Are "Triple A" gaming companies liquidating their current audience?

[Mechazod]

If it's no longer profitable to make a COD because the big gamers are not numerous enough to make it worth it, or, even worse, bored of it, what do you want companies to do ? When the arcade died, arcade-making companies moved to consoles or PC, or died. Gameboy-style handheld is virtually dead : do you cry about it or adapt ?

I adapt by no longer giving them money and supporting the companies that still do.

[Zaktar]

If I understand the OP correctly, the premise is that there is a conspiracy by major companies to drive away their audience by making deliberately bad games, so that they can embrace a new audience. Are these businesses run by captain planet villains? Why don't they just make games for their new audience? Seems cheaper than this elaborate plan to eliminate an audience.

"Go pollution!"

[xenogear3]

People are not interesting in playing games.
They want to watch other people playing.

WoW type grinding is history.
Starcraft is too complicate.

[Shalaator]

If I understand the OP correctly, the premise is that there is a conspiracy by major companies to drive away their audience by making deliberately bad games, so that they can embrace a new audience. Are these businesses run by captain planet villains? Why don't they just make games for their new audience? Seems cheaper than this elaborate plan to eliminate an audience.\

No, abandoning an audience is not profitable, hence the audience is being covertly liquidated for maximum revenue.

"Liquidate means to convert assets into cash or cash equivalents by selling them on the open market. Liquidate is also a term used in bankruptcy procedures in which an entity chooses or is forced by a legal judgment or contract to turn assets into a "liquid" form (cash). In finance, an asset is an item that has value."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidate.asp

PC gamers are still assets; however, the Mobile gamers are more profitable today, therefore these assets (PC gamers) are being rapidly liquefied for hwhatever hard cash they have left...this includes intentionally using previously trusted franchises and IP's, such as Fallout, and deceiving that audience into giving them money, knowing that their audience will be upset and never buy from them again.

In other words, yes, they made an active decision to release a terrible game (next to zero production costs) in order to liquidate their Fallout audience (assets). Mark my words that they also have no intention of making another Fallout game ever again. They decided to liquidate the entire franchise and its assets (the customers/audience of the fallout series are assets).

Obviously they're not going to announce this, admit to this or brag about it, since that would destroy their entire reputation as a company. I still have every reason to believe that Elder Scrolls 6 will be a great game since there is no reason to liquidate that franchise as of 2019. Bethesda is/was done with Fallout. End of story. The assets (customers/fanbase/audience/etc) were liquidated.

HOTS was liquidated with 1 year xp pac.

World of Warcraft has not nor will be liquidated any time soon, and for the most part I still enjoy WoW. I do believe WoW has many more expansions to come, I also believe every other expansion is going to be stellar and each one in between lackluster {WotLK MoP and Legion} vs {Cata, WoD and BFA}.

[Edge-]

In other words, yes, they made an active decision to release a terrible game (next to zero production costs) in order to liquidate their Fallout audience (assets). Mark my words that they also have no intention of making another Fallout game ever again. They decided to liquidate the entire franchise and its assets (the customers/audience of the fallout series are assets).

OR...

They tried to jump on a trend super late (survival sandboxes) and rushed a game out the door. And because it wasn't great (for most folks), the issues that have always plagued Bethesda games but were overlooked were highlighted. They're not "liquidating" them, it's just a game that was a miss. That shit happens, yo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_4#Sales

Fallout 4 did fantastically for them and apparently outperformed Skyrim, which itself was a massive hit. You don't liquidate a market that's driving huge revenue for you, and Bethesda is absolutely not "liquidating" them. Again, they simply released a game that was a miss and well outside their usual comfort zone. It's not part of some broader conspiracy to "liquidate audiences" that you still have yet to prove even exists.

Your "evidence" is a Fallout game that's a miss (those happen, even with big IP's!) and Blizzard having a bad year (those happen too!). That's not remotely indicative of anything broadly and you'd need far more data points to substantiate this.

[stellvia]

People are not interesting in playing games.
They want to watch other people playing.

WoW type grinding is history.
Starcraft is too complicate.

The real late-stage capitalism: People so lazy it's too much effort to even play games.
Kinda full circle in a way. Games replaced TV, and now "TV about games" is replacing games?

[Shalaator]

OR...

They tried to jump on a trend super late (survival sandboxes) and rushed a game out the door. And because it wasn't great (for most folks), the issues that have always plagued Bethesda games but were overlooked were highlighted. They're not "liquidating" them, it's just a game that was a miss. That shit happens, yo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_4#Sales

Fallout 4 did fantastically for them and apparently outperformed Skyrim, which itself was a massive hit. You don't liquidate a market that's driving huge revenue for you, and Bethesda is absolutely not "liquidating" them. Again, they simply released a game that was a miss and well outside their usual comfort zone. It's not part of some broader conspiracy to "liquidate audiences" that you still have yet to prove even exists.

Your "evidence" is a Fallout game that's a miss (those happen, even with big IP's!) and Blizzard having a bad year (those happen too!). That's not remotely indicative of anything broadly and you'd need far more data points to substantiate this.

No, the lead designer of Beth himself bragged and hyped the game, he knew full well that it sucked, like...SUCKED. He did it with a straight face. I'm pretty sure warned his higher ups that this would do irreparable harm to the Fallout franchise after release and they said: That's ok, we're not making any more Fallout games anyway.

Liquidation.

This wasn't some PR dude from Beth that hyped the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WREidENJ8w

[Zaktar]

No, abandoning an audience is not profitable, hence the audience is being covertly liquidated for maximum revenue.

"Liquidate means to convert assets into cash or cash equivalents by selling them on the open market. Liquidate is also a term used in bankruptcy procedures in which an entity chooses or is forced by a legal judgment or contract to turn assets into a "liquid" form (cash). In finance, an asset is an item that has value."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidate.asp

PC gamers are still assets; however, the Mobile gamers are more profitable today, therefore these assets (PC gamers) are being rapidly liquefied for hwhatever hard cash they have left...this includes intentionally using previously trusted franchises and IP's, such as Fallout, and deceiving that audience into giving them money, knowing that their audience will be upset and never buy from them again.

In other words, yes, they made an active decision to release a terrible game (next to zero production costs) in order to liquidate their Fallout audience (assets). Mark my words that they also have no intention of making another Fallout game ever again. They decided to liquidate the entire franchise and its assets (the customers/audience of the fallout series are assets).

Obviously they're not going to announce this, admit to this or brag about it, since that would destroy their entire reputation as a company. I still have every reason to believe that Elder Scrolls 6 will be a great game since there is no reason to liquidate that franchise as of 2019. Bethesda is/was done with Fallout. End of story. The assets (customers/fanbase/audience/etc) were liquidated.

Deliberately destroying your business's reputation is far less profitable than trying to make games which people will happily pay for. In one scenario you can convert old audience to new audience. In the other, people think you make trash instead of games and you go away. Businesses shit out half baked products out of greed in a different way, generally it is to try to trick the audience into buying your product while spending the least possible. Some companies trap themselves in this because then profits diminish and they have to keep spending less, which then earns even less, and so on until they spiral into nothingness.

This looks like a case of a business trying to keep up with how modern games are financed and failing extremely hard.

[lollermittens]

1. AAA companies do not cater to "gamers" anymore (if you consider yourself a gamer, AAA have stopped designing games you'll find interesting). Unfortunately for us, Blizzard is a AAA publisher/ developer and we are not their main target audience anymore. Any scrutiny placed upon WoW should clearly demonstrate the game's design evolving away from its core audience onto one more malleable and adaptive to casual players since they're more numerous and willing to shill out money when required.

2. We need to stop believing there was this golden age of gaming; it's like saying "Make America Great Again" when it was never great to begin with. Corporations are not your friends; your family; your siblings; you parents. They're entities designed to generate huge amounts of cash on a short-term basis. That alone should tell you what to expect from them. You're a customer at best; a metric at worst. The best thing you can do as a "gamer" is to remove any kind of emotional investment towards brands that you like. You shouldn't get offended that I dislike something that you may like since it prevents any kind of rational debate.

3. As I read elsewhere previously in this thread, people who enabled the cosmetic/ P2W MTx industry are largely responsible for the state gaming is in today. By letting yourselves be denominated as "whales, dolphins, or minnows" and supporting shady gambling practices, you sent a message to these multi-billion dollar corporations that you were okay with letting games be designed with monetization practices into them. Instead of pushing back and saying that meaningful/ interesting content should be designed to unlock paid cosmetic items that should never be monetized in the first place, you opened your wallet and responded by saying that you are willing to spend your hard-earned money to get a shortcut to what you wanted. People who've supported such practices have done irreparable damage and have absolutely no ground to stand on today saying that they don't like MTx while they've supported this shadiness for years. To you, the player that pays companies for shit that should be free: shame on you.

[Mister Cheese]

They're obviously trying to milk as much money as they can before the crash. But this was inevitable anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

Is this a joke?

First off, I'm assuming you're talking about 76?

Secondly, "only giving his opinion" means a lot... especially when it's infused with a ton of phony-rage and cynical conspiracy theory peddling... of which I find Azmongold and his ilk tends to do... alot....

Not even a theory when the see you later bundle has stats backed up behind it. The three lowest selling store mounts in the game are being removed to create artificial scarcity. Everyone pointed this out. He makes a video about it pointing the obvious. Why is it a conspiracy theory?

[Shalaator]

Deliberately destroying your business's reputation is far less profitable than trying to make games which people will happily pay for. In one scenario you can convert old audience to new audience. In the other, people think you make trash instead of games and you go away. Businesses shit out half baked products out of greed in a different way, generally it is to try to trick the audience into buying your product while spending the least possible. Some companies trap themselves in this because then profits diminish and they have to keep spending less, which then earns even less, and so on until they spiral into nothingness.

This looks like a case of a business trying to keep up with how modern games are financed and failing extremely hard.

They're reputation will recover as a whole when Elder Scrolls 6 releases, why do you think they released Fallout first? lol. Unless they're on a suicide mission, Elder Scrolls will be great game as will their future releases of other IPs.

They liquidated Fallout. period.

[tikcol]

The real late-stage capitalism: People so lazy it's too much effort to even play games.
Kinda full circle in a way. Games replaced TV, and now "TV about games" is replacing games?

It's all about dem gaimz, top of the jungle pwn pwn

[Edge-]

No, the lead designer of Beth himself bragged and hyped the game, he knew full well that it sucked, like...SUCKED.

Wait...a company that wants to sell you a product isn't going to tell you not to buy their product because it sucks? Again, this isn't remotely new or unique to Bethesda. Countless games have been hyped up only to launch as abject dumpster fires. I'm not saying this is fine, I'm not defending or excusing it, but it's not remotely new or indicative of anything other than "Same shit, different day."

I'm pretty sure warned his higher ups that this would do irreparable harm to the Fallout franchise after release and they said: That's ok, we're not making any more Fallout games anyway.

Or because he genuinely though the game would be good. You'd be surprised how much perspective gets lost from the inside of these companies and how often they drink their own cool-aid.

This wasn't some PR dude from Beth that hyped the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WREidENJ8w

I know who Todd Howard is. I don't know why people ever take him seriously/literally given how routinely he spouts off hyperbolic bullshit about how great their games are and how they all "just work".

Again, this is you having an issue with a few events, which is totally fine. I have issues with these things too, and it's why I didn't even consider buying FO76 (looked like a dumpster fire from a mile away, especially after the beta) or have essentially stopped playing Blizzard games (though that's also due to me not being interested in them anymore). What it's not is companies "liquidating" (I don't know why you keep pushing that term, it's a financial term related to assets as your quote states...and consumers are not assets) their core audiences.

Again, you'll need a lot more data points to substantiate this.

They're reputation will recover as a whole when Elder Scrolls 6 releases, why do you think they released Fallout first? lol. Unless they're on a suicide mission, Elder Scrolls will be great game as will their future releases of other IPs.

They liquidated Fallout. period.

Because Fallout was more recently released so it's higher on folks minds than ES, and because they already had a huge chunk of the work and assets for current-gen consoles done so they could easily re-use them (which isn't an inherently bad thing).

Because Fallout, being a post-apocalyptic game, lends itself to a survival sandbox setting far better than ES does.

Because they wanted to try something different using their IP's, and unfortunately they simply missed the mark and released a game that a whole lot of people weren't interested in or didn't like (and plenty did!). Which again, happens and isn't indicative of some grander conspiracy.

And stop saying "liquidate", that's not a remotely accurate term when it comes to what you're talking about. That's a purely financial term, you cannot "liquidate" a consumer base. You can lose them.

[Zenfoldor]

Unsure what drives all this other than greed, but what I do know is that they lost me quite a while ago. CDPR is basically the only corporation left in the industry that has something interesting to offer for me. Maybe Obsidian's new shooter/RPG too? I don't know.

As for Blizzard, leaving WoW in Legion was among the best decisions I've taken in life. That game made me more unhappy than if I would have been staring at the walls. I remember how exciting raiding used to be. Welp, that will not happen again, almost sure of it.

Obsidian shooter is exciting. CDPR is legendary. RE2 remake in January is gonna be epic. From Software is GoaT. You seem too focused on PC. Sony/Nintendo exclusive games are better than ever. Step back from gaas and try single player stuff, it might surprise you imo. I was surprised, and they renew my faith in gaming. Start with Bloodborne.

edit: I also wanted to add a hidden gem, Until Dawn on PS4.

[sam86]

Corporations are greedy shock. Btw Youtubers are greedy also and make negative videos to make money.

I never thought Activision Blizzard were my friend and I don't need fucking asmongold and his stupid hairless toothless idiot grin to tell me that.

blizzard was our friend, old companies were, u can check westwood studies documentaries (if u really care i can post the link since i LOVED westwood) how their main focus to actually make us gamers happy, NOT to milk us out of our money
yes they still work to eat, but their main goal wasn't to swim in gold, but for us to enjoy their work and memories they never had probably because no one cared for them as they did for us
activision on other side i don't even know how that greedy company still exist, even call it greedy is downgrading, Activision holds the record of almost single handedly destroy entire video game industry, if not for Nintendo risking lot of cash to save it, as soon i learned activision trying to take over blizzard in what was economic hostile takeover or something (not good in wallstreet sh8t), i knew that blizzard as we know is ending
i did expect it since a while and i hate it, but reality even the sin of greed is an angel in compare to activision

[Zaktar]

They're reputation will recover as a whole when Elder Scrolls 6 releases, why do you think they released Fallout first? lol. Unless they're on a suicide mission, Elder Scrolls will be great game as will their future releases of other IPs.

They liquidated Fallout. period.

My assumption is that they made this a fallout game because they thought money would rain from the sky down on them and wanted the widest audience possible. Fallout appears to be a more profitable franchise than TES, so they picked that one to launch this with. Unfortunately they did so without really understanding what their existing audience enjoys about their games. My guess is that the wider Fallout/TES audience enjoys paying up front for an open-ended long-term experience which provides a huge amount of value per dollar spent. I suspect we're more suspicious of microtransactions than the wider population.

To that audience, they released a stripped down version of their last game; the main "improvement" is that there are more ways for me to spend money, and you can play with a friend. I played with my friend for about three hours and haven't been able to come back to the game. They thought they were smarter than their audience and they are paying some kind of price for it now.

[druenos]

If all the top game studios go to mobile, then good luck, they'll flood the market and probably lose their reputations aswell. Then the PC gaming market will be wide open for new, startup, innovative companies to breathe some fresh air into this stale market place, without all that corperate bloat. There is a market for PC games and one thing has been true in all of human history. If there is a market for something, someone will always use it to make money, ie make PC games.

[sam86]

If I understand the OP correctly, the premise is that there is a conspiracy by major companies to drive away their audience by making deliberately bad games, so that they can embrace a new audience. Are these businesses run by captain planet villains? Why don't they just make games for their new audience? Seems cheaper than this elaborate plan to eliminate an audience.

u are describing a part of 2008 crisis btw, that did happen irl
it seems u mixing between ceo and the the normal worker, ceos - who are literally the reason of f8cked up economy - got away with almost no punish, in fact they gained a LOT from f8cking their own companies and moving to new ones
and since they control all major media too, the sound of ppl who asked to punish them wasn't heard at all, until occupy wallstreet movement, but it sadly was ignored and died too
Activision ceo bobby kodick is described as the guy who hates video games the most in world, his anti-gaming quotes are well documented and the guy REALLY hate video games with passion that makes u wonder why he is activision ceo in first place then, but of course for the big cash check
Yes it is the benefit of ceos to f8ck their own companies and move to other ones as much if not more than to keep it, for future of company bad luck, but for him and his elites they buy a company, suck it dry, move to next and so on, a cycle that so far no one willing to interrupt

[Knaar]

I wouldnt say at war with the gamer, i feel more like they are disconected from the gaming world and only think about money.
That's how big company fall and new ones rise. As soon as a company stop responding to their audience, it's the (slow) start of the end. Some random guy in his basement with a few buddy will see that, think they can do a game that gamers actually wants to play and boom, new studio is created! Life circle

[Zaktar]

u are describing a part of 2008 crisis btw, that did happen irl
it seems u mixing between ceo and the the normal worker, ceos - who are literally the reason of f8cked up economy - got away with almost no punish, in fact they gained a LOT from f8cking their own companies and moving to new ones
and since they control all major media too, the sound of ppl who asked to punish them wasn't heard at all, until occupy wallstreet movement, but it sadly was ignored and died too
Activision ceo bobby kodick is described as the guy who hates video games the most in world, his anti-gaming quotes are well documented and the guy REALLY hate video games with passion that makes u wonder why he is activision ceo in first place then, but of course for the big cash check
Yes it is the benefit of ceos to f8ck their own companies and move to other ones as much if not more than to keep it, for future of company bad luck, but for him and his elites they buy a company, suck it dry, move to next and so on, a cycle that so far no one willing to interrupt

The 2008 financial crisis, as I understand it, was the result of some very wealthy people playing a game of hot potato with bad loans, then laughing their way to the banks as the government took the potato, the wealthy people took the money, and the rest of us had burnt hands. Not sure of the relevance.