if you've never heard of gamergo then

consider yourself lucky they are widely

believed to be one of the worst
companies in the mmo landscape and their
recent behavior has all but confirmed
this
ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh
drivehayes and i don't normally do drama
but i am an mmorpg channel and this is a
gaming company that affects anyone who
enjoys
mmorpgs so settle in and grab a drink
because we have a lot to unpack
as usual a big thank you to my patreon
supporters and twitch subs who make
videos like this possible and support
the channel more on this at the end for
now
let's begin recently you may have heard
of the mmo games defiance defiance 2050
twin saga and eden eternal shutting down
and even more recently the mmo
rift having its staffing cut back
heavily well all these games are
owned by gamergo and the unfortunate
situation of games dying or being cut
back
is actually the inevitable reality of
what happens to
all gamergo games because of how they
work
here is why let's start with some
context back in december of 2020 i
received an email from a marketing
agency the kind to offer youtubers pay
promotion and sponsorships the email was
on behalf of the gaming conglomerate
game ago apparently they liked my mmo
videos and wanted me to promote their
games
this included things like fiesta online
archage and aura kingdom
i responded saying how it was great to
be contacted and how of all the games
arched was likely the one suited to my
audience i'm still a small channel and
company emails still excite
me then the agency laid out the rules of
this video it would need to be a certain
length at the start of my video uploaded
to this channel it would need to stick
to a script a set of several bullet
points the company had approved and
nothing of my own personal flair would
be added this i was not happy with
whenever a company forced reviewers or
advertisers to stick to a script it
shows a lack of faith in their own
product so with that limitation i
decided to decline the affiliation offer
and instead go a different way i
continued my worst mmo ever series
focusing on fiesta online a game ago
produced
game the video did very well by my
channel standards combining pedantic
nitpicking with genuine mechanical
critique this video likely killed any
potential for me to work with gamergo in
the future but now gamergo have killed
three games and crippled a fourth within
a month
and that fourth game rift i happen to
actually quite like so for those of you
unfamiliar with gamergo let's examine
who they are how they work and why you
should start to worry whenever they pick
up your favorite mmo
i'm looking at you wizard101 to begin to
understand gamergo's position within the
industry we need to look at three major
areas the general approach that other
companies have to creating a long-term
successful project
then the gamer go away and then the
business culture within the company
let's begin with general project
management this may seem simple to sum
but it's vital foundation knowledge
needed to understand the rest
any profit seeking project has two major
numbers to consider numbers more
important than all others the cost to
create and develop the thing
and then the revenue generated by the
thing let's call the cost to create and
develop
a this includes all the money a company
put into making something and making
sure it continues to grow
from employee salaries to consultation
fees artists managers paying rent on the
building your team works in keeping the
lights on staff food staff parties
executive bonuses the game's marketing
budget
value a is every single penny that goes
into making the project
in general the correlation is the higher
this value
the higher quality the project can
become it doesn't always work that way
but putting more money into something
lets you hire better people
and work with better equipment and in
games design especially mmo design
that means better artists better
developers and better hosting
infrastructure now the second value the
projects generated revenue we'll call
this b this is absolutely all the money
created by the project in case of games
this will be the sale of the base game
or the expansions monthly memberships
cash shop sales and in some cases
merchandise and even convention sales
value b is basically how much you make
the difference in these values
is the profit or loss of the project
normally measured over a year
if a is higher than b you're spending
more than you're making and you'll make
a loss
if b is higher than a you're making
money and will generate a profit
this is basic economics so far so now we
can get specific
if a project is focused on long-term
growth and consistently generating a
considerable and
growing profit each year one of the best
business decisions is to funnel a large
amount of profit generated that's the
excess on column b
back into creation for the next year
that's column a
simply put if you make profit investing
that
in your project using the money you made
to make your product even better is a
good idea if you're focused on
long-term growth and creating the
highest quality project
you can and you believe this is a
sustainable thing to do
then you actually want these two bars to
be relatively close to each other the
more you invest the better the game
becomes and so the more it generates
it's a positive feedback
loop however you will notice i've used
the phrases long term and high quality
and this is where the problem comes in
because these are factors ignored by
gamergo because they have a much more
insidious business model it works
because it generates vast amounts of
profit
but in the process it destroys the game
let me show you
game ago are part of the mgi group which
are a global
merger and acquisitions company these
companies generate massive profit by
buying smaller businesses or projects
and maximizing revenue from them over
the short term and it's this
short term profit focus that causes the
damage to the product in the long term
and here's why when gamer go buy an mmo
like rift or fiesta or the recently
acquired wizard101 they look at these
two bars
money spent and money generated and they
have effectively two very simple goals
over the long term
reduce a as much as possible and
increase b as much as possible
because the money generated on b is not
going back into a
it is going to the executives because
they need to buy another yacht to reduce
a you could get rid of staff to lower
wages reduce the frequency of updates so
you don't need as many developers reduce
customer service reps so
player bog or abuse reports take longer
to close or host the game on cheaper
infrastructure so it crashes more these
are
all realistic possibilities then you
increase b which is often done by
looking at what you can sell within your
game
and maximizing it such as a cash shop
some people might say if this was the
plan why not make every game a paid
subscription
and that's because doing that doesn't
always increase profit often the best
choice for profit is to make the game
free and vastly increase the cash shop
while making it pay to win
in the process i've covered this much
more fully in my evil way free games
make money video
so now we have a game with very low
input and very high
output extremely cheap to make and very
profitable how is this
bad well that's another important
business trick you see when you lower
a the customer experience that's the
gameplay the average player will
actually get to experience
doesn't change immediately there's a
delay
sometimes it's a week month sometimes
years the reduced input doesn't impact
the game overnight it slowly filters
through maybe bugs start being found and
reported but not
sorted maybe the game stops being
updated for a few months and then a few
years
or the advertising slows down maybe you
start to see recycled content as the
developers are forced to reuse
old assets because there are no new ones
being made
then you'll notice the b increase you'll
see more items in the cash shop you'll
see loot boxes being added maybe the
monthly membership goes up a little or
it becomes a
optional vip that's essentially
necessary
maybe you start getting more aggressive
marketing emails offering you limited
time items for the low low price of
whatever they think you'll pay slowly
but surely the scale
tips input down meaning lower quality
experience and output high
meaning more aggressive monetization now
for the company the end of year reports
look fantastic because for the first
year or two sometimes three
of this happening the profit generated
that's the difference between a and b
is huge you put the bare minimum in but
you got
so much more back out this is fantastic
in the short term but what happens when
the players begin to realize this
and the b value that's the money
generated starts to drop
simple you place the game on life
support mode with minimum staff so it's
costing you as little as possible and
then you move on and do this to another
game
gamergo are not concerned with the long
term health or growth of a game because
that isn't their business model they buy
a game
vastly profit from it in the short term
by exploiting the cash shop then move on
to another
this leads to a very specific workplace
culture which could probably accurately
be described as a graveyard company a
place where once great games go to die
not just a peaceful dignified death but
a hideous monetized death desecrated
shells
of their former greatness from the
public acquisitions records we can find
we can see that gamergo buy small
companies advertise the games they
acquire in the short term then
ultimately let go of a high percentage
of staff and expect the remaining ones
to pick up nearly double the workload
while at the same time adding in a cash
shop and pushing the items in it then
they will either
sell the now skinned company for a quick
profit using the reduce cost increase
revenue to
overvalue what the company can actually
realistically do
or keep them as a portfolio piece to
show off how many games they own
when tryon ran defiance or rift they had
a team of over 100 people
working on them you could find on
linkedin now gamergo owned those games
and through trawling forums and the
linkedin pages we can see there are
barely
10 plus a handful of the most basic it
supports staff
as for fiesta online specifically the
reason it doesn't get developed or any
major updates is because it doesn't
bring in enough
profit it's actually a smart business
decision for them to let it sit idly by
the reason that games are treated as
purely business decisions or
maths puzzles is likely due to how the
upper gamergo management
don't actually believe in or focus on
the long-term success
of any of their games they don't seem to
know what makes games
fun or good or sustainable and even if
they did it wouldn't match their
business model they just see
x increase in profits this year as a
good thing and they ignore
all the effects on whatever game they're
ravaging today or if those profits
are sustainable because even if they
aren't sustainable you just move on to
another game they have no connection to
the games
just the profits some of you might be
screaming about how they'd make more
money in the long term if they invested
in their games and while you might be
right
consider the following risk if you could
risk making
500k a year on a game and have that game
become popular and sustainable and well
loved but remember there's always a
chance it might
fail or you could guarantee that you'll
definitely make 500k
in the year but in doing so you will
absolutely destroy the game and make
sure it never becomes popular again
which would you choose if you love your
game and think it has a chance at
long-term success you will put your
heart and soul
into it if you are a soulless
corporation and simply want profit you
will happily kill the game every year
knowing you can just
buy more there are probably a few of you
listening who would happily kill the
franchise every year because you want
profits and that's your business choice
and that is exactly what happens here
beyond that
if your boss cares about profits do you
really want to be the guy to suggest
hey maybe we should make less money this
year because maybe in 20 or 30 years
time when we're not here anymore
someone else might make more if the game
succeeds
no boss wants that or will take you
seriously if you suggest that
so here's a really big question why mmos
of all the projects you could do this to
why choose gaming and why choose the mmo
genre specifically
well it's because of the built-in
captive and in some cases addicted
audience the sunk cost fallacy is one
hell of a thing and they are
fully exploiting it for anyone unsure of
what that is let me explain say you have
a car it's a decent car but it needs a
repair and it'll cost you 100 pounds or
you could buy a shiny new car for a
thousand pounds
you go and get the repair then a few
weeks down the line the car needs
another repair this time it'll cost you
200 but the shiny new car is still only
a thousand well now the sunk
cost fallacy kicks in and you think well
i've already spent a hundred on one
repair
if i buy the new car now that 100 is
wasted
so you spend the 200 on another repair a
new expense now
to justify an old one this happens again
and again and again until eventually you
have spent more money repairing the old
car than it would have cost you to just
buy the new one
why because every time you choose to
spend another 100 you're not thinking
about
just that hundred you're thinking about
all the previous money you've put in so
far and not wanting that to be wasted
you keep
spending this is the sunk cost fallacy
the psychological idea that you have
spent time and money on something before
and therefore you must keep doing so
mmorpg games have
mastered abusing this fallacy combining
it with a skinner box style feedback
loop these will all be individual videos
because the psychology of game design is
fascinating and you have created an
environment perfectly designed to trap
players especially those with addictive
personalities you only need to look at
the comments section of my videos to see
no matter how bad a game is how greedy
the company or how toxic the experience
someone will defend it and someone will
spend money on it
the mmo genre is the perfect genre to do
this because hardcore players will
accept
so much before they finally break and
gamergo
know this they specifically buy games
with dedicated player bases because they
know the return on investment is almost
guaranteed
due to the player's desire to not leave
a game
they love players will happily become
blind to the awful changes gamer go make
to their childhood game in order to keep
their own
narrow minded nostalgic version of their
game
alive in their minds on top of this
instead of just shutting the games down
keeping them on life support means you
always have the chance to capture a
whale in the gaming world whales are
players who spend a large amount of
money on a single game
three or four whales can easily outspend
three or four
thousand regular players so game ago
keep all their games doing
just well enough that they might
if lucky land a whale gamergo don't need
to spend time
effort or money on upgrading or actually
developing
anything they have because that's a risk
and that might not pay off for them and
they don't
like risk but you know what always pays
off buying something
reducing the operating costs throwing in
a cash shop
ramping up the micro transactions and
milking the player base for all their
worth before they finally get sick of
you and move on and the game dies
because then you just
do it again keep all these games alive
on the bare minimum just in case someone
rich and nostalgic drops by but don't in
any way risk actually making something
good
honestly i do feel sorry for the
designers and developers because in all
truth they probably
do want to make the best games they can
but the financial executives the ones
with the power to assign resources and
money are often focused entirely on
profit margins
even if those executives do consider
themselves gamers they must put aside
their personal preference and focus
on profit which as we've seen is
accomplished in gamergo's case through
reducing spending on a project
increasing monetization
of the project and then enjoying the
large profit margins while they last and
then when the game inevitably dies
as they all do move on to another game
but
is there any fix to this well yes
actually and it's a remarkably easy fix
and it involves doing this single thing
that gamergo
will not do investing the profit back
into their games
and risking a success hiring developers
and designers get some q
a testing going on spend the money you
make to make the games you have
world class if you are willing to take
the risk
then you are worthy of getting the
reward of a good
game i've been sat in management
meetings for various companies i've
worked for before where several hour
long discussions have focused on how to
improve the quality of something without
spending any actual money and the answer
is always the same in every one of these
meetings
you can't if gamergo want to improve the
games they own maybe bring some of those
zombie games back or sort out the
plethora of issues with the larger games
they have
they need to invest in them let the game
designers do what they do best
if you hired a graphic designer or a
small development team whose only job
was to improve
fiesta it would be improved in no time
but doing that would cost money
and it's a risk because you might not
get the money back if you do improve
fiesta and people continue to not
play it this is the unfortunate reality
of the grave you have dug for yourself
you have the reputation of doing this to
games so now when people see you own a
game they assume it's going to happen
and just
move on i have many more worst mmo ever
videos to make and many more gamer go
games to play and i will always be fair
to them i praised defiance 2050 for its
excellent gun play and i enjoyed the
core gameplay loop of rift but i won't
shy away from pointing out mistakes like
fiesta online's missing collision
detection or fiesta online's music or
fiesta online search menu having a typo
or just the rest of fiesta online
it's extremely simple if gamergo wants
to be seen
as more than a company that buy small
games
monetize them and then milk them dry
then simply stop doing that
ladies and gentlemen thank you for
watching another thank you to my patreon
supporters and twitch subs who make my
content possible you can support the
patreon from only one pound a month
check the video description for links to
the patreon twitch twitter and discord
and as always
have a great day
you