Yeah, I know it bothers you a lot. I understand your objection to it, and I agree that it is sad to see a company (or a band, or an author) that once produced something great devolve into a drivel machine. I know it happens. Success is seductive, and power/money corrupts a lot of people.
I don't have a good way of knowing when it is happening to a company, really (when it has moved from "seeking reasonable profits" to "excessive greed"). I think I would have to research the company and sit in on its board meetings — or at least talk to a few reliable sources who knew things from the inside — before I could make a good judgment about that.
You can look at its products and see if there is a decline. This would be similar to watching a band to see if it would "sell out" or a brilliant author go sour — you would watch for their works to get weaker and weaker, less inspired. But how would you know that's from excessive greed and not some other factor like just running out of inspiration, not being all that talented to begin with, a shift in their vision, a simple difference of taste, etc.
You could watch to see if their sales went through the roof and the company expanded hugely in size. That might be an indication that they are knee-deep in ravenous greed. But you can't really make the inference just based on that, either, because those things can come from other sources, including strong vision.
One reliable indicator might be if the CEO or some high-level muckedy muck said something to give it away — "our main interest is accumulating huge sums of money" (not in those words exactly, of course, but words to that effect). Most CEOs are smart enough not to publically announce that sort of thing, though.
It seems we largely agree about the signs, and how it will be hard to detect if you don't have access to priviliged information.
I guess it comes down to personal experience and optimism/pessimism/realism.
I tend to believe, though, that the whole idea of pursuing wealth versus art is an incredibly blurry one.
In fact, I think a lot of companies who are actively pursuing wealth before art - are not even fully aware of it.
That's because I base my opinions on my experience with human nature - rather than specific and intricate observations of company policy. It's human nature to want to thrive and be happy - and it's human nature to be in denial in many cases - if that makes you happy, though it will often be a very temporary state of mind.
The thing is that with big companies - like the obvious Bioware or Blizzard - it's not a single entity with a shared collective vision. It's just a bunch of people working together under set conditions. These conditions change dynamically - and the typical scenario is that managment or what I call top-people will have an agenda, for good or ill, and the individual worker might not even be aware of it.
They might not even want to be aware of it - and they might not want to act against it - even if they ARE against it.
That's the kind of thing I witness on a daily basis where I work - and at all the places I've worked. People say one thing openly - and something completely different in private or with trusted colleagues.
So, when something is to be presented or something deals with our outward image - it's presented as something COMPLETELY foreign to me. It's like a completely different reality that needs to be presented to our customers or the press.
That's how it's been everywhere I've been - and this tells me it's likely to be very common.
So, because some big company manages to present themselves in one way - or have developers openly praise internal policies - it's not necessarily an accurate reflection of reality.
Which is why I look at the only thing I really can look at, which are the games themselves. I try to look at games and how they've changed from the past - and I correlate it with my understanding of human nature - and I try to stick to what I consider a plausible scenario.
Unfortunately, this means I get to a very pessimistic place - compared to other people. It might be that I'm delusional - or that I'm so jaded I can't give companies a chance to be different. It seems a lot of people are a lot more optimistic than myself about the industry and what drives it.
It's not for me to actually know whether I'm being too dark or unfair - but I strive very hard to see things for what they are. In that way, there are very few companies left out there who're truly driven by the art.
- it is not currently possible for independent AAA developers to take wild chances. They'll need to iterate on formulas that are proven to work (and, yes, sell). With each game they might add a few new things that develops or expands the genre. If they are good, these new features will be something people talk about and makes their game stand out.
