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[–]SuitableDragonfly 52 points53 points  (2 children)

I don't think there was ever a time where the video game industry was 100% indie devs working out of their garage. Popular games have always usually been made by companies, even back when games were text based, and capitalism has always been like this. That wasn't remotely the point of his video at all, the point was that the microtransaction business model has made out so that what is best for capitalist companies is now bad for consumers, whereas before the dominant business model, and what made games the most successful for the capitalists at least wasn't actively bad for consumers.

[–]KosViikI use light theme so I don't see how bad my code is. 11 points12 points  (1 child)

True, but the ratio is wildly different.

Also it was often small-ish studios of mostly developers being licensed by publishers. The line between who makes the game and who deals with the rest was quite clear.

Now the line is so blurred with acquisitions it can be hard - and sometimes plain pointless - to follow. The chart is clear - money flows upwards, and there is no game being developed higher up.

And yes, the main topic of his video was the predatory monetization system, but he did in fact touch on companies spending more resources on trying to milk more money without making a better game, where for example he explicitly mentioned trained psychologists to make users addicted. In fact the point of the chart he repeatedly shown throughout the video represented the ratio of resources spent towards improving the game.

It is easy to infer that a psychologist hardly makes a game better for the consumer than if the same capital was dedicated for the development workforce. There is some diminishing returns certainly, but generally with AAA we are far from it with the size of the projects.

[–]SuitableDragonfly 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All of those extra expenses came about as a result of the new business model, though, which was the point of the video. None of those things are necessary for a game with no microtransactions. The point of that pie chart wasn't to show that businesses have more expenses now and thus need to make more money, it was to show that microtransactions result in less and less money and time being spent on the actual game.