@Magikf1ngers I do not think it is greed, but yes, it starts a long time ago. It it just that the market lacks competition and so the great publisher can do what they want without having to worry, that others take over. And because many consumers are pleased with it and buy the products anyway. There are lots of people pre-order games before they even played them. They are used to it, that they are flooded with cheap games every year and pay for it. But the niveau of quality decreases constantly, although the technology develops further.
If you want to be save from getting bought up by EA and vanish in the dark hole of flogged ideas, you have to refuse going on the stock marketing. But this means you get less money to grow as business. The stock market is a good thing to get money for your business, especially with new and good ideas. But than companies like EA can also buy shares and they have the money to buy enough to take you over and suck you in with all your good ideas. It would need a strong consumer shift to such companies, so that they can stand on their own.
But the market for games is not such volatile, because many people buy the franchises and products anyway, instead of asking for better products. The so called "fanbase". They spend their time complaining in such forums like this, instead of refusing consumption and try other and smaller companies. The Poles, as examples, have very good developpers with fresh ideas and there are also a few German studios. In Germany, there is a one-man-developper, which designs a SciFi space game totally on his own and it looks pretty good and has some interesting ideas. Although the modding community is in many ways more ambitious and talented, as many high-paid developpers - and they do it for free.
We need more of this to increase competition on the market, we must try to free the market more buy removing copyrights e.g. and it needs more guts to start own businesses for game developpment. We as consumer and gamers have to prevent, that moloch companies like EA suck in all the good ideas and destroy them. There are other companies, which also tend to go this way. It is simple economics: High-performance companies are small and very specialized. In the moment they grow their business model, the quality of their prodcts become worse. Especially, when they begin sucking in competitors. Normally, such companies vanish from the market some day. But we as consumers can speed this up by moving to other products and give new companies a chance, instead of beeing such conservative with our habits.
Indeed. I saw many projects financed and run by crowdfunding, not only in the gaming industry. But you have to deliver, if you want their money, instead that you only put a prize tag on it and nobody knows what is in. To an increasing extent I saw products in the media industry like games or movies, which are not worth the prize or not even worth buying at all, because they lied about or at least exaggarated the content or deceived the consumer about what they get. Many movies this days not even deliver entertainment and I ask myself, what I am paying for than.
Therefore, I do not buy any game at the release. I am mostly many years behind the release, because either the game is crap from the beginning or, what also is a current trend like we saw with Cyberpunk 2077, it is in an unfinised state by release and needs years to get to a finished state. I bought Cyberpunkt for under 20 bugs and Titanfall 2 for also something around it. So I really paid, what it is worth it, because Titanfall 2 was for me only a single-player game, because I am unable to play the multiplayer. And if I would know that, I would not have bought it in the first place.
But as I said, the power lies in our hand. The market gives us, what we demand and if we demand crap, we get crap.
Its almost Christmas of 2021, and I can't play Titanfall 2. Would someone please do something about this!?
