In Response to Rod "Liking" the Vyking Tweet:

Gears 5
#124

Read the article if you’d like. But to sum it up it explains how the earlier gears like the first one was very cheap to make and made a huge profit in comparison to what it cost to develop. But each game got more expensive to develop. One of the developers of Epic says in it that gears four would have bankrupted the company if it was anything short of a massive success. Hence why they implemented MT in 3 and why most games have MT. The cost of games have not changed yet the amount to develop them has. So this idea that people spending $60 on a base game should be enough just isn’t true. Games don’t cost a few million to make like they did on the PlayStation 1.

Also it’s just not how business works. It’s not like epic or the TC pays for the development out of pocket. Microsoft covers a big portion of the cost. In a way you could look at them like investors. The goal of any investor is to take the money they put into something and double it because they have faith that whatever they are investing in will be successful and yield them a big return. So Microsoft isn’t saying to the TC but micro transactions in the game because we are evil. They are saying we invested a lot of money into this franchise, numbers show base sales of the game alone wont yield profit or even let us break even, there needs to be a way for us to recoup what we spent.

It then puts TC in a position where they are like wel how can we do that without pissing off too many people . How about cosmetic items that have no effect on gameplay whatsoever.

Meaningful expansions? This isn’t an mmo. You get free maps that’s about the closest to an expansion for this game you’re gonna get

#125

@TheBeefInjecter

1.) Unreal is an affordable and easy to use engine, hence why it’s so popular.

2.) Since when are we, the customers, supposed to worry about someone in accounting not doing their jobs?

3.) You can make big games with reasonable budgets, look at Dark Souls 3. Every locale in that game is distinct and hardly has recycled content, and on top of that it’s an action RPG with a vast arsenal of gear and weapons (including projectiles), PvP, PvE, and Expansion DLC. You telling me that a COVER SHOOTER with a fraction of that arsenal and lack of RPG customization with Microsoft productions money needs to milk every dime? From Software did plenty with a smaller crew, and in 5 years for a whole trilogy.

4.) I heard this same argument for Call of Duty. Sorry, but I never asked Activision and Treyarch to get Robert Downey Jr. to advertise Black Ops 4 and expect me to cover their costs.

I didn’t ask for Terminator and WWE crossovers either, and that’s revenue going towards the devs and Microsoft for that kind of advertising. They’re not starving for cash as you’re making it out to be.

And if they can’t reasonably budget and do business in this industry, then why the hell are they in it to begin with?

Meaningful expansions like Raam’s Shadow have happened. Gears 3 is far from perfect but it is rich with content for a reasonable price: A story expansion with about 6 or so characters? $15 or so back then I think, and now it’s $10. Playing as Raam controlling Krill was awesome and a nice Gears 1 throwback.

6 Likes
#126

I’ll put my hand up.
When I first heard of project scorpio, I was definitely thinking sh*t could only get better…
How wrong I was… Damn this is a depressing line of thought…
I think I just ruined my own day replying to you hahaha…

1 Like
#127

Omg you’re dumb

  1. You as a customer don’t have to worry about it. But you as a customer shouldn’t act confused and act is of business and financial decisions don’t play a part in game development. Certain things are good business and that’s why they are done. It’s naive to want every single decision a company makes to be pro consumer because if that was the case every product in the world would be free.

  2. Just because dark souls has more in game content doesn’t mean it was more expensive to make. Gears has motion capture, actual actors they have to pay, a much bigger staff they have to pay, a ton of money spent on advertising and marketing, a campaign that while much shorter than dark souls is much more expensive due to quality and quantity of things they have going on at a given time etc. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the budget for game development goes into things other than the game itself.

  3. You never asked for it but it doesn’t matter what you as in individual want. And you wonder why the community gets called entitled. Again it goes back to marketing. For example take cyber punk. They spent money to get Keanu Reeves in the game. Do they need him? No they could have gotten any no name actor to play the same role. But they spend money on him because people like him and it may get more people to buy the game. Again it’s a business, the game is a product, the goal of any business is to market their product to as many people as possible.

Again it doesn’t matter what you ask for. You are a core fan they already have your purchase just by throwing gears and a number at the end of it. Batista, , Sarah Connor, Emile etc are for people who might not be into gears but see them and say ehh why not I’ll try it and hopefully they wind up loving the game. If a business only markets to its core audience it will never expand and the goal of any business is to expand and bring in new people.

I never said they were starving for cash but you seem to not know how business works. Microsoft didn’t go to TC and say hey here’s 100mill out of the kindness of our hearts to make gears. They went to them because they believe they TC will be capable of taking that 100 mill and turning into 300mill and net them a profit. Microsoft are investors essentially. And anything you invest in you’d want it to make you money. If it doesn’t you’d be upset and prob not invest in it again. Could Microsoft cover the cost of money lost from not having microtranactions in the game? Sure but why would they spend money if they don’t have to. Much like you can buy the content in the store and it won’t bankrupt you but you’d rather not spend money If it can be avoided. Simple enough for you?

The money they made from RAAMs shadow can be made doubled in a week by having Baird, Cole, Dom, and Marcus on the store for $10 for a week. Why spend time and effort making that when they know people will buy those characters despite how much they complain.

I’m not saying I agree with everything they do but I do understand it’s a business and they are in it to turn a profit.

#128

You’re wall of text is this: “Bruh it’s just capitalism. A business only exists to make money. Games get cheapened because profit. You just can’t handle FACTS and LOGIC with this galaxy brain. ¯_(ツ)_/¯”

1.) You didn’t read my 3rd point about reasonable budgets, check with an accountant. If your budget is that overblown, you don’t know how to maximize your profits and should fire said accountant. Overblown budgets is not how you business, It’s cheapening the product like you mentioned near the end of your wall of text, contradicting the whole “big budget = need to price gouge” justification.

2.) You’re right, Dark Souls isn’t that expensive to make. There’s absolutely no reason Gears has to risk bankruptcy as such a niche title now, when Gears has even less to think about now. No duh craft services, labor, licensing, etc. go into a budget, welcome to how PROJECTS work.
Oh god, “mokap”, the thing Mortal Kombat did for ages and for actual fight coreography and not just faces and still made bank. The thing God of War 4 did and made bank while being single player. Actors exist in all of gaming; once again is decided in the budget. Gears has been cheapened compared to previous titles, you can’t deny this by the sheer value you can see from Gears Judgment, 3, and 4 at launch.

3.) Non-argument. You spout a lot about business yet don’t understand the concept of keeping the worth of your brand afloat; Upholding the value of your IP.
Cheapening your product with further cut content and heavy price gouging hurts the value of your product. This is why almost every Nintendo product holds a lot of market value, you see that happening with Gears?
They’re choosing the most short-sighted option of “infinite growth”. A business model that is MADE TO FAIL FOR AS MUCH PROFIT IN THE SHORTEST TIME.
Nobody takes Battlefront serious anymore now, did you forget why?

So why do people complain? Because the core audience who would keep the game afloat sees that the product is cheapening and is unhappy. Piss off your core fanbase and your products worth is going to decrease because the most casual buyer isn’t gonna care about Gears of War, just the next thing that peaks their interest. What good is the IP then? Everyone loses in that scenario.

Your idea of “business” is “make as much money as fast as possible till the teets dry up”; the infinite growth model, which is an oxymoron. It’s a model made to kill a franchise. You realize you can do “business” with a modest title and still profit?

You realize business =/= hyper capitalism?

It’s not need, it’s greed.

Edit: Feel free to keep typing but I’m done.

7 Likes
#129

This is the greatest.

#130

your interpretation skills really need work. Also just because you don’t like how business works doesn’t mean none of what I said sent true.

  1. Once again the goal is to turn a profit. The game cost a ton of money to make. Base sales and map packs will not cover said costs. The solution is not to make the game cheaper and spend less. They know they can spend a lot of money because they will more than make it back. That’s how investing works. You take your money with the hopes of it doubling it. Their budget is not overblown because they make that money back. Them overblowing their budget would be expecting to make 300mil and only making 80 mill despite spending 100mill. When things go according to plan and they make their profit then it was worth what they spent. Or to make it as simple as possible so that even you can understand they aren’t losing money by spending that much. Also it has more content at launch than the other gears titles. Yes content isn’t the number of digital cosmetics or characters in a game it’s the amount of stuff there is to do. Between multiplayer, horde, escape, and the ToD there’s a lot more to do than just leveling up and waiting for new maps. Maybe you don’t care for the content but it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

  2. Again gears is not risking bankruptcy when they are making the profits they projected to earn. You’re proving my point. From software is not as big as TC so they don’t have to spend the money that gears does. You’re comparing old MK games to gears 5. That in and of itself says a lot about you if you can’t see the difference in cost that does into a game from the 90s and game from today . It’s easy to make bank when a game say cost you 1mil to make instead of 100mill. Yes actors exist in all games and gears spends more money on that than dark souls would. Bigger games cost more money to make. What you’re saying is the equivalent of well avengers endgame and some random indie movie are both the same length of time so why is it that endgame spent so much more on their film? You see how ridiculous that sounds right?

  3. You truly don’t understand business. Let’s say I own a restaurant. And people on Twitter constantly say wow your burgers suck get rid of them. Yet burgers continue to be my most popular item. You look at that snd day well they say they hate it but they keep buying it so I’m not getting rid of it. Evidently it’s not hurting the product because if they were really losing money they’d stop implementing them. You know how many people said they were done with the franchise after 4 because of the micro transactions that came back to this game and are still buying them. Once again it doesn’t matter how much people scream they hate something if they still buy it. Like with sports games. It’s the same game every year with just a roster update and aggressive micro transactions that actually impact gameplay. People hate it but they come back every year.

Battlefront had micro trans actions that were pretty pay to win. Gears does not have that level of micro transactions it’s just cosmetics. Battlefront was also catching a lot of flack from media outlets that don’t even cover games. They made a decision to save face. Why do you think battlefront got rid of their micro transactions but madden still has them.

At the end of the day I agree with you. It is greedy. But they know they can get away with it because they know people will still buy it. The people who say they’re done come back. The people who say they will never buy anything wind up doing it. And so they will continue to do it until they are no longer making a profit from their investment and need to turn it around. Which will then bring back all the people that left because they changed their practices and the cycle starts again

#131

Yup.

It’s amazing how people throughout all aspects of life repeatedly make decisions that are against their best interests. It’s shocking.

With advancements in IDE’s, frameworks such as the Unreal Engine, tools to facilitate automated / regression testing etc… a dev team is much more efficient than even a decade ago. Dev wages haven’t increased.

So where’s this “extra cost”?
Marketing.

Make a good game like the good ol days and you wouldn’t have to spend 50 million developing and another 200 million marketing.

2 Likes
#132

Not like you need much investment to market games now anyway.

Hellblade managed to be successful as a AAA experience by an independant studio, Ninja Theory, who’s brand was hurt by past experiences with DmC Devil May Cry’s development.

How? Social media and word of mouth starting from the dev team themselves.

Gears of War is a household name in gaming, you just say the title and people will know it. There is no good justification for the nickel and diming that was Gears 4.
Even if it’s toned down now, one wonders where all the money went in the budget because there’s plenty of recycled content outside of campaign, and a lot missing too.

1 Like
#133

I’ll be honest my dude, this gen was a bit of a disappointment.

Games as a service are becoming more and more rampant, meaning less and less games of some of my favorite franchises release within a single gen. For example, last gen saw the release of 4 Gears titles, 4 Halo titles, 3 main Final Fantasy titles, etc… This gen we got, 2 Gears titles, 1 Halo title (no I’m not going to count the MCC as a new title), 1 Final Fantasy title, etc… And there are countless more examples of this happening. And all because they want to drip feed us content for years so that we come back and hopefully have us spend money in their stores, which stifles the production of the next game. The only games that don’t seem affected are the ones that release every year, like CoD and FIFA and such. But that’s because they can get away with pretty much copy pasting their previous games, make it prettier, add/tweak a few things and serve.

Plus we get companies like Epic who strike gold and than don’t want to work on anything else, thus making the number of competent studios working on new, fresh and fun games less and less.

And on top of that most studios don’t seem to want to seem to take risks anymore, so we can pretty much kiss new type of games with interesting concepts goodbye.

And to put a bow on my long winded rant, we see more and more studios release unfinished, barebone, borderline beta-status games and sell them at full price, promising us the sun, the moon, the entire Milky Way will be added but deliver nothing and they get away with it, meaning that we can expect more of those next gen.

Anyways , long story short, yeah, this gen was a bit of a bummer.

/rant

4 Likes
#134

Indeed.
Kinda sad that the best game on 360 is also the best game on xbone…
I’m referring of course to GTA V.
Rockstar is literally the only developer I trust now (used to trust Turn10 but then Forza7 happened).

1 Like
#135

We’ve gone off topic…
Rod liked some twitt on tweeter…
Please continue.

3 Likes
#136

This is what people like BeefInjecter don’t understand. You brought up good points.

4 Likes
#137

A great response

#138

IMO I think both of them brought good points through their discussion.

The gamer in me tends to mostly side with @AkimboLeadPipes while the more realist in me tends to side with @TheBeefInjecter. They’re both right in my book to different degrees.

All in all, good convo.

#139

“lock of content is laughable”…umm OK. Ask Anthem about lack of content. This game has loads of content. I’ve got 100+ hours in and still have not touched everything the game has to offer.
Skins and characters are not content.
Play any PS exclusive game and then come back and tell me there is no content in this game. LOL
If you don’t like micro-transactions then I suggest you stop playing games because almost every game now has them.
Do I think Rod should be opening his mouth about these things?? Heck NO. He only threw gas on a fire and that is solely on him.
My hope is that they are actually learning like they say.