The Games Industry Bull Thread

I'm pretty sure I've bought two copies of Zip Lash, making me responsible for 50% of its sales.

I've also got one in the cupboard somewhere.

Okay, fuck this.

I have always been quite clear that UbiSoft and ActiBlizz's games are out of bounds to me until they show some serious signs of cleaning up their grubby sordid acts. Neither has shown any, of course. Now Nintendo is doing the same thing. Nintendo of America, specifically - but if they don't clean up their act, doesn't it mean that Nintendo of Japan doesn't care enough to make them to? No, if I'm to hold Nintendo to the same standard I hold the others to, I shouldn't be buying any Nintendo machine and/or game until there's those serious signs we haven't seen from Ubi and Acti.

I don't know if I can do that. Nintendo is my gaming life. I've owned every Nintendo machine since the 64 at launch, bubbling with excitement. For sure I'll yell to the heavens about this, and how nobody should forget; but I don't know if I can be as strict with Nintendo games as I should be for something as reprehensible as letting this go unchecked.

Maybe it won't I guess. Doug doesn't seem to have been in charge for the worst of it (looking at you Reggie), but to understate significantly, I don't feel like internal corporate investigations have the greatest of track records when it's a culture that needs to change. In the meanwhile, I've done the only thing I could think of and contacted Nintendo with this. I'd suggest you all do that (it took me three minutes), and if you have any better suggestions of means of contact to use, please let me know.

Still though, it may be a poor choice of words but: fuck this. Really and truly.

I see your point, but there are big differences between this and the likes of Ubi and Activision. I'd have to have a more serious conversation with myself if it were a top-to-bottom cultural thing at Nintendo. At the scale it currently is, and with more positive stories about the workplace culture in the main Kyoto office these days, I don't feel I need to boycott or anything.

But I'm also well aware that I'm compromised on this one.

Guess it's how Nintendo handles it, now more than anything.

It's exactly that. Buska's right, so far we've only had a bit revealed in an office that isn't the main one... but what if the main one does nothing? That's tacit acceptance. That's what worries me. I think that awful Nintendo of Russia bloke still works there, for example.

Yeah, it is, but also society at large has given tacit acceptance to . . .

Y'know?
Picking my battles just gets harder and harder when there is no good path other than living alone in the mountains growing my own crops.

I know, I know. For me the line should be easy: it's drawn just before sexual assault. This being Nintendo is going to smudge up that line something horrible.

I'd feel differently if we heard Koizumi and Shigsy were up to it, or that it was absolutely rampant at every level of the company and they strung us along with no actions for more than a year. At this stage, though, it feels isolated and I have a small sliver of stupid optimism that action will be taken.

Alas, it feels like every company and institution in America is just hell . . . watching an empire collapse in real time is miserable.

Because Yves Guillemot hasn't shat the bed enough already.

Surely Mario & Rabbid's commercial underperformance is a consequence of Ubisoft reliably reducing the price of all their games to a fraction of their RRP just months after they release, aye?

No, it's the workers who are wrong.[/skinner]

(That strategy probably didn't help, no.)

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Surely Mario & Rabbid's commercial underperformance is a consequence of Ubisoft reliably reducing the price of all their games to a fraction of their RRP just months after they release, aye?

I think the novelty of the game had worn off after the first one too, and I genuinely do wonder if the overall Ubisoft stink had a knock on sales numbers. I know we're a very, very small sample size but did anyone here actually pick up the sequel?

I think we're more up on the whole 'UbiSoft are shiters' deal than most, so I reckon we're a misrepresentative sample as well as a small one. Jim probably picked it up.

It should probably go without saying that meaning no disrespect to the devs, artists, programmers etc., I'm absolutely delighted that this flopped. It's just Yves making a shit of himself, followed by an atrocious non-apology that Nintendo Life misleadingly reported as an apology, complete with an atrociously misleading subtitle, that means we can't all enjoy the good news.

Two pieces of rubbish today.

First, Horizon Chase Turbo's devs have been bought out by Epic and put onto Fortnite duty. I have no fondness for rally games myself, but I know a couple of people here have absolutely loved the Horizon Chase games and to see them being thrown on the Fortnite dungheap is frankly tragic.

Second, today we got the announcement of Shadows Over Loathing, from the West of Loathing devs, and I was briefly excited... only it turns out the head honcho of the developer is quite possibly a serial abuser. (Scroll down to 'in 2019'.) So, that won't be going on my wishlist. (Harder to make the 'but what about the other devs?' argument when it's such a small team as well.)

Balladeer wrote:

First, Horizon Chase Turbo's devs have been bought out by Epic and put onto Fortnite duty.  I have no fondness for rally games myself, but I know a couple of people here have absolutely loved the Horizon Chase games and to see them being thrown on the Fortnite dungheap is frankly tragic.  

It feels a bit like when the developer of Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot 4 was bought by Activision and put to work on the Call of Duty games. As with Toys For Bob, this new project management feels like a waste of Aquiris’s talents and abilities.

I just hope that Horizon Chase 2’s Switch port is still on the cards, it’s my most anticipated game.

Well at least it happened I guess...?

Anyway, I mostly came into this thread to ask if anybody's been following the happenings with Unity.  Absolute shambles where they tried to retrospectively apply a per-install fee.  I think they've done the usual thing, where they walk it back a bit and everybody gives them a free pass because it's not as bad as the original proposition.  So the per-install fee's still happening but possibly not retrospective any more?  Anyway it's apocalyptically awful communication if nothing else.

Yeah, didn't realise I followed as many devs on twitter as I do when the Unity news broke. It's just pure greed & it's not a surprise it's happening because of former EA CEO who is now at Unity (even though he's been there since 2014) the very same guy who floated the idea of trying to charge players a fee to reload their weapons in a Battlefield game.
It'll be a real shame if devs don't keep pushing back to get the install fee completely changed but as far I can see a few indies have already swapped engines or are at least in the midst of checking to see if they can afford to swap.


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But at least the industry isn't completely full of shitheads.

https://www.eurogamer.net/terraria-developer-donates-to-open-source-engines-in-wake-of-unity-policy-changes

Yup, nice to see a successful developer shell out for a good cause. I didn't realise this was where Riccitiello had gone after EA until now, but it makes total sense doesn't it?  What a total slimeball.



Somebody showed me this graph elsewhere (from here).  [citation needed] natch, but it's showing that only if you make a game bringing in over $1.1m if you have one developer in your team, or about $2.6m if you have 20 (and various areas in between), does Unity cost less than Unreal.  And this is only for one year.  Basically what Unity have done makes things very confusing as well as just generally being an asshat move.

The Game Awards came and went last week and despite me usually enjoying the show, I thought this year really veered into the wrong path about recognising the people that actually made the games. There's been plenty of discourse about this on the Internet already, so not a new take at all, but the focus on advertisements and the increased time on celebrities - seriously, I think Anthony Mackie and Simu Liu got more time than the lad who voiced Astarion in BG3 and Larian for their GOTY win itself - really did not sit right with me. Couple that with Keighley giving an age to Kojima, complete with a theatrical stage walkout, and it lessened the whole affair.

I totally understand the need for ads, and how the big trailer reveals drive viewership to these events. Awards shows by themselves don't draw audiences, that's just a fact. But there's a balance here which I felt Keighley and his team got much better in past years. I think this of all years when devs are being made redundant in their 100s was a real opportunity to appreciate the folks that make the games we love, but I think how the Game Awards was presented this year almost validated the mindset that faceless corpo execs have that their studios and the people working there are expendable and not worth appreciation.

Still, at least the awesome GOTY orchestra segment is still present - a highlight every year.

I have no interest in awards ceremonies in general sadly, acceptance speeches are usually either a long dull list of thanks or verging on the maudlin... but if you're going to have something with 'Awards' in the title you should probably have some focus on the awards. You should definitely not give more time to Geoff's mates than you do to the speeches.

Also Geoff's lawyers would like me to point out that he's Kojima's mate as well. No really, he is. It's definitely not a one-way thing, they're best friends for ever and ever.

The Keighley cameo in Death Stranding is a character who is a massive fanboy for the protagonist and I think that's really, really funny.

Big news this week is the massive Insomniac leak with loads of sales and financial information alongside their next ten year plan. I found out today though that the leak also includes financial and personal information for Insomniac's employees which is causing havoc for the staff. I know a ton of outlets have elected not to cover the leak as a result of that as it's obviously super unethical to do so, whereas some outlets are chasing headlines. What's your take on all this, if you care at all?

It's a strange one as the games' industry talk about leaks all the time (Suicide Squad even this week) and like even something as simple as my predictions for 2024 now going to change due to these leaks.

Feel where this is different is financial and personal information, especially with the year I've had, that is now up for people to take advantage of.

I'm not a fan of leak culture in general, to be honest. But aye, this one is particularly grim due to the detrimental impact on the Insomniac staff. Hope the hackers get royally screwed for this.

I absolutely hate this race to the bottom with leaks and the need to report on it all, it's just the desperate way the industry has gone in terms of reporting news. Horrible news and horrible hacking arsehole dweebs.