To start off, I'm not gonna pretend I'm a well educated economist, so for those of you who are, feel free to blow holes in this, just some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head.
While we gamers like to point fingers at Activision, and EA and other Publishers for sometimes creating sub par games, and nickle and dimming us customers for every possible cent, and as well as the sometimes less than stellar treatment towards developers, and as well the sometimes strict deadlines. Blame can't be placed solely on the Publishers. For the most part, publishers are often working based off solely on the whims of their investors since in many cases, publishers like EA, and Activision are publicly traded companies and in order to continue their success they need plenty of investors funding different developers. And this, in my opinion is the root of many of the ills the industry must deal with. Impatient investors who aren't aware of the industry they are investing in.
Many investors fail to see that making a game takes time and money to wait. And normally, when you want an awesome game, you need to take your time and put effort into the game for the greater chance of success. This is what investors fail to realize and when they invest, they expect quick returns and will push for a game release as soon as possible. But doing this however will create the greater risk of a poor quality game and thus poor sales and investors not seeing a return in their investments. While on the other hand, Valve, not a publicly traded company sees for the most part great successes with their products because they take all the time needed for their games to be done. Of course Steam helps fund them. But the point stands, taking time with your games ensure a greater chance of success. This is why I have no worries for the most part that DA:I will be a fine success upon its release.
But the problem still stands. Impatient investors. What I feel needs to happen is that the whole gaming Industry needs to take the initiative in educating investors. They need to sit down and tell them that when investing in this industry, you have to be in it for the long haul otherwise you'll most likely not see a large return for your investment. You can't just jump in and jump out. I feel that if this is done, will get smarter and wiser investors who may become more understanding for the long development cycles, and we can see a turn around in some publishers and we can see a more relaxed development cycle and maybe even not as much nickle and dimming of customers....
And that is the musing of a sleepy person up at 1 in the morning.
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