Warner Bros to double down on live services despite Suicide Squad failure & Hogwarts Legacy success
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- Опубликовано: 4 мар 2024
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SOURCES
1: www.metacritic.com/game/suici...
2: opencritic.com/game/14351/sui...
3: store.steampowered.com/app/31...
4: steamcharts.com/app/315210
5: steamcharts.com/app/997070
6: steamcharts.com/app/1496790
7: steamcharts.com/app/208650
8: www.ign.com/articles/suicide-...
9: www.videogameschronicle.com/n...
10: www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject...
11: www.gamespot.com/articles/war...
12: www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indust...
13: insider-gaming.com/warner-bro...
TOP PATRONS
[BIG BOSS]
- Devon B
- gergely oggolder
- Jonathan Ball
[BOSS]
- Charlie Galvin
- Gerardo Andrade
- Marketing aag
- Michael Redmond
[LEGENDARY]
- azalea
- dirt 
Игры
Hogwarts Legacy, a singleplayer campaign game, becomes the best selling game of 2023. Suicide Squad, a game brought down by generic live service looter shooter elements, bombs. Warner Bros conclusion: "Clearly the best thing for our business is to make more live services."
PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea
TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/yong_yea
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TOP PATRONS
[BIG BOSS]
- Devon B
- gergely oggolder
- Jonathan Ball
[BOSS]
- Charlie Galvin
- Gerardo Andrade
- Marketing aag
- Michael Redmond
[LEGENDARY]
- azalea
- dirt
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How can they be called "live service" games when they die so quickly?
Unalive service
because they're too scared to admit the games are mmos
@@ricojesZombie Service games. 😂
same reason as why MAIDS is called healthcare. they lying
@@Xoulrath_ sounds like those old pay to win phone games
The success of Helldivers 2 will only feed the delusions of this kind of CEOs. They only see the profit and success the game is currently having, and will make a poor copy of it using their own IPs. These CEOs won't realize that Helldivers' success was due to how they make their game enjoyable to their customers.
The reason Helldiver 2 works is it has a solid gameplay loop despite being live service. Helldivers 1 was also a good game so it had a good base to build from.
@@Drstrange3000and you absolutely don’t need to spend a penny on it
Well said 👏👏👏👏
Also it is not $70
Helldivers 2 will fall off hard I give it 1 more month
Warner Brothers strategy for their "Nemesis" system from the Shadow of Mordor series was the best one haha.
1. patent the Nemesis System code so no one else can use it
2. Never make a game using this system
3. Never license it out to anyone else to be able to use
4. Give a raise to top 10% of the company
5. No profit
Hahaha
Man, it hurts to think how such a good gameplay concept has been so badly handled by the management. Kinda reminds of Eternal Darkness' Sanity System
This is their Mindset for the future and beyond. No Money Coming in..they are baffled and we Fans are Laughing at Them.
I am pretty sure that patents dont work like this. You can't have a complete monopoly on everything similar.
@@JS-vj1ilThey don’t have the idea, because by its nature you can’t patent an idea or a rules system, just the code and name. It’s just hard to develop and doesn’t have much of a place in a lot of games, since it’s gimmicky
@@kman9884it's not gimmicky in the slightest and any game where death has meaning, it can be applied.
They want every game to be Fortnite, Overwatch or GTA Online. It can't be overstated the harm that those games did to the industry.
yea, you hear it from the statement so clearly. suicide squad hasnt reached the monetization goals they had. neither did hogwarts.
hogwarts took lot of effort and was a gamble. with slightly bigger issues or without the license (that caters to girls and people who usually dont play so much) it wouldnt have been nearly the phenomena or success it was. big risk and expense for somewhat large income that covers the costs but not so much.
what they really want to do are games made with 1000 dollar budget but gain a billion. a year. for multiple years
Then stop buying them. Im not saying you specifically. Just i. General. The problem isnt bad games being made. The problems is people still buy and fork money out for said bad games. Look at helldivers 2. Its boring repetitive and lame. But a ton of mouthbreathers think its a good game so it makes devs think thats a formula for success. Everyone complains about sports games yet tons of ppl still spend millions of dollars on ultimate teams hence nothing will improve because theyre still generating money. Skull and bones was supposed to be the worst game in the last 10 years. Guess what? It was still bought by a grip of ppl so ubisoft is gonna think thats ok because they still made money from it. Lazy games will continue to flood the market because lower lifeforms will still buy them. And the more that continues to happen the worse gaming will get
@@kallemetsahalme5701not gonna happen
@@GigaChadDuPlessishelldivers isn’t lame and repetitive.
It’s fun and repetitive. However what makes it worth it is the price.
I paid £27 for that game. The content in tag at game is good for what I paid for it.
And it’s £35 at retail.
That’s what makes it a great game.
If I paid £70 for this game. I would have agreed with you.
@@alm31 bro stop it. Helldivers is a f2p game that they charged you 30$ for. Idc that you enjoy it. Subjectivly its a bad game
What's happening in the game industry is a bunch of non-gamer corporate assholes dictating how games should be developed, they are a plague to the industry now and every major game company has them.
Money, Gaming is money now so suits who were born 60+ years ago who barely learned how to use a computer who have all the money now want to squeeze the money out of games to add to their piles so they can play golf.
The only way we can stop this. Is just simply don’t support them. Let these idiots blow through their money, by making a bunch of more failures until they listen. Only problem is, people just need to not support them, and we win. These companies are only like this, because we let it happen. We let them get like this, and it’s up to us to keep them in check.
@@AndrewTaylorNintyuk it's a sickness. Ancient Greeks called it silver sickness. They kne people have to stop them or they'd destroy everything including themselves (like now with climate change). They already have enough to be able to play golf for several lifes yet they still chase more. It's a numbers game for them.
Same thing with hollywood. Corporate execs making creative decisions top down. Stakeholders don't help either. Even if someone with passion gets into such a position they are still legally beholden to stakeholder interests.
well the problem is the majority of the "gamers" are "non gamers" pure casuals who sink 50-500 €/$ into smth like fnite and what not every month i even see that in my friend and familys circle so many people who would never touch games at all 10 years ago spent all the money in the world into those trash live service games
To think this is the route they take after the success of Hogwarts Legacy and the failure of Suicide Squad.
These guys just don’t know how to _pull out_ . I bet the execs at rocksteady each have a catholic amount of kids.
Is there an analogy of like thinking with your penis, but for executives?
they too far gone with the SJWisms that pulling out now seems stupid to them.. they would rather self destroy claiming to be on right side of history vs making quality games
Unfortunately they saw the success of Helldivers 2.
To make a live service they must realize they aim for :
- The parasocial demographics
- Portable device salarymen
- Fanservice desiring players
- Mathematically adept asian gambler
- Unique premist and plot identity readers
- Dedicated and responsive community creators
Warner Bros never made a game for that demographic, yet wants to claim one. Then wonders why their feet are hold to the fire.
Yep. The moment I found out suicide squad was a live service, I immediately lost interest. I didn’t even bother checking out any previews or anything past the initial trailer.
Same.
Same x2
I’ve never actually been interested in it past the awesome trailers lol
Same here
same 😎👍
My local government had a program where people could attend free business training to help them start their own business. And during the classes we had an exercise on finding patterns in pictures, the trainer said that "a good boss is one who is able to recognize patterns", so that he can see in sales that, for example, this product is no longer selling, but that another one is reaching its peak and we need to looking for a new one.
So the WB Executives, earning MILLIONS of dollars a year for their "work", looked at
Hogwarts Legacy: a game with a single-player campaign. = huge financial success
SS:Kill Rocksteady: Live service = total flop
And they say, "yep Live service it is boys, to the moon 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀"
For real. They get paid so much because somehow they convinced people they are so valuable, yet cannot grasp that maybe they were wrong and need to try something else.
sunk cost fallacy maybe?
Because they don't want to admit they are wrong. If they admit wrong, shareholder and employees might not have further faith in the CEO. Until it really hit the shareholder's $$$, will they admit wrong and change. And if they change, the CEO will be replaced with another CEO.
The execs want a game were people buy in game items like fortnite or CoD 2019 but this mindset could spell the end for rocksteady or any game under WB
Here’s the thing. Small businesses have the ability to be agile and nimble in their decision making that dinosaur conglomerates like WBD don’t. But businesses aren’t allowed to thrive because they’ll be bought out or driven out of business. There’s no incentive for any company in any industry to innovate.
Customers: "We're not a big fan of these Live Service games"
Gaming Executives: "Yes you are"
They want those whales!
(later)
Gaming executives: “Where have all of the customers gone?!”
"you just don't know it yet"
Isn't that how marketing works? Make your customer believe they want your product. They are just really bad at this
"Ratio"
YongYea: "You would think WB would have learned their lesson."
No, no I wouldn't, I would never attribute any such competence or intelligence to them.
All of this failure and mismanagement in the gaming world is due to people with business/Econ degrees trying to control the games and the companies that make them. The video game industry was built on the foundation of gamers making games for other gamers *to enjoy.* When the corporate suits are in charge of a game, their one and only concern is: *MICROTRANSACTIONS* .
@@HondoHoss77What else can you expect from people who think those degrees take intelligence to complete, rather than recognizing most people aren’t interested in it?
Certainly not with David Zaslev in charge, at least...
@@kman9884That's the thing. I'm an academician, and the biggest gripe I have with my entire profession is that people with actual drive and outside-the-box thinking capabilities aren't necessarily rewarded. People who somehow tick the correct boxes, are. Which is why every sector sees a huge influx of incompetent people who regardless have "impressive" degrees to their name. It means nothing.
My friend used to work Warner Bros. While in a different corporate department they said that the senior management team are incompetent and are running the business into the ground. They now work for a direct competitor, so we’re both laughing at Warner Bros. Literally all the time.
Simply put if someone admits fault they'll scapegoat them. They'd rather risk sinking the ship than be thrown overboard.
WB are the living embodiment of the meme:
"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?"
🤣
Forget being out of touch with what people actually want at that point. *He is senile, and there's no way you're ever going to get through to him.*
@@The1NickSkylinebeyond on senile full on mental degradation even a senile person could see this isnt working
Not even Einstein could've defined this level of insanity.
@@wilcee238not funny at all
Its literally that principal Skinner meme.
WB CEO: Am I out of touch with things? No, it's the consumers who are
How many times we got to teach you this lesson old man!
Somehow gambling at a slot machine to get massive amounts of money is now viewed as an actual business strategy by large companies. Only a very few companies win big at putting their money into a 'live service' yet they're still licking their lips and showing shareholders pictures of the large pile of money won by another company, thinking it's a good idea to keep running the slots for that giant payoff instead of making a game providing the certainty of a smaller increase in profit.
The funniest part is the following quote said by the WB games CEO:
''Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live-service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis''
It's like he took all of the wrong lessons from these 2 games. they saw money in harry potter and instead of looking at what made that game successful, his mindset really is ''how do we make it even more profitable'', completely missing the point.
That's what happens when you have companies runs by useless MBAs
In the process, losing money.
@@Crow_Calypso Small correction, this is what happens when MBA's learn the wrong lessons from their education. They become really good at optimization but also really convinced that they don't actually need to know jack about whatever area of business they are optimizing in, because ultimately everything can be boiled down to costs and revenue generation. Kill all the stuff that is wasted on not generating big revenues, focus exclusively on stuff that leads to big revenue generation.
It's an executive who said it, not ceo
A simpler translation: "How do we exploit the big numbers of fans over time with maximum revenue and least amount of costs?"
I tell you what they will actually learn. They will learn to put even less effort into games, so any kind of revenue will be a win. They don't see the numbers and say "how do we increase the playerbase?". They say "How do we maximize profit from that exact same number?". They rather think that there are less DC fans and not people as a whole who disliked the game. They don't want to admit failure and mistakes. They don't see other other companies doing the exact same mistake and learn from it. They only see numbers and think how to use them the best way possible for maximum profit. Then move on to the next project and do the exact same thing, while completely ignoring the failure and death of a franchise they leave behind. Not learning what they did wrong and only seeing profit. If Hogwarts Legacy 2 will fail, they will again blame something completely unrelated and move on to the next big project to exploit it and it's fans as much as possible.
If there is one thing I have learned about executives in the last five years it is not that they double down on failure, or even triple down on failure; they quintuple down on failure.
A
AA
AAA
Quadruple A
Each A represents how much garbage a game will be.
This isn't 'live service' anymore. This is on 'life support'
Time to send a message…boycott these games. Make WB games lose millions of dollars until the lesson is learned.
It is the only way so they'll lose 💰 making them understand it ain't what we want.
They already lost a lot of money but they still don't learn anything
What does it matter? If we vote with our wallets they’ll lay off people
Enough people won’t do that though. I mean, a good amount of people still bought the Suicide Squad game. They might not be playing it anymore, but they still gave them money.
Exactly, and we can also blame David Zaslav for this!
One WB game: is *SUCCESSFUL* because it *ISN'T* live service
Another WB game: is *TERRIBLE* because it *IS* live service
Come on WB, we know you're smarter than that
You underestimate corporate greed
Tell that to their bastard CEO, David Zaslav.
Are they though?
Investors dont care
I think that's a little too much credit to give to them... All they see in money. You gotta speak in Money Terms to them.
Double down on stupidity = lose more money. It’s not a hard equation yet it seems like people at WB don’t understand it. God, I hope they don’t ruin Hogwarts Legacy 2.
it's bold to assume a triple A company would make a sequel to a successful single player game
I wouldn't hold my breath thinking WB hasn't had the plan in the works, considering they're so hellbent on live service games. $70 off the bat, $100 for some dumb 3-day early access with lackluster content with extra monetization for recolored costumes.
Lol they did do the 3 day early access for Legacy as well I know cuz I bought it 🥲 gotta watch them from now on these folks are insane
That's why their gonna make it a live service game in the first place. So that the fallout won't be as substantial as a full on game.
They will fuck it up. They don't see it as a single player game, they just see a game that was successful and will assume it will be equally successful if they turn it into a live service.
There's a reason that both Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 became so hugely popular too. For both of these games, the director's said that they were focused on trying to make a game that they themselves would want to play. It really isn't more difficult than that. If you have somebody who very much enjoys video games and is focused on making something the would like, then you can be certain that others will like it as well.
the very very soul of video games.
Well, usually anyway. [Insert picture of _YIIK_ here.] Still, even that terrible game at leasr had more passion than these most of these greedy, bland "live services".
These ceos look at video games as infinite money printing machines. If only they manipulate and con their customers, it will succeed so long as this industry is unregulated.
This is a symptom of an unregulated industry. Greed is like a cancer it will always go to the top. If left unchecked, it will leave ruins.
The reason why single player games aren't on the radar of the greedy executives is that type of game can only be used to predict the financials for one fiscal year. THE WORST thing that could happen in their eyes is the failure to meet the same profits next year. No exec wants to predict a drop in revenue so, they feel like live services can help bring in profits for years at a time and make their jobs easier.
There will be a massive shift in Game Development soon, NONE of this is sustainable.
I'd say it goes beyond that. The initial game takes a lot of money and time to make, while gamers are only willing to spend $70, for the most part, maybe as much as $100. Once launched, though, many of those same players will easily spend $20+ dollars a month for post-launch content. And that content takes far less money and time to make.
Of course, that has issues as well. Once the market matures, there is only so much pie. And if that pie is big, plenty of people want a piece of it. So the more people go after a piece of that pie, the more games will fail, the smaller the piece will be. So to get a piece of that pie, especially when players are already playing existing games, you need a better product than your competitors have, both on release and going forward. And that requires a lot of things to go right. Especially when the AAA studios want a big piece, so aim for wide-spread appeal, rather than making smaller games catered to a more niche audience. They swing for the fences.
Infinite growth and ever-increasing quarterly profits was a myth to begin with.
Meanwhile Nintendo keeps pulling in Big numbers with mostly single player gems.
@@terrylilianathey then use that money to crush legitimate emulators 😂
@@tehbeernerd my point still stands.
Warner bros and Ubisoft are fucking garbage
Don't forget sweet baby inc.😂
Hey at least they're not Embracer and EA
@MarvinParker-tg8fk Can't blame them for everything the gameplay for example.
blame david zaslav
The Division games are amazing ;but they're developed by Massive Entertainment and only published by Ubisoft.
Just checked and Suicide Squad has the same player count as Marvel Avengers, and it's not even listed Steam anymore! 😂😂😂
Should we put Warner Bros on Suicide Watch? This seems like blatantly suicidal behaviour
Nah. Put it on livestream so we can watch them fall on their sword.
It's so sad that games as an art form are losing quality over money, every time, every year more and more, good quality games sadly are becoming rare to find with each passing year.
How can it lose quality over money when it does not make money or deliver quality?
Just avoid the big corps, it's not that hard. Games as an art is still very much alive outside of these giant pieces of Corp crap
Not really
Simple, play indie and AA games. AAA games are a red flag while the Indie scene is Rising Up to take their place.
You'd see that if you only play AAA games. Aside from Spider-Man and God of War, I mainly play indie.
Translation: “We want to lose more money “
Let’s teach them a lesson guys!
Easy done. Doing nothing is what I do best.
They're the same willing to film whole movies and series, just to can them and mark them as a loss. That kind of sh1t won't stop them vacationing in Bahamas in a new yacht that year.
now that’s wht the game is called “suicide squad”
There is a theory called expectation treadmill, basically their stock price already reflected the expected growth of the company, hence they could perform well but the stock price might still tank if the growth is lower than expected. The thing is in each success, analysts and investors increase their growth expectation, initially it results in higher stick prices, but for stock prices continue to increase they need to grow even faster than investors” revised expectations. This can keep going until most profitable projects do not seem profitable enough anymore, and the companies start gambling in high risk all or nothing projects just to keep beating investors exorbitant growth expectations.
Shareholders are the dumbest people in existence, and “shareholder value” was derided as a harmful and stupid practice at the height of the Reagan/Thatcher era. But bad ideas never die
David Zaslav first cancels highly anticipated movie for Tax Write Off and now this. Yep WB is now a slowly sinking ship. Live Service, that are Paid does nothing but hurt devs, if it fails.
Nobody was highly anticipating that shit. Knock it off. If they thought it’d make money they’d release it. Blame the people that stole paychecks making a movie that has so little faith behind it that they’d rather throw it out.
@nrran6835 Have you not seen social media and RUclips talking about it? It has plenty of fans talking about it and pissed that WB now this afraid of trying anymore. I know not everyone was anticipating, but who knows. I'd rather not defend WB after their news of more Live Service games.
No one was talking about it until it was shelved. Thats it. No one gave a single fuck about it before then.@@jazzratoon
@@nrran6835 I still think it's sad WB rather support slop than creativity.
If you are talking about Batgirl, or whatever it was called, then you have a poor memory. No one was waiting with baited breath to see that garbage. It was constantly getting made fun of on RUclips and Twitter. If the people you follow on social media are crying about that movie getting cancelled then you need to seriously consider following better people.
Fun fact. Companies tend to do things like this to lower its value so other companies can buy them up and form bigger oligarchies
That’s actually the growing theory that David Zaslav is trying to do that with Warner Bros/Discovery film and TV properties.
I was thinking there must be something going on behind the scene here, no way they're THAT stupid, so I guess that makes much more sense.
Zaslav: "Joke's on you, I was PRETENDING to be an idiot because this merger was the worst mistake of my life snd I want someone else to clean up this mess!"
You can only do that so many times before there's no one left willing to buy you.
@@plipplop728Why not? It really doesn't take any degree of intelligence to be the CEO of a major company. The idea that you have to be smart and good at running a company to get into that position is the second biggest lie that's ever been sold about businesses. After the lie that big businesses have their customers' best interests at heart.
The disconnect is just insane I don't understand why they would double down on a bad product. I understand that they spent an ungodly amount of money on this game, but come on, man, just let it go. You can't fix something that down to its core is just bad.
They may be seeing the success of Helldivers 2 and want to replicate it
They see Fortnite , warzone and helldivers 2 have an orgasm thinking of all the money they can make
It has to do with keeping investors and test year sales out of the red. It’s easier to sell the idea of yearly income with slow growth over a huge sale spike 5-7 years apart with the possibility of not meeting goals. That why I tend to not trust many AAA studios with preorders. Too willing to shoot out a 1-2 year shit game, get initial sales before bad reviews drop,
And repeat.
That's what happens when people who never played a game of Pong in their lives are put in charge of beloved multigenerational franchises.
I think they use garbage like this as an easy way of tax write-off. These people are not delusional and stupid. If they know something, then it's how to generate money and play the system as smart as possible. At least this is what I think, because everything else simply doesn't make any sense.
I’d say whoever convinced them that Harley Quinn could pull in just as big of an audience as Batman should be fired, but it was probably a unanimous executive decision and you know they have zero accountability until the whole company is on fire.
It’s weird cause DC for years had treated Harley Quinn as a bigger pillar than Wonder Woman and yet the sales and pop culture zeitgeist says that’s not true. Wonder Woman is still the bigger name.
Probably the "industry specialists" that blackmailed their way into the dev team just to put in their "message"
Especially an uglified harley
WB losing money is very good news to me! Couldn't happen to a shiddier company.
*squints in the direction of EA and Blizz* I dunno about that…
disney
nintendo
All they had to do was make a batman beyond game
Being Live Service no thank you.
@@CAPCOM784 not live service
And once again, it proves, the wrong persons are in charge. And not only gaming companies too… Smdh
If it helps, everyone in the industry in general hates David Zaslav 😂
@@arctic_phoenix9936Stop it with the antiseminty comments (sarc - oy vey shut it down)
@@bobmcbob4399 Unironically I didn't even know the man was Jewish until ten seconds ago when I googled it. I just know many people in the entertainment industry blame his role as CEO of WBD for their overall decline in quality and bad decisions over the years. Writing off multiple films as tax write offs, even supposedly ones fully finished, the whole way HBO Max has handled a ton of their content due to not willing to pay for it. So they straight up delete a good portion of it out of existence. The way the DCU is a rushed mess (this one can't really blame Zaslav for IMO except the last like four films.... Which are all terrible so). Like these aren't antisemitic comments, the man has just straight up been a terrible CEO over the recent few years to a startling degree.
@@arctic_phoenix9936 That's the tip of the berg. Your United States is basically the United States of Israel. Hard fact to face up to. But so many of your top positions across all industries are captured by people who have dual nationality and are loyal to the same other nationality.
I think the disturbing truth of the matter is that a middling live-service game rakes in more money through whales than a very successful single-player game and that's why execs keep chasing it
They are angry that an offline game made money and are pissed that we aren't giving them money for their live service game that no one wants to play. Video game companies are truly run by idiots.
The problem with these Execs are they want 'consistency of money flowing'. They know Hogwarts Legacy was success but only a short time period, they want that money flowing all the time which is why they still trying to find that 'perfect' formula of live service game, which is a golden mine to them
I think Stephanie Sterling hit the nail on the head; the companies are sending out live service games to die because if one out of five live service games succeed, it'll make up for the failure of the other four. Basically victory by attrition; at least one has to be successful, right?
Of course, that's dumb. The market's getting oversaturated, and you can't keep brute forcing it forever.
Love this channel for its news and facts. Thank you for the response and research.
So, I know Yong is really unlikely to read this comment, but the execs continually pushing for a game to effectively be nothing but monetization are not some clueless idiots only chasing trends while behind the times. These are deliberate choices aimed at the same goal they literally always have been, from company towns for coal miners and factory workers, to locking the emergency exits at a shirtwaist factory, to ridiculous multi-decade cinematic universe plans, and so on. Specific to games, the progression has always been shareware to hook you into buying the full release (we STILL do this, it's called Early Access now, AND it's not always guaranteed to even work. At any stage.), to expansion packs, to DLC packs, to "time-savers", to premium currencies and lootboxes, to season passes, and so on, and so forth.
They work at companies that have to post ever-increasing profits. They are trying to keep the myth of eternal growth alive and the next way they want to do that is to make everything into either a subscription, paid, or otherwise monetized service to squeeze even more money from everyone. Corporations aren't simply about making money, they're about making ever increasing profits, even when it's not feasible, even when it's not even actually POSSIBLE because that's how the system works. Enough is never enough. They cannot ever be satisfied, they cannot ever stop making more because there is never enough.
You can call it "corruption of an art form" if you want, and I won't argue because I agree. I will also say that's how business is always done when the only thing business cares about is the ever-increasing line. They don't care that wizard game sold well compared to Superhero Live Service and they don't care that there are dozens of hundreds of competing titles or that it costs at least as much money to develop a live service game as any other kind of title; what they care about is you only buy wizard game once while Superhero Live Service has the potential to make, per person, more than millions of sold copies of wizard game. And they're willing to risk that *multiple times in a row* because when a live service game gets a solid base of players, it only stops making money for the company and shareholders when they shut it down.
In short: it's not idiocy or blindness. It's greed. It's always greed. The entertainment industry, especially gaming, is even more mired in corporate and individual greed than most others.
@TransientWitch Exactly! Part of the reason why everything goes so poorly nowadays is because people in positions of power (CEOs, execs, politicians, shareholders, etc.) are all living in a daydream. A daydream where the quantity of ressources available in the world is endless, even though it's clear the quantity of ressources is limited without care for the consequences... And thus, the world crumbles under our feet because of the short sightedness of these men...
@TransientWitch I couldn't have said it better myself!
I unironically hope they make more games like suicide squad. The more resources they put into these games, the faster the companies making them are shut down. Plus, it puts more attention on games like Hell Divers 2 who actually deserve the spot light on what a normal live service game should be. Edit: Grammar
Edit: GrammAr lol
@@TheBigBlueBugofJustice SH*T. Ya got me.
as someone not in the know, can you explain what makes hell divers 2 a great live service game?
@@MrMariosonicmanprimary example: HELLDIVERS 2 IS FUN
@@MrMariosonicmanHelldivers 2 is fun, has a reasonable price point, has very reasonable monetization, and you can acquire premium content just by playing the game.
4:10 IF Hogwarts Legacy goes Live Service I will not be getting it. At first I was on the fence to try it out but with that kind of narrow view and blatant just refusal to listen to the player base and have praised a single player campaign experience. 6:15 Exactly! There is a good connection to Harry Potter but that does wear off but there is a still a fair bit of fun to explore with the game outside of it's IP connection but it will need an actual real level up in all aspects to make a solid sequel. A live service will NOT accomplish that.
I feel incredibly conflicted about this matter, as I am actively participating in the perpetuation of this model--I play MK Onslaught all the time and have mostly integrated into that ecosysytem. I would wager I've already spent between $80-100 in micros in the six months since it hit full release, and dutifully do my dailies.
On the one hand, I am aware I am part of the problem in making WB think that this is the way to fully go; on the other hand, I genuinely enjoy the game, one of only two gacha games I've ever played and the only one I've had a good time with. So what am I to do? Do I damn the portion of Netherrealm Studios that works on Onslaught and pooh-pooh their work that I'm invested in (in multiple ways), or do I damn myself by continuing to feed the WB money-printing beast?
I feel for you. I used to think this way, too. I personally don't buy microtransactions, but I have purchased the dlc to every damn fromsoftware game out there. I'm buying shadow of the erdtree the second it releases. However, I think about it differently now. There have been so many good games that have come out that aren't part of the triple A nightmare. I used to think the future would be grim because of the seasonpass and microtransaction people but the reality is that those triple A studio games we love might die eventually but other more innovative companies can and will take over where they left off and the the cycle will probably just repeat. With games like lies of p, celeste, hollow knight, sekiro etc... I have high hopes for the future no matter how many people support micro-seasonpass type games.
Of course they double down on live service. Company's know they only need to succeed with one once, and they would have a money printing machine moving forward.
Less work, more reward.
Yes, but that's volatile. Like... Basically the definition of volatile business practice. Square Enix tries this shit too, which is why they released and closed like four separate live service games in the span of a year in 2022 and now they're suddenly struggling financially. The industry is full of companies that want to break into the money printing live service model, but incredibly scarce with examples of companies that have managed to do so. It doesn't take a business genius to realize what a terrible idea it is to shoot for that target.
PlayStation itself was trying to do it but decided it wasn't worth it, because if for some reasons they don't get the money back they are done(and their studios always made single player)ceo of WB either is delusional or is trying to do "something doesn't say in public)
This is just gambling. Its like they are addicts.
They all think they can get that Fortnite/GTA Online money.
Hate to say it but live service games are what keep most AAA publishers afloat. If they simply did AAA single-player games only, most of them would already would have went under a long time ago.
And the AAA space continues to crumble.
Gaming I think will be fine in a post AAA world. Anyone working for any big studio should be looking for escape plans yesterday as the recent layoffs I'm convinced are only the beginning, delaying the inevitable.
Thing is we've not seen anything good come out of ghe devs that've left their respective AAA studio. They're limited in busget and manpower and it will take even longer for them to produce a game in their vision than the typical AAA dev cycle.
I don't think the AAA industry will die, but it will get smaller as greedy execs tear it down with their immoral ideals.
@@paledrake Indies have come so far they have basically filled the AA space that the big publishers left behind. Yes a smaller studio will never make a massive graphically bleeding edge, motion captured to death level game, but is that a bad thing?
We know Spiderman 2 sold well but given how much money they spent on it, how profitable really was it? They spent way more money on making a game that only marginally looked better than the PS5 upgrade of Miles Morales. Then you have live service games which reached market saturation over a year ago and an entire graveyard of these games shut down because they are dull design by committee looter shooters.
And blaming greedy execs is a lame ass excuse, for 2 reasons.
1. Their behaviour has nothing to do with morality but of law. Execs of publicly traded companies are legally required to act first and foremost in the interests of shareholders. It's called fiduciary responsibility and it's law in just about every first world nation on the planet.
2. Consumers rewarded that behaviour by buying those crappy games to begin with and now thankfully consumers finally had enough and are punishing them by taking their money elsewhere. If someone bought these games they are part of the problem and have no moral high ground on the matter, say if someone bought Call of Duty games throughout the years, they have no moral high ground to criticise Bobby Kotick's actions, because that person rewarded Bobby's actions.
@@MdrnGmngScks Indie games are prospering, but at the same time those also take years upon years to make because they're made by very small teams and some just don't turn enough of a profit to keep the team/studio together/afloat. I'm more so talking about the developers we've seen leave AAA studios. A lot of them have made their own studios and as of yet they haven't even produced a trailer for their projects. We're in a weird transition phase where the future is unlcear and where devs don't really know what to do yet.
1. Yes and no. Some execs open up public trade or sell their studio to a publisher to the studio's detriment. Bungie for example is one of them. They finally earned their independence just to sell themselves to Sony. And while I do agree that shareholders is the wedge that halts the gears from turning I also think studios should try to buy back their shares when they become financially independent. Imo the stock market and shareholders is a cancer to the game's industry. It's like a kickstarter, but you become eternally indebted to the backers and need to please their monetary desires by law.
2. I agree and I'm happy that more people are starting to see reason. I've personally not financially endorsed something I disliked and if a game ever turned sour I'd just turn myself and my wallet away from it. There is no negotiating with these corporations, only through your wallet and attention.
"Maybe we should try taking a longer run-up!"
- Warner Bros after suffering from a concussion due to their attempt of running against a concrete wall head first
WB already not doing good financially. Wouldn't be surprised if they get purchased.
Warner Bros Games also hired the now-controversial Sweet Baby Inc to write bad storytelling, bad lore, and forcing bad DEI for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and others like Gotham Knights. And if Sweet Baby Inc don't get what they want, they force to "Terrify them" like bullying the company, like they admitted on a GDC 2019 interview.
That's why Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League accelerated to its downfall.
No they did not. They consulted them
LOL no. You can try tto manufacture controversy all you like, but that's got nothing to do with why the game failed. But keep trying with the culture war BS.
@@thebigvladgood choice my friend ☕️🗿
They will drive themselves out of business chasing after that magical fornite money. Absolute idiots.
I read somewhere that they deleted steam reviews, idk if that’s true or not
The ceo doesn't play these games. They don't understand why their kids/grandkids/nieces and nephews enjoy fortnight, just that they do.
From the second quote, it's more important to live and work in a game than it is to play.
As Stephanie Sterling said... They don't need to make a "good" live service. They just need to make as many cheap ones as they need until one of them sticks, then they'll recover all losses and gain way more, and even the ones that fail might cover the costs just in microtransactions alone.
They are only saying that because WB needs the money after canceling so many projects. What they don't seem to understand is customers don't like being abused, even with shittier live-services.
Its simply a money grab. If they can get a player to spend $150 over the lifetime of a game its worth so much more to them than a 1 time purchase of $50 to $70. Not to mention those who will spend way more that $150 through microtransactions. The more they get people to spend in 1 game the less cost they have in game development and needing to sell more copies which means saving money on marketing.
On Paper, a Live Service title seems to be fairly interesting if done right; an ever-evolving world that players can influence and "Experience" as if they were there, sort of like Elite Dangerous. Instead we have an excuse for studios to push sub-par products with the promise of "It'll get better as the seasons come out"
I weep for the future of gaming if we stay on this trend.
As someone that's been in the game industry I'm blown away with how many design changes (big ones) can happen so close to release dates. Not to mention the constantly occurring changes that happen every couple months and just big ones that come out of nowhere because the IP holder changed their mind about the games direction.
If they could get a solid design planned out before dozens or hundreds of artists and engineers create high quality stuff it would save so much time and money. The on the whim changes and then anger that follows because of bugs created by trying to revise programs to fit the new idea/design happens too regularly.
This executive are so obliviosu that I even wonder how they got so much control, knowing how stupid they are. Seriously. They never learn, do they?
I'm paraphrasing Stephanie Sterling, but they've always had it right. "The executives and shareholders at these giant corporations don't want a lot of money. They don't want all of your money. They want all of the money." As long as we live under our current economic structure, the profit motive will always come before the art (in this case video games). Executives are bound by law to their shareholders to try to give them ever increasing yearly profits, which leads to the executive types making decisions that the creative and talented artists should be making. Naturally this degrades the quality and removes the integrity of the finished products the big publishers release. These massive corporations regularly lay off hundreds to thousands of employees at a time, but its not because they are bad employees. That money you save after laying off all those people looks good on a quarterly earnings report. Whole studios often get shuddered by Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc. because they have bought them and made some calculation that it's better for them if these whole studios disappear. The only thing that can stop these maniacs are heavy regulations, and regulations are created by lawmakers. Depending on who you vote for, that lawmaker may be sympathetic to the giant publishers and actively work against your interests. Get involved in politics, because it is the only thing that can change this situation we live in. Some people dont like thinking about or discussing politics, but despite how they feel about it, the laws still affect them. The least you can do is vote for a candidate who will attempt to enact legislation that regulates these companies. The more of them there are, the more likely they are to succeed and create real change.
How many times are they going to try to buy this bridge?
Going to cover the Sweet Baby stuff?
Well 1. Live Service isn't the issue, BAD live service is (Look at Hell Divers 2, PoE, FF14)
2. WB is really fucking dumb for this, as the Arkham Trilogy/Shadow of Mordor (not Shadow of War)/Hogwarts Legacy/Injustice 1+2/Anything Lego suggests that good games can sell well, shit games do not
Ill double down on not buying their live service game
I'm probably pretty lucky that I'm not obsessed with super heroes... I was sort of looking forward to Monolith's Wonder Woman, but only because of the Nemesis system from Shadow of War/Mordor, which WB has patented... From the look of things they're probably asking Monolith if they can adapt the engine to push live service. Shadow of War does have some live service features that were sort of cool; you can invade other players' forts or avenge their deaths and get a feeling of what challenge they went through. And then there were the fighting pits, which could have been kind of cool if they weren't so heavy on RNG. I seem to remember that there were some microtransactions at some point, but I've been playing it recently and haven't noticed anything of the sort.
How many years we got til companies start wanting monthly fees to continue playing our games we pay full price for? A 'renewal' fee or start charging for game patches on broken out of the gate games?
Will ther be a fix for the mafia 3 gamesave bug?
So do you have anything to say about Sweet Baby Inc?
Nope, because he's as crooked as Angry Joe.
...The hell are you talking about?@@bobmcbob4399
I’m curious as to what that did to their stock prices. Companies will make insane and asinine decisions to please the investors and drive up the stock price which is mostly how these execs are paid.
So for example, they will announce a game/plan that makes “financial sense” to investors driving up the stock price, and when that flops, stock prices goes down, they buy it up and repeat.
Of course this is done at our expense.
Just understand every choice a corporation make is usually done with the investors in mind and not the actual consumers making their profits.
That’s a leadership problem at its core.
Why do games have a time limit to release ?
Your Google ads seem to think you're an alcoholic lol. Hope you are doing well and staying healthy! ✌️
I spend all day around people and when i come home to relax, i dont then want to play my game with other people. I just want to play a single plaayer fun game. Is that so hard to ask of these people?
Truly baffling !! Executives so often are out of touch! What they say goes and then everyone below them suffers. Job loss pay cuts etc
It is hard to process how people can miss the message so badly
Holy hell Gaming Executives are broken records at this point.
"Live service [skip] live service [skip] live service [skip] live service [skip]" and they never actually make a good game. Just more [skip] live service [skip] live service [skip] live service!
3:54 Here's the answer to that question: make it a good game that is fuelled by passion from top to bottom of the development studio. Case in point, even a month after release, BG 3 still had more players than on launch day. I've been playing it since early access and I still do. It has had some significant patches but they still haven't even released DLC for it. Live service model therefore is not necessary for long-term engagement. In fact, I find that it often ends up hampering it due to the fact that live service games tend to be fuelled by monetisation to a much greater degree than passion.
Mortal Kombat has had a mobile app for years (and hasn't deleted my characters twice like the 1st Injustice app did). Wonder if that exec even realizes.
That "SIGH" at 4:55, real af, LMAOOOOOO.
The saddest part is the telant that's been lost, if not from forced ill-concived games like SS:KTJL, then from (mis-managed) massive layoffs
Beloved companies today aren't the same companies they were 4 or 5 years ago, much less a decade ago
You guys remember what Warner did to the DCEU?
Of course this dumb ass execs that needed to spend millions of dollars on cinema flops trying to copy Marvel, are gonna be doing basically the same on gaming.
Executives are greedy AF but the true morons are the players that spend so much money of live services.
Ubisoft sees that crappy live services require a tenth of the effort and pull higher profits.
Is there any western live service game and successful game that ins’t based somehow on single player game. Doesn’t all first time entries created as live service games always fail?
Boy I wonder what that revenue stream for SS:KTJL looks like right about now..
I see the logic here. Its similar logic like a hobbyists game dav and content creator like myself uses to not turn those into careers. Those spaces are really volatile.
If u make a banger and get rewarded, but then your next game flops all of a sudden you cant eat meat next month.
These ceos are tasked with constantly growing their profits, so its really risky to make big single player games cause if you make a record breaker then ur next big game flops then ur profit margins might shrink a ton, so they want a more "sustainavle income source"
This is similar to how im a trained mechanical engineer as opposed to am indie game dev.
Congrats on Inside out 2 Yong! You absolutely work hard and deserve it. I hope you continue to experience success in following your dreams and passions!
Arent you gonna cover the yuzu and nintendo thing?
How I hate how executives seem terrified to put an definitive ending to a game, it has to stretch on for eternity like a gacha game.
What is so wrong with reaching an ending? You can smile as the credits roll and say "I did it, this was the entire experience and I liked it." rather than dragging it on and on until you get sick of it.
Heck if you really like a game so much then you'll probably start over and play it again if it's suitable for it, not every game type is, but that's okay.
Also the mobile game market could have been innovative, but it's a mire of Skinner box, FOMO, macrotransaction bullshit. You don't as much play as you are being drip-fed content as you sink deeper and deeper into an inability to let go since you've already put money into the game.
Sad truth is also that the mobile market is so much bigger than console and PC united :/
Reward companies that do right by buying their products, sharing their products, or just talking about their products. Hogwarts Legacy, Baldur's Gate 3, Stellar Blade, these are the franchises we need to support. Eventually we will teach them that good game = customers ("players")
If I remember correctly, I thought WB boosted about Hogwarts being their all time greatest seller, now they have decided to take a U turn.
As Yong says it doesn't make any sense, but me personally when you ask that question to yourself, I then answer with, maybe it's not meant to make sense at all, again why? If money is not what they want, is it the ideology they are trying to push instead?
Didnt we all tell them that we just dont want this game? I remember that first gameplay presentation ... why did they go through with it?
I think a part of the issue is companies like this ( and alot of them unfortunately.. ) want recurring profit for their games and not one time purchases. The business model of one time purchase games for these larger publicly traded companies just doesnt move the needle for them anymore. Does the game make a profit or cover its costs to make and market..perhaps..but even if it does and it makes profit..the overall revenue stops after that release window in any large margin. So a success like harry potter is more of a w/e to them but only a shining light of hey! people wanna play this IP so we can turn this into a recurring revenue as well now...not lets make another one off..cuz they dont care about that anymore.
I think thats why you dont see as many titles be made like that anymore by companies because they all want recurring revenue streams for their ips to print money...not just make profit off a SP game thats only a small short term boost and have to make another. Its just not the mindset of these companies anymore i feel seeing that as a good thing but only looking at the dollar signs for their IP's and not what do gamers want but how do we print more money without having to just release tons of one off titles ( regardless of weither their profitable or not ).
Sad I just read a article saying hogwarts legacy 2 will be live service on unreal engine 5. I don't touch live service due to I lose interest when there is to much and im over stimulated by the choices and when there is barely any effort and its falling apart because of early release corporate corruption.
Not an accountant, but do studios like WB get to write-off business losses from games that fail big?
Is this the current way of shuffling money around?
LMAO that title! I never seen this guy just spit straight out like that before 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Double down? Isn’t it more like quadruple or more at this point?
Plus side is I’m getting to go through my backlog of games I haven’t gotten to play yet because of the lack of good newer games!
I’m pretty sure they tried the HP mobile a few times and not one worked out well… I think my child character is still being strangled to this day from the devil snare 😂