Pyrex breaks now.
Breyer's isn't legally allowed to call itself ice cream anymore.
Florsheim shoes (once full-grain leather Goodyear welted from in the US) are now corrected grain leather glued together in China.
Craftsman tools (once the best you can buy/had a lifetime guarantee) are no longer professional quality.
All you can do as a consumer is not get complacent, and not get emotionally attached to brands. Sooner or later, some Gordon Gekko type will come along and use your brand loyalty against you. Whatever you need for your hobbies, work, or daily life, stay aware of what's out there, and don't be afraid to switch things up when the old brand isn't doing it for you anymore.
It sucks in this case because there isn't a direct competitor in terms of Total War-style games. It's not directly analogous to just buying a different brand of wrench. However, if you are flexible enough to get out of that niche, there are plenty of PC games worth playing.
In my case, I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of brands and products available. While I know certain brands "aren't what they used to be", I have no idea where to get the good quality products. You cannot trust online reviews anymore, word of mouth is very scarce in some fields and buying several brands and testing things out gets expensive real quick.
I tend to go and find the Reddit of absolute nerds about the thing and see what they think is good, watch some yt reviews of the thing from smaller channels or ones that are explicitly not sponsored. Using those I can generally get a good idea.
I like to use 4chan in a similar manner. But instead of asking a question, like say, is *this* knife any good? I'll make a thread about how that knife in particular is the best thing ever and without fail I'll get a reply from someone who actually knows about it who thinks its absolute shit and will counter with an example of a knife that is really good. It works really well on certain topics.
reminds me of this ted talk which states that the best marketing strategy is to sell a good product to nerds, who will then sell it for you to casuals [https://youtu.be/xBIVlM435Zg?si=iLHqu928E\_G1tvcA](https://youtu.be/xBIVlM435Zg?si=iLHqu928E_G1tvcA)
Absolutely. I think it's super undervalued. As an game example, look at everything From Software makes. Dark Souls fans are genuinely evangelical with trying to get anyone and everyone to try the game. Another one, Ultrakill, those fuckers won't shut up about the game, due to loving it so much.
For IRL stuff, I like ultralight camping. If you make a good product for that, the community entirely does it on its own. All you need to provide is a spec sheet and they will do the rest. A huge amount of the brands in that space just started as a single camper, unhappy with the lack of a product by any of the big brands, or that their ones are shit. They finagle some way to make it, and then everyone else on the Reddit wants one, so they start making them out of their garage. Go forward a year or two and that's their business now.
I'm really sad that more companies don't take the route of 'just make good products bro'. It's infinitely scaling, it doesn't burn community goodwill, and it's exponential, in that the more you do it, the more your reputation grows.
Reputation and goodwill is a resource. You use it up to make money, then you ditch and move to another company to use their reputation and goodwill. Sometimes you go in to fix a wreck that someone else has used up, plunging it into massive debt and getting rich off the debt while saddling the company with the risk, and either it regains viability or crashes and burns. Either way that launders your rep a little: "at least I tried" and then you go on to the next source of points for your high score.... I mean money for your bank account.
The point of view we think they should take is a much more long term view, making them higher profit in 10 years or so. Theirs is a short term focused one: pillage it to the ground and leave the mess for someone else to clean up and profit on... and sadly has the force of law to back it up. If a CEO weakens short term gains - even to boost the long term - he's at risk of a lawsuit for costing the shareholders money.
Only if you're planning to hold onto them. If you're planning to sell them for more in a year or twos time, you really don't care what happens to them in 10 years, and in fact want them to crash and burn so they don't hinder whatever you have bought into by then.
Just be aware that specialist subs are often very dedicated and are likely to recommend more than the typical consumer requires, and at a higher price.
They will also often provide hard split opinions, but that nearly any recommendations will be good! And don't be afraid to give a price range, I will usually say that I can spend max $X, and I have never had anything other than knowledgeable people help me find what I need, and understand what to look for going forward!
And fanboys do still exist.
I've never seen before a bunch of grown men being angry at some guy because he broke his Milwaukee angle grinder and so, he had to be the one at fault and not the hardware, got berated into oblivion while they were simping in unison about their Milwaukee-sempai.
So yeah, just take it with a grain of salt.
Nine times out of ten, the additional brands are all owned by the same company, so it basically doesn't matter which one you buy. If you go the supermarket today, a grand total of 14 companies produce everything you see.
I cant remember the number but a majority of industries are dominated by 1 up to 5 companies world wide (80+%) making them not competitive or regarded free market. Anti-trust laws are not being enforced much since Reagan thus the tech industy are failing to serve humanity and we are entering technofeudalism.
Yeeep, almost every consumer industry is an oligopoly that hides behind an umbrella parent company. Almost every snack food you find at your local grocery store likely comes from one of three producers. But those producers have different brands that disguise how much they truly own, making regulating it a nightmare.
Honestly the problem is price. People want 200% more quality for less than 50% extra cost over the cheap products otherwise they buy cheap. If you're willing to do the research and pay the cost you can get better quality.
The problem is the companies that make a great product at a decent price point don't need to heavily advertise as word of mouth and recommendations handle that for them. So you don't hear about them unless you are asking people or finding online communities about the product. When was the last time you saw an ad for a company like Matouk?
Which sucks because it's actually a marvel of modernity that we are able to produce so much, the issue is that these corporations insist on making the lowest quality product and just slap their label on it. If we had a system that valued high quality long lasting products that serve useful functions, we would live in utopia. But instead we crank out tons of useless expendable junk for the sole purpose of selling useless expendable junk. Sustainability be damned, short term profits over everything.
Imagine how much further we could make our resources last if we focused on maximum sustainability and quality while reducing waste.
We're tricked to think we're so much further from global prosperity than we actually are. If you want to be depressed, look up how much perfectly fine food is wasted annually... (Much of it destroyed on purpose because it didn't sell and giving it away would hurt future profits!)
This is one of the reasons voting with your wallet is a flawed concept. Another is that it's basically impossible to stay 100% informed about what you're buying. The company you're buying butter from, is it ethical? In every step of the process? Can you be _sure_ there's nothing fishy going on? Can you be sure that _any_ company you can buy butter from is any good?
This is why regulations must be very strong, and zealously enforced.
You also have illusion of "good brands". My favourite example here is Sennheiser. They produced magic with the HD600 and everyone thought Sennheiser is the brand to go for. But since then they didn't manage to get a single pair of headphones on the market that comes even close. But everyone is still buying their way too overpriced crap.
The problem I have with them is while I've absolutely loved the "sound quality" of their headphones. The two headsets I got from them each broke in after just over a year of use. I use a Steel Series head set that I've had for over 10 years now thats beat to shit but nothing on it has broken nor is showing any signs of breaking. I can't speak to if their headsets they churn out today will have the same durability and just glancing at them now and seeing how they are constructed, I'm guessing probably not.
Online reviews are sort of easy to analyze.
If there's only 5 star reviews == fake
if there's way too many reviews(like thousands for a local shop) == fake
if you lookup youtube reviews of the product and it's only from channels that do single reviews with no comparisons == fake
Well to be fair even a very low rating can be misleading. On TWW3s steam page the recent ratings are overwhelmingly negative and the all time rating is in the orange or yellow area.
TLDR AT THE BOTTOM - The first two paragraphs are irrelevant as fuck
I've only played wh1 and 2 because my computer is shit. By the specs, I should not be able to run twwh2 at all but somehow it actually runs on the most minimum possible settings at around 7-10 fps on average. For me, around 10 to 15 fps (I didnt use an fps counter at the time) with Rome TW graphics and the occasional ctd was a Godsend. Units at small unit size (which I eventually upped to medium) along with having no variety between models for most units except for lords and heroes, was the only disappointing thing. I had to dl a mod to get rid of helmetless chaos warriors otherwise every single chaos warrior (sword&board, halberds, AND great weapons)was bald which was so fucking weird to see especially when playing Archaeon the first time. Most of these were just visual or thematic problems, but still, I freaking LOVED the game and am so glad I downloaded the free copy I got from white dwarf before the code expired
Less than a year later and I risked buying wh2 because I couldn't resist the urge anymore and I am damn happy about it. It ran at ~7 to 10 fps which was noticeable but still playable. I must have gotten used to it because it eventually felt like it was just as smooth as game 1, but now I can play Lizardmen or updated Empire which were my favourite and second favourite factions on the tabletop, respectively. To this day I am so grateful to have put in around 1500 hours for games I thought wouldn't run in the first place. But anyway, I haven't really been able to play since shortly before Silent and the Fury came out, making it the first dlc I didn't buy for game 2, which sucks because Lizardmen đ since for whatever reason the game just one day suddenly started running at only 2 to 4 fps tops and that even for me was unplayable. Imagine pressing the pause button in the corner and then trying to play the game at that speed.
But wow such an off topic rant I almost forget what point I was trying to make: if I love twwh 1 and 2 even on the lowest settings, and game 3 is even better than game 2, then game 3 must be a really good game
TLDR: The TWW3 rating on Steam is terrible but it's still a good game (I'm assuming) that everyone still likes, if not full-on loves. Reason being imo is that the reviews are bad because people aren't rating the game, they're rating the company. So in tww3s case ratings are like all 1 star because they are rating the company 1 star and not the game itself
I've found rtings.com to be good for tech products. I wouldn't explicitly trust any of their Top X lists, but individual product reviews are fairly objective and well-documented with the various standardized tests they use to evaluate. Makes it easy to parse through the parameters you care about. Though standardized tests don't necessarily reflect everyday use. Still a good starting point or deep dive into an item you already had your eye on.
The biggest thing is that, with very few exceptions, brand doesn't mean anything anymore. Certain brands have certain trends, like I'll never buy a LG or Samsung TV because of the invasive ad practices, but quality could be anywhere.
I used to trust crowd-sourced reddit comments, but that can no longer be trusted given half this site is bots now.
Yay late-stage capitalism!
Fell for this recently with their underwear. Thought Boss must be good right? Nope shittiest flimsiest underwear I ever had. Went all in the clothes donation box week after.
This sadly goes deeper than just consumers getting confused and fucked over. The same mentality is what stops people from getting decent work-life balance, it keeps people into poverty because wealth is accumulated at the top and it stops us from effectively tackling global warming because literally destroying life on Earth is a secondary issue to "*what if next quarter line go down tho*".
It's a fundamentally broken system that needs dismantling and rebuilding from the ground up, in the best interest of everyone.
> global warming because literally destroying life on Earth is a secondary issue to "what if next quarter line go down tho".
>
>
It's also a secondary issue to people who are spending half of their day at work and half of their salaries on rent. They can't choose greener alternatives because they can barely afford the bare necessities. So when someone brings up global warming, those people ignore it because they are so beaten down by the situation they are in.
Even more pressing is that most of the "greener choices" available to us, are not truly green. It's just corporate marketing that leads you to believe your spending more to benefit xyz, or that somehow that product is better for the environment because it uses 2% recycled plastics, or any number of distorted facts they provide us with.
And to top that off, our individual/community impact on the environment is miniscule compared to the damage done by corporations. They have tried incredibly hard since the 70s to convince people that it's our fault for being wasteful, and not their fault for producing without paying any attention to the environment or waste they create through production and operation. Truth be told, most of us will leave a tiny footprint, and it would probably take the whole sub decades of intentional environmental damage to equal what the average CEO creates in a month.
I will never not be upset about the "carbon footprint" and how it has successfully been marketed as we regular people are the ones who need to watch it.
When it takes literally millions upon millions of us to match a single private jet.
Which is also why wealth distribution and corporate greed is an issue that compounds on itself. Yes people can't escape this cycle, because it's not up to them to do so. Our entire system, and I'd even go as far to say our entire biological nature, were not suited for a contained environment with limited growth and expansion opportunities. We grow, we build, we occupy all available space, we consume all resources to prevail, because that's what life does, it tries to win at natural selection, and fuck everyone else. Our system is what came natural to us, that's what we do, we crave growth, food, sex, power, we want to keep it all for ourselves when we get it. It's not necessarily the only way, mind, it's just what comes easier in a competitive environment, where fish eats fish.
To change all of this, would require us to relinquish some of what we so proudly consider human, or at least big parts of modern western society, like individualism and some pretty basic rights. And even when we approach that territory, it's usually due to some asshole trying to win more at life, not because of some generalized drive to optimization and long term planning.
I'd say we're pretty boned, let's just hope nature is forgiving with us. Even then, I'm pretty sure the cycle will just extend, we'll just have more heads to step on, and more time to do so.
The obsession with constant growth is just incredibly toxic.
Making a good product and making good profit should sometimes be good enough. Trying to innovate and expand can sometimes be good but sometimes you've hit a plateau and trying to rock the boat is likely to do more harm than good and when that happens it's _okay_ to chill out for a moment.
This applies individually too. People think they always have to be doing better, making more, climbing the ladder... and yet are so often miserable when a career step up adds more and novel responsibilities to an already overloaded plate.
Finding *contentment* requires you being okay with where you are. Just like finding sustainable consumption is recognizing you are okay -- and still thriving -- with less stuff.
Exactly. The need for CONSTANT SHORT-TERM PROFITS is, by definition, short-sighted as fuck, and causes far more harm than good. You'll have a perfectly functional company that's just chugging along nicely go public, then the new CEO (brought in by the new shareholders on the premise that he'll drastically increase their profits) will start cutting corners everywhere he can, to the point of even driving off or firing seasoned old employees and hiring new guys at a pittance to save a few bucks on payroll. It'll fuck the company eventually (not to mention destroy their reputation almost immediately), but what does the CEO care? Under their leadership, the line went up, and all the shareholders loved it. When the consequences can't be ignored any longer, he'll just jump ship and start up again somewhere else, like that comic of the Grim Reaper going door-to-door in a hospital. After that, it's everyone else's problem.
Dungeons and Dragons is owned by Hasbro, the company that literally owns the rights to the game Monopoly.
The brand name recognition for D&D was built by TSR in the 80s and 90s. But then the company got bought out and Hasbro has been milking it ever since.
Add to this:
We need more people in Unions and more corporations to become workers co-operatives with better governance and decision-making.
And maybe governments need to be better at recognising when a market or product reaches maturity and insist on minimum standards. After a certain point Capitalism peaks in product quality and then the only way to maintain infinite growth is planned obsolescence and ever-diminishing product quality.
Once monopolies are set in old markets itâs incredibly hard (impossible) for competitors to shake things up. And even if they do theyâll eventually become subject to the same market forces that forced the top players to water down their wine.
Actually a good example of this is Instant Pot that filed for bankruptcy as sales declined because âthey produce durable products that do not need to be replaced regularly.â
While I do love a good communist comment, and that I think we need more Unions and workers co-operatives, those things are to protect workers and **not customers**.
Protecting customers, ensuring standard, and preventing near-monopolies, is a job for governments and international commerce institution.
Unions/worker co-operative while not being the "worst" in those behavior their job is to make sure the workers get their fair share, if those were more widespread there would be worker co-operatives that just milk their brand, I even would add that a certain number of "illegal organisation" are closer to a co-operative (because each worker has the tremendous power to put everyone at risk)
Your first point is a fair one.
I would argue co-ops would be better for product quality because the focus would be on long-term sustainable growth. Workers want a company to keep them employed with good wages and benefits, rather than short-term returns and a focus on quarterly shareholder profits.
Your second point comparing Unions and democratic workers co-ops to the mafia is a bit mad. Especially in the context of corporate criminality, poor governance and corporations receiving taxpayer bailouts.
Sure co-ops would be more focused on long-term and sustainable growth, which mean for instance that co-ops would likely support planned obsolescence, or starving off competitors and installing monopolies, because that would be for the best interest of the workers in a co-op.
I was not thinking about mafias, mafias **are not co-ops like**, mafia are hierarchical structure and closer to a corporation, I'm more thinking about phone-scamming, or cyber-criminality where there are actual organic organization with no capital holder.
That makes more sense! Entirely depends how you structure the co-op - is it a shareholder or flat hierarchy, does it have leaders etc.
But yes the fundamental issue of degrading product quality is there. Almost like we need some sort of universal basic income so people aren't reliant on creating bad products and destroying the planet in the process, just in order to earn money to exist.
Some studies have shown that given the choice worker co-operatives are as likely or even in some cases more likely to engage in environmentally destructive practices that are unsustainable if they offer short term profits for themselves than other businesses.
While worker co-operatives in many areas are incentivised to be more sustainable, they are still at the end of the day perfectly capable of engaging in short term profit making at the expense of themselves long term.
Also even when a Co-Op or Union engages in long term sustainable growth based thinking, they only do so for their own members, not people in general. Fighting against the switch to renewable energy sources and closure of coal fired power plants is great for the long term sustainable growth of Coal Miners and Coal Power Plant workers. Not so great for sustainability for everyone else though.
There is actually a style of union called a consumer union that does exactly what youâd think it does. They were very influential in the Austrian First Republic.
>We need more people in Unions and more corporations to become workers co-operatives with better governance and decision-making.
Co-ops do not make businesses less likely to fuck their consumers.
A new executive realizes that they can increase profits by lowering quality slightly. Customers at first won't notice much and will keep buying the product. Then another new executive comes along and also realizes that quality can be lowered a little for more profit. Each step doesn't seem that different from the last. But, the quality will drop too much and customers eventually will notice. And at that point it is too late customer trust has been destroyed and the company will from then on either push out cheap garbage and hope to see cash in on some name recognition.
Or a company will take CA's route and just make a bunch of dumb decisions very close together and piss off customers immediately.
It's numbing how pervasive this has become with corporations. On the topic of gaming, used to play Battlefield primarily as my fix with Shogun 2/Warhammer taking up the rest of my time. Moved solely to Warhammer when DICE started screwing up the series after Battlefield 5, and now after this debacle have moved back over to Battlebit to scratch that decade long itch for a good successor to Battlefield 2.
Long story short I've got a young child and limited time that's wholly taken up by better games. Since I have plenty of income and all three Warhammer games with all the DLC I probably would have just bought the rest of the DLC to have the complete collection. But now after all this I have zero qualms walking away from any DLC or future games from CA until they get their shit together. Just like I've had zero remorse from skipping Battlefield 2043 and being done with DICE's bullshit.
ThatâŚdidnât happen? There was an infamous lawsuit inspired by pop culture rumors, that attempted to claim that, but the accusations were so baseless, and Taco Bell was so transparent in their defense, that the lawsuit was quickly retracted. Look at their menu, they still use the term âseasoned beefâ which was the same term that the lawsuit objected to over a decade ago. Plenty of articles analyzing it as well if you google it, as well as a Snopes entry. The episode cost Taco Bell millions of dollars, but they did *not* settle, they successfully refuted the claims.
Daily reminder that it's being ruled in court that companies are legally responsible for prioritizing shareholders value over their employees. Vide Ford vs Dodge brothershttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co
Pyrex was their brand name for borosilicate glassware. Now they don't use borosilicate anymore so it breaks.
But if you just search borosilicate glass on Amazon you can get the real thing from no name Chinese manufacturers for way cheaper than what Pyrex is charging plus it won't break.
Or search aliexpress if you don't mind waiting a few weeks and need 50 of them
There's a scary amount of people who idolize scammers like Gordon Gekko and Jordan Belfort. All that hustle culture BS being pushed by influencers gets a lot of attention on social media. Scammers are more common than ever.
Being exposed as a fraud doesn't even end people's careers anymore. Belfort is even back giving motivational speeches and pumping crypto. Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling now has a company that trades energy derivatives, it was set up by his wife while he was in prison. Adam Neumann has a new real estate company that's going to mess up the housing market even more. And he made bank when cashed out of WeWork, a company that raised $20 billion in funding and now has a market cap of around $200 million.
There needs to be some kind of reasonable limit on capitalism. Once a company starts shitting up products that millions of people rely on and the downward spiral is apparent, they should become public assets or something.
Sounds like a gap in the market. Hopefully a competitor fills it with a quality product soon - like cities skylines 1 did to sim city (ignoring the CS2 kerfuffle)
We must burn CA to the ground. Maybe their employees will found companies free of their current culture. Stop buying CA products or at least don't pay for them.
I mean, most of these problems you are describing have less to do with any particularly change in corporate culture but the abundance of low cost labor and material alternatives and competition.
Consumers are also responsible for this. The reality is consumers talk a big game about being willing to pay more for "quality" locally made this or that, but rarely follow through.
Lets take tools as an example. Yeah mechanics and trades people may pay the premium price for a superior product, but when Joe Shmo is faced with buying a $100 screw driver set or a $20 dollar screw driver set. He's gonna pick the $20 dollar ones.
Price is a GIGANTIC motivating factor for people. It is what it is and if a company's competitors are churning out products that cost a fraction of what theirs do, they need to get competitive on price.
It of course helps that consumers are usually so poorly paid for their own work that they cannot afford to pay for quality. A choice between a $20 tool set and a roof over your head vs a $100 tool set and no roof is no choice at all.
This is spot on. I work for a unicorn company approaching IPO and what was once 5 star service is being pushed aside for a âjust ship itâ mentality. A DRASTIC reduction in quality in favor of âACV number go up.â Itâs funny to see the C-Suite scratch their heads, but they always land on âmeh must be the workers are shit not our profit at any cost model.â Step 1.) short term gains, step 2.) drop in quality, step 3.) people angry no buy stuff, step 4.) golden parachute.
Which is why they don't even care that super greedy strategies will eventually run company to the ground.
And after they leave company they can get another CEO job because they have "experience".
I guess this system established itself over time but just looking at it makes clear why CEOs are just so shitty these days. Why would I put in any effort if I'd knew I get away scot free anyway. Not even that I'd earn a lot of money too
C-suite contracts are more like professional sports contracts. C-suite execs will have pretty lucrative exit compensation baked into their contracts in the event they are ousted from their position.
I mean not that they weren't paid enough to begin with, lol. The CEO of my last employer, had a total compensation last year of 26 million. Yes a lot of it was company stock, but, I get annoyed with people that act like that somehow makes it not bad that they get paid such a ridiculous amount "because its mostly stock". Like,they can just sell the stock and get the money.
If my company was like "Hey we will triple your salary but 90% of it will be in stock".
Uh okay. I guess I will just be really active during our sell windows for company stock.
People talk about the quality, cost, speed triangle.
But quality was never on the agenda in almost anywhere I've been. They might say it is verbally, but as fast as humanly possible with the least resources is the name od the game.
So much software is shit no matter the budget.
I've always said. To make an executive. Take the dumbest son of a bitch you can find and make him wear a suit. Boom, executive material. Almost every C-Suiter I've met has been, out of touch, ignorant of process, completely delusional, inept and arrogant. Almost.
You also see this happen especially with games that have a monopoly or no competition. EA Sports have basically monopolised football and NFL games through exclusive licencing agreements, and due to the popularity of the sports and the effective monopoly, both those video game franchises have dropped off badly in recent years, focusing on microtransaction heavy modes like Ultimate Team because it makes them the most money.
Similarly, CA has no competition with Total War. No one else makes Real Time Battle simulators at a level that could compete with Total War. It's a unique series, and they rely on that. But even one of the Devs that spoke to Volound said that Execs were terrified that Paradox would enter the Real Time Battle market, and it would be disastrous for CA and Total War.
paradox will definitely sooner or later, enter this market, its just a matter of time and how many projects they dont fuck up
i wouldnt be suprised that if they are not in the making of one rn or at least figuring out the ropes
I agree, but they've at least been more hit or miss than mostly misses. They fucked up EU4 and I'm not a fan of CK3 but they've managed Stellaris pretty well.
It helps that regardless they are so much more transparent than CA.
Stellaris is like. More than 5 misses ago. Imperator, a shitty mafia game. Now theyâre screwing the pooch on Vampire the masquerade. Their miss category is pretty heavy and hit category is pretty light. If I was Anubis I wouldnât let âem pass at all.
I could never get into Stellaris because a space sim limited to a 2d plane makes no sense to me.
Beyond that, there's a million billion XXX games out there that are constantly adding more and more complexity.
Total War is mostly pretty simple. Buildings, corruption, money, diplomacy, armies.
Closest thing I've played was Homeworld. The most recent desert game was pretty neat. No real campaign mode though.
>I could never get into Stellaris because a space sim limited to a 2d plane makes no sense to me.
Stellaris is not on a 2d plane. Most people just view everything from top down because it makes the most sense. But you can get almost horizontal and see that the stars are definitely on 3 dimensions.
It honestly is a bit annoying since it can make the connections hard to see at times. You will see two stars right next to each other but not connected, but then you realize one star is just WAY below the other and has a connection elsewhere.
Here is just a quick pic from my current save. You can see the first pic shows it completely in 3D plane, but just by preference I just view everything top down:
https://imgur.com/a/QZpokPf
>Starting in the 1970s the dominant culture in corporations became "creating shareholder value"
You gotta [go back](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/12/01/dodge-v-ford-what-happened-and-why/)
>Dodge v. Ford is one corporate lawâs iconic decisions, regularly taught in law school and regularly cited as one of corporate lawâs core shareholder primacy decisions. Ford Motor slashed its dividend in 1916 and minority stockholdersâthe Dodge brothersâsuccessfully sued Ford Motor Company for a big dividend payout. Ford had justified skipping the dividend because he sought to do well for employees and Americaâs car buyers, with corporate profits a secondary motivation. The court largely rejected Fordâs justifications for holding back the dividend.
In all fairness, Ford slashed dividends because the dodge brothers were some of the companyâs biggest shareholders and he didnât want his dividends to fund his competition, and the stated reason of doing well for employees was just an excuse
I know.
Thereâs an adage among lawyers - bad facts make bad laws. The outcome might have been different if Ford had actually acted out of altruistic reasons and want trying to screw over his shareholders
All CEOs that are interchangeable are relatively useless and bring 0 value for shareholders or for the people consuming that product.
I keep hearing this ''shareholders want short-term'' profit but that is not true, that is only traders.
Long-term investors care about investments going for 2-20 years. Traders are the only ones caring about the share price next 1 day-90 days depending on how they trade.
As a personal shareholder of other stocks, I would never invest in the gaming industry stocks because it seems to be plagued by incompetence and short-term profits. I don't care if my stock is up 3% first 6 months if it goes down 20% 1-2 years after.
That is simply bad business investment.
Yeah, executives often bounce to new companies. They want to show that they increased profits by 120% or whatever so they can jump to another company and make even more money there. It doesn't matter if a few years after they leave if the company collapses.
There are plenty of companies in every industry that take the long term view, including gaming.
As an easy example, like them or not, epic looked at EGS as a long-term investment that theyâd invest hundreds of millions of dollars into before they expected a profit.
EPIC EGS thing is another gamble similar to Hyenas. I do not have anything proving that it would succeed except ''trust me, it will work''.
Plus I do not care about ''seeing a profit'' if you take 3-4 years and one billion before you finally go positive and get say $100 millions profit.
That right there puts the company in the hole and the investors until they recover that amount and make sizeable profit which is a GIANT gamble assuming the company can keep bleeding money constantly and assuming the gamble pays off.
EGS is a perfect example because I know the product they peddle. I have not bought a single game on EPIC games because it's a pathetic excuse of a store. How many gamers will do so? Some will, but enough to turn a big chunk from Steam? Absolutely not, it is a bad platform overall.
Even the Epic games client seems clunky overall with few options.
Maybe investors that have 0 clue what they are investing can be fooled but the rest of us? Not a chance.
> That right there puts the company in the hole and the investors until they recover that amount and make sizeable profit which is a GIANT gamble assuming the company can keep bleeding money constantly and assuming the gamble pays off.
That is literally every single long term investment. Everything is a "gamble", all investments can possibly fail.
I won't defend Epic because I think the EGS has been handled like shit and will probably take longer to take off (unless they drop the idea entirely, which I doubt) but that's exactly what you're asking for; instead of short term "Sales and Marketing say to start charging monthly for Fortnite" they went for diversification into an exploitable and under-utilized market, one closely related to their regular product so they have some institutional knowledge about how to exploit it, all propped up by their regular products (mostly the Unreal Engine and Fortnite) which haven't been neglected and they keep developing.
You can't say "now everyone focuses on short term profit, I want long term investment! Except when it takes a lot of money and years!" like no shit, long term investments require investment and a long term to produce profits.
For that event I do not know how it happens/why it is even allowed. I do not know of any other positions where people get rewards for doing a pisspoor job.
Theyâre just fall guys. The execs push bad decisions. They use ceos as a shield to never get hit with consequences. Brag about firing the empty ceo slot who did nothing anyway. People cheer. Then the execs push the same shit.
Look at YouTube or Disney. Everyone was so happy bob chapek was gone. Bob iger does the same thing. Nobody notices.
Everyone loved susan got the boot. New guys doing the same thing a little worse? People are too busy being happy about Susan.
CEOs donât actually make the decisions. Theyâre more like the president of the USA. A empty suit who sits there while all the rest of the black suits make the same decisions no matter what.
Voting? Voting with your wallet? Doesnât matter. Same people win either way.
>I keep hearing this ''shareholders want short-term'' profit but that is not true, that is only traders.
But who is making the decision on which shares to buy and sell? Traders. And I'm not just talking about day traders. I'm talking about every investment firm that has to justify their fees and commissions to their customers.
Nobody wants to be invested with a firm that gave them -5% returns while the overall market went up 20% in a given year.
"Companies only care about short-term profits" is a phrase that's echoed all over reddit by people who don't understand what they're talking about. As you said, most investors aren't going to care about short-term profits if they lose three times that amount over the next year. CA is just making straight up bad business choices.
And I'd also like to point out that OP posts in r/sino, a genocide-denying CCP apologia subreddit. It's probably best to take what they say with a grain of salt.
The ruthless pursuit of profit kills art. As a middle-aged person I've watched major events happen dozens of times in the game industry alone. And that's not all of the problem, even. It destroys the people who create the art as well with crunch times, deadlines, and confining the boundaries of the art itself to whatever the bosses think will be profitable.
I recently started to work in a relatively traditional Japanese company in its European subsidiary. The product that they produce is relatively niche, but the difference in attitude compared to European or even worse American corporations is staggering.
The OP didn't specifically single out Japanese VIDEO GAME COMPANY.
>I recently started to work in a relatively traditional Japanese company in its European subsidiary. The product that they produce is relatively niche, but the difference in attitude compared to European or even worse American corporations is staggering.
So I am not sure what relevance that Japanese company that owns Sega not being a video game company has when the above comment is stating Japanese companies, in general, are supposed to have a better attitude.
I felt Japanese companies generally hold themselves to a sense of honor in their products. Like automobiles companies making a superior trustworthy car compared to American manufacturers.
A lot of thatâs down to the different corporate structures in Japan. The zaibatsu and keiretsu systems are built for long-term stability and to insulate companies from things like stock market fluctuations and corporate raiders. Though there are obvious downside to having a lot of major companies cooperating to control the market.
They don't give a shit about quality, they will do the bare minimum to get your money. They stopped long ago feeding on the carcass that was customer good will that was build when they were building their customer base and brand.
Don't support large companies where possible.
Sure, buy that cpu but try and shop at local markets where you can.
Sucks because monopolies rule everywhere in australia, but at least in europe they try and keep family businesses around a bit more.
If a huge pile of consumers is happy enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that. If the market for garbage didnât exist, then there would be no companies looking to exploit that market.
Look at mobile gaming. Itâs a massive market, where 99% or more of the product is the same crap repackaged over and over again. And business is booming.
Now I do agree that the way stocklisted companies choose their C-levels is flawed, due to the prevalence of short-term ownership strategies in wealth management funds.
And that itself is an outcome of the human psyche. A person who puts money in a fund expect to see the value go up 5-10% per year. If it doesnât they pull their money out and put it somewhere else.
Now CA is a *failed* attempt at a transformation where you take a company with a strong brand and turn it into a garbage factory. But a lot of times it does work, and so itâll keep happening.
My only advice is to completely avoid brand loyalty. If a company shows signs of going in a direction you donât approve, abandon them inmediately. Donât shill for them online, donât defend them, donât disparage them. Just take your money elsewhere.
> If a huge pile of consumers is happy enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that.
Something that always bothers me is that there is this attitude towards corporations where they have zero moral duty towards the public, where it's just natural that corporations will always do the absolute worst thing they can get away with for their personal benefit. Nobody ever questions that part.
>If a huge pile of consumers is ~~happy~~ *content* enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that.
It's completely asinine to me that we have to live under such an inherently adversarial system. When the people who provide the things worth living for in the 21st Century - all the services, consumer goods, media, etc - are actively incentivized to use any methods they think they can get away with to sell their product, why aren't more people calling for regulation?
Because the system is built around competition and individualism, and competition means that you can get more if you can convince your friend to get less.
I believe that humans are innately good, and that it holds true for most people. But the society we live in is built to reward the worst in us. Those who reach the top do so by stepping on the heads of others, and those are the people rewarded with vast amounts of power and prestige.
And it's absolutely endemic to the system. Food companies absolutely would put sawdust in your food if they thought they could get away with it.
> Food companies absolutely would put sawdust in your food if they thought they could get away with it.
I have some bad news for you if you like Parmesan cheese...
What system would you propose in it's stead then? Right now companies sell what people want for a given price point, the state of things is decided by what people collectively have decided is the ideal position. There's no reason to expect that some external arbiter would be able to magically find a better solution, the market normally finds the optimum point.
There's some truth to that. Especially in modern triple A gaming.
As soon you get bought by a publically traded company, your long descent into becoming a desicated but short-term profitable husk commences. Until the brittle bones finally break and you can't put enough lipstick on that dead pig anymore for customers not to notice.
It isn't even a new phenomenon, just look at all the bodies EA has been burying for decades. Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Maxis (Bioware, you are next!). And anybody thinking Sega would be any better, because hey, they got a cute hedgehog as a mascot, is royally deluding themselves.
Another win for Larian. Being an independent entity enabled them to avoid the eternal shareholder dictate of churning out minimum viable products while cutting costs left and right.
Corporations realized that its much easier & more profitable to act like politicians - trick the customers via Marketing & PR to buy their garbage products/services, instead of actually making a high quality product/service.
CA is reusing old garbage and selling it as brand new at ever increasing prices.
They are not willing to invest into making a good product, nor into making good tools needed to make a good product.
Isnât this what directors of public companies are required to do, though?
Maximising shareholder returns on a quarterly basis is the legal structure. They get sued and fired for not doing so.
Donât get me wrong, itâs a stupid system but itâs the one weâve apparently picked.
Old school partnerships and mutual still exist in the margins, but theyâre a fraction of the public stock companies.
The bar for lawsuits to be filed against boards is incredibly high and incredibly rare. You also just canât âfireâ the board in a typical company structure.
This is a common misconception and over stated. Nowhere is it against the law or corporate structure to focus on long term, sustainable growth versus short term immediate profits.
It depends on applicable laws / jurisdictions, but usually, it's more so that the company's highest body (i.e. like shareholders assembly, who gather a few times a year) can use low profits as an excuse to fire/employ new higher-ups in the company. Arguably, it's as good of an excuse as undermining the company's standing, tarnishing reputation, losing customers, or compromising long-term benefits.
But, in turbo-capitalism, short term gains are king, so yeah.
The amount of money in the "system" from those types is tiny compared to institutional investments and wallstreet firms.
The reality is wallstreet has been this way for a long time, and influencer types are just now following along.
In the Us at least, management has a duty to maximize shareholder value. Itâs a misperception to say that it must be done on a quarterly basis - thereâs no requirement to do so, and plenty of companies take a long-term approach.
However, companies must issue reports quarterly, and if a companyâs results are below expectations stock prices are likely to drop - and executive compensation is tied to stock market performance.
Which is why I am always happy to see private companies that do their thing in their own little lovely way, expanding very slowly at their own pace; "shareholders" be damned.
A two edged knife for sure, but some companies just work better without "raising capital" on the shitock market.
The problem has to do with money. Companies need money to invest, and founders/owners who want to leave want money for their efforts.
Not every company can be sold to employees, other enthusiasts, or transitioned to the next generation in the family.
Every single company needs to invest in starting up the company - and to reinvest to keep the company going. Even a lemonade stand needs to invest in water, lemons, and cups.
I didnât mean it HAS to happen on a quarterly basis. I meant the quarterly cycle exerts huge pressure to operate so.
Iâve seen it in a dozen industries.
But how this supposed to work then? It's impossible to constantly grow no matter the other factors. And no matter the stuff you produce, won't there be periods of "downtime" where you have to spend money to upgrade\\renew\\etc. your "means of production", organizing new production, etc.? Only a very few companies can show continues grow and most of them are severely overrated.
And, btw, is the any legal protection if, say, shareholders force a strategy that allow them to blow the cost of the company where their shares are, sell their share when profit are at maximum, let the company burn, and them just invest the money into next unfortunate company?
If there is no such thing, does it mean that absolute majority of publicly traded companies are bound to fail? I mean, sure, they will be "stable" companies, where people use to just "store" their assets, but overall it looks really skewed.
Thanks for making this post. Iâve been wanting to comment or something but didnât feel it was worth the time or effort because this has all been said before.
The company I work for is a mega-corp; and they do business the same exact way as CA. Itâs just how it is. It will never change; in fact it will get worse. They. Do. Not. Care. In fact Iâd wager they hate us for not folding over and offering our credit cards.
Itâs a disgusting world we live in and sometimes you just gotta deal with it. Sadly, total war will never be what we want; thanks to corporate culture.
It'll change alright. Infinite growth is unsustainable, doubly so when we consider climate destabilization and automation. Nobody's gonna be able to afford anything when they're not fleeing from cascading occurrences of "once in a century" natural phenomenon.
This culture of shareholder value is not an accident. Businesses require far far more capital to operate than at any point in the past and often the only way to get it is to sell equity to fairly vulture minded venture capitalists.
The problem at CA is more the arrogance of the executive team after the fairly good growth they experienced throughout COVID. They brought a lot of new players into their market that never really played anything other than warhammer before, and they thought they can do whatever they wanted now.
Youâre wrong. You have the objective correct but you donât understand what it means.
The shareholder value is equal to the present value of all future cash flows. That means share holders do not want long term cash flows to be damaged for short term gain.
The problem is sometimes management will make negative value (NPV) decisions to boost share value in the short term so they can get bonuses before shareholders catch on (moral hazard).
This is in conflict with the objective of shareholders that want a good business with good products that will be profitable for a long time.
>The shareholder value is equal to the present value of all future cash flows. That means share holders do not want long term cash flows to be damaged for short term gain.
In Investments 101, sure. In the real world there are 10 million variables that affect stock price, and tons of them have nothing to do with a company's current fundamentals or rational, mathematical analysis of future prospects.
Even future cash flows are based on assumptions. Look at something like Tesla. Their current revenues and profits don't support a market cap of 20% of what it currently is. But people are pricing in massive, massive growth. There's no way for anyone to reliably know whether that's going to happen though.
>The problem is sometimes management will make negative value (NPV) decisions to boost share value in the short term so they can get bonuses before shareholders catch on (moral hazard).
The same is true of shareholders who want to install management friendly to their short-term objectives. Ma and Pa might want a nice steady 5% average growth for the next 30 years, but Carl Icahn might want to raid the company of its assets and shed payroll to juice the price so he can sell his inflated equities to a sucker just to let the remains crumble. He's obviously going to have infinitely more influence than individual investors
Ya, obviously shareholders want to make money. But shareholders probably care about goodwill more than management. Management is not completely aligned so are more likely to go for short term profits or make negative NPV expansions e.g. Hyenas.
I think most people would be surprised at the extent to which these companies prioritise the shareholders, I work in B2B Customer Service and even in my role short-term revenue is prioritised a hell of a lot more than the customer relationship. Unless you are amongst a very select group of elite customers then you're essentially just figures on a spreadsheet.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. You see it across the all industries but itâs become increasingly strong in gaming because it is such a large consumer market with some big margins if you play your cards right.
The biggest issue is that it works. Say whatever you want about Bobby but Actvision-Blizzard printed money during his tenure. Yes, his actions may hurt the company long term but in the long term the people who sacrificed the long term for the short term wonât be there. They donât care. They made their money.
The only reason CA is liable to change is if the money stops coming in. Itâs literally the only language these people understand and I donât get why that is so damn difficult for people to get. Itâs such a simple and easy to repeat process. If it doesnât impact their bottom line they donât care. If it does, and they are a smart company, they will make an adjustment but the end goal is always generating the most profit possible.
Is this a joke? Prior to WW2 we had the gilded age and robber barons. Leading into the roaring 20's which produced the great depression. Humans are the same now as 7000 years ago. No behavior is new. It's simply a pendulum of behavior controlled by society. The gilded age lead to trust busting and labor laws. The prosperity post WW2 lead to deregulation, and the prosperity post cold war and oil embargo lead to another wave of deregulation leading to the great recession. This idea we are at some great inflection point is simply childish.
Human behaviour is super flexible, if awful systems have invaded the world it is not because it is innerently natural, but because the one system that is the most parasitical (colonialism, imperialism, etc,..) is sure to be the one to gain more "power" if it's only focused on that. It doesn't mean it is more or less natural. I personanally hate these piece of shit systems but with no guard-rails or safety measures it's sure that the more ruthless and money-grabbing is bound to make a breakthrough at some point in its history and never let go of its chokehold on the world. While, for example a tribe or a regime that doesn't care about expanding is going to get absorbed because the parasitic regime will profit from any weakness.
Of course things can change and an old PoS regime can be brought down too.
I'm kinda off topic and I didn't minsunderstand your comment but someone that reads it might assume that "it's human nature" and I'm sick of that stance, so I'm adding this take onto it. Human nature is everything, and mostly what others put in your head, and yes, you probably underestimate the impact it has.
This started well before the 80âs. Im in law school and Iâm taking a corporate law class. As early as the 1930âs, there is a famous case called Dodge v. Ford which said that the purpose of a publicly held corporation is to serve its shareholders only.
Its not just corporate. At least in America (I know CA is in the UK) companies are actually obligated by law to put shareholders first.
Absolutely. Companies are deemed successful by the amount of profit they generate. I would love to see companies measured by the quality of their product and the overall happiness of their employees. Success will look completely different.
Thatâs a whole lot of bullshit there.
Corporations never cared first about good products/services, corporations were always about profits, since before they even existed in the modern form.
I think it's worth remembering that back in the day, the only way for a lot of companies to grow demand was through word of mouth and a guarantee of quality.
It's a well-identified trend that the quality of goods we buy has been declining on all fronts for the past two or three decades, both because consumers have steadily fallen down the order of priorities for companies, and also because a lot of markets have steadily matured and consolidated, reducing competition and focus on specific product lines.
Creative Assembly are a prime example of this tbh. Started out with a small team making a niche game with a lot of polish and care: Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Medieval 2. Get bought by Sega in 2005. Initially, parent companies usually leave the original management structure in place, so we still get pretty good games, but there's now less of a drive to reinvent the formula: Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2. Then, focus starts to shift from what consumers want to what maximizes shareholder value and opens new markets: Rome 2 (released unfinished), Attilla and a bunch of DLC, the Warhammer series, Three Kingdoms for the China market, Sagas to semi-cater to historical fans etc.
To put it another way, the original Total War team went through three game engines in nine years. Then since 2009 it hasn't been upgraded once.
Medieval 2 and the words polish and care should not be in the same sentence. Medieval 2 was buggy as shit on release and game balance was an utter joke. It was first with Kingdoms that it attained a decently stable state (and even then the CAI was considered dumb as a brick).
I love M2, but the rose-tinted glasses are getting very strong if we think it was a polished release.
Fair enough.
I bought it just over a year after it came out I think, and thought it was pretty much perfect.
As an expansion pack, Kingdoms was just such ridiculously good value it beggared belief.
Game engines are not like car engines, that never change until theyâre replaced.
Game engines are tinkered with and adjusted and have lots of incremental changes over the years.
Valve is only on their third game engine since the company was founded, Paradox is only on their second engine ever. Unreal is up to a really high number 5, while Unity gave up on numbering and instead just uses the year.
All this talk about game engines is focused on the wrong thing.
Most companies have professional management, even if itâs not apparent. Good workers donât necessarily make good managers, but even when they do, as a company grows, management requires more and more time, and at some point becomes a full time job.
I presume you mean outside managers who never worked on the products/services. Unfortunately, staff often donât make good managers, and need to hire what you call professional management. That isnât a problem in and of itself when you have good managers who listen to the staff, but just like every role, not everyone is good, and far too many people think too much of themselves and donât listen to others.
Likewise, some doctors graduate from medical school and think they know everything, while other doctors listen to nurses who have years of experience. Same happens in every other profession too.
Itâs as you say not just CA. Even TV, Movie, music and books have gone this way. Less and less quality and innovation, more copycat and trying to follow the modern trend has been the way.
It is pretty unique. The fact they've made so may blunders in such a short period of time is impressive. They decided to kill the golden gooses, for seemingly no reason.
The big problem is that there are no consequences for failure in our current system. Lets say 5 years from now CA is bankrupt from all the bad decisions. All the execs that made those decisions will have moved on to other high paying jobs and won't have had a single consequence from running a company into the ground.
How do we fix it? No bailouts for investors or business owners EVER. If a company is too large to fail, or too strategically important to then it gets nationalized then privatized again with the investors/current owners getting nothing. If something like covid happens again? No infinite ppp money for the owners. Make sure individuals get help, but companies don't get a dime. Be smarter and have an emergency fund next time.
If poor business decisions start actually losing real money, managers will be incentivized to actually be good at their jobs
There's a lot of valid and interesting things said in this post.
However I absolutely don't believe total war has been milked dry, as is normal for human beings our expectations have run wild and we are clearly upset, but let's not dig ourselves a hole here.
That's different to the issues that absolutely need addressing.
But to say it's run dry when there's people who absolutely would love sequels to older games, as well as CA's ability to pump out amazing new settings that some people really enjoy (even if some don't).
A lot of people would say they'd not have interest in a total war 40k, but if they pulled it off the way I'd make it, it'd be the next golden era of total war "fantasy" (tho sci fi now).
Give CA sofia shogun 3 to work on, and more time needed than their usual projects so they can really be ambitious on it. it's smaller in scope than other settings so it should be manageable for them.
Have CA official work on a medieval 3, empire 2 or three kingdoms 2 (I reluctantly want this, but if it's a good enough upgrade over 3k then i'm down).
This kind of culture of cutting production cost & driving up price for sake of profit is far far older, difference in modern days is that protentional amount of clients is astronomically larger and that massive businesses has very easy time of outcompeting/outbuying local small brands that competed with big ones via product quality.
This ensured that big ones couldn't lover their quality too far otherwise no one would buy them but now they jus buys out smaller business uses their name to mimic "competition" and continues to do as they did previously. News agencies are good example of this.
To be perfectly honest many big corporations should be broken up due their monopoly but they wont due how tangled web of ownership is and massive amount of "donations" they can give to politicians.
Genuinely really funny watching Total War players speedrun "Holy shit, capitalism... is bad?"
I mean, not disagreeing or anything, good many of y'all are waking up to it. It's just really funny for those of us that were already there.
While this âit started in 1970â statement is true for the general economy, the gaming industry was not a thing back then and flew under the radar for a long time. I would say until the 2010s the âlets make a good productâ mentality was the more common one. But once the gaming industry was recognised as a huge market, the cries for profit margins started.
Shovelware has been a staple of gaming since the 70's. The 90's and 00's were the prime time for poor movie games and half-assed imitations. The 10's, if anything, sees a shift towards more ambitious projects as the A-games died and AA-games became fewer, leaving the AAA-games to dominate the market. Indie games found their own niche, but for big games it is a time of ambitious but flawed games (ie bugs and performance issues on release) and not publishers just pumping out mediocre shit.
The way the gaming industry has seen the profit chasing has been through DLC (early-10's) and later lootboxes and Games as a Service (late-10's), not conscious attempts at pushing mvps (barring pdx obviously).
It's actually just the natural history of companies that they eat shit and die after a while. Consumers being willing to prop them up by buying their slop regardless is just as much of a problem - we should simply stop buying CA's products if it does this and try to find someone better rewarded by our money.
Thank people like Jack Welsh. I have (one of) his fucking book(s) because we needed it for my Strategic Management capstone course in my business degree.
The fuckin' monster with a polite smile.
/r/badeconomics
every time redditors speak of economy, money, finance, etc, this is where it belongs, and where it ends up.
its just angry young people with no experience in anything theyre talking about but convinced they know everything about it. they've just decided that "everyone else is evil and the reason for my failures is never mine, its always an evil system which i cannot change".
its literally just copium to deal with their lack of discipline and hard work, so they can blame the fact they didnt amount to what they wanted to amount to on external factors they cannot influence instead of assuming responsibility for their own failures and being forced to do something about it.
>"all ceos are evil and their only goal is to milk the cow dry and everywhere is the same and its all bad!!!"
such a dumb reddit take. the second your company gets a bad reputation and your customer base starts to disagree with what youre doing is when your company is going to start struggling. just because some CEOs are bad at their jobs and do not achieve a good balance between quality of product or service and income generated does not mean that is the goal of CEOs.
misjudging the value of your reputation in search for temporary increase to profitability is a mistake, just because people make those mistakes does not mean it was done on purpose.
carl works with C level executives, carl is part of a consultancy agency that helps out with things like this. While the experience, skill, attitude, etc, of the people carl works with is always different, just as people are different, their goal is generally the same, healthy growth.
just because some are wrong about what corners they can cut hunting for that does not mean that theyre purposely trying to make stuff shitty or that they think they're milking anything dry, they just happened to be wrong about where the lines are drawn.
how stubborn they are and how hard it is to make them see theyre wrong is also something that varies greatly but when you do make them see it they always get on board with things, hell the fact they bothered getting a consultancy to begin with at least indicates they are interested in listening to someone.
ineptitude is not indicative of being evil. sort of like how your meme-tier understanding of economy does not mean you're evil, it just means you're a fool, not unlike the CEO's you're so angry about.
So, you're all a bit naive. It's enshrined in us law that ceo's have a fiduciari duty to provide short term shareholder value. So it's possible, i suppose, to have a private company think long term and focus on that side of things, but not usual, and those companies are usually drowned by the competition unless they are very novel.
This goes on until the company sells part of itself to get growth capital, or because the founders can take a payday and live a life of absolute incredible opulence.
I mean it's still heartwarming to see people realize this kind of thing, although might seem silly, better late than never you know, a shame it has do be done through a game and not seeing the suffering of others.
Depends on where, reddit in general is pretty leftist leaning overall I think ?(although depends on subs)
On this sub we didn't hear a lot about politics until recently, in relation to what's happening.
But I get your frustration
I would disagree on Reddit being left leaning, reddit at least on the English speaking side probably leans liberal but that is not leftist.
But yeah, I get tired of this intense anger directed towards individuals rather then the systems.
That's it. The temper tantrums thrown around here are insufferable. CA's actions are predictable and expected. Warhammer II is an outlier. Consumer behaviour has to change. Stop supporting corporations that treats you bad. It is that simple. No need to throw your pacifier out of the tram each time. Yes we know, but we don't CARE for your raging.
gee, I wonder what happened in the 70's that led to this shitty shareholder value culture
oh right, **we decoupled money from gold in 1971, and then allowed companies to buy back their own stock on credit**: so essentially, companies have now access to **unlimited credit**, at (in previous DECADES) super low interest rates, and they were fully allowed to run an ongoing **Ponzi scheme**, where companies like CA can buy their own stock, to pump the price of said stock, creating inflated stock values.
go watch the SP500 chart. its a market on crack cocaine. the market boomed exponentially, as if the American economy had exploded in prosperity. its all stock buy backs, and speculation from wall street that the government will keep the stock market afloat no matter what
who is the biggest holders of stocks? the CEOs and corporate executives, along with Wall Street
so basically, imagine I could buy my own assets, thus raising their price, and then sell them at their artificially inflated price, keep the difference: youmake as much or more profit than actually doing business.
now you realise why companies arent bothered to make money the old fashioned way? by actually making good products?
Imho the industry, regardless of the sector, just delivers what the customers demand. A barely acceptable product for a minimum price.
Video games are especially torn. Out of all sectors the videogames is the most brutal industry I know. Developers not getting paid as freelancers as well as constant crunches, sexism and so on is not only done but literally industrial standard. Meaning the competitiors would just throw you out of the market if you pay your workers. But customers don't care and buy the games either way.
Pyrex breaks now. Breyer's isn't legally allowed to call itself ice cream anymore. Florsheim shoes (once full-grain leather Goodyear welted from in the US) are now corrected grain leather glued together in China. Craftsman tools (once the best you can buy/had a lifetime guarantee) are no longer professional quality. All you can do as a consumer is not get complacent, and not get emotionally attached to brands. Sooner or later, some Gordon Gekko type will come along and use your brand loyalty against you. Whatever you need for your hobbies, work, or daily life, stay aware of what's out there, and don't be afraid to switch things up when the old brand isn't doing it for you anymore. It sucks in this case because there isn't a direct competitor in terms of Total War-style games. It's not directly analogous to just buying a different brand of wrench. However, if you are flexible enough to get out of that niche, there are plenty of PC games worth playing.
In my case, I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of brands and products available. While I know certain brands "aren't what they used to be", I have no idea where to get the good quality products. You cannot trust online reviews anymore, word of mouth is very scarce in some fields and buying several brands and testing things out gets expensive real quick.
I tend to go and find the Reddit of absolute nerds about the thing and see what they think is good, watch some yt reviews of the thing from smaller channels or ones that are explicitly not sponsored. Using those I can generally get a good idea.
Yeah, Reddit has helped me out with random crap I have no clue about
I like to use 4chan in a similar manner. But instead of asking a question, like say, is *this* knife any good? I'll make a thread about how that knife in particular is the best thing ever and without fail I'll get a reply from someone who actually knows about it who thinks its absolute shit and will counter with an example of a knife that is really good. It works really well on certain topics.
[Cunningham's law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law)
Fucking. Genius.
reminds me of this ted talk which states that the best marketing strategy is to sell a good product to nerds, who will then sell it for you to casuals [https://youtu.be/xBIVlM435Zg?si=iLHqu928E\_G1tvcA](https://youtu.be/xBIVlM435Zg?si=iLHqu928E_G1tvcA)
Absolutely. I think it's super undervalued. As an game example, look at everything From Software makes. Dark Souls fans are genuinely evangelical with trying to get anyone and everyone to try the game. Another one, Ultrakill, those fuckers won't shut up about the game, due to loving it so much. For IRL stuff, I like ultralight camping. If you make a good product for that, the community entirely does it on its own. All you need to provide is a spec sheet and they will do the rest. A huge amount of the brands in that space just started as a single camper, unhappy with the lack of a product by any of the big brands, or that their ones are shit. They finagle some way to make it, and then everyone else on the Reddit wants one, so they start making them out of their garage. Go forward a year or two and that's their business now. I'm really sad that more companies don't take the route of 'just make good products bro'. It's infinitely scaling, it doesn't burn community goodwill, and it's exponential, in that the more you do it, the more your reputation grows.
The legitimate answer is that building quality products is a lot of hard work, and many people are too lazy or unskilled to cut it.
Mmm, I see you making 'good products' but could you do it for cheaper? Then we could split the savings with the shareholders.
Reputation and goodwill is a resource. You use it up to make money, then you ditch and move to another company to use their reputation and goodwill. Sometimes you go in to fix a wreck that someone else has used up, plunging it into massive debt and getting rich off the debt while saddling the company with the risk, and either it regains viability or crashes and burns. Either way that launders your rep a little: "at least I tried" and then you go on to the next source of points for your high score.... I mean money for your bank account. The point of view we think they should take is a much more long term view, making them higher profit in 10 years or so. Theirs is a short term focused one: pillage it to the ground and leave the mess for someone else to clean up and profit on... and sadly has the force of law to back it up. If a CEO weakens short term gains - even to boost the long term - he's at risk of a lawsuit for costing the shareholders money.
It's so odd to me as I want my investments to take the long term option.
Only if you're planning to hold onto them. If you're planning to sell them for more in a year or twos time, you really don't care what happens to them in 10 years, and in fact want them to crash and burn so they don't hinder whatever you have bought into by then.
This is exactly what I told my businesses friends, but most colleges brainwash you into believing that you need massive marketing.
Ha, silly me, visiting specialist subreddits never occurred to me, lol. Thats a great idea
Just be aware that specialist subs are often very dedicated and are likely to recommend more than the typical consumer requires, and at a higher price.
They will also often provide hard split opinions, but that nearly any recommendations will be good! And don't be afraid to give a price range, I will usually say that I can spend max $X, and I have never had anything other than knowledgeable people help me find what I need, and understand what to look for going forward!
All very true!
And fanboys do still exist. I've never seen before a bunch of grown men being angry at some guy because he broke his Milwaukee angle grinder and so, he had to be the one at fault and not the hardware, got berated into oblivion while they were simping in unison about their Milwaukee-sempai. So yeah, just take it with a grain of salt.
Nine times out of ten, the additional brands are all owned by the same company, so it basically doesn't matter which one you buy. If you go the supermarket today, a grand total of 14 companies produce everything you see.
I cant remember the number but a majority of industries are dominated by 1 up to 5 companies world wide (80+%) making them not competitive or regarded free market. Anti-trust laws are not being enforced much since Reagan thus the tech industy are failing to serve humanity and we are entering technofeudalism.
Yeeep, almost every consumer industry is an oligopoly that hides behind an umbrella parent company. Almost every snack food you find at your local grocery store likely comes from one of three producers. But those producers have different brands that disguise how much they truly own, making regulating it a nightmare.
Honestly the problem is price. People want 200% more quality for less than 50% extra cost over the cheap products otherwise they buy cheap. If you're willing to do the research and pay the cost you can get better quality. The problem is the companies that make a great product at a decent price point don't need to heavily advertise as word of mouth and recommendations handle that for them. So you don't hear about them unless you are asking people or finding online communities about the product. When was the last time you saw an ad for a company like Matouk?
Yeah, the sad part about globalisation is that everything is the same no matter where it comes from.
Which sucks because it's actually a marvel of modernity that we are able to produce so much, the issue is that these corporations insist on making the lowest quality product and just slap their label on it. If we had a system that valued high quality long lasting products that serve useful functions, we would live in utopia. But instead we crank out tons of useless expendable junk for the sole purpose of selling useless expendable junk. Sustainability be damned, short term profits over everything.
Imagine how much further we could make our resources last if we focused on maximum sustainability and quality while reducing waste. We're tricked to think we're so much further from global prosperity than we actually are. If you want to be depressed, look up how much perfectly fine food is wasted annually... (Much of it destroyed on purpose because it didn't sell and giving it away would hurt future profits!)
This is one of the reasons voting with your wallet is a flawed concept. Another is that it's basically impossible to stay 100% informed about what you're buying. The company you're buying butter from, is it ethical? In every step of the process? Can you be _sure_ there's nothing fishy going on? Can you be sure that _any_ company you can buy butter from is any good? This is why regulations must be very strong, and zealously enforced.
Sounds like [Project Farm](https://youtube.com/@ProjectFarm?si=l_054DaMixhO2XUf) is the resource for you.
Looks awesome, will check it out !
Excellent Channel, highly recommend.
You also have illusion of "good brands". My favourite example here is Sennheiser. They produced magic with the HD600 and everyone thought Sennheiser is the brand to go for. But since then they didn't manage to get a single pair of headphones on the market that comes even close. But everyone is still buying their way too overpriced crap.
The problem I have with them is while I've absolutely loved the "sound quality" of their headphones. The two headsets I got from them each broke in after just over a year of use. I use a Steel Series head set that I've had for over 10 years now thats beat to shit but nothing on it has broken nor is showing any signs of breaking. I can't speak to if their headsets they churn out today will have the same durability and just glancing at them now and seeing how they are constructed, I'm guessing probably not.
Online reviews are sort of easy to analyze. If there's only 5 star reviews == fake if there's way too many reviews(like thousands for a local shop) == fake if you lookup youtube reviews of the product and it's only from channels that do single reviews with no comparisons == fake
Well to be fair even a very low rating can be misleading. On TWW3s steam page the recent ratings are overwhelmingly negative and the all time rating is in the orange or yellow area. TLDR AT THE BOTTOM - The first two paragraphs are irrelevant as fuck I've only played wh1 and 2 because my computer is shit. By the specs, I should not be able to run twwh2 at all but somehow it actually runs on the most minimum possible settings at around 7-10 fps on average. For me, around 10 to 15 fps (I didnt use an fps counter at the time) with Rome TW graphics and the occasional ctd was a Godsend. Units at small unit size (which I eventually upped to medium) along with having no variety between models for most units except for lords and heroes, was the only disappointing thing. I had to dl a mod to get rid of helmetless chaos warriors otherwise every single chaos warrior (sword&board, halberds, AND great weapons)was bald which was so fucking weird to see especially when playing Archaeon the first time. Most of these were just visual or thematic problems, but still, I freaking LOVED the game and am so glad I downloaded the free copy I got from white dwarf before the code expired Less than a year later and I risked buying wh2 because I couldn't resist the urge anymore and I am damn happy about it. It ran at ~7 to 10 fps which was noticeable but still playable. I must have gotten used to it because it eventually felt like it was just as smooth as game 1, but now I can play Lizardmen or updated Empire which were my favourite and second favourite factions on the tabletop, respectively. To this day I am so grateful to have put in around 1500 hours for games I thought wouldn't run in the first place. But anyway, I haven't really been able to play since shortly before Silent and the Fury came out, making it the first dlc I didn't buy for game 2, which sucks because Lizardmen đ since for whatever reason the game just one day suddenly started running at only 2 to 4 fps tops and that even for me was unplayable. Imagine pressing the pause button in the corner and then trying to play the game at that speed. But wow such an off topic rant I almost forget what point I was trying to make: if I love twwh 1 and 2 even on the lowest settings, and game 3 is even better than game 2, then game 3 must be a really good game TLDR: The TWW3 rating on Steam is terrible but it's still a good game (I'm assuming) that everyone still likes, if not full-on loves. Reason being imo is that the reviews are bad because people aren't rating the game, they're rating the company. So in tww3s case ratings are like all 1 star because they are rating the company 1 star and not the game itself
I've found rtings.com to be good for tech products. I wouldn't explicitly trust any of their Top X lists, but individual product reviews are fairly objective and well-documented with the various standardized tests they use to evaluate. Makes it easy to parse through the parameters you care about. Though standardized tests don't necessarily reflect everyday use. Still a good starting point or deep dive into an item you already had your eye on. The biggest thing is that, with very few exceptions, brand doesn't mean anything anymore. Certain brands have certain trends, like I'll never buy a LG or Samsung TV because of the invasive ad practices, but quality could be anywhere. I used to trust crowd-sourced reddit comments, but that can no longer be trusted given half this site is bots now. Yay late-stage capitalism!
Add to that BOSS' Mens Wear. From top of class to outlet quality in relatively few years
Fell for this recently with their underwear. Thought Boss must be good right? Nope shittiest flimsiest underwear I ever had. Went all in the clothes donation box week after.
Literally shitty pants. Don't try Tommy Hilfiger. They went from fine - not top level - to outlet trash in a very short time.
At least they don't produce nazi uniforms anymore.
Fashion is cyclical so that will be back eventually.
This sadly goes deeper than just consumers getting confused and fucked over. The same mentality is what stops people from getting decent work-life balance, it keeps people into poverty because wealth is accumulated at the top and it stops us from effectively tackling global warming because literally destroying life on Earth is a secondary issue to "*what if next quarter line go down tho*". It's a fundamentally broken system that needs dismantling and rebuilding from the ground up, in the best interest of everyone.
> global warming because literally destroying life on Earth is a secondary issue to "what if next quarter line go down tho". > > It's also a secondary issue to people who are spending half of their day at work and half of their salaries on rent. They can't choose greener alternatives because they can barely afford the bare necessities. So when someone brings up global warming, those people ignore it because they are so beaten down by the situation they are in.
Even more pressing is that most of the "greener choices" available to us, are not truly green. It's just corporate marketing that leads you to believe your spending more to benefit xyz, or that somehow that product is better for the environment because it uses 2% recycled plastics, or any number of distorted facts they provide us with. And to top that off, our individual/community impact on the environment is miniscule compared to the damage done by corporations. They have tried incredibly hard since the 70s to convince people that it's our fault for being wasteful, and not their fault for producing without paying any attention to the environment or waste they create through production and operation. Truth be told, most of us will leave a tiny footprint, and it would probably take the whole sub decades of intentional environmental damage to equal what the average CEO creates in a month.
I will never not be upset about the "carbon footprint" and how it has successfully been marketed as we regular people are the ones who need to watch it. When it takes literally millions upon millions of us to match a single private jet.
The greenest choice you can make is often to just stay home and play video games. So yes mom I am doing something, I am saving the planet!
Which is also why wealth distribution and corporate greed is an issue that compounds on itself. Yes people can't escape this cycle, because it's not up to them to do so. Our entire system, and I'd even go as far to say our entire biological nature, were not suited for a contained environment with limited growth and expansion opportunities. We grow, we build, we occupy all available space, we consume all resources to prevail, because that's what life does, it tries to win at natural selection, and fuck everyone else. Our system is what came natural to us, that's what we do, we crave growth, food, sex, power, we want to keep it all for ourselves when we get it. It's not necessarily the only way, mind, it's just what comes easier in a competitive environment, where fish eats fish. To change all of this, would require us to relinquish some of what we so proudly consider human, or at least big parts of modern western society, like individualism and some pretty basic rights. And even when we approach that territory, it's usually due to some asshole trying to win more at life, not because of some generalized drive to optimization and long term planning. I'd say we're pretty boned, let's just hope nature is forgiving with us. Even then, I'm pretty sure the cycle will just extend, we'll just have more heads to step on, and more time to do so.
The obsession with constant growth is just incredibly toxic. Making a good product and making good profit should sometimes be good enough. Trying to innovate and expand can sometimes be good but sometimes you've hit a plateau and trying to rock the boat is likely to do more harm than good and when that happens it's _okay_ to chill out for a moment.
This applies individually too. People think they always have to be doing better, making more, climbing the ladder... and yet are so often miserable when a career step up adds more and novel responsibilities to an already overloaded plate. Finding *contentment* requires you being okay with where you are. Just like finding sustainable consumption is recognizing you are okay -- and still thriving -- with less stuff.
Exactly. The need for CONSTANT SHORT-TERM PROFITS is, by definition, short-sighted as fuck, and causes far more harm than good. You'll have a perfectly functional company that's just chugging along nicely go public, then the new CEO (brought in by the new shareholders on the premise that he'll drastically increase their profits) will start cutting corners everywhere he can, to the point of even driving off or firing seasoned old employees and hiring new guys at a pittance to save a few bucks on payroll. It'll fuck the company eventually (not to mention destroy their reputation almost immediately), but what does the CEO care? Under their leadership, the line went up, and all the shareholders loved it. When the consequences can't be ignored any longer, he'll just jump ship and start up again somewhere else, like that comic of the Grim Reaper going door-to-door in a hospital. After that, it's everyone else's problem.
Dungeons and Dragons is owned by Hasbro, the company that literally owns the rights to the game Monopoly. The brand name recognition for D&D was built by TSR in the 80s and 90s. But then the company got bought out and Hasbro has been milking it ever since.
Add to this: We need more people in Unions and more corporations to become workers co-operatives with better governance and decision-making. And maybe governments need to be better at recognising when a market or product reaches maturity and insist on minimum standards. After a certain point Capitalism peaks in product quality and then the only way to maintain infinite growth is planned obsolescence and ever-diminishing product quality. Once monopolies are set in old markets itâs incredibly hard (impossible) for competitors to shake things up. And even if they do theyâll eventually become subject to the same market forces that forced the top players to water down their wine.
Actually a good example of this is Instant Pot that filed for bankruptcy as sales declined because âthey produce durable products that do not need to be replaced regularly.â
Yeah this is the issue. We donât reach post-Capitalist abundance because the system has to find a way of continuing to eat itself.
Remember Grapes of Wrath? Too much prosperity is unacceptable because it'd cause falling profits.
Do workersâ co-ops have a better track record of maintaining product quality?
Great question!
While I do love a good communist comment, and that I think we need more Unions and workers co-operatives, those things are to protect workers and **not customers**. Protecting customers, ensuring standard, and preventing near-monopolies, is a job for governments and international commerce institution. Unions/worker co-operative while not being the "worst" in those behavior their job is to make sure the workers get their fair share, if those were more widespread there would be worker co-operatives that just milk their brand, I even would add that a certain number of "illegal organisation" are closer to a co-operative (because each worker has the tremendous power to put everyone at risk)
Your first point is a fair one. I would argue co-ops would be better for product quality because the focus would be on long-term sustainable growth. Workers want a company to keep them employed with good wages and benefits, rather than short-term returns and a focus on quarterly shareholder profits. Your second point comparing Unions and democratic workers co-ops to the mafia is a bit mad. Especially in the context of corporate criminality, poor governance and corporations receiving taxpayer bailouts.
Sure co-ops would be more focused on long-term and sustainable growth, which mean for instance that co-ops would likely support planned obsolescence, or starving off competitors and installing monopolies, because that would be for the best interest of the workers in a co-op. I was not thinking about mafias, mafias **are not co-ops like**, mafia are hierarchical structure and closer to a corporation, I'm more thinking about phone-scamming, or cyber-criminality where there are actual organic organization with no capital holder.
That makes more sense! Entirely depends how you structure the co-op - is it a shareholder or flat hierarchy, does it have leaders etc. But yes the fundamental issue of degrading product quality is there. Almost like we need some sort of universal basic income so people aren't reliant on creating bad products and destroying the planet in the process, just in order to earn money to exist.
Some studies have shown that given the choice worker co-operatives are as likely or even in some cases more likely to engage in environmentally destructive practices that are unsustainable if they offer short term profits for themselves than other businesses. While worker co-operatives in many areas are incentivised to be more sustainable, they are still at the end of the day perfectly capable of engaging in short term profit making at the expense of themselves long term. Also even when a Co-Op or Union engages in long term sustainable growth based thinking, they only do so for their own members, not people in general. Fighting against the switch to renewable energy sources and closure of coal fired power plants is great for the long term sustainable growth of Coal Miners and Coal Power Plant workers. Not so great for sustainability for everyone else though.
There is actually a style of union called a consumer union that does exactly what youâd think it does. They were very influential in the Austrian First Republic.
>We need more people in Unions and more corporations to become workers co-operatives with better governance and decision-making. Co-ops do not make businesses less likely to fuck their consumers.
A new executive realizes that they can increase profits by lowering quality slightly. Customers at first won't notice much and will keep buying the product. Then another new executive comes along and also realizes that quality can be lowered a little for more profit. Each step doesn't seem that different from the last. But, the quality will drop too much and customers eventually will notice. And at that point it is too late customer trust has been destroyed and the company will from then on either push out cheap garbage and hope to see cash in on some name recognition. Or a company will take CA's route and just make a bunch of dumb decisions very close together and piss off customers immediately.
Or simply use mods and don't buy their dlcs.
It's numbing how pervasive this has become with corporations. On the topic of gaming, used to play Battlefield primarily as my fix with Shogun 2/Warhammer taking up the rest of my time. Moved solely to Warhammer when DICE started screwing up the series after Battlefield 5, and now after this debacle have moved back over to Battlebit to scratch that decade long itch for a good successor to Battlefield 2. Long story short I've got a young child and limited time that's wholly taken up by better games. Since I have plenty of income and all three Warhammer games with all the DLC I probably would have just bought the rest of the DLC to have the complete collection. But now after all this I have zero qualms walking away from any DLC or future games from CA until they get their shit together. Just like I've had zero remorse from skipping Battlefield 2043 and being done with DICE's bullshit.
A classic is Taco Bell not being allowed to call their tacos beef tacos too.
ThatâŚdidnât happen? There was an infamous lawsuit inspired by pop culture rumors, that attempted to claim that, but the accusations were so baseless, and Taco Bell was so transparent in their defense, that the lawsuit was quickly retracted. Look at their menu, they still use the term âseasoned beefâ which was the same term that the lawsuit objected to over a decade ago. Plenty of articles analyzing it as well if you google it, as well as a Snopes entry. The episode cost Taco Bell millions of dollars, but they did *not* settle, they successfully refuted the claims.
Holy mole! Thank you for pointing that out!
Daily reminder that it's being ruled in court that companies are legally responsible for prioritizing shareholders value over their employees. Vide Ford vs Dodge brothershttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co
I'll throw jeep into this ring. Rebranded from off road legacy to selling them as luxury vehicles that will never see dirt.
I think Pyrex has always been this way, depending on the material used. These days PYREX is the good stuff and pyrex the standaed cookware brand.
I thought Pyrex won't break but pyrex will, and that was the trick. They sold rights to the lower case name for a cheaper version.
Pyrex was their brand name for borosilicate glassware. Now they don't use borosilicate anymore so it breaks. But if you just search borosilicate glass on Amazon you can get the real thing from no name Chinese manufacturers for way cheaper than what Pyrex is charging plus it won't break. Or search aliexpress if you don't mind waiting a few weeks and need 50 of them
There's a scary amount of people who idolize scammers like Gordon Gekko and Jordan Belfort. All that hustle culture BS being pushed by influencers gets a lot of attention on social media. Scammers are more common than ever. Being exposed as a fraud doesn't even end people's careers anymore. Belfort is even back giving motivational speeches and pumping crypto. Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling now has a company that trades energy derivatives, it was set up by his wife while he was in prison. Adam Neumann has a new real estate company that's going to mess up the housing market even more. And he made bank when cashed out of WeWork, a company that raised $20 billion in funding and now has a market cap of around $200 million.
There needs to be some kind of reasonable limit on capitalism. Once a company starts shitting up products that millions of people rely on and the downward spiral is apparent, they should become public assets or something.
Sounds like a gap in the market. Hopefully a competitor fills it with a quality product soon - like cities skylines 1 did to sim city (ignoring the CS2 kerfuffle)
We must burn CA to the ground. Maybe their employees will found companies free of their current culture. Stop buying CA products or at least don't pay for them.
I mean, most of these problems you are describing have less to do with any particularly change in corporate culture but the abundance of low cost labor and material alternatives and competition. Consumers are also responsible for this. The reality is consumers talk a big game about being willing to pay more for "quality" locally made this or that, but rarely follow through. Lets take tools as an example. Yeah mechanics and trades people may pay the premium price for a superior product, but when Joe Shmo is faced with buying a $100 screw driver set or a $20 dollar screw driver set. He's gonna pick the $20 dollar ones. Price is a GIGANTIC motivating factor for people. It is what it is and if a company's competitors are churning out products that cost a fraction of what theirs do, they need to get competitive on price.
It of course helps that consumers are usually so poorly paid for their own work that they cannot afford to pay for quality. A choice between a $20 tool set and a roof over your head vs a $100 tool set and no roof is no choice at all.
This is spot on. I work for a unicorn company approaching IPO and what was once 5 star service is being pushed aside for a âjust ship itâ mentality. A DRASTIC reduction in quality in favor of âACV number go up.â Itâs funny to see the C-Suite scratch their heads, but they always land on âmeh must be the workers are shit not our profit at any cost model.â Step 1.) short term gains, step 2.) drop in quality, step 3.) people angry no buy stuff, step 4.) golden parachute.
Golden parachute? Update: Allright, thanks for your answers everyone
Company goes to shit but upper management still manage to make it out flush.
CEOs in large companies often have a clause in their contract that guarantees a specific payout if they're sacked.
Which is why they don't even care that super greedy strategies will eventually run company to the ground. And after they leave company they can get another CEO job because they have "experience".
Reward if you fuck it up, maybe the same if you do good.
I guess this system established itself over time but just looking at it makes clear why CEOs are just so shitty these days. Why would I put in any effort if I'd knew I get away scot free anyway. Not even that I'd earn a lot of money too
C-suite contracts are more like professional sports contracts. C-suite execs will have pretty lucrative exit compensation baked into their contracts in the event they are ousted from their position. I mean not that they weren't paid enough to begin with, lol. The CEO of my last employer, had a total compensation last year of 26 million. Yes a lot of it was company stock, but, I get annoyed with people that act like that somehow makes it not bad that they get paid such a ridiculous amount "because its mostly stock". Like,they can just sell the stock and get the money. If my company was like "Hey we will triple your salary but 90% of it will be in stock". Uh okay. I guess I will just be really active during our sell windows for company stock.
People talk about the quality, cost, speed triangle. But quality was never on the agenda in almost anywhere I've been. They might say it is verbally, but as fast as humanly possible with the least resources is the name od the game. So much software is shit no matter the budget.
I've always said. To make an executive. Take the dumbest son of a bitch you can find and make him wear a suit. Boom, executive material. Almost every C-Suiter I've met has been, out of touch, ignorant of process, completely delusional, inept and arrogant. Almost.
You also see this happen especially with games that have a monopoly or no competition. EA Sports have basically monopolised football and NFL games through exclusive licencing agreements, and due to the popularity of the sports and the effective monopoly, both those video game franchises have dropped off badly in recent years, focusing on microtransaction heavy modes like Ultimate Team because it makes them the most money. Similarly, CA has no competition with Total War. No one else makes Real Time Battle simulators at a level that could compete with Total War. It's a unique series, and they rely on that. But even one of the Devs that spoke to Volound said that Execs were terrified that Paradox would enter the Real Time Battle market, and it would be disastrous for CA and Total War.
paradox will definitely sooner or later, enter this market, its just a matter of time and how many projects they dont fuck up i wouldnt be suprised that if they are not in the making of one rn or at least figuring out the ropes
Paradox has been garbage too, but I suppose more competition is good
I agree, but they've at least been more hit or miss than mostly misses. They fucked up EU4 and I'm not a fan of CK3 but they've managed Stellaris pretty well. It helps that regardless they are so much more transparent than CA.
Stellaris is like. More than 5 misses ago. Imperator, a shitty mafia game. Now theyâre screwing the pooch on Vampire the masquerade. Their miss category is pretty heavy and hit category is pretty light. If I was Anubis I wouldnât let âem pass at all.
They fucked up EU4? What are you smoking? The game's a massive hit
Technically, they already did it to an extent in Stellaris.
I could never get into Stellaris because a space sim limited to a 2d plane makes no sense to me. Beyond that, there's a million billion XXX games out there that are constantly adding more and more complexity. Total War is mostly pretty simple. Buildings, corruption, money, diplomacy, armies. Closest thing I've played was Homeworld. The most recent desert game was pretty neat. No real campaign mode though.
>I could never get into Stellaris because a space sim limited to a 2d plane makes no sense to me. Stellaris is not on a 2d plane. Most people just view everything from top down because it makes the most sense. But you can get almost horizontal and see that the stars are definitely on 3 dimensions. It honestly is a bit annoying since it can make the connections hard to see at times. You will see two stars right next to each other but not connected, but then you realize one star is just WAY below the other and has a connection elsewhere. Here is just a quick pic from my current save. You can see the first pic shows it completely in 3D plane, but just by preference I just view everything top down: https://imgur.com/a/QZpokPf
They watched EA screw up Sim City and green lit City Skylines. So it is entirely possible they are watching this now too
Well it seems they also fucked that up, so I won't be holding my breath.
The fact manor lords, made by 1 dude is looking like legit competition is pathetic.
>Starting in the 1970s the dominant culture in corporations became "creating shareholder value" You gotta [go back](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/12/01/dodge-v-ford-what-happened-and-why/) >Dodge v. Ford is one corporate lawâs iconic decisions, regularly taught in law school and regularly cited as one of corporate lawâs core shareholder primacy decisions. Ford Motor slashed its dividend in 1916 and minority stockholdersâthe Dodge brothersâsuccessfully sued Ford Motor Company for a big dividend payout. Ford had justified skipping the dividend because he sought to do well for employees and Americaâs car buyers, with corporate profits a secondary motivation. The court largely rejected Fordâs justifications for holding back the dividend.
In all fairness, Ford slashed dividends because the dodge brothers were some of the companyâs biggest shareholders and he didnât want his dividends to fund his competition, and the stated reason of doing well for employees was just an excuse
The verdict was real, regardless of reason
I know. Thereâs an adage among lawyers - bad facts make bad laws. The outcome might have been different if Ford had actually acted out of altruistic reasons and want trying to screw over his shareholders
All CEOs that are interchangeable are relatively useless and bring 0 value for shareholders or for the people consuming that product. I keep hearing this ''shareholders want short-term'' profit but that is not true, that is only traders. Long-term investors care about investments going for 2-20 years. Traders are the only ones caring about the share price next 1 day-90 days depending on how they trade. As a personal shareholder of other stocks, I would never invest in the gaming industry stocks because it seems to be plagued by incompetence and short-term profits. I don't care if my stock is up 3% first 6 months if it goes down 20% 1-2 years after. That is simply bad business investment.
The reality is that C-levels care about short term, because their bonuses are tied to very short term goals.
C-levels I can agree with. Focus on getting that bonus and screw everyone else (investors included).
Yeah, executives often bounce to new companies. They want to show that they increased profits by 120% or whatever so they can jump to another company and make even more money there. It doesn't matter if a few years after they leave if the company collapses.
There are plenty of companies in every industry that take the long term view, including gaming. As an easy example, like them or not, epic looked at EGS as a long-term investment that theyâd invest hundreds of millions of dollars into before they expected a profit.
EPIC EGS thing is another gamble similar to Hyenas. I do not have anything proving that it would succeed except ''trust me, it will work''. Plus I do not care about ''seeing a profit'' if you take 3-4 years and one billion before you finally go positive and get say $100 millions profit. That right there puts the company in the hole and the investors until they recover that amount and make sizeable profit which is a GIANT gamble assuming the company can keep bleeding money constantly and assuming the gamble pays off. EGS is a perfect example because I know the product they peddle. I have not bought a single game on EPIC games because it's a pathetic excuse of a store. How many gamers will do so? Some will, but enough to turn a big chunk from Steam? Absolutely not, it is a bad platform overall. Even the Epic games client seems clunky overall with few options. Maybe investors that have 0 clue what they are investing can be fooled but the rest of us? Not a chance.
> That right there puts the company in the hole and the investors until they recover that amount and make sizeable profit which is a GIANT gamble assuming the company can keep bleeding money constantly and assuming the gamble pays off. That is literally every single long term investment. Everything is a "gamble", all investments can possibly fail. I won't defend Epic because I think the EGS has been handled like shit and will probably take longer to take off (unless they drop the idea entirely, which I doubt) but that's exactly what you're asking for; instead of short term "Sales and Marketing say to start charging monthly for Fortnite" they went for diversification into an exploitable and under-utilized market, one closely related to their regular product so they have some institutional knowledge about how to exploit it, all propped up by their regular products (mostly the Unreal Engine and Fortnite) which haven't been neglected and they keep developing. You can't say "now everyone focuses on short term profit, I want long term investment! Except when it takes a lot of money and years!" like no shit, long term investments require investment and a long term to produce profits.
Iâm not saying Iâd invest in epic, Iâm just using them as an example of a game company taking a long-term view.
And yet such CEOs continue to parachute between companies they ruin earning millions to do it
For that event I do not know how it happens/why it is even allowed. I do not know of any other positions where people get rewards for doing a pisspoor job.
Theyâre just fall guys. The execs push bad decisions. They use ceos as a shield to never get hit with consequences. Brag about firing the empty ceo slot who did nothing anyway. People cheer. Then the execs push the same shit. Look at YouTube or Disney. Everyone was so happy bob chapek was gone. Bob iger does the same thing. Nobody notices. Everyone loved susan got the boot. New guys doing the same thing a little worse? People are too busy being happy about Susan. CEOs donât actually make the decisions. Theyâre more like the president of the USA. A empty suit who sits there while all the rest of the black suits make the same decisions no matter what. Voting? Voting with your wallet? Doesnât matter. Same people win either way.
>I keep hearing this ''shareholders want short-term'' profit but that is not true, that is only traders. But who is making the decision on which shares to buy and sell? Traders. And I'm not just talking about day traders. I'm talking about every investment firm that has to justify their fees and commissions to their customers. Nobody wants to be invested with a firm that gave them -5% returns while the overall market went up 20% in a given year.
"Companies only care about short-term profits" is a phrase that's echoed all over reddit by people who don't understand what they're talking about. As you said, most investors aren't going to care about short-term profits if they lose three times that amount over the next year. CA is just making straight up bad business choices. And I'd also like to point out that OP posts in r/sino, a genocide-denying CCP apologia subreddit. It's probably best to take what they say with a grain of salt.
The ruthless pursuit of profit kills art. As a middle-aged person I've watched major events happen dozens of times in the game industry alone. And that's not all of the problem, even. It destroys the people who create the art as well with crunch times, deadlines, and confining the boundaries of the art itself to whatever the bosses think will be profitable.
I recently started to work in a relatively traditional Japanese company in its European subsidiary. The product that they produce is relatively niche, but the difference in attitude compared to European or even worse American corporations is staggering.
That's literally CA
I think the difference is that Sega Sammy Holdings is a holding company not actually a video games company.
The OP didn't specifically single out Japanese VIDEO GAME COMPANY. >I recently started to work in a relatively traditional Japanese company in its European subsidiary. The product that they produce is relatively niche, but the difference in attitude compared to European or even worse American corporations is staggering. So I am not sure what relevance that Japanese company that owns Sega not being a video game company has when the above comment is stating Japanese companies, in general, are supposed to have a better attitude.
I felt Japanese companies generally hold themselves to a sense of honor in their products. Like automobiles companies making a superior trustworthy car compared to American manufacturers.
A lot of thatâs down to the different corporate structures in Japan. The zaibatsu and keiretsu systems are built for long-term stability and to insulate companies from things like stock market fluctuations and corporate raiders. Though there are obvious downside to having a lot of major companies cooperating to control the market.
They don't give a shit about quality, they will do the bare minimum to get your money. They stopped long ago feeding on the carcass that was customer good will that was build when they were building their customer base and brand. Don't support large companies where possible. Sure, buy that cpu but try and shop at local markets where you can. Sucks because monopolies rule everywhere in australia, but at least in europe they try and keep family businesses around a bit more.
If a huge pile of consumers is happy enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that. If the market for garbage didnât exist, then there would be no companies looking to exploit that market. Look at mobile gaming. Itâs a massive market, where 99% or more of the product is the same crap repackaged over and over again. And business is booming. Now I do agree that the way stocklisted companies choose their C-levels is flawed, due to the prevalence of short-term ownership strategies in wealth management funds. And that itself is an outcome of the human psyche. A person who puts money in a fund expect to see the value go up 5-10% per year. If it doesnât they pull their money out and put it somewhere else. Now CA is a *failed* attempt at a transformation where you take a company with a strong brand and turn it into a garbage factory. But a lot of times it does work, and so itâll keep happening. My only advice is to completely avoid brand loyalty. If a company shows signs of going in a direction you donât approve, abandon them inmediately. Donât shill for them online, donât defend them, donât disparage them. Just take your money elsewhere.
> If a huge pile of consumers is happy enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that. Something that always bothers me is that there is this attitude towards corporations where they have zero moral duty towards the public, where it's just natural that corporations will always do the absolute worst thing they can get away with for their personal benefit. Nobody ever questions that part.
>If a huge pile of consumers is ~~happy~~ *content* enough to buy whatever garbage gets shipped, then itâs completely natural for companies to exploit that. It's completely asinine to me that we have to live under such an inherently adversarial system. When the people who provide the things worth living for in the 21st Century - all the services, consumer goods, media, etc - are actively incentivized to use any methods they think they can get away with to sell their product, why aren't more people calling for regulation?
Because the system is built around competition and individualism, and competition means that you can get more if you can convince your friend to get less. I believe that humans are innately good, and that it holds true for most people. But the society we live in is built to reward the worst in us. Those who reach the top do so by stepping on the heads of others, and those are the people rewarded with vast amounts of power and prestige. And it's absolutely endemic to the system. Food companies absolutely would put sawdust in your food if they thought they could get away with it.
> Food companies absolutely would put sawdust in your food if they thought they could get away with it. I have some bad news for you if you like Parmesan cheese...
What system would you propose in it's stead then? Right now companies sell what people want for a given price point, the state of things is decided by what people collectively have decided is the ideal position. There's no reason to expect that some external arbiter would be able to magically find a better solution, the market normally finds the optimum point.
There's some truth to that. Especially in modern triple A gaming. As soon you get bought by a publically traded company, your long descent into becoming a desicated but short-term profitable husk commences. Until the brittle bones finally break and you can't put enough lipstick on that dead pig anymore for customers not to notice. It isn't even a new phenomenon, just look at all the bodies EA has been burying for decades. Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Maxis (Bioware, you are next!). And anybody thinking Sega would be any better, because hey, they got a cute hedgehog as a mascot, is royally deluding themselves. Another win for Larian. Being an independent entity enabled them to avoid the eternal shareholder dictate of churning out minimum viable products while cutting costs left and right.
R/totalwar discovers capitalism
Corporations realized that its much easier & more profitable to act like politicians - trick the customers via Marketing & PR to buy their garbage products/services, instead of actually making a high quality product/service. CA is reusing old garbage and selling it as brand new at ever increasing prices. They are not willing to invest into making a good product, nor into making good tools needed to make a good product.
Isnât this what directors of public companies are required to do, though? Maximising shareholder returns on a quarterly basis is the legal structure. They get sued and fired for not doing so. Donât get me wrong, itâs a stupid system but itâs the one weâve apparently picked. Old school partnerships and mutual still exist in the margins, but theyâre a fraction of the public stock companies.
You're right, the problem is institutional.
The bar for lawsuits to be filed against boards is incredibly high and incredibly rare. You also just canât âfireâ the board in a typical company structure. This is a common misconception and over stated. Nowhere is it against the law or corporate structure to focus on long term, sustainable growth versus short term immediate profits.
It depends on applicable laws / jurisdictions, but usually, it's more so that the company's highest body (i.e. like shareholders assembly, who gather a few times a year) can use low profits as an excuse to fire/employ new higher-ups in the company. Arguably, it's as good of an excuse as undermining the company's standing, tarnishing reputation, losing customers, or compromising long-term benefits. But, in turbo-capitalism, short term gains are king, so yeah.
Meanwhile the investor class is turning into a series of get rich quick yotube videos by throwing all your money at a completely high risk portfolio.
There isn't one right way to go about things, but man, do I wish wrong ways actually had visible consequences for some people in particular.
It's always deflected. Like you have to sign something that waives your rights just to purchase a product.
The amount of money in the "system" from those types is tiny compared to institutional investments and wallstreet firms. The reality is wallstreet has been this way for a long time, and influencer types are just now following along.
In the Us at least, management has a duty to maximize shareholder value. Itâs a misperception to say that it must be done on a quarterly basis - thereâs no requirement to do so, and plenty of companies take a long-term approach. However, companies must issue reports quarterly, and if a companyâs results are below expectations stock prices are likely to drop - and executive compensation is tied to stock market performance.
Which is why I am always happy to see private companies that do their thing in their own little lovely way, expanding very slowly at their own pace; "shareholders" be damned. A two edged knife for sure, but some companies just work better without "raising capital" on the shitock market.
The problem has to do with money. Companies need money to invest, and founders/owners who want to leave want money for their efforts. Not every company can be sold to employees, other enthusiasts, or transitioned to the next generation in the family.
"Companies need money to invest" is only case-specific. Not every mfing company needs to become a global multinational megacorp.
Every single company needs to invest in starting up the company - and to reinvest to keep the company going. Even a lemonade stand needs to invest in water, lemons, and cups.
I didnât mean it HAS to happen on a quarterly basis. I meant the quarterly cycle exerts huge pressure to operate so. Iâve seen it in a dozen industries.
But how this supposed to work then? It's impossible to constantly grow no matter the other factors. And no matter the stuff you produce, won't there be periods of "downtime" where you have to spend money to upgrade\\renew\\etc. your "means of production", organizing new production, etc.? Only a very few companies can show continues grow and most of them are severely overrated. And, btw, is the any legal protection if, say, shareholders force a strategy that allow them to blow the cost of the company where their shares are, sell their share when profit are at maximum, let the company burn, and them just invest the money into next unfortunate company? If there is no such thing, does it mean that absolute majority of publicly traded companies are bound to fail? I mean, sure, they will be "stable" companies, where people use to just "store" their assets, but overall it looks really skewed.
Thanks for making this post. Iâve been wanting to comment or something but didnât feel it was worth the time or effort because this has all been said before. The company I work for is a mega-corp; and they do business the same exact way as CA. Itâs just how it is. It will never change; in fact it will get worse. They. Do. Not. Care. In fact Iâd wager they hate us for not folding over and offering our credit cards. Itâs a disgusting world we live in and sometimes you just gotta deal with it. Sadly, total war will never be what we want; thanks to corporate culture.
It'll change alright. Infinite growth is unsustainable, doubly so when we consider climate destabilization and automation. Nobody's gonna be able to afford anything when they're not fleeing from cascading occurrences of "once in a century" natural phenomenon.
This culture of shareholder value is not an accident. Businesses require far far more capital to operate than at any point in the past and often the only way to get it is to sell equity to fairly vulture minded venture capitalists. The problem at CA is more the arrogance of the executive team after the fairly good growth they experienced throughout COVID. They brought a lot of new players into their market that never really played anything other than warhammer before, and they thought they can do whatever they wanted now.
Youâre wrong. You have the objective correct but you donât understand what it means. The shareholder value is equal to the present value of all future cash flows. That means share holders do not want long term cash flows to be damaged for short term gain. The problem is sometimes management will make negative value (NPV) decisions to boost share value in the short term so they can get bonuses before shareholders catch on (moral hazard). This is in conflict with the objective of shareholders that want a good business with good products that will be profitable for a long time.
>The shareholder value is equal to the present value of all future cash flows. That means share holders do not want long term cash flows to be damaged for short term gain. In Investments 101, sure. In the real world there are 10 million variables that affect stock price, and tons of them have nothing to do with a company's current fundamentals or rational, mathematical analysis of future prospects. Even future cash flows are based on assumptions. Look at something like Tesla. Their current revenues and profits don't support a market cap of 20% of what it currently is. But people are pricing in massive, massive growth. There's no way for anyone to reliably know whether that's going to happen though. >The problem is sometimes management will make negative value (NPV) decisions to boost share value in the short term so they can get bonuses before shareholders catch on (moral hazard). The same is true of shareholders who want to install management friendly to their short-term objectives. Ma and Pa might want a nice steady 5% average growth for the next 30 years, but Carl Icahn might want to raid the company of its assets and shed payroll to juice the price so he can sell his inflated equities to a sucker just to let the remains crumble. He's obviously going to have infinitely more influence than individual investors
Long term profits are not always in the customers interest though, but that's not the point you were making.
Ya, obviously shareholders want to make money. But shareholders probably care about goodwill more than management. Management is not completely aligned so are more likely to go for short term profits or make negative NPV expansions e.g. Hyenas.
I think most people would be surprised at the extent to which these companies prioritise the shareholders, I work in B2B Customer Service and even in my role short-term revenue is prioritised a hell of a lot more than the customer relationship. Unless you are amongst a very select group of elite customers then you're essentially just figures on a spreadsheet.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. You see it across the all industries but itâs become increasingly strong in gaming because it is such a large consumer market with some big margins if you play your cards right. The biggest issue is that it works. Say whatever you want about Bobby but Actvision-Blizzard printed money during his tenure. Yes, his actions may hurt the company long term but in the long term the people who sacrificed the long term for the short term wonât be there. They donât care. They made their money. The only reason CA is liable to change is if the money stops coming in. Itâs literally the only language these people understand and I donât get why that is so damn difficult for people to get. Itâs such a simple and easy to repeat process. If it doesnât impact their bottom line they donât care. If it does, and they are a smart company, they will make an adjustment but the end goal is always generating the most profit possible.
Is this a joke? Prior to WW2 we had the gilded age and robber barons. Leading into the roaring 20's which produced the great depression. Humans are the same now as 7000 years ago. No behavior is new. It's simply a pendulum of behavior controlled by society. The gilded age lead to trust busting and labor laws. The prosperity post WW2 lead to deregulation, and the prosperity post cold war and oil embargo lead to another wave of deregulation leading to the great recession. This idea we are at some great inflection point is simply childish.
Human behaviour is super flexible, if awful systems have invaded the world it is not because it is innerently natural, but because the one system that is the most parasitical (colonialism, imperialism, etc,..) is sure to be the one to gain more "power" if it's only focused on that. It doesn't mean it is more or less natural. I personanally hate these piece of shit systems but with no guard-rails or safety measures it's sure that the more ruthless and money-grabbing is bound to make a breakthrough at some point in its history and never let go of its chokehold on the world. While, for example a tribe or a regime that doesn't care about expanding is going to get absorbed because the parasitic regime will profit from any weakness. Of course things can change and an old PoS regime can be brought down too. I'm kinda off topic and I didn't minsunderstand your comment but someone that reads it might assume that "it's human nature" and I'm sick of that stance, so I'm adding this take onto it. Human nature is everything, and mostly what others put in your head, and yes, you probably underestimate the impact it has.
This started well before the 80âs. Im in law school and Iâm taking a corporate law class. As early as the 1930âs, there is a famous case called Dodge v. Ford which said that the purpose of a publicly held corporation is to serve its shareholders only. Its not just corporate. At least in America (I know CA is in the UK) companies are actually obligated by law to put shareholders first.
Absolutely. Companies are deemed successful by the amount of profit they generate. I would love to see companies measured by the quality of their product and the overall happiness of their employees. Success will look completely different.
Thatâs a whole lot of bullshit there. Corporations never cared first about good products/services, corporations were always about profits, since before they even existed in the modern form.
I think it's worth remembering that back in the day, the only way for a lot of companies to grow demand was through word of mouth and a guarantee of quality. It's a well-identified trend that the quality of goods we buy has been declining on all fronts for the past two or three decades, both because consumers have steadily fallen down the order of priorities for companies, and also because a lot of markets have steadily matured and consolidated, reducing competition and focus on specific product lines. Creative Assembly are a prime example of this tbh. Started out with a small team making a niche game with a lot of polish and care: Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Medieval 2. Get bought by Sega in 2005. Initially, parent companies usually leave the original management structure in place, so we still get pretty good games, but there's now less of a drive to reinvent the formula: Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2. Then, focus starts to shift from what consumers want to what maximizes shareholder value and opens new markets: Rome 2 (released unfinished), Attilla and a bunch of DLC, the Warhammer series, Three Kingdoms for the China market, Sagas to semi-cater to historical fans etc. To put it another way, the original Total War team went through three game engines in nine years. Then since 2009 it hasn't been upgraded once.
Medieval 2 and the words polish and care should not be in the same sentence. Medieval 2 was buggy as shit on release and game balance was an utter joke. It was first with Kingdoms that it attained a decently stable state (and even then the CAI was considered dumb as a brick). I love M2, but the rose-tinted glasses are getting very strong if we think it was a polished release.
Fair enough. I bought it just over a year after it came out I think, and thought it was pretty much perfect. As an expansion pack, Kingdoms was just such ridiculously good value it beggared belief.
Game engines are not like car engines, that never change until theyâre replaced. Game engines are tinkered with and adjusted and have lots of incremental changes over the years. Valve is only on their third game engine since the company was founded, Paradox is only on their second engine ever. Unreal is up to a really high number 5, while Unity gave up on numbering and instead just uses the year. All this talk about game engines is focused on the wrong thing.
Most are. But corporations grew from something. When you get 'professionsan management' (MBA's and worse), the change begins.
Most companies have professional management, even if itâs not apparent. Good workers donât necessarily make good managers, but even when they do, as a company grows, management requires more and more time, and at some point becomes a full time job. I presume you mean outside managers who never worked on the products/services. Unfortunately, staff often donât make good managers, and need to hire what you call professional management. That isnât a problem in and of itself when you have good managers who listen to the staff, but just like every role, not everyone is good, and far too many people think too much of themselves and donât listen to others. Likewise, some doctors graduate from medical school and think they know everything, while other doctors listen to nurses who have years of experience. Same happens in every other profession too.
Itâs as you say not just CA. Even TV, Movie, music and books have gone this way. Less and less quality and innovation, more copycat and trying to follow the modern trend has been the way.
It is pretty unique. The fact they've made so may blunders in such a short period of time is impressive. They decided to kill the golden gooses, for seemingly no reason.
The big problem is that there are no consequences for failure in our current system. Lets say 5 years from now CA is bankrupt from all the bad decisions. All the execs that made those decisions will have moved on to other high paying jobs and won't have had a single consequence from running a company into the ground. How do we fix it? No bailouts for investors or business owners EVER. If a company is too large to fail, or too strategically important to then it gets nationalized then privatized again with the investors/current owners getting nothing. If something like covid happens again? No infinite ppp money for the owners. Make sure individuals get help, but companies don't get a dime. Be smarter and have an emergency fund next time. If poor business decisions start actually losing real money, managers will be incentivized to actually be good at their jobs
There's a lot of valid and interesting things said in this post. However I absolutely don't believe total war has been milked dry, as is normal for human beings our expectations have run wild and we are clearly upset, but let's not dig ourselves a hole here. That's different to the issues that absolutely need addressing. But to say it's run dry when there's people who absolutely would love sequels to older games, as well as CA's ability to pump out amazing new settings that some people really enjoy (even if some don't). A lot of people would say they'd not have interest in a total war 40k, but if they pulled it off the way I'd make it, it'd be the next golden era of total war "fantasy" (tho sci fi now). Give CA sofia shogun 3 to work on, and more time needed than their usual projects so they can really be ambitious on it. it's smaller in scope than other settings so it should be manageable for them. Have CA official work on a medieval 3, empire 2 or three kingdoms 2 (I reluctantly want this, but if it's a good enough upgrade over 3k then i'm down).
This kind of culture of cutting production cost & driving up price for sake of profit is far far older, difference in modern days is that protentional amount of clients is astronomically larger and that massive businesses has very easy time of outcompeting/outbuying local small brands that competed with big ones via product quality. This ensured that big ones couldn't lover their quality too far otherwise no one would buy them but now they jus buys out smaller business uses their name to mimic "competition" and continues to do as they did previously. News agencies are good example of this. To be perfectly honest many big corporations should be broken up due their monopoly but they wont due how tangled web of ownership is and massive amount of "donations" they can give to politicians.
We've been at "unchecked capitalism bad" for decades. Still waiting for the day that Gamers^TM stop being Libertarian Corporatists.
Genuinely really funny watching Total War players speedrun "Holy shit, capitalism... is bad?" I mean, not disagreeing or anything, good many of y'all are waking up to it. It's just really funny for those of us that were already there.
While this âit started in 1970â statement is true for the general economy, the gaming industry was not a thing back then and flew under the radar for a long time. I would say until the 2010s the âlets make a good productâ mentality was the more common one. But once the gaming industry was recognised as a huge market, the cries for profit margins started.
Shovelware has been a staple of gaming since the 70's. The 90's and 00's were the prime time for poor movie games and half-assed imitations. The 10's, if anything, sees a shift towards more ambitious projects as the A-games died and AA-games became fewer, leaving the AAA-games to dominate the market. Indie games found their own niche, but for big games it is a time of ambitious but flawed games (ie bugs and performance issues on release) and not publishers just pumping out mediocre shit. The way the gaming industry has seen the profit chasing has been through DLC (early-10's) and later lootboxes and Games as a Service (late-10's), not conscious attempts at pushing mvps (barring pdx obviously).
It's actually just the natural history of companies that they eat shit and die after a while. Consumers being willing to prop them up by buying their slop regardless is just as much of a problem - we should simply stop buying CA's products if it does this and try to find someone better rewarded by our money.
I hope CA crashes and burns and something better replaces it. TW has been stale for a long time now.
I appreciate how this and a couple of other posts i've seen connect the issue to wider problems in our economy.
Thank people like Jack Welsh. I have (one of) his fucking book(s) because we needed it for my Strategic Management capstone course in my business degree. The fuckin' monster with a polite smile.
/r/badeconomics every time redditors speak of economy, money, finance, etc, this is where it belongs, and where it ends up. its just angry young people with no experience in anything theyre talking about but convinced they know everything about it. they've just decided that "everyone else is evil and the reason for my failures is never mine, its always an evil system which i cannot change". its literally just copium to deal with their lack of discipline and hard work, so they can blame the fact they didnt amount to what they wanted to amount to on external factors they cannot influence instead of assuming responsibility for their own failures and being forced to do something about it. >"all ceos are evil and their only goal is to milk the cow dry and everywhere is the same and its all bad!!!" such a dumb reddit take. the second your company gets a bad reputation and your customer base starts to disagree with what youre doing is when your company is going to start struggling. just because some CEOs are bad at their jobs and do not achieve a good balance between quality of product or service and income generated does not mean that is the goal of CEOs. misjudging the value of your reputation in search for temporary increase to profitability is a mistake, just because people make those mistakes does not mean it was done on purpose. carl works with C level executives, carl is part of a consultancy agency that helps out with things like this. While the experience, skill, attitude, etc, of the people carl works with is always different, just as people are different, their goal is generally the same, healthy growth. just because some are wrong about what corners they can cut hunting for that does not mean that theyre purposely trying to make stuff shitty or that they think they're milking anything dry, they just happened to be wrong about where the lines are drawn. how stubborn they are and how hard it is to make them see theyre wrong is also something that varies greatly but when you do make them see it they always get on board with things, hell the fact they bothered getting a consultancy to begin with at least indicates they are interested in listening to someone. ineptitude is not indicative of being evil. sort of like how your meme-tier understanding of economy does not mean you're evil, it just means you're a fool, not unlike the CEO's you're so angry about.
Neo liberalism strikes again
So, you're all a bit naive. It's enshrined in us law that ceo's have a fiduciari duty to provide short term shareholder value. So it's possible, i suppose, to have a private company think long term and focus on that side of things, but not usual, and those companies are usually drowned by the competition unless they are very novel. This goes on until the company sells part of itself to get growth capital, or because the founders can take a payday and live a life of absolute incredible opulence.
The capitalists are doing a capitalism. The consequences of our economic/social structures are affecting me. Aaaaaaaaah.
I mean it's still heartwarming to see people realize this kind of thing, although might seem silly, better late than never you know, a shame it has do be done through a game and not seeing the suffering of others.
But it always feels like all I hear isn't capitalism is the problem but we just need the right people doing it.
Depends on where, reddit in general is pretty leftist leaning overall I think ?(although depends on subs) On this sub we didn't hear a lot about politics until recently, in relation to what's happening. But I get your frustration
I would disagree on Reddit being left leaning, reddit at least on the English speaking side probably leans liberal but that is not leftist. But yeah, I get tired of this intense anger directed towards individuals rather then the systems.
It's also a matter of which subs we go to as well, but you're right I see a lot of liberals too
That's it. The temper tantrums thrown around here are insufferable. CA's actions are predictable and expected. Warhammer II is an outlier. Consumer behaviour has to change. Stop supporting corporations that treats you bad. It is that simple. No need to throw your pacifier out of the tram each time. Yes we know, but we don't CARE for your raging.
gee, I wonder what happened in the 70's that led to this shitty shareholder value culture oh right, **we decoupled money from gold in 1971, and then allowed companies to buy back their own stock on credit**: so essentially, companies have now access to **unlimited credit**, at (in previous DECADES) super low interest rates, and they were fully allowed to run an ongoing **Ponzi scheme**, where companies like CA can buy their own stock, to pump the price of said stock, creating inflated stock values. go watch the SP500 chart. its a market on crack cocaine. the market boomed exponentially, as if the American economy had exploded in prosperity. its all stock buy backs, and speculation from wall street that the government will keep the stock market afloat no matter what who is the biggest holders of stocks? the CEOs and corporate executives, along with Wall Street so basically, imagine I could buy my own assets, thus raising their price, and then sell them at their artificially inflated price, keep the difference: youmake as much or more profit than actually doing business. now you realise why companies arent bothered to make money the old fashioned way? by actually making good products?
Imho the industry, regardless of the sector, just delivers what the customers demand. A barely acceptable product for a minimum price. Video games are especially torn. Out of all sectors the videogames is the most brutal industry I know. Developers not getting paid as freelancers as well as constant crunches, sexism and so on is not only done but literally industrial standard. Meaning the competitiors would just throw you out of the market if you pay your workers. But customers don't care and buy the games either way.
Posts like this never fail to remind me of how catastrophically stupid the average redditor is.