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by krimskrams
802 days ago
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What do you think about the other side of the video game industry where games are distributed digitally? Most PC games nowadays are distributed this way and even consoles are moving in this direction too. There is so much more to it than just aligning marketing and distribution with the development cycle. Time and time again, news breaks out about terrible working conditions and crunch culture being so ingrained and standard in this industry. Many cases come from studios that mainly distribute their games digitally. So many AAA titles nowadays are released half-finished, broken and rushed for the sake of meeting next quarter's quotas at the expense of the company's employees mental health (Ubisoft for instance), and in some cases, their lives (Activision Blizzard). The fact that some developers are unjustly taking heat, blame and pressure from their own playerbase is not the saddest part. Video game journalists are disincentivised from talking about it from fear of being blacklisted. I find that looking at it from the traditional brick-and-mortar perspective misses a dark side of this industry that is often entirely ignored, or treated as an open secret. Crunch can be avoided. Nintendo and Mojang have delayed releases to avoid crunch, yet one of the two also deals with physical retail copies. This is a management/investor pressure/culture/people issue. |
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As someone that has done work for indie studios, you very much still have to align marketing and distribution with the development cycle with online marketplaces. Shelf-space and shelf-life aren't any less real because they are virtual - if anything, they're scarcer resources. Anyone who's actually sold things online can attest to this; customers' patience and attention spans are horrendously short. Not making it into the first page of results can be a straight-up death sentence for a project.