realnc wrote on 2022-07-15, 12:38:
There are some things to be said about that article though.
Since you already added the original link to the source, I'll add the article here in case it ever disappears sometime in the future since I'm about to dissect it a little:
Unity CEO John Riccitiello has said that if you’re not thinking about monetisation during your creative process, you’re a “fucking idiot.”
The comments came in an interview with our friends at pocketgamer.biz just after it was confirmed that Unity and IronSource are to merge.
So the first thing he does, is to state his hypothesis (which he delivers like it's a fact, but it's really his hypothesis as he's about to try to state his case next) that "if you’re not thinking about monetisation during your creative process, you’re a “fucking idiot.”".
When Riccitiello was asked about some of the heat Unity and IronSource has received around the idea of including monetisation earlier in the development process, Riccitiello responded:
“Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.”
Here he tries to illustrate or cartonize or whatever one could call it, the people who don't work in this way or basically what he described as fucking idiots along with "clay and carving knives" with which he tries to imply that not working in his way is old-fashioned, dated and obsolete and that this is a mere small portion, all of this he implies they should move on, stop trying to fight commercial wars with clubs and start using nukes like normal people who are not fucking idiots do. He clearly is dismissive on people he perceives as pure and brilliant, as he tries to imply they should stop being fucking idiots and become more narcissistic or something.
Unity’s merger with IronSource was announced yesterday, and valued the latter company at $4.4bn.
“I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that,” he continued.
Next he makes a statement which doesn't only try to imply he is knowledgeable about thew gaming industry for a longer time than most others have, it is also a statement of entitlement for his own behalf. It's to add extra foundation for his next statement.
“It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.”
philosophy, artforms, deeply respectful, dedication and care (but they are fucking idiots).
“But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product.
This doesn't really need a whole lot of explanation. He clearly divides/polarizes this previously mentioned group (the so called fucking idiots) and "those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product" with which he wants to basically create 2 groups, of which he tries to imply the group of fucking idiots are the outcasts, the old fashioned ones, the naive idiots with ideals basically. And on the other hand the normal people, the rest of the world who massively embrace (a word which usually has a positive connotation which he attempts to mix in with what essentially are 'game' or surprise mechanics, veeeery sneaky! Very clever) how to figure out (as in think/use a brain, another clever use of words with the purpose of trying to invoke an emotion from the reader) what makes a successful product.
Of course a successful product is one in which monetization should be blended into the creative phase (because that's what makes money, or so he implies).
And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.”
Here he tries to add in yet another connotation to put even more emphasis on dividing up these 2 groups he is talking about. The same clever way of using certain words.
Some parts I don't fully understand, this bit: "this cycle of feedback comes back" not sure if he means that somehow the inclusion of monetization practices have a positive effect on the amount of feedback the game company receives, but this is either simply not the case. Because game companies that still make games more the old fashioned way actually do know how to use 2022 communication methods quite effectively, but are not really needed by companies that think about monetization as much because companies that try to make people as addicted as possible to their products, their 'games', create their software build around trying to get people as addicted as possible. This is implied by this next bit:
“I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate. There isn’t a developer on the planet that wouldn’t want that knowledge.”
The compulsion loop is a term used in what I could describe as gaming psychology, which is part of a set of 'rules' now generally understood to help make games that people keep playing and also keep going back to. There's a whole lot of info to be found about this subject, so I won't search and link some of those here (because I literally have a train to catch in a bit and want to spend my remaining time preparing for that instaed of hunting links via google about tricks companies use to make you addicted to their games).
So this last bit is actually somewhat true. But he's again being deceitful as he is implying that these sciences, this knowledge about the more mathematical approaches of what make games more fun, are somehow connected to monetization, which thjey are not.
The difference here is that monetization of games is often by misuse or abuse of these sets of rules, they are definitely not the same. A game could perfectly well be made according to those rules but exclude monetization in not only the creative phase, but in the other phases as well and be sold the old fashioned way.
What is regarded as a successful product is also open to debate. I assume the writer of this article was implying that the amount of success of a game can only be measured in how much money it makes. This is a questionable statement as this depends on what your end goals are.
About the feedback he mentioned earlier. It wouldn't surprise me if part of this feedback was from datamining, invading people's privacies because if they let their guard down they will be the best datamineable set of people for which to tweak their psychological abuse of addictive mechanics they want to blend into their 'games'. it's like trying to add heroine to coffee and persuade people it's just greater coffee than the coffee the old-fashioned people still make.
So all in all, a rather deceitful bunch of statements mentioned in that article. It doesn't even actually contain a lot of actual information, it's mostly a collection of statements processed into a relatively short story/article which is build around trying to swing the reader's opinions about this subject in a (from my perspective) untruthful way.
It's deceptive and not true.
