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MMORPGDOT: Altre's Gamer View & Comic
The Gaming Piņatas

Altre, 2004-01-30

We've been fooled. Not by the nefarious plots of evil masterminds whose sole idea of fun is eating babies, but by ourselves. The desire to believe what we're told, and to trust that others always mean us well.



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Let me explain. Company PR schemes are nothing new. Lies are a matter of course. We simply no longer trust major corporations. After all, their main motivation is the almighty dollar, and not our happiness. What about the software companies that make our beloved games? Ahhh, yes. That's where the sticky bit is. People often fail to make a connection between the larger corporate world, and the video games industry. How many times have we heard, "We're gamers first!" or "Our number one goal is customer satisfaction." What's worse than these trite sayings? That we actually believe them. The simple fact of the matter is this: a software company's first and primary goal is to make money. No matter what they say or do, that will never change. It will always be far above any other consideration.

If the strategy department of a major gaming company determines that the market can sustain higher priced software, they will raise it. If they determine that they can get away with hiring less people, for less time, on a given gaming project and still generate the same sales level, they will. If your favorite software company figures out that they can produce an inferior, buggy product and just as many people will go out and buy it, they most certainly will. This is the mechanics of profit. Obviously, there is some variation to this theme. Let me introduce to you the formula of corruption: Each employee in a given corporation is probably a pretty decent person. You might actually want to go out to have coffee with them some time. At work, a person loses a small part of their individuality to the greater whole of their company.

The greater the number of people working for a company, the greater the amount of potential corruption.

The greater amount of total revenue in a company, the larger the amount of actual corruption. It's relative to the number of employees. It's just something about putting large groups of people together for the purpose of making money that brings out the worst in humanity. Another way of putting it is this: A small company may seek out a puppy, and give it a hug and a free meal. A medium sized entity may just kick the poor dog and say it's mother was a cat. While a large corporation is probably going to put the dog to work in one of it's slave labor camps. Then set fire to it so they can collect the insurance money. Ending the day with selling it's own grandmother on ebay whilst chuckling pleasantly. You have to remember this. You may see a game come out that, quite frankly, seems like it was put together by a large number of gerbils on LSD. It's probably because the company was out to make a quick buck. Someone, at some level, decided that they could roll the game out as is and get some revenue out of it.

Too often we give the benefit of the doubt, when reality is much harsher.



 
 
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