10 Things Video Game Developers Wish You Understood Better
7. Games DO Exist To Make Money, But Developers Have Next To Zero Say In Corporate Decisions
"You sold out! Game X is doing the shady microtransaction thing, how COULD you?!"
Well, for starters, how DARE the publisher's CFO make a choice about monetisation without ME, one of the team's seven user interface artists! They must be crazy! Don't they know I'm 2,893rd in the chain of command here?!
The development team and publishing team (and, by extension, the financial team) may be a perfect symbiotic pairing - a creative clownfish and an acuminous anemone working in perfect harmony - but that also means both have agency to work to their respective specialisms. Development teams rarely get much of a say in how their game will be sold, how it'll be marketed, or outwardly depicted (especially when the publisher has placed hundreds of millions of pounds into the project).
Developers develop the product - they don't sell the product.
Why get angry at the dude at Burger King who made your Whopper for how expensive the burgers are? What are the chances he's going to be like, "argh, you caught me, I'm actually the secret millionaire CEO of Burger King, and you're right, the burgers are too expensive AND the chips AREN'T as good as McDonalds'!"?
Glibness aside, games exist to make money. Even if created with some altruistic love of art, they have to sell in order to spread that message to the masses... and to keep all us lovely developers in jobs.
Don't blame us for a legendary character skin costing £10... we just make the damned thing.