It's time for another "McJob Roasts A forgetwit".Today's forgetwit has decided to trample on my toes by providing this extremely antiquated opinion:
Its stupidity when Developers get so greedy they trash they're franchises name for the sake for a few extra dollars
Firstly, it's the PUBLISHER that determines how products will be sold and distributed, and they usually have a big say in profitably aspects of their products.
Here's a fun fact about AAA development; it costs a lot. You have 100+ developers (as well as administration staff and everybody inside the publishing office). You have computers for all of those 100+ staff, probably running dual-monitors and pretty high-spec, high-power consumption systems. Those PCs require software licences, some of which will be royalty based, some are yearly subscriptions. You have the cost of all the furniture in the building, all the paper materials used by the developers and administration staff, all of the business registration costs, all of the taxes and salaries, all of the water and internet bills, compensation for employees on paid leave or who are entitled to a severance package, marketing costs (which can skyrocket into the hundreds of millions), lawyer costs and so on, so forth (there's way more costs to cover). Then you have to remember that the longer it takes a developer/publisher to release a game, the more time it takes for them to both earn back the cash they've spent on development but also make some kind of profit to fund future projects (businesses can't survive if they're only ever equalling up on losses). Furthermore, every single year, the prices of just about everything increase. Taxes increase, the minimum wage increases, inflation increase and so on.
If AAA Publishers push their developers to continually make gradually smaller games that'll be at the same cost, gamers will (appropriately) bitch, moan and complain because the games aren't improving and getting bigger, as they should.
Yes, it feels like a stuffty practice and there needs to be a better way to cover costs, but there's a reason that publishers are trying to find new ways to make money. At the moment, these practices aren't really obtrusive to the game experience. Bullstuff yes, hindering no.
It isn't "a few dollars" on the line. It's the ability to pay their employees and keep making games that's on the line.
