Re: It's not just you... developers hate MTX too

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 07:23:42 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

On 8/20/2024 4:16 AM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

 
Of course developers don't like them.  MTX and related monetization
tricks are what happens when marketing douchebags and bean counters
are allowed to make decisions about product direction.  And in any
industry, allowing such has never done anything but result in an
inferior product.
 
I guess the only real news is that historically gamers have a history
of referring to "the developers" of a game in a way that includes the
marketing douchebags and bean counters into the same category, as if
everyone in the company has common interests.
 

By "developers" we mean the company developing the game.

Then it becomes impossible to categorize their perspective in a single
bucket.  Different roles within an organization bring many different
perspectives.

I just call them game companies or vendors, usually.  Development is
one of many roles within.

Perhaps the real enemy is bonuses and stock options as incentives for
the development team.  A lot of these endeavors have creative
directors who have financial incentive to increase the games sales.
This puts pressure on them to cave into the money grabs, if not even
focus on sales numbers as a goal rather than focusing on how enjoyable
the game is.
 
Actual software developers also usually have stock option incentives,
but either their options package isn't attractive enough in terms of
earning potential to really make a difference, or (more commonly) it's
not the developer's first rodeo, and he's already savvy enough to know
that options are a scam.
 
Flat salaries are probably the only solution, but don't count on them
ever happening.

>
This is not limited to software, it is the way almost ALL companies are.

That's why I opened with "And in any industry, allowing such has never
done anything but result in an inferior product."

 Flat salaries aren't going to help, you need to get rid of
shareholders with their demands for "money NOW!" and business schools
teaching "the next quarterly report is the only thing that matters!"

Agree about shareholders but that's getting into a bigger discussion
about a bigger problem that's related only in that it's about money
(but so are many of life's problems not just corporate ones),
inevitable long-term results of capitalism, yada yada.  So I was
trying to keep it semi-focused on the ideas around what the employees
who are actually creating the product (not every employee in the
company -- at least for the scope of my post) think about monetization
schemes.

Of course, folks who chose finance/accounting as a career are going to
want to see impressive bottom lines and will care more about that than
the actual product development team.  Marketing wants to be able to
brag about the measurable results of their campaign ideas .. again
measured in profits.

But what about product development?  Everyone from testers to
developers to leads to managers and directors and c-levels.  If their
salaries were not incentivized around profit, they would have only
incentive to create a product they would be proud of (not just be
proud of the sales of).