Okay, I'm going to give some people a little length of rope to hang me here: I don't have a huge insight into how big businesses work. The internal workings of large companies are somewhat arcane and nausea-inducing. I always envision people in suits getting promotions based only marginally on their abilities and mostly based on how much arse they're willing to have near their mouths. A skewed, paranoid picture, possibly, but it's hard to shake it*, especially when you read about the kind of shit that goes on.
Anyway. Since I have no real understanding of businesses of a certain bigness, I will only talk about it in the vaguest of terms, in a hushed voice, hoping they don't swoop out of the darkness**, plucking me away and setting me to work in their customer service department. Eeeep. That image is bowel-worrying. I'm sure I can extrapolate things, we can all do that, but usually when I try to my wonky understanding of human nature screws up my prediction and I end up looking like I'm somewhere advanced on the autistic spectrum. I'll give it the ole college try, though.
What I can understand is greed. We all know greed and we all see it. Just a quick glimpse at British Telecom, British Gas and British train fares† tells you what you need to know about greed. It's not those companies I'm looking at right now, though they deserve all the fucking lambasting they get.
I've been reading about corporate greed in different areas in the last week, in areas slightly less consequential than transport, communication and power. They might not impact lives quite as much, but it doesn't make their money-grubbing antics any less unappetising. Like watching a demented and unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge bashing orphans on the head and carrying them off to workhouses, cackling all the way.
So, I present to you the curious cases of Games Workshop and EA Games.
Yes, note the word connecting both. I'll give you a moment to consider sticking around before clicking on something else, perhaps some hollow 'inspiring' quotation perhaps. To the two people who have stuck around: what the fuck is wrong with you?
Since you've stayed I'll offer some background. Games Workshop is the company behind the tabletop battle games Warhammer Fantasy Battle (or simply Warhammer) and Warhammer 40,000 (known also as Warhammer 40K or 40K). Both of these games involve the use of miniatures‡ to simulate battles in either an epic fantasy setting or a far-flung future – guess which is which. Games Workshop has been the undisputed giant of this market for a couple of decades. EA Games, full Sunday title being Electronic Arts, is a computer games publisher and current Source of All Evil§.
I used to love playing Warhammer 40K. In my teens and early twenties I bought lots of miniatures and rules books. I wasn't spectacular at the games, but I generally had fun playing. Not long after I started in the hobby, I got one of my patented foreshadowing moments (see my Dean Koontz open letter for details, I'll still be here when you're done§§), but couldn't quite explain it. Something was off about it. Unlike my Koontz foreshadowing the problem became clear to me fairly quickly: expense. The models to play this game, we have to use and only from Games Workshop, were pricey. Not break the bank pricey, but you had to think long and hard about when and which purchases you were going to make. This was the early nineties, when Games Workshop still sold miniatures other than their own Citadel Miniatures, but that didn't last, oh no. Soon it was only Citadel Miniatures as the official miniature for their games. And prices started to go up.
Now, you have to pay almost fifty quid for a sixty or seventy millimetre model – and not even a metal model, at that, because Citadel don't do metal no more. It's all plastic these days, guv. That's a ridiculous amount of money and it's only for a single miniature; for even a small game of 40K you need at least twenty-five or thirty models. And even your bog standard troop type models are not cheap, costing twenty-five quid for ten plastic models. That's insanity. And there are people more passionate than me about the whole business who'll also point out the overpriced and constantly re-released rules books (with new rules§§§!! And new units!!) that are broken anyway. And don't get anyone started on the prices of paints. Whoo! That's a big can of worms, there.
I stepped away from the hobby quite a long time ago, but I still look in on it once in a while and was amused and saddened when I read recently their share price had plummeted. It seems Games Workshop's policy of extreme pricing because there was no alternative to their model or system has come back and bit them on the arse. There are other games systems around now that don't demand such huge sums of money from those who indulge in the hobby. You have to feel sorry for the staff though, because at some point it's going to come back and bite them too.
An interesting thing about the Games Workshop thing is that it got me back to something I've done periodically: making rules for my own games. Most of the time these rules were messy and ultimately didn't work. This time probably won't be much different, but I'm going to see what I make of it§§§§.
Now, to the other greedy bastard company: EA. They have come under fire in the last couple of weeks for re-releasing a game I loved. They resurrected Dungeon Keeper. It doesn't really matter what the game was like, because, by all accounts§§§§§ this update for the mobile market bears not a fucking ounce of resemblance. For a start, they've stripped it down to being a tower defence game, right, fair enough, it's for mobile, it's just for people on the train or bus going to and from work. The real heinous crime comes in the pay to play model they've crammed into it.
For this game, in order to do anything that even sniffs of gameplay without waiting for hours or days waiting for a simple action to occur requires money, you know to make up for the game being free to download. And it's on a sliding scale, depending on how advanced the action is you want to do. Some of the reviews I looked at reported requiring hundreds of dollars to achieve anything in the game. Do you remember my crack here about Sticky the Stick? Did someone at EA see this and go, "Fuck me! This nobody's on to something!" and decide that fucking gamers and a beloved game was the way to go.
I hope this isn't a trend because the games industry, from what I now understand, is on a bit of a precipice and this kind of thoughtless money-grabbing insanity is only going to tip them closer.
And those, my friends are the tales of greed and corporate stupidity I saw this week. They are not unique and I wish more companies suffered greater consequences for their actions, but, in the case of EA, if I can help make people aware and make sure they don't spend money on a shoddy, nasty tactic, then I'll have done something worthwhile, even if it is a tiny thing.
* Yes, yes. Hard working and dedicated people get to the tops of companies all the time. It's my perception, dude, get with it. It also doesn't mean they're nice people.
** Or blinding fucking sunshine as it is at the moment. It's really damned inconvenient and it shouldn't happen in February.
† That's the seeds of a political rant for another time, I think. Fucking politician cunts. See that? It's anger. Grrr.
‡ Also known in some circles as minis or sad sodgies.
§ A position sometimes occupied by Activision.
§§ Or will I?
§§§ Tweaks.
§§§§ While not getting too distracted with it. I have other things to do, you know. I might release it for people to test it out. How's that, eh? Interested? Comment.
§§§§§ And keep an eye on that page, the number of negative reviews is only going to swell.
Will
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