This site has been a bafflement to the “Game Industry”. Since there is a PR war going on among companies over the Internet, they don’t know what to make of Malstrom. Is he a rampant Nintendo fan as has been accused? Or is he read because he is a ‘Nintendo seer’ to explain what Nintendo does next? The reason why they want to know is because this little site has become very effective, and they don’t like that. They want to know why people read so they can drive a wedge between this site and its readers. This site is hurting many of their ‘marketing campaigns’.

Good.

For too long, the word “industry” has replaced the word “gaming”. It is no longer about growth of gaming or gamers that matters. It is about the growth of the “industry”. This shift is leading game companies to look at customers not as their masters but as their prey.

The problem with gaming is the industry itself. It is time for the industry to be dismantled and destroyed. It is the ‘industry’ that is holding gaming back.

This has puzzled my critics. From their experience, everyone fits the mold of either being a ‘fanboy’ masquerading as something else. If anyone said anything negative about the “game industry”, it was because they were old and didn’t understand gaming like a mother (or someone who profits from demonizing the “game industry” like Jack Thompson). But there really hasn’t been much criticism of the “Game Industry” for the love of gaming.

Most people write about gaming on the Internet because they are a fan of a game or a game company or it is because they wish to get into the “game industry” as many of young males wish to get in. Game developers are used to be treated as ’stars’ by these young males. The idea that someone who loves gaming has no desire to get into the “game industry” but only wishes its demise is indeed puzzling and new to them.

The reason why this site keeps growing in popularity and is often quoted has very little to do with me. It has everything to do with the increased realization from gamers that the “Game Industry” is becoming less and less about gaming and to be more and more about generating revenue.

Recently, when the issue of digital distribution came up, gamers were very vocal against it that shocked developers. They are used to being ‘worshiped’, to be ‘listened to’, not to have gamers become combative and confrontational with them. Some of these developers trotted out old phrases such as “but digital distribution would mean more money for developers and more money for game development. That can only be a good thing, right?” These types of lines might have worked in the past, but they certainly didn’t work this time. Gamers are becoming aware that they are being used. They are realizing that the gamer is no longer the center of the Game Universe, only the revenue is.

Putting the revenue in the center instead of the customer is not a new thing for the “Game Industry”. However, this has been masked by the “Game Industry” saying, “We are a business. We must make money. And this money can mean only good thing for games and developers.” They talk of developers as if they are living in their parent’s garage making games struggling to get by (as was the case in 1983) but now many are making some significant money. “Not as much money as if I worked in Hollywood,” they sneer. I try to point out to them, “Do you know how much money a successful writer makes? If you knew, you would cry.” Then they mention something like ‘Harry Potter’, and I have to point out that such money isn’t generated so much by the writing but by the licensing. The book industry is a very different beast than the ‘developers’ of books (i.e. the writers).

In other entertainment mediums, they have been completely destroyed. Poetry, which was printed and cited commonly in magazines and books up to the fifties and sixties and brought us names like Robert Frost, has been completely and utterly destroyed in America.

The “Game Industry” did successfully destroy gaming once before in the early 1980s. Gaming that occurred in arcades or on the rise of PCs were coming from kids who grew up and created the corner stones of the ‘industry’ today. There were also game companies from Japan as we all know. So the notion that an ‘industry’ cannot destroy its medium is simply false.

Originally, I made this site and little writings because I wanted to learn more about business. I wished I could go back in time to see how the NES exploded the market when it came out. With the Wii, it was like a front row seat to watching some business magic occur. And I have learned much. But one of the consequences has been that what is proper business is not what the “Game Industry” has been saying all along.

The “Game Industry”, including publishers and developers, would get angry gamers to shut up by saying how they had to do (whatever it is that was pissing their customers off) because of business reasons. Now, more gamers are becoming more business aware and are challenging them. This is shocking to them. And they don’t know how to respond. Maybe they can’t.

How can they respond to complaints over digital distribution when someone brings up the “First Right Sale Doctrine”? Gamers aren’t supposed to know that! Who told them that? Gamers are supposed to sit there and do what the “Game Industry” tells them to!

How can they respond to complaints about rising prices when gamers chart out the true costs for games? Since when did gamers know so much math and financing? The “Game Industry” is completely baffled.

There is a growing wave of anti-industry sentiment out there. This website’s growing popularity is not because of me or any specific thing I said but because it is an anti-industry site which is riding a growing wave. If sites took an anti-industry stance, they, too, would start to grow.

How strong is the anti-industry stance? Even Blizzard is affected. As Blizzard cuts out LAN from Starcraft 2, and attempts to get customers to buy the game three times, serious frustration and objections are being raised. An anti-Blizzard wave is growing only because Blizzard seems more interested in “industry” and “revenue” rather than “gaming” and “customers”. They did not used to be that way.

Readers understood, even though the marketers didn’t, that the strong Nintendo backing on this site was due to Nintendo going against the “Game Industry” and acting (as was perceived) as a weapon to dismantle it. I don’t want Nintendo to save the “Game Industry”. I want Nintendo to destroy it.

Let’s look at some of the ways gamers have become ‘prey’ and are no longer ‘masters’ of whom game companies serve:

-Costs are ballooning. $600-$400 for launch game consoles. $60+ for new games. Endless ‘limited edition’ packages that are filled with garbage.

-Constant Used-Market Games witch hunts. Any thing that might reduce a company’s revenue in any way has to be evil. Billions are not enough for these companies. They demand gazillions.

-The move to lease games, not to sell them. This is what ‘digital distribution’ is all about. The customer will no longer be allowed to return a game, to give it to a friend, to sell the game, or to have any control of the product whatsoever. Amazon revealed this future when they removed 1984 from Kindle readers without the customers’ permission or knowledge.

-Developers acting like it is all about them. They believe their ‘vision’ is what makes games great. The vision from the customers’ side is not given any weight. So when their game flops, they attack the customers. Why attack customers when the product wasn’t designed for them in the first place?

-Game journalists who are begging to be hired at a ‘game company’ and apparently have no interest in what they do. The ‘game reviews’ that are nothing more than a ‘game advertisement’. The constant quoting of analysts. Why are they quoted anyway? Gamers don’t want to buy stock.

-Analysts who also think it is about themselves. Analysts make money from the “Game Industry”, but they do not make money from gaming. Talking to reporters is not their job. So why the hell are they consistently doing it?

-Endless hype. It is common for a game to live longer in hype than it does when in customers’ hands. Gamers are sick of games hyped to be something marvelous, but they end up being a turkey.

-Lack of imagination. The variety of gaming keeps decreasing, not increasing. Every game now seems like something else.

-It is not just that the magic of gaming is gone. It is that the “Game Industry” doesn’t care to pursue ‘magic’ in their games. It is all about the short term revenue, not about making classics.

-On the other side of the extreme, it is the desire to make a game into ‘art’. How strange it is that ‘games as art’ always translates to doing whatever the developer wants to do!

-Viral messengers, posing as ‘gamers’, are polluting message forums and comments from various websites in the shape to ‘change public opinion’. Anyone who deserves a place in Dante’s Inferno would be computer virus makers and viral marketers posing as regular people. I want viral messengers *gone*.

While there are more examples than these, it shows why I want the “Game Industry” to die, and why it deserves to die. I knew some of the original game developers. They were overjoyed that they could be making games for a living instead of having to get a “real job”. Today, young people are being attracted to the “Game Industry” purely because they want to make the games they want to play or so they can become the next ‘Miyamoto’. These are all the wrong reasons. Because of the flooding of young people wanting to get in (all for the wrong reasons), wages and job security are low in the “Game Industry” since developers can easily be replaced with a young person willing to work for nothing. This would not occur if game developers weren’t worshiped and described that the genius of their game came from “their vision”. The ‘Game God’ is harming gaming. [When I criticize legends like Miyamoto and all, it is not because I do not like them. Miyamoto is fabulous. My criticism has the purpose to turn the focus of a game’s success away from the developer and more on the customer. Young game developers should study the customers instead of the developers.)

Here is the business strategy I think is appropriate and most profitable for all game companies: make games that sell forever. In other words, make classics. If your game sells forever, you are always getting revenue. You have increased job security due to your game selling forever. You also will be allowed to make more experimental titles since you have a solid financial base to work from. Games could be spent more time on, to be made true classics, as Blizzard and Nintendo do. Gamers want this. Many game developers probably want this too. But publishers in their infinite wisdom think they know about the business of gaming. Well, Mr. Smartypants, the business of gaming is the business of the customer.

Aside from gamer related problems the “Game Industry” presents, it presents many problems for developers and, worse, future developers. With the way the “Game Industry” is currently constituted, how is a new developer supposed to make a game? They can’t make a game on the PS3 or Xbox 360, it is too expensive. Digital distribution is an extremely limited pool of users. Effectively, the next generation of developers are being screwed over by the current generation. Even if a ‘digital distributed’ game is put out and finds users, it will be co-opted by larger companies (such as DOTA and Stardock’s ‘Demi-gods).

With the declining number of gamers, it is clear that the “Game Industry” would rather preserve the ‘industry’ at the expense of gaming. This is why the “Game Industry” needs to be dismantled and creatively destroyed.

For decades, we have heard a voice from the “Game Industry” say that their game is going to revolutionize this or that a company is going to revolutionize a new business model. Oh, why doesn’t the “Game Industry” revolutionize itself? That would solve all problems.