The Triple A Trap: A Warning To Gamers | Asmongold Reacts

a AAA trap so I've been thinking a lot about AAA gaming recently and one of the things that kind of interested me so much that I actually wanted to get on camera was this funny little idea of corporate capitalism and how AAA Studios can take your favorite games and extract as much money out of you as possible putting in the least amount of effort to actually make the game you know just some this guy played like the new Star Wars Battlefront thing I bet existential dread kind of stuff like normal weekday things I truly believe that what we're experiencing right now is a bursting of the AAA bubble a separation of corporate made passionless money grabs from the smaller but still incredibly fun and affordable games from ablea Studios and below I think that they also like the AAA games are calibrated in a way that like they overc calibrated for profit basically among other reasons it's because the corporate structure is driven by a capitalist economy and the capitalist economy is driven by the idea that rich people can get richer by owning things and draining the profit out of it and this Chase for higher profits using gaming as a trojan horse for Revenue generation is leading us into a period of AAA shovelware that costs millions of dollars and years of development to make but still ends up broken and buggy and otherwise not fun at all capitalism will take an IP and drive it into the ground capitalism will take 10 years to develop a pirate game I actually don't think this is something that's because of capitalism I think it's because of companies that have a profit incentive that makes them beholden to people people who don't have a vested interest in the quality of the product that's really what the issue is because a lot of a lot of companies operate in semi capitalistic places so capitalism will not necessarily like you're talking about like I'm talking about a publicly traded company like publicly traded companies are only one instance of that what's this here are people unhappy about this that's the definition of capitalism what game is good that isn't capitalist that's the thing is every game like the thing is that if you're putting a game out in our culture that game exists in a capitalistic Marketplace it does all games are capitalistic every single game is like this so if you say that capitalism is is the problem then every single game is bad so you're painting with such a broad brush that you might as well not be painting at all like you're making a non statement so I think that we really should make a distinction between games that basically the people that are making the financial decisions and the people that are deciding what the company does don't have a vested financial interest in the long-term quality of the product and so this happens with Executives trying to minmax quarterly profits this happens with shareholder fiduciary responsibility and I think it can also happen with just some president or a CEO that's trying to meet a certain number so they can get a bonus all of these things are the bad issue I don't think that this is NE necessarily an outcome of capitalism because again there are other games that exist in capitalism that don't have this problem so if if capitalism is the universal variable then why is it not affecting everything equally I I think that the real issue is that there are people that don't have a vested financial interest in the long-term health of the product yeah Baler yeah balers gate look at balers Gate 3 look at Hell divers look at vampire survivor without any content and the CEO will still call it a quadruple a game capitalism release any game into the market because no matter the quality or amount of testing that's been completed capitalism demands that you ensure a certain amount of money spent versus the money that you can make in return I feel that plenty of the issues that we see with well I don't know if I agree with that let me hear that again or dupa game capitalism release any game into the market because I don't think that's necessarily true no matter the quality or amount of testing that's been completed capitalism demands that you ensure a certain amount of money spent versus the money that you can make in return I don't necessarily think that's true because there's a lot of instances of these games like very clearly there is a consequence to making bad video games and that's why you've seen so many studios have to fire hundreds or thousands of people there is absolutely a consequence for it and that consequence is because of capitalism it's because people bring out a game nobody buys it and then they lose all their money plenty of the issues that we see with Studios like Ubisoft Activision Blizzard Bethesda Sony Nintendo tensent or Nexon these issues come from the fact that the modern corporate system under capitalism simply does not Foster great creativity and instead actively works against it so I want to talk about the corporate I don't agree with that either I think that there's a lot of games that for example balers Gate 3 balers Gate 3 exists absolutely under capitalism and people would consider it very creative same thing as uh you know hell divers 2 I mean I guess hell divers 2 isn't really super creative but it does exist under capitalism all these games do I don't necessarily like how could you like every single game and how could you also look at old games as a frame of reference whenever back then it's not like capitalism it's not like capitalism is a new patch that we just got 10 years ago like it's been like this for a long time it's always been like this yeah Elden ring is is capitalist yes he's equating capitalism with corporate greed yeah I think that that's basically what he's saying is like I mean I agree with him where it's like obviously you know companies that only care about profits are really what the problem is it's not necessarily capitalism fundamentally because if it was then all all products would be affected to some equal degree and it doesn't seem like that's the case structure of game companies for the third time on my channel and how these corporations don't care about you they care about money they take products you love and squeeze the most profit that they can out of it while minimizing costs on development effort true and to me it's extremely important that we keep talking about this in the gaming space because we as gamers are extremely susceptible to being taken advantage of we identify ourselves based on the games that we like we find meaning in the art of a game we create relationships through the shared experience we have with other Gamers it's very possible that Nostalgia May creep into our wallets where reason should be instead so the more we talk about it the more awareness we spread and hopefully the more people stop falling into the AAA trap though really quick I want to point out that this problem is not just in the gaming industry this is something that's been ruining movies and TV shows for what feels like decades now just take a look at Marvel Star Wars Disney movies in general half of the [ __ ] that Netflix puts out M it's unfortunate but a lot of these big budget films are turning into corporate mush by the Numbers remakes or creatively bankrupt TV series that are really just there to capitalize on your attention span there's also like the other meta of like Disney remaking movies so they can keep the copyright on the movie which is like another Factor but I think yeah well the reason why is because you think about it like if you're a movie studio and you're looking to invest $100 million do you want to invest it into a you know maybe a director that's had a couple of pretty popular movies but like who knows or do you want to go with a guy that's already made three other popular movies for you and go with Spider-Man because you know Spider-Man is going to make money that's a fact and this is one of the problems again and I think this does have to do with like again companies that are not invested in the long-term growth of the of the product and of what they're making is that they never think about well what's this going to do in three years what's this going to do in 5 years because they're only thinking at four in 3mon intervals right with quarterly reports so that's really what the issue is and they're not invested in the outcome for that Nostalgia rather than doing anything creative or Innovative corporations are a sign that an industry is booming any industry that makes money will have big corporations that control a large portion of it gaming is no different Ubisoft Nexon Activision Blizzard these are huge companies with thousands of employees that rake in hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars per year so if they make so much money you would think that corporations would be great for the industry I mean if so many people buy their products wouldn't you think that the people like the corporations too well yes and no it's undeniable that people buy their products that's why they've become corporations and continue to survive amongst the incredible amounts of new Studios popping up every day but that doesn't mean that their product is the best for the most part it just means that it's the most widely known or that at one point it was the best and all other competition has been snuffed out the best example I can give you is EA EA puts out a Madden game every year they put out FIFA every year and every year they make a lot of money and I mean because people buy it that's the reason people [ __ ] buy it it's not like they're being forced to buy FIFA but they do it anyway a lot of money but is Madden just the undeniable best football game out there well in a world where there isn't much competition of course it is when was the last time you heard of a football game that wasn't Madden or a soccer game that was can you imagine smaller Dev studio trying to compete with these games point I'm trying to make is that these corporations have skill they can't because of Licensing work their way into a place where they have no competition yeah any competitors even other corporations will have an extremely hard time creating games that can compete so what does this mean to you we as consumers are given an illusion of choice in reality we are being fed limited options with limited competition that could have driven these corporations to actually improve their game right now we're seeing the consequences of of a lack of competition in gaming Pokemon games releasing broken Halo game I think that really I mean there's always going to be a lack of competition with big games like FIFA because of like all the secondary things like licensing and you know getting characters likeness and you know making sure everything is up todate all of that I I do definitely think that FIFA is kind of a really like nuanced example because of all those secondary factors however whenever I think about about all the rest of them I do think that really these kinds of things work themselves out in the free market like power world is a great example of that and I think that's why having a free market is great it's because you can't just keep making a Pokemon game forever and ever and ever and have people keep buying it because there have been instances where there are games that you know the IP is destroyed and nobody's buying or playing the game anymore it does happen releasing without content Call of Duty games don't really change much neither do Assassin Creed games mm RPGs take forever to make and if you make one there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to pull people away from the most popular games like World of Warcraft Runescape or Final Fantasy just recently we had a Star Wars Battlefront remake release and it was worse in quality than the originals that came out in the early 2000s instead of Battlefront fans being treated to a bit of fan service this collection is a Shameless money grubbing exploit of said fan base this is nothing more than a cold-blooded attempt to exploit people's Nostalgia which is the most disrespectful thing you could do with a game like this we need to be very yeah welcome to every [ __ ] remake aware of the fact that gaming companies are not worried you are happy with your choices of gains they aren't going to go the extra mile beyond their planned budget just to make sure that the game they're making is perfect everything is calculated gaming companies are only worried about making as much profit as they can with as minimal of cost as possible now you may say but Jack some game studios love their fan base and are constantly communicating with their fans to give them what they want don't they actually care yes the companies do care about what you think no they don't do that because they care about you specifically they will develop the game to your liking because if enough people agree with you and stop buying their game it's beneficial for them to do what you're asking and get people buying again this is an example of aligned interests see corporations will basically align themselves with whatever social cause or whatever game Trend makes them the most money why do you think WB Games is doubling down on life that's not really a bad thing I mean I don't think we can really categorize a company that's I don't think this is bad I mean what he's saying is that the company is going to make the product that the consumers want like that's good what else would you want them to do models even though Suicide Squad killed the Justice League was pretty much a disaster it's because the life service model has proven to be the safest investment for a hefty return sir the game isn't even finished only half of it even works oh that doesn't matter the reason smaller Studios can't get away with stuff like this is because they need their interest to align with customers more often in order to get customers to buy their product they are the underdog the new people on the Block they need to make sure their game is good enough that the player base sticks around instead of going to the other AAA options that had a much larger marketing or that's a good point yeah production budget and I hate to be so cynical but that's just how business works sometimes a customer's interests align with a company sometimes it doesn't the business will decide what they do based on the amount of money that they make from it not how happy it'll make customers if you want to look at it well I don't think that's true either I think that making customers happy makes you a lot of money in a lot of cases I think they can be one and the same and really it's about how you approach it and what the company is doing in that situation like of course there's going to be times where a company is doing something and it's only for money like making a Pay to Win feature in the game but in a lot of cases like this is kind of like a damned if you do damned if you don't situation so it's like if the company is financially benefited by doing something that you like then they're only doing that because they're trying to steal your money but if they're doing something that you don't like well then they're disconnected and they don't know what people want and they don't care what people want so there's really no way that based with this logic you can have a situation where a game is actually is is authentically good it's basically like there's there's no way it's either you know you're right or they're lying another way ask yourself the question do you think that if hundreds of thousands of people complain about predatory cash shops that the mobile games will stop having predatory cash shops no yes absolutely because if enough people complained about it then people would stop buying it absolutely the problem is that people don't yes and no yes or no well it's kind of both I mean to be fair like the truth is that the reason why Candy Crush has a cash shop is because people buy the things on the cash shop if people stopped buying the things on the cash shop the cash shop would go away and maybe the game would go away too let me tell you this if whenever blizzard brought out their first storm Mount 85% of the wow player base immediately unsubscribed that day Bobby kodic himself would have written a handwritten apology to the World of Warcraft community and promise to never add mounts again but that didn't happen because people like again and this is the issue that like I think he's probably the same as me is that we're in a lot of cases in an echo chamber with games like we're talking like he's a 30-year old man probably I'm a 30-year old man and we're sitting here talking about how how good games used to be and how everybody hates this stuff but the truth is that we're not the norm we're not the majority we're the top 5% we're the top 10% so whenever a game is made for Market they're not thinking about the 10% they're thinking about the 90 even less maybe you're right because for every hundreds of thousands of people complaining about the cash shop there are 10 people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in that cash shop and if corporations are psychologically manipulating customers into spending more money creating barriers to entry that prevent any real competition making budget cuts while releasing games of questionable quality and doing all of that while trying to spread a message of do this for you dear consumer if the corporation is evil wouldn't you expect the people working in the corporation to be evil too like little henchmen to a super villain right out of a comic book obviously the answer is no not everyone that works at a corporation is evil and to be fair not every corporation is evil but what we as consumers need to understand is that the corporate structure itself has been refined over time to help businesses be the most efficient at serving their purpose which is to make money at the top will always be the board of directors the president of the company and the SE Suite these guys make all the decisions and most of the time their job is not to care about games it's to care about the welfare of the business but does this make them evil well some of them might be but being it doesn't make them evil and it doesn't make them good and this is one thing that I really wish more people understood about companies is that companies are not evil nor are they good they are aoral like devices and like objects or things that exist to make money so like whenever a company is agreeing with your political opinion they're only doing that so you have a more positive Viewpoint of that company and then you might buy their [ __ ] they don't care about these problems they don't care about those people they don't care about any of it the only thing they care about is making money now I think that there are smaller companies that don't have this issue but once you get into the publicly traded Large Scale Company you do obviously run into fiduciary responsibility which is the obligation that the people that run publicly traded companies have to make the company more money it's a literal law so yeah I I I do think that this is a big factor I don't think companies are evil I don't think they're good and I wish more people stopped waiting for like stopped trying to hope that a company would reaffirm their Viewpoint or reaffirm their values because it's just simply not what companies are made to do an executive at a corporation doesn't inherently make you an evil person most of the time it just means you're good at your job on my business card I am a corporate president in my mind I am a game developer but in my heart I am a gamer there it is there it is and this is relatively the same for all the employees below them they're hired to do a job and that job is related to some function that the business needs in order to make money now of course there will be plenty of people who do their job and are passionate about making a great game I'm sure Ian has a costus the game director for Wow truly wants to make the game better he has always seemed very passionate but he doesn't have the final say if he makes a game that doesn't rake in more and more Revenue every year he will be seen as a failure in the eyes of the business they may not fire him on the spot but you best believe that he's going to be under an incredible amount of pressure to perform exactly better for the company what's up everyone editor Jack here and I have a treat for you I actually got a hold of some real fake video footage of an actual fake Bethesda meeting where the game director of Starfield 2 is giving some Executives a status update and the executives they make real fake changes on the spot this proves how easy it is for the people in charge of the business side to change what the creative side does Bobby roll the tape good afternoon gentlemen today we're going to be talking about the QA results for our next Starfield game named Starfield plus we keep our current Pace Rel Starfield Plus there's something about that that is very unsettling because I could imagine that being real I could very easily imagine Starfield plus becoming real about 31 weeks or S months to deliver fixes for all of these you know assuming we don't find any more going forward any questions yes sir Jack this is Jim your CMO that is Chief marketing officer If You Don't Know Jack uh you're telling me that to address all these bugs it'll take 31 weeks but that'll put us well past our targeted launch date and I would really like to hit our targeted launch date because that puts the release of this game right before the holidays and I would love to have something to sell for the holiday rush I mean that is a huge opportunity for some high return on investment here and I don't think the company can afford to miss that they did this with pubg they pushed pubg out like out of Early Access way too early Microsoft did this great yeah see this is Devin CFO and to add to Jim's point I would really like to see us reduce the number of weeks it takes to fix all of these bugs cuz I would really like to reduce the amount of strain on the budget by severely reducing the size of our QA team so we need them to retest as many fixes as possible before I end their contracts okay not a problem I'll see what I can do to speed up the pace of their testing uh when did you want to cancel their contracts Oh Oh and next week after all right I'll see what I can do about that yeah you know when correct me if I'm wrong here but I think we really should be focusing on our internal you know cuz they are the heart and soul of the game do you think that we can ask them to use their passion for game development to maybe work harder maybe more hours in the day to really push us past that Finish Line you know Sprint in the final 50 yards of the marathon oh yeah I'm sure they'd be so happy they call they call it a Sprint as far as I know in software development I've heard this term used a lot more of their time possible especially for no extra pay or guarantee of future employment once the game is launched yeah and while we're talking about the de team I would also like to hear from you Lazarus Lazarus he's our chief diversity officer I'm pretty sure we can secure some capital from investors who specifically look for Hispanics and video games did you feel like we address this with our Dev team Lazarus Lazarus are you there okay well we ask email Jack can you just double check with the devs that we put in a new Hispanic character in the game like Miles Morales everyone loves Miles Morales he's cool and Hispanic so can you just put Miles Morales in Starfield plus uh yeah sure I think I can do that you do know this I do think that there's like a confirmation bias of uh to real yeah I do think there's a confirmation bias where like a lot of the companies that try to go for ESG points are creating bad games so people view games that have representation worse because a lot of games try to go for representation because they can't stand on their own with gameplay I think that definitely happen like logically that's what would make sense right is like if you can't secure investment with the gameplay quality and you can't secure investment with like the well I don't know what else besides gameplay quality right gameplay quality well then instead of that now you're securing investment because of some sort of like representation or ESG thing so it would logically make sense that a lot of the games that have ESG funding or at least a larger percentage of those games would have lower quality games because they would need that funding and in order to get that funding they would have to change the game in that way a game about space exploration and creating your own spaceship though right doesn't really have any superheroes in it yeah that's not my problem I'm just the money guy not the creative game making guy that's probably someone on your team uh okay so more crunch time to hit a Holiday deadline QA team will need to work faster to optimize their usefulness before they're fired and uh Miles Morales okay thanks for your time today team please consider all the hard work I'm doing in your next round of promotions or at least when you're looking at which games to cancel and who to fire okay talk to you soon so again what does this mean for you the customer why the hell am I taking up all your time talking about what people may already know well here we go here's the big drop here's the main point I was building up to the entire time I want you my dear viewer to be prepared basically I would like for us Gamers to better protect ourselves against some of the disappointments that AAA gaming produces if they get your money they don't care about your complaint at the end of the day I think that people get too emotionally invested into the outcome of a video game and they get too mad whenever a game is bad or too happy whenever a game is good I think that people should try to disconnect a little bit from the way that they consume entertainment and I think that people treat entertainment too seriously nowadays and it's not healthy bro it costs [ __ ] $100 yeah but like I'm not just talking about like AAA games I'm talking about like in general I think that people just have like too much of an with of an unhealthy relationship with entertainment media in general whether that's people that are super parasocial towards streamers whether that's people that are you know crying about the Star Wars trailer whether that's people that are spending $2,000 on honai Star rail I think that just really you have a lot of people that are just like so hyper invested emotionally and also financially in entertainment media that it's like a god it's like they religion it's really bad and and I think that also the companies the companies try to like incentivize that they try to cultivate that I feel that the structure leads to a conflict of interest the gaming side of the company the creative side of the house is put in a position where it constantly fights with the business side of the company and unfortunately the business side will always win because games need money to be made and function the world doesn't run on Good Vibes and fun games it runs on cash and that means that any complaint a Dev may have is instantly trumped by the response but this will make us more money and this brings us back to the structure of Corporations it's not one person's fault it's a system the system was created to efficiently run a business and that's it corporations don't Foster creativity because I think that really whose fault is it it's people's fault because if you decide to buy a game like for example smile gate which are the people who make lost St Park this is a privately owned company so there actually isn't like there generally a lot of the big bad companies are the ones that are public but that's not always true so what ends up happening is that a lot of these companies are just doing it for money but the reason why they keep doing it is because they keep getting money so really who's at fault is the customer and that's the only person who can keep them accountable like the government can't keep them accountable the employees can't keep them accountable the shareholders can't realistically keep them accountable the bo like nobody can keep them accountable except for the customers the customer is the bottom line and if you're buying games that you think are bad stop buying games that you think are bad stop giving these companies money if you think the games suck stop pre-ordering stop uh you know buying into the hype stop buying or $500 worth of microtransactions because that's the reason why these games exist and also if a massive like with any of these free-to-play games it's true that free-to-play games make like 70% of their sales off of like 1% of their customer base it's like some crazy [ __ ] statistic like that right I I I think that's inaccurate but it's something that's massively disproportionate as you would pretty much assume right but the reason why that 1% is spending all the money is so they can eat the other 99 so in a video game or like a pay to- win game that doesn't have a massive economy of other people playing the game will die out so the reason why these games are still successful is because people keep supporting them even whenever in a lot of cases you know it would be against their best interest to do so that's not what they were meant to do the structure has been put in place to make money based off data and educated decision-making and that's why creativity is only tolerated as long as you can prove with data that the creative investment is worth the risk sure I'm being a bit dramatic but basically I went on this rant to spread Awareness on protecting yourself against these corporations don't buy games based on pure trust in developers because it may not be the developers that have the final say try not to fall victim to predatory microtransactions yeah you should just really I think the problem is like people make too many decisions on hype and emotion they're deciding everything that they're going to do based off of like oh my God this game is so good oh wow the trailer is so good it's like how can you stop that except for like making people accountable to educating themselves streamers don't help with that streamers absolutely make it worse they 100% do and they also make it a lot better like for example I think that a lot of people whenever a new game comes out they're going to watch me they're going to watch L they'll watch Charlie they'll watch chance and they'll see one of us play the game and they'll be like or if it's FPS they're going to watch shroud they're going to look at it they're going to see for themselves hm is this any good no okay all right I don't think I'm going to buy it and that's it that's what people need to do yep Co there's a lot of people because this validates the company's decision that doesn't happen wait so you think that people don't watch streams and use streams to inform themselves on what games to buy if that didn't happen then I wouldn't be paid a ton of [ __ ] money to play games on my stream it absolutely happens do you think that they want to give some [ __ ] loser that sits in their mom's attic a bunch of money to play their video game no they don't want to give me the [ __ ] money but they know that it'll make them more money so they agree to it this wasn't out of the goodness of their heart be predatory and have mic transactions don't pre-order online games if the developer hasn't given you a reason to trust that the game will be actually good just be aware and most of all if a game comes out and it's [ __ ] and you happen to buy it go get that refund even in Live service games if the game is broken or not fun don't by the way uh common steam W Steam for uh the day before which is this game did the craziest thing whenever this game came out it was so bad steam proactively issued refunds to every single person who bought the game it don't trust that the developers make it good refund the game and keep in mind steam is also a company then buy it again when it gets good anyway I turned this into more of a rant than I had hoped but I still think that it's an interesting conversation to have with you all I would love to hear your take on the gaming industry and how corporations can better foster creativity and innovation in games rather than what they're meant to do right now which is make a lot of money but most importantly I think that we just need to go through a gaming Renaissance I think that's what's happening already and you're seeing that happen with a lot of these smaller games smaller scope games become so popular I think that this is a problem that the free market will solve in time and also there will always be games that are garbage there's always been games that are garbage so I mean like yeah we can all talk about how bad Skull and Bones was but let's let's be honest there have been a lot of bad games that came out on GameCube like it's not like GameCube didn't have any bad games or Super Nintendo didn't have any bad games that's just how it is hope you enjoyed the video leave a like if you liked it and subscribe for more content I hope you enjoy these AAA gaming companies games and I can't wait to see what we talk about next well here's the problem it's that he's talking to me and I'm talking to you and we're all having a conversation about how bad this is but the people that are creating an economy for these games aren't even paying attention i' apparently I've watched one of his videos before I'm subscribed to him I give it a like this a good video I mean I I don't think that you can ascribe a lot of this to capitalism uh like as capitalism as the root cause I I think that really like capitalism might be the root cause but it's an application of capitalism that is hyper profit driven and Hyper um like pessimistic in a way right negative so it's just greed yeah basically it's just greed because again Elden ring balder's gate all of these games exist in the capitalist economy that you get to make the choice whether you're going to play these games or not so let's not get too far into that but I do think that obviously he brings up a lot of good points with uh a lot of these games and it's just especially like with FIFA he's totally right that there are no other sports games and I don't think that there ever really will be because of uh you know how much structural Advantage EA has over every other game and I do find that to be problematic it is

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 449,073

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, zackrawrr

Id: b2CG8O75P98

Length: 33min 54sec (2034 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024