Featured Image

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Players

Jay

Russell

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Show Notes

Remember when I talked about how we should ditch the gatekeepers back in April

check your podcatcher for a link

Well, it’s now time to talk about the other aspect of gatekeeping: entitlement - specifically about how some gamers feel entitled to something because they play games. As with gatekeepers, it’s all nonsense.

Series Intro

This is The Waffling Taylors Raw with Jay, a series of shorter episodes of indefinite length. These episodes will cover shorter topics which don’t really fit will within the scope of the show, or topics that I want to cover in my own way. That’s not to say that we won’t cover these topics in the main show, but I’d like to take a whack at them here, first.

I can’t guarantee that all of these shorter episodes will be as deep or technical as this one. But I wanted to start big.

Anyway, let’s get to it.

Entitlement in Gaming

There are lots of definitions of entitlement, but this is the one that I’m going to use for this episode:

the feeling that you have the right to do or have what you want without having to work for it or deserve it, just because of who you are

I’m sure that we all know someone who behaves as though they are entitled to something that they might not actually be entitled to. But this episode is all about the folks who have that sense of entitlement specifically because they are gamers.

I’m sure you’ve seen something like this in the past:

I’ve bought and played every entry in this series, and they need to make another one because I want them to

- some twitter user

If you remember the fall out from the ending of the Mass Effect trilogy, you’ll have seen this when the fans rallied round and forced EA to create a different ending to the game because they didn’t like the original. This is an example of entitlement by gamers

although there’s more to it than just that

I take the stance that games have the ability to be art, especially story-driven ones - after all, someone

or a team of someones

has to write the story, and stories are art.

There’s an argument here about whether the creator has the final say in the art that they create, or whether it should be down to the consumers of that art. But that’s for smarter people than me to talk about.

The point that I’m attempting to drive towards

and remember, all of this is my opinion

is that you aren’t entitled to anything simply because you play video games. To explain why, let’s talk about how games development companies work

Games Development Companies Are Businesses First

So, the first thing that you need to know about games development companies is that they are businesses first and foremost.

This means that they have someone

or a group of someones

overlooking almost every decision that the company makes, to ensure that they make the most profit possible.

And that’s another thing that I feel most gamers forget: almost every company on the planet aims to make as much profit for as little investment as possible. To quote my good friend Steve Worthy:

Focus on WIN: What’s Important Now?

As a side note: if you’re interested in business and how to be better at leadership, you should listen to his podcast: Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy

check your podcatcher for a link

This means that a company should always be looking at what is important now, and for the majority of games development companies it isn’t the developers, designers, and artists who decide what “important” means. That decision is made by the shareholders, whose main goal is for the company to make money. Whilst the employees of the development company might want to create the

greatest game evar!

the shareholders might want to release something as soon as possible in order to get that important injection of cash.

I hate to bring up Cyberpunk 2077, but I just did.

To be fair, that particular title had a lot of problems, the least of which was the rush to release it for Christmas 2020.

The only way that a company can turn a profit is to release products which are guaranteed to do so. This means releasing products which fit the biggest demand in the market. I’m sure you’ve all heard of Supply & Demand as part of economic theory, and since video games are a product with a market, this applies here too.

have you ever wondered why there are new licences NFL, NBA, NHL, FIFA, and other sports games each year? Demand for them means that companies like EA supply the products which fill that demand

And there’s another example of “as little investment as possible”: licensing entire leagues of sports teams, along with their logos and player likenesses is ridiculously expensive. One report from 2019 states that EA spends between $100m to $150m just for their yearly FIFA titles. So before they even start, they’re up to $150 million dollars down.

And that’s before they start paying the developers, designers, artists, testers, and licence any music for the games.

Imagine if you wanted to compete with that.

Games Development is a Global Industry

The other thing to take into account with the games development industry is that it’s a truly global industry. But even with that taken into account, a considerable number of development companies being based in the Far East. Each games development company has global sales targets, but they also have their own local targets. This means that whilst Konami, for instance, want to make as much money as possible in the global market, they know that they have a much better investment to profit ratio in Japan - where they produce a lot of pachinko machines

and pachinko is BIG business in Japan

Because of this, a lot of companies (not just games developers) release country or region specific products. The most recent example that I can think of is the Game Gear Micro.

For those unfamiliar with that, here’s a quick tl;dr

too long; didn’t read

of an article I wrote about the Game Gear Micro:

Back in the 1990s Sega released a handheld games console which was meant to rival Nintendo’s GameBoy. Where the GameBoy had a monochromatic screen using a dotmatrix display, the Game Gear used a full colour LCD screen. This meant that the Game Gear chewed through batteries in around 3 hours

if you were lucky

whereas the GameBoy could last anywhere between 10 and 30 hours on fewer batteries.

Anyway, 2020 saw the 60th anniversary of Sega; which the celebrated with a number of Japanese commercials showing the son of Segata Sanshiro - a fictional character created to advertise the Sega Saturn - going to school and using almost all of Sega’s video game accessories

I would track the commercials down, as they are quite fun to watch

Anyway, alongside this Sega where hinting that they had a big surprise for their Japanese market. This caused a number of YouTubers to theorise that it was a successor to the Dreamcast, a theory which held no water as Sega had publicly sworn off of the console market

it’s even more expensive to manufacture a console, and you take a huge hit on profits for the first two to three years of a console’s life time

Anyway, this all came to a fever pitch when Sega then announced a range of Android powered devices called Game Gear Micro. Those who had convinced themselves that the announcement would be for a DreamCast 2 where upset and began swearing off of Sega, calling for a boycott

interestingly, the loudest voice in this was back on Sega’s side a month later - controversy creates cash, I suppose

What had actually happened was that Sega had identified what they thought was a gap in the Japanese market and looked to fill it. Sometimes filling a gap in teh market can come off, and you can make lots of money; and sometimes it doesn’t. At the time of writing this episode I can’t find sales figures for the Micro, so I can’t comment on how well they did.

Check you podcatcher for a link to the article that I wrote about the Game Gear Micro.

A lot of Japanese console titles released in the 90s didn’t actually see a release in the West, because it wasn’t seen as worth the cost of translating (translating the in game text to another language), localising (changing the cultural references to one used in the target market), marketing, and shipping the games to the West. A lot of this was down to a perceived difference in gaming cultures in the West vs the Far East, once which I’ve seen first-hand: a lot of Japanese gamers that I know will actually go to an arcade in order to play the more arcade-y titles and will reserve their home gaming for more slow burn, story driven titles.

The Cost of Making Games

Games development, as with any other industry, is about risk and reward (or cost vs benefit). Most AAA titles can cost anywhere between $60m and $80m and take upwards of three years to develop, and the majority of shareholders will want as return on that initial cost immediately. It’s that metric that the majority of games development companies will use in order to decide whether it’s worth making a specific title: if a product idea isn’t going to make a lot of money, it won’t get created. It’s that simple.

With that being said, it’s often hard to estimate whether a game or series will do well in gaming, because the trends shift almost constantly. When Fortnite was released, almost no one expected it to cause the planned Unreal Tournament game of that year to be cancelled, but that’s what happened. No one could have predicted the success of titles like Among Us and Fall Guys, especially during a summer which saw Animal Crossing, Doom Eternal, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor releases.

With that being said, there are a few game genres which will always make money:

  • Sports games
  • Brown-grey shooters
  • MMORPGS

Sports fans will almost always gravitate towards the latest release fo a sports game, simply because they can keep up with the real leagues, teams, and players when they are playing those games. Brown-grey shooters (or first-person shooters) will always sell well because they have that arcade-y instant feedback feel with their over the top action. And MMORPGs will always sell well (if developed properly) because there’s a sense of community for players to attach to

listen to our discussion with John Krikorian about his journey with EverQuest for a real example

check your podcatcher for a link to that episode - specifically episode 95

If the genre of the game doesn’t fit within that list, then the chances of it selling well are not great, which means that a games development company will be less likely to put upwards of three years and $80m into developing it. That doesn’t mean that they won’t release closed betas and pass game ideas around to market researchers, or that the game in question won’t ever see the light of day, it just become less likely.

And none of that covers the cost of marketing, advertisements, endorsements, influencers, and community management.

And all of that only applies to the AAA companies. The majority of indies are more interested in creating whatever they want, often blending genres together or hyper focusing on a single genre.

Entitlement in Gaming

I didn’t want to stray too far from the imagined quote from earlier in the episode:

I’ve bought and played every entry in this series, and they need to make another one because I want them to

- some twitter user

feeling that I mentioned earlier, and wanted to use that as a way to talk about the business of video game development. Over the past decade or two, I’ve seen more and more consumers of video games

I’m actually tempted to using

communicate with development companies with a greater and greater sense of entitlement. Just because you have bought and use a product, doesn’t mean that you have a say in the future products that a company may or may not manufacture

unless, of course you are on the board at a games development company

As consumers, I feel that there is a certain lacking in compassion towards the creators of the products that we consume. Especially in relation to how fast a large percentage of consumers discarded new games for even newer ones - but that might be a problem for another rant.

And don’t get me started on:

I can’t afford it, so I want it for free

or

give me it for free, because I’m a fan!

Having seen the amount of work that goes into the majority of pieces of art (commercialised or otherwise) first hand, I would say that all creators should be paid for their works, and it’s something we believe very deeply in at the Waffling Taylors.

Anyway, that’s a story for another day.

In Closing

As I’ve said before, these shorter episodes are all my own opinions on things, and you don’t have to agree with them. But I’d be interested to hear what you think about the type of entitlement that I’ve covered here.

I genuinely believe that purchasing a product doesn’t necessarily give the consumer the right to demand more, or a change, or another for free. Games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and a company is not going to invest the time and money required to creating something if there isn’t a market for it.

Plus, having a sense of entitlement subtracts from the FUN that we’re all meant to be having when playing these games. Remember: games are meant to be a FUN way to spend some time; we should be avoiding the people who stop it from being fun.

With that being said, I’m going to go play some games, whose with me?

Russell, tell the people what to do:

missingNo's Avatar Russell

GO. PLAY

That’s it my friend.

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 12 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: