Podcasty thing for July

So much hate and anger in games at the moment, when will it all stop!?

The most bullshit top 100 list of all time

The above picture was sent to me this morning by a friend of mine via Facebook and good lord, I have never had a worse start to a day than this.

While browsing a certain anonymous forum last night, this picture popped up in a thread, but given the nature of said forum I dismissed it as photoshopped bait in order to rile people up.  That said, after having it linked on facebook, I had to go make sure so I did a google search.

The picture wasn't bait at all and it turns out it came from a top 100 list written on the Xbox Official Magazine website, you can check out the whole of their stupid bullshit list here.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/57106/features/the-100-most-important-people-in-the-world-of-xbox/?page=1

   Now everyones problem is the placement of John Carmack when compared to Anita Sarkeesian.

For those that don't know, John Carmack is one of those legendary game developers, basically credited for putting the FPS genre on the map.  The lead programmer of classics like Doom, Quake and Commander Keen and well known for working on the more recent Rage.  John Carmack, along with everyone else who worked on those games are awesome people who made awesome games and have done a lot for the industry.

But what about Anita?  Well if you don't know who she is, Anita is a feminist who started a kickstarter so she could make videos on YouTube titled "Tropes Vs Women".  In this video she puts forward badly researched points about how the damsel in distress trope in gaming is "harmful towards women".  Anita Sarkeesian is a moron of the highest calibre who took a large amount of money from a large amount of people to make two shitty YouTube videos that show nothing but her bleak outlook that the idea of a male wanting to protect someone that he loves is harmful to women and we as males should be ashamed about wanting to protect our families and friends.

Yet somehow, this idiot is higher on a list of most important people in the industry?! Are you fucking HIGH OXM?! A man who put a genre on the fucking map, the genre that just so happens to be the most played this generation, is somehow less important to the industry than some moron who makes videos on YouTube.  I'M a fucking moron who makes videos on YouTube, but I didn't need a fucking kickstarter to do it, so why aren't I on that list?!  Yeah, it sounds stupid but that's how stupid the idea of Anita being on that fucking list is.

Also since that picture was taken, the title of the article has been changed to "The 100 most important people in the world of Xbox" which is STILL bullshit because if that's the case, why is Anita on there at all?!  A feminist who talks about video game cliches has NOTHING to do with the world of Xbox.  Double bullshit is that rank 39 is fucking Satoru Iwata, the president of fucking NINTENDO.

What the fuck does Nintendo have to do with the world of fucking Xbox?! HUH?! Are you crediting him for motion controls or some shit?  That can't be the case though because if the kinect borrows its concept from anything, it's the fucking Playstation Eye Toy, fucking idiots.  It's not like anyone who works at Microsoft shares the worth ethic and outlook of someone like Iwata so why is he even on the list?

So you know what OXM? Get fucked, you're nothing but a bunch of morons who have no idea what you're on about and I hope whoever wrote this article encounters a gorgon and has his hands turned to stone so he can never write another fucking shitty list again in his goddamn life.

Yes, I'm mad

A Demo Cuts Sales? I Don't Think So

Before I start, let me tell you about something called D.I.C.E.

This is basically an event where a bunch of gaming bigwigs sit around and discuss that state of the industry as well as other things.  So now with that out of the way, I can tell you about a guy who spoke at DICE 2013 and pissed me off.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/releasing-a-game-demo-can-cut-your-sales-in-half-warns-schell/

In the above VG24/7 article lies a video of a man called Jesse Schell giving a speech at DICE.  I'm not really pissed off at him in the same way I'm pissed off at someone like Tomm Hulett, but he still rubbed me up the wrong way. 

As part of his speech he talks about the sales figures of games with demos, and games without demos, and he backs it up with a graph too, take a look

So, if you watch the video he explains it, but the four lines are four different types of games.  The bottom line is a game with no demo or trailer.  Next up is a game with a demo only, and a game with a trailer only.  The top line is games that only have a trailer.

Wow, OK, seems pretty solid right?  Well he's pretty vague about what these "types of games" are.  His graph really gives no thought to the quality of said games.  His argument is that the more curious people are, the more likely they are to buy something, which is fine I guess, but it's still complete dog shit.

The guy knows his stuff, I'll give him that, but just because a game has a demo doesn't mean it's going to cut your sale. I'm going to be quite blunt here, and say that there is a lot of shit on the market right now.  I can't move in a games shop for shit games just clogging up the shelf, and THIS is why sales on certain titles are poor.

If your game is ass, and you release a demo, people then know its ass and they won't buy it, but at least you don't piss them off.  If you take away the demo and release a shit game, all you are going to do is anger people and potentially lose sales down the road because they will lose any way of testing your game and may just end up assuming that everything developer X produces is crap after wasting money on the demo less piece of garbage that you first put out.

I remember back when demo discs used to come on the front of fucking magazines and up until this guys speech, I've never even heard the idea that having a demo is going to kill your sales, if anything it would cause the opposite if you ask me, providing that the game is actually good.

Games with demos lose sales because the game is ass, not because of the demo.  If you are seriously suggesting that demos are to blame for poor sales, and the only way to increase sales is to leave gamers in the dark regarding the quality of upcoming titles, you are nothing but a greedy fuck stain hoping to earn a quick buck by shovelling shit into the mouth of consumers.   Still, that's about the state of video games today really, isn't it?

Japan dropping the game ball?!

So I was talking with a buddy about some of the latest releases as we were sweating our balls off in the Japan summer when he said to me "Yeah, Japanese devs have really dropped the ball with game releases over the last few years" and while we moved on from that point fairly quickly at the time, it got me thinking about if that's actually the case or not?

Sure, if you're a fan of Japanese games and you live in the UK or America, you may find that the latest releases from the land of the rising sun have been a bit lack luster, and sure, you're probably right there, but to say that the Japanese aren't producing good games anymore is a bit unfair.

You see, the problem is that Japan actually has a shit ton of good games.  Walking around the various game stores I always find something that piques my interest and has me wishing my pay day would come sooner.  Plus you see all these booths for stuff coming out soon and it looks like there is some quality stuff on the way too.

So really, it's not a case of Japanese developers dropping the ball, but it's a case of Joe Bloggs westerner just not being aware of most of the quality Japanese titles!  That's not a case of me being "oh the uneducated masses aren't aware of the gems to be found in glorious nippon", it's more the fault of the big companies here than it is the consumer.  You see, Japan makes all these really cool looking games, then gives them no exposure or no mention in the west at all, and it's a bit bullshit really.  It's a shame that there is this huge selection of games to be found that most people will never even hear of due to this fact.

So why is it all like this?  I'm no industry expert, but my guess is that they just don't have the staff for put this stuff into English.  I mean, it's not like it wouldn't sell, I think the whole Xenoblade Chronicles thing proved that there is a market for Japanese games, but I think the amount of people who know enough Japanese to translate these games for a western audience are just far too few.

I mean I studied Japanese for 4 years, and right now, the best thing I can think of doing with that ability is to come here and teach English.  The work isn't too taxing and the pay is pretty good and I think this is the view that a lot of Japanese language students end up having, but the reason for that is something else entirely.  The people who do decide to push themselves into more language heavy work, aren't going to use those skills to translate video games, they will want to work for big companies as interpreters or whatever and earn metric craptons of money that way.

So to sum it all up, Japanese games are as good as they always were, if you enjoy the kind of stuff that comes out of this country, then you'll still love it now, but the people willing to bring you that stuff are a minority, I think.

As a disclaimer, this isn't really based on facts I've been looking up, this whole post is me basically musing to myself, but you never know, maybe I'm right....but I could also be completely wrong and the above text just makes me look retarded, but whatever.