Fundertaker
El Dandy
Hideo Kojima should direct every ending ever!
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Post by Fundertaker on Feb 14, 2019 7:03:57 GMT -5
'sides, Konami is Konami, and Konami is the worst. Err, was the worst. They still suck, but as we've seen, the bar has been lowered considerably. Heck, Jim Sterling actually kinda praised them recently.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Feb 14, 2019 7:06:29 GMT -5
'sides, Konami is Konami, and Konami is the worst. Err, was the worst. They still suck, but as we've seen, the bar has been lowered considerably. Heck, Jim Sterling actually kinda praised them recently. Yup, which prompted that. Konami's a very weird company to try to predict, given I was pretty surprised they even bothered with the SOTN remaster or allowing so much for Smash, but I guess maybe they're putting in a token effort lately.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 7:32:31 GMT -5
Gonna try to be as vague as possible given board rules, but I very much recommend watching Jim Sterling's recent Jimquisition on this topic (not the one linked in the OP). As he says in that video, this sort of behavior from Activision-Blizzard is a feature, not a bug, of the society we live in, and more people realizing that is the only way things are gonna' change.
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Post by SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman on Feb 14, 2019 11:14:12 GMT -5
How is calling EA exactly what it is "whining and entitled"? It does exactly the same kind of stuff as Activision-Blizzard, only somehow worse. EA is the king of buying smaller companies, draining them to the bone, having them make games that gets them record profits, and then firing everyone once they've outlived their usefulness. On top of that, they basically constantly harass and humiliate employees, and they exploit addictive behaviour and mental manipulation on consumers. You know what's really "whiny and entitled"? A multinational company that makes more money than some nations whilst virtually paying no taxes, getting cuts on what little taxes they do pay, as well as state grants, make further cash from brand deals, have the support of literally thousands of shareholders and investors, meaning they basically take zero financial risks ever since they don't spend their own money, trying to pressure entire nations into changing their laws so they can sell unsupervised gambling in the form of loot boxes, like EA did in Belgium. THAT is whiny and entitled, not calling out a greedy company for behaviour that would have had medieval lords thrown in a dungeon and forgotten about. You think that EA is worse than Monsanto, Koch, and Wells Fargo? On equal footing, I'd say. Just in different areas. Equally harmful to workers, consumers and society alike. Is Generation X going around calling Millennials entitled? I thought that was a boomer thing. GenX is a bunch of slackers. Oh I assure you, they do. And considering how many of them either run or support the companies making life Hell for Millenials...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 11:33:29 GMT -5
Presumably the money needed for the huge settlement they'll have to give Booker T.
Trying to bring humour to a totally crap situation.
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Dr. T is an alien
Patti Mayonnaise
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I've been found out!
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Post by Dr. T is an alien on Feb 14, 2019 11:57:04 GMT -5
I don’t pay that much attention to the gaming industry. Can I sssume Activision and Blizzard merged recently? If so, then I would not be surprised to see the company split in two with all of the valuable assets in one company and all of the debt in the other one. The debt laden company declares bankruptcy and the owners of the other company now own a company rich in intellectual assets and debt free. Mind you, the debtors and the employees get screwed every time that happens (it’s a favorite strategy of hedge funds), but no one gets in the way of making profits.
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Spider2024
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Post by Spider2024 on Feb 14, 2019 14:07:46 GMT -5
Presumably the money needed for the huge settlement they'll have to give Booker T. Trying to bring humour to a totally crap situation. ...MMM!
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on Feb 14, 2019 14:10:15 GMT -5
I don't follow gaming industry news and even I heard about this. Not a good look and I feel bad for the folks that have to scramble to get back on their feet.
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Post by Cyno on Feb 14, 2019 14:16:28 GMT -5
I don’t pay that much attention to the gaming industry. Can I sssume Activision and Blizzard merged recently? If so, then I would not be surprised to see the company split in two with all of the valuable assets in one company and all of the debt in the other one. The debt laden company declares bankruptcy and the owners of the other company now own a company rich in intellectual assets and debt free. Mind you, the debtors and the employees get screwed every time that happens (it’s a favorite strategy of hedge funds), but no one gets in the way of making profits. Activision and Vivendi's video games publisher subsidiary (which included Blizzard, Sierra, and a few other studios) merged in 2008 to form Activision Blizzard. Blizzard itself maintained its autonomy in the merger from Activision proper though it's been gradually chipped away at. Vivendi was also the majority stockholder at first though now the company is wholly separate from Vivendi proper.
There are no issues with debt with this company. If anything the company's been growing at an unsustainable rate for years and just posted record profits before the layoffs were announced. The problem is that in spite of shattering sales records, it didn't meet absurd projections set by the ActiBlizzard executives and expected to be met by their shareholders. The problem isn't that they're not doing well. The problem is that the greedy f***s in charge only care about making more and more and more in the short term without any consideration for long-term health of the company or how it treats its employees or customers. And if it ever gets to a case where the company does get in serious trouble, the people responsible for this mess will be just fine with their multi-million dollar golden parachutes while everyone else suffers.
And they aren't alone in the industry. It's why I think an industry crash will happen in the not-too-distant future because that's the way the market works. And it will be a true industry-wide crash as opposed to the Atari crash in the 80's that really only affected console games as Atari WAS the console industry at the time (arcades and computer gaming were doing just fine). Things are going to come back down to Earth and because of the way these "Triple A" publishers operate, instead of being prepared for that, they'll crash and burn.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 14, 2019 17:36:19 GMT -5
I don’t pay that much attention to the gaming industry. Can I sssume Activision and Blizzard merged recently? If so, then I would not be surprised to see the company split in two with all of the valuable assets in one company and all of the debt in the other one. The debt laden company declares bankruptcy and the owners of the other company now own a company rich in intellectual assets and debt free. Mind you, the debtors and the employees get screwed every time that happens (it’s a favorite strategy of hedge funds), but no one gets in the way of making profits. Activision and Vivendi's video games publisher subsidiary (which included Blizzard, Sierra, and a few other studios) merged in 2008 to form Activision Blizzard. Blizzard itself maintained its autonomy in the merger from Activision proper though it's been gradually chipped away at. Vivendi was also the majority stockholder at first though now the company is wholly separate from Vivendi proper.
There are no issues with debt with this company. If anything the company's been growing at an unsustainable rate for years and just posted record profits before the layoffs were announced. The problem is that in spite of shattering sales records, it didn't meet absurd projections set by the ActiBlizzard executives and expected to be met by their shareholders. The problem isn't that they're not doing well. The problem is that the greedy f***s in charge only care about making more and more and more in the short term without any consideration for long-term health of the company or how it treats its employees or customers. And if it ever gets to a case where the company does get in serious trouble, the people responsible for this mess will be just fine with their multi-million dollar golden parachutes while everyone else suffers.
And they aren't alone in the industry. It's why I think an industry crash will happen in the not-too-distant future because that's the way the market works. And it will be a true industry-wide crash as opposed to the Atari crash in the 80's that really only affected console games as Atari WAS the console industry at the time (arcades and computer gaming were doing just fine). Things are going to come back down to Earth and because of the way these "Triple A" publishers operate, instead of being prepared for that, they'll crash and burn.
Decent chance we'll see something similar in Hollywood, though the movie industry will be more equipped to adjust; the world of "we need to sell 5 million copies of this game/this movie hast o gross over $1 billion/etc." is strangling the "middle class" of both industries, leading to a dearth of mid-tier games and films, many of which help to undergird those industries when things go south. Hell, it'll probably happen with pro sports, too: when the cable bubble pops or changes into a form unfamiliar to what it looks like today, those ticket prices that are 50% higher than they were just 10 years ago might not help so much.
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Post by Cyno on Feb 14, 2019 17:49:36 GMT -5
Amazingly enough, the console producers themselves, while they'll take an indirect hit from lost third-party game sales on their consoles, will probably come out of this fine because they aren't beholden to the same short-term expectation trap the third party AAA publishers are. Because they make console hardware and have to develop new tech, they're forced to take a more long-term view of the market.
Also helps that all three tend to stay away from the most blatant anti-consumer practices like lootboxes and microtransactions, though they're not saints in this area (see: Sony's recent controversy with locking Fortnite accounts to Sony consoles to lockdown cross-platform play).
These days also make me miss the likes of Satoru Iwata, the former president and CEO of Nintendo. When the Wii U was struggling, rather than shift blame and layoffs on his employees, he took sole responsibility and cut his own salary substantially. People like him are one in a million, sadly and the industry is a lesser place with his death.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Feb 14, 2019 17:56:31 GMT -5
Modern capitalism is built on the delusion that infinite growth is possible and anything less than that is a failure that should be corrected, usually through bloodletting, firing the people who make the things that make the money.
Game studio employees need to unionise if there's even so much as a rumour that EA or Activision are sniffing around.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 23:47:51 GMT -5
Couldn't Activision point to something like Sears and say they're cutting costs now before they lose money in the future?
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Feb 15, 2019 3:51:15 GMT -5
Couldn't Activision point to something like Sears and say they're cutting costs now before they lose money in the future? They could, but Sears had much bigger issues than not meeting unrealistic sales predictions. Sears was intentionally being mismanaged, had an outdated business model and was in a field that was declining, while Activision is in a booming field, had a business model that works, had no big budget failures, the problem was they told investors they'd sell millions more copies of their latest franchise update of their tripleA game, based on nothing but the management thinking they should. Nothing about this justifies cutting anyone below boardroom level, but this gives the illusion of fixing a problem that doesn't really exist.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2019 4:17:30 GMT -5
Couldn't Activision point to something like Sears and say they're cutting costs now before they lose money in the future? They could, but Sears had much bigger issues than not meeting unrealistic sales predictions. Sears was intentionally being mismanaged, had an outdated business model and was in a field that was declining, while Activision is in a booming field, had a business model that works, had no big budget failures, the problem was they told investors they'd sell millions more copies of their latest franchise update of their tripleA game, based on nothing but the management thinking they should. Nothing about this justifies cutting anyone below boardroom level, but this gives the illusion of fixing a problem that doesn't really exist.
Ah yeah. Activision should just do a hiring freeze and get rid of people by attrition instead (as in wait for people to quit/get themselves fired and do not replace them). They could probably get rid of 775 people in a few years that way anyway. Like maybe try to find workers who are getting ready to leave soon anyway and speed it up for them, or do that thing and offer $50K to anyone that wants to quit to trim the payroll that way.
If I were president or whatever of Activision I'd be like "OK guys, here we go, 775 people gotta go, you have until January 1, 2022 to get another job, the sooner you leave our company the bigger your severance package will be. So if 775 of you can get out there and find another job we'll save the trouble of having to fire people in 2022. You can even use company time to send resumes and take PTO for job interviews. Thank you."
Isn't that a better approach? I hate this idea of just pulling the rug out from under people's feet, yet I respect that a company should have the right to define the size of its workforce.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Feb 15, 2019 4:29:51 GMT -5
I'm glad that Square Enix and some other developers have reached out to try to hire some of those laid off, not unlike when Telltale died. No way is it going to entirely pick up the slack, but every bit counts in a situation like this, especially for the people who had to move cross-country, or even one case where I saw someone at risk of being deported because of it.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Feb 15, 2019 4:59:54 GMT -5
They could, but Sears had much bigger issues than not meeting unrealistic sales predictions. Sears was intentionally being mismanaged, had an outdated business model and was in a field that was declining, while Activision is in a booming field, had a business model that works, had no big budget failures, the problem was they told investors they'd sell millions more copies of their latest franchise update of their tripleA game, based on nothing but the management thinking they should. Nothing about this justifies cutting anyone below boardroom level, but this gives the illusion of fixing a problem that doesn't really exist. Ah yeah. Activision should just do a hiring freeze and get rid of people by attrition instead (as in wait for people to quit/get themselves fired and do not replace them). They could probably get rid of 775 people in a few years that way anyway. Like maybe try to find workers who are getting ready to leave soon anyway and speed it up for them, or do that thing and offer $50K to anyone that wants to quit to trim the payroll that way. If I were president or whatever of Activision I'd be like "OK guys, here we go, 775 people gotta go, you have until January 1, 2022 to get another job, the sooner you leave our company the bigger your severance package will be. So if 775 of you can get out there and find another job we'll save the trouble of having to fire people in 2022. You can even use company time to send resumes and take PTO for job interviews. Thank you." Isn't that a better approach? I hate this idea of just pulling the rug out from under people's feet, yet I respect that a company should have the right to define the size of its workforce.
But how does that fix anything? They're laying off people who make the product across the board because they made overambitious sales predictions based on nothing but the belief all numbers should always go up by a higher percentage year on year, even when they started giving people less for their money by stripping out content, making the games less enjoyable for the benefit of the microtransaction economy. The overall product wasn't to blame, this was entirely on management decisions and they're not going to get a better selling product by making it on the cheap, it's been tried by numerous developers, it doesn't work. The remaining workforce will now have to work longer, harder without adequate compensation in many cases, with those wonderful 'crunch periods' that everyone loves, games will be released in an incomplete state more often than they already are and that isn't going to help sales in any way. They're throwing people under the bus because they promised their investors the moon on a stick, cutting staff is a dick move and a distraction.
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