I worked for Ubisoft for 6 years and theres a combination of:
* the business reality being harder than you think
* certain peoples ego. (notably Serge Hascoet, and his pressure to push games to be the same; towers to unlock the map etc)
* Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)
The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.
I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced
> Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)
This may have been the official line but I don't buy that the reason that Uplay was created was to "give people cheaper games" or that it had to do anything with "good intentions". No player ever asked for yet another launcher.
> The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.
The majority of individual developers, sure. They don't call the shots when it comes to deciding the anti-features put into the game though. And some individual developers end up implementing those anti-features.
> the business reality being harder than you think
> I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced
The ever-increasing scope (especially graphics wise) is something that game development studios and/or their publishers decide on though. They could instead choose to have multiple more reasonably scoped but less risk adverse games though. For all its checkbox design in the main titles Ubisoft does do some of that though.
It's also hard to empathize iwth the business reality being harde when the leadership of these giant game companies rake in ungodly amounts of money. That's really the main problem with the AAA industry: the ones in charge generally only seem to care about increasing their own net worth rather than have any pride in the games they create.
I worked for Ubisoft for 6 years and theres a combination of:
* the business reality being harder than you think
* certain peoples ego. (notably Serge Hascoet, and his pressure to push games to be the same; towers to unlock the map etc)
* Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)
The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.
I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced