Fifth post - Synthesis of what has been learned about the reserch topic

 The Video game industry is heading straight into a crisis from which it will not recover. For the past decade and a half, budgets for big video game projects have been increasing at an alarming pace. Mostly from executives and investors prioritizing higher profit margins. This leads to a negative feedback loop. In which companies push for bigger games, that requires immense team sizes and development times to complete. Which in turn drives up the budgets. Higher budgets means that the project needs to generate more money just to brake even, So the acceptable profit margins become more ludicrous in turn. Leading to the increasingly more common sight of these projects not meeting “expectations” and people being laid off.

Fourth post - Working position

 I believe this to be  a meaningful topic for two reasons. Firstly, as an issue that plagues the entire industry, it affects people’s livelihoods. I believe it is important to bring awareness to the hundreds of workers who are affected when one of these projects with an over inflated project fails. Secondly, Video games are an important part of my life. This topic and the current direction in which the industry as a whole is headed is one I would like to see corrected.

Third post - Format Ideas

 I intend to present my final project as a digital unbiased piece that examines the causes and consequences of the trend of inflated development budgets in modern video game projects. This format suits my message and audience well. As video game consumers are an audience that is well versed in digital media such as video sites, online forums, blogs and online (gaming) news/reviews sites. By using this familiar, yet unbiased format, I believe that I can communicate my message to an audience that is seeking information about this topic effectively. 

Second post - Intended audience

 I intend for video game consumers to be my targeted audience for the project. A sizable percentage of the consumer base is fully or at least partially ignorant of this crisis. I believe that educating them about it is a major step to improve the current state of the industry. It is evident to most consumers that retail prices for games and related services have been on the rise for the past decade. Yet many assume it is due to executive greed solely and are not aware of all the underlying issues that created the crisis. 

I believe that a good way to connect with my audience would be to appeal to their wallets. Since they already understand that games are more expensive, appealing to them by warning that price increase trends will continue as long as the crisis is unresolved seems like a good idea. The AI was specially helpful in making me realize this path of connection.

FIrst post: topic and overal purpose of the blog

This blog and all subsequent posts will be related to the current trend of overblown modern video game budgets. As I stated in the description, the main purpose of this blog will be to serve as a sort of archive or journal for my research. Specifically, to document my findings about the topic and so forth. With that said, I will end this first post with an explanation as to how I first settled on the topic:

From the start, I knew that I wanted to talk about how games were made from the beginning. Throughout my time in the class however, I started narrowing down the specifics of what I wanted to talk about with this topic. I decided to talk specifically about the causes behind the recent industry trend of project budgets being overly inflated and the consequences this has on the industry as a whole. Video games are an important part of my life. This topic and the current direction in which the industry as a whole is headed is one, I would like to see corrected.