In that case, its about shutting down news stories targeting wealthy and well-connected people. But same logic with video games.
I think they just call it market consolidation but basically yeah.
Taking lessons from EA. RIP Maxis, Westwood, etc.
Rejoice, children of Nod!
Maxis fucked up Sim City, right?
"While Maxis were focusing on graphical improvements with the SimCity reboot, EA wanted to make the game multiplayer and always-online, in part to combat piracy. The game was subject to "one of the most disastrous launches in history", as the game was released in a highly buggy state, with server failures plaguing players, and the open regions swiftly filling with abandoned cities."
Killing competition
Well, they get the snuff out competition and get to hold on to IPs. The thing is though: People are saying that there are good indie games, but I won't ever hear shit about said games unless I specifically go looking for them, which will almost never happen nowadays.
Even when I allow ads, game ads are pretty rare. AAA games were almost impossible to miss because there's always enough buzz, positive or negative, for the big ones.
Well, as you can imagine, they don't have quite the same marketing budget. Many of them market themselves on social media.
Personally, I keep up with gaming news anyways, so that's how I'll usually find out about them.
If you don't do that, there's occasionally indie showcases where it's basically trailer after trailer for (already more established) indie titles.
Here's a recent one, which had some good stuff, albeit lots announcements for the future: https://iii-initiative.com
I'm sure, you can also find a million articles and videos for "best indies of 2023" or similar.
Accrue intellectual property
Ignore culture, consumers, and artists
It's not only video game studios that got bought up and then dried out during the "quantitative easing" period.
Money was so cheap it made sense (business wise) to buy and kill competitors instead of beating them by being better.
Buy successful indie game and studio, run the IP into the ground or just lay the workers off and keep the IP. Much cheaper to keep good games out and make room for your shitty AAA title than actually compete with them in the market.
The Activision(TM) way?
shrug… At least we’ve been getting banger indie games. I’m fine if this whole AAA thing goes up in smoke. EA, Microsoft, etc. are just chasing that live service cash cow.
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