The Amiibo ad was made by Game Grumps. Here is a video tour of their
office:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4BJRr3zzHAThis has to be the cringiest shit I have see so far this year, and I have seen the Star Citizen furries, so that’s saying a lot. Jump to 4:37 for the Amiibo hallway where the ad was filmed.
This does raise an interesting point: all that crap in that office must be really expensive. How on earth did a bunch of nobodies making YouTube Let’s Play videos get this rich? Who keeps watching these manchildren? Is it something people watch out of some morbid fascination, or is this what children watch these days? Is there some money laundering going on behind the scenes? What is going on here?
In hindsight Minecraft has indeed been the most influential game of this decade, but sadly in all the bad ways. With the popularity of Let’s Play and YouTube channels games have increasingly been made with the internet audience in mind. Some corporate egghead and Nintendo must have looked at which channels are popular, saw Game Grumps and figured “let’s have these guys advertise our stuff, that’s what the kids like these days”.
Speaking of Amiibos, I fully agree, they need to die. Not only is it the same AAA DLC culture I was laughing at during the Wii generation (haha, look at those losers buying incomplete games), you also have to pay extra because it comes in a crappy Happy Meal toy. It’s not even an action figure you could give to a child to play with, it’s just a piece of plastic you will never put on display because it looks so embarrassing. And even if you want to buy a particular Amiibo, good luck if it’s a small run and the scalpers snatch all of them.
At the same time the gaming industry is doing its hardest to push retail games out of the market. On PC it’s already so bad that most games are just Steam keys in a case, and on PS 4 if you buy a game you still have to download half of it off PSN (I don’t know about the XBox, but it’s probably the same). I guess printing discs or manufacturing cartridges is too expensive in the current year, but there is always enough money for Happy Meal toys. Fuck this shit, all I wanted was to buy a game and have it complete. And a manual, an honest-to-God printed manual that tells me how to play a game, not a link to a wiki. Is this too much to ask for?
It is lies and fraud. Shovel Knight makers say, “It is too expensive to make a cartridge for our games because of retail costs, shipping, manufacturing, etc. etc.” Meanwhile, here are four amiibos for you to buy! “No, we can’t make a cartridge for our games. But we can make amiibos! Buy our amiibos!” What a piece of shit company.
Yeah, you Yacht Games. I’m talking to you. You guys are piece of shit company. Fuck you.
Now I don’t want anything to do with Shovel Knight. Fuck them. Their company name is appropriate. What are they interested in, building yachts for themselves?
Give your money to Nicalis publisher instead. The publisher actually puts out cartridge versions of games such as Binding of Isaac and more.
I’m done with this ‘digital download only’ bullshit. What it SHOULD be is that you buy the PHYSICAL VERSION plus you get a DIGITAL VERSION too! This is how music and movies do it. But no, there is too much greed. Why on earth would anyone pay $30 for a digital download let alone $60? How stupid do they think we are?
Neogeo games are worth their digital versions because the actual physical versions of those games are WAY TOO expensive. Digital is great when we cannot get the physical or if the physical is way too expensive. This isn’t the case here.
What I find interesting about Nicalis is that they are excited and proud to be making these physical copies. They feel like they are carrying to the torch of the classic publishers in the past. They LIKE to make the cover, the cartridge, the manual, etc. They seem to know that this is very important to the experience.
But the other publishers, including Nintendo, don’t give a shit. It’s astonishing. They all talk about ‘giving the customer a good experience’ and try to take away all forms of packaging whatsoever.
“We must save money, Malstrom.”
Yeah, I’ll save money too when I DON’T BUY YOUR PRODUCT!