There is a sales equivalent to what you have described, of course. A common feature of many titles is that they sell for perhaps a month at most, and then new copies drop to a trickle. This is indicative of a game which fails to hold its quality for the mass of consumers who have already purchased it. Most further sales are made as used copies, as word of mouth spreads about the game and existing copies are sold back to shops. After the initial wave of sales from marketing and hype die down, many titles drop off the radar entirely.
It's even more dramatic in Japan than in America, actually: it's frowned upon to say the least for shops to sell used games there, meaning bad PR from word-of-mouth can kill a game's sales fast (why buy a full-priced game you might never be able to pawn off if it might turn out to have no appeal in the long run?). Only "safe" titles stand much of a chance there at the prices shops are asking for new games.
You can get a gauge of a game's overall quality from raw data of sales. You can get an idea of how well that quality will hold up in the long run (ie. 5, 10, even 15 years down the line) by how long the sales trail off for. Million-sale wonders that drop off the radar within a month have definite quality, but won't hold that quality in the long run. Games that start off slow but never lose their momentum are likely to hold their quality for a long, long time indeed. All this really is is a means of looking at quality with an additional vector of consideration: time.
Other M is going to flop because it's human insticts? What the flying geezers are you talking about? You do realise it's a video game, not a living being, right?
What are you talking about? Games with stories usually do bad. Players do not play games to hear characters go on and on about their internal problems. In New Super Mario Bros Wii, does Mario go one about how this war could have been stopped. How all the inocent Goombas could have been spared. Hell no he doesn't. Do the Miis in Wii Sports gon one and one about how their Mii wife is cheating on them and golf is the only thing they have left in life. See how silly it is.
Most big sellers have little to no story. WoW's story can only be found if you look for it. Call of Duty's story is a string of events and then you get to the shooting. Most people play the multiplayer anyway.
This kind of writing would not be acceptable in any other medium. Why do we accept in it video games?
I never called him a raging monkey. He's a raging Dalek. There's a difference. For one, monkeys are much more rational and reasonable than Daleks.
Ad hominen. I love how you don't attack the message but him. I'd love to see you try to prove him wrong.
Second, how does Metroid Prime Trilogy, a re-release of games made in 2002-2004 suppose to count? Does that also mean re-release of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 is now a debut for a brand new TV series? And the reason people noted this is because how DALEK SEAN went on an aggression fueled hate-trip about how Yoshio Sakamoto sucks because of this and that with this quote being one of the primary reasons. Also, I think it's much more pathetic going nuts when people correct this flaw, rather than people correcting someone as irrational and idiotic as DALEK SEAN.
I love how people interpret what he says as angry. Again, it shows how he must tick people like you off. Ad Hominen again.
Even if you ignore the Trilogy, there was Prime 3 in 2007. It has not been that long. Also, I didn't say Trilogy was a new game. You made that up. It was a Metorid game on a console in 2009.
Also, his point on Sakamoto are very valid. Most people agree that Fusion is weak compaired to Super Metroid which was made by Gunpei Yokoi. Zero Mission sold less then the Metroid re-release on the GBA. Other M will most likely uner preform compaired to Prime as all of Sakamoto's games have. I'm not even sure why they have him around.
And the answer you're looking for is professional criticism. Remember that magical little thing?
What professional critism? Critism is an opinion anyway. A lot of it is paid off and based on hype. "Quality," in that sense is subjective. I've played a lot of games that good good reviews and I thought they were horrible. Must I accept that that is quality work. Am I, the paying customer, wrong?
Sales are quality because people spent money on it. If you assume that sales are not quality, then you must also accept that people buy things they don't like. Customers buy what they want. If New Super Mario Bros Wii is what they want, then it must be of high quality. I mean, they bought it over Heavy Rain. They must not like quality. Or maybe because quality is misdefined.
So now I ask, why is a critics review score quality? Is it quality if it is bought? And, if we define it that way, how come some games of high quality fail in the marketplace while game sof low quality don't?
Oh yes, because your opinion on games with story applies to EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING, NO EXCEPTIONS!
Sale numbers cannot in dictate on one's quality and it never will. It's unreliable and often times inaccurate. More often that not, game such as Okami and Team Ico games sell poorly, even when they are considered one of the most artistic games of all time. So how can sales exactly determine one's quality? You're point does not apply here.
Learn what ad hominem actually means before talking to me, thank you very much.
My point still stands. If it's already released before, it doesn't count.
Oh yes, of course, DALEK SEAN calling Yoshio Sakamoto being the embodiment of evil, because he supposedly RUINS Metroid by doing something different for a change is now perfectly valid and reasonable. No you are wrong. Yoshio Sakamoto both directed and designed Super Metroid, whereas Gunpei Yokoi was only a designer along side with Makoto Kanoh and also the general manager. Do some actual research beforeciting these. And I will never understand your claim(or rather, DALEK SEAN's claim that you are so obnoxiously parroting) on Fusion's quality. Because I belong to several communities, I know alot of people who not only DON'T think Fusion is bad, but think it as one of the best in the whole franchise. I dare to guess that you've never even played Metroid Fusion(or any Metroid game, for that matter), but only read how there are complaints about it on the internet, rather than seeing it yourself and actually do the research.
Again, no research. Last time I checked, there do not exist any evidence that supports or disagrees with the claim that re-release of Metroid NES sold more than Zero Mission and Fusion, which means that DALEK SEAN's claim is most likely fabricated so he can make more insane arguements. Second, even if it was true, there is a perfect reason that has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself. As we all know, Nintendo has a ability to play with people nostalgias. So re-releasing a NES game for gamers is a great way of earning more cash. Let's not forget that at the time the only way to play NES games was to either own the console itself or an emulator. Virtual Console didn't exist back then. How can I take you seriously if all you can do is repeat DALEK SEAN's remarks over and over again without doing any research by yourself?
I am not suprised in the least bit that you are no satisfied with the games critics called good, since as I demonstrated it's obvious that you don't put your thought to it.
Sales numbers as indication of quality is idiotic and distrustful. First of all, how does products' sales numbers determine it's quality? What if the costumer who bought the product was not satisfied? What if the he bought it in accident? What if there' a several million people just like him? What if they are not satisfied with the product either?
Sales numbers as the judge of products' quality is just as random and subjective as criticism is.
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen performed very well in the box office. Does that means it's better than all the movies that sold less tickets? Does that mean it's the better film in direction and script than Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Exorcist and Sprited Away?
NO, for the love of Christ(Get it? I mentioned the Exorcist before saying Christ. I'm so sutble), NO!
And there are several other points on why sales numebers don't work as the indicator for quality, because:
1. Consumers are not professionals. 2. Some Consumers don't know what they want. 3. Consumers satisfaction is not guaranteed. 4. Some, most, if not all consumers are idiots.
Actually, you(or rather, DALEK SEAN) are not even talking about quality. You are talking about popularity among the general public. And general public will almost eat everything given to them like animals, further showing how this arguement does not work.
Basically, if all you can do is parrot DALEK SEAN's arguement(which itself is insanse and irrational) without any thought, you're only wasting everyone's time. You're acting as nothing more than just DALEK SEAN's tool, or put it more harshly, idea slave. It's like playing a saxophone to a deaf bat. This discussion does not worth continuing if every arguement is all stolen from DALEK SEAN.
Thank you my dear sir, for I have wasted atleast thirty minutes of my life hammering this to your brain. I hope you are proud of yourself.
There is a simple word to use here: snob.
The point has probably been made, but there is such a thing as word of mouth. If a product doesn't provide the things that people need then they won't buy it because people will slag it off. Games that I personally don't want to own, such as Just Dance, do have an appeal to many people when they play them and then they buy it...
Yes.
www.spacemag.org - contribute your stuff... satire, comics, ideas, debate, stupidy stupid etc.
About the Other M debate. I'll list the reasons Malstrom has given about complaining about the game.
1: Sakamoto has made statements about Metroid that makes it questionable if he really knows what Metroid is about. Malstrom has quoted these statements, but I'm too lazy to look them up so someone else will have to look for them in the blog.
2: Sakamoto has said that Samus' character will be more explored and that players will learn more about her maternal instincts.
Does this even need an explanation? Noone has ever thought about Samus' feelings when playing Metroid. Samus is just a badass space soldier, sort of like an avatar for the player. She's also the only female game character who's not suffering from stereotypes precisely because she doesn't have a story, and now Sakamoto wants to explore her 'maternal instincts'? Metroid was about the gameplay, not about maternal instincts! If he wants to make a game about maternal instincts he should make a new game universe instead of messing up that of Metroid!
3 Sakamoto does not have a good track reckord.
Fusion was supposed to be an heir to Super Metroid and the 'safe' game when Fusion and Prime launched. Fusion was nothing like Super Metroid and got trashed by Prime in sales. Zero mission messed up the Metroid storyline by trapping Samus in a biologial armour making any sequel impossible (unless said sequel is to ignore everything that took place in Zero mission) Zero mission wich had the original Metroid in it as an extra was also outsold by a remake of Metroid for GBA, now THAT is pathetic.
Fact is, the only good Metroid games Sakamoto worked on were the ones were he had Gunpei Yokoi as his superior, and there is probably a good reason for that. All sakamoto ever did after Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo was to make Metroid games that were destructive to the series. Metroid is Yokoi's series, not Sakamoto's, personally I'd rather see metroid go to the grave with Yokoi than see Sakamoto in charge of Metroid.
This can also be measured in sales. Fusion and Zero Mission did poorly in the market. They put people off.
Now there are reasons for people to belive that the game actually can turn out good. Like Team Ninja being on board and the so far amazing graphics. But still, you have to understand that Malstrom is making some really valid points about the game.
Also, he's trying to predict the future with the facts that he has in the present. We will see eventually how well Other M does. But don't be surprised if he's right.
All sakamoto ever did after Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo was to make Metroid games that were destructive to the series.
You're being unfair to Sakamoto here. He's incredibly prolific outside of the Metroid series: WarioWare is his creation, for instance, and he's responsible for the Tomodachi Friend Collection title that's stormed Japan. While I mostly agree about Sakamoto as regards Metroid, the man's done plenty of good work without his mentor.
Moreover, I'm not sure what you mean by the new suit in Zero Mission. As far as I can tell, the suit she gets at the end of that game is pretty much a replacement of the suit she lost: where did the biological suit part come from? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is the first time I've ever heard this.
Warren Spector has a great new interview. I laughed at this part: There’s a point in every project where I beat my head on my desk and say “why I do I always do things the hard way? Why don’t I just make a shooter?” With this game it was like, “Wow, why am I making a thirdperson game in which the player can determine where the walls and floors go? Oh my God!”
Listen to this quote:
One of the great challenges for videogames is that we have to stop building movie sets and start building worlds. Back in the old days, Origin’s motto was ‘We create worlds’. Somewhere along the line we lost that, and started building movie sets. And so for years I’ve been looking for an excuse to build a world that’s more dynamic. But it would have been a radically different game without Mickey as its beating creative heart.
One of the reasons why I think video games are seeing serious decline is that there is no interest or talent focused on creating content, or the ‘continuum’ or ‘world’ the game exists in. Content creation skills are very different than game making skills.
For example, a broadcaster needs the skills of broadcasting (doing that in a fun and entertaining way) but the broadcaster also needs the skills of content. In other words, the broadcaster must do show prep. Many broadcasters cannot do this so they rely on guests.
Many video games take their content or ‘world’ from other areas. EA did not invent football. Take Two did not invent the ‘wild west’ for Red Dead Redemption. The ‘wild west’ already existed and is already portrayed in other mediums.
This is why games like Super Mario Brothers or Ultima are very special. Their ‘world’ wasn’t taken from anywhere else. It was unique to the game. The only way to get to the Mushroom Kingdom was by playing Super Mario Brothers.
What does Mario, Metroid, and Zelda have in common? They are all unique worlds. I remember when the games came out. People were not fascinated by the characters of Mario, Samus, and Link, they were really fascinated by the worlds and wanted to remain in that world.
Fantasy and science-fiction authors have no problem creating ‘accessible writing’. The big, big problem is the world creation, ultimately the content of the book. They agonizingly spend years creating the fictional world. Much of this fictional world won’t even appear in the book! And much of the fictional world somehow ‘appears’ in the middle of the writing process!
As Spector noted, video games are not interested in making worlds. This ‘world’ is the biggest reason why people go off and buy the sequel. They want to return to that world! People will buy Starcraft 2, for example, to see what happens in that game world. “No,” says the reader. “They will buy it for the multiplayer gameplay.” But Blizzard, themselves, say that half of their customers do not even play multiplayer. When Blizzard designs units for their RTS games, they go with what unit has the most interesting story, the one that best fleshes out this ‘continuum’ or ‘world’ they are in.
I remember how shockingly awesome World of warcraft was when it released because it felt incredible to explore the world of Azeroth in such a way. Blizzard was busy building up the ‘Warcraft’ continuum bit by bit since the original Warcraft came out. (The biggest complaint against World of Warcraft is that Blizzard has put in so many strange things that the Warcraft continuum no longer makes sense.)
Gameplay is not enough. You must create an interesting game world to go with it. The best way to create an interesting game world is to STEAL IT from another medium or from real life. Sports games are great at this since the world of sports is time tested and exists outside of gaming. Licensed games also do this. Early video game makers would put in cliches of their favorite books and TV shows. Contra has something like a cross between Rambo and Aliens in it.
When Mario Mania was around, it wasn’t so much about the character of Mario but the fantastical Mushroom Land that everyone wanted to be in. Mario was around in Donkey Kong. Mario even had his own game in Mario Brothers. But the difference is that Mushroom Land did not exist yet.
During the NES Era, the gaming population increased when the game worlds increased. And now that game worlds are becoming less and less, and every game world seems like a copy from another game world, is it any surprise the gaming population decreases?
In order to illustrate the game world, I must separate it from the gameplay. How do we do this? Well, people have already done it. Things like cartoons and all would revel in the game world even though there was no gameplay. Take how people were perceiving the Mushroom Land over Mario 1&2 / Mario 3 / Super Mario World:
You can see the fantastical lands. Even the real life actors illustrated how people perceived Mario to be a real-life plumber from Brooklyn who somehow went down the wrong pipe and ended up being in Mushroom Land.
Mario 3 expanded the Mushroom Kingdom (in the previews of Mario 3 in Nintendo Power, the much younger Shigeru Miyamoto said that Mario 3 was a ‘further exploration’ of the eight worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom). Mario 3 added the Koopa Kids, the doomships, and really fleshed out and diversified the worlds. Instead of World 4, it was Giant World!
The Mario Universe was clearly expanding with Yoshi and Dinosaur Land. However, I am not sure if this is what Mario fans, who were enamored with Mushroom Land, really wanted was Dinosaur Land. Mario Mania began to die down after Super Mario World which created holes for competitors like Sonic to jump in.
And in Mario 64, there was Peach’s Castle that expanded the Mario Universe. However, this is nothing compared to what the 2d Marios pioneered.
My point is that Mario Mania existed only when the Game World was expanding and fleshing out. Since then, Nintendo has refused to expand this world. The Mario Universe has been in a stasis for decades as it keeps being re-used and re-used for various sports games, racing games, RPG games, or whatever game Mario appears in. In Mario 5, there was no real expansion of the game world (however, this probably didn’t matter since people hadn’t seen a console 2d Mario in 18 years). In Mario Sunshine, well, that game took place in a very different place than Mushroom Land. In the Mario Galaxies, Mushroom Land existed only through a blender. The worlds were in pieces and nothing had any cohesion. In the Galaxies, it was as if the Game World was sacrificed on the altar of gameplay.
Look at the Zelda fan. They love to talk about the timeline of Zelda games. They do this because they enjoy the Game World that is Zelda. The drive for Zelda fans to purchase the new Zelda game clearly goes beyond gameplay to include seeing how the Zelda Game World has expanded. Games like Spirit Tracks not only failed to truly expand the Game World, they destablized the ‘continuum’ by putting in elements that didn’t make any sense in the Zelda world (i.e. trains). One of the biggest complaints about Twilight Princess was that it felt like it was Ocarina of Time. This complain was both gameplay based (on the formula) and on the game world itself (do we really need to keep seeing Kariko Village and the same exact Link To The Past map?).
People love their Game Worlds. This is why maps are extremely popular in video games whether they appear as a stage selection technique in Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World or if they are a cloth map for a RPG.
Above: Awesome map is awesome.
Did you know that maps are extremely popular in the book medium? It’s true! Crack open your Lord of the Rings books, and you will find maps. Tolkien didn’t so much as create a story, he crafted a very detailed world. Why do you think Dune became popular? It wasn’t because it was the best written book. It is because it had a very fleshed out world. The very popular Star Wars and Star Trek also have very fleshed out universes.
But it is very important to note that fictional universes, of whatever medium, must operate by the laws of that universe. If it does not, the audience will feel cheated and the universe will collapse in on itself. If you set up as a rule in your fictional universe that magic use will deplete mana, the novel becomes a sort of game with the reader wondering how is the character going to get out of this situation since he used up all his mana! But if the author makes the character use magic even though the mana is depleted, the reader will be furious and the universe will likely collapse if the reader doesn’t close the book in frustration.
Movies and television shows also must obey the rules of their fictional universe. Later Star Trek shows began breaking their own universe rules which caused fans to turn away in disgust (the driving reason for Trekkies to keep watching Trek was to see how the new episodes would ‘flesh out’ the universe even more). The Battlestar Galactica remake caused a big backlash when the writers made a deus-ex-machina of angels appearing to solve the problems of the plot.
There are some examples of video games having this issue. Spirit Tracks is the one that readily comes to mind. Sure, the game tried to ‘explain’ the trains, but no one bought that it was an organic growth of the Zelda universe. This is why the Game World must be the master, not the gameplay. Gameplay is limited to what is in the Game World. You do not re-design the Universe just because you like train gameplay. Fans will reject it.
When gamers play a World War 2 game, they expect World War 2 game mechanics. If you have sci-fi game mechanics in a World War 2 game, the players will be unable to accept this Game Universe and will turn away from the game.
Creating and properly expanding a Fictional Universe is far harder than creating new gameplay. Look at how rarely it is successfully done.
Do not confuse this with I.P. I.P., which stands for Intellectual Property, is a legal fiction. The ‘world’ is the beef of the game. If it isn’t enticing, people won’t care about the gameplay. Much of gaming’s history shows great consumer interest in increases in graphics and sound and computer technology to allow the larger creation of game worlds. How many people actually played GTA 3 the way the developers intended? I bet many people played GTA 3 just to experience the rich and detailed game world.
The Generation Zero developers could create New Worlds because they did not grow up on video games (since they didn’t exist). They grew up on board games, on books like Lord of the Rings, on movies, and on television. So the first games used many concepts found in books and television and movies.All these other mediums provided rich soil for Game World plants to be seeded and to sprout and grow.
Today, game developers grew up on video games. Many of them do not even bother reading books, wondering about Nature, or other things outside of video games. The soil is no longer rich. All they know is to copy what came before. Games today feel like a photocopy of a photocopy. No game world is fresh. It feels like a copy from another game world.
In particular, Pachter singled out Nintendo for the fact that software sales continue to dwindle despite its growing install base.
“Wii software sales were down 29 per cent year-over-year and DS software sales were down 13 per cent, while PS3 software sales were up 58 per cent and Xbox 360 software sales were up 29 per cent,” he added.
“We think this is remarkable, given growth in the Wii hardware installed base of 44 per cent and growth in the DS installed base of 33 per cent over the last 12 months. In our view, this indicates that Nintendo’s customers either are not finding enough software to satisfy their needs, or need less software than the typical Sony or Microsoft customer.”
The first rule of how the console market works is that software sells hardware. No one is buying a Wii just so it looks pretty in the living room. They buy the hardware only to get to the software.
Wii hardware is still selling fine which means people are interested in the software. Sure enough, Wii titles are still in the top ten such as Mario 5 and Wii Fit. Note how no analyst is mentioning the Wii sales grew more than the PS3 and Xbox 360 year over year for this month. That would break their spinning for the Industry.
When Wii was sold out for years and years, analysts like Pachter declared it was because of ‘casual gaming’. Now, the Wii still sells strongly but the ‘casual games’ are no longer selling. Does Pachter or any other analyst re-evaluate citing the Wii’s success due to ‘csaual games’? Of course not. What Pachter says is ‘We think this is remarkable…’ These guys are no help at all.
Back in 2008, I wrote a little article called ‘Birdman and the Casual Fallacy’ which said that the ‘casual games’ would all fail. The ‘Industry’ did not truly understand the Wii phenomenon. Now, the Industry is running off to cell phones to peddle their ‘casual games’, but they are failing there too.
There is no such thing as the ‘casual gamer’. It is a fiction the Industry conjured to explain the Wii success. Now that the Wii keeps selling despite casual and shovelware games bombing, analysts have nothing to say. They keep trying to spin it that the ‘hardcore gaming’ is healthy when it is in massive, massive decline from the previous generation.
Where did all those PS2 gamers go? Not one single analyst has the balls to answer this question. Not one single journalist has dared to ask this question to the analysts.
“Rather, we believe that the publishers and developers of games have created more robust multiplayer content in recent years that has resulted in core gamers playing the same games for much longer, on average, than they did in the past, leading to lower sales of new games.
Now there is some unicorn logic: ‘People do not buy games because they are too busy playing multiplayer in older games’. The most obvious explanation is the correct one: people do not buy new games because the new games are not good.
People tried to blame the decline of the PC games market due to ‘Blizzard games being so good’. This is poppycock. Blizzard is not a godly company. They are an above average company who were at the same level as other companies like Westwood Studios. Blizzard did not become godly, it is that other companies became corrupted by the ‘Industry’ and quality levels fell through the floor. Why would anyone buy Command and Conquer 4, for example?
Nintendo is definitely a way-above-average-game-company but other game companies gave Nintendo a run for their money decades ago. Sega was able to rival 2d Mario with Sonic the Hedgehog. Capcom and Konami made classic games that some people prefer over the Nintendo classics. The quality level, across the board, was much higher. Now, quality level has collapsed. Even Nintendo’s output in quality was in decline during the Gamecube Era and the Wii Era is showing very much a reversal of that. I still don’t think Nintendo is at the quality level they were during the NES or SNES Eras. But their quality level is improving year by year.
The reason why people do not buy games is often because the games are not good. Yet, this is the last thing any analyst will say. These analysts are Propaganda Arms of the Industry. Investors, beware.
”We expect investors to remain spooked by the May results, as they are beginning to reinforce the notion that the video game industry is in a state of persistent secular decline.”
Michael Pachter was formally trained to be a lawyer, i.e. politician. He probably went into financial analysis because of the money. Every now and then, Pachter’s political training ‘pops’ out. The word ‘secular’ doesn’t belong. Secular is a word differentiating it from the spiritual realm. Secular is a word often used in the realm of politics (e.g. separation of church and state to make a ‘secular society’). Why Pachter is using the word ‘secular’ shows that you can take the politician out of politics but you cannot take the politics out of the politician.
Just for fun, I will say the opposite. I will say that video games are suffering a spiritual decline, not a secular decline. Video games are no longer magical. They are just plastic banana junk manufactured by the ‘Industry’. Video games are soul-less today.
Let us listen to some more of Michael Pachter’s latest hits…
Asked about E3 2010 Predictions…
It really depends on this 3DS and how good it is, because I don’t think Nintendo has anything else. Nintendo is on the verge of… losing its dominance, because I really truly believe that Sony Move is the Wii HD. I really believe it. That’s been my quote: I told everyone a Wii HD was coming this year, it just happens to say PS3 on the box. It is the Wii HD.
That’s a very easy upsell for Sony to say, “If you have a Wii and you really want to play high-def games on your new big high-def TV, we’ve got ‘em.” Sony is a winner and Nintendo is a loser on the console side, because the Wii Vitality Sensor isn’t going to excite anybody. But the 3DS will. If you look at Nintendo’s line-up, everything we care about is either out or known by now.
People are going to like Microsoft more than we expect.
Here, Pachter distorts Wii Fit sales and doesn’t mention how Wii Fit sales were down because it was constantly sold out:
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter disagrees, however; he thinks the Wii decline isn’t simply a result of shortages. “Nintendo’s overall performance was well below our expectations, with software down over 30% and Wii hardware units down almost 50%. Nintendo had warned us that February would be a difficult month due to supply constraints, but we believe that the problem runs deeper than that, as sales of staple titles like Wii Fit with Balance Board and Wii Play were well below historical levels,” he noted.
While Pachter attributes the current “market meltdown” in part to waning consumer confidence, he believes “video games are likely to weather a recession quite well.”
“Notwithstanding this month’s anticipated decline, we believe that the video game software sector remains highly recession-resistant,” he says in a recent note sent to investors and Gamasutra.
Michael Pachter is not the analyst from Wedbush, he is the politician from Wedbush. There is no analysis at all. It is nothing but constant spinning. If someone believed everything Pachter said, that person would be the most uninformed around. You would be more informed on the market by not reading Pachter.
Above: Microsoft’s Core Market fire is out of control. According to disruption literature, the only way Microsoft will put it out is to kill Kinect along with their ‘new market’ move and regroup to their shrinking Core Market.
Listen to this:
“Let’s go back and look at the track record of the hardcore gamer,” he continued.
“Shipping a console with an Ethernet port? Oh, it’ll never succeed. Paying for multiplayer? Oh no, that’s not good. I don’t like avatars; I won’t buy anything that goes to my avatar. The Wii… I mean no offence hardcore gamers, you’ve kinda been wrong a lot for the past ten years.
“I love you and I’m a hardcore gamer and I’ve been wrong too. I was the one who thought the DS was kinda gimmicky and probably wasn’t going to take off. I was obviously insanely wrong about that. Give it a chance.”
I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this. Microsoft has fallen for their own marketing hype. Think back to the original Xbox. The Xbox sold mostly only in America and in the UK. It was never a global console. It died in Japan. And the Xbox blew up billions of dollars (a financial disaster). Yet, it sold almost a little more than the Gamecube. Somehow, the Gamecube, which was profitable and far more even in its global penetration, was a ‘huge disaster’ yet the Xbox was a ‘huge success’. If they both sold around the same, if the Gamecube sucked, wouldn’t the Xbox also suck? But the Industry kept writing how ‘marvelous’ the Xbox was. In other words, paying for multiplayer, putting an ethernet port on the back of the console, I don’t see how any of that was a success.
It is also important to differentiate the stereotypical ‘hardcore’ gamer we see infesting the message forums like barnacles and the gamer who wants to see gaming evolve and grow. The stereotypical ‘hardcore’ gamers are Industry gamers. They swallow all the marketing and think, “Wow, I am so hardcore, I am going to buy that game day one, with the $100 collector’s edition, and I will buy it at Gamestop because I want to get the exclusive DLC, and then I will keep paying for DLC over and over again for trinkets on my game’s characters so people on the internet can be jealous of my character.” In other words, ‘hardcore gamers’ are Industry tools. The real gamer has always rejected the ‘hardcore’ marketing and wish to see games be treated as games and not as soul-less commodities manufactured from the ‘Industry’.
The DS did not have a good start. It had a port of Mario 64 and some third party touch-screen gimmick games. Gamers didn’t really flock to the DS until Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing WW, Kirby Canvas Course, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (so awesome), and, of course, New Super Mario Brothers came out on to the system. This was in late 2005 and early 2006. What an incredible observation… gamers go where the games are! Shocking! I hope Microsoft is taking note.
With the Wii, gamers did flock to it from the beginning. Gamers flocked to it during E3 2006 if you recall the massively long lines and the stampedes. Wii did not just have Wii Sports and Wii Play. Wii also launched with Zelda: Twilight Princess and other third party games (many of which, sadly, are not worth mentioning today). But at E3 2006, games were ‘soon to come out’ such as Super Mario Galaxy and this game’s trailer seen below:
At GDC 2006, after mentioning that word ‘disruption’ a hundred times, Iwata unveiled the Virtual Console would be getting Genesis and Turbographx-16 games.
Even before the Wii came out, I could tell that there was no other console like this except the NES. From memory, the NES redefined the controller we used, the NES brought brand new landmark games we had never seen before (Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda) but not as well known that the NES also had many old games on it such as arcade ports of games from Donkey Kong to Pac-Man to Gyruss to Xevious and so on.
If you were an Atari 2600 gamer, the NES made you feel at home with those older games. Nintendo also released this to make gamers feel comfortable:
Above: Yeah, arcade purists won’t like the plastic stick, but the above joystick was freaking awesome back in the day.
It was a time where people could not abandon their joysticks! NES’s crazy Japanese controller was too much for some people. Come on, a controller where you hold with both hands? That will never catch on! Real games use a joystick!
For the Wii, like the NES, Nintendo put out a legacy controller.
The point of all this is to show there was much more going on with the Wii than is believed by Microsoft, Sony, and the Industry in general. They invented a term called ‘Casual Gaming’ as a type of box, and shoved everything they didn’t feel like understanding into that box.
“You know, within casual is such a hodgepodge that’s still coming together with mobile, and Pogo, and ‘What is casual?’ And I’m not even sure we like the word casual. I don’t think [Kathy Vrabeck] does either.”
There is another quote from Moore (that I cannot find at this moment) where he says the Industry had no idea how to understand these new ‘non-games’ that were coming out so they put them in a box called ‘casual games’.
Video games did not begin during the 70s and 80s. The video game market did. Video games were many prior different things before that. But what we call ‘old school gaming’ was the market choosing what games they want to buy. A better name for this would be the ‘foundation of gaming’. They were the planks that build up the gaming market.
As time went on, gaming began to abandon many of those values and planks that originally built the gaming market. Aside from being less accessible, games became more ‘movie like’, less about skill, less about social gaming, and more about computer animation. It is these ‘Industry Games’ that are the true ‘non-games’. Gamers never abandoned games, it was games that abandoned gaming. Gaming became an obstacle to the Industry because gaming implied ‘replayablity’ and emphasis on gameplay instead of ‘narrative’. The Industry saw ‘replayablity’ as a con, as if that meant people would not buy new games. The Industry wanted to make ‘narratives’ instead of games. And these ‘narratives’ would be stuffed with top-end computer animation. Ooohhh ooohhhh!
The DS isn’t as dramatic a change since it really isn’t that much different from the Gameboy Advance. But what the Wii did was a restoration of gaming. Wii Sports Tennis is as pure as a game as PONG is. Wii Play’s Tanks is as pure as a game as Atari’s Combat is. When 2d Mario games came out, which the Industry mocked because ‘all games must be 3d, those 2d games are so primitive, LOL’, they felt like a continuation of the ‘foundational planks’ that made gaming in the first place. Did not Wii have a ‘gun’ accessory? Of course it did. While not everyone likes these type of games, everyone was excited how the Wii was returning to what gaming actually is. The Virtual Console was a nod to the past and an acknowledgment that the existence of today’s games is that they stand on the shoulders of the giants of the past.
The Industry is very hostile to the past and to ‘old school’ gaming. Sony did not want ’2d games’ to appear on their PlayStation system. Microsoft has no idea what ‘old school’ gaming is and think it is nothing more than arcade games where you shoot tons of stuff. ‘Old school’ meant families gathering around the game console. ‘Old school’ gamers are girl gamers who played Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and got left behind as games went the ‘Mortal Kombat’ violent route.
The Wii succeeded because the foundational ideas were philosophically sound. Real gamers instantly saw the potential of the Wii before any games were shown and at E3 2006, real gamers grew even more excited. The Industry was clueless about it until the sales numbers came out. “Who cares if the Wii sold out? Gamecube sold well at first too.” Derp! Derp! Derp! “The Wii is going to crash because casual games are a fad!” Derp! Derp! Derp! But once Microsoft and Sony began to ‘jump in’ as well as the Industry which is why ‘casual games’ became ‘so awesome’ and ‘Wii is doomed’ unless ‘they must make a Wii HD immediately’.
Kinect is not philosophically sound. It’s philosophy is nothing more than the ‘casual gaming’ stereotypes of the Industry all together as one, Gozilla-like, gigantic Birdman. People who liked the Wii will not like Kinect. The Old School gamers, reborn phoenix-like, are the Expanded Audience.
Kinect and Move are the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what happened with the Wii. Prior to the Wii coming out, the real gamers were on board. The Industry opposed it. Now with prior to the Move and Kinect being released, the real gamers do not want anything to do with Move and Kinect and wish both of them to flop in the market. The Industry, however, is all excited about Move and Kinect.
Even the hardcore Xbox 360 fan was interested in the Wii back then. How can I say this? It is because of the Wii60 movement that even Peter Moore was behind.
You hear that sound, Stephen Toulouse? That is the sound of you being owned.
I don’t think there is any subject that Isaac Asimov didn’t write about. Here is a very interesting lecture he did on the Star-Spangled Banner.
During World War 2, Congress forbid the use of the last two stanzas so not to upset the British allies. With World War 2 being long over, would be it be any offense to sing all the stanzas to the Star-Spangled Banner, stanzas most Americans have never heard? Let us listen to the last stanza.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation, Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n – rescued land Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause is just, And this be our motto–”In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Your posts on sales and quality lately have been very interesting, and I largely agree with them, if you substitute the word “value” for each use of the word “quality”. From the consumer’s perspective*, sales determine value, not quality. A Toyota Corolla may have sold more over it’s lifetime than a Mercedes Benz CL-Class, but that does not make the Toyota a higher “quality” car. It means that it is the car that provides the most value to the consumer verses its cost. It may also mean that it is produced at a cost that makes it available or desirable to a wider market. People buy a lot of Charles Shaw wine, that in no way makes it of a better quality than more expensive wines that sell less. People use particle board for furniture construction more than they use oak (and more of that furniture is sold), that does not make particle board a higher quality material, it makes it a better value. This is pretty basic stuff. For as much authority as you like to speak with on your site, you should take the time to get the semantics right.
All things being equal, a higher quality product will sell more than a lower quality product…but all things are not equal. Price, supply, and information (influenced by marketing) will all impact sales levels.
Hope this helps,
XXXXX
*I suppose you could argue that from a producer’s perspective the “quality” of a product is determined by how well it is designed to meet the market, including how it is priced. As in, if I was running an company and you came to me with several proposals for products we could produce I could say that the proposed product that is likely to sell the most is the highest “quality” proposal…But I think even from the perspective of a product designer one would typically, and correctly, say that the “quality” of a product is its set of attributes, its effectiveness at performing a given job or function…not its value to consumers relative to its cost (which will largely determine the quantity sold).
I am quite happy the emailer has learned how to read a textbook and is quoting it with gusto. But of course, the textbook often is very wrong when it is applied to the real world. Remember that the entire underpinning of disruption was that business schools (including the Harvard Business School) were teaching things that were sending businesses to their death.
If I wanted to say the word ‘value’, I would have written the word ‘value’. But as you will note, I intentionally wrote the word ‘quality’.
I want you to define to me the definition of ‘quality’ for a video game. It is very difficult. Even Miyamoto struggles with this. What is the definition of ‘quality’ for entertainment? Another very difficult question.
As the saying goes, “The audience is always, always, always right. You can point to the accessible parking lot, to the time of the showing, to the weather of the sky, but none of that matters. The audience is always right.” One issue with entertainment is that the entertainer does not treat it as a business but as a personal response to his or her ‘creativity’. So when sales do not happen, the entertainer will say that it was “too much quality” for the peasant-like masses. “The masses do not appreciate art,” the entertainer will sniff.
You are avoiding a point I made that goes back hundreds of years. When Mark Twain wrote his books, they were not considered ‘quality’ because he wrote in the language of common people. Other American novelists, in order to ‘define American literature’, were trying to imitate European authors or writers from ancient Rome and ancient Greece. Mark Twain ended up defining the quality of American literature precisely because he sold to the masses.
You can go back to Shakespeare who wrote plays at the time which were popular with the masses but not popular with the ‘critics’ at the time. It was not considered quality work then. Yet, today it is the poetry of the ages.
I remember when Super Mario Brothers came out. It was not considered a ‘quality’ game. Neither were games like the Legend of Zelda. The NES was not considered a ‘quality’ game console. Companies like Electronic Arts sneered at it. Yet, it sold and sold. Today, those games are considered the ‘gold standard’ of quality concerning video games.
Remember that PONG was not the first tennis like video game. There were others. They didn’t sell. Do you know why the first video game console, Baur’s Odyssey released in the 70s, failed? It is because everyone kept returning the system because they thought they were buying the home version of PONG but were getting Baur’s crappy game. It was the constant returns that caused Magnavox to discontinue the Odyssey. And during the creation of PONG, Bushnell says the drive was to make it quality. It was PONG selling so much that gave a definition to ‘quality’ concerning video games. Other big hit video games would add to that definition of ‘quality’.
This same thing occurs with books, movies, music, and so on.
Replacing the word ‘quality’ with the word ‘value’ makes you go nowhere because everyone demands quality entertainment and it becomes a circular argument.
It is like saying a movie that revolves around special effects failed in the box office. “It is because people do not value the special effects,” says the marketer. But the real answer is that it was a bad quality movie. It is human nature to take a subject and define it entirely in the lens of what one person’s profession is. A marketer will always apply his marketing mumbo jumbo to everything.
One thing we witnessed was the absolute destruction of Wii momentum due to User Generated Content. UGC passed all the executives and marketers of Nintendo with their vote of approval. Yet, it destroyed the momentum of the Wii. The Wii would have fallen through the floor if it were not for Mario 5.
The textbook definition of ‘content’ in video games has always referred to the art assets and sound assets and overall playtime and ‘size’ of the digital world. After the UGC disaster, I began talking about ‘content’ and how it was a driving force for people wanting to buy games. It is said, “When Malstrom says content, he must be meaning value.” But no, I meant content. I actually mean the substance of the work and not necessarily the value of it. Who the hell values the ‘Mushroom Kingdom’?
Why are American newspapers in decline? They still have high value. Who would not want to see oneself in the New York Time? The reason why they are in decline is because of the content. The stories the editors choose to place in the paper are not resonating with what people want to read. You can’t say ‘value’ because the customer still highly values such a newspaper like the New York Times. It is the content of the paper that is turning people off. The paper is not competing with quality content appearing in alternative places such as the Internet. (How can I be so ‘authoritative’ on this subject? It is because a very big media person told me so. It is pretty common sense when you think about it.)
Why are video games in decline? Analysts will give you all sorts of reasons. But they will not offer the most common sense reason: that video games are not as good in quality as they were generations ago. In a way, video games are more highly valued today as there is less stigma about them as there was in the 80s, for example.
Why did Wii Music fail? Was it because of marketing? It was because it wasn’t a quality product. It wasn’t fun.
Now look at the success of Wii Sports success. Did that succeed because of marketing? Ask any marketer and they will, of course, claim marketing is of course the reason for its success. But the truth of the matter is that Wii Sports is one of the best quality video games ever made.
Why does 2d Mario sell more than 3d Mario? Is it because 2d Mario is more accessible? It is because 2d Mario is a higher quality game. I can actually point that the core gameplay in 2d Mario is far more intense and arcade like than 3d Mario gameplay which is slower, more puzzle orientated, and more bloated.
The big, big problem the Industry has is that they are thinking like you, Emailer. The Industry does not see games like Mario 5 or Wii Sports as extremely well made games. What they think instead is that the games are mediocre in quality, but they have high value to people who do not want to play seriously. This is the thought process that gave birth to the Casual Game Fallacy. We have watched shovelware flood the Wii. And we have watched such shovelware bomb out. Retailers refuse to buy these games.
With Kinect, Microsoft is stunned there was such a backlash. I am sure they are telling themselves what you are saying, emailer, that quality is in the eye of the demographic group, that they will value Kinect. But what people want is quality entertainment and Kinect is most definitely not quality. Kinect is a good example of what happens when development is controlled by the marketers. Aside from a novelty gadget item, who wants to buy Kinect?
Crappy products for crappy customers, disruption’s motto, is quality in a new context of use… not value as in crowds of people running around with all sorts of different values. People did not flock to the movie theaters to watch Star Wars because they had ‘different values’. People flocked to the movie theaters because Star Wars was a quality piece of entertainment and what Hollywood was making before, the doldrums of movies, was garbage. Much of the ‘sophisticated’ and ‘serious’ movies of the 70s were bad. When ‘Star Wars’ came out, movie watchers complained that ‘Star Wars’ destroyed movies (similar how hardcore gamers say the Wii destroyed gaming).
It is all about what is the definition of quality. Since Human Nature is universal and eternal, quality is going to be what best resonates with Human Nature. Sales indicate the definition of quality. Remember when video games were defined as nothing but toys? What changed these ‘toys’ into ‘quality products’? Sales.
I have tried hard to treat you and your ideas with respect, and have no complaints when you disagree with my opinions. In fact, it’s OK if you criticize me personally as well, as my presence in the media probably makes me enough of a public figure to invite personal criticism.
It struck me as odd that you chose to challenge my use of the word “secular”. One of the meanings is as you suggest—not connected with religion. Another of the word’s meanings is “occurring only once in an age or century”, and this meaning is precisely what I endeavored to say when I talked about the state of persistent secular decline for packaged goods. Industries rendered obsolete by technology (think buggy whips, typewriters, or transistor radios) are subject to secular declines, meaning that they are going away. It’s exactly the right word to describe what I was talking about, is not political in the least, and your challenge of its use was just plain wrong.
You can say whatever you wish about my ideas, and I won’t challenge you as being wrong. In this case, you’re not only wrong, but you come across as petty and arrogant.
As Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens would say, “Wilt thou whip thy faults into other men?”
This is an unsolicited email. Every now and then, Pachter sends me an email and seems surprised that I do not treat his words as mana from heaven. I am someone who cannot be manipulated. He’s tried flattery. He’s tried humor. Now he’s calling me ‘petty and arrogant’. This is all very funny to me.
Instead of leaving the email in my spam folder, I am sharing it with you, the wonderful reader, to illustrate how Pachter speaks with a lawyer’s tongue and behaves like one.
I have tried hard to treat you and your ideas with respect, and have no complaints when you disagree with my opinions.
The ideas of Blue Ocean Strategy and disruption are not my ideas. They are not Nintendo’s ideas. They are from the Harvard Business School. Reggie Fils-Aime said they were the key to understanding Nintendo’s business perspective in 2005, half a decade ago. Has any analyst, even Pachter who loves to grandstand on soapboxes, mentioned these in regards to their analysis of Nintendo or the gaming market? No. They have said things completely contrary. They are well aware of Nintendo’s true perspective. Their public statements are calculated to publicly distort what is going on in the market.
This was said five years ago. Since then, Nintendo has gone on to a success beyond anything seen in video game history and perhaps even entertainment history. All we can do now is just mock these analysts as they appear clueless as to what is going on in the market.
But here’s the rub, I do not think they are clueless. People say Pachter is stupid. I do not think he is stupid. I think he is extremely intelligent. It is tempting for someone to look at Pachter saying absurdly wrong things and conclude: “What a stupid analyst” because it makes ourselves feel smart.
If you look at Michael Pachter’s educational history, you will find that he graduated from The Anderson School of Management, from Levin College of Law, and from Pepperdine University School of Law. This is clearly not a dumb person.
But if you note that his formal education is extremely law heavy. I have gone through a similar education, and I can assure you that the process of a Law education forges a certain personality. In a similar way, medical schools forges a type of personality (the doctor will always think he is right. Beware trying to work in a doctor’s office or being married to a doctor). Sure, these are general things I am saying, but the fact of the matter is that lawyers and politicians come out of law schools, not financial analysts. I imagine that Pachter realized that law and being a politician did not necessarily pay well.
One thing many people do not realize is that America’s political realm is hip to hip connected to the financial services industry. What jobs do the daughters of presidents end up getting? You find them a part of some financial service group like managing hedge funds. “Maybe those girls really like finances and are good at it. Perhaps they didn’t get that job through the fact their daddy was President of the United States.” Oh, you are a funny one, reader! Most politicians, when they retire, end up lobbyists or they work in the financial services somewhere.
Now, I am not faulting Pachter for wanting a career change earlier in life. We all go through this. My question is only whether Michael Pachter’s behavior matches that of the financial analyst or that of the political operative? Does Pachter’s behavior seem as if he is trying to control the business news cycle for video games? It does to me.
I don’t think Pachter’s mission is to give an honest analysis of the markets. It is clearly to shape and manipulate the business news cycle of gaming for some other reason.
From someone who has been through those law school corridors, Pachter’s words sound extremely ‘parsed’ and deliberately tactical. For example, he starts off the email saying that he is trying very hard to ‘respect my ideas’ (what ideas are these? He does not say) and does not agree when I disagree with his opinions. Now, I am not disagreeing with his opinions at all. I am saying those ‘opinions’ are tactical maneuvers to shape the business news cycle. For example, when Wii sales broke all records in December 2009, Pachter said to Bloomberg news that it was due to a Wal-Mart special and then Pachter went on popular gaming forum of NeoGAF (which the gaming press reads) to start a thread asking how can third party companies sell on the Wii. It was a deliberate and calculated shift to change the business news cycle to instead of being about Wii sales breaking all records (and why this could be), to shift discussion to why (some) third party companies cannot sell on the Wii and that Wii sold hardware because of a price drop at Wal-Mart (even though the console would sell out in all stores). A few months earlier, analysts were in agreement that Wii’s best selling days were over but then it broke all records. No question as to why. You would think there would be some mention from an analyst, anywhere, about how a 2d game on a home console can sell so much when it was decided by the Industry that no one wanted 2d platformers anymore on home consoles.
Until analysts like Pachter begin assigning Blue Ocean Strategy and disruption to explain Nintendo’s rise and Sony and Microsoft’s fall (instead of making up BS terms like ‘casual gamers’), everyone is going to keep laughing at them.
My disagreement with Pachter has nothing to do with his opinion but everything to do about his professional conduct. Pachter trying to spin this as a disagreement and lack of respect of people’s opinions is, itself, a distortion of what is going on. And it is deliberate on his part.
In fact, it’s OK if you criticize me personally as well, as my presence in the media probably makes me enough of a public figure to invite personal criticism.
More deliberate distortion. I am not personally criticizing Pachter at all. A personal criticism would be making fun of his hair. I am criticizing his behavior as an analyst. Why? Because his behavior far better fits the political operative obsessed over shaping the news cycle.
Talking to the press, going on TV shows, even having his own personal web-TV show, none of this is his job. So why waste all this time doing that? Wouldn’t it be better spent doing additional research (with Pachter’s track record, he definitely needs it)?
Most people do not realize that you cannot sue someone for libel if that person is considered a ‘public figure’. A financial analyst would likely not know this. But a lawyer and politician would. Note how Pachter mentions what is known mostly only to lawyers so casually.
It struck me as odd that you chose to challenge my use of the word “secular”. One of the meanings is as you suggest—not connected with religion. Another of the word’s meanings is “occurring only once in an age or century”, and this meaning is precisely what I endeavored to say when I talked about the state of persistent secular decline for packaged goods. Industries rendered obsolete by technology (think buggy whips, typewriters, or transistor radios) are subject to secular declines, meaning that they are going away. It’s exactly the right word to describe what I was talking about, is not political in the least, and your challenge of its use was just plain wrong.
This is a deliberate attempt to sidetrack me away from discussing Pachter’s behavior and get me talking about how he used a word. If I start arguing pages over a word, I appear to Pachter’s investors the way he wants me to appear: petty and arrogant.
No speaker of the English language uses the word ‘secular’ as Pachter did, and it appears that his political side jumped out and used an inappropriate word not geared toward financial analysis (secular decline is often used in the political realm to describe a nation’s spiritual decline). The reason why he sounds like a lawyer in defending it is because he is a lawyer. I would not be surprised if Pachter is very much involved in political activism.
You can say whatever you wish about my ideas, and I won’t challenge you as being wrong. In this case, you’re not only wrong, but you come across as petty and arrogant.
Who the hell is Pachter to say what someone can or cannot say about his public behavior? Who the hell is Pachter to say what can or cannot be written on someone’s own personal website?
I’m sure everyone knows Malstrom is so petty that he emails, unsolicited, anyone who uses the word ‘secular’ incorrectly.
I’m sure everyone knows Malstrom is so arrogant that he insists no one question his public behavior.
I’m sure everyone knows Malstrom is so arrogant that he has his own TV show on the web, and loves putting his face on TV, as well as being quoted in as many publications as possible.
I’m sure Malstrom is so petty and arrogant that he tells people what they may or may not write on their own personal webpage.
We all know that Malstrom is so arrogant, he publicly declares he has five Porsches, and that he uses his public appearances to boost his own personal financial gain.
That Malstrom! How dare he be so petty and arrogant!
Gameindustry.biz had a story of Mark Rein, of Epic Games, saying how AAA games will come to the iPad. The commentators mock Rein. Rein made this response:
Folks,
I wasn’t talking specifically about one generation of iPad or another or even specifically about the iPad itself but rather mobile platforms in general. They’re currently doubling in performance every single year. If that pace keeps up they’ll be as powerful as current game consoles before long. Whose to say Microsoft’s next Xbox won’t be a tablet with the Kinect hardware built right in or Sony making one with Move and camera support or Nintendo making a portable Wii? You’d be able to enjoy the console experience anywhere but then dock it to your TV for a full high-resolution living room experience and to watch your movies on the big screen. Pull out some wireless controllers and now you’re playing the next big shooter. Your saved games, identify, and even movies and music, could be stored in the cloud and accessed where ever you are. Again this sort of thing would be possible once the mobile platforms are powerful enough to do it better than the home platforms. If we fix the home platforms at today’s performance and let the mobiles double every year it is inevitable that we’ll get those kinds of experiences on mobile. Certainly we’ll get more powerful home consoles, and who knows how amazing those could be, but my point is we’ll get the quality of experiences we have on consoles today on mobile devices at some in the not-too-distant future. Will they be the exact same types of game? Maybe not because you want to make games that work to the strengths of the environment and control schemes but they’ll definitely meet the AAA quality bar.
Funny the writer asked about Angry Birds because I love that games. For me games like that, Flight Control, and Field Runners, Need for Speed, and others, already represent the current AAA on the iPad. This isn’t strictly about fancy graphics but quality of experience. I get fully immersed in Angry Birds and Field Runners :) There are lots of great games for mobile platforms and lots more on the way.
Daniel: I didn’t say anything about the death of 4:3 as an aspect ratio but was simply pointing out that, generally speaking, we’re no longer shooting movies in 4:3 anymore. Even TVs today are widescreen. If widescreen TVs had failed in the marketplace it might be different story but technology marches on – which is the overall point of what I was saying.
Portable game consoles have surpassed home consoles for quite some time. What I mean is that the Gameboy Advance is far more powerful than the NES, the DS is more powerful than the SNES, the 3DS will be more powerful than the N64, and so on. But we don’t plug our portable machines into the living room TV. What crack is this guy smoking?
There are portable DVD players. That doesn’t mean we carry around a portable DVD player and ‘plug it in’ to the living room TV when we want to watch something.
And another big issue is that no one wants the home experience of gaming on the portable. The PSP was all about bringing the home console experience to the portable and look how badly that failed. Experiences must be tailored to the portable nature of the device. You cannot slap on home experiences to portables, especially not games.
Did Mark Rein realize he said a ‘portable Wii’? How the hell would you do a portable Wii? You cannot play Wii Sports at the bus stop. The police would arrest you or something. As you can tell, there is no way the Wii experience can be turned into a portable. How would you play Wii Fit on the train?
I’m still amazed investors in Epic haven’t sacked Reins yet.
After reading Totilo’s piece on 2d gaming’s “revenge”, it appears that many people think 3d gaming began with the time period around Mario 64. This is not true. 3d gaming was popular even back in the early 1980s.
A young whippersnapper would look at this video and go, “Bah ha ha ha! Look how primitive it is! It is all green! Who would play that stupid game? Ha ha ha ha!” I would then proceed to slap the hell out of that punk.
The game is Battlezone. It was made by Atari in 1980. It was a ‘hit game’. It is entirely in 3d.
Here is Alkabeth, otherwise known as Ultima 0. It was made in 1980. Ironically, Ultima began as a 3d game and as it grew more 2d, the larger the game world got. And Ultima’s decline came as the game went to 3d once again.
Pole Position from Namco was released in 1982. It is was a huge hit. It is definitely a 3d game.
Zaxxon was another popular 3d game hit back in the early 1980s.
Power Glove was supposed to be about 3d gaming. Rad Racer, a hit racing game for Square before they became a RPG factory, was a 3d game. “Not uh, Malstrom!” cries a hardcore gamer. “You see what Sony is doing? Huh? HUH? Sony is bringing out true 3d gaming because… you know why, Mr. Malstrom? It is because PlayStation 3 will have 3d glasses!”
Rad Racer for the NES came with 3d glasses. It shows how the PS3 is still trying to catch up with the NES released twenty five years ago. Even the Sega Master system had 3d stereoscopic glasses.
What about first person shooters like Doom?
Note that the title of the game is Wolfenstein 3d.
Wing Commander was a very popular game. It was 3d.
Starfox was a popular 3d game too.
And this is the most popular 3d game ever made…
I mention this one because people say that ‘3d is too hard for some people, wah wah wah’. Motion controls is 3d gaming.
The point of all this is to show that there is no 2d VS. 3d conflict. No one wants to play racing games that go back to overhead 2d.
The conflict is between old school values/arcade values versus modern gaming values. The reason why everything fell apart during 3d gaming is because developers got a ‘camera’ and then they suddenly thought they were a movie director. “I got a camera! Wow! I am Steven Spielberg of video games! W00t! w00t!” And just because computer technology improved to the point that 3d didn’t have to be simulated through software didn’t mean that games had to turn into 3d. Tetris taught this lesson to everyone as it was a simple block falling game where it didn’t scroll. But computer technology, at that point, was scrolling both ways and having luxurious worlds inside the game If the game community had learned that lesson back with Tetris, we wouldn’t have seen such a decline when all games “had” to shift to 3d.
The main body of the post is that Blizzard will post the players real name with the option of showing the name of their character along with it. I wonder if this is another idea that came from those within Blizzard who likes Xbox live.
Now looking at the extremes of this announcement, on one hand, I can see a peaceful place to post anything about any Blizzard product without getting ridiculed by idiots or trolls. On the other hand, I could see Blizzard taking this off their forums after getting sued by surviving relatives of dead players that were killed by other players who found out where they lived from their real name posted on the forums. All because of a ganking situation, dispute over loot, or maybe one player insulting another player’s wife, for example.
What are your thoughts about this? _______________________________________ In gaming, it has become accepted that overtly pushing DRM punishes legitimate customers and pirates find a way to get around it anyway. What Blizzard is doing is punishing legitimate users and trolls will find a way around it. There is no way for the ‘Real Name ID’ to actually mean your true first and last name. Someone could say their name is Zoot Zebranky and, nothing can be done about it.
In other words, nothing is going to change. In fact, it is likely going to get worse because Blizzard’s move is inviting hostility from trolls.
The best move would be for Blizzard to shut down the forums and to fire their community managers. Of the many years I have seen Blizzard forums, Blizzard has no interest in actually policing it. Even during Bnet games, there are people who backstab teammates and just mess up the game experience. People kept reporting them but Blizzard did nothing. Blizzard prefers software to police things, not Human people (which is why so they rely so much on the Warden). Blizzard has tons of money, and they can afford to hire people to do nothing but police, but they do not wish to spend such money.
The reason why the Internet works is because it is de-centralized. In the beginning, the Internet was centralized as only one or a few servers were made in some universities. And the Internet languished. Some science communities used it, but other than that, not much was going on. But now anyone can build a server and host their own website. This decentralization of the Internet allowed it to truly become something marvelous.
Blizzard’s philosophy, as is many game companies approach to the Internet, is centralization instead of de-centralization. Everything goes through the Bnet server controlled by Blizzard. Instead of making chat channels able to be policed or free of bots and spam, Blizzard takes the ‘centralized route’ and removes chat channels completely.
It sounds as if this decision was made more by a Penny Arcade cartoon than by any real critical thinking. I expect hostility to mount and people to take the real names of the Blue posters, find their addresses, their pictures, their history, and post it outside of the forums for all to see of people illustrating to Blizzard what can be done.
I read on a message forum somewhere of some guy saying this was no problem because people did not sign their names onto the Declaration of Independence anonymously. Of course not, it was a declaration. But much of the writing before-hand was anonymous. Benjamin Franklin often wrote anonymously, for example. The entire Federalist Papers which explained how the United States Constitution worked were written anonymously. Much of the best authors did so anonymously or through pen names. Mark Twain is an alias. William Shakespeare is an alias. So the idea that anonymous people only spam and write junk can only be said by someone who knows little about history or of the written word.
I am critical of the idea of ‘community’ in the first place especially ‘game community’. There is no ‘community’. There is just a bunch of individuals who play games. Blizzard, or any other game company, trying to force a ‘community’ will have it blow up in their faces. The way around it is to allow gamers to create their own communities.
Blizzard forums have spam and trolls not because the posters are anonymous but because Blizzard is trying to centralize and force a ‘united game community’ which is contrary to Human Nature.
Love your site greatly and I respect what you do. But you seem to be very wrong about the “secular” issue and I think it’s made you look a bit silly.
Just google “secular decline” (with quotes) and you’ll see 10 uses of the term, all meaning “long-term decline” and none of them appearing to have anything to do with religion (rather, they mostly seem to be financial in nature).
In a post where you suggest someone else do more research, it is cringe-worthy to notice that one of my favorite writers on the ‘net has not taken 30 seconds to run such an obvious Google search. I get it, your work is only worth reading if you are arrogant. But that looks really really arrogant.
Step your game up, Sean!
You must have been reading another blog. I did say that ‘secular decline’ could be used to say ‘once in an age’ decline but this is not a common use of the word. Pachter even admitted I had said this.
Most often it is a use in English language is related to the political arena which includes academic theorists. It is also a holdover from when politico-economics was one field (before politics and economics were separated as a science). This is why most of the links go to academic or political websites. It is not a common use in the English language. This is why in message forums, people raised an eyebrow at the use of the word. It is the first time they had ever heard that word used in such a way. And that is my entire point. The phrase is such an artifact you only really find it normally used actively in political language or academic language (which is arguably the same thing). Although I do admit that the phrase is seeing more activity due to the economic decline.
The word they should be using is ‘disruption’. It is the word that Nintendo uses. It is the word that Microsoft uses. It is the word the entire Silicon Valley uses. For some reason, analysts will not use that word. Someone should ask them why since all the businesses they ‘analyze’ use it.
Let me ask you a question, ‘What more can I have done to illustrate the ideas of disruption and Blue Ocean Strategy?’ I have created articles on the subject. I have made a blog site that routinely talks about it. Granted, they are imperfect. However, school kids even understand the concepts. They clearly can see Nintendo’s strategy. And it can be used to predict the future. When Nintendo announced 3DS, clearly they were planning to disrupt something that a competitor was doing. Since Sony is the big Nintendo competitor, we look at what Sony is doing (3d glasses), and we can clearly see why Nintendo executives keep cheerily shouting, “No more glasses!”
If mere school kids can understand this concept, why can’t analysts? I’ve been observing the gaming business scene for almost half a decade now. At first, I thought it was because they were not paying attention because Gamecube did poorly. I figured when Wii was super successful, they would see it and come around. This didn’t occur. What happened is the exact opposite. They ignored anything Nintendo said about their business strategy and invented totally bullshit notions such as ‘casual gaming’. One like Pachter peddled very hard the idea that a Wii HD was imminent, and he was ‘definitely’ sure that it was coming out. Even when the top executives at Nintendo called him out on it, he kept continuing. Why?
After all this time, only one painful conclusion remains: analysts like Pachter say these things intentionally, even knowing they are wrong, in order to manipulate the news cycle of gaming business. When Pachter began his own personal web TV show at Gametrailers, a red flag went up for me. I have never seen any financial analyst act this way… So I began to ask questions about Pachter’s behavior on this merry blog. Pachter angrily emailed me demanding that no one is allowed to question his behavior. This struck me as very odd. People question my behavior all the time, as even this email is about.
I think it is time to stop responding to WHAT Pachter is saying but begin to ask more WHY he is saying it in the first place. Why would Pachter keep peddling a Wii HD when the top people in the company not only said it wasn’t occurring but called him out on it personally?
Why do analysts seemingly ignore the Wii altogether when it comes to NPD numbers? The only time I recall them talking about the Wii is when it declined. When the numbers went back up, it was pretended the Wii didn’t exist. The extremely strong presence of Mario 5, with seemingly longer lasting power than Modern Warfare 2, is completely ignored.
And then there are strange things like analysts talking about the PS3 supply shortage that never truly existed, or Pachter apologizing to Sony for calling the price of the PSP Go a ‘rip off’ which is what consumers agreed with entirely. BTW, why did Pachter give all three press conferences at E3 an ‘A ’? It is strange behavior we are seeing from these people.
Reader, I want to ask you another question. Why do you encounter some people in message forums vocally opposed to this website or even see websites devoted entirely to attacking this website? Is that not a strange response to a little gamer made website like this? Why the hostility?
Originally, this website was ignored. But as it grew in more popularity, or rather influence, the more attacks began lobbed on it. I recall one viral marketer on a message forum being stunned there was so much advocacy of the Wii.
I recall Pachter arguing with gamers in NeoGAF about Wii HD, and the gamers were saying that was not Nintendo’s strategy. Nintendo was doing the Blue Ocean Strategy and the Wii HD would be totally ‘Red Ocean’. At first, Pachter tried to dismiss the Blue Ocean Strategy (i.e. the best selling business book) by saying ‘it is too simple’, but Pachter kept encountering resistance. People would link to this blog website! hahaha It was then when I got the first email from Michael Pachter (this was when he used the ‘I greatly respect your work, blah blah blah’ as a way to attempt to roll me).
I think there is a definite pattern of guys like Pachter trying to influence the business news cycle for gaming.
Folks, for his NPD preview for May 2010, Pachter expected the Industry to ‘recover’. Now, suddenly out of the blue, he declares it is in permanent ‘decline’. What a flip-flop! Game journalists, who might as well be named Pachter sternographers, dutifully cut and paste his emails and words with no questions asked or even second opinion from one of the other analysts out there (who we never hear anything about. It is the same exact few analysts time and time again).
I think it is good and proper to tell investors that they should be very wary about what these analysts (who constantly talk to the press) are saying.
Anyway, this website is not well liked by the ‘Industry’ and is, of course, greatly despised by the viral marketers. Due to my lack of identity, the lack of a target, it has been difficult for them to attack me. They used to go for Malstrom’s credibility “He is just a Nintendo fanboy”, but too much time and too many events have occurred where they cannot go for the credibility angle.
Currently, they are going for the ‘arrogant’ angle. “Malstrom is arrogant! OMG!” The mission is to make sure this website has no influence whatsoever.
If I’m so arrogant, as I’ve often said, why does this website have no revenue? It is a labor of love. If I’m so arrogant, how come no one knows anything about me?
I know how the game is played. Try to bait Malstrom with arguing pointlessly over a definition of a word. But the problem is that I’ve seen this trick done before. These guys need to come up with better stuff.
And don’t you find it extremely odd that a major analyst is sending unsolicited emails to a personal website to insult it?
Above: Blizzard thinks Bnet 2.0 is awesome. Fans disagree.
Many Blizzard fans are worried that Blizzard has become a spawn of Activision and has completely lost touch with what gamers want. I cannot find Activision’s tentacles in Blizzard to explain Bnet 2.0 or other odd decisions the company is making. The companies are still pretty separate.
I remember in 2004 when World of Warcraft became huge, an elder developer from Ultima Online was asked about Blizzard’s success in the MMORPG. His response was brutal: “I think WoW’s success will destroy Blizzard,” he said. What he is referring to is how Ultima Online totally changed his company, and he expected WoW to totally change Blizzard.
This to me sounds like the more striking reason as to what has happened to Blizzard. This has altered Blizzard from being a product company to becoming a service company. And this is why you do not want Nintendo to make a MMORPG. This would explain why the company is just peachy having Starcraft 2 be online only (except for single player) as it feels fine being a ‘service’ orientated company. It looks to increase revenue from having a ‘User Generated Content store’ and managing ‘E-Sports’ both of which are services.
One of the things mentioned in disruption literature is that ‘too much money’ can ‘poison’ a company. Keep in mind that Starcraft 2 is the very first game Blizzard has made since WoW.
”But it is also the first game released since joining with Activsiion.”
True. But the expansions to WoW such as Burning Crusade were met with some disappointment.
With so much money coming in, it is not impossible to think that some of the people inside the company have become arrogant, to think they are geniuses in more ways than one.
From my spy inside Blizzard, I can confirm Blizzard developers are huge Xbox 360 fans, and they love Xbox Live. This is why Bnet 2.0 is taking the shape that it is. It isn’t because Activision doing it, it is because the Blizzard developers are doing it.
Why are Blizzard developers so far off from what people want? They actually did believe we would be ‘excited’ for Bnet 2.0. What happened?
It is a phenomenon I call Developer Drift. Back in 2005, as Nintendo warned about how the video game market is soon to collapse, they talked about Gamer Drift. Gamer Drift were gamers, like Malstrom, who stopped playing games sometime and drifted away doing other things. But let us turn it around. There is no Gamer Drift. It was always Developer Drift. Developers were not interested in continuing to make games I wanted to buy. The classic example is Miyamoto refusing to make 2d Mario games. Or it would be Aonuma deciding to put bizarre things in Zelda, like trains, because he wishes to please his child.
Developer Drift is when the developers’ definition of quality of video game entertainment runs off from the reservation. One of the small perks of game development is that it is very social, and you work with many other gamers. But a problem arises when people validate eccentric tastes through these peers instead of the mass market at large. For example, Blizzard developers think Xbox Live is really cool. However, their audience of PC gamers do not like it at all. Bnet 2.0 is a good example of developer drift where the developers get out of touch with what the market wants.
Developer drift seems to be a problem occurring with game developers who have been working for ten to twenty (or even more) years. If you work with just other developers for so long, it can get you out of touch with the masses. It might explain why we see such huge hits occur with ‘nobodies’ (because they are intertwined with the mass market) but once they become ‘developers’, eventually their work gets out of touch. Their work becomes more ‘niche’.
Starcraft fans are reeling over the strange things Blizzard has done (Bnet 2.0). But I don’t think the worst is over yet.
I bet there is going to be some rude surprises in the single player campaign. I thought the original Starcraft story was fine. I actually really liked the characters referring to me as the ‘magistrate’. Blizzard developers, however, do not appear to like how Starcraft 1 was done. They seem to invest heavily more in the ‘story’ element meaning they are going to Hollywood-ize it.
This brings me flashbacks of Tiberian Sun. It was when Westwood was beginning to enter decline. In Command and Conquer and Red Alert, games the videos were speaking directly to the player as ‘Commander’. In Tiberian Sun, this was removed as Westwood hired Hollywood actors, and you played a “character”. Fans complained that they didn’t want to be a character, and I believe it was changed back for Red Alert 2.
Here is what I expect: massive disappointment with the single player campaign. People will think the story is ‘lame’ (which is probable because we will only see the first third of it), and people will be annoyed at the ret-cons. What you saw occur in Starcraft 1 didn’t happen. Instead, it will be ‘re-visualized’ for you in a cinematic for Starcraft 2. Like, did you not know Raynor and Kerrigan were lovers? Or did you not know that Fenix was Artanis’s mentor? These ret-cons will come up. Fans will complain. Blizzard developers are big fans of Battlestar Galactica (which was a ratings disaster) and that show was totally heavy in ret-cons and characters having ‘identity crisis’. I expect this to be much of Starcraft 2’s story.
Blizzard had to have been very unhappy with consumer anger over Bnet 2.0 since they thought it was so awesome. Now imagine if there is consumer anger over the single player campaign. They already have the second two campaigns written and if people do not like how the single player story is done, Blizzard is stuck between a rock in a hard place.
As game developers get older and the fact that they will have spent most of their lives being game developers, the greater possibility for ‘developer drift’ to occur. A big trigger to ‘developer drift’ is big success. With Nintendo, I believe examples of ‘developer drift’ would be Metroid: Other M, Mario Galaxy 2, and some other games that got greenlit when it was made apparent how successful Wii was (this would put the year the games began in 2007 or 2008). A better example would be 3d gaming in general in the 1990s where developer drift had developers all excited about ‘3d technology’ but the mass audience wasn’t that excited.
Probably the worst trigger of ‘developer drift’ is when the developer literally believes he is a ‘Game god’ and will go to message forums where people worship him as a ‘Game god’ or keep searching the Internet to see what people are saying about him.
The only tonic I know that can solve ‘developer drift’ is failure. Blizzard has never put out a game that has really ‘failed’. While this won’t occur with Starcraft 2, it seems probable that it will occur soon. Blizzard putting out a game not well received would definitely humble the company.
What a load of smoke and mirrors. So let me get this straight. Pachter doesn’t bother to personally criticize you when you absolutely humiliate him by showing how flawed and ridiculous his “analysis” of the video game market is. Oh no, that’s not worth his time! Nor does he bother to email you and verbally assault you when you show that he’s on the take and trying to manipulate public opinion. Again, not worth his time.
But you say, as a small part of a much larger criticism, that the word secular felt out of place in Pachter’s “analysis.” My god, you’ve crossed the line! It’s one thing to say Pachter can’t even properly fulfill his duties as an analyst, but to challenge his grasp of the English language? Blasphemy!
You noted that Pachter possesses formal legal training. So do I. My father and grandfather are lawyers, and I have been to law school (though I am not a lawyer – don’t want to be). I have been dealing with lawyers for four years now and have drafted just about every legal brief imaginable in the legal profession. I have seen some stupid, irrelevant shit being argued by lawyers before to distract judges from the real issues, but Pachter’s criticism ranks right up there with the best of the worst.
There is a saying in the legal field that I’ve come to really appreciate over the years. It’s an apt saying pertaining to defense attorneys and it’s entirely appropriate here.
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Remember when Jesse Divnich emailed you to get a rise out of you?
“I’m beginning to suspect these analysts go to some backroom and make deals saying, “Who is going to say the kookiest thing to get a rise out of Malstrom?” “My turn! My turn!” says Pachter, jumping up and down. “No, it is my turn this time,” says Divnich.”
Looks like it was Pachter’s turn this time.
Don’t these people have something better to do than email you over irrelevant shit like this? Who’s really acting petty here? Pachter is. As is the guy who emailed you afterward saying you didn’t do your job because you didn’t do a Google search of the phrase secular decline.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who senses this. Going to law school makes the parents proud and women really want to get to know you better which is why it is so tempting. But actually practicing law for the rest of your life? I’d rather do something else. And many other people come to that conclusion.
But still, you gain a ‘personality’ and can sense ‘personality traits’ of those who have gone through such similar schooling. Constantly, I am thinking, “Man, this guy Pachter sounds more like my Congressman running for re-election.”
But, emailer, I didn’t know you had such teaching. I get a wide range of different emailers. Some are kids in high school. Some are in college. Some are out of college. Some are CEOs of manufacturing and other industries! It is very interesting to me to know the general range where the emailers are at as, at times, I sometimes think they are all college freshmen.
About Jesse Divinch, I haven’t had any dealings with him except for the one time where I quoted some things he said about Sony Move, and I placed some Kool-Aid pictures up (which I thought was funny). But I haven’t had any issues with him. I don’t see him parading himself everywhere or trying to control the news cycle.
Ones like Anita Fraizer only talk when NPD numbers come out. I didn’t note anything about her until GTA 4 came out. She said things like father’s day sales or graduation day sales would move the game. I’m thinking, “What the hell?” It was as if the analyst was rooting for the game to do well. I clearly got that sense with the reaction to Modern Warfare 2′s sales being orgasm over while Mario 5 was completely ignored. This was back in 2008, 2009, and now in 2010 I just can’t take it anymore and have resorted to mocking some of this behavior I’ve seen.
But without a doubt, Pachter takes center stage. You cannot go to a game website without running into a quote of his. He is everywhere. I’ve tried my hardest to ignore him. When people send me things about him, I try to ignore it. But in 2010, he has been saying some absolutely crazy stuff such as the Wii selling big in December 2009 because of ‘Wal-Mart Special’ or saying Wii Fit sales have plunged without mentioning it was supply restrained.
Like the emailer, my former legal training made me wonder something was up with this guy. His formal education shows much legal training. I’m glad that my instinct matches up with the emailer’s.
It leads me to ask a question I do not want to ask: Is there corruption in the financial markets surrounding video games? Are investors being taken for a ride?
It’s been obvious for a while that Patcher’s been trying to influence the industry himself. The question I have is: why? Patcher’s an analyst (or supposed to be). He doesn’t have anything to gain from the rise or fall of the industry. The health of the industry won’t affect his bottom line.
What’s his motivation here? Moneyhats? Fame (lol)? ____________________ I do know that Wedbush has a disclaimer on their ‘analysis’ sheets that say they do seek to do business with these third party companies. What that means, I do not know. But I wouldn’t confine Wedbush’s business to just analysis. . Perhaps Pachter would love to tell us what that disclaimer means. Let’s get it all out in the open. Let’s audit all the ‘analyst’ companies to make sure things are on the up and up.
As you know, I am a PC gamer at heart. I love RTS games. Unfortunately, there are not very many RTS games being made anymore. As you can expect, I am all over Starcraft 2. I’m closely following its development, I’m a participant in the beta, and I generally am a fan of Blizzard games. When Beta Phase 2 comes out, you will see the posting here plunge to nothing! (laughs)
Anyway, I have been exploring this bizarre ‘Starcraft’ type of players. What always struck me as odd that they keep insisting they type with symbols and letters like ‘gg’ or ‘glhf’ while they boast about their macro and micro. But why doesn’t this apply to the typing? Grandmothers can macro words better and can fully type out ‘good game’ or ‘good luck, have fun’. If someone can have good Starcraft 2 skills, they can surely have decent typing skills. But I digress…
One funny part of the Starcraft scene is the ‘youtube commentary’ videos. What I find humorous about them is how the commentators have to find something interesting to say in the first five minutes since every game has the same exact five minutes. Everyone is going to make scvs, probes, and drones. Everyone is going to scout with them. How do you make that sound exciting? And they do a decent job.
As gamers, we have to admit that gaming is a waste of time. Or is it? Can gaming be turned from a liability into an asset? My approach is to use gaming to learn more about the secrets of business. But that is my approach. People like the commentators are using gaming to improve their communication and perhaps make some money to the side. Some of the ‘pro-players’ have become mini-entrepreneurs and have set up little shops where they sell shirts and all. It is actually a fantastic thing for young people to do. You are turning your fun past time into a more productive activity.
Imagine, shock, if your productive activity takes off and that can be your job for life? Imagine your job being you having fun all the time. Why not? You have one life so you might as well make it count.
Out of all the commentators, day[9] is particularly different. This guy has some real broadcast talent skills that haven’t been fully developed. Unlike other commentators, he doesn’t just talk about the game but is constantly funny but informative at the same time. Not too many people can do this.
One of the things he is doing very correctly is the picture below:
Day[9]‘s videos are not about how awesome he is or how awesome the pro-players are. His videos are about how awesome YOU are. People gravitate to his videos because he is sincerely trying to teach them to be better Starcraft 2 players. Along the ride, the viewer gets to see interesting games and funny antics by day[9]. I don’t see that same desire of wanting the viewer to ‘kick ass’ from the other SC2 commentators.
I don’t know if Day[9] has any formal broadcasting skills. However, he should definitely consider doing it for a living and try getting some formal skills. The skills he is building just by using Youtube will be incredible.
Communication skills are so important no matter what you do in life. Many people are scared to death to do a speech. This guy is getting comfortable putting his face on TV and doing it day after day after day. Even though he is having fun about a video game, he is building ‘in-demand’ skills.
Anyway, in a year or so once video conferencing is more popular, I’d love to get a couple of super models to ‘ask him questions’. So when he goes to the viewer and says, “Let’s see what this person’s question is…” he sees a super model hot babe asking something like, “Day[9], when I make my roaches and ultralisks, I still have problems with Terran mech. Do you have any suggestions for me?” his response would probably look like this:
I was never aware that Malstrom was relevant enough to command these analysts to call him out directly.
Indeed, that is the tactic they should have employed. Ignore him, and he could be relegated to the status of fringe lunatic. Acknowledge him, and you *know* he's getting somewhere.
I was never aware that Malstrom was relevant enough to command these analysts to call him out directly.
Indeed, that is the tactic they should have employed. Ignore him, and he could be relegated to the status of fringe lunatic. Acknowledge him, and you *know* he's getting somewhere.
On that note, I hope he keeps posting the Patcher emails to make him look like more of a fool.
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