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Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

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21–30 of 370 posts

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#21
post #3

Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative.

> Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative. The most profitable franchises have not done this. It's all timesinks, pay-to-win, and microtransactions.

The maximization of profit over everything else is the cause of much suffering.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#23
Did you know there is a market for pre-war steel? This is steel manufactured before 1945 that is uncontaminated by radionuclides:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

There will soon be a market for pre-microtransactions games.

Also: I used to hate on the casino industry for using the term “gaming” to euphemistically refer to gambling, but now they’re not so different so I’ll let them have that one.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#24
post #5

FTA: ... "they tuned their compulsion loop" ... We've done it folks. We've found business models far shadier than standard issue surveillance capitalism. This whole attention economy thing is just so unbelievably gross. The only things lower on the moral totem pole these days are cryptocurrency scams and the really shady/exploitative side of the porn industry.

“Compulsion loop” definitely needs to go in the hall of fame of dystopian phrases.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#25
The full quote for context:

> Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.

Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an idiot, just that there are some in that group of people. And personally, I greatly prefer this sort of frank talk to run-of-the-mill generic PR speak that usually comes from CEO interviews.

The next thing he says in the interview:

> I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#27
post #25

The full quote for context: > Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots. Their CEO is certainly not calling everyone an…

He's saying every game needs to be an MTX riddled nightmare to be successful. As a gamer I reject that and have been with my wallet for a while. There are hundreds of dev teams producing great stuff below the AAA level that only ask me to buy the game once not every day.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#28
I knew I remembered the name John Riccitiello from somewhere as a dumbass. And it turns out, it's 1997 to 2004 and 2007 to 2013 at Electronic Arts. The two periods known as the absolute worst times in terms of quality and scumbaggery when it comes to monetization of games for EA. Oh, and also as someone who was fired because EA was bleeding out money, fucked up not one but four consecutive high profile game launches and was in litigation with about half of its studios.

Thanks John, but I seem to have a slight idea at who the fucking idiot in the room might be, unfortunately, you're failing upwards.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#29
post #17

This seems like a click bait title to me, he "technically" uses those words, but the article seems a lot more sensible to me than inflammatory. We should definitely be thinking through sales/marketing when building games just like we do when building software. Not sure why you wouldn't be. Edit to add: This rings true even when you decide "not a priority this time", that's still thinking it through

Counterpoint: Minecraft did essentially zero marketing and is monetized only in the sense that you need an account to log in (which is easily bypassed for single player) and it was/is the biggest and most valuable game of all time.

Re: Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO

#30
post #3

Or, you know, invested in building games where people retrospectively assess their time spent with the game as enriching rather than exploitative.

That's nice and all but it'll be the last thing your studio does if you didn't think about monetization. Why is "have a business model" so controversial?
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