliar, you gotta work harder to build a bridge, not a temple.

I think we've head into a completely different discussion direction from my first post. Your original post was saying big company buying startup is a thing in tech industry, I only said game industry works differently and big company buying smaller studios often didn't end well because it is different industry.

I can name plenty of examples like Bioware, Westwood, Lionhead studios etc, that was previously successful, bought by big companies like EA or MS then it is completely ruined. Because they way they manage people does not "click".

Ultimately game industry is a very people focused industry.


Sure, you don't know who made it, but you know you love it. What makes you love it? It has to be "something" right? Maybe it is the experience, world building, battle system, story, music, art, or the combination of all of above?

If I just randomly hire a team of designers, composers and artists and make Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles 3 or something, will it have the same "something" that you love from the previous games?

Mayyybe not, because they are made by different people now. Game industry is unique is this case that you can't easily replicate the "something" people love which is unique in a game. But that "something" is what sells a game.

It is art business first and foremost.



That's the life of being a creator.

You can't blame me for not knowing someone else don't know certain name lol. Everyone has different level of knowledge when it comes to a subject. However it is difficult to guess exactly where they are, on a forum, with every strangers posting. Especially on a forum with related(gaming) subject.

If I am discussing these names with someone who never play games, then yeah I would try to explain who they are before I drop a name. If I am posting on a non-gaming forum I would do that too. It is normal to assume those people never read any video game articles.

On a gaming forum it is much easier to assume other readers at
least read some gaming related news and learn the names from there. I post and read many other video game forums, and most other posters read video game articles. It is easier to assume other people also read articles because they are common in the gaming community.

That being said, I wasn't trying to shame people for not knowing people's names. If people tell me I would explain np. There is no need to accuse me for "OF COURSE you know" tone", it wasn't my intention to shame people for not knowing at all.

you take the comment as some sort of blame, when it was just coming from someone else who is an avid fan of a small universe, and a very passionate one, trying to offer advice that helps attract new people to what you are passionate about. Why did you jump to blame or fault versus, "perhaps the responsibility is on ME if I want to attract new fans, or to not care if I don't want to work hard as an ambassador for my passion?"

We are at the beginning of the Video game great depression.

Tech has already seen marginal gains in the last iterations of PC equipment. We noticed this in the past with games getting shorter and shorter but now we are seeing straight-up billion-dollar games having a Chucky cheese level of design. I predict a freefall soon.

I blame graphics.

I predict Phil Spencer will leave his company and make a kickstarter for the "game he always wanted to make since he was a wide eyed boy", raise billions for it and never deliver, like most other past it game makers.

Who will win? Bull or bear?

https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-media/video-games/worldwide

There is no such thing as "Stock market capitalism", you either own private property or you do not own private property.

"Stocks" is just shorthand for "ownership shares of a company". If I start a company then I own 1 out of 1 share of that company. If I take on a partner and we go 50/50, then I own 1 out of 2 shares of that company. If instead we go with a more advanced structure and my partner is a 20% owner, then I own 4 out of 5 shares and they own 1 out of 5 shares. My partner can then decide to sell their 1 share to someone else for however much they want. Furthermore I can take on a third partner and pay them ownership out of my 4/5 shares or we can restructure the shares to be a larger number (usually 100~1000) and reallocate ownership that way.

Now if we want to expand further we can decide to open purchasing ownership of our company to the public. We'll pool our ownership shares, reallocate to a much larger number and then each will pledge a certain amount for sale as part of an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Of course to participate in public exchange of ownership we would need to comply with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) rules. We'll also have to restructure as a C Corp to comply with the IRS filing requirements for publicly traded companies. Now selling our stock to the public individually is a ridiculous amount of work, so we'll contract our to a standard stock exchange like in the New York Stock Exchange and people can use brokers to facilitate the buying and selling of my companies ownership.

And that is all that "stock" is, just ownership of companies. If any of you have a 401k then you are part owner of companies, and you've elected to proxy your owner voting to whomever is running your 401K program.

Also the reverse of this process is possible, someone decides to buy all shares of a company, usually with partners, and afterwards closes off public buying of those shares and delists from any stock exchanges.

Ok now for the real root cause of the crazy "stock price go up by any means necessary" mentality, the US tax system. Seriously.

The US currently taxes based on citizenship, any US citizen anywhere in the world must file and pay taxes on any and all income. That income can broadly be broken into two categories, regular income and capital gains income. Regular income is taxed based on the IRS tax schedule and capital gains is taxed as either long or short term. Short term is any gain on property owned for less then 12 months and is taxed as regular income. Long term means you've owned the property for longer then one year and is taxed at 15~20% depending. The thing is, that income is from profit which was first taxed at the corporate income tax rate of 21% along with whatever that State taxes at, CA for example goes by 8.84%.

All combined a $100 profit in CA results in a 42.38% total tax liability for a return of $57.62, this is quite disheartening. But there is a way to minimize this, return the profit to the investor in the form of higher stock price. The investor then sells the stock and only has to pay the 15~20% long term capital gains tax on it instead of the 42% rate. I only pay tax on the revenue I declare as profit, if instead I invest that net income into a new project, expansion or acquisition my share price goes up.

So we can see why investors want share prices to keep going up, and why executives are incentivized to do so. It's about avoiding crazy double taxation. We know this because there is another business model that doesn't do this, Real Estate. Due to how tax rules are structured for real estate business's, property owners can elect to either tax the distributions a regular income, or split them as part of an S Corp. I can do a whole other post if people want to know how that works and why it's the foundation of most wealth in the US.

you cannot for pages cite gaming as "closer to art" then try to quantify the quality of the field via stock values. I mean, my god, how obvious does an industry have to be that "hey, we market to kids, addict them early, and then do the absolute minimum required to keep taking money from them"?

Art and make money does not contradict, lol. Capitalism has been hyping art made hundreds of years ago into something worth millions, sell them to rich people so us poor people aren't even allowed to own them. Associating with money doesn't make art any less.

What qualify as art to me is if it triggers particular long lasting emotional experience via story and presentation. Even gacha games with well written story and presentation can do that. And the gambling part isn't even must have. I've played plenty of gacha games for story and enjoyed reading them. I have never pay a cent for any gacha game. Almost feel bad to read their story without paying.