Are Money Driven Executives Sucking The Life Blood Out Of The Gaming Industry?

Back To The Drawing Board

December 20th, 2013, By Maya Mayfield

I pondered the title to my article for a while because I wanted to not only get your thoughts and opinions on this question, but to also reflect on a time when money wasn't always the major factor on the success of a game. 

The reason for this question was fundamentally inspired by the Class Action Lawsuit being filed against EA by one of its own investors, because battlefield 4 is riddled with bugs, and was not ready for consumer consumption by the time it was rushed to release. 

You can read some of the details below of the lawsuit filed by Robbins Gellar Rudman &Dowd LLP against Electronic Arts, Inc.

Following on from this, we also got information revealed by Gamespot yesterday showing that EA executives had in fact sold off thousands of shares resulting in millions, prior to Battlefield 4 being launched. Which as if things weren't already bad enough for EA, does little to diminish public opinion of its brand, and cast further doubt on if these EA executives knew something prior to the release of Battlefield 4.  

 

I remember an article I wrote a while back about indie company Supergiant Games makers of Transistor. It was what their creative director Greg Kasavin had said during that article that really struck a chord with me.

Greg Kasavin's comments really got me thinking about this as I reflected on a time when playing video games had a certain appeal, especially when it came to a titles back story. Of course if we are going way back, we could argue that the graphics then are nothing compared to what we see now, which lets face it does take the most time and attention in todays video game development process. 

There are some great modern titles out there like Naughty Dogs Uncharted series, Last Of Us, GTA 5, and the God of War franchise to name a few, but these are the exceptions to the rule. You see when a game developer gets the graphics, gameplay mechanics and story telling just right during creation process, it really is a remarkable experience not just for the development team but for gamers as well. 

Which leads me back to Greg Kasavin's statement above, where he mentioned the creative freedom he now has at Supergiants  is what makes it such a great place to work. 

If I may state the obvious here, we do live in a society where money does talk. When games like Battlefield 4 have to be quickly rushed to market with very little time to clear out the bugs, we get such an unfortunate outcome to what really is an awesome game by an awesome development team at DICE.  

Sadly when money gets involved in most things, it really does have a way of driving the heart and soul from a project, turning what should be a passionate representation of years of hard work, to just units, figures and digits. Don't get me wrong I do understand that making money is obviously very important and the gaming industry is worth billions, but the recent BF4 saga does make me wonder who out of DICE and EA had the upper hand when it came down rushing Battlefield 4 to market?    

Ironically the same question we ask from our title can also be related back to so many other creative industries like the film and music sector, over-run by sales driven executives whose only concerns are on profit gains than the heart, soul and fundamental message behind that  project.

This is why we continue to strongly support and advocate Sony's movement to promote indie games and we hope you all do too.

Are Money Driven Executives Sucking The Life Blood Out Of The Gaming Industry?

Please let us know your thoughts on this debatable subject by leaving a comment below.