Below Expectations (The Jimquisition)
Added 2018-12-03 14:47:26 +0000 UTCWe've all heard the story. "AAA" game comes out, "AAA" game is a critical and commercial success, "AAA" game disappoints its publisher for failing to meet expectations.
When you pull back and see just how often this dance is performed, it paints the picture of a panicked and desperate industry, a rotten swan kicking its decaying legs frantically across a poisoned swamp. Because that's what it is. The industry is a rotten swan.
Comments
Surely this sort of thing should be regarded as mass hysteria or collective cultural neurosis? When a company makes more money in a single day than all of Jim's patreons combined will make in a year but still consider that a "disappointment", you know something aberrant and weird is happening to these peoples minds.
Freakish Uproar
2018-12-05 08:59:30 +0000 UTCthat's the one he means, yes
Neverside Labs
2018-12-04 07:30:43 +0000 UTCYou mention that you like a game named "The Missing". Can you give more details? Is it the JJ Macfield game on Steam?
Thyristor
2018-12-04 04:06:14 +0000 UTCFriendly reminder that when rich people call poor people "parasites," they're projecting. The stock market produces nothing. Sears is going bankrupt while their largest creditor is a hedge fund run by Sears's own current CEO, who is also bidding on the company's assets. And let's not forget what happened when Bain Capital bought Toys R Us in a leveraged buyout for the sole purpose of draining it dry. Stockholders are indistinguishable from a malignant parasitic infection.
Nicole Barovic
2018-12-04 02:02:13 +0000 UTCI completely understand what you mean by console exclusives being good, and I understand the economics of why, and I hate that this is the case. I could almost bring myself to buy a PS4 or a Switch if they were at least offline, put-in-the-disk/cart-and-play machines like consoles were back in the era of the PS2, GameCube, and GameBoy (up to Advance). There are still so many anti-consumer hooks in current consoles (such as Nintendo's crappy online offering) that I just can't bring myself to buy one.
Twit In A Hat
2018-12-03 20:58:47 +0000 UTCDon't hit the E-mail, thats the scammy evil thing to do hit the Writer of the message not the messenger
Otoger
2018-12-03 18:27:30 +0000 UTCI laughed hard at the opening with regard to the "III" e-mail; thank you, I needed that. The response to Destiny 2 sales numbers is baffling to anyone who isn't in it for incredibly short-term gain. "Our sales numbers suggest that most of our sales are probably people who became engaged with the original Destiny, to the extent that they were willing to ignore features we removed to sell back to them so long as they could continue to have more fun Destiny experiences... So, how to we alienate that remaining core?" It will be both funny and sad if the crash of the industry comes from the sleazy profit model they've been flogging becoming so egregious that it's legislated out from under them.
Kraken
2018-12-03 17:34:44 +0000 UTCInfinite growth. It makes me furious to know that investors and share holders expect such bullshit. Or that anyone expects it frankly. Do these idiots think, "Well the universe is constantly expanding so why can't my wallet?" Games are an artistic medium. There is no way to guarantee constant growth of an artistic medium (well, not from a financial standpoint anyway) and anyone who expects otherwise needs to reassess their perception of reality on this finite world. And it's the same across every industry (at least any that involves investors/shareholders). Ugh! Thank you Jim for being a voice calling this bullshit for what it is.
Perpetual Noob
2018-12-03 16:18:05 +0000 UTCThere WILL come a point when their greed will crash the industry again. And it's not too far off. The core of the 1982-83 games crash was the industry's insistence that anything that could make money should be published - without any regard to whether it was a quality and fun gaming experience. Eventually people caught on, and we realized the whole industry couldn't be trusted with our money. I was there. It wasn't just E.T. and a crappy Pac-Man port. It was shelves of bad license games, mountains of garbage titles from companies who knew game publishing was lucrative, but didn't know or didn't care how to make a quality game. They can't just publish shitty games anymore to make that kind of money because consumers can research games before they buy them now. Instead, they rely on psychological tools - the sunk cost fallacy, brand imprinting, trading on peoples' addictive tendencies, and outright fraud in their marketing and hype. Yesterday's rushed Atari game is today's microtransaction and loot box-laden "games-as-service" fraud scheme. Unfortunately, fraud is usually more lucrative than actual business . . . in the short run. Thank God Jim Sterling and others are on watch.
Brendan K McBride
2018-12-03 15:32:30 +0000 UTCI had set it up for those community added subtitles, which worked out well for a while. I'm guessing YouTube might have broken them as per usual. Been meaning to look into it for a while so I'll see what I can do!
Jim Sterling
2018-12-03 15:18:36 +0000 UTCHi Jim, I've said a few times in the YouTube comments section but I guess they got lost, is there any chance of you adding subtitles or hiring someone to add subtitles? I have audio processing difficulties, and it makes it harder to enjoy the video. For some reason YouTube is always very late in adding automatic captions and they're never very accurate. Thanks!
fohfuu
2018-12-03 15:06:25 +0000 UTC
