The only thing sure in life is death... and taxes.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
It is very easy to prophesize that every game is going to fail.... because it is eventually going to happen... and if you do this for every game, you are bound to be right some of the time. Then they can always reference the time that they were right (while ignoring the times that they were not). Everyone likes to be right... right?
For me, wanting a game to fail is attached to simlply disagreeing with design decisions or execution, and not wanting success to be a roadmap for future games (which it would stand to reason I would also not like!)
I too feel the same. Fail is a strong word though, maybe too strong.
I wont mince words, I feel the GW2 model is the gaming anti-christ, atleast one of the signs. I hate the business model far more than the gameplay itself.
I shudder at a future when buying gold in my mmorpg is the norm instead of the outlier. When an mmorpg is collection of games in a box without a cohesive one world design. When hype sells 2.4 million boxes at launch and solid innovative play sells less than 500k at launch. When "give me now" trumps earning an reward. When all of this is a raging sucess.
Interesting I see the buying a box, having a sub and a cash shop closer to the "anti-christ".
On topic. Its hard to want a game to fail, at most you want a certain aspect of it to be shun upon. Maybe its something in the gameplay or the price model. It could be a number of things, but wanting a game to fail is not something Ive come accross.
I think it is a cop out to reduce "wanting a game to fail" to the human factor. Yes, it is regrettable that sometimes, people are laid off. But do I have to wish every game well and pay for it so that this doesn't happen?
That's guilt-tripping me into paying for and playing games I don't want. I am not responsible for the livelihoods of game devs, sorry.
Take a look at SW: TOR. I wanted that game to be good. I pre-ordered the CE, I took leave when it came out, I was passionate about it. I even used to hang around their forums and voice productive, concise feedback to the topics I knew enough about to have an educated talk about. Only, there never was talk. There ever only was monologue.
And I'm not saying that I'm special and that BW should have done what I said. But there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people on their forums mirroring my sentiments about concerns with the game.
Bioware did not listen, and ultimately, this is (part of) why SW: TOR is now going f2p. Because yes, we are not game designers for the most part. But we are gamers. We usually know what works or doesn't work in our hobby. And as showcased in that Wilson/Brevik stunt: The industry detaches itself more and more from the common gamer.
And that leaves the 'informed decision' when I 'want' a game to fail to a simple check: Do I want the characteristics of that game to be perpetuated in the industry?
Take a look at WoW (imo a great game in its time) and what it has done to the industry as a whole. Sometimes I wish that WoW hadn't been so successful - I think we would have a few more interesting MMORPGs to play instead of one uninspired WoW-alike after the other.
Also think about the working conditions of developers. Brevik in his infamous interview hinted at it: Being a game developer nowadays means that you either have success or you get replaced. Is that a climate we want to foster?
Good games like the chronicles of spellborne, Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa were wayy before their time and people called for their heads all the time.. Seeing those games shut down and all those jobs liquidated helps no one.. Not the industry, not the genre, not the consumers.. It only further helps the guy with the big wallet realize that MMO's are NOT the future and cannot be dependant on support from its fans (SWTOR was a big check in this category because not even star wars fans could keep that game afloat, which is partly what they were relying on)
The most interesting thing here is that none of those games were anywhere near wow-clones (ok i can't really speak for MO, but the other 2 i played extensively). Both TR and TCoS were unique quality-games that got knocked out in round 1, just like many of the actual WoW-clones did. There have been a good bunch of games around since WoW, both clones and not-so-much-clones, and none of them came close to even meeting a guy who once pet a cat whose owner once saw a picture of a guy who heard a story about the throne.
The major force in play here is indeed time, and TR and TCoS where, as you say, before their time, while others were to late. You cannot dethrone WoW. It's time simply has to run out. Making 1000 wow-clones won't change that fact. Making 1000 non-WoW-clones wont change that fact. WoW had perfect timing, and that's the most important factor to it's success. Only recently is WoW truly getting old, running out of time. It will still be around for years to come, but it's starting to get sour and smell.
I think we are quite close to a shift in this little universe of ours. Tension has been building up for some time now and the bubble is about to burst. Exactly what will happen is impossible to predict. But it will happen... soon.
I certainly dont want to see any major AAA games fail mostly due to the loss of employment involved however i have become quite good at successfully predicting failure based on certain red flags surrounding both the publisher and dev alike..
MMO failure in the end cant be blamed on the gamer or the critics but can almost always be attributed to poor and or clone design principles along with better (or at least percieved as better) games that have or are releasing soon..
Times are changing and the stubborn mindset of the $15 a month dinosaur clone will only lead to extinction and perhaps if these greed first driven companies cant deliver a fully loaded worthwhile product then we will watch natural selection take its course and new gamer friendly empires arise..
Personally I don't wait for any game to fail. It's not in my nature to hold grudges when things don't work as well as I'd like in the way of game mechanics. I find it distasteful to write up long rants about the whys and wherefores when it comes to post game-play angst. When a game sucks ( and we've had some doozies lately) I only tell the game company as constructively as I can as to why I've quit. I also refuse to give attention to folk who insist on chest beating to try to get folk to agree with them. I agree with the OP, I don't think "wanting" a game or company to fail is a good thing.
Like everything else.. money talks in the end. Dev's get caught up in the end and have to decide how they will choose. Stay true to the dream or cash out.
"Stay true to the dream" sure sounds easy, if you don't have kids to feed.
All creative types get to deal with this decision, at some point. Pretty principles or a paycheck.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
For me, wanting a game to fail is attached to simlply disagreeing with design decisions or execution, and not wanting success to be a roadmap for future games (which it would stand to reason I would also not like!)
I too feel the same. Fail is a strong word though, maybe too strong.
I wont mince words, I feel the GW2 model is the gaming anti-christ, atleast one of the signs. I hate the business model far more than the gameplay itself.
I shudder at a future when buying gold in my mmorpg is the norm instead of the outlier. When an mmorpg is collection of games in a box without a cohesive one world design. When hype sells 2.4 million boxes at launch and solid innovative play sells less than 500k at launch. When "give me now" trumps earning an reward. When all of this is a raging sucess.
Your hate for GW2 obviously stems from resentment. Because you believe TSW should have gotten the popularity GW2 has.
Simply put: People love to see suffering and pain as a form of amusement. If somebody is not failing, we are not succeeding.
I am not claiming everyone who dislikes a game to be a psycho, not by a long shot. But those who find the pain, misery and suffering of others delightful and lack the emotional ability to place themselves in a sympathetic role in regards to that pain and misery, need to start thinking about their psyche profile. It's not healthy.
MMO financial success determines the future of MMO design so why would anyone wish success on a game design, system or mechanics they don't like only to see more of them in the future?
I'd like to see all Themeparks die a horrible death personally.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Wanting MMOs to fail is about as cool as wanting the neighbors kid to forget his lines and start crying on stage during the school play. Way to go champ.
If you aren't rooting for success, just shut up and keep flipping yourself off in the mirror each morning you douche...
Here is a good example, headline on the page, TERA $14.99 until Aug 28th? WTF? The game does not even rate a subscription let alone actually buying it. The game fits the f2p mold and until the developers face that reality, they deserve the scorn they are getting.
SWTOR, another example of an extremely overhyped game that failed miserably to live up to expectations. Sorry for those that failed to see that, but it was quite obvious to many of us it was a very badly designed game.
As long as developers continue to generate these boring theme park designs that offer little or no continuity for continued play, why would anyone want them to succeed? Why reinforce what is recognized as a bad design?
Wow this is pathetic. First of all if you want to work in an industry the world does not need, then this is what you face. Secondly if the game is crap then tell the world about it, do not cover it up for others to find out on thier own. Third if your going to produce crap games then you already know your going to catch heat.
This is freaking video games not life or death!!!!
Want to give a shout out to Swtor for sucking too btw
People want MMO's to fail because of obvious stupid decisions in which they deserve to fail. If I could push a button that made every themepark WoW clone fail for the next hundred years I would push it but luckily they are tanking without me.
Games with overly greedy business models deserve to fail. Games that ignore the playerbase deserve to fail. Games with endgame as an afterthought deserve to fail. Games lacking smooth gameplay at launch deserve to fail. etc. etc.
The above reasons are why pretty much every MMO after WoW has failed. Until these companies start truly thinking for themselves they are doomed to chase 5% of WoW's market and even failing in that regard.
And No, games like Tera having a unique combat system and almost every other aspect of the game is a bad WoW imitation does not count as innovation. You can tell if a company is trying to clone WoW with a single screenshot nowadays, that's how bad it is and yes GW2 is a part of this.
There are valid reasons for wanting a game to fail.
Let's say an MMO is made of your favorite ip, but you think the game sucks. You know that the only way to get another shot at your favorite ip being made into a better game is if the current one fails.
Let's say there are trends or dynamics you feel are ruining MMO's, like heavy instancing, focusing on singleplayer storytelling to the detriment of community. You know that they only way for these trends to go away are if the games using them fail.
It is tough to bash a game where you know developers are hard at work.
Rift for example I don't agree with the tenancy to copy everything in existence without thinking for themselves but man do they know how to code and pump out content. I love the dev team over there and I want them to succeed because there is a chance in the future they may grow a pair and do something innovative and new and if they did it would be crazy.
However because of the bandwagon jumping bunch of companies we have making games for us you have to be loud and clear about games that represent stagnation and backwards movement. SWTOR was the final nail in the coffin of out and out wow clones. It is a shining representation of what people do not want in this day and age.
If there wasn't people trashing games the developers would keep on thinking there was nothing wrong and they would keep making these safe crappy wow clones if we let them.
For me, wanting a game to fail is attached to simlply disagreeing with design decisions or execution, and not wanting success to be a roadmap for future games (which it would stand to reason I would also not like!)
Yup, it's essential to how the free market works. As a consumer, you generaly don't want a business which you believe isn't serving your intrests well to succeed...or at least to suceed wildly as that means you will see more and more of those business on the market, which limits your individual choice. This would normaly not be so much of an issue, if it were not for the "lemming effect" which seems to have held the MMO market in it's grips for the past decade or so. In most areas of commerce, the desire to emulate successfull products/competitors is counter-blanced by the desire to significantly differentiate yourself from your competition and capture market share in DIFFERENT audience segments that are currently being underserved. This helps to create a healthy variety of offerings for the consumer (and consumers of different tastes). Thus McDonalds is different from Outback Steakhouse, which in turn is different from the Pizza joint on the corner, which in turn is different from that fancy 4 star restaurant you took your wife to for her birthday. The consumer isn't generaly particularly invested in seeing any one offering that they dislike fail, as that won't significantly increase thier opportunity to see more offerings suited to thier preferences. The market is already wide enough to represent well a wide variety of consumer tastes and preferences. For some reason the MMO market has not emulated the healthy variety that exists in so many other sectors of commerce. Although it's a significantly large industry and even rather crowded...there seems to have been a very limited and narrow range of offerings. Most offerings for the past decade, and certainly those given significant capital backing have followed and extremely narrow formula, with relatively minor variations in detail. This leads to many consumers feeling, with justification, that they have little to no offerings targeted to serving thier preferences. It is only natural, therefore, for such consumers to want to see yet another iteration of the same formula fail, in the hopes that publishers might finally begin to realize that particular market segment is over-saturated and breakaway from the formula to offer something substantialy different which might appeal to those currently under-served audiences. This is neither spitefull nor akin to the desire to see traffic accidents. It's a simple, realistic understanding of how free market economies work on the part of consumers who are currently disatisfied. In many way's, the industry has actualy brought this situation upon itself, whether consciously or unconsciously. YMMV.
Originally posted by Paradigm68 There are valid reasons for wanting a game to fail. Let's say an MMO is made of your favorite ip, but you think the game sucks. You know that the only way to get another shot at your favorite ip being made into a better game is if the current one fails. Let's say there are trends or dynamics you feel are ruining MMO's, like heavy instancing, focusing on singleplayer storytelling to the detriment of community. You know that they only way for these trends to go away are if the games using them fail.
Pretty much this.
And also to the companies that make incomplete/shallow/crappy/the-same-game-over-and-over, I have no guilt about hoping they go under too.
Why?
Because that is the way the market works. Make a "bad product"? Work for a badly run company? Get punished.
The alternative is for MMO and other comp game consumers to keep buying bad/mediocre games encouraging these companies to put out the same crap ad infinitum and think it is ok. And it makes no sense: "I am going to buy this mediocre/bad/incomplete product just to support some company?" In what other industry would people think that way?
And that is EXACTLY what has been wrong with the MMO genre the last 6-8 years. People buying "meh" games with crap/shallow/copied design from developers/pubishers that put in the minimum effort and then patch hard for 6 months (because the game was not ready to go at launch - again, in what other industry would that be acceptable?).
The days when devs/pubs cared about "making good games" is long over. It is no longer hobbists that started programing in their basement that designing games these days. It is midsize and large companies (and their suits) that dictate design, and they care about the money, first, last, and in between. That's it.
No. Enough.
More game and company failures are exactly what the industry need if there is any hope of a turn around in the MMO space.
(And as an aside, don't feel too much guilt about "all those poor devs" that get "laid off": in the MMO/game industry, that is the norm. People work on a game, it goes out, project over, time to look for the next thing. Getting canned out of a crap company because they put out a crap game is not much different.)
Originally posted by Paradigm68 There are valid reasons for wanting a game to fail. Let's say an MMO is made of your favorite ip, but you think the game sucks. You know that the only way to get another shot at your favorite ip being made into a better game is if the current one fails. Let's say there are trends or dynamics you feel are ruining MMO's, like heavy instancing, focusing on singleplayer storytelling to the detriment of community. You know that they only way for these trends to go away are if the games using them fail.
Pretty much this.
And also to the companies that make incomplete/shallow/crappy/the-same-game-over-and-over, I have no guilt about hoping they go under too.
Why?
Because that is the way the market works. Make a "bad product"? Work for a badly run company? Get punished.
The alternative is for MMO and other comp game consumers to keep buying bad/mediocre games encouraging these companies to put out the same crap ad infinitum and think it is ok. And it makes no sense: "I am going to buy this mediocre/bad/incomplete product just to support some company?" In what other industry would people think that way?
And that is EXACTLY what has been wrong with the MMO genre the last 6-8 years. People buying "meh" games with crap/shallow/copied design from developers/pubishers that put in the minimum effort and then patch hard for 6 months (because the game was not ready to go at launch - again, in what other industry would that be acceptable?).
No. Enough.
More game and company failures are exactly what the industry need if there is any hope of a turn around in the MMO space.
(And as an aside, don't feel too much guilt about "all those poor devs" that get "laid off": in the MMO/game industry, that is the norm. People work on a game, it goes out, project over, time to look for the next thing. Getting canned out of a crap company because they put out a crap game is not much different.)
Yep...I agree. I think that this column more or less ignores the actual valid reasons for wanting a game to fail, and instead paints folks who want anything to fail as sadistic, heartless bastards who only get off on the misery of others.
I will admit that I wanted SWTOR to "fail" as in not become the next big thing. But my reasons for this has nothing to do with taking enjoyment out of the misery of others, in fact I am really sad for all the folks who lost their job. On the contrary, my reasons for wanting SWTOR to fail have everything to do with the simple fact that success is imitated.
If SWTOR turned out to be a great success, then it would basically ensure that many future MMORPGs would follow its example of extremely heavily sharded zones, focus on single player aspects of the game like story, and near carbon-copy WoW combat. I didn't want this to happen, so yes, I wanted SWTOR to fail.
Also...just about everyone here will point out that if you don't want a game company to do horrible practice X, then you should stop buying their games and speak with your wallet. No one would disagree with this right?
But what do you think the end result of this is? If everyone actually does do this, then guess what? The company's game fails and people get laid off! It's sad, but it's true. It's naive to think that losers aren't necessary in a free market system.
Comments
Lets combine a few good phrases:
The only thing sure in life is death... and taxes.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
It is very easy to prophesize that every game is going to fail.... because it is eventually going to happen... and if you do this for every game, you are bound to be right some of the time. Then they can always reference the time that they were right (while ignoring the times that they were not). Everyone likes to be right... right?
Interesting I see the buying a box, having a sub and a cash shop closer to the "anti-christ".
On topic. Its hard to want a game to fail, at most you want a certain aspect of it to be shun upon. Maybe its something in the gameplay or the price model. It could be a number of things, but wanting a game to fail is not something Ive come accross.
I think it is a cop out to reduce "wanting a game to fail" to the human factor. Yes, it is regrettable that sometimes, people are laid off. But do I have to wish every game well and pay for it so that this doesn't happen?
That's guilt-tripping me into paying for and playing games I don't want. I am not responsible for the livelihoods of game devs, sorry.
Take a look at SW: TOR. I wanted that game to be good. I pre-ordered the CE, I took leave when it came out, I was passionate about it. I even used to hang around their forums and voice productive, concise feedback to the topics I knew enough about to have an educated talk about. Only, there never was talk. There ever only was monologue.
And I'm not saying that I'm special and that BW should have done what I said. But there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people on their forums mirroring my sentiments about concerns with the game.
Bioware did not listen, and ultimately, this is (part of) why SW: TOR is now going f2p. Because yes, we are not game designers for the most part. But we are gamers. We usually know what works or doesn't work in our hobby. And as showcased in that Wilson/Brevik stunt: The industry detaches itself more and more from the common gamer.
And that leaves the 'informed decision' when I 'want' a game to fail to a simple check: Do I want the characteristics of that game to be perpetuated in the industry?
Take a look at WoW (imo a great game in its time) and what it has done to the industry as a whole. Sometimes I wish that WoW hadn't been so successful - I think we would have a few more interesting MMORPGs to play instead of one uninspired WoW-alike after the other.
Also think about the working conditions of developers. Brevik in his infamous interview hinted at it: Being a game developer nowadays means that you either have success or you get replaced. Is that a climate we want to foster?
The most interesting thing here is that none of those games were anywhere near wow-clones (ok i can't really speak for MO, but the other 2 i played extensively). Both TR and TCoS were unique quality-games that got knocked out in round 1, just like many of the actual WoW-clones did. There have been a good bunch of games around since WoW, both clones and not-so-much-clones, and none of them came close to even meeting a guy who once pet a cat whose owner once saw a picture of a guy who heard a story about the throne.
The major force in play here is indeed time, and TR and TCoS where, as you say, before their time, while others were to late. You cannot dethrone WoW. It's time simply has to run out. Making 1000 wow-clones won't change that fact. Making 1000 non-WoW-clones wont change that fact. WoW had perfect timing, and that's the most important factor to it's success. Only recently is WoW truly getting old, running out of time. It will still be around for years to come, but it's starting to get sour and smell.
I think we are quite close to a shift in this little universe of ours. Tension has been building up for some time now and the bubble is about to burst. Exactly what will happen is impossible to predict. But it will happen... soon.
I certainly dont want to see any major AAA games fail mostly due to the loss of employment involved however i have become quite good at successfully predicting failure based on certain red flags surrounding both the publisher and dev alike..
MMO failure in the end cant be blamed on the gamer or the critics but can almost always be attributed to poor and or clone design principles along with better (or at least percieved as better) games that have or are releasing soon..
Times are changing and the stubborn mindset of the $15 a month dinosaur clone will only lead to extinction and perhaps if these greed first driven companies cant deliver a fully loaded worthwhile product then we will watch natural selection take its course and new gamer friendly empires arise..
Playing GW2..
Nope. I actually think it was the best ST series ever...
"Stay true to the dream" sure sounds easy, if you don't have kids to feed.
All creative types get to deal with this decision, at some point. Pretty principles or a paycheck.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Your hate for GW2 obviously stems from resentment. Because you believe TSW should have gotten the popularity GW2 has.
I am not claiming everyone who dislikes a game to be a psycho, not by a long shot. But those who find the pain, misery and suffering of others delightful and lack the emotional ability to place themselves in a sympathetic role in regards to that pain and misery, need to start thinking about their psyche profile. It's not healthy.
Scary is very scary. I was horrified to read Scary's arguments.
I get it that it takes all kinds of people to make a world and Scary lives in it. But I am ever so glad I don't have to hang out with him.
I'd like to see all Themeparks die a horrible death personally.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
If you aren't rooting for success, just shut up and keep flipping yourself off in the mirror each morning you douche...
SWTOR, another example of an extremely overhyped game that failed miserably to live up to expectations. Sorry for those that failed to see that, but it was quite obvious to many of us it was a very badly designed game.
As long as developers continue to generate these boring theme park designs that offer little or no continuity for continued play, why would anyone want them to succeed? Why reinforce what is recognized as a bad design?
This is freaking video games not life or death!!!!
Want to give a shout out to Swtor for sucking too btw
Where the kisses are hers and hers and his... (And apparently, those young'uns who were teens in the 90s.)
Oh i know that show ; )Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Games with overly greedy business models deserve to fail. Games that ignore the playerbase deserve to fail. Games with endgame as an afterthought deserve to fail. Games lacking smooth gameplay at launch deserve to fail. etc. etc.
The above reasons are why pretty much every MMO after WoW has failed. Until these companies start truly thinking for themselves they are doomed to chase 5% of WoW's market and even failing in that regard.
And No, games like Tera having a unique combat system and almost every other aspect of the game is a bad WoW imitation does not count as innovation. You can tell if a company is trying to clone WoW with a single screenshot nowadays, that's how bad it is and yes GW2 is a part of this.
Let's say an MMO is made of your favorite ip, but you think the game sucks. You know that the only way to get another shot at your favorite ip being made into a better game is if the current one fails.
Let's say there are trends or dynamics you feel are ruining MMO's, like heavy instancing, focusing on singleplayer storytelling to the detriment of community. You know that they only way for these trends to go away are if the games using them fail.
Rift for example I don't agree with the tenancy to copy everything in existence without thinking for themselves but man do they know how to code and pump out content. I love the dev team over there and I want them to succeed because there is a chance in the future they may grow a pair and do something innovative and new and if they did it would be crazy.
However because of the bandwagon jumping bunch of companies we have making games for us you have to be loud and clear about games that represent stagnation and backwards movement. SWTOR was the final nail in the coffin of out and out wow clones. It is a shining representation of what people do not want in this day and age.
If there wasn't people trashing games the developers would keep on thinking there was nothing wrong and they would keep making these safe crappy wow clones if we let them.
Yup, it's essential to how the free market works. As a consumer, you generaly don't want a business which you believe isn't serving your intrests well to succeed...or at least to suceed wildly as that means you will see more and more of those business on the market, which limits your individual choice. This would normaly not be so much of an issue, if it were not for the "lemming effect" which seems to have held the MMO market in it's grips for the past decade or so. In most areas of commerce, the desire to emulate successfull products/competitors is counter-blanced by the desire to significantly differentiate yourself from your competition and capture market share in DIFFERENT audience segments that are currently being underserved. This helps to create a healthy variety of offerings for the consumer (and consumers of different tastes). Thus McDonalds is different from Outback Steakhouse, which in turn is different from the Pizza joint on the corner, which in turn is different from that fancy 4 star restaurant you took your wife to for her birthday. The consumer isn't generaly particularly invested in seeing any one offering that they dislike fail, as that won't significantly increase thier opportunity to see more offerings suited to thier preferences. The market is already wide enough to represent well a wide variety of consumer tastes and preferences. For some reason the MMO market has not emulated the healthy variety that exists in so many other sectors of commerce. Although it's a significantly large industry and even rather crowded...there seems to have been a very limited and narrow range of offerings. Most offerings for the past decade, and certainly those given significant capital backing have followed and extremely narrow formula, with relatively minor variations in detail. This leads to many consumers feeling, with justification, that they have little to no offerings targeted to serving thier preferences. It is only natural, therefore, for such consumers to want to see yet another iteration of the same formula fail, in the hopes that publishers might finally begin to realize that particular market segment is over-saturated and breakaway from the formula to offer something substantialy different which might appeal to those currently under-served audiences. This is neither spitefull nor akin to the desire to see traffic accidents. It's a simple, realistic understanding of how free market economies work on the part of consumers who are currently disatisfied. In many way's, the industry has actualy brought this situation upon itself, whether consciously or unconsciously. YMMV.Pretty much this.
And also to the companies that make incomplete/shallow/crappy/the-same-game-over-and-over, I have no guilt about hoping they go under too.
Why?
Because that is the way the market works. Make a "bad product"? Work for a badly run company? Get punished.
The alternative is for MMO and other comp game consumers to keep buying bad/mediocre games encouraging these companies to put out the same crap ad infinitum and think it is ok. And it makes no sense: "I am going to buy this mediocre/bad/incomplete product just to support some company?" In what other industry would people think that way?
And that is EXACTLY what has been wrong with the MMO genre the last 6-8 years. People buying "meh" games with crap/shallow/copied design from developers/pubishers that put in the minimum effort and then patch hard for 6 months (because the game was not ready to go at launch - again, in what other industry would that be acceptable?).
The days when devs/pubs cared about "making good games" is long over. It is no longer hobbists that started programing in their basement that designing games these days. It is midsize and large companies (and their suits) that dictate design, and they care about the money, first, last, and in between. That's it.
No. Enough.
More game and company failures are exactly what the industry need if there is any hope of a turn around in the MMO space.
(And as an aside, don't feel too much guilt about "all those poor devs" that get "laid off": in the MMO/game industry, that is the norm. People work on a game, it goes out, project over, time to look for the next thing. Getting canned out of a crap company because they put out a crap game is not much different.)
Yep...I agree. I think that this column more or less ignores the actual valid reasons for wanting a game to fail, and instead paints folks who want anything to fail as sadistic, heartless bastards who only get off on the misery of others.
I will admit that I wanted SWTOR to "fail" as in not become the next big thing. But my reasons for this has nothing to do with taking enjoyment out of the misery of others, in fact I am really sad for all the folks who lost their job. On the contrary, my reasons for wanting SWTOR to fail have everything to do with the simple fact that success is imitated.
If SWTOR turned out to be a great success, then it would basically ensure that many future MMORPGs would follow its example of extremely heavily sharded zones, focus on single player aspects of the game like story, and near carbon-copy WoW combat. I didn't want this to happen, so yes, I wanted SWTOR to fail.
Also...just about everyone here will point out that if you don't want a game company to do horrible practice X, then you should stop buying their games and speak with your wallet. No one would disagree with this right?
But what do you think the end result of this is? If everyone actually does do this, then guess what? The company's game fails and people get laid off! It's sad, but it's true. It's naive to think that losers aren't necessary in a free market system.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?