Capitalism and the Video Game Industry

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25 May 2024, 7:21 pm

You all are talking about a video game.

Not about life saving medicine for sick babies!

Jeeze!

If you're gonna indict all of "capitalism" pick something more important than - software that competes with Donkey Kong. :lol:

Aspiegaming
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25 May 2024, 7:42 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Video games are a big part of the entertainment industry. Much of the industry is Triple A these days. No one cares about Donkey Kong. Video games have the potential to be an art form.

We're arguing how to preserve jobs for talented developers who put their livelihoods in an industry that could let them go for no reason.

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01 Jun 2024, 7:45 pm

Aspiegaming wrote:

We're arguing how to preserve jobs for talented developers who put their livelihoods in an industry that could let them go for no reason.

The only way to accomplish THAT goal is for those very same “talented developers” to be the sole owners of the companies for which they work -- no outside capital investors (i.e., no banks, no stockholders, et cetera), and no “silent partners” either.

This means that (1) All the profits go into the artists’ pockets, and (2) All the costs come out of the artists’ pockets as well.

Imagine 10 - 20 artistic types trying to reach a consensus on product development while also trying to market and sell their products in a highly-competitive marketplace without any outside help.

Do you remember Solar Engine Games? Not many people do.

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01 Jun 2024, 8:26 pm

Fnord wrote:

Aspiegaming wrote:

We're arguing how to preserve jobs for talented developers who put their livelihoods in an industry that could let them go for no reason.

I know a lot of indie developers, but Solar Engine Games brings up nothing on any search. Do you have any proof they existed? What did they work on if anything got released at all or at least got a prototype demo?

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01 Jun 2024, 11:14 pm

Solar Engine Games was an ambitious plan by over a dozen game developers to “go their own way” together, using the model I expressed in my previous post. They had a lot of creativity, but little start-up capital of their own, and no idea how to run a business without it. Trying to satisfy everyone’s ego didn’t help much either. They went bust in less than a year, with nothing to show but some vaporware and a few broken friendships.

Needless to say that most people have never heard of SEG.

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02 Jun 2024, 12:13 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

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06 Jun 2024, 9:27 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:

RetroGamer87 wrote:

ToughDiamond wrote:

Not saying strong socialism can work in a big nation state, but I don't think this idea of buying the means of production from the elite is the best thing to do, although it may be better than nothing. The wealth would still be concentrated into the same small number of hands. Another option would be confiscation, just taking it. We already have this to a small degree with taxation.

You're thinking of this as a zero sum game. How can you think of this as a positive sum game?

Remember there is no absolute fixed limit on the number of factories that can exist in the world at any one time.

In what way is that relevent to what I said?

It's relevant because it's possible to create new wealth instead of coveting existing wealth. I'm not saying it will be easy but you need to stop thinking of this as a zero sum game.

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10 Jun 2024, 10:02 am

If a company isn't making ALL of the money (including all of YOUR money), business isn't profitable enough so they cry about how production is too expensive wah, wah, wah.

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24 Jun 2024, 10:11 am

Let's look at Embracer. Don't you just love it when a company buys every property in sight, go into massive debt, and do some "restructuring" that results in projects with potential getting cancelled and many many studios shut down thus contributing to the ongoing and increasing unemployment problem in the industry.

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16 Sep 2024, 11:01 am

I never thought I'd be so happy to resurrect this thread.

Former Sony Europe CEO Chris Deering has said some genuinely offensive garbage in the wake of the industry's awful layoff epidemic. His callous suggestions to those laid off include just getting over it and having a beach holiday, because from his perspective it isn't really a big deal. And ain't that the problem? This is from HIS perspective, and an executive's perspective is absolutely useless to the rest of us. Executives are, themselves, completely bloody useless.

Quote:

I don't think it's fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed. I always tried to minimize the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would always be a cycle and I didn't want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in electronics. If the money isn't coming in from the consumers on the last game, it's going to be hard to justify spending the money for the next game. I think it's probably very painful for the managers, But I don't think that having a skill in this area [of game dev] is going to be a lifetime of poverty or limitation. It's still where the action is, and it's like the pandemic but now you're going to have to take a few. Figure out how to get through it, drive an uber or whatever, go off to find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year. But keep up with your news and keep up with it, because once you get off the train, it's much harder.

Analysis and criticism:

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