I started to play Tears of Kingdom again after putting it down sometime in latter 2023. This game is not going to age well.

The world is just unimaginative and boring. It’s the SAME WORLD as in BOTW. I simply don’t want to explore. I want to get my shrines and korok seeds and move on.

The story is also just stupid. Zelda going back in time and turning into a dragon? STUPID. It’s like this game doesn’t connect to BOTW at all.

I still really hate the idea of fusing items (outside of arrows). All the weapons being fused with a stick or rock looks really stupid and makes all the weapons look ugly.

I really, really don’t like how they handled the Master Sword in this game. But more on that later.

Let’s break this common sentiment down…

Console warz are for boomers

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 18, 2024

This is a fascinating tweet. It is written with the full on arrogance that players are a reactionary element, a lagging factor. It is, basically saying, that ‘players will eventually catch up to things’ because apparently ‘players are living in the past’. That is what the ‘Console Warz are for boomers’ comment is about.

Is this true? Let’s ask some questions here.

Are players living in the past?

Why is the Game Industry talking about players as a separate entity? Why aren’t the industry players as well? Or does no one play games in the games industry?

The difference between Sega and Microsoft? When Sega goes third party, it is bad. When Microsoft goes third party, it is good. When Sega’s first party software is on a competitor’s platform, that was considered the death knell. But when Microsoft’s first party software is on a competitor’s platform, it is considered the life knell!

Microsoft owns an entirely news division. Despite everything in the Xbox franchise being failure after failure, you get nothing but glowing news from Microsoft Xbox. If Sony and Nintendo are not both ‘doomed’, both are constantly told they need to stop doing what they’re doing and ‘follow Microsoft’s lead’.

I don’t know what to laugh at more. These absurd stories or how some people appear to read them with a straight face.

To paraphrase a Klingon quote: “Console warz is only fun when you WIN!!!!”

The only reason why console warz is ‘over’ is because Microsoft lost. Apparently, going ‘third party’ is now being declared to be ‘transcending the market’! Hahahahahahahaha.

How stupid do they think we are?

Hello, Sean!

I hope this is the right email address to write to.

You wrote:

“Now, I have not seen official sales numbers, but I am under the impression that the Nintendo Switch is a sales success and may, in fact, be the best selling game console ever made.”

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html

Almost, but Nintendo DS is still number 1 as of December 31, 2023.

The statement is correct. Read it closer. …and MAY, in fact, be the best selling game console ever made.

The Switch lifecycle is not over. Just because Switch 2 comes out doesn’t mean people will stop buying the Switch either. No one knows how much the Switch will ultimately sell. So… it *may* become the best selling console. May…

But getting back to the point and context…

It made sense in 2005 to think Sean Malstrom was CRAZY for being bullish on Nintendo. Nintendo had three weak console generations in a row (SNES, N64, Gamecube) with only the strong NES which had no competition. Nintendo clearly couldn’t compete with PlayStation 3. And then Microsoft was bringing out their mighty Xbox 360!!!

I don’t blame anyone thinking I was crazy then. The surface data showed momentum with Sony and Microsoft and with Nintendo in nothing but decline.

But, today, the surface data doesn’t show that. What the surface does shows is…

Nintendo breaking records and doing gangbusters.

Sony’s PS5 disappointing and having a tepid market response.

Microsoft’s Xbox might as well disappear with how badly it is doing.

So WHAT IN ANY REASON could anyone conclude, “Nintendo is being stubborn by not following Sony and Microsoft’s direction.” Why on earth would a WINNER want to emulate the LOSERS???

You know why they don’t talk about the great CONSOLE WAR anymore and mock anyone who brings it up?

THEY LOST.

Back in 2005, nearly twenty years ago, the great Satoru Iwata said the Sony/Microsoft console direction was ‘not the way’. Nintendo was going to take a different approach, the Blue Ocean approach, and declared war against generalized disinterest itself.

“How is Nintendo doing what they’re doing?” No analyst asks that. Why not? Aren’t they curious? Why are we assuming that Microsoft’s ‘Cloud everywhere’ approach is The Way? Why are we assuming that Sony’s ‘port on PC’ approach is The Way?

Why don’t the analysts analyze the BEST SELLING consoles instead of analyzing the LOSING consoles? Why are analysts championing the LOSING STRATEGY of LOSING CONSOLE COMPANIES? Why aren’t analysts curious about the WINNING STRATEGY of the WINNING CONSOLE COMPANY?

“But there aren’t any winners and losers of console war!!!”

See? There you go again. There definitely is a market battle. If Sony or, especially Microsoft, was winning, THAT WOULD BE ALL THEY WOULD BE TALKING ABOUT.

They even now define console generations are not a thing. If they did, that would invite comparison to the Switch kicking their ass. You can’t have that.

I’m not even trying to look up anything on this Piscatella guy. He just ‘appears’ in every news article like Pachter. And also, like Pachter, he comments on television entertainment.

To those who do not remember, Michael Pachter was the infamously wrong video game analyst. He also loved the limelight and would jump on every interview. Of course, he was on the wrong side of the DS and Wii back in 2004-2006 respectively. But he also kept declaring DOOM for Netflix yet Netflix is not only still around but the only profitable streaming service out there!

So now we get this Piscatella guy. From this article, he says,

A few factors have caused this dam to break (outside of Nintendo, which is still stubbornly plugging the leak and making games for its systems exclusively). “Exclusives matter most when trying to encourage consumers to purchase your video game console over the other company’s console,” says Mat Piscatella, executive director and video game industry analyst at market research company Circana. “This was far more important when consoles were the primary way people engaged with video games.” Now, committed console gamers are aging, and younger generations aren’t enthused about buying expensive hardware when they have computers, phones, and tablets. “It’s the wider adoption of mobile/tablet/PC, and maybe eventually cloud, that is lessening the importance of exclusive games,” Piscatella continues. “Consumer tastes and expectations have evolved, and convenience to content has become more important than loyalty to a console.”

There is zero interest in understanding Nintendo from the business sense. Nintendo simply is ‘stubborn’ and making exclusives because it wants to be ‘stubborn’. What a joke article.

Piscatella doesn’t understand the purpose of the video game console. For first party companies, the reason for the first party game is to give purpose to the hardware, not simply a competitive advantage because not all the consoles are competing. Nintendo is an integrated hardware and software game maker. It’s like asking Apple to port the Mac OS to PCs. It defeats the purpose of Apple being an integrated hardware/software developer if they were to do that.

Piscatella must be avoiding or ignoring all the data on Nintendo hardware and software. Now, I have not seen official sales numbers, but I am under the impression that the Nintendo Switch is a sales success and may, in fact, be the best selling game console ever made. And looking at the titles of the Switch software, I am assuming that many young people are buying and playing the software.

When Piscatella is generalizing, he only is talking about Sony and Microsoft consoles which, undoubtedly, skew older. But he doesn’t even place the Nintendo data in his analysis of consoles because it blows up his analysis. The Nintendo Switch is hot stuff with the younger generations. Too bad for Microsoft and Sony.

Hey, look at this…

What's it like to post sales info on Twitter these days?

Chris Dring has left Twitter due to harassment, one of the only people that posted real sales info here.

I'm guessing that second name is me (although wtf did I do, and I lost 80 lbs so come up with something new plz). pic.twitter.com/dVXAUGffV5

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 15, 2024

I have no idea who Chris is Dring, but by deleting his twitter account, there is no evidence of what was said. Naturally, Resetera accepts the word as gold and bemoans ‘toxic’ twitter. I want to see proof, not strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks.

I don’t know who this Mat Piscatella is. Let’s see what he is saying.

2023 US spending on physical video game software was 37% lower than it was in 2019.
Comparing these same two years, overall video game content spending (including physical and digital across console, portable, PC, cloud, non-console VR, subscription and mobile) increased by 25%.

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 10, 2024

This is a very dishonest presentation of the ‘sales data’. First of all, why are you giving percentages in the first place? Percentages don’t mean anything as we don’t have actual numbers. If my game sells from one copy to two, it is considered a 100% increase in sales yet the game is selling terribly.

Second, any talk of physical game sales should be compared only in an apples to apples basis. This is deliberately not done. I can only imagine the reason why is because the data may not show what the assumed business narrative to be. An apples-to-apples comparison would be to compare physical sales to digital sales of the same exact product. For example, you would compare such sales of Final Fantasy XVI retail to Final Fantasy XVI digital. It is the same exact game but one is a digital version and the other is the physical version. When talking about physical game sales, this is the assumed comparison.

But the guy talks like a lawyer. He compares physical sales, which can be nothing but actual retail games, to digital spending which includes digital games as well as all DLC, all subscriptions, and all games that are not present in retail (e.g. indie games). Maybe it is true that people are choosing to buy digital games over physical games. However, the way how this information is being presented is extremely dishonest and appears to be designed to create a pre-defined narrative in the analysis.

No one goes to retail stores to get DLC or online subscriptions.

There is also no physical presence of mobile games. All mobile games are digital.

So comparing a generalized ‘digital revenue’ (which is a universe of things) to physical revenue, which can only mean retail games, is blatantly dishonest. Why not just give us the numbers straight up?

In addition, one thing these characters are doing is continuing a tradition from back during the Generation 6 and Generation 7 eras: never mentioning the number of customers. One of the reasons why gamers want to see sales data is to see which games are popular. This means higher probability of those games getting sequels.

But revenue is not customers. Why not tell us the number of customers? Tell us ‘units sold’, not ‘revenue’. Not all games are the same price. And on top of that, many games add on DLC, micro-transactions, and subscription fees to mask the actual numbers of the game. Some games may be very unpopular but be dominated by ‘whales’ who are spending big.

Yet, the number of customers is not given to the public. Why? I will the reader use his or her own imagination as to why.

A big reveal is when the analyst starts to become passive aggressive. Take a look at this:

US Video Game Content Sales Share, Excluding Digital.

In a chart. https://t.co/2eyv5JMBz3 pic.twitter.com/dsk615os3I

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 9, 2024

Ironically, digital would be 100% of all non-full game sales. It’s like a chart of 100% DLC being digital. Like… duh!

Instead of just putting out the numbers (not percentages, not interpretations, not apples-to-orange comparisons), he is twisting himself into these type of knots.

Retail sales are dying because commercial real estate is dying. Does NPD have access to Limited Run Games, Strickly Limited, and other physical print sellers data? I honestly do not know.

Also, note how all their ‘decline’ data starts at 2019. Why not start sooner or later? Why 2019 or 2020? It couldn’t be because of a pandemic that forced everyone inside which artificially boosted all online activity and sales, could it? If I wanted to present the largest percentage of decline in physical, I would start right when the pandemic started.

Take it from someone who has been dealing with these people for many decades. The information they are putting out online is actually coordinated press releases for some corporate narrative. The real information, the stuff companies pay for, doesn’t get put out for free. If so, why would anyone pay for it? The information put out there is to move the needle on media perception.

I could not believe in 2005 and 2006 that these analysts would cherry pick data of game consoles and ignore WHOPPING data that was pointing to a different conclusion. The DS selling like hotcakes and smoking the PSP was completely ignored! The PS3 was supposed to sell amazing only because the PS1 and PS2 sold amazing. But if you look at all the console data for all the generations, you’d find that the approach the PS3 was doing was the opposite of what each market leader was doing for each generation, including Sony. The PS1 and PS2 were not powerhouse consoles compared to their competition. But, again, none of that matched the created media narrative of the time.

The most optimistic thing about the future of physical game sales is revealed in how non-transparent and word-snaking these analysts are about the subject. I’m suspecting far better numbers for physical than are expected.

“You can imagine anything you wish too… blah blah blah…”

THEN GIVE US THE FUCKING APPLE-TO-APPLE NUMBER COMPARISON!!!

Not percentages…

Not products that have no physical comparison (like DLC)…

Instead of Microsoft admitting they cannot compete in the console game market, they want to re-define everything as ‘only digital’ and then not reveal their own data. After all, with Game Pass, Microsoft no longer sells video games in the traditional sense.

I don’t want to hear about ‘revenue’ (revenue is not customers and is not profit). I want to hear about customers. Show us THAT data.

And where are the installed console base numbers?

“Why you being all console warrior? Blah blah blah…”

It’s because we’ve been getting those numbers for GENERATIONS. It looks like the Big Loser (Microsoft) doesn’t want the public to realize how bad their console business is going.

Master Malstrom,

Your post on declining fertility rates is very interesting, and I was recently thinking about this very topic.

I believe the problem is not that women don’t want to have children but that they only want to have children with alpha males. It’s been said that women only find 8 percent of men attractive. And so they’d rather be alone than “settle.”

In the past, most women did not have access to the top men, but now thanks to social media (Instagram), they do. As a result, most women spend their most fertile years chasing after the alpha males, but there simply aren’t enough of these men to go around, so by the time these women finally “hit the wall” around age 30 and are finally willing to settle for a lesser man, they have a high body count and thus are no longer attractive to most men.

The sexual revolution was sold to society based on the idea of freedom. And we are still being told that complete sexual freedom is liberating for all. But it is the opposite that is true. Complete sexual freedom is actually quite oppressive as it allows the strong to outmuscle the weak. It allows the alpha males to get most of the women. The vast majority of men get left out in the cold, and most women get used and discarded. What we currently have is a quasi-polygamous society, and history has shown that every polygamous society has inevitably collapsed.

So what is the solution? What must be done is we have to find a way to prevent the alpha males from hoarding most of the women for themselves. As to how to do this, I think laws need to be passed that make it illegal for a man to impregnate a woman out of wedlock. If a man does this, he would go to prison for a minimum of one year with no exceptions. The woman would not be punished.

I know this must sound oppressive, but I would argue that this would actually be less oppressive than the current situation we have. And since only a very small percentage of men are capable of getting sexual consent from a woman, most men would not be negatively affected by this law. They would benefit because they wouldn’t have to compete with the alpha males to the extent that they currently do.

What say you?

There are legal distortions that are creating these social problems. It is not unlike the ‘one child’ rule in China which created a generation of mostly male. I prefer the correct approach is to remove the legal distortions and allow nature to flow through society.

Let’s take a look at South Korea. Here, a woman speaks about the issue.

North Korea doesn’t seem to have this fertility problem. Does this mean North Korea is ultimately going to be defining the Korean Civilization as South Korea dies out? Perhaps this is why totalitarianism is the norm in history.

Listen at 3:00 for that video. There was a LAW that said women HAD to be married before being at a certain age. It has nothing to do with Christianity as there was no Christianity here. No Right Wing Trump Supporters in Korea at that time period either (we assume) so it isn’t about political ideology.

At 3:08, fathers were punished if the daughters were not married! Imagine that.

Marrying for love was only done when Catholicism was introduced to the country. Before that, it appears all marriages were arranged.

At 4:55, she says that the man was to pay for the house and the woman to pay for the furnishings. But due to high cost of houses, couples need financial help from their parents. Then the parents exert CONTROL over the couple’s lives. (Yikes!)

At 5:45, she talks about matchmaking services which are done as last resort. She says they are a ‘wake up call’ as they are a huge reality check to people. As a male, I would say it is more so for the women than for the men. Men get used to rejection if they are not ‘up to proper standards’. Women skate by until they are 40 and then reality hits.

There is going to be some sort of cultural or social pressure that will force men and women to marry and have children. This may, or may not, be inserted into law. But it going to come from culture and society first.

Most likely is that the current population will be replaced by another society that does have those cultural and social pressures. The reason why marriage and children is ‘normal’ throughout history in all cultures in all civilizations isn’t because it is the most consistent, it is because history is written by those who show up.

There are those that say, “This is new! It has never been done before! Progress!”, but there is Nothing New Under the Sun. Human nature, like civilization, is cyclical. With that and the idea of survivorship bias for cultural and historical norms, let’s go back into historical data.

Why do you assume ancient societies had men as hunters and women as gatherers? This may not be the case. In fact, women could be hunters as well and they were.

“That’s amazing!” cries the reader. “It shows Enlightenment and Wokeness occurred in the ancient times.”

Indeed, it does. But if women are hunting, they wouldn’t be tending children or having children. Modern times proves this to be true. Perhaps, as an evolutionary innovation, it was necessary to make women stay home and make babies.

“Are you implying a civilization died out because women were out hunting?”

Not a civilization. This is bigger than civilization.

A major hypothesis for the death of the Neanderthals was that their women hunted while Homo Sapien women stayed home and made babies. This is why Homo Sapiens became the de facto Humans while Neanderthals died out.

“What are you trying to say!?”

Civilization in 2200 A.D. is going to have women (and men) being pressured or forced to make babies and marry. There is no alternative to that. The only question is whether the future civilization of 2200 A.D. will be our ancestors or not.

Korea may not be Korean centuries from now. Japan may not be Japanese. Europe may no longer be European. Demographics are destiny.

This isn’t a new idea, but I don’t think I’ve heard your take on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Basically, the “mouse utopia” experiments may show logically how any species population will react to overabundance of resources in too dense (per capita) an area:

Having reached a level of high population density, the mice began exhibiting a variety of abnormal, often destructive, behaviors including refusal to engage in courtship, and females abandoning their young. By the 600th day, the population was on its way to extinction. Though physically able to reproduce, the mice had lost the social skills required to mate.

…

Calhoun himself saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of humankind. He characterized the social breakdown as a “spiritual death”,[6] with reference to bodily death as the “second death” mentioned in the Biblical verse Revelation 2:11.[6]

Do you think population density was at root in previous historical examples with government mandating procreation? If not, do you think governments can apply a similar strategy successfully if that’s the issue we are facing now? Or will it take a more cataclysmic event (wars, famines) in order to “reset the scales”?

Humans are NOT mice. That is the fatal flaw of all the mouse experiments.

What is interesting about the Mouse Utopia experiments is because of the ‘Utopia’ aspect… unlimited resources. Malthusian thought predominated the twentieth century… i.e. that Humanity would run out of resources. What if resources were unlimited? The Mouse Utopia shows that the mice would all die just the same.

Recent economic trends show there is no ‘utopia’ going on for Humans anyway. Food is getting more expensive, not cheaper. Housing is getting more expensive, not cheaper. So I think the Mouse Utopia comparisons are moot since not only are Humans not mice, Humans do not have ‘free’ and ‘unlimited’ goods.

Speaking of Malthus, so many animal experiments were done to prove Malthus. It is a good example to show why one shouldn’t compare rodents to Humans. Julian Simon showed Malthus was incorrect. The resource is not a bountiful gift that springs from a compassionate planet. Rather, a resource is the product of man’s mind. Historically, the more resources man uses, the more man creates. Oil does not come from the ground but out of our heads. All resources come out of the Human mind!!!

As for your last paragraph, let me take the American view. One thing I’ve noticed with my non-American readers is they tend to speak of government and society as the same thing. In the American psyche, this is not the case. Consider the very first words of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense…

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

The most important paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence is not the second, the most quoted, but actually the fourth, the least quoted. It reads:

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

The fourth paragraph of the Declaration is separating British Society from the British Government. The Declaration is saying they are not at war with the British people but only their government. Indeed, when elements of British society appeared, such as a science ship intercepted at sea, the colonists let the science ship go saying, “We do not war against science.”

The US Constitution also highlights the difference between SOCIETY and GOVERNMENT. The very beginning of the US Constitution says:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, pro­vide for the common defence, pro­mote the general Welfare, and se­cure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain….

The US Government is not the people. Indeed, American society existed well before the US Constitution. It is society that makes the government, not the other way around.

The French did not understand this. It is why the French Revolution was so bloody and kept happening again and again. Frederic Bastiat recognizes the issue was conflating society and government and wrote a hilarious essay on it.

The solution to the fertility problem is not a top down approach, a type of tyrannical hammer enforcing a behavior. The low fertility rate, the error of which must be removed, is likely not being caused by society at all! What is the government, e.g. the laws, doing with society?

If the law has it to be more profitable to women to divorce a man than to stay married, should we be surprised that women keep divorcing their men?

If the law is paying for education degrees, is it not surprising that everyone, including women in their most vulnerable childbearing years, are spending it in a university?

If the law would stop spending all the taxpayer money, perhaps then the government wouldn’t be printing so much money creating poverty out of the working class which is causing all the women to work.

At least in the American system, even things like abortion didn’t come about because society wanted it. It wasn’t even voted on. This was why the Roe v. Wade decision was so controversial and hated. Now, abortion is still legal in America but has to be done through the local state (which can be done democratically or non-democratically).

Society already does marriages and babies naturally. What needs to happen is the government to get out the business of marriages and babies. Instead of trusting a law or an ideology, let us try liberty.

You do not achieve liberty by oppressing someone. The slave owner said freeing his slave is ruining his own ‘liberty’. Liberty of what? To be a bum? There is a difference between liberty and license. In the same way, in order for women to have ‘liberty’ to divorce their husbands and resume their lifestyle, the state must oppress the former husband and take his money. Ask any divorced man for clarification on this subject.

Check out this jokester…

I've thought about this idea for a while, as a player, since I've been diving into single player games lately.

When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I've often thought "I wish I could give these…

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) April 11, 2024

No one, and I mean NO ONE, in commentary on the ‘Gaming Message Forums’ or the streamers on Youtube are talking about the Working Class. Why? Because they *hate* the Working Class and have no desire to ever CONNECT to the Working Class. Even worse, now they want to make believe they are ‘working class’ by now desiring ‘tips’.

Even in America, the capital of tipping culture, the only people who get tips are WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. These are waiters, cooks, and bag handlers. They are people who work with their hands and muscles, not people pushing buttons on a computer.

As for game developers, successful games tend to generate best selling merchandise, spin-offs, as well as sequels. But… apparently that is not enough. What’s even more hilarious is that this dumbass thinks he is actually being ‘smart’ and ‘clever’ with his tweet. “Isn’t this a great idea!?”

Do you tip the people making your electricity?

Do you tip the people making your fuel?

Do you tip your farmer?

Do you tip your car mechanic?

Do you tip your police officer?

As an entertainer, it is important to remain connected to the mass market… e.g. the Working Class. It is extremely common and risky for successful entertainers to become disconnected to the Working Class. Thus, they become ‘out of touch’. The market, e.g. the Working Class, sees the entertainer as arrogant and annoying, and then that entertainer is completely destroyed. It is the cycle that keeps on happening.

The LAST TIME I heard game developers talk about the Working Class was Iwata when he was bringing out Nintendo’s new direction with Generation 7. Ever since then, they don’t talk to the market as if they are Human beings but just some nebulous ‘Expanded Audience’.

The reason why the Switch is a hit is because it works better with the Working Class as Switch is cheaper and more pick up and play. However, everyone is mistaking this as Nintendo’s ‘philosophy’. It is no more complicated than the Switch being a handheld being marketed as a home console (to sell the home console prices for handheld production effort games).

The outrage over the Sony announcement of PS3’s ‘599 US Dollars’ is really the Working Class’s lament. The Working Class has the power to destroy the entertainment and to return these people back to ‘real jobs’. This includes streamers as well. Anger them and beware.

If the Game Industry was smart (they aren’t), they’d shut this guy up fast. Asking for tip money from the audience is ridiculous and extremely offensive.

Most of these so-called ‘game developers’ have no business being entertainers. With this upcoming generation, we will return you to a ‘Real Job’. You doubt this? Just watch…

This is a real job:

This is not a real job:

Entertainers exist on the pleasure of the Working Class. This must never be forgotten.

When gamers on a mass scale realize they can make more entertaining games themselves, this entire Game Industry is going to fall apart at a rate faster than anyone can imagine.

Sit down, everyone! Sit down and hush. For here is a letter from The Reader. Let’s listen…

Hello Master Malstrom,

I’m sorry to hear about your condition and want to thank you as a long time reader for showing me a different perspective of gaming and the game industry.

I hope you will pull through and I can still write to you 10 years later. Since you have talked about the lack of professionalism among Game Developers, I want to follow it up with the recent happenings at the “Game Developers Conference” for your amusement.

Here is a Video of Game Developers screaming into the void to protest something:

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/events-conferences/game-developers-come-together-at-gdc-for-a-gdscream-to-vent-rage-at-the-state-of-the-industry-it-feels-hard-to-be-here-and-pretend-like-everything-is-fine

A link to the video directly: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/rWFBlFcg

Thank you for everything.

Best regards,

The Reader

My reply:

The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures.

-Return of the King, by Tolkien

Evil cannot create. It can only twist existing things. This explains The Woke.

Hello Malstrom,

you have readers all over the world, so it would be pretty cool if you could
share this campaign on your blog:

https://www.stopkillinggames.com

To provide some background information, this is an attempt headed by the
YouTuber Ross Scott to get some sort of legal action rolling to prevent game
publishers from being able to irrevocably shut down games. The current target
is The Crew because it has a hard online-only requirement and the server are
getting shut down. There is nothing special about The Crew itself, but UbiSoft
is a European country, and the shutdown is recent, so it makes for a good
case. I’ll let Ross explain it himself:

Americans have practically zero consumer protection when it comes to software,
so he is trying to rile up as much of the rest of the world as possible and
the website has information on what course of action to take in different
countries. Some actions require you to own the game, others don’t. We don’t
really have anything to lose, so why not give it a shot? If even one country
cracks down on this practice it will be a win.

I don’t think being posted on this blog is going to do that guy any good, but there you go.

I also don’t think this has any legal way to succeed.

The best way to stop these games is to not buy them. Play older games. They’re better anyway and MUCH CHEAPER with being Woke-Free!