Phil Spencer Blames Capitalism For Bad Games

Capitalism absolutely incentivizes greed, and that's in the most charitable case.

"I'm a game dev at IndieStudio. I want to make good games and be ethical."

"Hey there, my name is EA. I hope you don't intend to compete with me."

EA begins to capture more of the market because they have no scruples and maximum corporate ambition.

"Well, ***, I need to keep up with them if I'm to survive, or else I'll only have 0.1% of the market and won't be able to expand. And then EA will starve me out."

IndieStudio either dies out, or otherwise engages in EA-esque decision-making in order to stay afloat.

This same notion of "competition", which is supposed to yield "innovation" (and usually doesn't), actually just poisons the well for every player (developer) in the game (the market). The Nash equilibrium for these games is to do what it takes to make as much money as possible. The players (developers) that don't will go bankrupt or will get acquired by bigger fish.

This is how the free market has worked since forever.

You only find freedom once you die.

At least, freedom in this world.

We never know if the next one is any better

Kinda a tangent, but the innovation thing is such a problem even out side of game industry. The tech industry as a whole has fallen into this format where the big names do nothing take on 0 risk and simply let "start ups" take on 100% of that risk and buy whatever was successful.

This creates some absolutely disappointing behaviors within the company where that 1 thing that is actually critical to their core business NO ONE CAN DO ANY MORE! their entire damn pyramid is built on it but because the idiots never innovated on their own technology they open themselves up to a real problem when they can't find anyone to make their 40 year old IC designs anymore... not speak from experience or anything...

If you want to see socialism in action check out the USSR. You'll need a time machine.

To see what capitalism can do to a previous socialist system, see current Argentina.

To see what socialism does to a previous capitalist system, see current USA.

To truly understand the difference read some books on economics and history. Not youtubers.

If your only argument is "But that wasn't REAL blah blah blah" then I really just dont have any thing else to offer you.

HERESY.

Also, I made this hoping I could use it in this thread, but I can't wait.

Incorrect. Regulations exist because people are fundamentally broken.

What system they use ultimately doesn't matter. It could be Communism, it could be Capitalism, it could be mercantilist.

There will or should always be regulations of a sort. There are always people who take advantage of whatever systems are available to them. And they can only be made to stop doing that through threat of force.

In Communism it's usually the heads of state that go unchecked and run the country into the ground with their own greed.

In Capitalism, it's different corporations, which allows for a slower version of the same thing(generally where corpos buy politicians), that so far can be so slow as to allow for people to have told us for the last idk, 50? years that we're in Late Stage Capitalism and Capitalism is dying and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Conveniently leaving out that Capitalism has fostered a society that allows for free speech and allows for people that grow up within it to challenge and change it and even assault its integrity for their entire lives.

Big thing about Capitalism is that it appeals to human tendencies. Humans are greedy. Humans take advantage of other humans. A lot of humans like to see others fail when they themselves succeed. Is it an ideal fairy story where everyone gets a big slice of pie? No. Is any economic system ever going to be that? Also no. Resources are fundamentally finite. This includes innovators. No system will ever be perfect.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but no results are guaranteed, even if we were to completely dismantle and replace Capitalism with something else.

Humans are always the weak link in anything. Humans will *** up any and everything 100% of the time.

That's why the AI overlords will kill us all. We're a terrible species.

People are fundamentally broken, yeah--- but I mean that free-market capitalism is mathematically untenable. The world we live in, right now, was completely predictable because that's just how the rules of this dynamical system work. Capitalism tends towards monopoly. By the rules that define this system, there are winners and losers. That's just a statement of fact.

(As silly and childish it may seem, think about the game "Monopoly." How does that game always end? Three broke-*** players running around the board, praying to the Lord Baby Jesus that they don't accidentally land on Boardwalk, and one person who very clearly is winning the game and is simply waiting for everyone else to give up and die.)

I would never suggest that regulations are a bad thing. I only mention them here to illustrate that regulations exist as band-aids over surface-level manifestations of deeper problems. You don't need to be Marxist to recognize the underlying contradictions of capitalism.



I have to push back on this a little bit. There is no consensus in the fields of psychology, or anthropology, that greed is a fundamental human trait. In a more facetious sense... if humanity was fundamentally greedy, I don't think 99% of the population would continue to let themselves be *** in the *** by a handful of ultra-wealthy *** like we are now.

And even if it was, there's no reason we should fatalistically accept the way things are right now. The one consistent thread in human history is that of progress and mastery over our environment and ourselves.

I'm with you that no economic system is perfect, ESPECIALLY not in practice. I don't know what the best economic system would be-- I have guesses, but that's not really what I care about right now. I mainly want people to recognize what the actual reasons for their economic or material problems are. Because a small minority of powerful capital owners act in their better interest to distract us from questioning inefficiencies and inequities in the current system. We should be acting in our best interest too. And that means not licking boots, but collectively realizing that, hey, things CAN be better than they are now. Capitalism isn't a natural disaster, like an earthquake or hurricane. We can make our lives better, but to do that, we first have to recognize what the problem actually is.

This is just funny... the universally recognized right to own both property and the success of that property has created the largest increase in quality of life the entire human history has known. While every attempt to communally own the property and it's success has created famine and misery every place it's been attempted, not to mention the highest body count in human history. We could all the deaths from all wars in the past few centuries and Communism still has them beat.

And it's really that simple, you either own property or you do not. If you own property then you are entitled to the success of that property and can reinvest that success into other property. If you do not then you must rely on the state to manage property and apportion the success along with any reinvestment.

But none of that matters to you, you just want to get your hands on other peoples stuff.

Ultimately it always boils down to the right to own property. What we call "Capitalism" is just the right to own property. If I'm allowed to own a business, then that is property. If my business is successful then I own that success and can use that success to live whatever life I want. I can also take that success and use it to expand my existing business or start a new business.

If the State owns the property as it does in Communism / Socialism, then the State owns the success (or lack thereof) and gets to determine what lifestyles people can live and if to start new business's or not.

In the first situation I'm incentivized to do the best I can because I'll get to use that success to increase my quality of life. In the second situation any success I create goes to the State who then redistributes it as they see fit. "They" being the ruling aristocracy, and history has shown us that they'll just redistribute to themselves.

I really do not get why those of a certain ideological persuasion hate the middle class so much while worshiping the wealthy aristocrats. Bourgeoisie quite literally means "middle class" and refers to the business owners and craftsman of that period. Blacksmiths, jewelers, merchants, pretty much anyone who was neither a peasant/serf nor a land owning aristocrat. Marx and Engels really did not like the middle class and the "new money" growth it was experiencing during the industrial revolution.

Greed is evil. you don't get rid of it by taking away people's freedom. Capitalism is NOT the cause or creator of Greed. and it incentivizes greed less than every other system than anyone has every tried.

Everyone I've ever heard criticizing Capitalism is either a devout Marxist or too ignorant to understand they are preaching Marxism. Marxism is so evil it caused the most horrendous crimes against humanity in the last century, and really compete for the most evil in history ever.

No one else criticizes freedom. If you criticize Freedom are you gonna be the first to give it up and let others make all your choices for you? What you can eat, what you can wear, how many hours you have to work, what healthcare do you really need? cuz I don't want a big bureaucratic office making those choices for me.

There is no freedom without consequences.

There is no Power without responsibility.

The only way it works is if people actually choose to be Morally upright. Otherwise there will be corruption, things will get bad. Its always been a constant battle between good and evil that happens in small steps repeatedly every day for years and years.

yep, when enough people don't care about good, you get all the crap you are complaining about and more. You create Hell on Earth.

The solution is to choose good yourself, and work on it, then convince others to do so also.

Economic Freedom, Capitalism, rewards those who strive for goals. The converse, Marxism, punishes people for striving towards goals.

Can you really not tell the difference between good and evil?

Capitalism does not equal Corruption. Corruption will happen no matter the system. The solution is Making good laws and enforcing them, not destroying everyone's freedom.

PUNISH THE PERP not everyone else.

edit: oh yeah, my example of Minecraft and Notch already proved you wrong on the hyperbolic EA example where you pull fake numbers out of nowhere.

If only it was merely Capitalism to blame and not the nature of our world itself.

Nature encourages success, in whatever form it may take. And it is often quite cruel. Not every person or animal gets to mate. Not every person or animal gets to have lavish meals or enough to eat. Our natural world has a harsh mode for life, and it is only through mankind's wonderful invention of society and civilization that we have become insulated from that.

Our economic systems are the means by which we continue to insulate ourselves from that, en masse. Perceived inequality stems from the idea that the rich get to completely insulate themselves from that, always and forever, while poor people do not.

Under Capitalism, however, more people than ever before have gotten to have quite the bulwark from it. Yes, it has faults. Yes, it's still meeting new challenges and straining under the weight of humanity's unbridled prosperity and size. But this is its crucible. Whatever its fate, it will have been part of the path and the reason for us being able to find something better.


You don't need a consensus from corrupted academia where endorsement of research amounts to favor trading and grant money bribery in order to see that people are indeed greedy on average.

Altruism itself can even be done selfishly even if no reward is taken, because the reward is the feeling of having been "selfless" and the dopamine it provides. The endorsement and validation given to you by others for the "good" thing you did or the help you provided.

The reason 99% of people continue to let themselves be *** in the *** is because that can actually be a pleasurable experience. That and, as individuals, almost no one has that same magnitude of power to top, to stick with the metaphor. If they did, they would. Meet anyone who runs a company, and they will take advantage of every small thing they feel entitled too. Meet anyone who feels entitled to anything, and they will damn you for even attempting to deny it to them, no matter the reason.

The way it goes right now, is people believe attaining that amount of wealth is ontologically evil, and so to pursue it is ignoble. This results in this attempted power bottom situation, where we want to tell the rich and powerful how to live, while they push our faces deeper into the pillow.

We really should find a better way, and Daddy WEF really wants to tell us how, but unfortunately those guys are all shriveled up bone cages that only know how to make us in fight.

Capitalism absolutely incentivizes greed (X)

Greed is part of human nature so mankind collectively choose capitalism (O).

Communism had their chance to compete with capitalism and a few country still use such system. But they lost to capitalism in terms of living quality and technology advancement. That's why the system is how it is today.


This absolutely does NOT describe current industry situation. Hating capitalism is one thing. Using what you hate to "theorycraft" what will happen and be wrong is another....

Imo, "indie game dies out" will not happen in foreseeable future.

Only 72 games released on Steam in 2004. 2505 in 2016, 10341 in 2022, 14532 in 2023. This number is growing every year.

The reality is closer to, this market is entering the stage of hyper competitive with extreme market saturation. everybody is undercutting game price like mad, everyone gets smaller pieces of pie. So AAA companies has to use dlc and such to increase revenue as a very huge piece of pie are taken by indie games.

So the situation of indie games taken by EA is almost impossible to happen.

As to EA-esque decision making. Idk what you mean. If you meant EA's tendency to cut development time of big IP for maximum profit, like what they did to Dragon Age 2, then I can tell you this is not an effective tactic for indie dev without big IP nor long history.

If you meant DLC and such, to me dlc is just a way to counter inflation increasing game dev cost. Unless the customer can accept game price increase(which they won't) I do think every dev should utilize it in the future to remain sustainable. This is more of inflation's fault.


What do you mean? If you look at games from the past 5-7 years, I would say it is one of the best era for innovative games. Some of my favorite games all came from 2018-2024 era when the market enters hyper competitive state. Competition absolutely DOES increase the top tier product's quality. Maybe not average quality. Top tier product yes.

As a gamer I am perfectly happy with current state of games and I think they are leaps and bounds better than older games from 2000 era. Stop attacking games people.

How game industry works is drastically different from tech industry from business point of view. Even though they both are software their business model isn't the same.

A lot of tech companies are aquired by bigger company because the bigger company instantly gets all the user on that platform.

If I am rich enough to buy Twitter or TikTok etc then all the users on that platform will be mine. Which helps my companies grow as now I have more users.

Gaming industry doesn't work this way, at least not non-live service games. If today I see Vampire survivor is popular so I buy the company and IP, do I suddenly get all the users for vampire survivor games? No. Because anyone can make a vampires survivor clone and still compete in the same market.

Gamers are also more attached to creative people behind a game and not IP/company name. A rich company can buy Platinum Games and Nier IP. As soon as Yoko taro leaves the company and work for another or start his own company, all the Nier fan will leave with him too.

This why game companies often license an IP instead of buying the whole company for it. Or why Microsoft stock price drop when they aquired Blizzard. Buying a whole game company is generally not the most efficient way to use money.

tl;dr: the main resource of a tech company is product user base or technology. But the main resource of a game company is their creative employees and IP. That's the main difference.

So you don't know what the best economic system would be, then you ask people to "recognize" our system is flawed and take action to change it. On the same time not telling us how to fix it....

Okay......

Literally everybody knows our system is flawed. The problem is nobody knows how to make a perfect system.

In past 100 years mankind experimented all kinds of economic system. Go read the economic reform history in China, Cuba, USSR or wide variety of social democracy countries in South America or Europe.

Go read about how the economy system reform in past 50 years , such as ditching gold standard and Bretton woods system, after learning from the past mistakes.

Some economic reforms were successful, many were not.

People recognize our system is flawed all the time, and they attempt to change it all the time. There is no need to lecture people about how they should "recognize" the flaws of our system.

The problem is nobody knows what the perfect system looks like. We don't know how to magically fix ALL the problems in the world. We can only slowly experiment and move forward. That's why it is not fixed.




Literally the wisest post on this site ever.

I know many people hates essays but sometimes they are needed to discuss something beyond surface level knowledge.

Capitalism is unapologetic greed.

Let's say cell phone companies reached 100% market penetration, where all 8-billion humans owned a cell phone. They have to increase revenue or provide value to shareholders, or increase profit year over year. There is no end.

To compensate, they devise a plan and shame every human in to replacing their second kidney with a second cell phone.

It works. People give the surgery to their kids at birth. In 25 years, a study proves that the second kidney-phone produces cancer or lowers life expectancy. They settle out of court and admit no wrong doing.

Corporation continues un-checked.

Capitalism might not be the best but without it, I don't think we would be here talking about games online.

Most of us would probably be dead by childhood. The survivors would be working on a farm hoping that the weather won't *** up the next harvest.

Capitalism isn't a bad in itself, but what it has evolved into is. Stock market capitalism turned everything upto 11 because as said above "fiduciary responsibility" is legally enforced unlimited greed demands applied to the CEO (if a CEO does not add loot boxes to a game when it would be accepted to do so, he can be sued by the stock holders for example), it's almost like a cancer infecting everything it touches. People will build an amazing company that is loved or respected by people all around the world, then sell it out and go public for greed and over the next 10-20 years run the company into the ground to the point everyone hates it. At which point other bigger companies will buy and sell it like a $10 hoe. Then another company will be born (often by the people who sold their last company out) and the cycle will start fresh. Even every day people who invest into companies they love, will over time care more about +1$ than what is best for the company they used to care about.

Remember occupy wall street? this was the first time billionaires playing with other peoples lives, destroying companies and reveling in obscene wealth got scared of the masses (mainly college age kids) rising up against them. They got real scared of this, and knew action needed to be taken to put out this rising fire against them.

If you check the timeline, you'll see something interesting happen shortly after occupy wall street and all attention against the .01% falling away shortly after in the following years by the 99.99%, and an utter chaos of anger and tribal warfare happening among them. Especially in colleges and universities where this all started.

In the story from XI, the Zilart created a perfect civilization where all the people were telepathically linked and this did away with all wars, hatred and distractions of life. So the entire race of people all across the planet were as one. They created a perfect utopia, and this lead to them creating a common goal of reaching paradise. Which the elites of that world did not want.

After this attempt was stopped, to make sure this action was never repeated Vanadiel and its people were utterly corrupted from what it was. Because Utopia was bad for the elites of that world, and so it was rolled back. The telepathic link all the Zilart enjoyed was broken, all the people were infected with magicite dark emotions and from that action over time were mutated into different races we see today. In doing so they formed tribes, and went to war with each other constantly. Beast appeared and constantly harassed all the groups of peoples too.

No more fixation with reaching paradise, cause they are too busy fighting each other and defending against beasts.

Turning back the clock and destroying this utopia, bringing chaos is bad for the people. But good for those that rule over them, real life is the same. Do you think the .01% want us to come together and be happy as brothers and sisters together? Of course they don't, they want us to hate each other and are constantly pushing for and funding more division and anger in every way possible. Divide and conquer wins, so they can keep doing what they are doing with no complaints. When massive corporations back something, they are not doing it because they are good or want to make the world a better place. They are doing it cause it's good for them and they want more $$$$

If you check the timeline after occupy wall street, you will see all the publications and news outlets these billionaires controlled, started suddenly putting out lots of what we now call "woke" articles riling people up and intentionally trying to create self isolating factions in society. When we were younger we were encouraged to come together, to see past our differences. The common held belief today is the exactly opposite of this, we are told to embrace our differences, isolate into groups of similar types of people and hate on "outsiders" as the cause of all our problems. Women vs men, black vs white, straight vs gay etc. This is most rampant in colleges and universities where occupy wallstreet started.

Divide and conquer the 99.99%, a people united are a fearful thing to the people who rule over them.

The current woke and anti woke wars that fill social media and universities is a wonderful distraction, which is why it's so heavily funded, forced into all forms of media the .01% fund and why it's never ending. Any attempt to unify people is immediately attacked and undermined, it's bad for business.

Then don't own a 2nd phone then...you 100% have the freedom to do so.

I honestly don't know that many people who uses 2 phones at once. Nor I think it is an effective tactic to increase cell phone industry market size at all.



But there IS an end. In the past 15 years I can't count how many hardware manufacturer started cell phone manufacturing business when it was growing, ultimately shut down the department after the growth has stopped.

Even apple hasn't been growing for quite some time, their stock price remains the same since 2021 despite all the inflation.

The growth stopped when the market reached saturation and some companies have to exit the play field, then whoever survived can get the rest of the pie. There are no such thing as "infinite growth" as the market size is limited. The "shame people buying 2nd phone to keep the growth going" tactic doesn't work lol.

A lot of people keep theorycraft the worst case scenerio in this discussion before it even happen, lol. It doesn't work that way....

lmao,

the only thing socialism or communism has ever created is poverty, starvation and death.

thanks capitalism for providing abundance.

you guys are mad at investors.

Well in a world with freedom of course people will look for ways to make more money. But does this matter if good games continue to exist?

I recently played dmc5 and it is one of the best 3D action game I've ever played, and I didn't even like DMC 3 and 4 that much. This game offers dlc like blue orb(HP increase) or red orb(learn skill) for people to buy. But I never pay for any of them nor the lack of paying hinder my enjoyment in anyway. Not once I feel the character progression is grindy because I didn't pay. I just play the game normally and obtain these things normally as I play the game.

People keep saying lootbox is bad because it is greedy. This is discussing it on moral point of view. If a game experience is hindered greatly without paying for a large additional fee I would agree gaming industry is ruined. But I have absolutely zero issue enjoying current gen games without paying all that additional fee. So who cares about shareholders demand really?

Shareholders can demand whatever they want as long as game dev still make good games.

Like I said on other posts, some of my favorite games all came from 2018-2024. I tried to play many 2000-2012 games and I couldn't tolerate any of them, they just aren't as fun now. I just don't buy the idea of capitalism ruining games because I still find modern games fun.

All these arguments against capitalism assume everyone is a moron and therefore must be protected by some benevolent overlord....

..think about that...

Are there morons? Yes, almost exclusively.

But it takes a whole world of morons to think that any one group has all the answers and should impose that will on others.

Economics is way, way more simple then everyone wants to make it. And by "everyone" I mean those who'd rather game the system then get on the field and play (and possibly lose, and rot away in jealousy).

“Everything we know in economics we teach in Econ 1, and everything else is made up.”
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, Economics, 1976

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Is the universal example of why shareholder capitalism is deeply flawed and makes everything worse.

The argument that things are good, so it doesn't matter that they could be better is lame. But, unless customers willingly stop buying games from companies that lean too far toward profit over product, nothing's going to change. So, I guess just get used to it and take what's offered if you want to.

Balance.

Honestly a lot of "this system is bad" capitalism arguments on the internet pretty much all used theorically worst case scenerio to make an argument. The reality is often somewhere in between.

A good CEO will balance the need of employees, shareholders and customers. Leaning towards either side is bad business.

If CEO maximize shareholders profit but ignores employees and customer's need, pretty soon the best employees will leave, customers won't buy their products, the company makes less money, shareholders get nothing.

Any good CEO will know competent employees is what makes money and they will do their best to keep them. The idea of CEO can maximize shareholders profit endlessly with no limit certainly no longer apply in most industries these days.

In many countries shareholder capitalism also co-exist with state capitalism and stakeholders capitalism. They are not mutually exclusive. We often see business donate money and resources during natural disaster. This is one example of prioritizing society need over shareholders.

Sometimes We also see government give more resources to companies that benefits the entire nation, this is more like state capitalism that prioritizing national benefits over shareholder benefits.

You can find all kinds of scenerios and examples in this world that counters the argument of worst case scenerio being the only thing ever existed.


The argument was never "it is good now", the argument was "we don't know how to make things in absolute perfect condition so we can only try and experiment then tweak the system but that takes time, so we accept what it is for now".

Customers have been doing that for a long time....

Why does gacha needs to label SSR pull rate? Why do they make the main story beatable without needing to pay any money for pulls? Why does dlc in games are nice to have but not a must have? Why does entire pay4win system in mmo died?

Game companies could totally ignore all of above and profit more but customers said no. So current state is a balance between customer's need and companies need for profit.

Maybe you don't find modern games entertaining but I am perfectly fine with modern games and I still have enjoyment from playing them. That is good for me to support the need of game companies since my own need as a customer is fulfilled.

You give the greater group "people" too much credit, I played Nier I liked it a lot I have no idea who Yoko Taro is, I just know it was a SE game. I dont have time to research or look into every game dev who makes the games I buy so I rely on the "name brand" of the company or trailers to carry the weight. If John Doe leaves and then the company makes an sequel to GameOfTheYear20XX "people" will buy it, and probably find it "not as good" or just be happy to be in that world again.

In contrast indie game devs their name is much more visible, I know Toby Fox made undertale and I know scott cawthon made five nights at freddies... and I have not played either of those games.

For indie games the name brand is the dev, for big company it is the company's name. This has been true for much of history if you look at independent inventors, Tesla and Edison, then we transition to private labs like bell labs. Once you enter the cooperation you are faceless, your work gives their name credit and weight. Social media changed that a bit, but only for those who "care" enough to do the research into the staff.

Google Kickstarter page for Shenmue 3, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Mighty No. 9, Eiyuden Chronicle, pillar of eternity, torment tides of numenera and see how much money they made despite it those dev no longer work for their previous company.

Would also add sea of stars(composer) and Armed Fantasia and Penny blood to the list....

Outside of Shenmue 3 everything else are new IP too. But people still pay for them because they recognized the name of the old IP that they loved.

Of course not everyone will recognize names. But hardcore fans and game journalists will. As soon as journalists write an article about "(your favorite IP name) creator is launching a Kickstarter campaign!" People will pay for it. You will know it from the journalists too.

I don't think I give people too much credit if some people's game just sells better than another regardless of the company that they are in. Some game designers even have their names in the title, like Sid Meier. Because whenever a game has his name on it just sells more.