I think that when we say we "can't understand" we're overestimating people.
Which is where this story from real life fits in:
There was once upon a time a hugely anticipated game title up for launch. We can call it 'Wacka'. The developer of 'Wacka', which we can call 'Minute', had a very solid reputation for producing games resembling simulations. There was always something interesting going on in Minute's games. But never much combat or war. In short, they weren't like most other games at all. But they did have a large following of people.
Well, this developer, Minute, had been purchased by a large publisher, which we can call 'Soft Creations'. And Minute was pulling in a lot of money to 'Soft Creations'. They did this mainly with a franchise which many in the marketing department of 'Soft Creations' had never believed in. So the spectacular success of this franchise surprised them greatly. Clearly, here was an opportunity to learn something new.
So they invented a label for this crowd of gamers, we can pretend that label was "accidental gamers". And they set out to learn as much as possible about these gamers.
This is where something went horribly wrong. I don't know exactly what, but there seem to have been conflicting interests inside the marketing department. This is at a time when it's a great concern that the age distribution of gamers is so even. Too many players are too old. Clearly, there is not the healthy recruitment of new players through kids, that the corporation had built their expectations for the future on. So getting more children to play video games became a major goal of marketing.
Now I can tell exactly who the "accidental gamers" are and what they like. They are really two different groups, combined.
Group One: They are intelligent people, but of the kind of intelligence which makes them consider most videogames beneath them and 'childish'. And they particularly abhor games putting violence as their focus. What draws them and entertains them is when they see something interesting going on. And they almost always got introduced to their gaming on their PC, and through their gaming children, husbands, girlfriends whatever family members.
Group two: Is all the usual hardcore gamers, who want to experience something new, and actually also likes when there is something interesting going on. These are also the very same family members who originally purchased the games which the 'Group One' got hooked on.
But somehow, don't ask me how, 'Accidental Gamers' suddenly became about recruiting and introducing children to videogaming. If you think that's a crazy leap that defies all logic and that there can't possibly be so stupid people holding jobs in marketing at a big corporation, well wait for the end of this story, because it gets crazier.
The fundamental cornerstones in the marketing's 'accidental gamer' theory was that he/she was inept and new at playing videogames and thus needed easy gameplay. And also easily amused simpletons. The idea seems to be that children and 'accidental gamers' were groups that could and should be recruited and educated together, with the same means, to real videogaming and thus enlarging the market for farther goals.
And the task to do this went to 'Minute' by association. Minute was Soft Creation's spectacularly successful and major developer for what was now considered 'accidental gamers'. And they had a new game going, Wacka. They had developed fantastic new technologies and entirely new concepts in gaming. It all looked very exiting. But it also seemed like it wouldn't do. Minute was screwing things up. They weren't at all going into the directions that they should. And Wacka's head designer had always been an odd, unreliable and strange goof. Everybody knew that. Certainly, his straight line of successes must be mostly due to sheer luck? And this time it seemed he would surely fail most ugly. And with tons of Soft Creations money invested in the project.
Soft Creations consider their marketing group an asset, an in house research tool for developers to use, in shaping their games for greater success. So the head designer was taken to a number of meetings where he was educated about his customers, the 'accidental gamers', and how big this market was, how important it was to recruit more kids to gaming, and how important this game, Wacka, was for all this.
If he got it "right". "Don't screw up this!" "Don't drop the ball on this". This designer, who until this always had gone on his own instincts and taste, was taught something entirely new: To design a game by calculation and targeting the gamers. He had no reasons to doubt the marketing people. After all, they knew so much more about this than he, didn't they?
So when Wacka was released, it came out with fantastic, never before seen technologies. But instead of the intricate and interesting simulation, that millions of gamers had anticipated for years, actual gameplay consisted of
extremely simplified versions of Soft Creations more normal game genre's. RTS, RPG, and an ultra-tedius 4X (maybe intended as teraphy for retards).
And the overwhelming emphasis on gameplay was on KILLING, GENOCIDE, WAR, CONQUERING, EXTERMINATION.
But the "funniest" thing in this story (if one can talk about "funny" in this context) is still not told.
While there was a horrible and lasting uproar about the poor gameplay, this was initially drowned in another uproar.
You see, before Wacka was released, it was decided on a new IP-protection. Each and every copy would only be possible to install precisely three times. No more. No rollback. And you must be connected to internet while installing, and it will only be possible to install as long as the online servers are up.
It certainly defies my imagination how something as crazy as this could pass Soft Creation's marketing department. Why didn't they react and stop this madness? It's their job and duty. I mean this is not just stupid, it's so unthinkingly stupid that it's insane. And how could this decision pass the CEO and the leadership?
But it gets worse, much worse. Because Wacka also introduced a piece of code that permanently altered the OS of the customers PC, with no possibilty to change back, but format C: and reinstalling Windows. Now if that seems alarming to you, consider this: This code, which we can call 'RiscyDriveVirus' had ALREADY collected, AND LOST, a number of lawsuits all over the world. It had already been ruled against!
Can anybody who delivers this with his product be considered competent? Isn't there something fantastically, unbelievably wrong here?
But it gets even worse: It was kept completely secret! The product was distributed utterly void of any information about this. Not even in the licence, which nobody bothers to read, was there any mention of this. So not only did they do something bad, they also spread wide for class lawsuits.
...
...
But Nah,
Fooled you! This has of course never happened
Surely not. It cannot happen. HaHa. Right?
...or..
Did it really?
Modifié par bEVEsthda, 10 août 2011 - 11:03 .
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did not enjoy game and if want to stand even a chance of enjoying it they have to buy the (fixes/improvement DLC) as an added price on top of retail.
