The gaming paradigm has changed.
I know it's a different world today than 15 years ago. Back around, oh, the year 2000 or so, games used to be released as finished products that you paid a decent sum of money for, and then you got to play them and have fun. Game companies got their revenue only if they made a decent product, and consumers were willing to shell out however much you charged for it. If you didn't make a good product, word got out, and your time and money was wasted because people stopped buying it. It's the american way, or at least, it used to be.
Nowadays, we have things like Kickstarter. Now, kickstarter, in and of itself, is actually a good thing. Kickstarter is a method whereby you put forth an idea for a game (or something similar) and people donate to your cause until you have enough cash to proceed with it. Ideally, the theory is that good ideas from independent programmers will get funded and once the programmers have enough funds to proceed, they finish their wonderful game and then release it for consumers. If you are a gamer, you've probably heard of it already, and if not, you probably will soon. if you are not a gamer, this post may not mean much to you at all so you could probably quit reading now. lol
Steam is an online game purchasing service. Originally bundled with Valve titles like Left4Dead and other games by Valve (which I can't really think of any right now, maybe Halflife?), it has grown to offer games from almost all companies and independent game startups, as well as having basic chat functionality. I've been using steam for years, ever since I bought left 4 dead, installed steam, and realized I never had to leave my house again to buy a game. You buy them, they download to your system, and you play them. No waste of gas money, no waiting in long lines of unwashed geeks for the midnight opening, no fighting for a parking spot with a crotchety old lady named Vera who says she always parks there and threatens you with attack by her small toy poodle who looks like he's scared to leave her beat up volvo. Just browse the listings, pick one, and POOF you get to play, all in the comfort of your original 1980's scooby doo pajamas.
Steam also offers something called "Early Access" wherein, you buy a game early and you get to provide feedback to the game developers while they make it, hopefully resulting in a better and more enjoyable game. Again, ideally, this seems like a good idea. With more feedback from your target audience, you get a larger pool of beta testers, and they can let you know how to improve your game and point out bugs you might have missed, resulting in an outstanding and very well-received end result.
Now, here's how shit breaks down in our modern, crazy, mixed-up world.
You don't actually need to have a decent product, or be an independent developer, to get on Kickstarter. Any idea can be listed and there are tons of people out there who will donate. Even major developers can use it to gather funds from the gaming community without any reason whatsoever as to why they aren't using their own company resources to develop it. So, they can legally pocket every dime they get, and then use kickstarter to fund the next game, instead of putting profit back into the company. Your game can be little more than an idea. You don't need a working demo, you don't even need to be a programmer. This opens kickstarter up to much abuse of the system. At least, that's what I have heard, and I may be misinformed.
Early Access doesn't give you any special influence as to how games are developed. The gaming companies, which if they were smart, used to listen to feedback from the gaming community while they were developing the game anyway, can still ignore your suggestions and make the game any way they want to. It is still their product, whether you bought into it while it was still an idea or not. Your suggestion may be the most reasonable, funnest thing EVER, and they can still choose not to include it in their game for whatever reason. Also, your opinion doesn't have any more weight than some other idiot on the forums who hasn't bought early access to the game, IF the gaming company even listens to their forums, which they may not. Early access sounds more like they are charging you for the privilege of providing feedback, and guaranteeing their revenue stream, before they even have a finished product.
So in essence, here's what's going on. Let's say I am the shittiest game developer on the planet, and I have a crappy game idea. Let's say for the sake of argument I am also the crookedest one out there. So, yes, I am Electronic Arts. Although, they certainly don't need to use kickstarter to fund their game development, since I heard they recently purchased God and are forcing him to work overtime to make crappy games for them. I could also be Mojang, who started charging for Alpha access to Minecraft (which, while a good game, has had VERY little development done on it over the past 5 years while raking in buttloads of money), and haven't released a decent game since. So here I am, with my shitty game idea. I slap it up on Kickstarter with a few crappy mockups of what it might eventually look like. I let the funding roll in. And roll in. And roll in. Once I've got more money than I know what to do with, I hire a guy. Some crappy programmer fresh out of C++ classes to program something for me. I pay him shit money to make a shit game, and to take his time about it. While I use fifty dollar bills to light my bong, he works on some basic outline of a game. And then I slap it up on Steam's Early Access and wait for it to get greenlit by a rabid gaming community who wouldn't know a good game if it came up behind them and goosed them. I don't blame them. It's not their fault, because there's so many crap games out there nowadays, they can't tell what a good game looks like anymore. And then once it goes to early access, and everyone starts buying my crappy piece of shit game that took me years to develop while everyone was throwing money at me, I can light my bong with hundred dollar bills while the money keeps rolling in. And in six months, after I've ignored everyone on the forums telling me how my game sucks and this is what I could do to improve it, I then release my crappy piece of shit game, and start lighting my bong with thousand dollar bills as anyone who didn't want to buy an unfinished product, now buys my finished piece of shit game. And when the money runs out? I go back to kickstarter! Flawless.
I don't really understand when it became a pay-to-work attitude with companies. Maybe they got so flustered with cash that their brains snapped. Maybe they started feeling like their employees owed them so much for allowing them to work at a company that that attitude just naturally trickled down to the average consumer. Nowadays, games like World of Warcraft and most other MMO's charge you a monthly fee to run around doing pointless quests like gather 100 of these by killing 1000 of those and take them to this guy and then he sends you to another guy who has a similar quest. And then at some point you "level up." When did gaming become all about hearing the DING noise when you go from level 45 to level 46? Does that DING matter that much to you? Do you really feel like you've accomplished something after taking into account the fact that you've played WoW for 3 years, at a cost of $15 a month, and a waste of countless hours of your life, to get your cartoon character from level 45 to level 46? Can you die happy now? Do you know anyone else who has "get a WoW character to level 46." on their bucket list? Have you bathed this month? Are your kids starving to death while you play WoW? When was the last time you talked with a human being outside of the game?
Where's the fun? When did companies start charging you for the pleasure of working for them, which is basically what you are doing in most level-based games? I mean, think about any level based game you have played, at all. Level one is about learning how to play. You're there going "Oh, new game, I have to figure out the rules, then it'll be fun." as you run around doing exactly whatever any quest-giver in the game tells you to do. Then it's a DING to level 2, and you're hooked. You're like Pavlov's dogs at this point. Wanting to hear that all powerful DING, and the instant you hear it, you're already salivating to get to the level after that. I've actually been told, by a very brainwashed WoW player, that you have to get to the MAX level, which was 70 at the time, in order to get to the fun parts of the game. Seventy levels of work to get to a few fun parts, and that's in-game work, while I PAY a monthly fee to Blizzard, for the honor. So I have to work at my day job for years in order to pay for my nighttime job of playing WoW, in order to finally have fun when I reach level 70, after however long it takes me to get there? Months, years? And honestly, once you've reached level 70, what happens then? Where's my DING? How can I enjoy the game now? There's no more levels! I've done everything there is to do, and even if I haven't, it's just going to be EXACTLY like those other billion things I had to do to GET to level 70. Because that's what the game does. It brainwashes you, with a DING, to think work is fun, instead of fun being fun.
What comes next? Who even needs to hire managers at companies now? You can set up computer generated quest-givers at the managers desk to give out quests to employees whenever they come around, or to just randomly send them out via email. Employees, excited to have a job and intimately familiar with the work-for-fun concept, are giving their all trying to learn the rules of the workplace, hoping to keep working because no job means no money. Why not just reward them with a DING instead of money? Why pay them at all? Toss some stale snacks at them from the vending machine, have a small bell over their heads go DING after every 3 months of service, and your employees are now slave labor. Congratulations! You can now pocket every dime your shitty company makes and jet off to aruba while Americans are slaving over a hot computer hoping to hear a DING! Well done, dickhead. I hope your plane crashes into the ocean and you are eaten by sharks.
I'm even more disturbed by the free-to-play scenario with games nowadays. Humans, ever competitive, get to play the game for free, opening the game up to a wider market. Of course, there's always the rich douchebags who have shiny gold mounts and flashy magic weapons that you pay through the nose for via the in-game store, showing off all over the game and trying to entice you into buying stuff. Human beings have no willpower, that much is obvious. So instead of a decision whereby they consider the cost of a game against the value of how much fun it might be, which it was in days past, you now get to work in-game, for free, running around doing quests, while the richer folks among us flaunt their flashy wares. Neverwinter, i'm looking at you. I can't believe they were trying to charge $120 for a "northern adventurer" package or some shit, where you got a spider mount and some flashy helmet or something. Wtf. One hundred and twenty goddamn dollars, the cost of two or three games back in the day, for a mount with 6 legs. Ooh. Hold me back. I suppose in a sense, it's a lot like real life, where most people will see a guy with a flashy car or nice house or trophy wife and think "Man i need to get me some money and get those," but at least in real life you get PAID for your work, at least, in most cases, though not always as much as you should. You at least have the choice of what you spend your hard-earned money on, but if you'll allow me, I'd like to make a suggestion...
Don't spend it on unfinished ideas. Wait til they finish the game. Just like you wouldn't buy a car when all you've seen is a painting of what it might look like, you shouldn't be spending money on a game you haven't played yet. Test drive that sumbitch. Wait til they release a demo so you can try it out. If you don't like it, at least you don't have to buy it, and that stops the company from releasing a poor product and you paying through the nose for it before you've even seen it. Trust me, I've been burned by gaming companies, and companies in general, way too many times to not be speaking from experience here. If they can sell you a piece of shit and tell you it's solid gold, they will. Buyer beware. And for all that is good and holy in the world, avoid games with an in-game store. Avoid them like they were the black plague and you're a medieval peasant with a bad constitution. There's a reason games are going with in-game stores now. The companies make more money off of them that way, and they don't spend as much time on the actual game, trying to make it fun. No, it's all about maximizing profit for minimal input. Companies do not care if you get burned, since there's 50 other people who aren't as bright as you who are going to get fooled.
At least until we all start paying attention, and let them know we aren't as dumb as they think we are.
I hope that happens soon. I'm tired of getting burned.
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