Re: Kingdom Come Deliverance II Wins Big

On Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:07:53 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

The sad thing is: they're not that out of touch. Live-service games
rake in billions of dollars and are immensely popular amongst hoi
polloi. They aren't loved by Real Gamers (tm) but we are a
surprisingly small percentage of people who buy those sort of games.
It's almost guaranteed money, and the much safer bet. In theory, at
least.
>

Case in point:

Ubisoft CEO Guillemot says that the compay plans to focus on
open-world live-service games year after year.* This despite the fact
that the company has become jokingly synonymous with that sort of
game; it's their trademark style. Increasingly, this games are
receiving lower and lower reviews with each iteration but they're
sticking to their guns. Why? Because they make money. More
importantly, these sort of games /reliably/ make money.

Yes, a "Baldurs Gate 3" style game could rake in a lot more revenue
than a "Far Cry 17"... but it's really hard to make a game as good as
that, and just happens to resonate with the current gamer zeitgeist.
It's a much riskier choice than the shovelware Ubisoft currently craps
out. And companies hate risk... and Ubisoft especially so, since its
Guillemot-dominated C-levels are currently under threat by those
hoping to buy the family out. A threat that can easily be mitigated if
you bring in lots of easy revenue.

More, some companies -- with Ubisoft and Bethesda being the most
obvious examples-- have am entire process for how they develop and
sell their games. It's why their games often look so much the same;
it's not just the re-use of their engines, but the entire development
process --from the pre-dev visualizing, to how the assets are built,
to the back-n-forth between programming and game-dev-- is a tested,
almost assembly-line methodology. It's not fixed in stone, but changes
are costly and... well, why bother if people are going to buy the end
product anyway?






* it says so here!
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-ceo-says-the-plan-is-to-focus-on-open-world-and-live-service-games-year-after-year/