Video game companies are lying to us about everything - Reader's Feature
A reader is sceptical about the current leadership in the video games industry and worries that the needs of gamers are not the priority for publishers.
The games industry is in such a strange place at the moment. On the one hand we have amazing games being released, with things like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, and Monster Hunter Wilds. And on the other we have publishers acting like monsters, cutting hundreds of jobs at a time, while making billions in profits. Not only that but making business decisions so stupid that its left ordinary gamers like me absolutely baffled.
It's not just the obsession with live service games (which Sony proved this week they still can't shake) but the total refusal to deal with the rising cost of making games, with anything other than price rises. When even Nintendo sees that as the only answer you know they're not even trying to address the problems, and that's what got me to thinking.
It seems to me that nobody high up in the games industry is in the slightest bit interested in being a custododian, as you might say, of gaming. Nobody is looking out for its long term health, nobody cares whether people lose their jobs or developers go under, and definitely nobody cares about art.
You might call me naïve for even thinking any of these things were possible but whenever something bad happens in gaming I think back to that awful photo of Phil Spencer (the head of Xbox) and the head of Blizzard at the time, standing in front of hundreds of Blizzard employees, a huge number of which got laid off only a few days later.
Both men must've known that at the time but they're both grinning away as if they're at a pop concert, soaking up the adulation from their 'fans'.
Nobody in charge of a game publisher is in the role for anything other than themselves. They don't even care about the company, just their own money, bonuses, and eventual golden parachute. Remember when the head of Microsoft had Game Pass targets removed from the list of things he had to do to get a bonus? These people don't care about anything but their own bank balance.
They're only human, I suppose you could say. I'm not sure I would be any different if I was earning $10 million a year. But then recently I was watching a video by Alanah Pearce, who used to work at Sony Santa Monica, about everything that's going on. It's very interesting, and only 20 minutes long, so I advise everyone to watch.
A lot of it was familiar to me from things GC has said in the past, about publishers not being interested in what gamers want but instead what will please investors. They make money from selling games, obviously, but that takes time to filter through. Most of the actual cash flow, as I understand, comes from investors and venture capitalists.
What this video makes clear, is that we ordinary people are not even the customers of these companies, of Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, EA, Ubisoft and the rest. The investors are. Everything games publishers do they do for them. Once you realise that all the dumb decisions suddenly start to make sense.
There's too many live service games and gamers want more single-player games, but it never happens. Why? Because investors know about Fortnite, Minecraft, and the rest and they want more of that. Even just the potential of a hit of that scale is far more important to them than just a modest profit from a normal game.
Already sick of hearing about AI in games? Tough. Investors love it. Even if it doesn't work and it's going to ruin the economy by putting so many people out of work, if they find out AI is involved they're more likely to invest. And it'll be the same for whatever dumb buzzword is next in tech, just like it was for NFTs.
Games are getting too expensive to make so maybe we should cut budgets and shorten games… that doesn't make sense to investors. They don't understand, or want to understand, gaming so the only logical thing to them is to put more money in to get more money out.
If any publisher tries to pretend to you that they're doing it for the gamers or give a damn about what the game is or who's making it… they're lying. All they're interested in is what pleases investors. Even laying people off is part of that, because that's what investors expect any company to do, that isn't showing infinite growth.
Everything bad that's happening to the games industry right now is because of greedy execs looking out for themselves and uncaring investors looking for easy money. Any good games that come out of that is purely a side product and no one that could make things better has any interest in doing so. Publishers don't care about games, and they definitely don't care about you.
By reader Grackle
Why are they smiling? (ResetEra)
The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email.
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She's my other half. She grew up a lot with me, and I grew up a lot with her,' Ozzy explained. 'I hope it will be a story that everybody can relate to,' Sharon added. 'You don't have to be a fan of the music, because it's a story about a survivor. No matter what life throws at you, you pick yourself up and you start again. It's just an amazing story of overcoming everything that's thrown at you in your life.' Son Jack confirmed they'd asked the writer to focus on 1979 to 1996, bringing the timeline forward compared to Sharon's initial idea. Suitably, his mum then insisted that the biopic would be 'a lot more real' than the Freddie Mercury and Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody because 'we don't want it to be squeaky, shiny clean and all of that'. 'We're not making it for kids. It's an adult movie for adults.' 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Donkey Kong Bananza fan breaks game by painting the cartridge yellow
An overly enthusastic Donkey Kong fan has almost ruined their Nintendo Switch 2 by spray painting one of their game cartridges banana yellow. Donkey Kong Bananza is a great game and it's been a very long time since there was another big budget Donkey Kong title, so some fans, with a lot of nostalgia for the franchise, have got a bit carried away with themselves. One major point of conversation has been the game's placement in the wider Donkey Kong timeline or rather how it seems to contradict it entirely. We're not going to get into that again here, but some fans are oddly annoyed by the lack of consistency… even though the series has never had in-depth storylines. Another even stranger trend has been trying to paint the cartridge the game comes on yellow, like the Donkey Kong 64 one. That's not a very good idea though, as one fan in particular has discovered. The fan in question is one gardnerhartung, or merely Gardner, on TikTok who recently shared a video expressing disappointment that the physical game cartridge for Donkey Kong Bananza is the usual red colour, like other Switch 2 cartridges. His reasoning is that, back in the day, a couple of Donkey Kong games received unique yellow cartridges when they came out, specifically 1995's Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy and 1996's Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64. It was a fun novelty, but it really was only those two games. Yet Gardner, in his own words, was 'displeased' with Bananza not following suit and filmed himself disassembling the cartridge so he can paint it yellow without damaging the game and its connection pins. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The final result is admittedly authentic looking, but it ultimately proved fruitless since the cartridge would no longer fit into the console, either due to the extra layers of paint making it slightly bigger or it wasn't put back together properly. In a follow-up video, Gardner showed he was able to force the cartridge in eventually and, from the sound of things, actually play the game. But the cartridge is now stuck, and he can't remove it, with one attempt with a pair of metal pliers only breaking part of it off. While some of the comments do try to offer advice on how to remove the cartridge, there are unsurprisingly a lot of people mocking Gardner for even attempting any of this to begin with. The videos have gone viral enough to generate at least three separate Reddit threads, where plenty of people either insult Gardner or accuse him of just trying to draw attention. Whatever the case, Gardner appears to be taking has fame well. In a third video, where it seems he's about to address the mean comments and media coverage, he reveals he was sent a threatening email from Nintendo. Signed by 'John Nintendo himself', it says unless Gardner gets the cartridge removed by the end of the day, the company will take his house and brick his Switch 2 (admittedly, that second one is something Nintendo can actually do). He then shows that a second attempt at using the pliers was successful and has presumably left his Switch 2 undamaged, but the cartridge itself is in pieces. If there's any lesson to be learned from this, it's don't spray paint your games, especially with how expensive they are nowadays, although you'd think most people would know not to do that. More Trending In other Donkey Kong news, although Nintendo hasn't shared official sales figures yet, data by NielsenIQ and shared by The Game Business says Donkey Kong Bananza enjoyed the biggest opening week in the UK in the franchise's history… maybe. As it stands, 2010's Donkey Kong Country Returns (the original Wii game, not the Switch remaster) officially holds that record, but NielsenIQ admits it currently lacks data for how many copies of Bananza were sold directly from Nintendo's online store and the eShop. Even if Bananza has outperformed every other Donkey Kong game in the UK, that doesn't really mean much as the series has never done tremendously well over here. Although Donkey Kong Country helped the SNES to beat the Mega Drive (aka Genesis) in the US, during the 90s, it didn't have quite the same effect here, where it wasn't until the DS and Wii era when Nintendo really became popular in the UK. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 beats PS4 and PS5 as fastest-selling console ever MORE: Two new racers coming to Mario Kart World hints Donkey Kong credits MORE: Weirdly Mario Kart World is only the third best selling Switch 2 digital game
