And a pre-emptive middle finger to anyone who can’t figure out budgets follow revenue. They cannot possibly lead it. If companies did that, they would run out of money. They’re only spending two times their last game’s budget because their last game made four times its budget. You can’t do it the other way around.

But empty suits only see ROI. They think, if some game sold one million copies, then it would necessarily have sold one point two million copies, if they’d spend twenty percent more. Their model has no concept of an additional two hundred thousand actual human beings who would give a shit, somehow, about this already-popular title. There is only the equation, and a roll of the dice.