The downfall of Gaming
17/11/2015. By Nikiforos Pingouras
Large corporation practices enforced
wrongly in the gaming community will eventually lead to the death of gaming as
we know it.
But how do I know that?
Lets have a brief discussion on based on this statement...
To begin my argument I first need to briefly explain my
previous statement. As a lifetime “fanatic” gamer I have witnessed gaming
evolve into a multibillion industry through the passing of about 20 years from
the mid 1990’s until today. The fact that gaming as a hobby has surpassed all
other hobbies and even challenges hobbies like football in many occasions means that it has
also attracted several large corporate interests that undoubtedly understood
the potential for earnings using digital games. And we’ve seen what large
corporations can do when they “invade” unfamiliar territories to them, social,
economic, humanitarian problems, crises, even wars can happen when large
companies try to invest in sectors they have no idea about, but that’s a huge
other argument for another day.
On a similar note the same has been happening for the last 10
years when it comes to gaming. The fact that gaming is a whole subculture with
different norms rules, views and preferences from the mainstream society seems
to have missed the corporate radar when they started invading gaming culture
even back in the 80’s. The need for more and more earnings with no though about
the subculture that created gaming in the first place is what has in the past
and will again in the future devastate this attempt along with some of the more
“careless” companies and unfortunately many of us gamers. Take the downfall
of ATARI in the 1980’s for example if this is not the best example of
history repeating itself then I don’t know what is. Atari had the idea to
promote an unfinished unpolished buggy game as the best game of the decade (I’m
talking about E.T. ),
that didn’t turn out to be the best marketing strategy but ATARI seemed to hope
that a good marketing campaign was enough to turn probably the worst game ever
made by them into a profitable commercial release. The millions of dumped game
cartridges that fill several landfill sites until today stand as a testimony to
bad corporation tactics. The above example along with several other failed
attempts drove the gaming community into an outrage, abandoning their love for
video games for good and turning their back on one of the most profitable game
console and video game makers of that time thus ensuring the destruction of
ATARI.
The thing that most corporations seem to forget is that
video games or in today’s terms digital games are not like any other
commercially consumed product like washing machines or televisions. Digital
games are surrounded by a very robust, caring and active community that acts
and reacts in order to ensure the well being of their favorite hobby that is
gaming. And that very community will and has reacted in attempts to negatively
change their hobby in favor of profit. The picture of negative marketing
practices has made a very firm appearance in the 21st century.
Tactics like massive marketing campaigns promoting bad and unfinished products
have made their reappearance. Worse than that, other more dastardly methods for
profit have arisen through shady attempts in “milking” the gaming community for
money, some examples being: in game micro
transactions, pre orders
and even worse paid DLC’s
for unfinished games that require players to pay in order to get the full game
off a game that was released uncompleted in many cases.
A recent example of the shady marketing practices enforced
by corporations in the field of gaming is the recent Star Wars Battlefront game were EA
charges an initial $49.99 for the
digital pre order or various other more expensive packets up to $119.98 for the full
game including TBA DLC’s and access to
online content. Taking advantage of the huge success that the marketing
campaign for the game had as well as the fact that this is a Star Wars (Star
Wars is very popular in gaming culture) game EA sough to make as much profit as
possible with ridiculous prices creating an outrage among critics[1]
although the game has not yet been released we can already see the consequences
that these “shady” practices have in the gaming industry.
Another very good example of the same type of behavior by
corporations was the recent release of the expansion for the game World of Warcraft called Warlords of Draenor.
World of Warcraft has established itself as the most played MMORPG of all
time with figures reaching well above 12 million players at its peak. After a
huge and very successful advertising campaign world of Warcraft released one of
its most expensive expansions in late 2014 at a cost of $60 it is now
remembered as the expansion of the lost potential, since the quantity and
quality of content offered were no were near that of other cheaper expansions
such as Wrath of the Lich
king or The
Burning Crusade . This decline in quality an increase in price have let to
yet another outrage in the diehard player base of World of Warcraft leading to the biggest
decline in subscription numbers since the game’s release in 2004
contributing to the slow death of one of the largest and most popular games
ever created.
Returning to my initial statement and with all the above
mentioned I firmly believe that it is only a matter of time before we see
several ATARI examples happening again, but this time with names such as EA,
Activision etc. If the careless implementation cooperative marketing continues
to infest the gaming industry we might very soon find ourselves in yet another “dark
age of gaming” (video
game crash of 1983) similar with that of the 80’s that was full of failed
attempts that eventually led to the abandonment of gaming by even the most
diehard gamers. Only this time it will be due to paid DLC’s, unfinished game
releases and incompetent PR and marketing strategies that corporations use in
an attempt to rob gamers of every penny they have.
The chart provides us with the numbers of earnings in millions from content sold by EA. As it can be very easily observed extra content is the number 1 source of money for EA.
But as ATARI forgot, they forget too, that the gaming
community and culture is alive and active and does not take lightly to shady
attempts in destroying their beloved hobby…
No comments:
Post a Comment