Red Dead Redemption 2

[PZ]

Thanks for the video, AB    Might be worth a go, but I've lost interest in the game for now. I haven't fired it up in several days.

As you guys may recall, one of the big complaints about FC2 was the time it took to travel around the rather tiny 50 square km. Imagine that travel requirement in a huge map like RDR2. Sure, you can take a train or coach to various towns and stations, but there are many times you need to travel very long distances without the fast travel benefit - becomes quite tedious after you have been on the same route a couple of times. Soon you begin to feel that the travel is not worth continuing the session.

There was also another annoying programming part of the game - once you are in a mission, you cannot save the game until said mission is completed. The problem is that some missions are really long. For example, one in which you start on a ship and are eventually castaways on an island. That mission eventually took me a couple of hours to complete. Problem is that I started the mission not knowing the time required, so part way through the mission I had to stop.  When I returned, I had to start the mission completely over - talk about nonsensical repetitive bull$hit.

[Art Blade]

oh man, that sucks

[LowPolyOWG]

Assuming you were online, the game disconnects you from a session/mission if you idle around too much. Same thing as GTA Online, missions need to be restarted and completed from scratch.

I agree with you Art. Some games are made to be grindy by nature (MMO/RPGs) while others are made grindy for you to throw money on it. As Jim Sterling asked EA DICE during their damage control AMA after the Star Wars Lootfront II debacle:

Spoiler

"They say games are too expensive to make and that's why they need season passes, DLC, deluxe editions, microtransactions, and loot boxes (to say nothing of merchandise, tax breaks, and sponsorship deals). Can you honestly tell me that a Star Wars game was too expensive to make? That you couldn't have made a Star Wars game, as in a game about Star Wars, and that it would not conceivably sell enough to make its money back without all these additional monetization strategies? Should you be in this business if you cannot affordably conduct business?"

Considering how much money the AAA companies are raking in, it's pathetic when they just can't sell complete games anymore, without trying to monetize the *bleep* out of it and still claim poverty.

[Art Blade]

yeah.

The real problem and the reason behind all this is: the inexplicable wish to turn their autonomous company into a heteronomous company. I mean, voluntarily giving away control by allowing shareholders to own parts of the company and thereby to dictate what they want from the company.

To become a public company is really not necessary for a game-developing or -distributing company.

The original idea behind shares was to fund a company that only had an idea but no capital to start. It also meant that many people could buy small shares for small money and the company would have access to the whole pot of money so they could start their business once there was enough funding. The reason to share the funding was risk management. "It may or may not w0#k," was the problem with a company that hadn't yet existed and with the money, joint capital, they could either succeed or fail. Failure was an option and no one wanted to risk all by themselves financing a company with unknown future. They needed partners to share the risk.

However, a company that actually became successful not only returned the money but returned money (according to the shares) with interest, so by buying back the shares from the shareholders, they company would stand on its own feet and those who helped them made money in the process.

Buying back is the magic that got lost due to greed which led to speculation and now all there is, is speculation. Shareholders expect to make money and they don't give a flying fart about what the company needs. Companies giving out shares are now gambling, speculating that they'd make more money than by just selling their products.

And because the shareholders are greedy and threaten to withdraw their money, companies try everything to keep them happy by increasing the share value, which means, they have to make money. And if they can't make money, they have to reduce costs.. which is what we all know is leading to cuts in budgets and letting off workers.. only so the shares are "worthwhile" for the shareholders.

That's called "shareholder interest" policy, and that's exactly the opposite of the original idea. And that, my friends, is why we get *bleep* products wherever we look.

And that's why I think the big companies so need to rethink their strategy or they will fail in the long run.

[fragger]

For example, one in which you start on a ship and are eventually castaways on an island.

Umm... That doesn't sound very Western-like

[LowPolyOWG]

Agree with you, Art Most developers are doing fine without them, look at Valve, IO Interactive and all other indie companies.

[fragger]

Excellent post Art, that's one of the best capsule summaries about the flaws of shareholding that I think I've ever read. You hit that one on the head, buddy +1

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[Art Blade]

cheers

Unfortunately, everyone with common sense seems to understand the shareholding problem EXCEPT the bosses of those public companies and their greedy shareholders.

In the end, the process is like this: employees cost too much money, let's reduce the amount of employees. Meanwhile the company is growing because the bosses tell the employees to w0#k harder. So ever fewer employees have to w0#k ever harder. Also, they have to w0#k harder because the remaining employees need to do the w0#k of those gone. The logical consequence of cutting costs like that is to reduce the amount of employees to zero. It never comes to that. Before that, the employees "burn out" and take a sick leave or cancel their contracts and the company eventually breaks down. Before it comes to that, the company will be sold for maximum profit, and the new owner will want to get more money out of it than they put into it, so more cost cuts, more employees being let off, and sold again, until the company is dissolved.

There are many examples of formerly he@lthy companies that got sold several times and then finally got liquidised. A shame, really.  Why, oh why..

[LowPolyOWG]

That happened to Telltale games. Employees were overworked to the point of illness, left the studio. Said studio fell apart, few months ago. Sadly, there is no unionization in the game developer industry and developers found it unfair how voice actors got better pay/benefits than them. At least Hollywood appears to have unions ensuring fair pay for their workers. Then you got the QA depertment where everyone is forced to w0#k unreasonable hours and fired immediately, if they don't have anything to do or get sick/tired. A QA tester for Treyarch got fired after he had a lunch break, which had the time changed and the tester wasn't notified from management.

CDPR also crunch their employees. Half the studio quit due to burnout after the development of TW3. And they are probably crunching Cyberpunk 2077. They rebooted the game constantly apparently. Basically, game development is almost equal to old times slavery. A youtube comment on a video regarding RDR2 said this: "Game so realistic it was made with 19th century working methods" As Houser apparently had the brilliant idea of bragging about "100+ hour w0#k weeks" at R*, for just developing RDR2. Even former GTA V QA testers revealed how they were locked in the office for weeks, to crunch GTA V.

Whats funny: Activision/EA/ wanted to make more money, after their developers felt ripped off at their former workspace. Quite ironic. Ubisoft was a game distributor, but they decided to craft their own w0#k after Canada offered them tax cuts. What they all do is abusing their employees and customers. CDPR abuse their workers, but not the customers. And there is no-one to hold them accountable.

Video game VA strike

[Art Blade]

I know someone who really wanted to become involved in the gaming industry. After he graduated from university, he got a job offer and was excited. After some time, maybe two years, I heard from him again. He said essentially they had been locked away, not allowed any contact to "the outer world" (including internet) for fear of leaking info, and he mentioned having had to w0#k overtime a lot. It was so frustrating that he quit working for the industry and got a job at the university where he's been teaching since.

[LowPolyOWG]

That's horrible Anyway, I dreamed of the same thing, but I have realised it's just too difficult (maths/programming) and the AAA working space is just *bleep*.

[LowPolyOWG]

So, I guess Zelnick were right about RDR2 may not be as profitable/engaging as GTA Online...

[Art Blade]

well, that was that, then *waves good-bye to RDR2 online*

From my point of view, I wasn't interested in this game to begin with. However, I followed this topic, watched some YouTube videos of the single player story (playthrough) and simply put, I wasn't impressed. At all. Then I checked some online-related vids and out of those, I remember one in particular because at the time I wanted to help PZ with his online career and found a vid that showed how to make money without glitches or cheats. I watched that vid which essentially showed hunting and skinning animals. I wasn't impressed with that, either, considering that an online game, meaning there are other players out there at the time you're looking for something you can make money with, should give you access to something like heists in GTA or those contact missions that you can play on your own in GTA. But geez, hunting? For a fistful of dollars?

All of that aside, the gaming industry represented by companies like Rockstar and Take 2 being a money-milking industry with focus on micro transactions these days, they seem to think that years of development of (then shooting star) GTAV can be copy-pasted and globally be used to add the same amount of money they make from GTAV every time they release a new game, that's nonsense and has efficiently pissed me off. I'm not the guy they make any money from and I'm no longer a guy who's willing to play *bleep* like that, regarding games with micro transactions and such.

There are Four games that I own that w0#k with DLC to buy, it's FO4, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Hitman 2 (2018) and Ride 2. Except for KCD (for now) and Hitman 2, those DLC (for FO4 and Ride 2) cost more than the base game. But it's a one time investment that enhances the gameplay if you want that and decide to buy them. By comparison, what you pay for GTA's "shark cards" (real money for game money) is ridiculous when looking at how much money you pay for the biggest shark cards that these days are worth next to nothing in-game. If you compare that to DLC you buy once, those DLC are a much better deal.

Anyway, I know there are games and companies out there that focus on quality which leads to games that almost sell by themselves because WE know what is good and spread the word.

The only game since Hitman and KCD that I've been waiting for is Cyberpunk. I have a feeling that game will be a blast.

[PZ]

I'm not playing anything right now, and RDR2 single player was reasonable. However, I judge my games on replay value, and I only did RDR2 once, and even at that, did not complete the ending. The only games I've played through more than once include FC5, and my recent favorite, AC: Origins, which I played through several times.

Because of the adventures nex has posted, I want to do Wildlands one of these days, and due to AB's posts, I'd like to do the latest Hitman.