The new agreement will help to create digital voice replicas
Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.
It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.
They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.
I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?
I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.
I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.
For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content
I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.
You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.
Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.
Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.
The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.
Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.
One way or another, these games provoked strong reactions.
I don't think Days Gone divided fans. For the most part, gamers loved it. It was the reviewers who were divided. Self-loathing racist pieces of shit that took exception to the main character being white. This was a fantastic game, one of the best open-world games I ever played, and I've played them all.
For the most part, when it comes to Last of Us 2, incels, homophobes, and closet national socialist types didn't like it. I repeat not all, but most.
Days Gone is a great game and it was attacked by the leftist socialist people that are actually closet fascists. As a great poet once said: "Socialism is the mother of fascism."
The Order got hit from anti-Sony Xbox fans.
Out of these 3, Last of Us 2 stands above as being a work of art. It's still generating a ton conversation to this day.
Amazing gameplay, but TLOU2 had one of the worst, most convoluted and uneccessary plots I ever seen in a sequel. Terrible story and the characters were forgettable. I didn't give an F about anyone in the story.
I don't think any of these divided fans, other than LoU2. The rest were either victims of biased reviews or just generally agreed that they weren't as good as they could've been or just overall disappointing.
This new Starfield mod turns the game into a city builder and colony sim, and it even adds in a variety of long sought after mechs too.
SAG-AFTRA helping the pushers of AI cutting out more of the workforce so more profits go to CEO's and shareholders.
"Understandably, voice actors are baffled by SAG-AFTRA's decision. Similar to when Microsoft announced its partnership with InWorld AI,
Steve Blum, who has provided his voice in everything including Diablo 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Last of Us Part 2, and more, said: "Excuse me? With all due respect…you state in the article 'approved by affected members of the union's voiceover performer community.' Nobody in our community approved this that I know of. Games are the bulk of my livelihood and have been for years. Who are you referring to?"
Deus Ex and Starfield actor Elias Toufexis responds similarly: "I would humbly consider myself one of the top voice actors working in games. No one asked me about this. No one reached out for my opinion. From what I'm seeing, no one asked any of my peers either."
Fellow Starfield actor Melissa Medína also responds to the news, calling it a "betrayal" and warning fellow actors: "Don't give your voice to this until you have clarity around where your voice will be used."
"A disappointing agreement SAG-AFTRA have made regarding AI use," Baldur's Gate 3 and Dying Light 2 actor Thomas Mitchells says. "Studios will look past creativity for convenience and this will potentially have a detrimental effect on artists."
Money, money, money
In the songs tone
Capitalism needs to be tweaked a little. The constant hunger for profits profits profits every quarter only open the door for cutting corners and trying to find new ways to make more money. Greed will always ruin products. Even fast food companies like McDonalds started off using quality ingredients and only because of their constant hunger for profits and pleasing shareholders did they begin to use cheaper and cheaper products and materials, just to make profit. You could have the perfect product that everyone loves, but if it doesnt make MORE money for your company year over year then they have to sacrifice parts of it in order to make a profit. If they weren’t always looking to make more money they wouldn’t be doing this, capitalism expects a company to have infinite growth in a finite space, that’s called a Cancer in the biological world.
Such BS. I want real acting (good or bad) in my movies and games. Not some robot with their fake emotions. Im in full support of real working voice actors. And if it means not buying anticipated games. Then so be it.
The industry is slowly leading to its own destruction.