I’m not saying business majors shouldn’t be involved at all, they just shouldn’t be making major game design decisions that the people who have a passion for making a great game disagree with.
It all comes down to the main motivation for doing the work. If the passion guiding the overall operation is about making a great x, then IMO it is much more likely to succeed than if the passion is about making money from making x.
When it’s a large company involved, that can be mitigated by finding people who are passionate about the x instead of just the money, but all the orders of “do it this less fun way because it will make us more money” can kill that passion over time or even just cancel out the positive effect that passion had on the game.
I’m reminded of the guy who busted his balls trying to get Fallout 1 to be a thing when Interplay had no faith in it, only to be “rewarded” by being overly worked and underpaid to rush out a sequel…
And the release parties for Tomb Raider that the devs literally weren’t invited to, just suits and press people acting like they were the ones who made the game.
I’m not saying business majors shouldn’t be involved at all, they just shouldn’t be making major game design decisions that the people who have a passion for making a great game disagree with.
It all comes down to the main motivation for doing the work. If the passion guiding the overall operation is about making a great x, then IMO it is much more likely to succeed than if the passion is about making money from making x.
When it’s a large company involved, that can be mitigated by finding people who are passionate about the x instead of just the money, but all the orders of “do it this less fun way because it will make us more money” can kill that passion over time or even just cancel out the positive effect that passion had on the game.
I’m reminded of the guy who busted his balls trying to get Fallout 1 to be a thing when Interplay had no faith in it, only to be “rewarded” by being overly worked and underpaid to rush out a sequel…
And the release parties for Tomb Raider that the devs literally weren’t invited to, just suits and press people acting like they were the ones who made the game.