HoneyBakedHam: If I were a publisher, looking to buy a successful development house, my thoughts would go something like this: "Wow, they make excellent games that are very popular and sell lots of copies. They must have a business culture well suited for game development. Over the years they are going to make me a lot of money if I just let them do what they so obviously know how to do. I might even learn something from them."
Maybe... you might be thinking wrong. (not in my opinion, but theirs) I don't think these guys are buying the future. I think they are buying the past.
When EA (or any company, because frankly EA does good things too... sometimes) absorbs a studio, they are buying existing IP that already has a cash value and a projected future earning. So the logic is to pump out some new titles on old IP at a reduced cost, cash in, burn the studio, lather, rinse, repeat.
Creation is risk. You need to minimize risk and maximize profit, because after all, the dollar is God and the stockholder is the chosen people. So destruction is actually the safer path.
HoneyBakedHam: EA execs, on the other hand, seem to think "Wow, they make excellent games that are very popular and sell lots of copies. But I bet they don't know the first thing about how it should really be done. If we restrict their creativity and force a different business culture on them, I'm sure we could get much better results out of them. It didn't work the last three times we tried it, but I'm convinced I'm right anyway."
But... it did work the last three times. They got their cash out of them and moved on.
HoneyBakedHam: It seems to me that corporate business types only think of economy in the very short term. They'd much rather have $2 million now once and for all, than $20 million over the next five years. And most of them definitely don't subscribe to the philosophy of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". Also, my experiences over the years have led me to the conclusion that one philosophy they
do subscribe to is "there's nothing that can't be fixed by drawing a new organizational chart". I've seen this done as a "solution" a staggering number of times, despite the fact that it has never worked.
You understand... you just have a far different definition of "works" than they do.
I'm reminded of making pizza when I was a teenager.
I worked at a pizza delivery joint and on the night of the big home game at the nearby high school we were getting slammed with orders. I was on the oven. I was taking pizza from the prep table to the oven and from the oven to the box.
We made a few hundred pizzas but I dropped one from the prep table to the floor, so I threw it away and the prep guys made me a new one.
In 1985, the food cost was on a large deluxe was roughly $1... and the retail price was $12... thus the profit was $11. The manager, after the rush, came to the kitchen, saw the one in 200 pies that were trashed, and said, "that pizza lost me $11."
I said, "no, you lost $1 in costs, and it was replaced with an additional dollar investment, so you made $10 on that pie, as opposed to the $11 you made on 199 other pies. All in all, you gained $2199 over a 3 hour period..."
He countered that the pizza in the trash represented $11 in lost profit and so an argument ensued, which I won, although he'd never admit that, meaning that I define winning as knowing I am right despite my opponent remaining a delusional douche-bag.
My point... That's how these guys see money. It's all loss to them. If they pay labor, that's a loss. If they maintenance delivery cars, that's a loss. At EA, if they hire a tech support agent, he represents a loss because he doesn't generate revenue.
Suits never celebrate that a $5 million investment resulted in a $10 million profit. They only complain that if they didn't have to spend X on Y then the profit would have been $12 million.
It is a particularly craven view of business.
HoneyBakedHam: I agree completely. I think the reason most people react that way is that, frankly, most people are idiots. To quote George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize, half of them are stupider than that!"
Love Carlin, and love your gusto... and in fact, I've said the same thing...
But step back a second.
How stupid are people?
Everyone thinks everyone else is stupid. It's pretty amazing. On paper, Earth is occupied by 6 and 1/2 billion morons.
But really... we worry about our jobs (if we still have one)... we worry about health care... we worry about the quality of our kids education... we worry about their safety... we worry about the food we eat and water we drink... we worry about oil in the Gulf and drunks of the highway and Ford building new plants in Taiwan while closing plants in Michigan and the rising costs of everything we need and the declining dollar and our wife wants to go back to school and we need a new car because the '98 Honda Civic is really about to die and...
For too many of us, there is point where we really just want to relax and play Madden 11 and not have to invoke the spirit of Eugene Debs just to buy a video game...
...and that sucks, because that game choice effects the path of the state of the art of the industry. And, it impacts regular people's jobs, and futures. Will EA pump out two new Modern Warfare clones or choose a path of innovation? I don't know, but if Mom has to buy a game for little Jimmy, you can bet she won't put as much thought into that as she does about how much high fructose corn syrup is the food she feeds him.
Is she stupid? Or between the presentations she has to give at work about the April sales figures, and the PTA meetings, and soccer, and Cub Scouts, and bills, and everything else contributing chaos to life... is it in fact forgivable that she doesn't log on to Gamespot to bone up on Starcraft 2?
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I'm not actually arguing with you, and I'm sorry I went off on a ranty tangent... But I'm very political, and it took years to understand that other people aren't... and perhaps with good reason.
I just think its fun to write about it, and sometimes I think we all pontificate about how things should be more than realizing how things are, and I think we oversimplify things. A multi-billion dollar industry like gaming is staggeringly complex... in ways most of us, including me, can't easily realize.
It's like the guy who says, "the problem with kids today is..."
Any statement that says THE problem IS... is wrong. At the very least, one must say ONE of the myriad of problems are, in some cases...
But really... what I really mean is... I wanna play a new Dungeon Keeper game.
That game rocked!
I'm gonna go take my meds now :-)
