Has "Vote with your Wallet" Ever Truly Worked?

[Magick]

It depends on if the people supplying the money / at the top are the reason for the issues. If yes, then it won't work. If no, it may work by causing the people with the money/leadership to address the problem.

e.g., Lords of the Fallen studio CEO had no idea the game even had "body type" instead of sex, he stated there were developers keeping such decisions from ever reaching him and didn't know until fans told him.

I do believe it, but it's not much of an excuse though is it. You'd think the CEO would be properly endorsing their own product by giving it a go, at least at some point during the multi year development cycle or upon release.
This is a good reason for them to get more involved. Also, if any subversive **** like that is found, they should be mandating an update to put it right.

I can believe it. Leadership aren't always managerial and like to give department heads leeway.

That's no excuse tho. Day to day delegation is fine, but they should be checking in now and then, and certainly before release. At the end of the day they're the head honcho and responsible, the buck stops with them.
If I was CEO of a chocolate bar company I'd be tasting that **** bar before a new product came out. I'd also watch a movie if I was CEO of a movie studio. Is it really too much to ask for the game studio CEO to start the **** thing up and spend 5 minutes having a look, at least? I don't think anyone expects them to do a 100% run or something.

"Soz I didn't know" is not acceptable. Either own it, or say **** it was a mistake, and get it reverted ASAP. If modders can do it, there's nothing stopping a game studio from doing so. (Unless they already have, in which case fair enough).

[Tangerine]

It works for me. I have a lot more in my wallet than I would otherwise.

[J1M]

Games need to scale down and make better, more cohesive experiences. They should charge less for less but better quality and put out more games. Don't achievements show most gamers don't even finish games? I think this speaks volumes of the length getting ridiculous (inflated for the sole purpose of excusing the price tag).

Even **** low production value games want to charge loads now. I vote with my wallet by starving them.

The AA game and the Japanese visual novel industries died and were supplanted by live service games because prices were not high enough for the size of the market. Contrary to how the games looked - even the "cheap" 2D VNs - they cost a lot of money to produce, and you need a comfortably large profit margin so that your company doesn't go under after one or two bombs.

I'd argue that it was probably an issue of oversaturating the market. The total amount spent on those visual novels is probably plenty to fund a couple a year. Additionally, with AI art and voice acting the cost of making them is now drastically reduced.

[Norfleet]

I suppose in a way it "works" as in killing the studio

I voted for this!

[Vaako]

Plenty of AAA games underperform so they will eventually stop making them or go broke. Plenty of indie games are outperforming AAA games with a fraction fo the budget. But it will take a lot more time especially the badly informed console players still keep buying way too much ****.

[J1M]

Imagine if things worked the way you wished they would. A game sells poorly and extensive research is commissioned to be presented to the most important decision makers at a company.

The person that gathered the data about what players thought was lacking and is presenting a narrative with it to the CEO/marketing/game directors is not someone who owns every Spiderman comic. It is a middle-aged woman.

[Vergil]

In my ideal world the person gathering the data would be a closeted homosexual chud

[Roguey]

The last course corrections I recall are Resident Evil 6 leading to 7 and 8 and Hitman Absolution leading to the World of Asassination. Both of the duds released in 2012.

[Vergil]

The last course corrections I recall are Resident Evil 6 leading to 7 and 8 and Hitman Absolution leading to the World of Asassination. Both of the duds released in 2012.

7 is worse than 6 and has arguably ruined the franchise forever.
Hitman is a good example tho

[Stack of Turtles]

In my ideal world the person gathering the data would be a closeted homosexual chud

It's kind of you to reserve a job specifically for @Maledict.

[rusty_shackleford]

AAA games are barely even made anymore. There's what, 1-2 a year now or something? Imagine if hollywood releases 1-2 big budget movies a year.
I don't know why they still get brought up so much

[Val the Moofia Boss]

AAA games are barely even made anymore. There's what, 1-2 a year now or something? Imagine if hollywood releases 1-2 big budget movies a year.
I don't know why they still get brought up so much

AAA games that released within the last three years: Horizon Forbidden West, Honkai Star Rail, Elden Ring, Forspoken, Final Fantasy XVI, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, Nu Spiderman 2, Yakuza 8 Infinite Wealth, FF7 Rebirth, Wuthering Waves, Zenless Zone Zero, Black Myth Wukong, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Doom the Dark Ages, Death Stranding 2, Wuchang Fallen Feathers, Ghosts of Yotei, Where Winds Meet, Arknights Endfield.

That's at least 21 games with huge dev teams.

[rusty_shackleford]

AAA games that released within the last three years: Horizon Forbidden West

This released 4 years ago today.

I will agree that 2023 had far more games released than usual, but this was due to the coofdemic delaying a bunch of games during the coofdemic to when it ended.

[edit]
also, I refuse to call f2p gachaslop AAA

[Val the Moofia Boss]

20 games

[DemoGraph]

I suppose in a way it "works" as in killing the studio but has there ever been an example of a studio starting down the wrong path and after fan backlash they do a 180 instead of doubling down or just dying outright?

Works for presidential elections, though. See Clinton's republican-democratic flip.

I think it works for studios as well as for politics, but the process is very inertial. The larger the company, the more powerful is managerial bureaucracy and the larger the corporate tolerance for failure. WoW rots for 10-15 years already.

In my ideal world the person gathering the data would be a closeted homosexual chud

Are you looking for job?

[rusty_shackleford]

20 games

Drop the pro-Asian bias that isn't afforded to western companies:
wukong/wuchang aren't AAA(Outer Worlds 2 cost more to develop and had more people working on it than either of those games), mobile gachaslop also isn't AAA(regardless of how much money is spent on it, unless you also consider Clash of Clans and Raid: Shadow Legends to be AAA?)

horizon forbidden west, elden ring, and forspoken are all outside the 3 year window

That's 11 games in 3 years. So, 3-4 titles a year on average, 2024 having 2 and 2023/2025 having higher.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

mobile gachaslop also isn't AAA

What does crossplatform have anything to do with it? If we go by headcount, if the 500 devs working on HSR and WuWa isn't AAA, then KCD2 and Elden Ring to name 2 aren't either.

[rusty_shackleford]

mobile gachaslop also isn't AAA

What does crossplatform have anything to do with it? If we go by headcount, if the 500 devs working on HSR and WuWa isn't AAA, then KCD2 and Elden Ring to name 2 aren't either.

I dismiss those as AAA for the same reason you dismiss EA Sports FC 25

[rusty_shackleford]

If anything, the definition of AAA has become too diluted. Unless you're pushing boundaries with your production values/budget it's just a game created by people with poor budgeting skills and lots of useless employees. The last AAA game is probably Cyberpunk 2077.

[rusty_shackleford]

AAA.webp

[mercerxiv]

IMO "voting is your wallet" at this point is more along the line of "beatings will continue until the games improve". The cope/hope there is that if we keep sending studios that make **** games to the guillotines, eventually there will be enough fear in the funding part of the industry that they will simply not fund anything resembling the games that tanked those studios. I wouldn't be opposed to instilling fear into the developers as well, so that they are afraid of as much as mentioning body type A/B or any other of this ****, but I don't think there's a practical way of achieving that. And no, landing into a fed honeypot for doing something ******** like sending threats is not a practical approach.

[rusty_shackleford]

I still @Val the Moofia Boss even if he is a turboweeb that plays lots of gachaslop

[Eyestabber]

Gaming is filled with examples of products improving based upon customer feedback. Well, "improving" might be a strong word, let's say "changing". I would go as far as to say that gaming has a much more discerning audience than say niggerball where ******* keep supporting corporations that obviously hate them, while in the gaming sphere titans like Concord and Marathon have failed spectacularly. The existence of (((certain people))) with infinite money to burn for the sake of an agenda that has nothing to do with gaming is not the gamer's fault and is unlikely to be solved by not buying vidya. Also, "voting with your wallet" isn't as clear cut as one might think. Take Syntetik as an example. People loved the game, voted with their wallets and turned it into an indie success story, a real david v goliath. Then the guy who made the game was like "sweet, let's release a sequel that completely uproots the game's formula!" and again, people voted with their wallets sending S2 into poverty. Communication between players and developers is multi-layered and not a binary system of money = good, no money = bad.

[Norfleet]

mobile gachaslop also isn't AAA

What does crossplatform have anything to do with it? If we go by headcount, if the 500 devs working on HSR and WuWa isn't AAA

They're not AAA for the same reason America's Army didn't count as AAA: State-sponsored propaganda and espionage does not count as a genuine commercial product. Those "games" are not actually intended as games, but rather, hooks to get Chinese spyware installed on your computer to further Chinese state cyberwarfare.

[Maledict]

In my ideal world the person gathering the data would be a closeted homosexual chud

It's kind of you to reserve a job specifically for @Maledict.

I'm sadly employed. I will inform them there is a translesbian transwoman of transcolour available, so you may apply, @Stack of Turtles.

Maybe they'll be even open to hiring a biological female and give the offer to @Vergil xerself.

[J1M]

I assumed the way people were counting AAA was hyperbole.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
Diablo IV
World of Warcraft: The War Within
World of Warcraft: Midnight
Madden NFL 24
Madden NFL 25
Madden NFL 26
EA Sports College Football 24
EA Sports College Football 25
EA Sports College Football 26
NHL 24
NHL 25
NHL 26
EA Sports FC 24
EA Sports FC 25
EA Sports FC 26
EA Sports UFC 5
F1 24
F1 25
Battlefield 6
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Immortals of Aveum

That's just from Activision and EA.

Unless people are now using AAA as shorthand for "good game" instead of "$100m budget"?

[rusty_shackleford]

I assumed the way people were counting AAA was hyperbole.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
Diablo IV
World of Warcraft: The War Within
World of Warcraft: Midnight
Madden NFL 24
Madden NFL 25
Madden NFL 26
EA Sports College Football 24
EA Sports College Football 25
EA Sports College Football 26
NHL 24
NHL 25
NHL 26
EA Sports FC 24
EA Sports FC 25
EA Sports FC 26
EA Sports UFC 5
F1 24
F1 25
Battlefield 6
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Immortals of Aveum

That's just from Activision and EA.

Wow, that's one big pile of ****

[rusty_shackleford]

instead of "$100m budget"?

This figure is too low.

Don't think people quite appreciate the budgets of games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield (lol)

[Norfleet]

Don't think people quite appreciate the budgets of games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield (lol)

And let's not forget Concord, Concord II, and soon Concord III and IV.

[J1M]

instead of "$100m budget"?

This figure is too low.

Don't think people quite appreciate the budgets of games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield (lol)

I'm willing to introduce the AAAA category for games that have a budget of $1b.