Submitted 14 hours ago by GamingBot@lemmy.zip [bot] to gaming@lemmy.zip
Its a very high risk, high reward market. Games take so much money and so much time, and less and less people are willing to shell out. I still haven’t paid more than $60 for a game, and I often wont pay more than $30.
I did buy Cyberpunk on release, and if reviews are good for Witcher IV I could see myself getting it. Dropping Witcher III remastered in my library, with all the DLC, earned a lot of my good will.
I don’t think CDPR’s risk comes from being a “single IP” dev, but from the fact that they’re stock listed. If they were fully private they probably would’ve had a backup fund ( probably still do ) that would hold them over for a while if their games flopped. But the stock market can really bury you at the slightest hiccup, or push you to make bad decisions. Add to that the fact that they’re also an ambitious company that likes to bet big and grow fast and you start to worry for them.
GardenGeek@europe.pub 12 hours ago
Just two personal, uneconomical opinions on the subject:
Games are also an art form. Statistically speaking, art isn’t created to make money but primarily for its own sake; so the pursuit of profit isn’t the main focus of most works of art.
I much prefer companies that actually take entrepreneurial risks (you know, that ominous sense of responsibility that’s used to justify exploitation and obscene wealth) to those that just try to “play it safe” and therefore churn out the umpteenth sequel or remake of a series to milk the fanbase a little more (looking at you, Ubisoft). Unfortunately, playing it safe all too often means turning away from new ideas and concepts and just churning out the same old stuff… which, in the long run, makes the gaming industry more boring for all gamers and may even result in lost revenue for the developers.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 8 hours ago
Agree, gaming companies who have been playing it safe are the ones who have no idea what to do anymore. Ubisoft is more or less dead. Bioware is dead after DA4. By trying to play it safe and reach everyone they have reached no one.
Two studios that do take massive risks? CDPR and Rockstar. If you put generic gaming exec in there they would cancel all projects and fire half the staff right now, and wall street would laud them for it. Problem is that gaming is a creative field, and you can’t be purely logical and money driven when working in a creative field. Art is subjective, you will have people who dislike it. These two studios get that, for the time being at least.