It's probably a good game, and I appreciate the way the game makes it clear in the description that it is probably not for me.

You will learn that in this world being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive

isn't really my thing even in a game, so I'm glad they warn about it.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFrankly, this kind of sounds like their buyouts were leveraged from the start

Well yeah, that's how, was far as I know, almost every industry works... On credit.

When I worked in construction, our company owner would joke "The entire industry would freeze if any one actually tried to collect their bills!!"

Even small business do the same. A deli owner friend of mine remarked how he didn't turn a profit for his first 5 years and how that was the average for his industry/region. That's 5 years with everything on credit and even if he did make some profit, the debt is still there.

I'm some cases, paying off debts is considered a waste of money as you get higher yields investing that money vs the savings from paying early (or at all), especially in during our past decade where interest rates were low.

Of course, that can bite people and companies when expected investments fall apart, as it seems to have done here.

Lovely capitalism.

People being irresponsible with finances (and, yes, taking out huge loans that you can't easily repay is irresponsible) is not a feature of capitalism.

Depends what you mean. In the sense that it's a bug rather than a feature, sure. Or, in the sense that it's not "intended", OK.
In the sense that a "feature of X" is something that inevitably goes with it . . . yeah, it's a feature of capitalism.

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Quoting: benstor214

Quoting: Purple Library GuyY'know, so many of these non-modern city builder things are vaguely medieval that it had never even occurred to me--architecture wise, Rome was so much cooler for this kind of thing.

Well, there is Caesar I-III (and Pharaoh/Cleopatra, Zeus/Poseidon) or more recently Nebuchadnezzar… also Builders of Egypt/Greece/China. Lastly the Pharaoh remake “New Era”.
Frankly, I can’t say anything to which is architecturally the most appealing as that is highly subjective.

It's not even a matter of appealing. I think medieval castles are awesome looking.
It's more like, the Roman era had a much stronger government that made various public buildings. Amphitheatres and circuses, dams and aqueducts, public baths . . . none of this stuff had a medieval equivalent. And they're all monumental and impressive. Plus they presumably have in-game functions, making the game more interesting.
Something about the trailer, with its aqueducts carrying water and its hippodromes having races and its circuses showing gladiators murdering each other for public entertainment just drove home that distinction for me.

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Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFrankly, this kind of sounds like their buyouts were leveraged from the start

Well yeah, that's how, was far as I know, almost every industry works... On credit.

Fairly true. I think there's a difference though. It's like a first-order, second-order thing.
I mean, if I start a restaurant, and get credit so I can do the things that will let me serve meals to people and have them give me money which I can hopefully use some of to pay the credit, that's somewhat risky, but there's a direct link from getting the credit to doing the productive activity. On a broader scale, given the rest of the economic setup, if people didn't do that stuff, economic activity wouldn't happen nearly as much. So first-order running on credit is useful (up to a point anyway).

If other people start restaurants and use debt to help finance their operations, and then I take out debt to buy some of those restaurants (along with the debt the restaurants already had), that means I'm stacking new debt on top of the old debt, but not adding any new productive activity. So how am I going to make money from this? Usually, I'll need to do shenanigans. At minimum, cut wages and food quality and stuff, stiffing the workers and the customers. Often, stuff like shift my debt to the restaurants, then make them take on even more debt to give me money, then let them die and leave the creditors holding the bag. Second-order running on credit is not nearly as useful as first-order, and usually downright malignant. This kind of story is very common in the United States, they're even pulling this stuff with hospitals.

It may be that the Embracer Group actually thought that they as the new owners would bring so much additional value to the table that their acquisitions would make enough extra money to make up for the extra debt. Indeed, it may be that the partner got cold feet upon finding out that looting was not the plan and deciding the Embracer Group were naive.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: dpanter'Huge hit' is a substantial understatement, more than 50% of their market value was destroyed in one fell swoop. Consequences arrive quickly when you're hurting.

I understand "partnership that has been negotiated for seven months will not materialize" as there hasn't been (much) actual money lost?

Yeah, but if they're retrenching this hard because of it, it suggests they were hard up before, I suspect deep in debt, and needed this "partnership" to keep on doing their thing. I never really understood what they thought they were doing, why it would be worth spending a whole lot of money to buy a bunch of smaller studios and put them under one umbrella but leave them basically separate; it's not like they were going to have a realistic shot at cornering the gaming market or something. I suppose in theory if you had a centralized marketing unit that marketed the games from all the studios then each of their sales could be higher and they'd be worth more? Whatever it was, presumably the rumoured "partner" that backed out thinks they were overoptimistic.

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Frankly, this kind of sounds like their buyouts were leveraged from the start, they were always going to have to eventually rip/cannibalize value out of the acquisitions to pay the debt, "Private Equity Raider" style, but the reckoning came home a bit earlier than expected.

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Y'know, so many of these non-modern city builder things are vaguely medieval that it had never even occurred to me--architecture wise, Rome was so much cooler for this kind of thing.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: KlaasName change to Exterminator Group incoming?

That should be "Extinguisher Group" of course. :grin: Although I would have expected "Extender Group" before that. Maybe I've missed it.

Blast, beat me to it!

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80Native triple a games are a thing of the past.

Were native triple A games ever really a thing of the present?

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So, seems like someone here might know . . . Where is Waldo?

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