so many of the current corporate layoffs and struggles and places going under are literally because they saw a huge spike in profits from the pandemic and had no real choice not to then have to make year-on-year profits that topped that even if everyone in the company knew it wouldn't last (as was obvious -- people can only buy so much stuff until mostly sated, even if the lockdown never ended).

but because they decided to shackle themselves to shareholders -- and because shareholders (especially big things like Vanguard) would pull out, in a very real way the companies basically are streamlined to failure. Because if they didn't perform, many of them would likely just be starved.

and every few weeks I just think about this, and how it was both inevitable and, largely, unpreventable. Whole system's sick.

There's no law that you have to privilege shareholders, but there might as well be at that scale.

it's like how having a bank account that's shared forces your org to be an NGO which then forces it to behave in ways that turn it into An NGO In Deed As Well As Word (Pejorative)

anyway this is part of why anything going IPO is usually a death blow to anything good, unless it already was so big that it had staying-power. Though that didn't really help google.

thinking about how the last 20 years have been, largely, about "optimizing" all the slack out of systems such that tiny, often predictable problems are made into black swans because there's no buffer. For very little benefit unless you're an executive or shareholder.

thinking about how megacorps rely on making so much more year on year for detached, uncaring shareholders such that as time goes on they can't afford not to appease the right wing of any given country.

what a well-oiled machine.

thinking about how the game industry is sort of disincentivized to learn any business lessons that aren't "game sell good because superstitious reasons" and "game sell bad because superstitious reasons"

having accidentally taken advantage of the increasing suburbanization of the world and a decline of public space and physical third spaces from 2000-present in the US, they have a captive audience in gamers who are partially there for a complex mix of social pressure and network effect.

who will buy any game made under any working conditions as long as you manage to get brand loyalty with the part of the social group that is at most 10% of it but has the most free time to play and evangelize

and you'll pretty much always have those things if you aim at 16-21 year old

so the core audience is people who probably haven't done any creative work or had to pay their own rent, who will always buy your game even if it's bad, and they'll complain and then come right back

idk how to change that, but basically the metrics are worse than meaningless and it's entirely possible neither group realizes they're holding each other back by not demanding something sustainable

see also "15 hours? for a 60$ video game???" being a common comment on games with a 3 person team