This is probably true of many many other industries. I work in automotive and while a lot of us care about delivering a quality product, the majority are not “car people” and have never changed a part on their car.
Yeah, it is kind of the default isn’t it. It kinda make sense for the programmers and artists, but it is still kinda weird that the actual designers don’t really understand why people play video games. You wouldn’t expect a movie director to not like movies, or a car designer to not like cars. I guess it must be happening everywhere at least to some degree.
Nowadays I would compare some game studios to what some boys bands were to music. You start with some guys with money who are neither musicians, nor sound engineers, nor anything really. They pick singers and musicians based on look and market research, they hire a large team of specialized workers, and then they spend millions on marketing to flood the space with their new album. The indie developers in this scenario would be Pink Floyd.
It wasn’t always like this, at least for video games. I feel like in the 80s up to the early 00s it was mostly dominated by passionate workers, but there just isn’t enough passionate workers for the demand. As the industry grew, big players started building those “soulless” projects to make good return on investment. Not to denigrate the individual contributions of the workers, but sadly the people who own those business don’t really care if they’re making games or cars or selling cigarettes. They care about r.o.i.
This is probably true of many many other industries. I work in automotive and while a lot of us care about delivering a quality product, the majority are not “car people” and have never changed a part on their car.
Yeah, it is kind of the default isn’t it. It kinda make sense for the programmers and artists, but it is still kinda weird that the actual designers don’t really understand why people play video games. You wouldn’t expect a movie director to not like movies, or a car designer to not like cars. I guess it must be happening everywhere at least to some degree.
Nowadays I would compare some game studios to what some boys bands were to music. You start with some guys with money who are neither musicians, nor sound engineers, nor anything really. They pick singers and musicians based on look and market research, they hire a large team of specialized workers, and then they spend millions on marketing to flood the space with their new album. The indie developers in this scenario would be Pink Floyd.
It wasn’t always like this, at least for video games. I feel like in the 80s up to the early 00s it was mostly dominated by passionate workers, but there just isn’t enough passionate workers for the demand. As the industry grew, big players started building those “soulless” projects to make good return on investment. Not to denigrate the individual contributions of the workers, but sadly the people who own those business don’t really care if they’re making games or cars or selling cigarettes. They care about r.o.i.