Michael Foster-Sanders
senior producer
Triple-A game companies need to hear this. Stop milking gamers yearly for your mediocre franchise titles. Specifically speaking to Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Activision.
I fully understand running a business requires profit to be made so the company can stay afloat, but when you nickel and dime the consumer for minor tweaks that could be software updates, you’re souring the fanbase for said gaming franchise.
This is not a new practice in the gaming industry.
In the 90s, Japanese juggernaut gaming publisher Capcom found a hit in the arcade with a little game called “Street Fighter 2.” Its predecessor was abysmal, so this sequel was an apology for that. It had a secret sauce that made it magical, and most importantly, profitable.
Arcade owners made tons of money off the cabinet, and that success brought with it repetitive game design. Capcom believed in the motto “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” and released meager updates to the title which added new characters to the game, spoon-feeding players to keep them hooked.
Nowadays, Capcom has continued using the same business strategy to ensure its profits from each title as much as it can. It obviously works for the company because no matter how much controversy follows its games, people will continue buying them. Unfortunately, it isn’t the only company in the market that uses such a greedy practice. Some could argue that it’s an industry standard.
Sports games are criminal when it comes to this type of nickel and diming.
Electronic Arts are the king of sports games, and their reign began when the John Madden series was ported to the Sega Genesis. Year after year, the company charged full price for its football simulator, basically just updating the roster, something gamers could have done manually with a trade option and battery backup.
Graphics were not updated until a new generation of systems came out, and usually, the first game would be trash on the new platform.
It’s up to us consumers to fight back and stop buying these products and giving in to the hype of a new feature. Activision’s “Call of Duty” series should at least have a two-year gap between its titles because it doesn’t make any sense to take a great game like the Modern Warfare remake from 2019 and kill the player base by releasing the trash Black Ops, which regressed rather than improved.
