#customerandservice — Public Fediverse posts

Ampere Analysis makes speculation on female gamers, not hard data

Ampere Analysis presented a study earlier this year where they concluded that women make up 48% of the gaming community. We can say that’s effectively half. That’s approximately 922 million people across 21 countries. Big numbers for sure. Supposedly, the gaming industry is largely ignoring this major possible market segment, as there is a serious lack of games for women who would like to play story-driven single-player games with a social aspect and romance. They came to this conclusion by looking at what kind of media outside games these women consume and made a beeline assumption that women want the same thing from their games. What their data seems to indicate is that there is a large section of women who are interested in playing games but don’t. Either they don’t know how to play games or don’t know what kind of game content exists.

Let’s pause here and point out that Ampere showcases data in a biased manner. That 48% includes any woman who has played a game, be it Candy Crush or FarmVille. If you’re a woman who has played a game of any kind, you’re counted in this number. The quality of these stats is messy, as that equates players who spend about ten minutes with games per week with people who spend most of their waking hours gaming. This is an important point, as any person wanting to sell something realizes that these two kinds of customers are completely different and need to be valued in a different manner.

The inquiry had 52 video and computer games listed. Only three titles had more women playing than men: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Sims 4, and Roblox. From a list of 50 mobile games, some 13 titles had more women players. This would indicate, then, that the higher concentration of women in gaming can be found outside the usual big sellers, and on mobile devices rather than consoles and computers.

The market is functioning as you’d expect; nothing has really changed in behavioural differences between the two sexes. Early on in this blog’s life, I wrote about girl games as part of a series where I illustrated how video and computer games aren’t a special phenomenon in and of themselves, but a continuation of a long play culture. Gaming in general mostly adheres to boys’ play culture, as it builds on competition and readily set rules. It’s much easier to make a soccer or a tennis video game because these rules exist and are set in stone. Playing house is something classically part of girls’ play culture, as playing with dolls and other miniature house equipment readies them for motherhood. It’s much harder to make a simulacrum of playing house because it has no readily set rules. Here’s mother, dad, kid, and maybe a dog. Here’s the house. Now play house. I’ve used The Sims as an example of this being successfully adapted, and I’m not surprised The Sims 4 is on the above list.

Making girl games is hard because historically they’ve been misunderstood and misapplied by powers that be in the gaming industry. You might have a good memory of some Barbie game out there, but none of them would win any prizes. What most of these girl games lacked in the 1980s and 1990s was holding power, or the way a game keeps attracting the player back to itself to maintain their attention span and immerse them in its world. Because gaming is largely based on boys’ play culture, its holding power over girls is less due to the different schema the two have classically worked under. In a manner, girls and women as gamers were treated like some sort of invalids because of this. Girl games were colourful, with horses and puppies galore, with about as much gameplay as a wet towel on a wall.

However, as demand grew for games specifically catering to girls and women, a few began to understand that the differences in play cultures were a possibility rather than a ball and chain. Brenda Laurel founded Purple Moon in 1999 to make, as she called it in 2009, a cultural intervention. Purple Moon’s games targeted girls between 8 and 14, and rather than making games about competition and confrontation, their games were more like interactive story worlds the players could explore. However, as we can see from Ampere’s data, games-for-all are more popular among modern women and girls than games directly aimed at girls.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2kZwk1Ym4?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=863&h=486]

Purple Moon games were criticized for doing the same gender stereotyping they wanted to intervene

In a way, girl games dried out early in the millennium because games in general had already begun to emphasize story framing and expanded world-building in mainstream titles. I would hazard a guess that World of Warcraft offered much of the very same story-driven exploration and interactivity, not just with the game but with other players as well.

Barbie Fashion Designer may have sold well and left an unwanted mark, but a game like New Style Boutique 3 found itself with a cult following from the opposite sex. The game didn’t just require players to design new clothing combinations, but had a framing narrative of the player needing to run a clothes boutique, making the game deep enough to have holding power over both boys and men as well as girls and women. Unlike the Barbie game, this 3DS game had some depth to it. The lack of a license probably hurt the game’s sales, but its cult status shows that games stemming from girl play culture can have universal acceptance, even if it’s marginal. Of course, The Sims is the titan in this.

Girl game as a term has become rare, as it became associated with terrible shovelware. They were represented as the opposite of boys’ games, which frankly is just the de facto standard for the game industry. That’s not to say girls and women were ignored, as Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda games still make big sales and are more or less equally popular between the sexes. As gaming has moved away from public places and now solely resides at home, there is no longer any pressure for girls and women to give whatever games they might fancy a go. Why did more females play Tetris than Pac-Man? Because the physical placement of the game had moved away from arcades to home computers and consoles.

This study seems to ignore a few genres that have an overwhelming female audience, and they even make the whole girl game concept sound good: otome games and romance video games. Otome games have been specifically designed to cater to the sensibilities girls and women have, so it’s not surprising that over 90% of otome game players are women. We can argue whether or not visual novels count, but some fantasy otome games also have elements like running a kingdom, meaning they’re not just text but have meaningful gameplay elements that impact the social aspect.

As games have gotten heavier on delivering framing and allowing players to wander the world, we’ve seen a sort of coming together between the two play cultures. Especially with RPGs like Dragon Age series or The Witcher 3, we see that social aspect becoming a major component, with the ability to romance characters and that being an essential part of the story. However, the bulk of the play is still dictated by rules and regulations that largely stem from boys’ play culture. Acknowledging this, we can see how the two complement each other in a manner where they couldn’t exist separately. You get action gameplay with whatever character you choose to make, and then engage in extensive dialogue options between NPCs that might affect anything from what coloured shoes they wear to who stabs you in the back.

I see that if gaming would take its interactivity into account more, allowing players to dynamically change framing directions as much as systems could, and not stick to linear storytelling as seen in films and literature, we could find ourselves in places where games combine the two play cultures in a more holistic manner and embrace the medium’s inherent properties rather than stick with ready-made stories.

However, that wouldn’t automatically mean more women would want to play such a game. The number of hardcore male gamers who put more money into gaming is larger than females, and that is a lifestyle choice. The linkage between visual novels and women reading books is easy to understand; they’re almost the same thing in different packaging. However, there is no hard proof or individual linkage showcasing cross-media consumption. Anecdotes and niche demographics do suggest an overlap, but a large number of romance book readers don’t play games, even when there are already options that cater to them.

Even when we ignore romance as a genre, there are no studies that link cross-media consumption. Ampere is making the argument that because women consume X kind of content in media Y, then they should also be interested in X content in media Z. While this seems like a no-brainer at surface value, it’s a pretty big leap from opening a book and reading what’s on the page to installing a 50GB game on your computer and learning system mechanics that enable a similar story to that of a Harlequin book. That’s why girl games had that bad reputation; they tried to meet a supposedly invalid audience by cutting away gameplay to match a level where other media offered a more enjoyable pastime. The claims Ampere makes are circumstantial at best. We would first need studies showcasing that people, especially women, actually consume the same kinds of genres and styles across all media. Ampere’s conclusion about what women would look for in a game based on what they watch and read is no less than harmful stereotyping.

The argument of women needing an easier entry point for gaming is petty at best and sexist at worst. It’s the whole notion of girl games and females being seen as gaming invalids raising its head again. There has never been a better time in history to get into gaming than now. Endless amounts of YouTube tutorials and guides exist, games quite literally hold the player’s hand to pass even the slightest obstacle, no-failure states exist across the board, and even gameplay can be skipped in some cases. Saying that there’s a subset of female non-gamers who are interested in gaming but lack the knowledge of how to play these games and what content is out there, and then demanding entry-level content, is misguided. If women are interested in something and want to give it a shot, they are just as capable of finding things out themselves. They need the same thing as men: motivation and reason.

We have more games than ever before, from small indie developers to large AAA studios, and they’re all easy to find as long as your search skills are decent. However, if there is no reason to take up gaming as a hobby or lifestyle, then that person is not as valuable a customer as someone who already is. You can’t force people to become something, just like you can’t force men and women to choose a certain kind of career path simply because statistics look off. The same applies to hobbies. It might be cultural or biological; it doesn’t matter.

When you have people who are not interested in your product and are aware it exists, they’re not even untapped customers. You would have to fundamentally change their perceptions to turn them into customers. Ampere disregards its own results: 47% of female non-gamers say they would never consider playing. That’s 10% less than non-gaming males. If there are more boys and men willing to give gaming a shot than girls and women, then wouldn’t that be the more viable market segment to pursue?

We should, of course, question Ampere’s data, as it’s all done via surveys. Ampere gave out a generalised survey that doesn’t really go into detail, nor did they conduct any behavioural study over time. 46,000 respondents self-reported their preferences and habits. This is probably one of the worst ways to gather consumer information, as customers don’t always know what they want. I often use the example of why there are so many different kinds of tomato pasta on store shelves. Consumers think they know what they want, but often don’t. It’s not because they’re unintelligent, but because we are creatures of habit and environment.

Everything in this study is just speculation. There are no strong scientific grounds presented.

No industry would take a study like this and its recommendations seriously. You can’t turn someone who doesn’t want mustard into a mustard customer. It simply won’t happen.

The approach is also flawed. Rather than directly asking what games women play or what media they consume elsewhere, a study examining what kinds of games and play current girls engage in would yield more valid data. Similarly, researching past play habits of adult women and their current non-digital hobbies could provide valuable insights. This would be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. It would also require researchers who understand differences in play cultures across various societies if conducted globally.

However, there’s still one thorn in my side I need to pick: games for general audiences. I mentioned Mario and Zelda earlier, and the reason they attract both sexes is because they are well-designed, high-quality games. Data over decades suggests that boys and girls, men and women, gravitate toward games that are enjoyable and have strong holding power. The more explicitly gendered a game is, the worse its design tends to be, and the less successful it becomes.

Xbox is now a watered down brand

Microsoft has a history with buying gaming companies, having exceedingly large expectations of them, and then proceeding to cull them for not meeting those expectations. They ultimately call the shots what Xbox as a department does. People were calling buying Activision Blizzard deal of the century, something that would forever change gaming. What we got was the same as usual, just with bigger dollars in the play.

Microsoft has never really got console gaming. They were decent when it came to PC market, but console gaming was beyond them. Maybe that’s why they resorted on delivering PC gaming on consoles. Looking back, the Xbox 360 probably wouldn’t have been the limited success it was if the macro-economics hadn’t been in a good shape and a new generation of consumers had come around. Xbox kiddies are now grown up and remember the days they were throwing slurs to each other in online matches with rose-tinted goggles.

MS and Xbox are doing the mistake all businesses tend to do when there’s a downward spiral; hard sale the decreasing customer base. When these last customers realise that they’re paying at least twice as much as they used to, with less other people around, they tend to explore other venues where they get better value for their money. Only the hardest of the core customer will stay to the sad end, and they’ll be monetarily abused all the way. It’ll help to get some money short term, but on the long term it’ll bust the business.

It’s comedic how much Microsoft’s console gaming is only a pale shadow of PC gaming, as now we’re seeing plans and methods of monetization that have been prevalent in mobile gaming, which itself is an extension of PC gaming. Xboxes have always been just dumbed down PCs with the games largely mirroring this. Microsoft never understood console gaming, which is why they’ve always been a massive failure in Japan, and why X360 didn’t sell as well as the Wii, or the PS3 in the end. The same can be said about modern Sony, where their big name titles all look the same, and their pricing has gone to high heavens. Nintendo lost the plot after Iwata as well.

It’s not a big secret what console gaming is supposed to be; an option for home gaming that is uncomplicated, direct and has high value with relatively low pricing point. It has its own culture around it that is different from PC gaming, both among players and developers. Some publishers saw this, but as the division between the two (and the arcade being the third pillar in this house) has been diminished, so has the quality of the product. PC gamers bemoan how games get dumbed down to console gamers with simplified controls or how ports of console games lack options they expect from PC games. Console gamers then get the same deal, dregs and scraps of PC games that are forced into a mold these games don’t really fit. Double stick controls are still only a bad emulation for Mouse and Keyboard. At the same time, M+KB can never beat the immediacy and tactile controls a console pad has. Probably why people are using first and third party console controllers on PCs nowadays a lot. Both sides suffer (while the arcades stay dead.)

The rising prices and chasing higher-end graphics that contribute nothing to the play has been a detriment for consoles. The more expensive and the more inconvenient a console is, the less it performs. The first point we can clearly say Microsoft started the downfall of Xbox was during X360’s and Xbox One’s transition, when they told customers that couldn’t have an always-online console to buy their older machine rather than invest into their newer hotness. Nintendo’s rep said the same thing when asked about customers who wouldn’t afford the Switch 2. It’s not good form and show how little these companies care about their customers. We’ll see if history rhymes.

If the Game Pass has been disastrous to game sales and money gotten out of MS brand games, mainly Call of Duty, then what does that say about smaller publishers’ and developers’ games on it? They’re probably seeing even less individual sales on their games. Game Pass has simply devalued gaming in general and MS is now feeling it themselves. It appears that individual game sales makes more profit than bundling them into an equivalent of Netflix of gaming. So, nickle and diming become the standard because the Netflix model as it is now with games doesn’t work. You will see ads becoming a standard down the line when maximum amount of nickel and diming is met, and then every other thing will be monetized in some fashion. Hell, I can see things like higher graphics settings being monetized on the long run if things keep going on like this.

Then you have the watering down of Xbox as a brand. If everything that can have Game Pass in some form is a Xbox, Xbox is worthless as a brand. Game Pass has replaced it. If rumours about the next Xbox console are true, then having Steam on the system makes it yet another dumbed down PC that offers nothing over buying a standard PC. The same games appear on Steam, Epic and Windows Store anyway. What’s the point of Xbox as a console at this point? At least Nintendo is still offering first party titles that aren’t available anywhere else, even if they’re insane with their pricing.

When services get more expensive and what’s deliver gets worse, people will turn away and spend their money where they get more value. Alternatively, people will go back to piracy, like in Finland. If people running Xbox as a brand wants it to do better, they have to go back to what made the original and 360 cultural touchstones while learning from the mistakes they’ve been doing all this time. Like Xbox brand name on a $1k ROG handheld. They’re contracting the market instead of expanding it, making their hard business even harder for them.

#consoleGaming #customerAndService #electronicGames #games #gaming #microsoft #videoGames #videogames #xbox

I’m done with modern Super Robot Wars

I’m done with modern Super Robot Wars, because the mainline series deserves to be better than the mobile slop it is becoming. You, as a consumer of video and computer games, deserve better treatment from Bandai Namco. Modern SRW has become yet another DLC hell, a platform to sell you bits and parts of the game you already bought at full price.

You deserve not get fucked in the ass by people who sell you games. Especially when they’re selling you a game with Denuvo attached to it.

Super Robot Wars Y, in terms of SRW games, is shaping up to be trash. Everything about the game screams both lack of budget, recycling and ambitionless direction. You can argue that SRW has always recycled sprites. However, in the past these sprites were made to accommodate a general art direction that meshed together visually. On the GameBoy Advance, the portable games recycled some of the PlayStation 2 sprites, but the lower fidelity requiring to re-adapt the sprites made them fit together better. Then, Super Robot Wars OGS would rework all these sprites, making it a standout game in the series. This was in an era when 2D games were still largely overlooked.

Recycling animations for SRW is standard, but the way recycling was done in the aforementioned manner; adapted to fit. Even when jumping from the GBA to the DS, the reused sprites fit in with the new ones, creating a cohesive style. If you’re hardcore enough, you can tell which sprite creator made which sprites in a game, but their overall presentation makes them fit together. You can’t tell from a glance how they’re clearly from separate sources.

This doesn’t apply to SRW Y, where you can tell just with a glance whether or not a sprite is specifically made for older games, for this game, or lifted from the mobile phone game DD. It makes a mess, when you have sprites with different styles in all manner vomited together and calling it a day. Mind, you, this was already the case with the previous anniversary game, SRW 30, so that’s the precedent. I’ve seen someone argue that it makes these units stand apart more, especially when its emphasizing the different source styles (I call this coping and a bad argument.) If this was the aim, then all units should have a unique style, following their main source material closely, but this isn’t the case. The lack of cohesive style jumps out even more when all units in the game still use SRW-style special effects, making the incohesive mess even more jarring. These range from explosions to projectile effects that aren’t part of a cut-in. The argument fails because all the different visual styles in SRW Y aren’t to make the units look different, but because they’re from different games with different styles. Because they’re throwing all different kind of sprites together without unifying the style, it looks like a slop in a puddle.

It’s funny how the fangame SRW ST manages to look more cohesive and professional than the actual series despite having less everything resource-wise. f

It doesn’t help that the attack animation, which once used to be stunning and full of life, are now largely lifeless, stiff and filled with cut-ins. Again, we find a kind of precedent in SRW 30, where you had tons of fade-ins to black. I’m honestly thinking they should just cut out the normal standing battle-sprite and follow the mobile game SD Gundam Eternal and make all attacks just the cut-ins. If you’re not doing anything with the base sprite, just remove it altogether. These sprites aren’t even proper SD anymore and haven’t been for a long time. The side effect of this is that the size differences between units makes less sense in the battle scenes, as sprites don’t scale based on their size. They’re not even proper 1:3 SD sprites, but some kind of perversion. If you look at Alpha-era sprites, there’s so much life in them, so much emotion without cutting it all the time. The basic battle-sprites have worth by doing the attacks in their animations proper, with bigger attacks getting more worth out of the cut-ins. Now that almost every attack animation is treated like as some kind of ender, it’s tiresome. Skipping and fast-forwarding has become enticing with time. When we get the basic battle-sprite doing these things, the stiffness and jank of the animation grinds the sight.

Perhaps not the best example, but note how the animations are quick and done most of the part, with cut-in saved for Fire Blaster, where it makes a proper effect

Sprite and animation recycling is forgivable as long as they’re renewed from time to time when they’re outdated. Going from the Super Famicom to PlayStation and to PlayStation 2 is still the best evolution in the series, showcasing how the sprites and animations can be smartly recycled and then during hardware upgrade, made new. The fandom largely forgave recycling with the portable games, especially when they introduced new series with each entry and slightly tweaked older ones if necessary. With the 3DS games, the game was made compatible with its 3D gimmick, and things had to be renewed. With some units, it seems like we’ve been running on same animations since 2008, when the sprite style changed. The mainline games should’ve seen an upgrade in visuals already, but instead its become a quilt jacket of bit of everything. We’re well past the point of this visual renewal the series so successful in the past.

By all means, SRW is just a marketing vehicle for Bandai Namco. If they have something they want to advertise in the game, it’s going to find its way in somehow. One of the best examples of this can be found in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, which was riling its story into deep space, but due to Sunrise and Bandai wanting Gundam Seed into the story, the staff had to make a weird pivot in the story and return circling Earth in parts for marketing reasons. Most of the series that find themselves in these games is more about marketing them and giving certain IPs visibility. This ensures the game can find bit more sales, as introducing popular [Series A] into SRW probably will attract [Series A]’s fans to pick up SRW for the first time. Recycling popular series also keeps fans of the other series with the games, but also cuts down development time when sprites and voice acting already exist.

SRW Y really looks like an amalgamation of all the bad brushstrokes SRW must go through to get made. Including an engine switch to Unity, though the mobile game Super Robot Wars DD already ran on it. The series has been running on the same engine since 2000’s Super Robot Wars Alpha, with updates to it whenever needed. I’m betting the engine switch was made to make it easier to cross DD, Y and whatever future SRW assets will be. While smart in terms of business and development, it also means mainline series, and probably future OGs titles, will be based on mobile slop. At least modding the game should be a bit easier. I’m not going to touch Unity as an engine at all, it’s a mess.

What grinds me the most though is how blasé SRW Y is. Sure, the series hasn’t exactly wowed anyone with its changes in time. Throughout the latter 1980s and 1990s these SD-driven games tried something new all the time, from RPG cross-overs like Hero Senki to action games akin to Great Battle and all the cross-over sports games. Super Robot Wars and SD Gundam series are the last vestiges of this, with both periodically giving their patterns of play a new lick of paint. SRW hasn’t exactly changed the core of its grid-based strategy in the mainline, but at least they’ve given it a go a few times around. SRW NEO on the Wii didn’t just use 3D models, but also gave each unit a range where they could walk freely, removing the grid system. The 3D games always tried something new like this, whereas the 2D games made great improvements in dealing with the ever-growing cast with Partner and Squad systems, combining multiple units into one squad, this affecting how battles would go down. SRW Y is as basic as it gets, offering literally nothing new in terms of play. It’s the same shit in different pants.

This of course applies to the presentation as well, which is largely boring. However, what’s even more boring is that the developers are very much stuck in the tried-and-tested Visual Novel presentation of the game and the ever-expanding number of lines these fanfiction games have. Of course, this is the most economical and cheapest way to deliver exposition, but thirty years now, and it’s the dullest possible way. At this point, Bandai Namco and Sunrise should hit their heads together and give SRW enough budget to get animated sequences between stages to ease out how lacking the series’ presentation has become. Hell, the devs should first make the story sequences during Battle Maps proper rather than have the models mash together like some capsule toys. Despite the new engine under the hood, SRW Y doesn’t seem to take any advantages of it as the devs are reusing twenty years old way to deliver battles outside battles. They can do anything during these sequences, and they choose to not to do anything creative.

I’m just so done with the newer entries in the series. If they’re not going to improve from what the series was twenty years ago, why bother? I still got some of the older titles unfinished on my shelf that are more unique in their own ways, like SRW 64. There are tons of games from the SD-character driven era that I can find to get my SD-battle fix.

I’m demanding something better. You can too, and the devs and publishers can deliver. They won’t if they’re not demanded that. The marketing forces and sycophants will tell you how true fans will buy anything they put out, no matter what’s the quality and we all recognize that it’s abusing behaviour. Knowing your self-worth matters, and a true fan would want their loved series to be better, to achieve new heights and become an even better version of what it already is. Not lay down spread the cheeks when told them to do so. The first step is stop paying for worse products, and the second step is to make your voice heard why that is. The third step is to ignore the sycophants that are yelling at you while their asses are bleeding.

I don’t like having this stance, but I like even less the direction the series has been going and how much less value the series has made itself to the customers. All the DLC shenanigans and market expansion with English versions have been a boon to Bandai Namco, but we’re not seeing any of that in the games themselves. Seeing the thumbnail for the first DLC for SRW Y just had me going Why am I even interested? I’m done with this without even clicking it. Yeah, I’m going to miss Godzilla and other cool stuff, but why bother? As a series veteran, I can tell how this is going to play out. I didn’t like it one bit in 30 or when Operation Extend tried to cash me over and over again, so I have to put my foot down and say No. I won’t allow myself to be taken advantage of anymore.

If you see me playing Super Robot Wars Y in the future, call me out on my bullshit.

#customerAndService #customerService #games #gaming #superRobotTaisen #superRobotWars

Nintendo games and consoles are for adults now, the expanded media for children

I end up reading quarterly reports now and then from Capcom and Nintendo, and outside few posts I let them go by. They are usually full of non-answers, but there are gems here and there. My favourite is the knowledge that when Square and Enix merged, the surviving company was Enix. This trips a lot of Square fans who don’t realize how badly Square was suffering in terms of finance back then. The Spirits Within movie had inflicted lasted damage to the company and was the main reason why the merger  was delayed. Enix was in a much better position.

Nintendo’s 85th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders is more of the same. There’s a question about if the Switch 2 supply is meeting with the demand, but there’s a non-answer. Nintendo doesn’t know, it’s been on the market too short a time. Which is also why Nintendo had to shoot down reports about those five million units sold too. 3.5 million is what Nintendo is saying. That’s still a good number and there is room for growth, but be either the price or the supply, Nintendo has already changed their strategy.

Q12:

Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher price point than past platforms like the Family Computer system
(Famicom). I am concerned that this might reduce opportunities for young children to engage with
it. How will you address this issue?
A12 Furukawa:
We believe the pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 is appropriate for the gaming experience it offers,
and what is most important is to provide entertaining experiences that demonstrate the value to
consumers. To achieve this goal, we have incorporated various features into Nintendo Switch 2.
It is true that Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher price point than our past gaming systems. We are
creating various opportunities outside of our gaming systems for young children to engage with
Nintendo characters and game worlds, with one of the ultimate goals being that they will eventually
play on our gaming systems. We are closely monitoring to what degree the price of the system
might become a barrier.

Nintendo acknowledges the Switch 2 is beyond most children at the moment. The reason Nintendo has the reputation of a family friendly, kids console is because they appealed to the whole family, not just kids or the parents, or the shut-in hardcore gamer in the basement. This explains the Switch 2’s design and addition of using the controllers as computer mice. The more muted colours of the console are there to make the console look less like a toy, the colours pop less. It’s the more mature option of the two, and keeping the Switch on the side might be a crutch solution to deliver games to children who can’t move on to the newer system.

This didn’t really work for Sony, as the PlayStation 5 ended up being largely a noteworthy console for it being about nothing. Sony let the PlayStation 4 live too long and had cross-system games draining any reasons to migrate to the newer system. Constant multiplatform games despite of their timed exclusivity damaged to console on the long run to the point of PS5 being irrelevant. I would’ve bought the system for Final Fantasy VI if it had anything else I would’ve wanted to buy, but PS5 has a very lacklustre library.

We are creating various opportunities outside of our gaming systems for young children to engage with Nintendo characters and game worlds, with one of the ultimate goals being that they will eventually play on our gaming systems. We are closely monitoring to what degree the price of the system might become a barrier. Nintendo seems to know that the price is too much. More importantly, they are intending to leverage other media to sell to kids. Nintendo has always had cartoons, comics, cereals and other mulimedia ventures next to their games, but they’re ramping them up now because of the Switch 2’s status as a high-price, prestige system. The Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda movies are an example of this, and these are kids movies. They’re also doing more concerts, which aren’t exactly for children but for Nintendo Adults, equivalent of Disney Adults.

That’s the main target audience for the Switch 2; people who grew up with Nintendo and are now between thirty and fifty, with enough income to put down enough cash without thinking too much whether or not the system warrants its high price. Nintendo acknowledges in this QA that the Switch 2 wasn’t priced high because of inflation. Because of this higher set price, Nintendo has created other opportunities for children (and people who can’t or won’t buy the Switch 2) to consume their properties in other media forms, aiming to make those emotional connections that are so important in keeping long-term, lifelong customers that won’t question much of the corporation’s actions and decisions. Some call these true fans, others call them more accurately as sycophants.

Can Nintendo make their business plan succeed without the larger children as their main target market, or will the Nintendo Adults be enough? Too early to tell, but this feels like abandoning a long-lasting and successful approach for something the corporate body got told by the shareholders.

QA14 more or less confirms what’s already said earlier. Based on our strategy of expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP, since the launch of Nintendo Switch, we have pursued parallel development in mobile apps, theme parks, movies, and official stores. These are now in place. These all eat Nintendo’s general budget and I have to question if they’re a good direction for a combined hardware and software provider. Spreading yourself too thin might cost them back. Are they intending to become some sort of Asian response to Disney?

Lastly, there are repetition about concerns over rising game development costs. Let’s kick that dead horse again and remind that nobody but the publishers and developers are ultimately responsible of these. Very few big name publisher/ developer produces smaller budget games with less high-budget fat. Just look at how successful Mega Man 11 has been for Capcom with a very modest budget, yet Capcom hasn’t put out a new Mega Man game because that’s not how they roll. Nintendo could similarly put out tighter budget games more often, hitting that 16-bit SNES nostalgia with sprite based Zelda or Mario and they’d make a bank. We’re not in the late 1990s-early 2000s anymore. If the Indie boom of the New Millennium showed anything, we’re well pass the Oooh Aaah 3D phase. 3D has become mundane long time ago and consumers have accepted how it was absolutely silly to shun 2D games after the launch of the PlayStation. Nintendo has leveraged their 2D roots many times over the years, but have never done a new and true 2D game with a proper budget on their flagship console. Hence, why the indies deliver some of the best stuff out there still.

 

#customerAndService #gaming #Nintendo #videoGames #videogames

Want to own the games you buy in the future and have them accessible after the publisher ceases support? Do you live in a European country that’s party of the EU? Then you can help by signing this initiative.

Stop Killing Games. The project has a goal; have games in functional state at the end of their life. Lot of games already have this built-in. However, every game that requires always-online functionality has a high probability of just dying on you. You won’t get to play the game because the publisher doesn’t support it anymore. The game’s obsolescence is built-in, planned to get you off that game and move to another product of their. Shut up and consume products, you have no right to this license. I don’t think many will agree with my take here, but this is something I want to get out of my system. Give the above links a read if consider the idea of Stop Killing Games a good one.

I hate the idea of government needing to tell companies to stop being abusive towards their customers. However, current laws across the globe largely benefit the companies, as they’ve had lobbyists doing that for them. The balance of power between consumers and corporations is grossly unbalanced. Consumers are expected to pay up and be happy to own nothing.

Therefore, you go in bed with the devil yourself in the best way you can. This EU Initiative is not making a law. It can be a start for a ruling. It’s a far shot, as members of the EU parliament are largely clueless idiots, who don’t read the papers and rulings they vote on. These parliament members are informed by their assistants, whose job is to read through these papers and help to make informed voting decisions. Of course, these assistants have their own agendas and will mislead the parliament members if they want.

I have no love for the EU, but this is a chance consumers can’t really sit on. On the long run, this isn’t just about having all video and computer games independently functional. This is also about ownership and license purchases work. There’s only a net positive if purchasing a license would end up equating to purchasing a physical product. Think it much like buying a music CD. You own that particular copy of the CD, but not the intellectual property on it. That’s your copy to do what you want with, even sell it to someone else. We should have the right to sell digital goods we’ve bought. The only reason you can’t is because the gaming industry might lose revenue from that. Again, the teeter-totter is against the consumer.

If this initiative would pass and the ruling would require publishers to ensure games would be in a reasonably working condition, it would also make a precedent for other industries. For example, a music player that requires an always-Online connection to the provider servers might be required to ensure the player would still work after they drop support and close the servers down. This naturally ties to Right to Repair, where customers fixing their own stuff to make them work again would be that much easier and simpler if the companies wouldn’t fight them to tooth and nail.

Unlike some buzz on the Internet about this initiative solely being to kill Live Service model games, that’s not the case. Live service games would be heavily impacted, but that’s just because they’re inherently anti-consumer. The core audience of video games have been treated like trash for long enough, and if this initiative doesn’t pass, and then hit its intended target, the industry will end up even more draconian. In no part of history has an industry looked at itself and considered whether or not they’re going too far. Instead, they’ll plough straight through into injuring other consumer protection laws and then decimate them through lobbyists and gerrymandering.

The game industry won’t stop the bad, anti-consumer practices and standards they have going on wilfully. It’d be nice if they’d start being consumer friendly and transparent, yet only a few developer and publisher ever seems to go for that. Instead, there have been even more layers obfuscating the separation between the consumers, developers and publishers. It doesn’t help that the gaming media is just another arm of the publisher PR machine. Hype the Big Game, buy the Big Game and a year later the Big Game is announced a disappointment after million dollars initial sales. There’s no monetary benefit for the industry to be pro-consumer, not at this point. Some talking heads have raised worries of this initiative opening publishers and developers for abuse from the consumers, but that’s goddamn rich talk when the industry is openly abusing its customers. To be make a very extreme point, anyone who sells you something should be treated with high suspicion, like they’re a drug seller trying to sell you bad juju instead of the good and pure stuff.

The initiative isn’t perfect and is intentionally rather vague. There are tons of stuff that can’t be pinpointed down until the later by the parliament starts their discussions on the topic. Some people want to know the details how these games would be kept functional. All that minutia would just slow down the conversation, and in the end, that’s up to the developers. Be it allowing consumers to access server binaries or built a multiplayer-only game to have AI opponents, that’s fully on the developers to figure out as far as I’m concerned. Every industry rejects and fights change that’s for the customer, but just like how car manufacturers nowadays have seatbelts, the game industry will too adjust and design games to be accessible in the future as well.

Future being the keyword, as it wouldn’t be fair to grandfather in games that have been already published and abandoned. I would include games that are currently active and live, e.g. Street Fighter 6 wouldn’t just go poof after Capcom shuts the servers down.

Which of course begs the question about console games. The Big N, MS and Sony would need to provide some method to access certain online functions after they drop support on their consoles. For example, they could patch the Wii to have an option to access a custom server that can run online-only game. Or maybe an older example, Capcom would need to offer a way to access Online-only quests in the original Monster Hunter. Not that either examples would be grandfathered in, they’re just examples. Still, that’s mostly beside the point. The minutia of how comes after.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I support this initiative. Everything that’s pro-consumer, pro-Right to Repair and pro-ownership is only a net good thing. Anything that empowers individual more and allows individual rights and freedoms to be expressed without oppressive corporate oversight is one step toward a brighter future.

https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2024/08/20/you-can-help-to-stop-killing-games-if-you-are-a-eu-citizen/

#customerAndService #customerService #electronicGames #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames

Want to own the games you buy in the future and have them accessible after the publisher ceases support? Do you live in a European country that’s party of the EU? Then you can help by signing this initiative.

Stop Killing Games. The project has a goal; have games in functional state at the end of their life. Lot of games already have this built-in. However, every game that requires always-online functionality has a high probability of just dying on you. You won’t get to play the game because the publisher doesn’t support it anymore. The game’s obsolescence is built-in, planned to get you off that game and move to another product of their. Shut up and consume products, you have no right to this license. I don’t think many will agree with my take here, but this is something I want to get out of my system. Give the above links a read if consider the idea of Stop Killing Games a good one.

I hate the idea of government needing to tell companies to stop being abusive towards their customers. However, current laws across the globe largely benefit the companies, as they’ve had lobbyists doing that for them. The balance of power between consumers and corporations is grossly unbalanced. Consumers are expected to pay up and be happy to own nothing.

Therefore, you go in bed with the devil yourself in the best way you can. This EU Initiative is not making a law. It can be a start for a ruling. It’s a far shot, as members of the EU parliament are largely clueless idiots, who don’t read the papers and rulings they vote on. These parliament members are informed by their assistants, whose job is to read through these papers and help to make informed voting decisions. Of course, these assistants have their own agendas and will mislead the parliament members if they want.

I have no love for the EU, but this is a chance consumers can’t really sit on. On the long run, this isn’t just about having all video and computer games independently functional. This is also about ownership and license purchases work. There’s only a net positive if purchasing a license would end up equating to purchasing a physical product. Think it much like buying a music CD. You own that particular copy of the CD, but not the intellectual property on it. That’s your copy to do what you want with, even sell it to someone else. We should have the right to sell digital goods we’ve bought. The only reason you can’t is because the gaming industry might lose revenue from that. Again, the teeter-totter is against the consumer.

If this initiative would pass and the ruling would require publishers to ensure games would be in a reasonably working condition, it would also make a precedent for other industries. For example, a music player that requires an always-Online connection to the provider servers might be required to ensure the player would still work after they drop support and close the servers down. This naturally ties to Right to Repair, where customers fixing their own stuff to make them work again would be that much easier and simpler if the companies wouldn’t fight them to tooth and nail.

Unlike some buzz on the Internet about this initiative solely being to kill Live Service model games, that’s not the case. Live service games would be heavily impacted, but that’s just because they’re inherently anti-consumer. The core audience of video games have been treated like trash for long enough, and if this initiative doesn’t pass, and then hit its intended target, the industry will end up even more draconian. In no part of history has an industry looked at itself and considered whether or not they’re going too far. Instead, they’ll plough straight through into injuring other consumer protection laws and then decimate them through lobbyists and gerrymandering.

The game industry won’t stop the bad, anti-consumer practices and standards they have going on wilfully. It’d be nice if they’d start being consumer friendly and transparent, yet only a few developer and publisher ever seems to go for that. Instead, there have been even more layers obfuscating the separation between the consumers, developers and publishers. It doesn’t help that the gaming media is just another arm of the publisher PR machine. Hype the Big Game, buy the Big Game and a year later the Big Game is announced a disappointment after million dollars initial sales. There’s no monetary benefit for the industry to be pro-consumer, not at this point. Some talking heads have raised worries of this initiative opening publishers and developers for abuse from the consumers, but that’s goddamn rich talk when the industry is openly abusing its customers. To be make a very extreme point, anyone who sells you something should be treated with high suspicion, like they’re a drug seller trying to sell you bad juju instead of the good and pure stuff.

The initiative isn’t perfect and is intentionally rather vague. There are tons of stuff that can’t be pinpointed down until the later by the parliament starts their discussions on the topic. Some people want to know the details how these games would be kept functional. All that minutia would just slow down the conversation, and in the end, that’s up to the developers. Be it allowing consumers to access server binaries or built a multiplayer-only game to have AI opponents, that’s fully on the developers to figure out as far as I’m concerned. Every industry rejects and fights change that’s for the customer, but just like how car manufacturers nowadays have seatbelts, the game industry will too adjust and design games to be accessible in the future as well.

Future being the keyword, as it wouldn’t be fair to grandfather in games that have been already published and abandoned. I would include games that are currently active and live, e.g. Street Fighter 6 wouldn’t just go poof after Capcom shuts the servers down.

Which of course begs the question about console games. The Big N, MS and Sony would need to provide some method to access certain online functions after they drop support on their consoles. For example, they could patch the Wii to have an option to access a custom server that can run online-only game. Or maybe an older example, Capcom would need to offer a way to access Online-only quests in the original Monster Hunter. Not that either examples would be grandfathered in, they’re just examples. Still, that’s mostly beside the point. The minutia of how comes after.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I support this initiative. Everything that’s pro-consumer, pro-Right to Repair and pro-ownership is only a net good thing. Anything that empowers individual more and allows individual rights and freedoms to be expressed without oppressive corporate oversight is one step toward a brighter future.

https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2024/08/20/you-can-help-to-stop-killing-games-if-you-are-a-eu-citizen/

#customerAndService #customerService #electronicGames #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames

Want to own the games you buy in the future and have them accessible after the publisher ceases support? Do you live in a European country that’s party of the EU? Then you can help by signing this initiative.

Stop Killing Games. The project has a goal; have games in functional state at the end of their life. Lot of games already have this built-in. However, every game that requires always-online functionality has a high probability of just dying on you. You won’t get to play the game because the publisher doesn’t support it anymore. The game’s obsolescence is built-in, planned to get you off that game and move to another product of their. Shut up and consume products, you have no right to this license. I don’t think many will agree with my take here, but this is something I want to get out of my system. Give the above links a read if consider the idea of Stop Killing Games a good one.

I hate the idea of government needing to tell companies to stop being abusive towards their customers. However, current laws across the globe largely benefit the companies, as they’ve had lobbyists doing that for them. The balance of power between consumers and corporations is grossly unbalanced. Consumers are expected to pay up and be happy to own nothing.

Therefore, you go in bed with the devil yourself in the best way you can. This EU Initiative is not making a law. It can be a start for a ruling. It’s a far shot, as members of the EU parliament are largely clueless idiots, who don’t read the papers and rulings they vote on. These parliament members are informed by their assistants, whose job is to read through these papers and help to make informed voting decisions. Of course, these assistants have their own agendas and will mislead the parliament members if they want.

I have no love for the EU, but this is a chance consumers can’t really sit on. On the long run, this isn’t just about having all video and computer games independently functional. This is also about ownership and license purchases work. There’s only a net positive if purchasing a license would end up equating to purchasing a physical product. Think it much like buying a music CD. You own that particular copy of the CD, but not the intellectual property on it. That’s your copy to do what you want with, even sell it to someone else. We should have the right to sell digital goods we’ve bought. The only reason you can’t is because the gaming industry might lose revenue from that. Again, the teeter-totter is against the consumer.

If this initiative would pass and the ruling would require publishers to ensure games would be in a reasonably working condition, it would also make a precedent for other industries. For example, a music player that requires an always-Online connection to the provider servers might be required to ensure the player would still work after they drop support and close the servers down. This naturally ties to Right to Repair, where customers fixing their own stuff to make them work again would be that much easier and simpler if the companies wouldn’t fight them to tooth and nail.

Unlike some buzz on the Internet about this initiative solely being to kill Live Service model games, that’s not the case. Live service games would be heavily impacted, but that’s just because they’re inherently anti-consumer. The core audience of video games have been treated like trash for long enough, and if this initiative doesn’t pass, and then hit its intended target, the industry will end up even more draconian. In no part of history has an industry looked at itself and considered whether or not they’re going too far. Instead, they’ll plough straight through into injuring other consumer protection laws and then decimate them through lobbyists and gerrymandering.

The game industry won’t stop the bad, anti-consumer practices and standards they have going on wilfully. It’d be nice if they’d start being consumer friendly and transparent, yet only a few developer and publisher ever seems to go for that. Instead, there have been even more layers obfuscating the separation between the consumers, developers and publishers. It doesn’t help that the gaming media is just another arm of the publisher PR machine. Hype the Big Game, buy the Big Game and a year later the Big Game is announced a disappointment after million dollars initial sales. There’s no monetary benefit for the industry to be pro-consumer, not at this point. Some talking heads have raised worries of this initiative opening publishers and developers for abuse from the consumers, but that’s goddamn rich talk when the industry is openly abusing its customers. To be make a very extreme point, anyone who sells you something should be treated with high suspicion, like they’re a drug seller trying to sell you bad juju instead of the good and pure stuff.

The initiative isn’t perfect and is intentionally rather vague. There are tons of stuff that can’t be pinpointed down until the later by the parliament starts their discussions on the topic. Some people want to know the details how these games would be kept functional. All that minutia would just slow down the conversation, and in the end, that’s up to the developers. Be it allowing consumers to access server binaries or built a multiplayer-only game to have AI opponents, that’s fully on the developers to figure out as far as I’m concerned. Every industry rejects and fights change that’s for the customer, but just like how car manufacturers nowadays have seatbelts, the game industry will too adjust and design games to be accessible in the future as well.

Future being the keyword, as it wouldn’t be fair to grandfather in games that have been already published and abandoned. I would include games that are currently active and live, e.g. Street Fighter 6 wouldn’t just go poof after Capcom shuts the servers down.

Which of course begs the question about console games. The Big N, MS and Sony would need to provide some method to access certain online functions after they drop support on their consoles. For example, they could patch the Wii to have an option to access a custom server that can run online-only game. Or maybe an older example, Capcom would need to offer a way to access Online-only quests in the original Monster Hunter. Not that either examples would be grandfathered in, they’re just examples. Still, that’s mostly beside the point. The minutia of how comes after.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I support this initiative. Everything that’s pro-consumer, pro-Right to Repair and pro-ownership is only a net good thing. Anything that empowers individual more and allows individual rights and freedoms to be expressed without oppressive corporate oversight is one step toward a brighter future.

https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2024/08/20/you-can-help-to-stop-killing-games-if-you-are-a-eu-citizen/

#customerAndService #customerService #electronicGames #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames

Want to own the games you buy in the future and have them accessible after the publisher ceases support? Do you live in a European country that’s party of the EU? Then you can help by signing this initiative.

Stop Killing Games. The project has a goal; have games in functional state at the end of their life. Lot of games already have this built-in. However, every game that requires always-online functionality has a high probability of just dying on you. You won’t get to play the game because the publisher doesn’t support it anymore. The game’s obsolescence is built-in, planned to get you off that game and move to another product of their. Shut up and consume products, you have no right to this license. I don’t think many will agree with my take here, but this is something I want to get out of my system. Give the above links a read if consider the idea of Stop Killing Games a good one.

I hate the idea of government needing to tell companies to stop being abusive towards their customers. However, current laws across the globe largely benefit the companies, as they’ve had lobbyists doing that for them. The balance of power between consumers and corporations is grossly unbalanced. Consumers are expected to pay up and be happy to own nothing.

Therefore, you go in bed with the devil yourself in the best way you can. This EU Initiative is not making a law. It can be a start for a ruling. It’s a far shot, as members of the EU parliament are largely clueless idiots, who don’t read the papers and rulings they vote on. These parliament members are informed by their assistants, whose job is to read through these papers and help to make informed voting decisions. Of course, these assistants have their own agendas and will mislead the parliament members if they want.

I have no love for the EU, but this is a chance consumers can’t really sit on. On the long run, this isn’t just about having all video and computer games independently functional. This is also about ownership and license purchases work. There’s only a net positive if purchasing a license would end up equating to purchasing a physical product. Think it much like buying a music CD. You own that particular copy of the CD, but not the intellectual property on it. That’s your copy to do what you want with, even sell it to someone else. We should have the right to sell digital goods we’ve bought. The only reason you can’t is because the gaming industry might lose revenue from that. Again, the teeter-totter is against the consumer.

If this initiative would pass and the ruling would require publishers to ensure games would be in a reasonably working condition, it would also make a precedent for other industries. For example, a music player that requires an always-Online connection to the provider servers might be required to ensure the player would still work after they drop support and close the servers down. This naturally ties to Right to Repair, where customers fixing their own stuff to make them work again would be that much easier and simpler if the companies wouldn’t fight them to tooth and nail.

Unlike some buzz on the Internet about this initiative solely being to kill Live Service model games, that’s not the case. Live service games would be heavily impacted, but that’s just because they’re inherently anti-consumer. The core audience of video games have been treated like trash for long enough, and if this initiative doesn’t pass, and then hit its intended target, the industry will end up even more draconian. In no part of history has an industry looked at itself and considered whether or not they’re going too far. Instead, they’ll plough straight through into injuring other consumer protection laws and then decimate them through lobbyists and gerrymandering.

The game industry won’t stop the bad, anti-consumer practices and standards they have going on wilfully. It’d be nice if they’d start being consumer friendly and transparent, yet only a few developer and publisher ever seems to go for that. Instead, there have been even more layers obfuscating the separation between the consumers, developers and publishers. It doesn’t help that the gaming media is just another arm of the publisher PR machine. Hype the Big Game, buy the Big Game and a year later the Big Game is announced a disappointment after million dollars initial sales. There’s no monetary benefit for the industry to be pro-consumer, not at this point. Some talking heads have raised worries of this initiative opening publishers and developers for abuse from the consumers, but that’s goddamn rich talk when the industry is openly abusing its customers. To be make a very extreme point, anyone who sells you something should be treated with high suspicion, like they’re a drug seller trying to sell you bad juju instead of the good and pure stuff.

The initiative isn’t perfect and is intentionally rather vague. There are tons of stuff that can’t be pinpointed down until the later by the parliament starts their discussions on the topic. Some people want to know the details how these games would be kept functional. All that minutia would just slow down the conversation, and in the end, that’s up to the developers. Be it allowing consumers to access server binaries or built a multiplayer-only game to have AI opponents, that’s fully on the developers to figure out as far as I’m concerned. Every industry rejects and fights change that’s for the customer, but just like how car manufacturers nowadays have seatbelts, the game industry will too adjust and design games to be accessible in the future as well.

Future being the keyword, as it wouldn’t be fair to grandfather in games that have been already published and abandoned. I would include games that are currently active and live, e.g. Street Fighter 6 wouldn’t just go poof after Capcom shuts the servers down.

Which of course begs the question about console games. The Big N, MS and Sony would need to provide some method to access certain online functions after they drop support on their consoles. For example, they could patch the Wii to have an option to access a custom server that can run online-only game. Or maybe an older example, Capcom would need to offer a way to access Online-only quests in the original Monster Hunter. Not that either examples would be grandfathered in, they’re just examples. Still, that’s mostly beside the point. The minutia of how comes after.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I support this initiative. Everything that’s pro-consumer, pro-Right to Repair and pro-ownership is only a net good thing. Anything that empowers individual more and allows individual rights and freedoms to be expressed without oppressive corporate oversight is one step toward a brighter future.

https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2024/08/20/you-can-help-to-stop-killing-games-if-you-are-a-eu-citizen/

#customerAndService #customerService #electronicGames #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames

Want to own the games you buy in the future and have them accessible after the publisher ceases support? Do you live in a European country that’s party of the EU? Then you can help by signing this initiative.

Stop Killing Games. The project has a goal; have games in functional state at the end of their life. Lot of games already have this built-in. However, every game that requires always-online functionality has a high probability of just dying on you. You won’t get to play the game because the publisher doesn’t support it anymore. The game’s obsolescence is built-in, planned to get you off that game and move to another product of their. Shut up and consume products, you have no right to this license. I don’t think many will agree with my take here, but this is something I want to get out of my system. Give the above links a read if consider the idea of Stop Killing Games a good one.

I hate the idea of government needing to tell companies to stop being abusive towards their customers. However, current laws across the globe largely benefit the companies, as they’ve had lobbyists doing that for them. The balance of power between consumers and corporations is grossly unbalanced. Consumers are expected to pay up and be happy to own nothing.

Therefore, you go in bed with the devil yourself in the best way you can. This EU Initiative is not making a law. It can be a start for a ruling. It’s a far shot, as members of the EU parliament are largely clueless idiots, who don’t read the papers and rulings they vote on. These parliament members are informed by their assistants, whose job is to read through these papers and help to make informed voting decisions. Of course, these assistants have their own agendas and will mislead the parliament members if they want.

I have no love for the EU, but this is a chance consumers can’t really sit on. On the long run, this isn’t just about having all video and computer games independently functional. This is also about ownership and license purchases work. There’s only a net positive if purchasing a license would end up equating to purchasing a physical product. Think it much like buying a music CD. You own that particular copy of the CD, but not the intellectual property on it. That’s your copy to do what you want with, even sell it to someone else. We should have the right to sell digital goods we’ve bought. The only reason you can’t is because the gaming industry might lose revenue from that. Again, the teeter-totter is against the consumer.

If this initiative would pass and the ruling would require publishers to ensure games would be in a reasonably working condition, it would also make a precedent for other industries. For example, a music player that requires an always-Online connection to the provider servers might be required to ensure the player would still work after they drop support and close the servers down. This naturally ties to Right to Repair, where customers fixing their own stuff to make them work again would be that much easier and simpler if the companies wouldn’t fight them to tooth and nail.

Unlike some buzz on the Internet about this initiative solely being to kill Live Service model games, that’s not the case. Live service games would be heavily impacted, but that’s just because they’re inherently anti-consumer. The core audience of video games have been treated like trash for long enough, and if this initiative doesn’t pass, and then hit its intended target, the industry will end up even more draconian. In no part of history has an industry looked at itself and considered whether or not they’re going too far. Instead, they’ll plough straight through into injuring other consumer protection laws and then decimate them through lobbyists and gerrymandering.

The game industry won’t stop the bad, anti-consumer practices and standards they have going on wilfully. It’d be nice if they’d start being consumer friendly and transparent, yet only a few developer and publisher ever seems to go for that. Instead, there have been even more layers obfuscating the separation between the consumers, developers and publishers. It doesn’t help that the gaming media is just another arm of the publisher PR machine. Hype the Big Game, buy the Big Game and a year later the Big Game is announced a disappointment after million dollars initial sales. There’s no monetary benefit for the industry to be pro-consumer, not at this point. Some talking heads have raised worries of this initiative opening publishers and developers for abuse from the consumers, but that’s goddamn rich talk when the industry is openly abusing its customers. To be make a very extreme point, anyone who sells you something should be treated with high suspicion, like they’re a drug seller trying to sell you bad juju instead of the good and pure stuff.

The initiative isn’t perfect and is intentionally rather vague. There are tons of stuff that can’t be pinpointed down until the later by the parliament starts their discussions on the topic. Some people want to know the details how these games would be kept functional. All that minutia would just slow down the conversation, and in the end, that’s up to the developers. Be it allowing consumers to access server binaries or built a multiplayer-only game to have AI opponents, that’s fully on the developers to figure out as far as I’m concerned. Every industry rejects and fights change that’s for the customer, but just like how car manufacturers nowadays have seatbelts, the game industry will too adjust and design games to be accessible in the future as well.

Future being the keyword, as it wouldn’t be fair to grandfather in games that have been already published and abandoned. I would include games that are currently active and live, e.g. Street Fighter 6 wouldn’t just go poof after Capcom shuts the servers down.

Which of course begs the question about console games. The Big N, MS and Sony would need to provide some method to access certain online functions after they drop support on their consoles. For example, they could patch the Wii to have an option to access a custom server that can run online-only game. Or maybe an older example, Capcom would need to offer a way to access Online-only quests in the original Monster Hunter. Not that either examples would be grandfathered in, they’re just examples. Still, that’s mostly beside the point. The minutia of how comes after.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that I support this initiative. Everything that’s pro-consumer, pro-Right to Repair and pro-ownership is only a net good thing. Anything that empowers individual more and allows individual rights and freedoms to be expressed without oppressive corporate oversight is one step toward a brighter future.

https://aaltomies.wordpress.com/2024/08/20/you-can-help-to-stop-killing-games-if-you-are-a-eu-citizen/

#customerAndService #customerService #electronicGames #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames