At a Glance: Gaming Worst Practices

Hi friends and followers,

It’s me again, publishing a personal blog with a goal to report on the state of the games industry and to facilitate growth to thought leaders who support inclusivity; by providing my internal thoughts, this exercise has also become a personal series to portray what it means to be a BIPOC LGBTQ+ leader in games. The gaming industry is an attractive, strange, and semi-organized beast, where consumers always find themselves predicting the aims and practices of publishers. 

(Also, in case you missed the last blog, here’s a link with new updates regarding this year’s gaming acquisitions)

This new article covers recent worst practices in the gaming industry, from controlling the reviews of critics to atrocious working hours for employees before the launch of a game, and even to limiting the accessibility of PC games. 

5 Worst Practices At a Glance

Video games are now a $120 billion industry and they play an amazingly influential role in pop culture, because gaming has become a common hobby and professional developers have grown into this remarkable profession. Still, there are some worst gaming practices seen in this industry and they need to be changed for the sake of the gaming industry. Let’s have a look at them.

---

1. Control over Critics

Being a game critic is not an easy task because critics have to have an intimate understanding of publishers and their behaviors, but also have to prepare themselves for overwhelmingly disparate gamer reactions (for example - when critics leave bad ratings on long awaited game reviews). Frankly speaking, almost all game studios consider any score less than 8 out of 10 disappointing in the gaming world. On the other hand, providing engaging and honest feedback is part of a critic’s job. This aspect of journalism is oftentimes exploited, and even AAA game publishers use this loophole as a tactic to sell more games; specific prohibitions help greatly in journalism, because you can create a non-disclosure agreement that forbids critics to say anything about an upcoming game title till a particular date and time later. Usually, advanced copies of novel games are provided to critics in order to develop a thorough opinion - but there are also many examples where critics are forced to sign embargoes by the publishers for the sake of getting advanced copies of games. 

This might also be expressed that reviewers must stay in the good books of publishers to get advanced copies for their reviews. For example in this article written by Forbes, Bethesda put an embargo on their embargo of Fallout 4, and the reviewers were forbidden to talk about the game until they were allowed to. In gaming journalism, blacklisting the reviewer means ignoring, essentially cold shouldering reviewers who break their embargo, thus asserting control over the critic. For example, in 2015, Kotaku had been blacklisted by Ubisoft for years.

On the other hand, players are too busy backlashing at reviewers for giving their beloved game an 8.8 instead of a 9 that they are unable to notice that the publishers are responsible for this situation in the first place. But at least it’s better than the situation where reviewers got fired by publishers because they pointed out that their games sucked. 

2. Console Wars

Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony announce new gaming consoles after every few years. Yet still, they more or less have functionally the same aside from some differences in hardware specs and controllers (connect with me and DM with me for specific details). The gaming industry creates super fans because you have to pick between different devices to gain access to a handful of exclusive labels, and, we have accepted this by feeding into being a, “Playstation-person”, or “Microsoft-person" (personally, I am a big fan of Sony exclusives).

Actually, a majority of games can be played on multi-platform... but there are just an adequate number of high-profile exclusives for every console that every generation perpetuates the idea of a console war. In reality, we should be trying to expose exclusive titles to every console so that franchises can nurture a growing community and gain more fans. Removing the console-exclusive barriers can also, technically speaking, make game development much easier without the concerns of testing hardware specs, or designing experiences for unique controllers. 

3. Crunch Culture

Crunch in some game companies is part of the culture, and is the assumption that in a short time period towards the project completion, everyone works extra hard to expedite a number of milestones... But the reality is different from it. Crunch periods can drag out for months and slowly the team develops many toxic layers of unhealthy patterns of work. 

Many employees report working between 50 - 59 hours (37%), 60 - 69 hours (29%), or 70+ hours (14%). 

The trigger of crunch: executives who have the authority to make decisions about new features during the project’s development - unfortunately to the bereft of crunch culture - this means extending work hours so that employees can meet this new criteria. Unless some sort of guaranteed reward has been sealed, it is purely enslaving your staff into work without incentives. 

4. Geo-blocking PC games

Recently, renowned gaming companies like Valve, Capcom, ZeniMax (Bethesda), Koch Media, and Focus Home were fined $9.5 million (USD) by the EU for geo-blocking the availability of several games on Steam. What ‘geo-blocking’ did was restrict the availability of newly launched games, concerning the geographical location of the consumers; essentially becoming an infringement of EU consumer policies because it constrained the users to buy the games at a higher price. This is something like a virtual tariff, therefore geo-blocking gave these companies a way to sell games for more money at a comparatively higher price due to their specific geographical location.

5. Creating Fictional "Shock Tactics"

In a market place as saturated as the games industry, there are hundreds of thousands of games that simulate similar game mechanics. To cut through the noise and get noticed by journalists, developers have to consider new game developments that stir controversy - perhaps by producing edgy narratives that are dark and provocative - games rated M for 17 years and older can often contain interactive scenes with burst sequences of torture, murder, death, and even domestic abuse. Since creating video games should be considered an interactive work of art, graphic scenes of the aforementioned become a talking point for reviewers, but is actually a symptom of trying to stand out in a highly competitive marketplace. 

The game “Hatred” tossed a thousand think pieces about ferocity in gaming. Due to the controversy of being a serial killer, views of the trailer reached the top, journalists hurried to perform meetings with the developers, key reviewers felt bound to play and cover it when it came out, and within a few hours, the game reached the top of Steam’s sales charts. 

But it’s just the extreme example of a game with a literal focus on hatred, perhaps even a genius subterfuge commentary, developers use "shock tactics" as described in the link above by creative director Jarosław Zieliński.

Conclusion:

The video game industry is full of enigmas and rifts which might not be visible to an outsider or a person not familiar with games. But, if you are someone who is crazy about the launching of new games, playing them, and sharing your views with other people then you might also be aware of the worst practices from this blog.

Over the past years, we have seen gaming practices by publishers, journalists, and studios which have made consumers furious for spending sums of money on games. Whether it is about creative controversy about a game just before its launch or the practices constraining consumers and the employees, the gaming industry must tackle these practices before we can move forward. 

---

Thanks for checking in to read my blog at a glance of the games industry. Stay tuned for another written piece from the perspective of an experienced video game producer, and don't forget to connect with me - I'm always open to collaborating on accessible content and I’d love to hear from you!

Take care until next time.