Is profit-motive capitalism hurting the gaming industry?

What I see as the highest priority in gamedev communities is the idea that the developer themselves & their income comes first & foremost. That they increase their revenue & sales, even if that means hurting the industry, manipulating consumers, or doing something less-than-optimal.

This community is much better: mostly focused on hobbyist gamedev, with profit not being the major focus. Many wonderful developers exist who just want to make fun games, no doubt.

But for the last decade, we've seen some bad stuff rise up. Pay2Win cash shops, obsession over whales in mobile, psychology exploiting addiction, children & young adults spending $100's of dollars on a game before realizing they shouldn't have, followed by draconian refund policies, not fulfilling promises to your userbase, unfulfilled kickstarters: Developers seem to put many things first before their consumers, their morals, and their industry. Indies, AAA, they all seem to be this way. I really don't notice much of a difference. You have your good guys, your bad guys, your "Sorry, we didn't expect to fail. We had no choice." types, but most seem to fall in the grey area of just trying to make it by & being willing to skirt around ethics in order to do so.

But at what cost?

I often feel like my ideals don't just make me a loner, but actively work to make me unpopular among other developers in many communities. Not so much here, where everyone seems very nice & mature. Ideals like:

• Consumers should be prioritized, before profits. There is nothing entertaining about frustrating other human beings who pay for your product.
• Gameplay quality should be prioritized, before profits.
• Gameplay issues, flaws, & balance problems should be of the highest priority in all video games after release. Letting these things exist, despite enormous problems & upset consumers, is unacceptable behavior.
• When a company refuses to fix their problems, bugs, or balance issues, they should be called out for it.
• When a company lies to consumers, helps scam them, or is unethical - they should be called out for it.
• The overall health of the game industry should be a high priority, as it is the responsibility of game developers to insure their industry remains healthy. This means putting the health of the industry over profits.
• Profits should only be important in that they ensure healthy growth & sustenance of the developers (and those connected to them) who create the games.

Because when it comes down to what you think about this or that, you can't follow these ideals AND also praise companies which betray them. In reality, these ideals can even cause you to fail as a business. In a heavily profit-motive capitalism based society, it can be hard to do the right thing. It can often put you at odds with people who support companies who knowingly participate in unethical practices. When those companies are popular, that can mean being disliked by a lot of people just for sticking up for what you believe in.

In other communities outside of Unity, you can find a lot of developers who actually WANT things like Pay2Win & addiction exploitation, etc. And to even have these ideals is to become enemies of those developers. To become "radical" to normal people. It can suck.

Yet I have not found any community with like-minded idealists. They seem to be in the minority. Most seem extremely "western", i.e. big supporters of profit-motive capitalism by default. By their own nature/culture. Although itch.io seems to be on the rise with their very progressive Open Revenue Sharing model. That gives me some hope.

And I won't pretend I am some Saint, as if I would not consider selling out all of these ideals when presented with the opportunity to significantly grow & expand a game business through profit, creating new jobs for the wonderful artists & engineers who want nothing more than to have a solid paycheck & a job that treats them with respect. To be able to create quality games for consumers is something I'd love to do, and that takes money. But I'd like to think that one day, we could all achieve a healthier industry. Even if we don't maximize profits. To make the industry more "By gamers, for gamers." and less "corporate". Higher quality games. I am a gamer, afterall.

However, I do contemplate if it is all worthwhile. Why not just sell out & say "F*** the industry! I am in it for myself!" when so many don't share these ideals? Would it not be more effective to work in the profit-motive reality in order to become successful enough to then help create a private community based on some ethics-motive? To use that wealth to help fund like-minded idealists so they can achieve their dream, as if some kind self-contained privately run socialism, insulated from the profit-motive world?

But any real change doesn't seem possible when companies & indies are too busy focusing on that profit-motive. And hell, we may not even have a world to entertain as profit-motive capitalism does little to stop things like climate change. The US economy, according to some experts, may collapse anytime now, even harder than in 2007, due to big bank shenanigans. Who knows how that will effect the industry. So does this even matter if major changes to our world might occur in the near future?

Just some thoughts as I contemplate ethics & the future of our industry & our world.

 

Food for thought:

1. Analyze another industry that also exploded in popularity, communities, and financial benefits in a short period of time. What's the state of that industry now? Is that industry hurting because of perceived negative practices? What groups are trying to fix the problems?

2.

Seems like a defeatist attitude is the bigger obstacle in making a change. Additionally, does the entire industry have to change and shift away from trying to make money? Seems like there are a ton of platforms, gatherings, and communities that support both quite well.

3.

You lost me here, because I don't view financial goals as being negative. That kind of statement is on par with something like "Hobbyist and indie games are garbage because they don't have a budget or ambition to make money." Both sound ludicrous to me.

4. This next point has no intention being inflammatory, but I'm probably oversimplifying things. If the tactics you described as negative are bad for the customers, why do the customers continue to support them? The developers are not giving themselves money for the features and mechanics. The gamers are. If the gamers stop paying, developers stop making money and change tactics.

The following is just my opinion based on my limited experiences, so feel free to ignore completely:

At this current time, I'm not onboard with this as a blanket statement. First, I've known plenty of talented developers who made solid contributions to a game project, but never really play games in their spare time. Second, I've never (EVER) had a debate or disagreement with a developer that resulted in me being told to "go drink bleach" or "kys". Number of times I've been told that by gamers, in just the past week? About 20 or 30 instances.

 

In the case of many games which exploit people's poor impulse control & addictive behavior, it should be self-explanatory.

Just ask yourself, "If exploiting an addictive gambler into selling his house & making his family homeless in the process is bad for him, why does he continue to do it?"

In that answer you will find a lot of explained behavior & the result of years of psychological research in marketing in entertainment.

You also can simply ask

"Why do people smoke, if it's bad for them?"
"Why do people eat so much sugar, if it's bad for them?"
"Why don't the U.S. citizens just overthrow their corrupt government & get money out of politics?"

There are many questions you could ask, which give different answers. All of which explain why people continue to support things which end up hurting them or their society.

IMO, and I mean no offense, but this is not how our current world works. Far from it.

For whatever reason, gamers are notorious for throwing infinite money at developers even in the face of being screwed at every opportunity.

What happens in reality is that gamers pay for games that are available. They would rather have something better, but I believe you can sum a bit of that up in "Beggars Can't be Choosers." You can also argue that if you don't support a game like some indie title, then you will never get what you actually want, because you discourage change by not paying.

I'm sure there are more reasons to explain this phenomenon among gamers. For example, I myself am highly dissatisfied with plenty of games I buy & play. But what else can I do? The other option is to not play any games, ever. The games I want developers to make won't get made, unless I make them. That's why I am a gamedev. I'm too niche. I don't want DRM to exist, but if I want to play some of the games I'm most excited about, I have to buy them despite their awful DRM. Which would I rather have? An indie fail & not make more games I like, or boycott DRM fully? The world is not so black/white.

 

I guess I agree. I live in one room in official poverty, but at my day job (teaching game dev, writing) I get to enthuse about subjects that can make the world better and more beautiful, and I have time to work on advancing the state of the art that I love. I'm currently willing to exchange one set of privileges (wealth, comfort, security, status) for another (self-development, contribution to a community, aesthetic growth, and independence). It's been a difficult choice, and the sacrifices are huge (How can I support friends or a family without money? What about good causes? What if my health fails? What about traveling? Recreation? Oh God...).

 

This is a great conversation. One I could spend all day on, both due to the content and the level-headed parties involved. However, I realize this is not directly related to Unity and probably should be better discussed in another forum or even private messages. I'm down for continuing the discussion in either avenues, but I don't want to cause a headache for the moderators.

 

I wouldn't say that it's hurting it. After all, profit-motive capitalism is what allowed it to balloon to it's current size and influence as quickly as it did. There have definitely been some positive returns from all of that.

I WOULD say that profit-motive capitalism is limiting the current game industry, and that a dearth of non-profit options is preventing game design and development from blossoming in new directions. There are numerous different kinds of game design concepts that can't exist properly as commercial projects. Those types of designs could benefit game development overall, profit and non-profit alike. But no one is willing to develop them because there is no potential profit in them.

We need more patreon-styled investment solutions, where talented or motivated creators can get the funding they need to pursue such designs while also being able to pay off their living expenses.

 

The problem is that society always create a certain percentage of people going for power grab, profit is a way to power grab. That's a simple truth, if you seek power you will find it. So they will find loophole and model that will set precedent. Power get great benefit to people who get it, so it became a new normal to all people which it influence. Enter the mediocre. Mediocrity isn't necessarily negative, those are people who just accept the statuquo, whether they like or not, they just go with the flow, so once power grabber have establish a practice, they go with it because that's just the way the world go now, they can be good people, they just don't act. Even when power grabber are out of the system, mediocre are who maintain it, they resist to change. The twist is that power grabber is not necessarily negative, people can try to seize power and influence for the benefice of all, problem is to set a precedent that clearly show a sustainable system that is greater to a selfish power grab, then mediocre will just follow.

 

Kickstarter exists for this.

If your idea is original and different enough, it will get funded.

 

I doubt it's so much because of you having those ideals but rather because you seem to come across as very judgemental.

So lets say a company releases a game and it flops hugely. Lets say the company can choose to either quickly move on to the next project, or go bankrupt.
Since according to you, continued support should be the highest priority in all cases, you would choose bankruptcy for your company, correct?

Here you are implying that people who are creating their own product, be it with their dime or their time, call it an entrepeneur or an indie developer or a financier, should only look to pay themselves a wage like an employee. Not very realistic.

While i'd agree that it's disappointing that so often people who've made enough money to never having to work again, still seem to be driven by greed. But expecting people who make or finance their own product to just expect a regular wage is rather out there, and i'd say unfair.

 

Kickstarter is a quasi-donation service. But it also has a certain expectation of returns, and most people who go into it do so with some expectation of long-term profit. Most Kickstarted games are attempting to turn a profit eventually, and establish some manner of sustainable business model. I'm referring to games that are produced with zero expectation of profit, ever. Games without any monetization.

Also, I think most existing kickstarters would take issue with your assertion that "original" and "different" are what succeeds for Kickstarter-related gaming projects. Most successful game-related kickstarter campaigns tend to rely heavily on nostalgia or long under-served market niches. Neither of those are particularly original or different. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, as several of these projects have been critically acclaimed, with games that did a good job of achieving what they set out to do. But I wouldn't agree that originality is a defining trait of kickstarter success.

 

That was the intent of my post.

It seems there is a difference between what the market wants and what some game devs want. You say 'games that none are willing to fund because there is no potential profit to them'... the only way I could see them made is either self-funded by the developer and a group of friends as a hobby project (there is no rush to get it done in time) or crowdfunding. Or early access to slowly develop a following.

The other choice is government sponsored art fund projects to 'support the development of high culture', which reminds me of governments and their biased (bad) preferences when it comes to art.

A creator or developer with a name behind will get their Kickstarter funded. An unknown developer still have to prove themselves. How is the question.

Which brings me to Brigador. Brigador is a highly experimental, unique and different game. I bet if it had been Kickstarted it would have been funded. And yet look at how it is only now after a year of release, after the Devs made a post on starving after 5 years of work that it is getting noticed.

I am noticing how once a time, when we were gamers, we were the ones to look for games we liked.

These days it is developers the ones who must actively work hard to make gamers notice their games.

Go look at Kologeon.
The most beautiful 2D game I had ever seen along with HLDrifter.
...
After funding, they changed it to a 3D game.
Fan outrage ensued.

I think that's why people want some conditions.
But even then, a Kickstarter is flexible.

The end product can be totally different to what you promised with zero repercussions.
Just like Mighty No.9.

Or even hardware products like the Keymouse keyboard+mouse.

 

@OP

You don't understand capitalism and profits. In "proper" capitalism profits are simply a premium for excellence. You are doing something cheaper and better which allows you to command higher margins and attract more customers. There is nothing "evil" in profits. This is just socialist propaganda.

Developers who chase profits also chase efficiency and delivering superior customer value. This is all very noble and prudent. There will always be people who will try to bend the rules by some manipulation but in the end good, honest developers will win. Look at Blizzard and Valve. They both chase profits hard but they do it in an ethical way which made them into global powerhouses.

 

When you have these ideals, you are at a natural opposition to those without those ideals. One cannot simultaneously say "I am against scammers." but then act as if it's just a difference of opinion that some people scam.

I reserve judgement not for the common man trying to make ends meat, but for the immoral shady type who manipulates other human beings or perpetuates unethical practices. Nine times out of ten, this is a large corporation, not some lone indie dev. The science of psychology should not be used for something as evil as exploitation of people's weaknesses for profit. Too many games focus on rudimentary psychological theory designed to keep them playing or spending more money in cash shops. As someone who is educated & works in the field of psychology, I have a professional obligation to challenge those who may use psychological theory unethically. If that makes me judgemental, then I am glad to be. I am a proud democratic socialist & self-proclaimed rebel of corporate greed. I proudly judge corporate greed & unethical industry practices very harshly.

Gamers appreciate honesty & you will find most are very understanding people. However there are things you can do other than what most do (which is simply abandon the project, but without any action to correct the problems). Give users full source code to fix bugs themselves. Give out the game for free because you abandon it, etc. This is what Double Fine did with Spacebase DF 9. That was moral & understandable solution to their problem. No one is going to declare them as evil, although of course it damaged their brand due to abandonment of the project & failure. (That is unavoidable).

I am not implying this at all. No one is against developers making money so that they can grow their company. Quite the opposite. I encourage intelligent practices where the developer gets to keep the revenue that they worked so hard to earn. I morally oppose institutions which work to leech off of the hard work of others, such as automated services which take a third of revenue. Many believe is an outrageous percentage and that developers not just need but deserve to take a larger percent of revenue because they are the ones doing all the work.

I believe you may have misunderstood where I'm coming from.

 

I would appreciate it if you would not infantilize me or other users. Thank you.

 

Valve as a development house is dead ironically for the same reasons this thread is pointing at

 

Thank you all for sharing. Great reads. I look forward to reading more of everyone's thoughts.

I am really glad I made this thread. Very interesting conversation!

 

I'd expect those dont care about your judgement.

Uhm, wasnt development for DF 9 paid for by Kickstarter crowdfunding and the IndieFund, and once they made enough money to pay back the fund, they tuck tail and ran?

That moral solution? "Let others pay for it, lol"?

And in that regard, let me just quote one of your idealism points again:

And Double Fine out of all companies is your paragon of virtue? Holy moly...

 

I never said Double Fine is a paragon of virtue. I don't have much respect for them due to their kickstarter history. I find their abandonment of Spacebase DF9 to be disgraceful. Not sure where you came up with this idea that I think highly of them.

However I used them as an example.

And Double Fine's actions are not mine. I do not defend them, nor see them as any example to follow. It is strange you would assume this of someone just for using them as an example in your hypothetical. A hypothetical which attempted to make my ideals seem unrealistic or overly harsh.

It seems there is no winning with you, as you seem insistent on tagging me negatively because...I am a high minded idealist? Weird. I assume at this point, you're just trolling for giggles.

 

No, you didnt, not in those words, but you found them a positive example worth praising. For releasing their now-money-losing-project-THAT-OTHER-PEOPLE-PAID-FOR as open source. While keeping the IP. You know, just in case. In case someone fixes it. And launching their next Kickstarter. For another project that OTHER PEOPLE ARE PAYING FOR and that is, again, supposed to make them rich (or more precisely, make the owner of the company rich).

From the shallow understanding i could get of your point of view, I think I've known someone irl with similar convictions about different topics. I think noone cares about what you're saying because YOU ARE WRONG.

Yeah, lol. "I'm gonna disagree because he is so high minded." is so what came to mind. I mean, what else could it be? ...
.
.
.
...

And that is that. Have a nice life.

 

Wow, dude. Calm down. We're just talking about capitalist ideology here, and how it pertains to game-design. You come in grinding an axe for a particular company, and get all butt-hurt.

Services like Kickstarter are an example of crowd-funding, where projects can get monetary donations through popular community support. While this is a potential funding solution for less mainstream projects, it doesn't represent a non-monetized product. As you yourself pointed out, most companies that go the Kickstarter route aren't doing so out of altruism. They fully intend to make money off of their work, no matter how their seed investment is collected.

I would hold up Patreon as a better example for what I'm proposing, partially thanks to their title. Patreon implies patronage, which is a bit more in line with support of artistic endeavors. Many famed classical artists would find wealthy patrons, who would support them financially so that they could focus on their artistic pursuits without having to constantly worry about money. These artists were frequently dependent on their patrons, and would have to occasionally do some family portraits. But this relationship allowed them to push their craft without having to worry about selling their art.

Of course, you also have to the option of simply developing gratis, and some actually go this route. Is especially common when someone is making a project that is intensely personal, and not meant to appeal to a wide audience. There might be some who will appreciate the experience, but when it is not meant to sell it does not have to be "fun" in the traditional sense.

 

There is people who use words like capitalism and socialism without any understanding of what they mean beside the Kool aid they drink lol.

Eventually all system fall because of the power hungry that are selfish. What people call socialism never existed, and communism was twisted by people that use it as an excuse to stay in power, betraying the ideal, also modern capitalism put the mean of production into the hand of the people, doesn't stop people from twisting the purity of the free market with patents, lobby, abuse of all sorts to kill competition, current capitalism is infested with big corps pretending being capitalist but having effectively socialism reserved for rich people, being paid for failing to manage a company is rampant. And technological capitalism got a big kick start through open sources mentality which is communism at it's finest (but you won't call it that way because taboo words), currently the deep learning is advancing very fast liberated from the shackle of making profit, which open opportunity to ... make profit!

In conclusion, don't let the ideal of each economic system blind you, they never work in their pure form in practice, they generally work by mixing and matching them when appropriate, and worse the actual implementation never match the ideal they have just pretend to be. Keep an eye on selfish power grabber, that's all, everything else is kool aid.

 

All people are "selfish power grabbers"... when they can. Only that most can't. Seeking power/profit is the very nature of humans. Socialism failed because it went against that nature and "The Party" filled the void.

 

I like money.
I also like pizza.
Sometimes I like pizza more than money, like right now. (yum!)

 

I'm not sure I can address this without delving into politics and other stuff we aren't supposed to. But I'll give it a go.

Ultimately individual humans are greedy. We very few exceptions we all tend to act in our own self interest, even when cooperation would produce better results.

You can see this in politics, voters tend to go for 'better go me' over 'better for the country'. You can see it in the everyday employment relationship, you can bet l would stop turning up at work the moment they stopped paying me. You can see it in the 'tragedy of the commons', where resources held in common pool get exploited by everyone for individual gain.

The big strength of capitalism is that it makes use of this natural human greed. Historically nothing inspires humans to get things done more then the prospect of individual gain.

Unrestrained this can lead to all sorts of unethical practices. So we use governments to set sensible regulations to restrict the excesses of capitalism.

Unfortunately this can fail in several ways

• When a government gains more concern for profit then people
• When an industry moves faster then a government can regulate

Games generally fall into the second category. In a large measure regulation is playing catchup. No sooner is one unethical practice brought under control then another one rises. Digital distribution and international borders complicate this.

So currently game developers face our own tragedy of the commons. If everybody practiced business ethically, we would all make more money. However if some people practice business exploitively, they stand to make a lot more money then everyone else, even if the overall money made reduces. This gives every dev an incentive to be the one making more money, despite the long term harm to the industry.

This is compounded by the fact that the ones who make the most money grow. Ones who don't inevitably shrink and disappear.

It's an unfortunate facet of economics. But I don't think there is much that can be done about it by tackling devs, gamers or distributors. Ultimately it needs to be at a government level, preferably the US, as that's the current dominant market for games.

Yeah. That's going to happen.

 

Speak for yourself. Many people just want a job & to be treated with basic human decency. They don't need power or even wealth. Just some basics. Not everyone wants to be powerful or wealthy. Most just want a chance to have a normal life.

 

I'd agree with this. Real change is likely to occur mostly when forced by a people's government that finally catches up to technology. I just don't think there's all that good of a chance, since we're still far from any form of people-driven governance.

 

The US is struggling. On the other hand western Europe style socialism seems to do a decent job of it. And we do okay here in Australia/NZ.

Only time will tell if investing in hospitals, schools and welfare over weapons was the smart choice.

 

I don't want to live where you live if you happen to grow up thinking that way, it must be WEIRD lol.
I'm glad it doesn't match my experience and I have example to look up to.

 

It saddens me that I am from a country of war & violence for profit. On the bright side, I am happy for every other western country which has healthcare & consumer protection laws. It was honestly surprising when I found out EU/Australia could get refunds from Steam back when they had a draconian refund policy. It's thanks to these other countries that we got a change in said policy, which is nice considering how much terror we cause in the world, lol.

 

So you have times where you like money more than pizza?

Your priorities are messed up.

 

@Frpmta I know, I'm sick in the head. Every so often I come to my senses though.

 

Well you can draw mustaches on president faces, since it's just paper.

Drawing mustaches & "I own slaves" chat bubbles on a pizza just doesn't do it for me anymore.

 

I have these times. Normally its when I've just finished eating a pizza.

 

But can you add pineapple as a topping to a dollar?

 

Politics are a not valid discussion topic here.