As fate would have it I was up at 3am. I awoke to the smell of an early burning breakfast that my father was making. It's his routine as of late. After deciding to stay up, and not go back to bed I headed straight on over to X (formerly Twitter) to raise a ruckus, to poke the bear, and see what kind of trouble I could get into. The topics of discussion did not disappoint. Had everything from Pam Bondi getting roasted over the Epstein debacle to talks about layoffs in the gaming industry, and whether or not gamers should criticize bad games.
The latter of the topics peaked my interest as a guy who understands business, and the goings on behind-the-scenes of the industry. I was quick to react and post a reply throwing my two cents worth into the gauntlet. I pointed out that Highguard's developers and publishers fell victim to the same day one sales expectations that a growing number of larger studios have adopted as their model of operation. I explained that you cannot expect great financial gain from rushed/lazy effort or an attempt to game the system for infinite financial uptick. Too often we see these publishers and studios assume that chasing trends with hopes for the monetization efforts to rake in the millions is ideal. They don't account for oversaturation, a lack of proper testing, or even a lack of understanding when it comes to the target audience and their expectations. It is this disconnect with reality that hits hardest when it does. Unless a studio is able to create a polished foundational legacy product from the get go that sells itself without the need for added monetization efforts, the prospect of continuous gain is more often than not out of the question.
Understanding all of the above and taking into consideration the real world example that is Hello Games' "No Man's Sky", one could also easily see that a failed launch isn't a death sentence unless you are so hellbent on high expectations that you fail to see a future for that project. Sometimes sticking to it, and listening to the customer feedback after you missed that first opportunity due to not listening will change the course of studio/publisher reputation and the viability of the product/game as well as future offerings.
As you can tell I'm very passionate about the topic, and for me it stems from a consumer perspective, seeing the hobby I love destroyed by greed and bad business practices. It is beyond me how these CEOs, and industry bigwigs operate without a sense of how to properly run a business. Some of them seem so invested in the money aspect that their games take a backseat of importance when it should be the other way around. There's that and the disconnect between businesses sold on selling politicized propaganda, and customers who don't want to pay for that bullsh*t. It's either greed, political bias, or outright ignorance that has led to issues like these. Whether or not they'll ever figure it out, I don't know. What are your thoughts? Is there any hope for gaming?
As far as gamer criticism is concerned if a game is bad, you don't lie or sugarcoat it and say it's good. Nothing gets fixed if you do. It all boils down to one thing, reputation. You can quote me on this ... "A good reputation sells product by itself while a focus on continuously selling cash grabs for quick gain ruins your future efforts through obvious desperation with the Midas touch of sh*t. Unless you do a 180 turn around and correct course on the failed project your reputation will be sh*t, and sh*t does not sell product."
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