Whales Vs Sharks. And the Fallacy of Publisher Practices

[isturbo1984]

I'll keep this on the short side and try to be to the point. Everyone knows what a "Whale" is when it comes to video games and microtransactions. If not, the TL;DR version is that whales are what the industry has dubbed those who spend a gratuitous amount of money on MTXs. This is actually where publishers make the bulk of their money from MTX-riddle titles. The average money spent on MTXs per player is actually very, very low. Far lower than if each person was to buy the game at full price? So do it? Because of the whales. They disproportionately spend a real world dollar amount on the games though MTXs several times over the actual price of a normal game.

But what about "Sharks"? Sharks is the Whale Concept here and applied to those against MTXs and these spending habits of video games. Gamers like me, who buy and play a "gratuitous" amount of games. Like whales, sharks are also on the rare side. Sharks purchase several games just to support their developer or publisher. And often times will double dip just to continue the good practices in gaming they want to see. Also, unlike whales, sharks will keep coming back with the new games if satisfied, while the whales typically fall off after a single entry. Why do publishers ignore the individual gamers who will buy every spinoff in their favorite annual franchise? If gamers as consumers are treated like investments like in other industries, one would think the vg industry would do batter chasing the sharks. What do you guys think?

[xadu]

I got to side with Aidy here. He disputed your claims. Repeatedly asked for you to produce once instance of an investor or stockholder and you didnt. Its time to put up or shut up. I am of the mind the investors do have a heavy hand in development and industry practices. I remember reading articles about it. But you don't keep arguing because you are too lazy to dig, lol. C'mon.

You don't get it. Is is not necessary for investors to manually intervene. Is not even necessary for an investor to actually buy any share.

If the market thinks anything, it will not buy, or will sell the stocks. That's all that matters.

If a market analysts predicts that the profits will be on the mobile market, all shared companies will start making mobile games, or they will be deinvested, in favor of the ones making mobile games.

I already gave an example showing a prediction, and we all know that all companies are running to make mobile games, even by angering their consumers. And we all know that every time the spokesperson talks about the angry consumers, they don't care at all about consumers. They are talking to the market, not to gamers.

It is not necessary for a shareholder to even talk to the CEO. But of course, all shareholders have a voice and a vote on the company they hold shares.

It is like after Tesla started selling self driving electric cars, every car manufacturer, all around the world, started investing in self driving and electric cars, because analysts said that it is the future. Any car manufacturer needs to at least pretend that they are in the business to stop scared investors from running away.

[isturbo1984]

Originally posted by xadu View Post


That's an absurd demand. .

You can't because you're wrong.

xadu
I got to side with Aidy here. He disputed your claims. Repeatedly asked for you to produce once instance of an investor or stockholder and you didnt. Its time to put up or shut up. I am of the mind the investors do have a heavy hand in development and industry practices. I remember reading articles about it. But you don't keep arguing because you are too lazy to dig, lol. C'mon.

[Zoltor]

I cannot blame an owner for making his company public. It is part of capitalism. If you own a company which makes 1 million in profit, and you can instantly turn it into 40 million in profit, why wouldn't you don't do it?.

I would totally sell off. That's 40 years of income collected on days/months.

But it comes with limitations. Once the company goes public, you depend on the opinion of investors which don't have a clue about video game business. They may make you billionaire, or broke, just for causes out of your control. A simple bug in a trade algorithm and your shares may drop in seconds.

Your wealth depends on the humor and ignorance of investors. That doesn't justifies or demonizes it. It is just the way markets work.

Yea true I agree, and don't get me wrong, I would probally sell as well, but only if I wanted to sell in the traditional sense(as in not have anything to do with it after the sale). I just find it how hilarious people are, thinking they can have their cake and eat it too.

[Erebus]

Investors have no effect on game companies, their games, or the development of the games. You have stated that they do. They don't.

Major shareholders can influence decisions or ask for things. The CEO and board can choose to comply to what the person asked or risk losing jobs/seats on board, bonuses or have a crash in stock. Shareholders have voting rights within a company.

[xadu]

, any publically traded company in the US especially has literally sold their souls to the shareholders. They virtually control everything the companies do, and nearly all high lv personnel changes that happens, is due to the shareholders wanting/voting for such.

Hell there are many people who started companies, turned it into a publically traded company, and then got kicked out of their own company lol. It literally happens all the damn time too(guess serves them right for wanting unnatural growth/influx of money for doing nothing, apposed to being patient, but still)

If not for shareholder nonsense, none of these evil western corporation would be even 25% a bad as they are.

I cannot blame an owner for making his company public. It is part of capitalism. If you own a company which makes 1 million in profit, and you can instantly turn it into 40 million in profit, why wouldn't you don't do it?.

I would totally sell off. That's 40 years of income collected on days/months.

But it comes with limitations. Once the company goes public, you depend on the opinion of investors which don't have a clue about video game business. They may make you billionaire, or broke, just for causes out of your control. A simple bug in a trade algorithm and your shares may drop in seconds.

Your wealth depends on the humor and ignorance of investors. That doesn't justifies or demonizes it. It is just the way markets work.

[Zoltor]

That's an absurd demand. Nobody can say Dude Smith bought 0,05% of XXX Limited and asked by phone to the CEO to do ZZZ with this result.

I explained how investors influence game developers, and why their opinion weights so much. I don't need to demonstrate any specific case in detail.

You aren't interested on it anyways. you are only here to pick a fight.

Sigh just ignore him, It's clear he doesn't pay any attention to the VG industry at all, because while the Japanese tend to mitigate the control they have, the same can't be said for the west, any publically traded company in the US especially has literally sold their souls to the shareholders. They virtually control everything the companies do, and nearly all high lv personnel changes that happens, is due to the shareholders wanting/voting for such.

Hell there are many people who started companies, turned it into a publically traded company, and then got kicked out of their own company lol. It literally happens all the damn time too(guess serves them right for wanting unnatural growth/influx of money for doing nothing, apposed to being patient, but still)

If not for shareholder nonsense, none of these evil western corporation would be even 25% a bad as they are.

[Aidy]

Proof? .

[Aidy]

That's an absurd demand. .

You can't because you're wrong.

[xadu]

Can you please give me a specific example of an investor\shareholder having influence over what happens in a game. Not your opinion, not your interpretation, I want actual fact. I want the investor, I want the action, I want the outcome.

That's an absurd demand. Nobody can say Dude Smith bought 0,05% of XXX Limited and asked by phone to the CEO to do ZZZ with this result.

I explained how investors influence game developers, and why their opinion weights so much. I don't need to demonstrate any specific case in detail.

You aren't interested on it anyways. you are only here to pick a fight.

[Thomas_JCG]

Every company with shareholders has the duty to keep a high profitability. To keep the investors pleased, many companies have focused on online games with MTX and loot boxes, as they provide a huge but short lived boost. Why do you think "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4" was released without a campaign? Why Blizzard is making a mobile game instead of working on "Diablo 4"? Those are very obvious examples of investors having an effect on game development.

[Aidy]

Can you please give me a specific example of an investor\shareholder having influence over what happens in a game. Not your opinion, not your interpretation, I want actual fact. I want the investor, I want the action, I want the outcome.

[xadu]

Ok first off let's remember you have a proven track record of posting lies as facts

https://www.exclusivelygames.com/for...8177#post18177

Second, can you please give me a specific example of an investor\shareholder having influence over what happens in a game. Not your opinion, not your interpretation, I want actual fact. I want the investor, I want the action, I want the outcome.

You are the one posting lies as facts. You listed SOME people on SOME Bethesda games remaining on the company as proof that programmers didn't moved to other companies. It does not disproves what I said.

For case, the creators of the fallout series were Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, which are the ones who moved to Obsidian Entertainment, and are now developing Outer Worlds, which clearly shows the talent that Bethesda lost

(I also see some borderland's style artwork, so I guess that Gearbox may have lost some artists to Obsidian)

My point was "Follow the programmers, not the company", and your point was to show a list of employees of Bethesda to cheat people to believe that the creators of the Fallout series still work in Bethesda.
Your argumentation is fallacious; Illogical.

I told you that the latest fallout games are "derivative games" from Fallout, to explain that they don't represent the creative talent of Fallout.
But you are not smart enough to have a civilized argument.



Your argumentation is so out of touch, which didn't deserved more answer. I just didn't noticed that you are the same person, or I would had not bothered to talk to you again.

[Aidy]

crap

Ok first off let's remember you have a proven track record of posting lies as facts

https://www.exclusivelygames.com/for...8177#post18177

Second, can you please give me a specific example of an investor\shareholder having influence over what happens in a game. Not your opinion, not your interpretation, I want actual fact. I want the investor, I want the action, I want the outcome.

[xadu]

You misunderstand. Give me specific examples of how investors influence the every day workings of a company.

Apologies to Zoltor, I spoke before realising it wasn't you who replied but xadu. 100% my mistake.

You need more explanations?

Look, not so long ago, market analysts made predictions like this:



They predict that mobile games will make most of the profit in gaming. So every CEO ran to turn the company into a mobile gaming company.

Nobody asked the consumer. Nobody cared about gamer's opinion, so Blizzard announced a mobile Diablo, and every consumer hated it.

Only investors opinion mattered. Consumers opinion are expressed by the dislike/like ratio on the youtube trailer



What was Blizzard answer? It went to client sites like Kotaku or Polygon, and spoke about gamers in third person, obviously not trying to talk to gamers, but to investors, about the gamers reaction. It was not a message for players, it was a message to investors.


Only after a market analyst, -Cowen & Company-, pointed to the elephant in the room: 'Blizzard severely miscalculated how their fans would respond, which suggests they aren't in touch with their players as maybe they should be.'"

Only after that, Blizzard cared to announce that it was developing a new Diablo game for PC/console, a claim that cannot be verified, and looks like damage control.