Hello again,
I really liked the re-framing post you wrote recently. It just really struck a chord as a common sense “duh!” pieces – something gaming companies’ CEOs and producers should be forced to read. It’d also pretty hard for them to refute the things said in the post due to the sheer amount of common sense
I’ve gotten some emails from game companies who say they have printed and passed one of my posts around the office. You’d be surprised who they are. But it wouldn’t be nice to reprint them on the blog for all to see since companies have PR departments for a reason. I won’t put anything that is sent my way public unless given permission.
Anyway, to the main point of the mail: In “An Expression of the Hardcore Mind”, you touched upon the subject of ‘uninformation’, of people pretending they have a clue about what is going on in the video game industry at the moment despite being completely and totally off in just about every way possible. People were angry at the game journalist being uninformed, yet they seem to ignore the fact that just about everyone, on every level of the business could be considered utterly ignorant. Indeed, it is highly distrubing how pervasive the ignorance and wishful thinking really are:
I also think there is a massive amount of anger because there are many, many people who want to enter the games industry and many Nintendo fans would LOVE to be on IGN’s Nintendo team. There is a sense that many of these ‘game journalists’ being hired are talentless hacks. If all game journalists disappeared and were replaced with random people from message boards, the output likely wouldn’t be too much different.
There is an expectation for a game journalist, even a game critic, to be better than the random message forum poster. Daemon sounded like one of those modded down comments you see on a YouTube video.
Customers: I don’t think I need to elaborate too much on the hardcore, you and others have done it at length already.
Aww…
Journalists & Analysts: It’s troubling that the people who should be our source of information on the industry don’t really understand it’s current state, yet they pretend to be. They seem to have this odd hunch that the game has changed, but still attempt to evaluate the new situation by the old rules. They feel SOMETHING’s wrong, but can’t point out what for the death of them.
I disagree with what you said about analysts. I’m convinced analysts really don’t give a damn. Do you have any idea how much the typically quoted ‘analyst’ gets paid? Pachter revealed that he is on his fifth porsche. Most of us, especially with the depression, will likely never even own one porsche. The job of guys like Pachter is to do reports on stocks and all, not to make quotes about the console war to the press. However, I suspect they do that not just to advertise their own companies and help journalists have stories (a story often needs some quotes from ‘experts’) but out of some sort of sense of guilt of all the money they make for essentially crunching numbers. I don’t think they should feel guilty. I admire people who earn money someway, somehow, so long as they don’t steal it.
On one level, I feel sorry for game journalists since they don’t get paid much. However, when they act like Daemon, it is obvious why no one looks upon their job with value.
I think many analysts, guys like Pachter and all, are genuinely nice guys. However, at the end of the day, they are out buying yet another new sports car while the rest of us would be happy to be able to buy a new car, any car. The analysts already have money. We, people like myself and others on the outskirts, don’t have that type of money. The point is that the reason why people like myself write these articles or people who come to this site interested in the business is because we want to generate that type of money.
In other words, I think people like myself and others have an advantage over the standard analysts: we have a burning passion to make money. They already have money, so the passion cannot be there. To be honest, if I was buying my fifth porche, I too probably would think a Wii HD is right around the corner. I simply wouldn’t have that passionate desire that is required to alter my context in order to get some sign or grasp of how Nintendo does what it does.
The most troubling sign of ignorance, however, are probably the developers and publishers. They should, by all accounts, see the inevitable, rising costs of development, and their complete inferiority before Nintendo. Their misunderstanding of the latter is easily attributed to them being Birdmen, but their acceptance of the first one is simply insane. Ubisoft’s CEO believes that another tech leap like the this generation could double development costs. ( http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212061.html?tag=result;title;0 )
The strange thing is, he seems to be perfectly okay with it. When I read the thing, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. He thinks his costs of doing business will dramatically increase, and he’s not questioning his current business model at all?!
This industry has clearly caught a disease. But, unlike the hardcore claim, the Wii most definitely is not it. If anything, the only people who aren’t totally blind right now are here and at Nintendo. And perhaps, just perhaps, someone at Microsoft, although I doubt it.
It was understandable in the begining, but things are rapidly reaching absurd proportions. Any idea why the people, especially those on a crash course financially, refuse to wake up?
Thinking about this some more, the disruption literature is very handy at this point. Or, better yet, why not listen to Christensen himself?
The premise of disruption is that companies that fail do not do so because their managers are ‘stupid’ or ‘ignorant’. They are entirely rational. Unfortunately, that rationality is obeying incorrect rules.
With all these third party companies investing in the HD Twins as this generation began, this was very rational. Of course, it was horribly wrong, but it was rational based on the rules they were using.
When analysts like Pachter say there is a Wii HD coming out, Pachter isn’t ‘stupid’. He is being rational. Unfortunately, the rules for that rational statement are not true. For example, I have never heard any game analyst theorize that maybe graphics are ‘good enough’ and people don’t care if a machine is HD or not. I also haven’t heard any game analyst theorize that maybe porting games is bad for the console because it removes differentiation. Wii doesn’t sell because it is like the other systems. It sells because it thrives on its differences and has very unique games. Removing differentiation from the Wii, which is what a Wii HD and even a ‘Xbox Live’ type online service for the Wii, could actually destroy the system instead of improve it in the market.
One sense I find universal among customers is that they want the three game consoles to be different and unique or else what is the point of buying all three? The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are doing little more than cannibalizing each other’s markets. As Miyamoto says, it is like two dinosaurs at the edge of extinction fighting over supremacy. The meteor has hit, and the non-gaming mammals are beginning to emerge.
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