TKO Creations

I want to say this first; I would, by the colloquial definition of the term, be a “gamer” myself.  So as I unload here, I do so knowing that I am a part and contributor to this environment.

I write this in the aftermath of the revelations of extreme “crunch” (for the non-gamers among my readers, it’s overtime in the same way that Hafthor Bjornsson is a weight-lifter) at Rockstar Games as they pushed to make the publishing deadline for their latest title, Red Dead Redemption 2.

Now, the extreme levels of crunch that R* demanded of its developers earned itself a great deal of flack and scorn from a broad swath of gamers… who then promptly rushed out on release day and rewarded the company for the abuse of their developers by buying the game “Day 1” by the truckload.

Because publishers know that gamers’ words of support for developers are emptier than John Stumpf’s soul.  Publishers will continue to abuse their developers without any real concern of reprisal because they know damn well by now that given the choice between actually supporting developers, or beating them like mules to get their games five months earlier, that gamers would crack that whip themselves if they had the opportunity.

Because gamers are what’s wrong with gaming.  We are the Patient Zero of all of the industry’s problems.  Every single terrible, predatory, abusive behavior on the part of publishers and studio management can be directly Point A to Point B traced to some shitty behavior or actions on the part of the industry’s consumers.

Publishers impose crunch because they know the absolute biggest sin for gamers is to delay a title.  Hell, we live in a society where a reporter got threatened because he reported a potential delay.  That dude was only the fuckin’ messenger.  What do ya think happens to developers of a delayed game?

And before that, what was the big source of outrage before Rockstar’s “crunch” controversy?  Lootboxes and other microtransactions bilking us of our money.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  It is predatory bullshit.  It is disgusting how much money they are making basically selling the equivalent of e-lottery tickets that you (mostly) can’t actually get any monetary winnings on.

But at the end of the day, this mess is the direct result of gamers repeatedly losing their shit every single time the industry tried to raise cover prices, and as such publishers decided they needed to get creative to get the profits they were looking for.  And now that they are making more money than half of the world’s nations, suddenly they don’t need to raise prices.

Good job, us.  All because we couldn’t accept that $60 in 1990 wasn’t the same as $60 in 2010.  We sure showed them!

Hell, we are a community so entitled that we have people comfortable enough to suggest without irony that laid-off developers for a studio that wasn’t even going to honor the contracts they had with those employees should work for fucking free to finish the game.

And don’t even get me started on the culture of toxicity that makes gaming or game developing as a woman such a unique hell that Dante Alighieri, if he were still alive, would have felt compelled to wedge it somewhere between his sixth and seventh circle.

And yes, I’m sure that these latter examples are all “minorities” of the community.  But ya know what isn’t?  The millions upon millions of people who despite knowing about people being worked up to “100 hours” for months on end still said, “But… my games…” and made Rockstar’s management a whole ton of bonuses.

Because we are the problem, and I’m kinda tired of hearing us claim we care about solutions.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2018 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Grumblings with tags crunch, Gamers, Gaming, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.