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  • Navok noted that if a game costs $100 million to make over five years, it has to beat what the company could have returned investing a similar amount in the stock market over the same period. “For the 5 years prior to Feb 2024, the stock market averaged a rate of return of 14.5%. Investing that $100m in the stock market would net you a return of $201m, so this is our ROI baseline,” he explained.

    This is why capitalism ruins everything. So it's not even about making art that is profitable, it's about beating out other investment opportunities that someone could have chosen, even if it meant the art didn't get made.

    That is so ass-backwards.

    Investment should be about wanting to grow a company whose products you believe in, both to see returns when those products perform well, but also to enjoy the future products.

    Someone whose attitude is "I don't care about your products at all, I just care about cash ROI" will turn around and short your stock and disparage you, if they think it'll net them more money. In other words, they won't actually look out for the best interests of the company, and will always be looking out for opportunities to plunder the business for more profit.

    And this is supposed to create a healthy market for goods? Please.

    "The free market makes goods compete to see what customers prefer." Apparently not.

    Apparently it creates a situation where the products can be profitable and amazing and well-loved, but a bunch of wealthy assholes who don't care about the products at all can decide the company isn't up to their standards, and punish or kill it.

    There was another post here on Beehaw about housing costs, where someone noted that "voting with your wallet" doesn't work because wealthy people can "out-vote" you, on a level that even collectively you can't compete with, and this really illustrates their point well.

    Late edit:

    I think it bears saying that under this model of ROI calculation, depending on how well other industries are doing, it is entirely possible that no video game could feasibly outperform the market for a given timeframe... so should the whole games industry just fucking shut down in that case?

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