How did the triple A games industry learn almost nothing from the success of Minecraft?

[Natalia Simp]

Many hit the nail on the ITT. And this issue isn't restricted to video games, all industries that have billions of investment have just as high expectations for ROI. That usually means the moneymen will hire as much middlemen as possible to hedge their bets. This is a happy circumstance, as the vast majority (75%+) of people are rather useless, and cannot function without explicit definitions of work. They're happy to work within the confines the middle managers create, towards building guaranteed pathways for maximized ROI.

Investors are happy with the guaranteed ROI, the mob is happy to afford Netflix, and the middle managers are happy to have some semblance of authority over the mobs. The ones who loose out are the small minority who aren't happy with just earning money and spending it, and strive for something more.

 

[iwanttogoback]

I will admit some faults to this list like how it fails to account for free-to-play games, and some of the numbers are probably outdated. But regardless, I think the picture is still accurate. Back on the topic, how did Minecraft become the most impactful and best-selling game and yet I haven't seen ANY of the major players take notes from Minecraft in any major way?? Unlike in the AA space where you always see a lot of survival games on steam so clearly a lot of indie game developers are inspired by the game. What I mean by notable is how Minecraft is a game where you can make anything, if you're on java you don't have any MTX or anything like that, Minecraft is built around making it your world, The game had humble beginnings and it's only like 30$. There's just so much that Minecraft has done that's pretty legendary that no one else has really adopted even though it's literally the best-selling game EVER.

I will give some credit though, out of all the greedy companies I think Ubisoft actually took some good notes from Minecraft. Ever since Minecraft, I've noticed Ubisoft add crafting mechanics and other aspects to their games which I think is pretty interesting to see. But even then how come no major company has taken a shot at making a AAA Minecraft competitor? If they really believed in the game they could pump a lot of money into it and make the game feel a lot more fleshed out and more "AAA" than Minecraft. I will admit though that I would prefer Minecraft compared to whatever shlock the AAA industry would put out but still, It would be good to see some kind of competitor.

The core of what I'm really getting at is the problem of how PRIDFUL and so far up their own, AAA games companies have become. You would expect whatever garbage they put out to be successful or be the best selling but no it's actually a simple cube game that would be popular. Is this just a very clear indication of just how corrupt and unbelievably out of touch western AAA companies have become? How are they this blissfully unaware of the popularity? I'm just really baffled as to how this happened. It doesn't even make business sense if you think about it. So much for voting with our wallet.

Minecraft couldn't milk as much money in its heyday like Fortnite currently is. Corporate shareholder stupidity is the reason why they're chasing the next big hit and just end up wasting hundreds of millions on Triple A Live service games that die within 2 months of release

 

[McGovern '72!]

Minecraft couldn't milk as much money in its heyday like Fortnite currently is. Corporate shareholder stupidity is the reason why they're chasing the next big hit and just end up wasting hundreds of millions on Triple A Live service games that die within 2 months of release

It's amazing that somehow these paint-by-the numbers corpo execs never seem to learn shit about how oversaturated the live service market is. Guess that's just what happens when you stuff your companies full of bureaucrats who just repeat what they learned in their marketing classes.

 

[iwanttogoback]

It's amazing that somehow these paint-by-the numbers corpo execs never seem to learn shit about how oversaturated the live service market is. Guess that's just what happens when you stuff your companies full of bureaucrats who just repeat what they learned in their marketing classes.

it's the other way around. the bureaucrats and marketing execs they've put in place are either old fucks or have no idea how the software business works. You can see time and time again they have a very shortsighted view of how it works and they either endlessly follow trends that may or may not fail or try to compete with Goliaths like EG & Activision that have already captured the live service audience, thinking their own audiences that traditionally buy into singleplayer is willing to switch over

 

[GENOSAD]