Tencent buys out Funcom?

Well it appears Tencent isnt stopping anytime soon.

This really isnt good for gaming in general (Social & Human Rights concerns aside in China)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2020/01/22/tencent-to-grow-gaming-empire-with-148m-acquisition-of-conan-publisher-funcom-in-norway/amp/

question.

Why would you expect them to stop or slow down?

As far as i know China is set on G5 deployment and development by 2025 worldwide to survive their social aging population collapse.(last part is my assumption, but it coincides with the population graphs)

So rooting themselves in gaming to ease network deployment worldwide and attract offers while at the same growing networks within those communities to favorably push relations and policy seem strategically normal?

You will need to specify what you find concerning about this event in particular for people to respond nuanced darth.

Peace,

-Boem-

Hmm I thought it was obvious.

Massive publishers acquiring studios is flat out bad for development and innovation.

They more they acquire the worse off the industry will be (imo)

Of course Tencent wont stop, but certainly studios can resist selling out. Understandably the almighty dollar gets in the way, but hey there are some successful independents out there.

Is it really so much to ask not to sell out to Tencent, EA, Activision, ect...?

All people have a price, this has always been the case.

And when it comes to capitalism and the current global market, how many people can withstand an offer made by a company backed up by it's entire state.

Not to mention that i wouldn't wanna be an entrepeneur or company in norway or many of the other socialist/wellfare states currently.
The red-tape is stupendous currently in those country's and i think i can say that with some degree of knowledge since i live in such a state and my dad is a CEO and we have a decent amount of wealth.

The environment is extremely hostile to wealth generation and perhaps somewhat ironically, playes like china who utilize state-backed entities to push economics force "normal" capitalist players into a position where they also have to push a policy of "state-backing" simply to survive.

There is something extremely humorous about people complaining about capitalism and crony-capitalism while ignoring that certain global players are utilizing means in the market like state-capital-backing to disrupt its functionality and corrupt its fundamental principles.

Which works out great for china since it allows socialist and communist party's to push the state within their country's to seize more control and restrict freedom.

It's like watching scrotie go on about crony-capitalism as the enemy totally ignoring that capitalism requires good-faith actors to participate for it to function at all.(since its fundamentally a trust based exchange system where trust is formalized in a currency)

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : retracted numbers, nobody's busines imo

Sure of course.

But there are all kinds of side effects to capitalism, and not all of them are good.

Walmart, Amazon, utility companies, banks, can get too big, monopolize, and are subject to consumer related offenses.

I dont want to get too off track here with regards to capitalism, but I do maintain that the large publisher expansion in the video game industry is a concern.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Sure of course.

But there are all kinds of side effects to capitalism, and not all of them are good.

Walmart, Amazon, utility companies, banks, can get too big, monopolize, and are subject to consumer related offenses.

I dont want to get too off track here with regards to capitalism, but I do maintain that the large publisher expansion in the video game industry is a concern.

On the first statement, this is obviously true though historically, prior to socialism and wellfare motives entering in the capitalist system it has produced the most wealth in history on a global scale.

Whats more is that a lot of the complaints people have are conflated with capitalism while they have nothing at all to do with it.(poor vs rich, wealth inequality etc)
That is to say, they exist within the system, but they are not "of the systems creation".

People werent all equally wealthy or poor prior to its introduction.

As far as monopoly's go, the only monopoly in existence is the state. The people that throw around the fear for monopoly's
1) dont have a clue about the definition or what a monopoly is
2) have no clue about economics and history in relation to economics

The fearmongering by using the buzzword "monopoly's!!!" goes back for a while now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T

This is a historical case for example, in reality at&t had 9% of the entire market share while it was demonized with the therm "evil monopoly".
And groups succesfully utilized the real monopoly(the state) to interfear and apply pressure.

I don't see much posibility to discuss this subject without getting into economics or politics since what china is doing is obviously linked with it on a global scale.

But we can go into the innovation and development argument if you feel the need to.

As far as i can see, we are having the most development and innovation/competition when it comes to software and games ever in history.
Just looking at the amount of "indie start-ups" that are pushing their idea's and investigating virtual reality game options for example is something unseen in past history.

Similar with more mainstream concepts of "games" the market is saturated with new editions trying to make a grab for the target audience daily.

Now a subjective claim can be made that there is a lot of "trash" in there, but thats a value statement and people will probably say the same about games you enjoy so i dont think thats helpfull as a route to contemplate the state of affairs currently.

A similar subjective dichotomy can be made based on "games for leisure" vs "games for challenge"(the eternal identity struggle of PoE?) where perhaps more oldschool gamers are feeling discontent with current games, while in reality there is simply a bigger market of "games for leisure" which can now be reached and making its mark on the industry(since the industry follow market pressure).

Hope that all makes sense, doing some other stuff so just typing this out in a minute or two so feel free to critique.

Peace,

-Boem-

Well there are two schools of thought on this (sticking to this industry) on what role the publishers play.

1. Publishers provide the financial support, and help deliver in areas the developers dont have expertise in (like advertising, marketing, logistics, and customer support) and lets them focus on what they do best.

2. Theses financial arrangements create pressure to hit sales and revenue targets that may work counter to development and the game experience.

I think we can have a discussion on how/why big publishers, like Tencent that owns GGG, buying up developers, and turning them into less game driven, and more revenue driven is bad for the industry.

Tencent just has that additional stigma of their social networking and explotation in China. In the arguement I'm making, this part isnt really relevant, other than the fact that Tencent does indeed own GGG.

I'm convinced there's some sci-fi nut among the big wheels at Tencent who saw what Funcom was about to do to poor li'l ol' Dune, and said, "Nah let's step in before they ruin it"

"

crunkatog wrote:

I'm convinced there's some sci-fi nut among the big wheels at Tencent who saw what Funcom was about to do to poor li'l ol' Dune, and said, "Nah let's step in before they ruin it"

If you read the articles, it seems that Tencent wants to capitalize on the survival/royale genre, and will be pushing that in this upcoming Dune game.

What that actually means, I have no idea. Surely there will be loot boxes that you can purchase with spice.

I don´t think this fearmongering is all about playing monopoly and rise and fall of corps. It´s more about "trusting" the corp-state with all your e-details.

You know what would be cool, using the new "face-recognition"-programms instead of typing passwords the old fashiond way. All power to the state. /ironyoff

Who here really knows in which direction AI develops next.