The unfortunate increase in Rabbit holes

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685103" wrote:

"gnelso1239;c-17684623" wrote:
EA's business model for the Sims has never been to progressively deliver at least the same (or greater value) per consumer dollar spent to purchase their products. Rather, their goal is to minimize development costs and maximize returns.

@gnelso1239 Which is great for business but terrible for theh quality...

"Beardedgeek;c-17685180" wrote:

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685103" wrote:

"gnelso1239;c-17684623" wrote:
EA's business model for the Sims has never been to progressively deliver at least the same (or greater value) per consumer dollar spent to purchase their products. Rather, their goal is to minimize development costs and maximize returns.

@gnelso1239 Which is great for business but terrible for theh quality...

Let's simplify it even more:
The base of a corporation is to get as much money as possible to it's shareholders and board members, tho board members are of less importance than shareholders.
It is, literally, it's only purpose. If the way to maximize profit is to deliver absolutely nothing and sell it for Infinity dollars, that is the ideal situation. But reality gets in the way of that so the real situation is this: There is a sweet spot for every type of product where the work hours, manufacturing costs and sell price all meet. To finely trim that spot (aka deliver as little as possible, made with as little effort as possible and as few employees as possible* ) for as high enough price as possible without cutting sales numbers is the magic bullet for a corporation.

This is why the board members of EA payed attention to the Sim City fiasco: They literally lost their bonuses, so they well... sorta kinda cared a bit, until they got their bonuses back.

*Corporations are not job creators. Not if they can avoid it. Employees are extremely expensive while being extremely unreliable; to avoid hiring people, and getting away with firing people, is something any successful company has made into a science.

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685611" wrote:

"Beardedgeek;c-17685180" wrote:

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685103" wrote:

"gnelso1239;c-17684623" wrote:
EA's business model for the Sims has never been to progressively deliver at least the same (or greater value) per consumer dollar spent to purchase their products. Rather, their goal is to minimize development costs and maximize returns.

@gnelso1239 Which is great for business but terrible for theh quality...

Let's simplify it even more:
The base of a corporation is to get as much money as possible to it's shareholders and board members, tho board members are of less importance than shareholders.
It is, literally, it's only purpose. If the way to maximize profit is to deliver absolutely nothing and sell it for Infinity dollars, that is the ideal situation. But reality gets in the way of that so the real situation is this: There is a sweet spot for every type of product where the work hours, manufacturing costs and sell price all meet. To finely trim that spot (aka deliver as little as possible, made with as little effort as possible and as few employees as possible* ) for as high enough price as possible without cutting sales numbers is the magic bullet for a corporation.

This is why the board members of EA payed attention to the Sim City fiasco: They literally lost their bonuses, so they well... sorta kinda cared a bit, until they got their bonuses back.

*Corporations are not job creators. Not if they can avoid it. Employees are extremely expensive while being extremely unreliable; to avoid hiring people, and getting away with firing people, is something any successful company has made into a science.

@gnelso1239 Yes definitely. But that's why I really dislike the idea of corporations like that. People in charge of marketing are people who went to college in order to learn how to maximize profit by any means possible. Imagine spending four years or more in college only learning about how to extract the biggest amount of money with the lease amount of effort from your customers. That completely collides with the ideas of "creativity", "fun", "innovation". Those are concepts that you might want to achieve as a game designer, but they do cost more money than lazily doing the same old and shareholders prefer that. This is where the two worlds of creative game designing and marketing collide and things like the Sims or the FIFA franchise turn into what they have become today.
There is always going to be some kind of conflict when you mix "money-making" marketing strategies with art, creative, innovative thinking etc. You see that all the time not just with big games but also with singers and artists who come into conflict with their labels for those exact reasons.
I think this problem is getting out of hand at EA and could be why they have become so hated and bring out lackluster games.

"Beardedgeek;c-17686570" wrote:

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685611" wrote:

"Beardedgeek;c-17685180" wrote:

"SimmerGeorge;c-17685103" wrote:

"gnelso1239;c-17684623" wrote:
EA's business model for the Sims has never been to progressively deliver at least the same (or greater value) per consumer dollar spent to purchase their products. Rather, their goal is to minimize development costs and maximize returns.

@gnelso1239 Which is great for business but terrible for theh quality...

Let's simplify it even more:
The base of a corporation is to get as much money as possible to it's shareholders and board members, tho board members are of less importance than shareholders.
It is, literally, it's only purpose. If the way to maximize profit is to deliver absolutely nothing and sell it for Infinity dollars, that is the ideal situation. But reality gets in the way of that so the real situation is this: There is a sweet spot for every type of product where the work hours, manufacturing costs and sell price all meet. To finely trim that spot (aka deliver as little as possible, made with as little effort as possible and as few employees as possible* ) for as high enough price as possible without cutting sales numbers is the magic bullet for a corporation.

This is why the board members of EA payed attention to the Sim City fiasco: They literally lost their bonuses, so they well... sorta kinda cared a bit, until they got their bonuses back.

*Corporations are not job creators. Not if they can avoid it. Employees are extremely expensive while being extremely unreliable; to avoid hiring people, and getting away with firing people, is something any successful company has made into a science.

@gnelso1239 Yes definitely. But that's why I really dislike the idea of corporations like that. People in charge of marketing are people who went to college in order to learn how to maximize profit by any means possible. Imagine spending four years or more in college only learning about how to extract the biggest amount of money with the lease amount of effort from your customers. That completely collides with the ideas of "creativity", "fun", "innovation". Those are concepts that you might want to achieve as a game designer, but they do cost more money than lazily doing the same old and shareholders prefer that. This is where the two worlds of creative game designing and marketing collide and things like the Sims or the FIFA franchise turn into what they have become today.
There is always going to be some kind of conflict when you mix "money-making" marketing strategies with art, creative, innovative thinking etc. You see that all the time not just with big games but also with singers and artists who come into conflict with their labels for those exact reasons.
I think this problem is getting out of hand at EA and could be why they have become so hated and bring out lackluster games.

Someone once said that when there is more than three layers of administration between the boss and the employee things turn into a money first operation. Very very few corporations that actually manufacture goods or deliver services (unlike say investment companies which are always shady) starts off like this. It is also usually telling when management is hired externally for their managing skills, with no in-knowledge of the type of business (so no promoted developers, but "experts in management").


I am old enough to remember when EA's logo looked like this:
https://fontmeme.com/images/Electronic_Arts_old-logo.png
...And back then they were a different kind of company.

"Chazzzy;c-17662511" wrote:
I adore the rabbit holes. The last thing I wanna do is control my Sims at every single moment. I very much like that I can send them off somewhere and do other things with other Sims.