Microsoft closes Activision deal, this does not bode well

“The need to monetize an art form is a big component as to what is killing gaming.”

Can you explain that?  I am not questioning the validity of your statement just wanting to understand where your reasons for.  I have always assumed monetization (AKA microtransactions)  was not a need but another way to extract money from consumers.  This initially started in free mobile games and rapidly crept over to consoles and PC.

“But, this is what you have happen when corporations run things and put their greedy nose into the art form of gaming.”

I disagree to a degree.  Corporations (or companies) are always greedy.  They always have been, their goal is to generate profit.  Now we can say that small to midsize private companies usually have an ethic and some sort of moral code and to me that seems to be the case.  But they still wish to make money.  Of course large corporations are generally (but not always) public entities.  They operate differently as they have shareholders who want predictable annual returns. This can be framed as fat cats wanting to get fatter and while that might be true it is only a piece of that picture.  Do you have a retirement account?  A 401k?  A pension?  Even if you don’t millions of people do.  And they too depend on those shares doing well.  If the bottom falls out of the market tomorrow who ends up usually going hungry?  Regular folks.  So to frame that situation as greedy corporations operating solely so the 1% can get theirs is to very much over simplify that entire situation.

As I stated above, everything you just aptly described as issues in the gaming industry, is not a free market issue.  It is not a greedy company issue.  It is not a large corporation issue.  It is a lack of competition issue.  None of the things you or I am complaining about would be the case if their was enough competition in the market.   And that’s because to succeed and do well (to appease greed) they would have to compete by making a better game, evolving the tech and putting out things that are fun and interesting (like indies do).  This is why indies are so awesome.  They are not AAA but they innovate and make good products.  Why?  There are many such little companies and projects, aka competition.

My summary here is it’s not that the issue there are greedy companies.  It’s that there are not enough of them.  Normally having a market with hungry consumers crys and screaming for better product would cause new blood to rush in.  But since there are only a few very large players and the government looks the other way they can pretty much keep everyone out.  So free market is not the issue, a non-free on is.

“Granted, I don’t see Microsoft as a monopoly since there is still competition and with the slow evolution of the parallel economy, I am sure we can hope to see gaming make a comeback.”

This depends to what industry you look at they are involved in.  Are they a monopoly in the software space?  I would argue yes. And through the last few decades they were threatened a number of times with being broken-up.

Now when we look at the game industry I am really using the word monopoly too loosely. It’s more as I have explained where you have only a few very large players so the competition is very thin.  And I believe all the companies in this space that are mega corps actively participate in anti-competition activity keeping anyone else out.  Big tech does the same thing and to the point to where they collude together to ban competition off the internet entirely. But the gaming industry is not that bad about it yet.

“Right now it’s hard to say which way Microsoft will go because they are still a woke company, they’re not woke enough to censor their games, just make their games unplayable like Fable or Starfield. The thing to keep in mind: Microsoft is not too big to fail, no company is. The time in which it takes them to fail however many take a long time to do so without heavier competition as Vknid reminds us.”

It has really nothing to do with woke or not.  Little competition stagnates evolution and creativity.  Making new and awesome things takes time, effort, talent and some amount of risk.  No one does those things unless they have too.

” Yes, Microsoft bought a huge acquisition, but will that make them a profit? ”

Yes it will.  Crappy games already make profit which is why we keep getting crappy games.  Madden is a garbage copy/paste every year and it has actually deteriorated over the years.  Why?  EA holds an exclusive NFL license.  No one else can make an NFL game.  So they don’t have to make it good and they won’t because dingdongs buy it every year anyway.

Crappy games do not make as much money as super awesome games, but if crappy games take 75% less effort and resources and make 50% of what a super awesome game would, then it works in their favor.  Also, while game devs are a dime a dozen (relatively speaking) people with vision, creativity and talent are few and far between.  This is the case in every industry everywhere. But such folks have to be found and normally paid well.  The flip side of that is you can outsource most of the day to day  programming or art work to cheap labor out of country.  And that is before you involve AI.  This does not get you a high quality product but it does not matter because people will often buy it anyway.  Enough of them to turn profit.

“If the video game industry is going to fail, I rather see it fail because of woke morons and corporate greed.”

Woke morons are for sure an issue. Corporate “greed” is not.  This is what drives industry, evolution and advancement.   Everything we have now that we consider modern conveniences, many we cannot live without, are because of “greed”.  So you cannot on one hand praise it and then on another chastise it as that is hypocritical.

Plus, as I learned today, that word “greed” is like many of the words in the modern vocabulary.  It has been twisted and used from it’s original meaning and ends up suiting certain agendas.

Greed was originally about “coveting”.  So not just that you have too much of something or an undue desire for it but that you want someone elses. Ironically, this would mean that socialism and communism is based on greed.  Interesting take right?  But that word has been used (just like you are using it here) in an attempt to stain capitalism. I am still researching this but many biblical references do mention greed but it is married with covetousness and sometimes one is translated as the other when coming from Greek.

But my point is wanting to make profit is not greed nor is it immoral.  Now, like anything else, an over emphasis on it would be an issue and immoral.  But capitalism inherently does not run on “greed”, it runs on the motivation of profit.  Someone offers something for a price that someone else agrees to and chooses to purchase.  If that company starts overcharging or making garbage, then the market corrects through new competition coming in as they see a lane for profit.   But when we have over regulated markets or large mega corps protected by government you do not have a free market.  So these issues we are speaking about are not due to greed or profit, they are due to an unfair, over regulated and fascist (IE big gov and big corp working together) market.

I think we all use “corporate greed” because it has been in the lexicon for decades but I wager when it entered it was a propaganda phrase like so many of the ones out there today invented by communists or socialists.

I could literally go on for days about words.  They have been used against the majority in this country now for probably since the 60’s.  And with each passing decade they become more prevalent, new ones are added, old ones are redefined.  It’s really quite evil.

I think all of these things you mention are all due to lack of competition as I originally stated.

Things have stagnated massively in the triple A space and outside of graphical fidelity nothing has advanced in some time or has even devolved.  This does go along with some of your points.  And at this level they don’t have to make better games or evolve because nothing motivates them to.  Why spend money on R&D when you can crank out the same stuff annually and make decent profit?

Now the indie space has much competition. And as such there is a massive diversity of games.  And many are high quality and fun and there are many unique titles.  In this space things evolve and do well.

Normally I think the indie space would lead to many growing companies that would organically grow and come to challenge the triple A companies providing more competition there and the market would thrive as it is intended.  But big corps are now allowed to play king of the hill and knock anyone off who approaches the top of the hill.