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Forums - Gaming - Against the Industry (Malstrom)

mrstickball on 17 September 2009
Khuutra said:
mrstickball said:
Khuutra -

Less financial incentives for 3rd party developers means less games for me to buy.
Excessive profits on hardware mean the system is more expensive than it should be to buy.

So unless you think that buying something is overpriced with less games isn't a negative for consumers, I think your wrong. Admittedly, such arguments may not prove correct for all consumers, but they are still negatives.

Goodness.

Moneyhatting is not something that necessarily benefits consumers. Lack thereof is not something that harms consumers: the fact that extra incentives have to be leveraged in order to bring third parties to make certain projects on the PS360 speaks as to one of the worse states of the industry.

Profits on hardware are not harmful to consumers. Nintendo has set a value proposition. Over fifty million people have accepted it. That is all there is.

The fact that Nintendo does not meet your value propositions does not mean that they are trying to screw over consumers, much less that "they've done it better than any other company"

I never said they were intentionally attempting to screw consumers over. Just that they are better at it than other companies. Better doesn't have to correlate with being meaner, and more abusive with their stance. I apologize if I worded it incorrectly. I'm not trying to say Nintendo is an evil gaming company, just that the things they've done have been ruthlessly efficient in the gaming market. When companies try to stay in the black, Nintendo is looking to earn even greater profits. In some situations, I think it's hurt the consumer (especially with hardware pricing). But again, it may be a nessicary evil on their behalf - Afterall, if they didn't have these profits, they would cease to be a game manufacturer, and we'd never enjoy their forthcoming great games.

The same argument could apply to Apple, as they seem to have a very similar model of ruthless vertical integration. In some cases, it's been fantastic as they've done things that no other company has, yet some may view it as being harmful in other ways.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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Slimebeast on 17 September 2009
MontanaHatchet said:
For one thing, his site isn't very big at all. If he's bragging about site growth, he better hope that no one actually bothers to look up any facts. Second off, is he really complaining that the game industry is called the game industry? It's the same as the film industry or music industry. It's a series of companies competing with each other for consumer interest, hence, an industry. Yes, they do care about profits. That's why they compete for our dollar. We give them money. It's not like they started caring about money and then decided that the people giving them money didn't give them money. Small internet followings about the lack of LAN in Starcraft 2 and his really low traffic rank aren't evidence of much. And it seems to me that the gaming population is growing, not shrinking. Frankly, I don't want the destruction of the game industry. Sure, it's not perfect, but it provides lots of enjoyment to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and it's growing all the time. And since it's still a fairly young medium, there's tons of room for growth. Thousands of people have jobs in the gaming industry, and a lot of money is generated because of gaming. I'm sure this was a nice read, but a lot of the things he said were just terrible.

I couldn't have said it better. I agree with every word.

I'll just add that like most industries, the gaming industry's products in principle just reflect what the consumers demand. The industry is (roughly) as good as the consumers deserve. There's nothing magical about 'the gaming industry' compared to other consumer product industries.



Khuutra on 17 September 2009
mrstickball said:

I never said they were intentionally attempting to screw consumers over. Just that they are better at it than other companies. Better doesn't have to correlate with being meaner, and more abusive with their stance. I apologize if I worded it incorrectly. I'm not trying to say Nintendo is an evil gaming company, just that the things they've done have been ruthlessly efficient in the gaming market. When companies try to stay in the black, Nintendo is looking to earn even greater profits. In some situations, I think it's hurt the consumer (especially with hardware pricing). But again, it may be a nessicary evil on their behalf - Afterall, if they didn't have these profits, they would cease to be a game manufacturer, and we'd never enjoy their forthcoming great games.

The same argument could apply to Apple, as they seem to have a very similar model of ruthless vertical integration. In some cases, it's been fantastic as they've done things that no other company has, yet some may view it as being harmful in other ways.

"Screwing over" implies intent, which in this context (and especially in the context which Maelstrom is describing, which I believe is the topic of the discussion at hand) means that a company would be attempting to place out value propositions which run counter to what consumers want and then trying to force them down consumers' throats by tying them to experiences that consumers already want. Nintendo has not tried to move people toward a buying model that they don't want, they do not try to take away software rights, and they are not one of the many companies who are trying to do anything mroe than make fun games and a platform to play them on. At heeart, Nintendo is still serving the consumer.

Making profits is not "screwing the consumer". It can't be. They make a value proposition, and are prepaed to change the proposition when the consumer rejects it.

You thinking that the Wii is overpriced does not mean that its price is hurting the consumer.



Alterego-X on 17 September 2009
Slimebeast said:

"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*."

Where does he get this from? I think he's overexaggerating this a lot. I've never met a viral marketer disguised as a gamer.

Obviouly, since they were... you know... disguised.  :P

 

I'm not sure if he is right, but he already wrote his theory a few times, that big companies actually pay for people to artifically generate hype.



KungKras on 17 September 2009
mrstickball said:
Khuutra said:
mrstickball said:
Khuutra -

Less financial incentives for 3rd party developers means less games for me to buy.
Excessive profits on hardware mean the system is more expensive than it should be to buy.

So unless you think that buying something is overpriced with less games isn't a negative for consumers, I think your wrong. Admittedly, such arguments may not prove correct for all consumers, but they are still negatives.

Goodness.

Moneyhatting is not something that necessarily benefits consumers. Lack thereof is not something that harms consumers: the fact that extra incentives have to be leveraged in order to bring third parties to make certain projects on the PS360 speaks as to one of the worse states of the industry.

Profits on hardware are not harmful to consumers. Nintendo has set a value proposition. Over fifty million people have accepted it. That is all there is.

The fact that Nintendo does not meet your value propositions does not mean that they are trying to screw over consumers, much less that "they've done it better than any other company"

I never said they were intentionally attempting to screw consumers over. Just that they are better at it than other companies. Better doesn't have to correlate with being meaner, and more abusive with their stance. I apologize if I worded it incorrectly. I'm not trying to say Nintendo is an evil gaming company, just that the things they've done have been ruthlessly efficient in the gaming market. When companies try to stay in the black, Nintendo is looking to earn even greater profits. In some situations, I think it's hurt the consumer (especially with hardware pricing). But again, it may be a nessicary evil on their behalf - Afterall, if they didn't have these profits, they would cease to be a game manufacturer, and we'd never enjoy their forthcoming great games.

The same argument could apply to Apple, as they seem to have a very similar model of ruthless vertical integration. In some cases, it's been fantastic as they've done things that no other company has, yet some may view it as being harmful in other ways.

I guess what you're trying to say is that Nintnedo is better at maximizing profits without people feeling screwed over.



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mike_intellivision on 17 September 2009

While I think the point is valid that gaming companies have forgotten about gaming -- and the strongest critiques of Nintendo have been about doing exactly that -- there are some nagging points in this article which to me starts to make Malstrom a bit of a blow-hard.

It is true the site is growing. Visits are up 280% in the last three months. But it is still not in the top 100K of all websites. Only about 2-3 visitors per million on the net visit it. So it is not as widely quoted or followed as we may think. (For reference, VGChartz gets 200 per millon web visitors and ranks 7592nd of all web sites).

Also, prices are not as high as they were in the classic era when adjusted for inflation. The Intellivision's MSRP of $300 was $725 in 2006. The Atari 2600's $200 was $483. And $30 games then would be equal to $72. So prices are not the factor he is making them out to be.

Mike from Morgantown



      


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MontanaHatchet on 17 September 2009

We must destroy the industry...to save the industry.



 

 

Khuutra on 17 September 2009
MontanaHatchet said:
We must destroy the industry...to save the industry.

In this case, when Maelstrom says "Industry" he is referring to the collectivie corporate bodies that seek to take away consumer rights to software, forcibly shift focuses in development, and try to forc the consumer to pay more for content that they would have gotten anyway in earlier generations.

He wants that mentality to die so we can jsut have the games, and wants corporations to remember that they serve the consumer, not the other way around.



Slimebeast on 17 September 2009
Alterego-X said:
Slimebeast said:

"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*."

Where does he get this from? I think he's overexaggerating this a lot. I've never met a viral marketer disguised as a gamer.

Obviouly, since they were... you know... disguised.  :P

 

I'm not sure if he is right, but he already wrote his theory a few times, that big companies actually pay for people to artifically generate hype.

U got good detection skills. ;)

Can u link to one of such articel about virals in distguise, the evidence? I think it's just a conspiracy theory, Malmostrom seems to think a lot in those ways, seeing demons everywhere.



SmokedHostage on 17 September 2009
MontanaHatchet said:
We must destroy the industry...to save the industry.


We must destroy the industry.. to save gaming as an entertainment medium sees more accurate.



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