Games

I think the big "issue" is that there's a notable lag between loss of goodwill and loss of income/profit/value, and there's an even bigger lag between trying to fix goodwill and returns on that. It makes it too hard for any profit-first company to get right.

External MBAs taking over running businesses will either result in this or making a billion dollar company through the heavy exploitation of their workers and the consumers. I think the vast majority are the former though.

I think when all these famous studios were interesting, they still by inertia functioned the way people with actual skills founded them. I'm thinking of BioWare, Black Isle, Obsidian, but reading the history of any famous video game studio gives that impression. It was a rather personal business in 90s and early 00s, it seems.

Then the "professionals" came and started "fixing" everything, and something about today's computing makes me personally deeply disgusted of anything advertised there.

I don't want a shooter not better than a hundred Q3 clones, but taking 50GB disk space. I don't even want it with "photorealistic" (no they aren't) graphics. I don't want CK3 because it's slow and has too much bullshit happening, the secret of success is in quality of content more than amount, and more is not always better if a player gets bored with small events. I admit, I haven't tried Hogwarts Legacy, put from what people say its open world is as useful as Daggerfall's map the size of England, because most things on that map are all the same, though as a dungeon crawler Daggerfall is still better than typical modern game. And Star Wars - its Expanded Universe mostly came into existence in the 90s, it's designed the way very convenient for all kinds of video games, or any entertainment and any secondary art at all, and George Lucas approached that theoretically before making the first movie (the "obscenely huge profits" part he may or may not have considered, but it came as a welcome bonus, I suppose), and still every modern time Star Wars game is just not interesting to me ; my favorite one is KotORII, so there is, of course, a gap between me and the majority, but it's still baffling how didn't they even try to make an X-Wing remake.

One can go on. People want to play interesting games. Very few people play games because of "more, better, wider" in ad. The whole idea of a game is to be interesting. It's entertainment. It's not "I've got a new iPhone and you don't" dick size contest. Some game being very technically cool, but absolutely bullshit in gameplay, writing, UI design, character design, location design etc, - is not entertaining. Some other game being technically a visual novel (not necessarily), but with all those things done well, - it is entertaining.

So, making a good game doesn't even require a lot of very competent and very stressed CS heroes working since dawn till dusk to the extent of their ability.

fyi, in case someone isn't clear on the difference:

stakeholder ≠ shareholder

stakeholders are basically all people involved, including staff, and even stuff like landlords, janitors, citizens (sometimes things like parents), etc.

it's anyone with a stake in an organizations operations!

example: a city decides to create a new bus route. in this case, stakeholders include the local residents, the companies involved in creating the route, the companies supplying the buses, the mechanics needed to keep the fleet running, etc., etc.

there's a usually a LOT of stakeholders, and typically you don't always include everyone in every little decision because it quickly becomes unmanageable. so only the most relevant ones are included in most decisions, and who exactly that is depends on the project.

shareholders on the other hand are what everyone is probably thinking of, and that's the people ("people" being used generously here) only interested in next quarters profits. you know! the parasites!

of course the message is still bullshit and nothing but coded corpo-speech for "shareholders", but i thought some folks might be interested in knowing the difference anyhow.

even if, in this case, it's only important to highlight the extra special bullshit they put into the statement...

The worst thing is none of the executives are getting fired (in a proper more manner, no golden parachutes and clawbacks on any stock based compensation).

lol, welcome to the west

And they probably had to sweat blood and tears to get there, because the videogame industry is a harsh mistress.

All the people making the shitty decisions will be fine. Everyday people will be the ones to lose their jobs, as is always the way in these things. :-/

I went one step better and didn't even play them.

Just one of its studios, not the whole company.

Ubisoft Leamington is gone. Ubisoft as a whole is still around (for now)