Email: About that video

…it was interesting, but he defeated his own argument with financial ignorance (declaring bankruptcy is never a “marketing ploy”), ignorance of how game developers work, and ignorance of what’s actually succeeding and why. For example, games with crappy on-disc content to be filled in via DLC don’t succeed; they fail. The few games really succeeding in today’s market give you plenty of stuff for your $60, and the DLC truly expands on it. 

 

The big problem is his video is totally hardcore-centric. He talks only about things that young, male gamers care about. True, some of those are indeed big issues, like EA’s copy-paste practices and rush jobs, but no, mediocre stories aren’t killing the game industry because stories never drove gaming to begin with. And no, running company servers and giving away access for free is not sustainable. Basically, his video is an extended hardcore rant on how the entire industry needs to do a better job of catering to him and give him more free stuff. I think the reason your early articles made a much bigger splash is they hit on a core truth the hardcore couldn’t deny and hated to admit (aka “hatefacts”)—the video game industry appealed to many more kinds of people in the Atari and NES eras than it does today.

 

The crisis has nothing to do with the hardcore wishing there were more pretend romance options in Mass Effect and everything to do with the fact that women have zero interest in the Wii U, children have zero interest in the 3DS, and old people aren’t playing Nintendoland. I think that what we’re seeing is a resumption of the decline in console gaming that was happening before the Wii released. Now that Nintendo has abandoned the Wii, the decline has resumed its normal pattern. Companies are spending ever more money making games for the hardcore, the hardcore are buying fewer and fewer games, consoles are going back to being regarded as what isolated manchildren do by themselves, and the whole thing is cannibalizing itself.

I agree with you. Perhaps the Neogaf thread was so positive in agreement because of the hardcore centric ideas in the video.

Notice how there is absolutely no interest from the Game Industry about the games (or other entertainment) children, women, and old people are consuming. They are gamers too. The hardcore do nothing but spin gaming into decline.

The hardcore must be destroyed!