the actual production effort that goes into a modern AAA game title is 100x or 1000x what it was back then
I dispute the premise. I'd agree if you said production budget or maybe minus the term "actual". It implies that no useless effort can come out of monetary incentive. Despite how nice the world would be if all systems utilized merit, the reality is not so. I blame managerialism.
satisfy the investors who aren't gamers themselves
I'd extend this past the simple financial investor. Take any AAA game product. The production leadership is responsible for crafting a solid creative vision of the finished state. They must then take efforts to ensure that every person working under them adheres to this vision, likely splitting up the vision by department to diminish directorial workload on each underling. Each of those underlings then will split up their portion amongst their underlings. Repeat until you get to code monkeys that are completely detached from the project because they have no idea what the creative vision is, so you have a thousand monkeys being expected to construct a forest by working on their little scrap of bark. There's just no skin in the game for any of them. Why should anyone care about the result as long as they get paid?
The complexity of the modern production team process is also a feature that grants immunity from outside criticism. In a team of 3 people, it's not hard to assign blame for mistakes as a consumer. In a team of 3000, it's a herculean task to figure out who to blame for any given mistake as a consumer. Uninformed consumers are more likely to make uninformed purchases, so it becomes a goal of the producer to minimize the information available to a consumer (or to present all relevant information in a manner that is not useful for informing a purchase). To do otherwise is to express confidence in the merit of your product, and we simply don't live in a world with such honest business.
Not to overlook the ideal demographic of people with low impulse control. Those are hugely profitable even outside of microtransactions. Combine with low information for guaranteed sales.
It's also nearly a fact that gamers don't have to be the audience of game producers anymore. The evidence has only become more obvious. Epic pays a big sum of cash for exclusivity based on projected sales (connection to reality not needed). Do people think that's new? Exclusivity deals have been around for a long time. Other deals can exist, like advertising some commercial product in your game. This is without getting into the extremely likely realm of contracts done under the table where special interest representative A pays a few million for their special interest to get pushed in the game somehow, but no one has publicly submitted a notarized confession so it's obviously impossible.
Are microtransactions making up for the gap?
No. No reason to trust any producer representative or journalist saying so. They''ve got a bucketfull of strategies to pursue to make up for the gap already. Microtransactions and seasonal dlc stuff is in the field of rent-seeking to me. The producers believe they deserve a big return on their financial investment. They followed the textbooks and powerpoint slideshows to the letter, so they are now entitled to your money. They're in the business of profits, not the business of making games.
Indies have a different set of problems, such as unironically taking a gamegrumps video as a lesson on game design. But at least indies tend to try to make their games be games instead of just quarterly earnings.
Oh..so you did want your title question answered.
I dispute the premise. I'd agree if you said production budget or maybe minus the term "actual". It implies that no useless effort can come out of monetary incentive. Despite how nice the world would be if all systems utilized merit, the reality is not so. I blame managerialism.
I'd extend this past the simple financial investor. Take any AAA game product. The production leadership is responsible for crafting a solid creative vision of the finished state. They must then take efforts to ensure that every person working under them adheres to this vision, likely splitting up the vision by department to diminish directorial workload on each underling. Each of those underlings then will split up their portion amongst their underlings. Repeat until you get to code monkeys that are completely detached from the project because they have no idea what the creative vision is, so you have a thousand monkeys being expected to construct a forest by working on their little scrap of bark. There's just no skin in the game for any of them. Why should anyone care about the result as long as they get paid?
The complexity of the modern production team process is also a feature that grants immunity from outside criticism. In a team of 3 people, it's not hard to assign blame for mistakes as a consumer. In a team of 3000, it's a herculean task to figure out who to blame for any given mistake as a consumer. Uninformed consumers are more likely to make uninformed purchases, so it becomes a goal of the producer to minimize the information available to a consumer (or to present all relevant information in a manner that is not useful for informing a purchase). To do otherwise is to express confidence in the merit of your product, and we simply don't live in a world with such honest business.
Not to overlook the ideal demographic of people with low impulse control. Those are hugely profitable even outside of microtransactions. Combine with low information for guaranteed sales.
It's also nearly a fact that gamers don't have to be the audience of game producers anymore. The evidence has only become more obvious. Epic pays a big sum of cash for exclusivity based on projected sales (connection to reality not needed). Do people think that's new? Exclusivity deals have been around for a long time. Other deals can exist, like advertising some commercial product in your game. This is without getting into the extremely likely realm of contracts done under the table where special interest representative A pays a few million for their special interest to get pushed in the game somehow, but no one has publicly submitted a notarized confession so it's obviously impossible.
No. No reason to trust any producer representative or journalist saying so. They''ve got a bucketfull of strategies to pursue to make up for the gap already. Microtransactions and seasonal dlc stuff is in the field of rent-seeking to me. The producers believe they deserve a big return on their financial investment. They followed the textbooks and powerpoint slideshows to the letter, so they are now entitled to your money. They're in the business of profits, not the business of making games.
Indies have a different set of problems, such as unironically taking a gamegrumps video as a lesson on game design. But at least indies tend to try to make their games be games instead of just quarterly earnings.