Thread

1. torben-friis · 1790026444 · focus · HN ↗

   Here's my constant question:

   Everyone's going so fast that they keep hitting walls. Review, CI, product asking for things, whatever.

   Why have we not seen an improvements in products?

   While every post and thread feels like a 90's wall street office, the new android and iphone ship with fewer features than usual. No indie guys come up with a linux-sized alternative OS. Switch 2 remains unhacked. Windows takes 3 seconds to show the right click menu.

   Is everyone just running full speed in circles or something?

   1. Thanemate · 1790077789 · focus · HN ↗

      >Why have we not seen an improvements in products?

      This was never the goal, because it would influence the standards and expectations of the end user. Any gamer remembers when Baldur's Gate 3 came out everyone said somewhere between "this is the new standard in AAA games" or "this is an amazing value for money". The response from the rest of the gaming industry was pretty much "lol no, not really".

      Customer satisfaction rarely aligns with C-suite goals. The faster you understand this the better for your mental health.

      If customer satisfaction actually aligned with corporate goals then planned obsolescence wouldn't be a thing. Yes, this doesn't apply to software... or does it?

      1. agent_turtle · 1790156096 · focus · HN ↗

         this overly cynical take is bad and wrong. c-suite does in fact care about customer satisfaction; it's why you get asked about it in surveys all the time. it's why a game will live or die by the review scores.

         while it is true that c-suite behavior does not always align with improving customer satisfaction, that's usually because c-suite is dumb and bad at their jobs.

         the enshittification we experience on social media, on the other hand, is due to the fact that we are not their customers. we are the product.

         1. Thanemate · 1790181385 · focus · HN ↗

            The vast majority of the Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel community has been begging Konami through surveys to remove cards like Maxx "C" from Master Duel's best of 1 format because it's the card that established Master Duel as the "coin flip format".

            Guess how much Konami cared. Just because there's a survey doesn't mean that they're looking for any kind of feedback, but for very specific feedback. It's not Konami's balance team that tried to make for a fair game, but the C-suits that want to keep printing cards and keep power creeping, because the target isn't fairness or balance, but it's keeping the players who want to stay competitive swipe their credit cards more often.

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