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Amazon is Good at So Many Things. Why is it Bad at Games? (protocol.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
In recent years Amazon has become a major force in television and film, so we have seen that the company can succeed in generating popular mass entertainment. Why is the company struggling so badly with games? Discussing the question with people involved with Amazon Games, some common themes emerge. From a report: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making games," Mike Frazzini, Amazon's vice president for game services and studios, told me in March. That isn't working because video games are fundamentally a creative endeavor, not the sort of purely quantifiable mass consumer product or service that Amazon knows how to make. No less than great novels or films, great top-end games cannot be created through user data requirements, A/B testing, behavioral analytics, user surveys and iterative critiques by departments ranging from security to finance. Yet games must jump through all those hoops at Amazon, according to people in a position to know. That product development sensibility can work for chintzy mobile games that are made to extract as much money as possible from players but does not work in creating multibillion-dollar long-term franchises that generate not just revenue but emotional loyalty. Instead, thinking of games like tech products just leads to watered-down games without a strong point of view or creative direction.

For example, Amazon executives told me that while designing Crucible they solicited private input from hundreds of streamers and esports figures -- people who play video games for a living and definitely know fun when they feel it. So how could the company ingest that input and still churn out a mediocre product? Turns out, the questions Amazon asked the game pros were generally incremental -- "Which weapon do you prefer?" "What classes and enemies do you enjoy?" -- rather than stepping back and asking, "Does this overall concept work?" That's why Crucible can feel like it was put together with bits and pieces of other successful games, rather than forging a strong vision of its own. The entire structure of most successful game publishers is built around protecting and insulating the creative people -- writers, artists and designers -- from the business. Take-Two does not tell Rockstar what the story of the next Grand Theft Auto should be. Mike Morhaime spent decades shielding the creative engine at Blizzard Entertainment from various corporate owners as Blizzard created StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo -- iconic franchises all.

Many precincts of the entertainment business are run by financial professionals, but the successful ones -- whether in television, music, film or games -- learn to let the creative people create. "Amazon is run not even by finance guys but by tech guys who instead of putting their creatives outside the bubble and protecting them from the culture, hired them into the bubble and expected them to work within that confine," said one person involved with Amazon's game efforts. "Amazon culture is great for product, horrible for creative endeavors." It is impossible to imagine Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, issuing her own version of Frazzini's pronouncement: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making movies." That is because when it comes to film and television, Amazon lets people with deep industry experience run the show and acquire projects being made by outside professionals. Salke was president of NBC Entertainment before joining Amazon two years ago. Her boss, Mike Hopkins, who joined Amazon in February, was previously chief executive of Hulu and chairman of Sony Pictures Television. Frazzini, meanwhile, had no significant game industry experience before joining Amazon.
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Amazon is Good at So Many Things. Why is it Bad at Games? More

Amazon is Good at So Many Things. Why is it Bad at Games?

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  • Probably arrogance (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday August 15, 2020 @05:37AM (#60403475)

    From what I can see, they though they could do this by themselves and get it right the first time. But gaming is tricky: The result has to appeal and motivate overall, and that is only weakly dependent on the details. Because they probably had no experienced game designers in actually leading positions they seem to have completely missed this. They apparently also failed to do any historical reviews of games that failed and what made them fail.

    Hence what they produce looks good, is probably technologically well done, but it is not fun. In order to be fun, risks have to be taken and things have to be done a bit different from what already exists. And that is completely different from how you do sound engineering.

    • A similar thing apparently happened with the big movie studios and games around the start of the CD Rom and 3D game era. They decided they could do away with game companies and make everything in house. The reasoning went that movie studios know all about stories and they have the best 3D animators and tools out there, games would be a cinch, and they could cut the middle-man out. It did not go well.

      • Personally, I loved those old LucasArts games.

        • I'm not counting Lucas in this, they got it right. LucasFilm isn't the same as a "studio". I'm talking about things like Warner Bros Interactive. Yeah I played one of their games based on The Matrix. I literally ended up snapping the CD in half so I wasn't tempted to pick it up again.

          • You do have a good point when it comes to all those cheap games that tried to leverage movie franchises. I guess they didn't occur to me because I always ignored them. LucasArts is definitely the exception that proves the rule.

            • I don't see how an exception to a rule could 'prove it.' Are you able to explain how this could be? I'm not poking fun but genuinely curious.

              • Lucasfilm did something different to the others, they got actual experienced game devs and put them in the pilot seat. The exception of how they did it leading to the exception of end results proves the usual way didn't work.

                It means exactly what it says it means

              • It's an old saying but the meaning is somewhat contested.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                The first meaning is that the existence of an exception to a rule confirms (proves) that the rule exists. That's probably the closest this is going to make sense. The noteworthiness of LucasArts games in itself highlights how most movie games are not noteworthy (otherwise LucasArts wouldn't stand out).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Saffaya ( 702234 )

          Lucasfilm was already doing excellent 3D games before the advent of CD-ROM and 3D cards, under the Lucasfilm Games label.

          Games such as :
          Ballblazer
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          Rescue on Fractalus!
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          Thus, it did not suffer from any of the faults described in the parent post.

      • You must be on a different timeline to me. Gaming changed ironically because CD's could hold more data than your hard drive. Games changed to reflect this. Stories could be told. It was clunky by today's standards, but at the time revolutionary. The industry changed and needed new experts in that role. I say that because it is part and parcel of modern gaming.

        • You're forgetting FMV titles, like Sewer Shark. GP is talking about a moment in time, not what eventually came about, after said businesses closed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yes, pretty much.

    • not good at games.
      we are talking about amazon.com.
      right

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The quality of the games was not their focus, their focus was how to squeeze in boiling frog advertising (start without and then continually increase over time) and flood it with so many micro transaction, every action replaceable by a micro transaction and continuously advertising micro transactions. Think the games are bad now, wait until they are advertising and micro transaction updated.

    • This happened to square with final fantasy 14. I watched a documentary on it, the game set to compete with popular MMOs at the time faired miserably, large in part by their relience on their own expertise, and lack of research. They didnt even install world of warcraft in the beginning to see what they were up against.

      Its pretty cool to see how they managed to not only bail water out of the sinking ship, but also bring it home. :)

    • Can't optimize yourself into creativity.

  • Amazon is amazingly good at tax avoidance. I don't see why anyone would expect that to make them good at writing games.

    • For TV they were smart enough to know that you hire TV people and just let them do their thing. For games they fucked up because they just didn't understand that games are not just a commodity product. They just assumed that you get any old 3D engine, you put nice-looking stuff in and people run around and Fun Happens(tm).

      If you made a movie like that it would be like making a movie entirely with Mad Libs. Not that you can't make a movie like that, but they're shitty movies. You can only make a cookie cutte

      • Point being: Amazon didn't fuck up by trying to make games, they fucked up by assuming you didn't need professional game creators. Like, if Amazon started making pharmaceuticals, they'd naturally hire professional pharmacologists and people with relevant industry experience to run that. But they just scoffed and assumed games would be easy. Sucks to be them basically, and it's not the first time a big corporation got caught out by this. Just be happy for the actual devs who got a paycheck out of this.

        • Clearly you are not a developer. I am looking back over a long and varied career in computering which has included game development, and to be honest you are talking nonsense.

          That said I find it hard to believe that Amazon did not hire anyone with experience...the so called creative in the blurb implies different. He is saying he is the expert.

          • You're correct. I happen to know Amazon hired a large number of very experienced game developers. What went on behind the scenes is probably a bit more complicated than a simple explanation like that. I'm not going to speculate publicly because I know some of the devs, and don't wish to gossip publicly about this sort of thing, but I can at least say that much.

            • "Frazzini, meanwhile, had no significant game industry experience before joining Amazon".

              I'm not disputing whether they paid top dollar for a lot of good programmers and artists, however what matters is the glue holding that together. The guy has a business major and an e-commerce/sales background.

              "Amazon Games develops games that harness the power of AWS and Twitch to create bold, new game experiences".

              Which is kind of the wrong way around to make really good stuff. It really doesn't matter if you have the

              • The point here is that they admit in the by-line for Amazon Games that the games primarily exist to showcase AWS and create Twitch Exclusives. This is ass-backwards to making stuff that people would really be interested in.

          • I'm talking about the way they run studios are run here, not the credentials of individual developers. Yes they hired qualified people but they treated the entire thing as a business process optimization task rather than how games are normally developed. Hence, yes they did heavily discount the importance of many critical aspects of the game design process and assumed that they could fill that in with whatever processes Amazon normally used to develop systems (A/B testing, focus testing elements etc). Stuff

          • You have to pay attention to the article btw, the guy they used to set up and run the studio had NO relevant industry experience. That's the hubris I'm talking about.

    • Tax avoidance doesn't make you one of the largest retailers on the planet, one of the largest cloud providers on the planet, one of the largest streaming services on the planet, the largest book store on the planet, and the largest e-reader manufacturer on the planet *ALL AT THE SAME TIME*.

      You may not like reality, but reality is Amazon are damn good at quite a few things, specifically because they gain the required expertise for them.

  • Games are art (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Karganeth ( 1017580 ) on Saturday August 15, 2020 @05:39AM (#60403479)
    You can brute force your way into many markets by investing massive amounts of money, but this approach doesn't work with art.
    • So are books, movies and TV shows.

      • It's a lie...and a weird one at that a cursory glance at there history shows they started with simple phone games..moved to consoles...now to mmorpg. A massively different approach to the one you are suggesting and ironically what Microsoft did successfully with Budgie. So wrong in everyway.

    • They could have done that but they didn't do it smartly. A much cleverer thing to do as in throwing money at the problem would have been to buy up Telltale Games when they were struggling. Episodic games would have been the perfect thing to fit into Amazon's offerings, and they could have cross-referenced Telltale to make games based on all the stuff they have on Amazon Prime. So you see, even the most rudimentary knowledge about the game industry itself would have helped.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Zuriel ( 1760072 )

      Well, it does, but you need to buy a game studio. Or at least hire an experienced game director and put him in charge of the project.

      "We're bringing Amazon practices to game development." sounds an awful lot like "We're going to show everyone how game development should be done."

      From someone with no game development experience, it's the sound of a giant ego about to some crashing back to earth.

      • No such thing as transferable skills, so Apple when they built a smartphone, didn't learn from the iPod, software design, marketing. Microsoft didn't learn from years of working on software, small hardware products, graphics etc etc

        Bullshit. That is ignoring the fact that Amazon have earned their stripes over years starting small.

        • It seems more like they didn't respect the lessons already learned in an industry that they were trying to enter, because they thought they were so bad ass that they didn't need to. The view is arrogant and counter productive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DThorne ( 21879 )
      They are helping create and support a lot of amazing artistic projects, in fact I'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify my Netflix account(I tend to put it on hold every year or so) but Prime has some really amazing shows. I think it's less about artistic and more about the ownership mentality - when they show The Expanse, they certainly have approval over it but it's actually produced by Alcon. Same for other shows like The Boys, etc - they essentially contract out the work. With games, they ap

  • Amazon's core business is selling stuff, so why is it so incredibly crap at letting you search for stuff to buy ?
    Try searching, for example, for an 8 Terabyte hard drive, sorted by price.
    Note how many of the results are not 8 Terabyte hard drives and how the results are not properly sorted by price.

    Almost as bad as Microsofts still unbelievably shite search IN ITS OWN OS.

    That these companies succeed where others fail is almost as surprising as Americans' choice of the best person to lead them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. And talk about book recommendations. I mark the 1st book of a series as "not interested". And what does this completely crappy algorithm do? It recommends the 2nd, 3rd, ... book of the same series! That is so obviously bullshit that it should have a hard-coded rule to exclude it.

    • Well, for the latter, to be fair, it's not like they really have a real choice.

  • I don't get it either (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Saturday August 15, 2020 @05:45AM (#60403497)

    It's a bit like the Postal Office, they can fill my box with tons of ads a thousand times in 4 years but they are unable to transport 1 ballot every 4 years for every adult?

    • Re:I don't get it either (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TFlan91 ( 2615727 ) on Saturday August 15, 2020 @06:46AM (#60403563)

      When leadership actively attempts to stop those ballots from arriving? Yes.

    • Are you sure it's even the postal service delivering those ads? Most junkmail is delivered by local kids, not by the postal service. You have to pay more for that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )

        Around here at least (which admittedly is not the USA), your ad-delivery model ceased to be true a decade or more ago. There's no doubt that used to be the way ads were delivered but it just doesn't seem to be anymore. I haven't seen one of those kids delivering ads in eons, but I get tons through the post office (Despite my repeated requests for them to stop, and them repeatedly claiming they will).

        I blame a few things for the change. first, a large portion of mail around here is no longer delivered to ind

  • Ham-handedly injecting politics into gaming to push an agenda that alienates their paying target audience is not how you do business.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      That's one thing that really confused me about the OP. "Let creatives create". But today's creatives are taught that "creation" equals "social justice". Hence crucible not having a single "character with whom people who make by far the most lucrative portion of the market couldn't identify with", to use their own lingo. In a game where you're supposed to monetize looks of characters.

      But that's just the surface. Even social justice "creatives" can create great games. For this, they need a short leash and a l

  • Unlike Netflix, Amazon Prime is designed to get you to pay to watch movies or TV shows. If they're doing the same thing with games it's no wonder they're failing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by green1 ( 322787 )

      This doesn't make any sense to me. I have never run into any additional costs on Prime. It's cheaper than Netflix, and happens to include free next day delivery on physical purchases in addition to the video offerings.
      Now we can argue about who has the best catalog, that might be valid, but I don't see your "sell sell sell" version on my prime.

  • Simple (Score:3)

    by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Saturday August 15, 2020 @06:10AM (#60403525)

    Amazon is Good at So Many Things. Why is it Bad at Games?

    You can't use market leverage to your advantage in squashing the competition when creating things. If you create something good it doesn't matter if it has competition or not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed, well said. Suddenly Amazon has to compete on merit of their _product_ and they do not look good.

      • Where do they look bad. To be honest they have barely registered until now, only producing a few phone games, and it seems they have grown the business up to producing large mmorpg. Much respect. They could have bought an established player like Microsoft did, but what they are doing looks good.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You seem to be living in a different reality. But sure, every product, no matter how crappy, always has a few fans.

          • Not a fan, you must be mistaking me for some other guy. But the lie that Amazon is trying to bully the other guy...when the other guy is Apple, Microsoft, Google, Steam and Epic is nonsense. They are building their expertise and experience...not buying it.

            The game in contrast to the summary...looks great but has bad design choices...and they have rightly taken it back to beta.

            Seriously Fix up

  • Amazon is mostly good at two things (Score:4, Informative)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday August 15, 2020 @06:21AM (#60403533)

    One, avoiding to pay tax and two, watching what sells on their marketplace and undercutting the profitable stuff. Both doesn't translate well to making good games.

    • Yet here we are with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony etc all also good at hiding money all originally not gaming companies. The exception seems to be Epic who for some reason is complaining about monopolies.

      Maybe your Attack on Amazon is more insightful than supporting your favourite mega corp

    • I didn't realise their market place has cloud computing services, or that their market place was the birth of the e-reader, or streaming trends, or information on efficient warehousing.

      Back in reality, Amazon are actually good at quite a lot of things.

  • Compared to other sites, their search is literally an enemy that you need to fight, to get what you want, instead of what you are told to buy.
    And their good selling business doesn't even make a profit! It's still in its "flooding the market until quasi-monopolistic domination" phase, and subsidized by their "cloud" business, according to internal sources.

    And ..."cloud" ... That's cancer in and of itself for the same reason as any kind of outsourcing (to you-don't-even-know-where, at that!).

    Doubleminusgood!

    T

    • Not sure what this have to do with gaming, but on the whole Amazon is popular because it is good. Most of the time the first choice given is a great choice. If it wasn't I would go somewhere else.

  • Amazon's games are so bad I didn't even know they had games. (checking games..) Oh hell, what's a Blink Mini? Alexia. Zoom in on her butt and track motion. Begin recording.

    • Not sure what you were expecting, they look to have started with small phone games...then moved to consoles, and now are launching mmorpg with a league of legends type model...which fits in with where they are heading.

      It is growing it's experience, in a thoughtful measured way.

  • How about a game with a bald protagonist, who cheats on his wife while making his employees pee in jars? Surely that's something everyone wants to play, right?

    • Lol what a strange attack. We don't all have godlike beauty or have perfect relationships. In fact I personally dispise the fact that that should matter literally anywhere, unless that is the job.

      As for drugs testing, whatever you views you don't want people operating industrial equipment or driving on them.

      To be honest I think not using epubs on the Kindle is worse than this.

      • It wasn't a drug testing reference, many employees complain that they are not allowed to use the rest room when they are on the clock. Did you just arrive here from the past / future ?

        • Not exactly a smoking gun, or a reference I have heard of. Not exactly like Apple having workers riot, and child labour in buildings with suicide nets.

          TBH all I really know of Amazon workers is their drivers are well paid compared to companies I have worked with, as for the toilet thing...you need to work in warehousing.

  • In my opinion, they are falling into the same pitfall that many other companies do these days - they are trying to accommodate for too many different tastes at the same time. Don't try to design a game which fits every player. Diversify and aim for a few good games in a number particular domains/genres rather than "one size fits all" mediocre title.

    • In my opinion, they are falling into the same pitfall that many other companies do these days - they are trying to accommodate for too many different tastes at the same time. Don't try to design a game which fits every player. Diversify and aim for a few good games in a number particular domains/genres rather than "one size fits all" mediocre title.

      Good points, I addition, Amazon's incremental approach to product development and replicating what sells well into an AmazonBasics product works great when you are selling physical products and price is an issue. For products that need emotional attachment, it fails. For example, I can yell you if I prefer a sword over a knife but that doesn't tell you I really don't; like either. I can tell you whaat I think in a focus group but that doesn't tell you if I buy into the concept. If you ask me about a new

      • What a load of nonsense, how dare a customer have an opinion. I wonder why we are starting to have massive difference between user score and review score.

        Amazon is running this like a business and thank God for that.

        • What a load of nonsense, how dare a customer have an opinion.

          It's not a question of having an opinion but rather is the opinion useful information for designing a good game? Simply because a customer prefers a sword doesn't answer the question "Will including a sword make this a game that will be fun to play?"

          I wonder why we are starting to have massive difference between user score and review score.

          Could it be that the choices Amazon made were not relevant to the user experience?

          Amazon is running this like a business and thank God for that.

          Sure. Nothing wrong with that. It's a good thing. The problem is when you think because you have been widely successful in one type of business you will be equally successful in a

          • Are you sure. I read the linked article. I bet my fucking soul they wanted a star rating. I bet they asked is it FUN.

            That said if the customer wants swords, you give them swords. The truth is weapons need to be balanced etc etc, but the truth is if a customer is if your customer is saying your weapon mechanics can be better you pull your head out of your creative arsehole and fix it.

            But the bottom line is the game is fun...why the fuck are we talking about swords. Sounds like an overpaid Pratt who needs a d

            • Are you sure. I read the linked article. I bet my fucking soul they wanted a star rating. I bet they asked is it FUN.

              That said if the customer wants swords, you give them swords. The truth is weapons need to be balanced etc etc, but the truth is if a customer is if your customer is saying your weapon mechanics can be better you pull your head out of your creative arsehole and fix it.

              Sure, but the question is "Do they want swords or is swords juist the best of a bunch of bad choices?"

              • No the bad choice was not optimising their gameplay, too long to get to action, boring action, slow with no team play elements.

                As I said, fun.

                • No the bad choice was not optimising their gameplay, too long to get to action, boring action, slow with no team play elements.

                  As I said, fun.

                  Which ultimately my point as well - what resulted in their making bad choices? It seems their approach to development failed to identify what players really wanted, even if they designed the game to deliver the choices identified by their research.

  • Almost all of the products Amazon have made look like they were designed by a committee that was micromanaged by an obsessive soulless asshole. And I suspect they were. Products that are blatant copies of other, better products that attempt to play notes without recognizing the tune.

    • This old chestnut. "Designed by committee" only if you have never worked would you say anything so stupid. I will call these meetings and will admit these are often timewasting and distraction from working, but they stop the stupid, and the dangerous.

      Let's compare say Alexa with the iPod. Apple got their arses handed to them, and the situation has not improved, even after Apple engineers bought them and took them apart.

      Committee are great, especially when it comes to calling out bullshit. Even visionary (si

  • Maybe I am reading a different article, or the maybe Amazon, is not for Favourite mega corporation in this fight.

    I am from this opinion piece choose the "creative" whatever that is supposed to mean. Having seen the entertainment industry "creatives" destroy everything I was invested in every medium and in every genre I like... including videogames that hate customers.

    To honest I am sold on Amazon putting a game in front of customers and instead of blaming them when they don't like it. It's repurposing the a

  • They tried to go for a generic cash grabber game first instead of creating itself a brand as a gaming publisher first with memorable games, so no one even noticed when they released that clone thing.

    • Clearly you have not bothered to even look through their back catalogue. There is a wikipedia page, and everything. Google it. Hell I have even made posts about it in this thread. If you still struggle I will post a link.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        I didn't even knew they had a back catalogue or even seen anyone on the internet talking about their games, which is the whole point.
        And given its all stuck in their game store, it's probably why.
        They don't have a fanbase.

  • Because Amazon is good at SELLING things not CREATING things. They take the quickest and easiest path to profit, that's it. It goes back to when Bezxos started the company. Most people would never want to get involved in selling books, but Bezos saw a market with a path to more and took it.

    • Really...not anything...nothing springs to mind...nothing.

      From an online bookstore to a sell anything store...ebook readers, tablets, Alexa and speakers, an OS, a streaming service with original content, and a whole range of smaller everyday items, making one of the most large diverse company on the planet.

  • What weapon do you prefer? Whichever one fits the story.
    What classes and enemies? Whichever ones fits the story.

    The story is what matters. If the story is engaging, and well written, and fun, I won't even notice if I'm using fists or phasers. Now if you have a story written, and gameplay created, then sure, those questions may be useful in tweaking the end result. "Here, play this game, is it too hard when we give you a less powerful weapon? it it too easy when we give you a more powerful one?" (or in relat

  • ... and everyone I met looked absolutely miserable.  Hard to make fun when you are miserable.

  • Games are hard to get right, and these days even most of the most successful studios are choking the life out of them with DLC and microtransactions.

    The fundamental failing of capitalism is that it promotes love of money above all. If you are willing to be an underhanded shitstain you have an advantage over those who want to produce a quality product.

    Capitalism increases production, but a lot of what it produces is shit.

    • I agree with you, personally I thought the Shareware model was the one. Independent games brought back fun, but those have stopped being appealing... because reasons.

      Personally I am hopeful that the new subscription service model is going to happen. I think it will fix a lot of the industry, I see some downsides, but overall better.

    • The fundamental success of capitalism is that in order to make money, you have to benefit other people. You have to deliver what they value above whatever you want to charge for it. Sometimes people think they know better than people do what those people want, but the market doesn't care, it's driven by local knowledge by the purchaser. Disciplined by only one rule - Whoever is best able to provide what people actually want are going to ultimately be the ones who succeed.

  • Amazon Basics operates a bit like Microsoft: find something that's selling well, copy it and produce it in-house and sell it cheaper. That's what they're doing with games and it's tough.

    • Ignoring att Micro$ofts dirty filthy trick and EEE it biggest success was entering markets with high barriers of entry, very few competing players, using its money and influence.

      Ironically Crucible, Amazon game despite being another cartoony team FPS, tried to be different. It's one of the reasons we are seeing this story. It would have faired much better if it has been another clone, and I suspect when it comes out of beta it will be .

  • They actually aren't very good at TV or movies either. And that's a medium most people understand to a degree. They've got a few hits, but it's really just them picking well-known artists. Video games have fewer icons who you can point at and say: she's "Steven Spielberg" level, or even he's "Amy Sherman-Palladino" level.

  • Do we really need another one? Wondering how it works on iOS, with Apple's iron hand wrapped firmly around the microcurrency controls.

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A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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