The rising cost of gaming is turning a beloved hobby into a luxury. With $80 games, inflated console prices, and new tariffs, the future of gaming may be out of reach for many.
They are privately owned, and are thus free from the ‘next quarter profit’ incentive structure.
… Which has enabled them to experiment, and actually drive forward gaming in general.
They basically invented achievements in games.
They also basicslly invented MTX.
They also basically have the best engine in gaming.
They also realized that turning steam, which was once just their game launcher/updater… into a gigantic digital marketplace for all games… was a very good idea.
They also basically invented handheld pc gaming consoles.
They also invented proton and are now rapidly approaching the ability to make the average person go… wait, why do I even use windows at all on my personal home PC?
… And they also pretty much make the best VR headset for AAA VR games, even if it turns out that VR is basically just too expensive generally.
The point here is: look at the incentive structure both within and surrounding an entity, and you csn determine how that entity is likely to act.
… Ironically… this is literally called ‘game theory’ and has many applications to economics, polisci, sociology, etc.
Yes, and even with Valve doing some great things for gaming, it’s important to note that we all will benefit from Valve having meaningful competition from Epic and GOG. If gamers spread their money around, service providers will do more to earn it.
Epic Games is American, and also privately owned, like Valve.
GOG is a subsidiary of CD Projekt, which became a publically traded company in 2009… but it is based in Poland, the EU, which has much more regulations in place that help to temper the pure insanity lust for maximum profits now! that American public companies have.
… Ironically… this is literally called ‘game theory’ and has many applications to economics, polisci, sociology, etc.
Game Theory presumes that you are dealing in near peer type dynamics where competition is possible while the people who own corpos and rule us don’t see us as equal and we really ain’t anyway economicly or otherwsie.
Obviously daddy Gabe giving capitalism sort of a good name here no doubt. But that’s an exception in a super lucrative segment.
Koch industries is privately owed so is Bloomberg and they behave like any other parasite.
Game Theory presumes that you are dealing in near peer type dynamics where competition is possible while the people who own corpos and rule us don’t see us as equal and we really ain’t anyway economicly or otherwsie.
No, it does not.
What you are describing is a constrained, specific usage or application of game theory, but the general theory is much more flexible and allows construction of and evaluation of much more varied and complex scenarios.
Game theory actually excels at analyzing situations where different actors have totally different preference sets, representing the power disparity you mention.
…
There are even whole subsets of game theory designed around accounting for information disparity between actors, where one actor knows their own preference set as well as that of the other actor… but the other actor only knows their own… and many other more complex scenarios…
… and there are subsets of games that sequentially repeat and form branching decision trees, and other models that use even more complex math for more complex scenarios.
Also somewhat ironically, a whole lot of early computers were designed specifically to evaluate massive datasets being pumped into iterative game theory models… computers and games go hand in hand, in many ways.
…
The thing that presumes you are dealing with near peer dynamics is the MicroEcon 101 level ‘perfect competition’ paradigm, which you will hopefully understand is certainly not 100% applicable to all situations before you finish your first year of a 4 year, proper Econ degree.
… I am not making a blanket statement that ‘all privately held companies are better in all respects than publically held companies.’
I am pointing out that in the context of video game companies, being beholden to outside investors is … seemingly in essentially all cases at this point… a recipe for all of your game development to lean toward the safe/formulaic/stale core game concepts, with increasing levels of production value, and also a massive disparity of power and wealth within the internal hierarchy, which leads to incompetent management.
High need for maximum investor profit = low appetite for truly innovative risks, which can’t guarantee they’ll even work at all.
Its basically a pretty clear rule of thumb at this point that when some privately held tech company goes public… 95% of the time that means they are either in dire financial straits and can’t find anymore VC funding, and/or they are about to enshittify and massively hypermonetize now that they think they have a functional lock on some market demographic or segment.
…
Perhaps a useful analogy would be the difference between a government with most of its debt held by domestic investors vs foreign investors.
If your own debt is mostly contained within your own country, you have more freedom to do both more radical monetary and fiscal policy.
If your own debt is mostly held by foreigners… well, your whole economy can collapse if you do something they don’t like, because they can just firesale your bonds.
This same dynamic plays out at the megacorp scale.
Comments like these is why I keep coming back!
Strong analysis. Really a microcosm of the fuckening we are being served.
Note how Valve is not a publically owned company.
They are privately owned, and are thus free from the ‘next quarter profit’ incentive structure.
… Which has enabled them to experiment, and actually drive forward gaming in general.
They basically invented achievements in games.
They also basicslly invented MTX.
They also basically have the best engine in gaming.
They also realized that turning steam, which was once just their game launcher/updater… into a gigantic digital marketplace for all games… was a very good idea.
They also basically invented handheld pc gaming consoles.
They also invented proton and are now rapidly approaching the ability to make the average person go… wait, why do I even use windows at all on my personal home PC?
… And they also pretty much make the best VR headset for AAA VR games, even if it turns out that VR is basically just too expensive generally.
The point here is: look at the incentive structure both within and surrounding an entity, and you csn determine how that entity is likely to act.
… Ironically… this is literally called ‘game theory’ and has many applications to economics, polisci, sociology, etc.
Yes, and even with Valve doing some great things for gaming, it’s important to note that we all will benefit from Valve having meaningful competition from Epic and GOG. If gamers spread their money around, service providers will do more to earn it.
Agreed!
Also worth pointing out:
Epic Games is American, and also privately owned, like Valve.
GOG is a subsidiary of CD Projekt, which became a publically traded company in 2009… but it is based in Poland, the EU, which has much more regulations in place that help to temper the pure insanity lust for maximum profits now! that American public companies have.
Game Theory presumes that you are dealing in near peer type dynamics where competition is possible while the people who own corpos and rule us don’t see us as equal and we really ain’t anyway economicly or otherwsie.
Obviously daddy Gabe giving capitalism sort of a good name here no doubt. But that’s an exception in a super lucrative segment.
Koch industries is privately owed so is Bloomberg and they behave like any other parasite.
No, it does not.
What you are describing is a constrained, specific usage or application of game theory, but the general theory is much more flexible and allows construction of and evaluation of much more varied and complex scenarios.
Game theory actually excels at analyzing situations where different actors have totally different preference sets, representing the power disparity you mention.
…
There are even whole subsets of game theory designed around accounting for information disparity between actors, where one actor knows their own preference set as well as that of the other actor… but the other actor only knows their own… and many other more complex scenarios…
… and there are subsets of games that sequentially repeat and form branching decision trees, and other models that use even more complex math for more complex scenarios.
Also somewhat ironically, a whole lot of early computers were designed specifically to evaluate massive datasets being pumped into iterative game theory models… computers and games go hand in hand, in many ways.
…
The thing that presumes you are dealing with near peer dynamics is the MicroEcon 101 level ‘perfect competition’ paradigm, which you will hopefully understand is certainly not 100% applicable to all situations before you finish your first year of a 4 year, proper Econ degree.
… I am not making a blanket statement that ‘all privately held companies are better in all respects than publically held companies.’
I am pointing out that in the context of video game companies, being beholden to outside investors is … seemingly in essentially all cases at this point… a recipe for all of your game development to lean toward the safe/formulaic/stale core game concepts, with increasing levels of production value, and also a massive disparity of power and wealth within the internal hierarchy, which leads to incompetent management.
High need for maximum investor profit = low appetite for truly innovative risks, which can’t guarantee they’ll even work at all.
Its basically a pretty clear rule of thumb at this point that when some privately held tech company goes public… 95% of the time that means they are either in dire financial straits and can’t find anymore VC funding, and/or they are about to enshittify and massively hypermonetize now that they think they have a functional lock on some market demographic or segment.
…
Perhaps a useful analogy would be the difference between a government with most of its debt held by domestic investors vs foreign investors.
If your own debt is mostly contained within your own country, you have more freedom to do both more radical monetary and fiscal policy.
If your own debt is mostly held by foreigners… well, your whole economy can collapse if you do something they don’t like, because they can just firesale your bonds.
This same dynamic plays out at the megacorp scale.