If you read my first post you'll see that he doesn't write for casuals.

Example.

But let us take this idea further. With books, we know there are tons of ‘literature’ and elitist type books where the author is attempting to create ‘art’. However, the best sellers are made for ‘casuals’ and lack ’serious’ literary writing. From the elitist view, these best sellers are ‘dumbed down’ for people. From the consumer’s point of view, they just want a good story to perform a job such as something to occupy them while riding a plane or on a beach. They have nothing against the ‘literary’ books except the prose is so thick, and so many obstacles of the author trying to use countless ’symbols’, that the story is difficult to get at.

Broken down:

But let us take this idea further.

1. Unecessary, a casual reader doesn't read articles with fluff.
2. What is with all this "us"?
   

With books, we know there are tons of ‘literature’ and elitist type books where the author is attempting to create ‘art’.

1. We know? If we know, then why are you telling us. 
2. "With books... there are books." Redundant, improper use of preposition. 
3. "...the author attempting to create ‘art’." Who is he to assume what an author is trying to accomplish?  Who is he to decide which is art or 'art'?
   

However, the best sellers are made for ‘casuals’ and lack ’serious’ literary writing.

1. Why are casuals and serious in quotes? Is he quoting somebody?  Is it a title of a piece that isn't divided into chapters or acts? Are they hypothetical?  As far as I can tell the words are being used exactly as they are meant to be.
2. We are discussing writing of books, not the making of.
3. The conjunction of "are made for 'casuals' and lack 'serious' literary writing" is very unclear.
   

From the elitist view, these best sellers are ‘dumbed down’ for people.

1. Who are these elitists?  Popular and lay writing have a very particular purpose.  Any rational writer I've met (which I have, met writers) understands the need for clarity and succinctness when informing or entertaining people of average reading ability.
2. He keeps mentioning bestsellers, and reiterating his main point with out providing any evidence.  Who are these elitists? What do they say? What are some examples of bestsellers that are dumbed down?
   
3. The books are dumbed down. The books are not "dumbed down".  And for god's sake, use the proper quotation mark.
   

From the consumer’s point of view, they just want a good story to perform a job such as something to occupy them while riding a plane or on a beach.

1. Exactly my point, if he is writing for casuals then he is not a doing a very good job because it is too long, too redundant, and too unclear.
2. The sentence is too wordy.  A casual reader just wants a book to occupy there time...
   

They have nothing against the ‘literary’ books except the prose is so thick, and so many obstacles of the author trying to use countless ’symbols’, that the story is difficult to get at.

1. "Nothing except" is a double negative and shows that the writer hasn't thought out his thesis and doesn't know how to proof read.  Double negatives are not very clear to inexperienced or casual readers.
2. He uses bad grammar.  He uses big words.  He uses odd sentence structure.
3. My version: "'Academic, high brow, and advanced books are too wordy, too abstract for people to enjoy for light reading.
4. Consumers? I think he means readers.
   
5. This sentence is condescending to those readers he trying to defend.

Why should I take this guy seriously?  He can't clearly explain his point.  He misuses the tools which are the tools he is trying to explain.

He is happy he writes for casuals?  I can't imagine a single casual gamer or reader reading through 3400 poorly written words on the video game industry.

His writing is not casual, it is bad.  He is trying to sound intelligent by using odd sentence structure, fancy language ("story to perform a job"), and ten dollar words (ex: consumers, prose, obstacles, elitist). 

John Grisham and Tom Clancy are casual, they are fantastic.  This guy's writing comes off as arrogant and unrefined.

(Edit: I am not a casual writer, I write dense texts about US-Iranian politics.  I already know that my writing comes off as elitist.  It works for what I do.)

(Edit2: Shakespear wrote for everyone, but he did not make it accessible, easy, or dumbed down.  Shakespear also used proper english for his time period and vernacualar when appropriate, as do today's popular writers.)

Just to clear up a misunderstanding, my point isn't that his point is right or wrong. My point is that he is a bad writer and should not be read.

He didn't say "small tutorials", he said "tutorials".  He didn't specify a length.  I mean, this isn't the only Nintendo game that's had a tutorial, just one way to point out a flaw in his system.

I actually agree with steven787 in that Malstrom is not a really great writer, and the things he tries to tell could be conveyed in a better way. On the other hand, he is writing about a very specific subject, from a very specific angle, so certain choices of words come from that background. For example, "story to perform a job" is a direct consequence of writing from the viewpoint that we buy things to accomplish certain other things, which have been labeled 'jobs'. I suspect not by him, but by Christensen or some other business author before him.

Still, I usually enjoy reading his articles and I don't agree with steven878 in that he should not be read. I place more value in the ideas behind the text than the text itself, simply because I believe that new ideas are much harder to come by than properly written articles. I have not read anybody writing about the video game market from the same angle as Malstrom, and perhaps even more shockingly, the difficulty is to find any worthwhile reading about video gaming business strategy. If anybody has good links to articles or knows books, I'd be very happy to hear them.

1. As far as "casuals" and "everyone" goes he's using them hand in hand - if Shakespeare wrote for everyone then he wrote for casuals. English is rule governed but for the purposes of information something understood is priceless compared to proper grammar. We can't argue (as much as I'd love to) for the mass because this text isn't on the market for the mass to decide.

However what he is saying holds enough water to be considered information.
A hard example of this would be in comparing: "The Dechronization of Sam Magruder" by (out of the many authors) George Gaylord Simpson (GGS) who writes many academic books which usually sell as expected though his numbers would pale to any book out of "Lord of the Rings" collection, of course written by J.R.R. Tolken but even his numbers when you take time into consideration pale compared to any Harry Potter (I want to include the author but I don't want to come off as being full of myself.)

By the by all of these books are of the same genre, the only difference is cost and release date. But all those books I believe (not including the collection just a single book of that collection) would be below $30 USD.

GGS writes very well however it's clear that he is aiming for a different audience from Tolken, that audience is much more niche - the consumer reacted properly and so he sold what he sold. Tolken's wordiness and the length of his breath made his books a chore - but compared the GGS his book is almost a cake walk, as you move into his writing you can understand the world your in and the nouns don't seem as abstract. Harry Potter places you in Harry's shoes and your on a pretty linear path of adventure and suspense.

The more you read a Harry Potter book the more obvious the writing similarities are with it and a Lord of the Rings the key difference is the ammount of each element that makes the story.

2. Your using words like refined and arrogant; when your talking about someones expression as not being refined then your saying that whoever appreciates his writing is unrefined as well as a person like yourself who is refined (not making a personal jot just making a point) can see right through him and point out where he needs to correct himself to appeal to that person (in this case yourself.) That is exactly what he is talking about with Hardcore versus Casual.

3. Like I said if you take into context everything this man has in his own little world - it makes total sense, he already notes that his news articles are very 'meh' as far as quality in the writing but tries to make up for it in the major articles as he spends more time on those. As far as Blue Ocean goes he's doing what he set out to do; Malstrom is about making money not teaching people who go to his site how to read or giving them the best english the internet can offer.

4. You've already addmited to being a writer who specializes in elitist texts I'm not certain if that was a disclaimer but as he's saying in all his examples and ironically in this artical that what your saying comes naturally. I don't dare claim I understand why - I'm not studied on that kind of stuff nor do I want to be - no interest you see.

The whole thing is funny really when you look back at our chat.

5. I'm actually worried now about my punctuation/spelling/grammar when I'm typing here. Your responses seem to nitpick at very specific idiums and make an arguement around it. Knowing myself I'll stay here all night and argue each one.

Kirby Time!!!!!! (>-.-)^ (>-.-)>

I'm not saying he's a great writer by the way - I'm saying his writing empahizes his points while exercising it as well.

By the way you ever notice that unlike N4G or IGN and very similar to VGC that malstrom doesn't advertise his sties? As this site's motto goes: Content is King, Malstrom follows context to if ou read the entire thing you'd understand where he's coming from and the point of all his articles.

@dib8rman

I feel like you expressed much of what I would wanted to say, but couldn't find the proper way so I just gave up and left those things out.

I really find amusing when they attact Malstrom in content but NOT in context. He wites in this distintic way with a log post to try to make other understand the context but there are people that can't really see it. Attack his writting, his content and not the context is what many might say "lack of reading comprehension" (if you feel offended then you know it's true in your case, deal with it).

Malstrom is what you can say an "average writer", as such, he commits many of the sins of article writting, if not all of them. I really don't care for that for the internet is full of bad writters that work as game journalists, game analysts, and game reviewers. In form and content I agree with you in the many flaws in his articles, abd because of these flaws, people tend to missunderstand him a lot. Quoting him directly wi end up shooting yourself in the foot in most cases, for there may not be enough arguements to prove it.

His writings can seem too apocalyptic, and 90% of the counter arguements are sales of games like GTAVI, MGS4, Halo 3, etc... He's not addressing that these games are a failure in the context of bad game, bad sells, but they fail in inviting new players to join. If you don't invite former gamers of new gamers, you will fail when other companies do it and overcome you in sales in the future. Metal Gear Solid 4 suffers from this kind of failure, because it's more natural for a fan of the series that played the previous installments that a new gamer that when he starts to see the story going deep I'm pretty sure three words will come to his mind (W-T-F) and the background is too long for most of the new gamers. In this aspect MGS4 fails....On Nintendo's side, there are two games that suffered as well: Fire Emblem and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, both are complicated for a new gamer (yes, even with Wii controls). TP didn't sell well in Japan....This is why Miyamoto called TP the last Zelda of the kind we know about, being Phantom Houglass the first sign of change... Nintendo is taking action with their own franchises, in order to invite new players and get more sales.

About the flags, again he's not saying that the games that have these are bad, he's saying that these can be a sign of failure in sales to a new audience.

The tutorial is the first flaw, if you keep it to a minimum and use it at the first part of the game step by step without making the player feel overwhelmed, then it's ok (Diablo 3 will keep it to a minimum because their aim is "you use a mouse, you can play diablo"). But if you need an introductory level of a tutorial area, only the hardore will endure this while the new and former gamer will see it as too complicated and won't get the game.

Cinematics are the next flaw to cater new gamers. New and fomer gamers want to play the game more than watching the cutscenes. If it has too much will be like they paid for a movie instead of a game and would want their money back. If the cutcenes are short and preferably interactive and give the player more freedom in game (gameplay time>>>>>> cutscene time) then more gamers would want to join in.

Text: Same as cinematics, new players like to play the game more than reading texts

Fun from minute 1: I do not need to explain this.

Malstrom shows the evidence in our faces that most titles are supported by the hardcore ONLY. The problem is that the hardcore of today can become the former gamer tomorrow (jobs, family, etc.), if they don't invite the new gamers, the numbers will decrease and the franchise dies.

I suggest you to read the old malstrom articles :

http://thewiikly.zogdog.com/author.php?author=8

The Theory of Cycles is one of the best.

Here an articles by Scott Anthony write in 2006 before the Wii release:

http://www.innosight.com/innovation_resources/insight.html?id=246

Also I suggest you to read Nintendo managers speech/interviews. They always know about disruption.

This is a Reggie speech from 2005:

http://cube.ign.com/articles/664/664495p1.html

A Reggie article on Brandweek from 2006:

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/magazine/features/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995536

"Disrupt before you are disrupted"

I thought the article was great. I think his argument in this article applies to any art form or any business or any entertainment. Yeah, you can come up with an exception for any rule, but that doesn't mean tutorials or cinematics or text are fun. They're really not. When a game full of those flaws succeeds, it's not due to those features, but in spite of them.