I am not interested in fan discussions about box office receipts, sales figures, or concurrent playerbases as measures of a works quality. Kill the armchair shareholder in your head.
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It's like people have a personal stake in the success or failure in a work. As if they bet money on X game having a playercount below a certain threshold.
it's been a trip watching this kinda thing get worse over the last 20 years or so. i remember in the '00s finding it odd when folks started commonly using "IP" instead of just "series" for games they liked, and now obnoxious marketing speak is just completely normalized 🫠
What's the point, it's all fucking commerce at the end of the day as much we pretend it's not. There is no art, only commodities. Nothing is sacred, everything is shit, and everything you love will turn to shit. Give up.
I don't own a studio nor am I a producer. None of my business how much stuff makes. Just make the shit, I'll consume it, and we'll repeat the dance until I've passed from this earth.
The only time I’m interested in those discussions is when a truly independent production achieves massive metrics in those areas. Not for any ROI purpose, but just because I like seeing indies succeed in ways the creators never could’ve imagined in their wildest dreams.
I absolutely love love discussing Box Office for a film parallel to the film's quality because they're two completely different things to talk about. Challengers had a meh box office run but the movie is still a banger no matter what
It kinda hit me when xbox decided to start bringing games like sea of theives and things to Ps that I just really don't care if that suddenly jeopardizes sales of xbox.
If halo comes to switch 2 and ps5, thank God.
More people get to play my favorite shooter series.
big fan of the Summer Eternal manifesto (one of the successor studios from ex-ZA/UM Disco Elysium developers) in this regard, couldn't have said it better https://summereternal.com/#manifesto
i fully admit i have a soft spot for nerding out about that stuff just for its own sake, but as a lifelong wrestling fan (where this kind of discourse is at its most omnipresent) i completely agree
reading database animals really reframed that stuff in my head - i think a ton of the financialization of fandom boils down to people trying to further define it as something with pure data-driven inputs and outputs
it's incredibly depressing that artless pricks are the people who decide what is made and the audience has seemingly decided to start roleplaying as artless pricks as well in order to understand why their art is made
Some of the best things I have ever seen were admittedly either flops or really niche, yet I loved them dearly
Sometimes things like that make me love finding out about an underrated gem I never heard about before that may not've reached as much of an audience as others and realising how good it is
I'm sorry, I'm a pro wrestling fan, I am fully incapable of turning off my "what rating did that segment do" in my head, and I don't think I ever will be able to, even when the day comes when Wrestling is only on streaming :(
Yeah! All we really want to know is the quality of the game itself. How’s the story? The gameplay? Graphics? Stuff that actually matters for the enjoyment of a game.
Did the people who made a thing I like reach whatever arbitrary threshold they needed to reach where they can make a living and potentially make another thing that I might also like? That's good enough for me.
I got sad when Dredd didn't make its money back because I wanted more Judge Dredd movies. If it had succeeded I wouldn't have been obsessed with it being a #1 hit or whatever.
The only value that concurrent players has to my gamer ass is that it tells me how likely and fast I am to get into a match.
And depending on the genre, the concurrent player base could be "some 100 or so brazilians and some mexicans" and THAT WOULD BE MORE THAN ENOUGH.
shoutouts to fightcade lobbies u guys rock when ur not throwing slurs over questionable balance decisions made in fighting games from over 20 years ago...
the depressing part is people who are like "you must show your support to silent hill 2 fortnite cameo or they will take silent hill 3 to the quarry and shoot it in the head"
Makes sense. These are stats that reflect initial popularity or hype and temporary fads, not goodness of the product. Confounding variables include marketing effectiveness. If you budget $0 for marketing and achieve maximum quality instead: sales can be zero as a result.
As someone who loves indie games and films.. all of this. A product's financial success doesn't mean it's good. The product being good is what makes it good.
I hate that a lot of discussion about art is about numbers and metrics instead of the art itself, especially when people don't understand or know the context of these metrics.
Have to learn to stop seeing things through a capitalist lens and start viewing things as a human
As far as games go, there definitely should be a balance in expectation. It’s unfortunate many of the big companies can’t stomach games “just selling enough” or maybe it’s some kind of tax ploy on their part.
agree but i do think that playerbase can be a measure of quality when changes are made (such as a live service game receiving a awful balance update) and the playerbase drops significantly
Well the thing is, we live in a capitalist world and a game or movie that doesn't make money will get shut down or probably not get many releases or a squeal which would limit my ability to enjoy it
FUCKING. THANK YOU.
I always cringe right out of my skin when I see some dumb fuck going 'oh well your game is bad because it only has x people playing it'.
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Every other scenario is crap
If halo comes to switch 2 and ps5, thank God.
More people get to play my favorite shooter series.
https://summereternal.com/#manifesto
Sometimes things like that make me love finding out about an underrated gem I never heard about before that may not've reached as much of an audience as others and realising how good it is
And depending on the genre, the concurrent player base could be "some 100 or so brazilians and some mexicans" and THAT WOULD BE MORE THAN ENOUGH.
Athena is super cheap thou
Have to learn to stop seeing things through a capitalist lens and start viewing things as a human
we need to start looking for the actual shareholders too
I don’t care, and I don’t want to hear people shut down because they got more joy from a game than the CEO who published it.
*glosses over the most cunt-serving game ever*
Wrestling especially.
I always cringe right out of my skin when I see some dumb fuck going 'oh well your game is bad because it only has x people playing it'.
Hold their hand. Make a new friend.