Game Companies That Can and Should Do Better

Normally I don't like focusing on negative things, but these developers and publishers frequently disappoint me, even though I know they have the potential to be so much better. So in the interest of calling attention to the shitty business practices of these companies, I’m going to highlight all of their faults, and then pretend I actually know anything about business and tell them how to fix them, in the hopes that one day they can pull their heads out of their asses.

List items

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  1. Capcom

  Capcom has some fantastic studios and developers who really know how to make solid games. That’s why it's so unfortunate that the businessmen who run the company have no idea what they’re doing. Between on disc DLC, some cancelled games, some poor quotes, and any countless other number of kerfuffles that have been popping up in the news recently Capcom’s been breeding an incredible amount of ill will from it's fans. In addition to that they’re sitting on lots of really valuable franchises, but they seem content to extort the same two or three, especially Street Fighter, which runs the risk of saturating the market just like they did a couple of generations ago. Yet another problem they’ve had is trying to westernize a lot of their franchises, and while that makes business sense and we should commend them for even trying, it feels like they’re taking all the wrong cues from our practices and completely ignoring the areas we want them to improve.

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  2. Square Enix

  Square Enix has no idea what it’s fans want. Sure it still sells amazingly, but lately the fan response to their games has been incredibly negative, the JRPG genre is stagnating and lots of people are placing the blame at Square’s feet, and they simply can’t seem to figure out what to do with all of their awesome properties. It seems like their spreading their talent far too thin, with the same names popping up from game to game, so it sounds like maybe they need to start trusting the younger generation with more responsibility. In addition to that they need to lower their standards of graphical excellence, because even though these games look beautiful, it’s not worth the insane amount of extra time and resources they have to spend in order to generate the art for their games. They should split the Final Fantasy franchise into a few different paths as well to try and please everybody, with a classic Final Fantasy sub series, and one that follows the same path as the current main series. In addition they need to pump out a real new Kingdom Hearts game, because that franchise was huge and they’re going to miss their chance to capitalize on it soon, if they haven’t already (release an HD collection to rekindle interest in the property). Then they could trade off one entry in each of their biggest franchises, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest, each year in order to keep a relevant Square game on the shelf at all times, without saturating any one brand. And make a new Chrono game, I don’t care how much business sense it makes.

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  3. BioWare

  With the fan reviled Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, the untamed failure of The Old Republic, and the departure of the famous Bioware Doctors, it’s getting pretty easy to feel depressed about the state of the once great RPG developer. Still, they’ve already announced they will continue the Mass Effect franchise, they’ve announced Dragon Age 3 and doubled it's development time over 2, so there is some hope left in the studio. I think both franchises are wonderful properties, and if they would just keep more of the spirit of the games alive between each entry than I don’t think the fans would react so negatively. In addition I feel they need to try and keep the principles of these games separate, Dragon Age did not need to turn into Mass Effect, there are pros and cons to the differences between these franchises and there's merit in keeping these differences alive for the sake of diversity. If they could launch one more successful series, and then use common technology between the 3 franchises in order to save on cost, they could play leapfrog with their franchises and give them more than enough time to meet the demands of RPG development, without having to compromise their bottom line.

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  4. Konami

  So I don’t know a whole lot about Konami’s business practices, and as I understand it they make a lot of their money outside of the video game space, with Pachinko machines, and Yugioh Cards, but in terms of the actual games, it sounds like they’ve really been fucking up lately. The only series they have that makes any money any more is Metal Gear, and they seem content to pump as many of those out of Kojima as they can. Frankly Kojima needs to deflate his ego a bit and let some of the other members of his team handle those projects so that he can move on to something more interesting. I refuse to believe that all the merit of those games comes just from him, and I think his work would be put to better use fostering some other series to popularity. They seem to be on the right track with Castlevania outsourcing to a Spanish studio who knows what they’re doing and ties the rest of the franchise together in meaningful ways, and splintering the series into a console and handheld counterpart that allows both the old and new style of Castlevania to live is a great idea. They really need to figure out what they’re doing with Silent Hill though. Shattered Memories was the most interesting game they’ve ever made and so they should take that team and get them to pump out more games in that series, instead of trying to reinvent the series into something it’s not, they need to determine what Silent Hill’s strengths are and play to those. Also stuff like the Silent Hill HD collection is just unacceptable. I’m surprised I actually need to explain this, but don’t treat your fans like shit, you owe them everything and you want them to be happy with you.

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  5. Activision Blizzard, Inc.

  With Activision it's hard to tell where the ass ends and the head begins. Proctologists speculate that their head may have gone so far up their own ass, that it came out their mouth again for a second trip up the rectum. This draws parallels to the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros, or the snake eating it's own tail, which is an apt metaphor for Activision’s business practices. They create fads such as Extreme Sports, Rhythm Games, and Modern Military Shooters, and then they capitalize on these fads by completely saturating the market for them. This totally breaks the market for the entire sub genre they've created after only a few years, forcing the company and the industry to move on to something else for a while. This kind of attitude is poisonous to the industry. They force studios to produce games with completely unacceptable turnaround which causes the series to stagnate, and ruins the developers reputation in the process. This has left countless studios and video game franchises completely dead in the water. As the largest video game publisher in the world, and a company with a ton of really cool ip at their disposal Activision could potentially produce a lot of great games. In order for them to improve they’re going to have to give up on the annual franchise attitude, and let their developers take 2 years to make a damn game. Short term this may seem like bad business practice, but if they gave their series some breathing room then they could potentially live a lot longer and flourish under the increased freedom. They need to start separating some of their licensed games, such as Spiderman, from the continuity of their movies, which would allow them to stand on their own better without relying too much on their counterpart. If they took a nod from the Arkham franchise then maybe these games would be awesome, in addition to selling a lot of copies. Honestly though it’s hard to see this happening for Activision with how successful they’ve been. I could see a future where Activision has shot themselves in the foot by killing their franchises, then bets big on the next fad and ends up losing a ton of money in the process, but this is the only chance I see of Activision ever deciding to reevaluate their business practices.