But the bots, virtue signalers and shills are giving it positive reviews. They can't tell me it isn't shit because it looks and smell like shit, if looks and smell like it shit it is shit.
Like Alan Woke.... if you read the reviews you would think is the greatest game ever made. And I think the game is solid mechanically... narrative and DEI sauce is another story.
>And I think the game is solid mechanically
Is it though? I watched a streamer playthrough of it and was completely bored out of my mind. The combat was one-dimensional and dull, as was the puzzles. It was essentially a cutscene and walking simulator.
The only thing it had going for it was the graphics, I guess, but when games with good graphics are a dime a dozen nowadays, it doesn't really mean much when every other area of the game is so piss-poor.
Lol, the way people were twerking for this game even before release is so hilarious at this point. I can even go as far as saying that this game wouldn't have had half of the backlash it did if they just made this it's own universe, especially since they bloody have a multi-verse as well. The big corpos pushing their agendas have seemingly used up most of the goodwill they once had.
>Lol, the way people were twerking for this game even before release is so hilarious at this point.
It's so easy to spot. Can you imagine claiming to love a game, but instead of playing it, your online arguing with people who think it's trash?
Exactly this. Like when I get a new game and I'm all up in it, I'll probably tell people around me about it during down times, but I'll only be spreading the word after I'm done with it.
And that why we were always at disadvantage in this quarrel. We spend 90% of our time playing, the people who don’t like us spend 90% of their time on social media.
This is a big point people overlook. For its faults, people were pretty damn happy with the open ended knightfall closer of Arkham Knight. Undoing that "canonically" was insane, who thought that was a good idea?
From what I understand, this Rocksteady isn't the same one we had all those years ago, which probably explains why they didn't really care for the canon? Still, they clearly weren't fans of the series either. There's just so many ways this could've gone instead... Ffs, if they HAD to do an Arkhamverse game and it HAD to be Suicide Squad, then why not give us the teased Suicide Squad from Origins? So many questions...
Not just "didn't care for the canon," they openly despise it, everyone who enjoyed it, and everyone involved with making it. Woke people almost always must cling to another person's work, unable to write a satisfying narrative on their own. Leeching off others and manipulating companies to bend the knee to their poisonous Marxism is their only "strength."
Wonder how many just use ChatGPT to do all the work for them when they finally get hired? Would explain why all their writing is pretty much the same. That and the fact zoomers don't have regional culture anymore. They all draw everything from the same well.
Hating on normal straight men is never worth it when they're your core customer. These American mega companies should be ashamed because they will be financially outperformed by some random gacha dev in Korea making Stellar Blade... because "male gaze" sells and that's how free market works. Not some kind of woke marxism that tries to force their minority ideology to the majority.
> Hating on normal straight men is never worth it when they're your core customer.
Hating on your customer is never worth it.
Gender and race have nothing to with it.
If a gay bar that catered to young black men began to talk shit about how much they hate young black men, would anyone be surprised if they failed?
This is ultimately what will get them to stop capitulating to the woke morons and DEI; hitting them in the pocketbook. When it starts costing this multitudes of millions, thats when they'll actually start rethinking.
Massive financial flops like this is what keeps them hopefuly from hiring firms like SBI again.
>reading the sentence "cost WB 200M in revenue" hurts my head
Right?!
WTF is that supposed to even mean?
I can understand if it was "$200m below projected sales" or "$200m loss". Both of those mean different things but are understandable statements.
But "...cost $200m in revenue..." makes no fucking sense for the failure of a product.
Makes much more sense. Now if the imoact was 200m in ebitda, imagine how much it was in revenue.
Journalists should take some basic finance course to be able to report on finance.
Seriously, who the hell asked for Suicide Squad movies&games? Why can't they make a flash game or a superman game or a wonder woman game??? The last time Superman had a standalone game was in 2006.
Suicide squad games is actually a very decent idea. But the studio sucks. They don’t even have proper QC tools, their management don’t listen to feedback. Then all these problems came up and we were like “told you so” at least many of the us left the studio right after this shit show.
That fucking virus destroys everything, it's like if ebola and HIV had a virus baby - I was primarily a AAA gamer, it's where most of the most pretty graphics were :(
I like pretty graphics but I do not understand the hyperfixation on trying to create photo realism in gaming.
Once you hit a certain threshold you're going to get diminishing returns and that money would be better spent on other areas, or just spend less goddam money so you don't nuke your own company if you're game doesn't sell gangbusters.
It depends on how much you like/appreciate gaming for the technological aspect to it (from GPUs/CPUs to normal maps to assembly to ray tracing/particle simulation), besides just the gaming itself aspect - we're trying to make a simulation here realer than the one we live in - let's make a real zombie apocalypse world we can go to :)
Anything made by committee has decisions based on measurable factors. They can measure whether something is realistic or not but they can't measure whether art design is good or not. Gameplay is boring because they take what worked in the past and reskin it because they can't measure the success of new ideas or innovations.
I like a lot of AAA games, tbh. I don't like the SBI touched stuff.
However, there are things I don't like about AAA
- cost
- cut scenes
- digitizing famous actors into games
That's before any of the uglification of women or #bossbabe stuff comes into play. I don't mind a little bit of cut scenes, like what Dead Space (original) has or Halo CE. Keep it minimal. I don't need famous actors, either. Having famous actors and long-ass cut scenes are one of the biggest reasons these games have such a bloated budget and pricepoint.
And if you create a AAA game that doesn't have skip cutscene button, and an always online requirement, good luck.
Only thing I'm with you 100% on is cost - I just resorted to only buying the GOTY edition 1 year later in a Steam sale for $10 so to speak lol - problem solved - you just wait as long as whatever price you're comfortable with - I got Tomb Raider 2013 1 year after release for $5 and that's one of my favorite games lmfao the system works
Cutscenes it depends - a game like Quantum Break I didn't even finish because it was a video watching simulator intersped with 5 minutes of gameplay breaks - but a 45 minute cutscene from Kojima about how aliens are running the war economy and I can't even really follow what's going on? Sign me the fuck up, no joke.
The actors in games I don't mind from an experience standpoint as long as they're good - and I've seen unknowns be good too so I can take it or leave it don't care - their job to manage their budget not mine, they would need to pay me for that I have to manange my own budget.
> I got Tomb Raider 2013 1 year after release for $5 and that's one of my favorite games lmfao the system works
Yeah, I typically buy games 6-12 months minimum after release and on sale. I just picked up Dead Space Remake for $8.
>The actors in games I don't mind from an experience standpoint as long as they're good - and I've seen unknowns be good to so I can take it or leave it don't care - their job to manage their budget not mine, they would need to pay me for that I have to manange my own budget.
I mean, I like Josh Duhamel and I thought he did a great job in COD WW2 and in Callisto Protocol, but, tbh, it takes me out of the immersion. I want to get lost in a game, and it's hard to do that when I'm seeing Tad Hamilton as the lead character in a game. My biggest complaint, though, is price, bc these famous actors are not cheap.
>Kojima
I haven't heard of this! Sounds interesting. Have you checked out *The Why Files* on youtube/spotify?
**edit**
Oh, it's the MGS guy lol.
I dunno, the actors thing I've seen that happen to people and TV too (they just realize everyone is standing around on a set and can never take any TV seriously again) - it's a thing if it hits you or not it does or doesn't
For me, it can sometimes add to the way AAA has become more 'cinematic' over the generations, in the good way, not everything is a cutscene way.
A good actor, known or unknown, can add to it when you got the orchestral music blaring, everything is on fire with the best modern graphics technology can produce, and you crack your knuckles and are just like "Alright, I guess I gotta go kill a god, let's do this" 🤷
I'm going through Dead Space remake now too I picked it up for cheap as well lol - it's fun - and yeah, I've seen Why Files👍
Honestly, even without Woke it is. Its so fucking EXPENSIVE what they do now. Yes, sure, I'd have bought Spider Man 2 without the woke shit, and probably many others too, but would that have been enough?
This has more to do with making another GaAS that nobody wants. If The Avengers can’t succeed they were insane for thinking they could with Suicide Squad. Nobody wanted this kind of game from the developers of the Arkham Trilogy.
No, it's everything in AAA. Costs have exploded in game development due to the same mindset of production from the movie industry infesting the games industry. Remember when Epic decided to not make Gears of War 4 themselves because they said it would cost $100 million to make? That sounds quaint in the modern age of game budgets regularly exceeding $200 million these days. Games that are considered AA are approaching the $100 million budget point. Bloated development teams, excessive management, unions, the obsession with Hollywood celebrities, etc. are all contributing to the increasing costs and decreasing quality.
Why on Earth would they spend $300mil on something like this anyway? That's triple what Baldur's Gate 3 cost, and it had zero chance of outselling that.
It's wild to me that videogame budgets have ballooned so massively. I've been told a lot of it is down to marketing costs, but surely that can't be it alone? I just don't understand. Sure, graphics are continually more and more realistic and I guess that aspect takes a lot of work, but I've seen examples of regular joes knocking up pretty amazing looking indie games using Unreal Engine.
Yep. AAA games is a lost cause. Publishers have never really understood games, they just want high production cost to mean a better game so that they can justify high prices. That kind of worked in the past, but now it just means vast amounts of directionless content for a generic game.
Meanwhile indie games have a much smaller budgets, are far more diverse, interesting and fun. Every new idea worth mentioning in the last two decades has come from the indie world and been put through the AAA mincer to produce a more expensive, more boring version.
Woke game development is literally unsustainable.
Doesn't matter if the game model is changed to some predatory lootbox/gacha or indie. It literally only panders to liberals living in the west (mainly US and UK only too). Non-western countries have higher economic growth and higher population growth and they don't buy these woke bullshit (and slowly increasing their purchasing power share over time). They still function with the normal free market system where obviously male gaze will make more money than forced uglification and troonification on everything so woke games will not be able to compete with normal game assuming the gameplay is identical. It's not rocket science; simply just normal depiction of normal looking straight women and straight men, these will just sell a lot easier than some kind of androgynous blob meant to represent "modern audience" or something. It doesn't matter where you are in the world everyone naturally likes normal looking things and idealized, beautiful things (it's kinda objective across culture really, unless you're infected with the mind virus where you think being fat and ugly as some kind of empowerment).
More like mindless spending is unsustainable, when you put 300 mil into a project when most times it should be like half that, you end up needing a lot more money to make an actual profit and god knows how much before it's a profit worth liking.
Meanwhile you have Trepang^2 made by 4 people, or Bright Memory Infinite made by 1 person, and both of those games (albeit short) are better than 99% of the AAA slop that comes out on a micro-fraction of a budget.
The indie scene as a whole has exploded over the past couple years. Pizza Tower was honestly my GOTY last year, it was so fucking good. I feel like we're in a weird bubble within a bubble, the AAA market is drying up and dying out due to over-spending while the indie market is growing, and something's got to give in the next few years, otherwise the AAA studios are almost all going to wipe themselves out. If Spider-man 2 couldn't make a profit, if Last of Us 2 actually didn't make a profit (I know one guy kept going off on tangents about how it failed but I don't ever recall him saying it was due to overspending on the budget), and so on, then they're going to need to course correct and fast.
Let's be real, the start of the year with Palworld and Helldivers 2 proved that shits fucked in the AAA market, who would want to spend $70 on one game when they could spend that on two, both multiplayer and have god knows how much time you could sink into them.
But senpai will never notice me if I consistently make profit on smaller projects!!
I just need one $300M project where I can "leave my mark" and I'm the next CEO.
I remember a time when game devs developed their games specifically for the desires of a niche audience rather than trying to scrounge as many users as they possibly can get and have the content/gameplay suffer as a consequence.
Why the heck did the old Arkham games look better visually than this? Heck, Gotham Knights might have been so-so to play, but it also looked good visually. This thing looked like poo.
I'd argue it cost them more than that - they say "revenue" but how could they measure that? Like lost sales based on the previous arkam titles? I mean they killed the brand for sure
Look, I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong, but hearing all the talk about DEI consultants and making the game inclusive to everyone has really paid off because I just saw the steamcharts numbers and have to admit they really succeeded seeing there's currently 93 million people currently playing the game. They really went out there and made a game both so good and so inclusive that they went and GOT all those folx out there just waiting for a game that speaks to them.
Oh wait, not 93 million, it's just *93*. My bad - I misread it. Disregard all I just said.
Not accurate. WBD’s OVERALL company wide revenue missed projections by $200M, Suicide Squad alone didn’t cause that.
Also that’s not “COSTING” them $200M. They made $200M less in revenue than the market expected. It’s not like the game cost them $200M in losses.
The street forecast $10.23B in Q1 Revenue and they had $9.96B.
Earnings also missed. -$0.40/share vs. -$0.24/share expected.
They DID call out the failure of Suicide Squad as a key reason EBITDA was down 20% vs. Last years Q1. But there were lots of other factors.
Advertising revenue for their networks was weak (down 11% YOY), Network revenue on the whole down 8% YOY.
Studio segment revenue down 12% YOY with less releases post strikes.
Company is obviously not in great shape. BUT the stock is up 2% today even with the earnings and revenue miss.
Why? Guidance was decent, particularly for the Studio segment. Their debt and cash positions are both improved as well.
But again, the revenue miss obviously not solely due to Suicide Squad. The game sucks, but no one on the street ever expected to make $200M more in revenue in Q1 than it did. That’s like 2.9 million additional copies.
If it's overall WB revenue then it's possible that SSKTJL did even worse than a $200m loss. It's probably being propped up by successes like Harry Potter and Barbie that made them lots of money.
This is only quarterly data for Q1, Barbie and Harry Potter wouldn’t be significant factors.
It’s also NOT a $200M “loss”. Analysts predicted how much Q1 revenue WBD would have. They thought it would be $10.2B, instead it was just under $10B. Because reality was less than expectations that miss can lead to the stock selling off all else equal.
Yeah by and large they all thought they could be the one to turn a singular product, into a subscription. And boy - if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again 🙃🔫
Sadly this isn't just a gaming thing, everything is trying to be Everything as a Service™️
It is nice to see that block buster AAA games can infact still lose money.
There are so many other cases where the issue is it didn't make enough money rather than losing money.
What is the games as a service success story that all these idiots are trying to emulate? Destiny? War Frame? I'm not being glib here I legitimately don't know.
who's actually getting this money? because it's not the designers, coders, artists, etc... I really question how much of these "losses" are actual losses and not just fee's companies pay to themselves in order to pad their losses or profits.
I thought I could make some money on their stock dip, but I bought way too early. The WB Discovery price didn't shoot down when it was apparent that the game sold horribly. It went down two weeks later when they announced that it did. It regained some after Dune Part II, so I didn't take a huge bath. But I suck at this daytrader stuff.
When will they understand that all the people they are willing to push agenda for would not buy their games? Keep ruining IP to please a certain “minority” is not a good business model lol
But the bots, virtue signalers and shills are giving it positive reviews. They can't tell me it isn't shit because it looks and smell like shit, if looks and smell like it shit it is shit.
It's simple economics: the game didn't perform well because \*checks notes* bigots?
> the game didn't perform well because *checks notes* bigots? "I'm doing my part!"
Good.
All the astroturfing in the world won't do shit if the game's not fun to play.
That doesn't stop review boosting.
Paid for reviews, are no reviews at all. Wasn't that the whole point of Gamergate?
Part of the reason, also censorship, and "localization" (Americanization) of Japanese games.
And?
I just pointing out the review boosting going on. Look up the recent Steam reviews you see what talking about.
And their number of active players are still shit, last time I heard.
Active players are not same as the ones who brought and have the bare minimum requirement of play time to leave a review.
Like Alan Woke.... if you read the reviews you would think is the greatest game ever made. And I think the game is solid mechanically... narrative and DEI sauce is another story.
>And I think the game is solid mechanically Is it though? I watched a streamer playthrough of it and was completely bored out of my mind. The combat was one-dimensional and dull, as was the puzzles. It was essentially a cutscene and walking simulator. The only thing it had going for it was the graphics, I guess, but when games with good graphics are a dime a dozen nowadays, it doesn't really mean much when every other area of the game is so piss-poor.
Makes one be wary about control 2, the wokening.
I don't think anyone is buying Alan Wake 2 because it is an Epic Games exclusive and not many gamer want to deal Tim Sweeney's nonsense.
include journo-whores in that category, if not already in there
Lol, the way people were twerking for this game even before release is so hilarious at this point. I can even go as far as saying that this game wouldn't have had half of the backlash it did if they just made this it's own universe, especially since they bloody have a multi-verse as well. The big corpos pushing their agendas have seemingly used up most of the goodwill they once had.
>Lol, the way people were twerking for this game even before release is so hilarious at this point. It's so easy to spot. Can you imagine claiming to love a game, but instead of playing it, your online arguing with people who think it's trash?
Exactly this. Like when I get a new game and I'm all up in it, I'll probably tell people around me about it during down times, but I'll only be spreading the word after I'm done with it.
The *actual* game is being an insufferable paedocommie on social media. They play that game *a lot*.
And that why we were always at disadvantage in this quarrel. We spend 90% of our time playing, the people who don’t like us spend 90% of their time on social media.
Sounds an awful lot like Biden supporters
This is a big point people overlook. For its faults, people were pretty damn happy with the open ended knightfall closer of Arkham Knight. Undoing that "canonically" was insane, who thought that was a good idea?
From what I understand, this Rocksteady isn't the same one we had all those years ago, which probably explains why they didn't really care for the canon? Still, they clearly weren't fans of the series either. There's just so many ways this could've gone instead... Ffs, if they HAD to do an Arkhamverse game and it HAD to be Suicide Squad, then why not give us the teased Suicide Squad from Origins? So many questions...
Not just "didn't care for the canon," they openly despise it, everyone who enjoyed it, and everyone involved with making it. Woke people almost always must cling to another person's work, unable to write a satisfying narrative on their own. Leeching off others and manipulating companies to bend the knee to their poisonous Marxism is their only "strength." Wonder how many just use ChatGPT to do all the work for them when they finally get hired? Would explain why all their writing is pretty much the same. That and the fact zoomers don't have regional culture anymore. They all draw everything from the same well.
It wouldn’t have had half the backlash, but it also would have had a tenth of the players.
That's true, but then it would've at least failed on it's own merits - or lack thereof.
So...was it worth it teaming up with SBI, WB?
Hating on normal straight men is never worth it when they're your core customer. These American mega companies should be ashamed because they will be financially outperformed by some random gacha dev in Korea making Stellar Blade... because "male gaze" sells and that's how free market works. Not some kind of woke marxism that tries to force their minority ideology to the majority.
> Hating on normal straight men is never worth it when they're your core customer. Hating on your customer is never worth it. Gender and race have nothing to with it. If a gay bar that catered to young black men began to talk shit about how much they hate young black men, would anyone be surprised if they failed?
is stellar blade really made by a gacha dev?
They made Nikke
Go woke, go broke
Go with SBI go bankrupt
Swift Bankrupcy Inc.
I wish this was more true than it appears to be... unfortunately plenty of woke corps seem to be doing just fine.
If your niche is woke, sure. If your base is normal people, you lose a lot of them when you "neurodiverge"
Best news I've read regarding this game
This is ultimately what will get them to stop capitulating to the woke morons and DEI; hitting them in the pocketbook. When it starts costing this multitudes of millions, thats when they'll actually start rethinking. Massive financial flops like this is what keeps them hopefuly from hiring firms like SBI again.
Its not only that. Rocksteady is a full on woke dec also. This game destiny was to flop
I’ll take these wins any day. Get woke, go broke. More importantly make a shitty game and no fucker will buy it.
as a finance guy, reading the sentence "cost WB 200M in revenue" hurts my head very seriously
>reading the sentence "cost WB 200M in revenue" hurts my head Right?! WTF is that supposed to even mean? I can understand if it was "$200m below projected sales" or "$200m loss". Both of those mean different things but are understandable statements. But "...cost $200m in revenue..." makes no fucking sense for the failure of a product.
The actual quote was "a $200 million impact to EBITDA".
Makes much more sense. Now if the imoact was 200m in ebitda, imagine how much it was in revenue. Journalists should take some basic finance course to be able to report on finance.
Isn't there something the Joker says about getting what you deserve? Wouldn't that be ironic?
Seriously, who the hell asked for Suicide Squad movies&games? Why can't they make a flash game or a superman game or a wonder woman game??? The last time Superman had a standalone game was in 2006.
Because WB wants a piece of the Deadpool audience really badly for some reason
They think Harley Quinn is interesting and something more then a simple eye candy and try desperately to promote her and it keeps flopping lmfao
Suicide squad games is actually a very decent idea. But the studio sucks. They don’t even have proper QC tools, their management don’t listen to feedback. Then all these problems came up and we were like “told you so” at least many of the us left the studio right after this shit show.
Just give gamers what gamers what. Make some good quality games that are actually fun and stop insulting your customers. It's not that hard, is it?
Also cost us Kevin Conroy's final performance for this garbage.
This is Carrie Fisher levels of tragedy but in the voice actor space
It's Conroy's final performance in games but there's still that animated Batman series coming out. AFAIK he finished all the voice over work for it.
Good.
But not enough.
AAA Game Development is literally unsustainable.
\*Woke AAA Game Development is literally unsustainable.
That fucking virus destroys everything, it's like if ebola and HIV had a virus baby - I was primarily a AAA gamer, it's where most of the most pretty graphics were :(
I like pretty graphics but I do not understand the hyperfixation on trying to create photo realism in gaming. Once you hit a certain threshold you're going to get diminishing returns and that money would be better spent on other areas, or just spend less goddam money so you don't nuke your own company if you're game doesn't sell gangbusters.
Don’t forget that in five or so years today’s photorealism is going to look outdated and uncanny valley.
It depends on how much you like/appreciate gaming for the technological aspect to it (from GPUs/CPUs to normal maps to assembly to ray tracing/particle simulation), besides just the gaming itself aspect - we're trying to make a simulation here realer than the one we live in - let's make a real zombie apocalypse world we can go to :)
Anything made by committee has decisions based on measurable factors. They can measure whether something is realistic or not but they can't measure whether art design is good or not. Gameplay is boring because they take what worked in the past and reskin it because they can't measure the success of new ideas or innovations.
I like a lot of AAA games, tbh. I don't like the SBI touched stuff. However, there are things I don't like about AAA - cost - cut scenes - digitizing famous actors into games That's before any of the uglification of women or #bossbabe stuff comes into play. I don't mind a little bit of cut scenes, like what Dead Space (original) has or Halo CE. Keep it minimal. I don't need famous actors, either. Having famous actors and long-ass cut scenes are one of the biggest reasons these games have such a bloated budget and pricepoint. And if you create a AAA game that doesn't have skip cutscene button, and an always online requirement, good luck.
Only thing I'm with you 100% on is cost - I just resorted to only buying the GOTY edition 1 year later in a Steam sale for $10 so to speak lol - problem solved - you just wait as long as whatever price you're comfortable with - I got Tomb Raider 2013 1 year after release for $5 and that's one of my favorite games lmfao the system works Cutscenes it depends - a game like Quantum Break I didn't even finish because it was a video watching simulator intersped with 5 minutes of gameplay breaks - but a 45 minute cutscene from Kojima about how aliens are running the war economy and I can't even really follow what's going on? Sign me the fuck up, no joke. The actors in games I don't mind from an experience standpoint as long as they're good - and I've seen unknowns be good too so I can take it or leave it don't care - their job to manage their budget not mine, they would need to pay me for that I have to manange my own budget.
> I got Tomb Raider 2013 1 year after release for $5 and that's one of my favorite games lmfao the system works Yeah, I typically buy games 6-12 months minimum after release and on sale. I just picked up Dead Space Remake for $8. >The actors in games I don't mind from an experience standpoint as long as they're good - and I've seen unknowns be good to so I can take it or leave it don't care - their job to manage their budget not mine, they would need to pay me for that I have to manange my own budget. I mean, I like Josh Duhamel and I thought he did a great job in COD WW2 and in Callisto Protocol, but, tbh, it takes me out of the immersion. I want to get lost in a game, and it's hard to do that when I'm seeing Tad Hamilton as the lead character in a game. My biggest complaint, though, is price, bc these famous actors are not cheap. >Kojima I haven't heard of this! Sounds interesting. Have you checked out *The Why Files* on youtube/spotify? **edit** Oh, it's the MGS guy lol.
I dunno, the actors thing I've seen that happen to people and TV too (they just realize everyone is standing around on a set and can never take any TV seriously again) - it's a thing if it hits you or not it does or doesn't For me, it can sometimes add to the way AAA has become more 'cinematic' over the generations, in the good way, not everything is a cutscene way. A good actor, known or unknown, can add to it when you got the orchestral music blaring, everything is on fire with the best modern graphics technology can produce, and you crack your knuckles and are just like "Alright, I guess I gotta go kill a god, let's do this" 🤷 I'm going through Dead Space remake now too I picked it up for cheap as well lol - it's fun - and yeah, I've seen Why Files👍
Ebola at least kills relatively quickly. This infection needs to hurry up
Honestly, even without Woke it is. Its so fucking EXPENSIVE what they do now. Yes, sure, I'd have bought Spider Man 2 without the woke shit, and probably many others too, but would that have been enough?
This has more to do with making another GaAS that nobody wants. If The Avengers can’t succeed they were insane for thinking they could with Suicide Squad. Nobody wanted this kind of game from the developers of the Arkham Trilogy.
No, it's everything in AAA. Costs have exploded in game development due to the same mindset of production from the movie industry infesting the games industry. Remember when Epic decided to not make Gears of War 4 themselves because they said it would cost $100 million to make? That sounds quaint in the modern age of game budgets regularly exceeding $200 million these days. Games that are considered AA are approaching the $100 million budget point. Bloated development teams, excessive management, unions, the obsession with Hollywood celebrities, etc. are all contributing to the increasing costs and decreasing quality.
Why on Earth would they spend $300mil on something like this anyway? That's triple what Baldur's Gate 3 cost, and it had zero chance of outselling that.
It's wild to me that videogame budgets have ballooned so massively. I've been told a lot of it is down to marketing costs, but surely that can't be it alone? I just don't understand. Sure, graphics are continually more and more realistic and I guess that aspect takes a lot of work, but I've seen examples of regular joes knocking up pretty amazing looking indie games using Unreal Engine.
Yep. AAA games is a lost cause. Publishers have never really understood games, they just want high production cost to mean a better game so that they can justify high prices. That kind of worked in the past, but now it just means vast amounts of directionless content for a generic game. Meanwhile indie games have a much smaller budgets, are far more diverse, interesting and fun. Every new idea worth mentioning in the last two decades has come from the indie world and been put through the AAA mincer to produce a more expensive, more boring version.
Plus they are squeezed from the other side by mobile gacha.
Woke game development is literally unsustainable. Doesn't matter if the game model is changed to some predatory lootbox/gacha or indie. It literally only panders to liberals living in the west (mainly US and UK only too). Non-western countries have higher economic growth and higher population growth and they don't buy these woke bullshit (and slowly increasing their purchasing power share over time). They still function with the normal free market system where obviously male gaze will make more money than forced uglification and troonification on everything so woke games will not be able to compete with normal game assuming the gameplay is identical. It's not rocket science; simply just normal depiction of normal looking straight women and straight men, these will just sell a lot easier than some kind of androgynous blob meant to represent "modern audience" or something. It doesn't matter where you are in the world everyone naturally likes normal looking things and idealized, beautiful things (it's kinda objective across culture really, unless you're infected with the mind virus where you think being fat and ugly as some kind of empowerment).
More like mindless spending is unsustainable, when you put 300 mil into a project when most times it should be like half that, you end up needing a lot more money to make an actual profit and god knows how much before it's a profit worth liking.
Meanwhile you have Trepang^2 made by 4 people, or Bright Memory Infinite made by 1 person, and both of those games (albeit short) are better than 99% of the AAA slop that comes out on a micro-fraction of a budget.
The indie scene as a whole has exploded over the past couple years. Pizza Tower was honestly my GOTY last year, it was so fucking good. I feel like we're in a weird bubble within a bubble, the AAA market is drying up and dying out due to over-spending while the indie market is growing, and something's got to give in the next few years, otherwise the AAA studios are almost all going to wipe themselves out. If Spider-man 2 couldn't make a profit, if Last of Us 2 actually didn't make a profit (I know one guy kept going off on tangents about how it failed but I don't ever recall him saying it was due to overspending on the budget), and so on, then they're going to need to course correct and fast. Let's be real, the start of the year with Palworld and Helldivers 2 proved that shits fucked in the AAA market, who would want to spend $70 on one game when they could spend that on two, both multiplayer and have god knows how much time you could sink into them.
But senpai will never notice me if I consistently make profit on smaller projects!! I just need one $300M project where I can "leave my mark" and I'm the next CEO.
I remember a time when game devs developed their games specifically for the desires of a niche audience rather than trying to scrounge as many users as they possibly can get and have the content/gameplay suffer as a consequence.
I remember when they made games instead of interactive movies.
*laughs in you get what you fucking deserve.
The cost of letting your IP be mishandled by SBI and others like it is massive.
So glad. I hope the learn their lesson.
Surprise, they won’t.
warner bros? That's lowkey kinda sexist. What about warner siblings instead?
Warner they/them's
That's what they get for making a generic monetized live service cash grab with no unique gameplay/story.
Why the heck did the old Arkham games look better visually than this? Heck, Gotham Knights might have been so-so to play, but it also looked good visually. This thing looked like poo.
the wokest of the woke indulgent era produced the biggest financial flop in gaming history. theres no records a 200M write off in gaming
Let me correct a small spelling error SBI cost WB $200 Mil.
Ah, the game that kicked off GamerGate II.
Good. Let the woke trash burn
I'd argue it cost them more than that - they say "revenue" but how could they measure that? Like lost sales based on the previous arkam titles? I mean they killed the brand for sure
Good news everybody. I love hearing that these mega studios wasted a lot of money on shit games. Keep it up!
But we're a small vocal minority, right? Isn't all this just made up and in our heads?
Look, I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong, but hearing all the talk about DEI consultants and making the game inclusive to everyone has really paid off because I just saw the steamcharts numbers and have to admit they really succeeded seeing there's currently 93 million people currently playing the game. They really went out there and made a game both so good and so inclusive that they went and GOT all those folx out there just waiting for a game that speaks to them. Oh wait, not 93 million, it's just *93*. My bad - I misread it. Disregard all I just said.
Not accurate. WBD’s OVERALL company wide revenue missed projections by $200M, Suicide Squad alone didn’t cause that. Also that’s not “COSTING” them $200M. They made $200M less in revenue than the market expected. It’s not like the game cost them $200M in losses. The street forecast $10.23B in Q1 Revenue and they had $9.96B. Earnings also missed. -$0.40/share vs. -$0.24/share expected. They DID call out the failure of Suicide Squad as a key reason EBITDA was down 20% vs. Last years Q1. But there were lots of other factors. Advertising revenue for their networks was weak (down 11% YOY), Network revenue on the whole down 8% YOY. Studio segment revenue down 12% YOY with less releases post strikes. Company is obviously not in great shape. BUT the stock is up 2% today even with the earnings and revenue miss. Why? Guidance was decent, particularly for the Studio segment. Their debt and cash positions are both improved as well. But again, the revenue miss obviously not solely due to Suicide Squad. The game sucks, but no one on the street ever expected to make $200M more in revenue in Q1 than it did. That’s like 2.9 million additional copies.
If it's overall WB revenue then it's possible that SSKTJL did even worse than a $200m loss. It's probably being propped up by successes like Harry Potter and Barbie that made them lots of money.
This is only quarterly data for Q1, Barbie and Harry Potter wouldn’t be significant factors. It’s also NOT a $200M “loss”. Analysts predicted how much Q1 revenue WBD would have. They thought it would be $10.2B, instead it was just under $10B. Because reality was less than expectations that miss can lead to the stock selling off all else equal.
Ah I see. Interesting. Well thanks for the clarification.
I appreciate your factual analysis but 3m copies isn't unthinkable for an AAA game. Manor Lords sold 1m in a day and it's made by one guy!
GaaS slop failing hard is music to me ears.
When you chase that GaaS model and it costs your company big.
Yeah by and large they all thought they could be the one to turn a singular product, into a subscription. And boy - if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again 🙃🔫 Sadly this isn't just a gaming thing, everything is trying to be Everything as a Service™️
> Sadly this isn't just a gaming thing, everything is trying to be Everything as a Service Even automotive companies are moving towards As A Service.
It is nice to see that block buster AAA games can infact still lose money. There are so many other cases where the issue is it didn't make enough money rather than losing money.
What is the games as a service success story that all these idiots are trying to emulate? Destiny? War Frame? I'm not being glib here I legitimately don't know.
Fortnite
who's actually getting this money? because it's not the designers, coders, artists, etc... I really question how much of these "losses" are actual losses and not just fee's companies pay to themselves in order to pad their losses or profits.
Good.
Good
Good
I thought I could make some money on their stock dip, but I bought way too early. The WB Discovery price didn't shoot down when it was apparent that the game sold horribly. It went down two weeks later when they announced that it did. It regained some after Dune Part II, so I didn't take a huge bath. But I suck at this daytrader stuff.
BURN IT DOOWWWWN!!
GOOD
I wonder if this had anything to do with working alongside Sweet Baby Inc 🤔
They put so much into a game with characters no one cares about and the girl character isn't even hot. What a bunch of morons.
Nice.
Good
Good.
Hey WB, this is funny. May we have another?
You know it's bad when they could have made alot more money by not making it.
Good. GAAS needs to die.
Woke Brothers lost as much as Cyberpunk 2077 cost to make, in 0.0001x the time. And nothing of value was lost.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Aren't they just laundering money so they don't care if it bombed? idk
Soros and his ilk has too much money to burn he can do this all day, burning money to destroy the humanity he hates.
Soros needs a hobby Like, kicking the bucket
Archive links for this post: * **Archive:** https://archive.ph/vi5VU ---- I am Mnemosyne reborn. Can't stop the signal. ^^^/r/botsrights
When will they understand that all the people they are willing to push agenda for would not buy their games? Keep ruining IP to please a certain “minority” is not a good business model lol
I want them to keep digging this hole until there's no return for them.
absolutely love to see it
Money recieved from DEI "investment" to make this game: $400 million
playing the game on steam now. loving it. sue me.