Originally Posted by
IntercourseByForce
I'm guessing that GREE produces quarterly earnings reports for its shareholders, and that the CEO's pay is tied to these reports. As long as he exceeds the numbers from last quarter, his pay continues to increase. If he fails, his income takes a hit. As a result, upper, middle, and lower management are not being paid to solve problems or make improvements. They're there to get the numbers up. By any means necessary. In a strange way, it's almost as if they're playing the exact same game that we are. (But with real money and real consequences). And while even a high school dropout could see that these changes are destroying opportunities for long term (which, for this game, I mean 6 months to a year or more) profitability, the position management has likely been put in prevents them from considering anything but the numbers at the end of this quarter. "Are they higher than last quarter?" "Yes?" "Great job! BTW remember that you're lucky to have a job!" "No?" "You're FIRED. Get out." Once it becomes clear that enough players have left such that the game can no longer increase its margins (probably at the end of this or next cycle), it will be purged and the process will repeat indefinitely for every other GREE game until the shareholders decide that GREE itself can no longer be the profit machine they want and decide to declare bankruptcy.
They've also likely started using a two-tier salary system for lower and middle managers as well as developers, where they pay new hires with the same amount of experience 25-40% less than the developers they're replacing. Programming is an incredibly meritocratic field, and so you absolutely cannot succeed with such a system in a company relying on developers for its digital production, as only the worst or least experienced developers will take a salary 25-40% less for doing the same work. Every compitent developer probably left a long time ago for a more competitive salary or to do work that actually makes their users happy. After all, who wants to be forced to make a crap product for stagnating wages if they can go somewhere else and do something more meaningful for more money?
TL;DR this game will fail because GREE does not care about the welfare of its most important stakeholders: the employees and the players. It is designed to only care about the welfare of its most influential stakeholders: the shareholders. Sadly, this problem is not unique to GREE.