@gamingkoala: Yeah, it is weird. You'd think that a) they'd have the money and b) as the old movie says, if they build it, they will come, as it were.

@gamingkoala: Not sure, as there doesn't seem to be a WWE one, but there is the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Waterloo Iowa, The Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in Witchita Falls, Texas and the International Professional Wrestling Hall of fame in Albany, NY.

That's a lot of halls of fame.

@Sushiglutton: Ha, yes. Wait until it's 423% off, like usual. :)

@feryl06: why indeed! Dude was born to play James Bond.

Great read, Phil. Thanks.

It's too bad that the economics of the time just can't get over chasing whatever is growing at the fastest rate. Gaming, now AI, it'll be something else later on. Even before, it was lending and real estate notes. That turned out rather badly.

No one on Wall Street wants sustainability. They want their piece of the flashy, right now pie until it can't grow anymore. Then it crashes and they go look for the next shiny thing.

@illegal_peanut: While I hate games as a service and want them to go away...

The problem with comparing now to the good old days when things started with single player games is that games today are, for the most part a) WAAAAY more expensive to make and b) WAAAAY cheaper to buy (when you figure inflation). I remember playing 40, 50 1980's dollars for infocom TEXT games. Adjusted for inflation, that's 143 of today's dollars. For a text game! Now, we're paying 60, 70 2024 dollars (unless it's a discount) for a game that costs nine figures to make. And we had a collective fit about going to 70 dollars.

In Ye Olde Tymes, we were paying a lot of money for a cheap product. Now, we're paying relatively little money for an expensive product. Therein lies the problem.

@illegal_peanut: I hear you, but I don't think long DLCs are bad. Micros? Bad. Very bad. But something long is basically a semi sequel. I'm playing Phantom Liberty right now, and the amount of good new content is more than worth it (plus, couldn't really be a sequel). It's like buying a sequel. If you didn't like the base game, fine, don't buy, if you did, do.

What's so damn awful about micros in sports games isn't that they add new content, it's that you need them to actually win (consistently). You could finish Cyberpunk quite cheerily without buying Phantom Liberty. Sports game? Sure, you technically can play them. Single player is doable. But good luck going head to head with someone who's spend a fortune if you haven't spent a dime.

That's the real offensive part.

@boobytrap: Yup. Happens in every industry. Companies chase the shiny new thing only to realize that it's either a fad, there isn't a huge market for it or both, and, by the time reality sinks in, ordinary people get screwed.

@RSM-HQ: That's what I was thinking. Publishers overdid it on planning live service, and now the workers pay the price. There was no way the industry was going to support all the live service they were chasing.

@Sushiglutton: The internet? Wait patiently? Surely you jest.