I try to resist walking into the fanboy fodder. I have outgrown the need to prove how smart I am on the internet thanks in part to your blogs about people being deluded into “playing analyst”, but at the back end of a work day waiting for my time to tick down, I decided to comment on a Gamespot article regarding Iwata blaming the industry as a whole for poor game quality and the slumping sales as a result. I found it amazing that so many posters were quick to mention that “it has been a banner year for game quality” based on reader and “game journalist” scores for games like SMG2 and GoW3.
The number of commentators citing game reviews as evidence that Iwata is wrong makes me think they can’t ALL be viral messengers (can they?). Some people actually believe it’s more important to get a high review score than to actually sell well. I know there’s no way to convince folks of the simple reality that sales = quality, but why do you think so many people are “stuck on stupid”?
This isn’t an issue where viral marketers would appear. Viral Marketers act as ‘shepherds’ on popular message forums or websites in order to corral opinion the way their company wants. Viral marketers appear at certain specific times such as during promotion of a company’s product or when that company’s product is released. For example, viral marketers were unleashed when ‘Natal’ was unveiled at E3 2009 as they declared how ‘amazing’ it was and tried to shepherd all other opinions about it. You could instantly spot the viral marketer when they would use language like ‘just imagine the possibilities!’ as in trying to shepherd other people to ‘use their imaginations’ to invest in Natal. What was really funny was that gamers did do this. They ‘used their imaginations’, and it got out of control. People began ‘imagining’ a brand new console successor to the Xbox 360 which, if it kept going on, people would begin to stop buying Xbox 360s because ‘they read on the Internet that the Xbox 360 successor would come out with Natal’. Microsoft had to make some public comments, and they reigned in their little marketers. Their hype dog slipped its leash!
What benefit is there for a viral marketer to disagree with Iwata on this issue? Microsoft and Sony are focused on Kinect and Move and are using their marketing muscle for that. Also, due to lagging U.S. sales there is no debate from analysts that the market is not healthy.
Iwata has been saying this stuff for years. The only people who are ‘shocked’ by what Iwata said are those who have never paid attention to him in the first place. Due to population decline, Japan can only see long-term decline. Soon Europe and America will follow. The DS and Wii were designed to combat this decline by expanding the market.
Why are people stuck on stupid? It is because they know much that isn’t so. These commentators truly believe ‘hardcore gaming’ is what grows and makes the industry healthy. They believe “casual gaming” to be a fad and to go away. This is why you keep reading comments like “recession has hurt Nintendo the most!”.
The commentators hear Iwata’s words of “the industry is the problem” as to mean “the hardcore games are the problem”. This is why they are going bonkers. Our lovable and misguided hardcore gamers believe that hardcore gaming is ‘healthy’ and ‘proper’ gaming and everything else is ‘casual gaming’ and that ‘casual gaming’ is a fad.
I have emails from people new to my website who are enraged that I wrote “there is no such thing as ‘casual gamers’”. They have created a world-view that healthy gaming is ‘hardcore gaming’ and that what they perceive to be ‘casual gaming’ is a fad. Iwata’s statements are conflicting with their world-view.
The hardcore gamer has a choice. Either their world-view is wrong and Iwata is correct, or their world-view is correct and Iwata is just speaking nonsense. Since human nature tilts towards behavior that makes us believe we are ‘superior’, the choice is almost always that Iwata is a clown who doesn’t know what he is saying but the random commentator on the website truly understands the business of gaming.
