Alanah Pearce: The games industry is screwed 2.0

Yes this time she research and left her leftist views behind. By the way I hope Alana will have a collab with Sydney Sweeney , or for her to invite her for interview and be a guest since Sydney is also into gaming. 😁
Yessss. Both starring in a remake of Night Trap or one of those other interactive movie games from the 90s
 
Video gaming as a whole is screwed. Other media categories (movie theatre, concert, Netflix fees, etc.) have adjusted for inflation while game prices haven't.
1992 games adjusted for inflation: Mortal Kombat, NBA and Street Fighter all sold for $157, Mario Paint for $134, Spider Man and Monopoly for $123.
Since 1992 the cost of making games has skyrocketed while the games themselves sell for a fraction of what they sold for.
The model is fundamentally broken - there should be a modern console selling games at a higher price than 1992 games.
Gaming as a whole is still selling American Coffee for 50¢ to the largest audience possible and we have no Starbucks selling games at $5+.


The audience is much larger nowadays so they don't need to charge these stupid prices to be profitable.

The inflation argument is bullshit, since the cost of living is so much worse today than twenty years ago. People don't earn enough money to pay those prices for videogames. That was possible in the past, not today.
 
The audience is much larger nowadays so they don't need to charge these stupid prices to be profitable.
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This isn't some crazy insider knowledge leaked by a secret informer. It's based on some industry report that I feel has been public for months now.

It should be obvious by looking around that social media and video content is holding people's attention more than gaming. Even "gaming" sites like twitch are dominated by "react" streamers who have the most moronic rage inducing opinions on video content that anyone who isn't addicted to eating trash could very safely ignore in a way that would be a net benefit to their lives.
 
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For those of you losers who still want the actual video from the thread title, here it is:




What. A. Bunch. Of. Brain-Dead. Alarmist. Claptrap.

First obvious point; if you ask a bunch of investors what matters to them is pretty fucking obviously going to be maximizing return on investment.

So, the entire premise is faulty because its essentially making the case that the industry is entirely dependent upon publicly traded companies for funding. Which really isn't the case, and has only become an issue in recent years due to massive consolidation. Remember when people like me were banging on about why consolidation is terrible no matter who's doing it? This precisely is why - if your performance targets are pegged to expectations set for the corporate whole, you can over-perform and still be considered a failure.

Its also worth pointing out that for platform holders, they don't have the luxury of being able to slash investment when the cornerstone of their entire business model is software driving hardware driving ecosystem sales and services! Unless you think Sony are going to trash Playstation to get into the social media business... they need to maintain investment, just diversify their portfolio into areas considered most likely to show growth to keep investors happy.

The biggest lie I see being peddled here is (again) the universal adoption of engagement as the only meaningful metric of success. Social media *shockingly I know* is the top-dog on this because its entirely driven by engagement.

This however is not the same as basic viability: If a venture can demonstrate a likelihood of positive ROI, it will attract funding. Will it attract the same degree of funding as others that promise higher returns, probably not, but that's not a "doom" scenario. Mature industries don't spontaneously implode unless revenue dries up. Privately owned businesses generally don't fold while they are operating profitably... what in fact actually happens are IPO's and acquisitions by larger publicly traded corporations!

More to the point for us peons, a period of growth stagnation or contraction is not going to be perceived as disastrous by us in the same way that it'll be felt by hedge-fund managers who have tied up a shitton of the resources they control in such areas!

Without getting caught up in the weeds of the economics, it should be fairly obvious why the thesis offered by Alanah only impacts a very specific set of people.

Sure, if your small company wants funding, without having to convingly prove that its going to generate a profit, this is bad news. But the obvious question is did it actually warrant an investor to take the risk in the first place?

The obvious, unpleasant truth is that a lot of projects have been funded due to the recent bubble in growth/market value that never should have been given the green-light.
The "modern audience" never existed. They were too busy doom-scrolling or posting on social media. Meanwhile the tastes and interests of the established audience were not satisfied.

Asian projects never really bought into this, and have risen in popularity and prominence, There is an evident upswing in investment from China, Korea. Japan... but hey, let's jusr pretend that only games made and funded in the west matter... Suspiciously convenient.

Also, why would growth be expected when the entire Western industry has become mired in culture war bollocks and partisan politics? That couldn't possibly drive people away, particulartly those looking for escapism in fractious times.

Oh, and if sales overall are down why wouldn't the rise of things like Game Pass and upper tier PS+ be excluded from consideration? They are essentially storefronts just with payment deferred and indirected through subscriptions, so consider me entirely unsurprised by traffic slowing down on the actual retail side.

Oh, and one last thing. MS "smart" bet on 'everything's an Xbox' to attract more attention from developing markets is again, self evidently nonsensical. Firstly that campaign only works in a developed market that understands the perceived benefit of playing everywhere. Without extant options it isn't a differentiator. Secondly it upholds the long-standing misconception that all games are basically the same, equally suitable for play under any conditions or circumstances by the exact same audience. Thirdly, and most importantly their entire strategy requires content mills churning out stuff to comtinually refresh their service offer... more than any other business model it demands continuous investment.

I would dearly love to debate Alanah -or Mat Piscatella for that matter- on these topics, because I feel pretty confident I could thoroughly dismantle their arguments and prescriptions.
 
"Nobody wants these Live Service games." - Alanah Pearce

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ARC Raiders Godzilla ascending from the ocean.

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"Buy my narrative you dumb twats."
 
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Alanah is a terrible person. Also Marty claimed that he slept with her (and many, MANY other women in the industry) and bragged about it, when word got out that's why he was "excommunicated" from IGN lmfao 😂
 
Alanah is a terrible person. Also Marty claimed that he slept with her (and many, MANY other women in the industry) and bragged about it, when word got out that's why he was "excommunicated" from IGN lmfao 😂

I heard about some weird swinger scene going on in that industry and Marty (who had a drinking problem)
couldn't keep his mouth shut and it caused problems

Alanah (who used to live in Max Scoville's basement and was very "close" with him and his gf) said herself
"People aren't talking about what happened because it would make everyone look bad"
 
Many good (and some very obvious) points in her video, but there's a silver lining in the negative trends. Gamers vote with their wallets, and the industry will follow suit. I think we're just a couple of "Concords" away from seeing this very clearly.
Lul nah. Before it was mmo, and then moba, then lootboxes, then hero shooters, then battle royales. Now its extraction shooters. The industry will always copy paste what is the most successful trend.
 
I don't celebrate people loosing their jobs but I honestly haven't seen many layoffs at any studios that I care about and make the type of games I like. In fact most of them seem to be doing fine (hell you can add Sandfall as a new addition to the list).

Looking at only this year, nothing makes me worried that studios like Warhorse, Capcom, Hazelight, Sandfall, Koei, etc are "screwed" or we won't see new games from them.
same
 
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Lul nah. Before it was mmo, and then moba, then lootboxes, then hero shooters, then battle royales. Now its extraction shooters. The industry will always copy paste what is the most successful trend.
Yeah, I guess you're right.
But i'm never playing any games from those genres you mention and I have zero chance of playing all the great stuff coming out all the time.
Every year there's shitloads of great games coming out, no matter what's the "hot flavour of the moment-kind of games"
 
Western corporate culture is in a fucking tailspin, sure, but you can still make perfectly good, financially viable games within reasonable budgets and timeframes, if you're not wired into the corporate mainframe.
 
Yeah, I guess you're right.
But i'm never playing any games from those genres you mention and I have zero chance of playing all the great stuff coming out all the time.
Every year there's shitloads of great games coming out, no matter what's the "hot flavour of the moment-kind of games"
Its a necessary evil imo but the investors are overzealous and dont really understand the landscape thinking gamers have more than 24 hours a day to play all those doomed to fail online games. But if one GaaS hits, its a big cash injection to other games getting pitched and made.

Without Apex Legends we would not have gotten Dead Space Remake or Split Fiction. Without Fortnite, Alan Wake 2 or that next Fumito Ueda game could not have gotten the funding etc.
 
The audience is much larger nowadays so they don't need to charge these stupid prices to be profitable.
The inflation argument is bullshit, since the cost of living is so much worse today than twenty years ago. People don't earn enough money to pay those prices for videogames. That was possible in the past, not today.
On a per-hour basis some games (Rockstar, Atlus, Bethesda, etc.) are the cheapest form of AAAA entertainment known to man.
When PS moves to a system where every game is permanently licensed at the PSN level (E.g., Steam) studios with PS exclusive games will be able to charge more without losing sales to 2nd hand resale.
PSN adopting a 2hr return policy will enable massive PS exclusive games (GTA, Persona, Elder Scrolls, etc.) to charge more than standard sized games.
 
The truth is, if you measure using solely man-hours of labour involved in creating a regular full-price RRP product, the difference between now and past eras shows a mind-boggling increase in cost.

Its not just team sizes either, its time-scales. The latter applying equally to so-called "indie" games which often seem to take AAA-length periods to create.
 
I heard about some weird swinger scene going on in that industry and Marty (who had a drinking problem)
couldn't keep his mouth shut and it caused problems

That is a million percent true. "Problem" is putting it lightly.

Alanah (who used to live in Max Scoville's basement and was very "close" with him and his gf) said herself
"People aren't talking about what happened because it would make everyone look bad"

Best I can say about that first part is I was unaware about any living arrangements, although in a non-weird way I wouldn't be surprised, it's extremely common for people to sleep on others' floors when they got into that industry. I did for about a month (not Max's), and I "paid it forward" after I got my own place for two others, too 🤷‍♂️
Max's gf (who I think was actually his fiance at the time and is now his wife?? - idk I haven't kept up) was very well liked though, she was friends with a couple girls and wives/gf's of a couple of the guys. I wasn't close with Max in any way but I don't have a bad thing to say about him, he was always very kind to me personally.
 
Does anyone give a shit about this woman? Maybe we should ask her on Twitter when she was formerly employed at Santa Monica Studios why they hired Kim Blackmail and her POS company, Sweet Baby Inc.? Why are developers in the United States, Canada, and a few other gaming companies in Europe forcing a disgusting form of black supremacy, anti-white, anti-heterosexual, uglification of women nonsense into games that is being universally panned by gamers everywhere? Are the DEI ESG points offered by BlackRock and Vanguard tempting enough that developers like Insomniac Games are willing to sacrifice their reputation to cater to a laughable "modern audience" that does not buy games and risk going out of business?
 
Does anyone give a shit about this woman?
Apparently some people care a lot.
Somehow this thread is now about her living arrangements and who she has or hasn't slept with and now you're suggesting we should pester her on Twitter.

I get people finding her attractive, but all this other personal shit is weird.
 
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