There's weird and then there's "we don't think you, a video game developer, are productive enough. We're sending you to the pachinko factory to crank out some machines."
Japanese companies are famous for this; there was a particularly gruesome train wreck a few years ago that was attributed to the engineer not wanting to run late because things like missing schedules got you assigned to walking the tracks and pulling weeds.
I love Japan; I went to university there and have visited a bunch of times before and since, but corporate culture can be awful.
This just blows my mind, not only because of the conditions that most very likely caused the accident, but in that their impression of fixing the fucking problem boils down to "have the top executives related to the shitty policies in the first place resign in order to save face for the company" instead of "review all of Japanese society and change it so people don't flip the fuck out like this in the first place"
Fixed that for you (to show why it's not really fixable).
I like how he says "Maybe they'll make a pachinko machine out of contra next"
Oh you sweet summer child. That pachislot machine's been around for awhile.
Yeah... if ever there was a video series that made me ponder the appeal of an internet talking head, it's that guy. Somebody linked another video elsewhere and the first thing it had was him laughing at Solitaire on windows 10 having a subscription and ads for like a minute with literally no rationalization or presentation of why (Windows 10 follows a free SaaS model, and the Solitaire app on windows 8.x was subscription along with minesweeper) and it's like... just. This is a person whose opinions you value?
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
Konami has obviously made decisions that I don't agree with, but Jim Sterling is the among the last people I'd want want to try and prop my opinions up on.
edit: english.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I like how he says "Maybe they'll make a pachinko machine out of contra next"
Oh you sweet summer child. That pachislot machine's been around for awhile.
Yeah... if ever there was a video series that made me ponder the appeal of an internet talking head, it's that guy. Somebody linked another video elsewhere and the first thing it had was him laughing at Solitaire on windows 10 having a subscription and ads for like a minute with literally no rationalization or presentation of why (Windows 10 follows a free SaaS model, and the Solitaire app on windows 8.x was subscription along with minesweeper) and it's like... just. This is a person whose opinions you value?
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
Konami has obviously made decisions that I don't agree with, but Jim Sterling is the among the last people I'd want want to try and prop my opinions up on.
edit: english.
When it comes to Konami and Jim Sterling. You kinda got to realize he has a bit of a bias and grudge with the company. He gave one of their games a bad review back in his Destructoid days. Konami decided that they would blacklist him for it but never told him and Destructoid. He found out when he was at a convention and went to the Konami booth and their PR guy told him he can't be there because he was banned. Thus a grudge was born.
Yeah... if ever there was a video series that made me ponder the appeal of an internet talking head, it's that guy. Somebody linked another video elsewhere and the first thing it had was him laughing at Solitaire on windows 10 having a subscription and ads for like a minute with literally no rationalization or presentation of why (Windows 10 follows a free SaaS model, and the Solitaire app on windows 8.x was subscription along with minesweeper) and it's like... just. This is a person whose opinions you value?
Jim Sterling is great! This particular thing you're referring to was just supposed to be a silly thing before his actual video began. There was really no rationalization needed for it outside of "the idea of subscription based solitaire is really silly.".
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
In his defence, charging for Solitaire is hilarious. It's fucking Solitaire.
Eh, don't see the point of going back and forth on this yet again, but sans reductionist reasoning—as in, looking the actual thing being sold and not thinking that it's the same win32 solitaire/etc that's been prepacked with windows forever but instead features a few other gametypes, daily challenges, Xbox live achievements, etc—it's not blindly laughable. Are these things a person may not be interested in? Sure, absolutely! Wouldn't pay for it then (Win 8), won't pay for it now (Win 10). At its core though, you're simply paying to eliminate ads; not buy the thing. That said, it's been a dead horse debate to me long before Windows 10 made it relevant once more and the drive for manufactured outrage/clicks brought it to the fore again and it's OT... but yeah.
You guys like him and the presentation of his arguments may be appealing to you, but he's not all that entertaining to me and the arguments in the videos of his that I've seen are often flawed and weak as far as I'm concerned. IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When it comes to Konami and Jim Sterling. You kinda got to realize he has a bit of a bias and grudge with the company. He gave one of their games a bad review back in his Destructoid days. Konami decided that they would blacklist him for it but never told him and Destructoid. He found out when he was at a convention and went to the Konami booth and their PR guy told him he can't be there because he was banned. Thus a grudge was born.
I guess that explains why his remarks toward Konami had undertones of things being a little personal in the ones I've seen.
edit: Perhaps his other works are better, but as the only thing I've seen from him are the youtube videos, I'm not a fan.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
0
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Oh, I don't like him. His shtick is immensely irritating. I just don't think he's wrong! ;D
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
Dude. I said this before, but: shifting to gambling machines is a poor decision, probably made in desperation. I couldn't recall the company name off of the top of my head, so I looked it up - IGT, the leader in slots & video poker, owns 90~ percent of the market share. That would be bad enough in any industry, but regular Casino customers are knee deep in Gambler's Fallacy land. Just like how most people will pick one brand of scratch tickets and buy them over and over again because they believe that somehow their odds will get better this way, people will tend to stick to one type of video poker cabinet or slot machine for the same reason. They don't give a shit about your theme; they want to win the jackpot and have deluded themselves into believing that the 'winning strategy' is to visit the same game over and over.
I don't know who sold Konami the slot machine snake oil, but they've pretty much guaranteed that - if nothing else - we'll be seeing Silent Hill and Metal Gear titles again, but only after the IPs have been auctioned-off in the wake of Konami's bankruptcy.
Jim Sterling's great. He has the occassional weak argument (his argument that Splatoon and Witcher 3 are perfect examples of games as services was ridiculous in comparison to a ton of other games like CSGO, TF2, Dota 2, L4D2, DriveClub, etc.) but they're far outweighed by his good arguments, which are usually in areas 99% of other videogame writers/press/journalists/whatever deliberately avoid for various reasons.
You might think your job sucks, but at least your boss wasn't insane enough to remove all the chairs and install security so an alarm goes off if you don't walk fast enough.
The president of Canon Electronics, Hisashi Sakamaki, is also the author of a book proposing some of the same measures he takes with his own company. His theory is that forcing employees to stand not only saves money but increases productivity and enhances employee relationships.
In the hallway, if an employee walks slower than 5 meters every 3.6 seconds, an alarm and flashing lights are set off, reminding the poor startled worker that he's an inefficient waste of air. Even better (or worse), there's a sign on the floor in said hallways that reads, "Let's rush: If we don't, the company and world will perish." The big boss, as a reward for thinking up all this stuff, gets to lounge in a nice, relaxing chair.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
Dude. I said this before, but: shifting to gambling machines is a poor decision, probably made in desperation. I couldn't recall the company name off of the top of my head, so I looked it up - IGT, the leader in slots & video poker, owns 90~ percent of the market share. That would be bad enough in any industry, but regular Casino customers are knee deep in Gambler's Fallacy land. Just like how most people will pick one brand of scratch tickets and buy them over and over again because they believe that somehow their odds will get better this way, people will tend to stick to one type of video poker cabinet or slot machine for the same reason. They don't give a shit about your theme; they want to win the jackpot and have deluded themselves into believing that the 'winning strategy' is to visit the same game over and over.
I don't know who sold Konami the slot machine snake oil, but they've pretty much guaranteed that - if nothing else - we'll be seeing Silent Hill and Metal Gear titles again, but only after the IPs have been auctioned-off in the wake of Konami's bankruptcy.
Which probably would be the best result any kind of fan of the properties could hope for at this point.
Jim Sterling's great. He has the occassional weak argument (his argument that Splatoon and Witcher 3 are perfect examples of games as services was ridiculous in comparison to a ton of other games like CSGO, TF2, Dota 2, L4D2, DriveClub, etc.) but they're far outweighed by his good arguments, which are usually in areas 99% of other videogame writers/press/journalists/whatever deliberately avoid for various reasons.
I don't think he was positing that they were superior to your examples. I remember that video, he used Dead Space 3 as the counterexample, i think Witcher 3 and Splatoon got picked because they came out in the same window.
For example, Canon:
You might think your job sucks, but at least your boss wasn't insane enough to remove all the chairs and install security so an alarm goes off if you don't walk fast enough.
The president of Canon Electronics, Hisashi Sakamaki, is also the author of a book proposing some of the same measures he takes with his own company. His theory is that forcing employees to stand not only saves money but increases productivity and enhances employee relationships.
In the hallway, if an employee walks slower than 5 meters every 3.6 seconds, an alarm and flashing lights are set off, reminding the poor startled worker that he's an inefficient waste of air. Even better (or worse), there's a sign on the floor in said hallways that reads, "Let's rush: If we don't, the company and world will perish." The big boss, as a reward for thinking up all this stuff, gets to lounge in a nice, relaxing chair.
I wouldn't have an issue with that if the boss followed the same philosophy. I myself tend to believe standing at work is beneficial, unless the employee has physical difficulties doing so, and hustling isn't a bad thing (though the alarms are overkill). But if you demand your employees do something, you should show solidarity, like Iwata with his voluntary pay-cuts.
Mr Khan on
+5
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Why are people still asserting that Konami will fail at the pachislot business when we've read time and time again that they're doing quite well at the pachislot business? =/
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited August 2015
Also, re: Jim Sterling; I take most of his stuff with a grain of salt but to me he doesn't seem to have as violent an echo chamber as some other pedestals like Angry Joe. He also doesn't have immediate violent allergic reactions to any hint of a microtransaction (but it isn't to say he doesn't have excessive grouching) :P
I like all of his videos about Konami, though, his personal experiences make his outrage much more entertaining
Why are people still asserting that Konami will fail at the pachislot business when we've read time and time again that they're doing quite well at the pachislot business? =/
Yeah there is a lot of "Konami doesn't know what it's doing" in this thread. Konami knows exactly what it's doing, and that is focusing on an area that makes shitloads of money at low risk instead of an area that makes shitloads of money at high risk. Pachinko is hella money in Japan. A Pachinko company bought Sega, and they paid over a billion dollars to do so.
It sucks for people who like Konami games because outside of f2p microtransation'd out the ass mobile garbage some of videogaming's favorite franchises are officially deader than the parents on Party of Five, but Konami isn't an independent musician who jams in their basement and releases their stuff for free on soundcloud out of a love for sharing art with the masses, they're a business run by people who are interested in making as much money as possible to keep their company afloat and their wallets fat. This is a business decision, and a pretty safe one at that.
Why are people still asserting that Konami will fail at the pachislot business when we've read time and time again that they're doing quite well at the pachislot business? =/
Yeah there is a lot of "Konami doesn't know what it's doing" in this thread. Konami knows exactly what it's doing, and that is focusing on an area that makes shitloads of money at low risk instead of an area that makes shitloads of money at high risk. Pachinko is hella money in Japan. A Pachinko company bought Sega, and they paid over a billion dollars to do so.
It sucks for people who like Konami games because outside of f2p microtransation'd out the ass mobile garbage some of videogaming's favorite franchises are officially deader than the parents on Party of Five, but Konami isn't an independent musician who jams in their basement and releases their stuff for free on soundcloud out of a love for sharing art with the masses, they're a business run by people who are interested in making as much money as possible to keep their company afloat and their wallets fat. This is a business decision, and a pretty safe one at that.
Hell, "EROTIC VIOLENCE" isn't even their first instance of a Castlevania pachislot, at least three came before it.
The thing you have to do with Jim Sterling is skip the skit at the start of the video and turn it off when it starts back up again at the end. His shtick is incredibly irritating and i'm not sure why he kept doing it after he left The Escapist. The middle section of his videos, where he's actually talking about the meat of whatever issue the video is about, is where it's well-done and interesting.
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
Eh, the subject of my post is his video and response, not other people's responses in the thread... or fans in general? Plus, there's already a Contra pachislot game... so, even that fell flat (this was mentioned earlier too). But yeah, the whole "Silent Hill on the console is cancelled but PACHINKO game" argument is weak to me given the facts surrounding licensed franchises appearing in Pachinko products: it's a thing independent of their console product... it's just noise that doesn't add anything meaningful to the argument as far as I'm concerned.
IJS, Konami has apparently killed off their AAA development because it's expensive and risky for them to keep churning those products out...But PACHINKO? No, making AAA games is still expensive and risky. Being upset or hurt about their legacy doesn't change this fact.
That said, I'd even venture to say that your remarks to the effects of shitty pachislot"/"pachishit" falls into the bucket of being a dick about a thing you don't like. Pachinko is ... a thing in Japan for some reason. I don't understand the appeal, but eh. It's a thing that some people do like and it evidently makes Konami enough money to warrant focusing on it further.
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
His presentation of that common failure of large corporate infrastructures is framed around the idea that the information that was provided before (the Gematsu article, etc) was sensationalized and in some cases not even from Konami. Then he says that he was dishing the real horrors from his "inside sources" and whatnot. Then he goes on to tell a story that is commonplace... and it's like. Okay. Troubled corporation faces same issues with user account management as other less troubled corporations. News at 11.
I'd also argue that the repeated string of commercial and reviewed failures on the part of Konami's console stuff that led to them deciding "hey, AAA games are expensive and risky so let's maybe not do them anymore when we can make make more money doing other stuff" is the opposite of acting in idiocy. It's good business that keeps the lights on although pretty much none of us here like it (or Pachinko). And really, framing the people who do like those other things as "mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism" again falls into the "being a dick about the things you don't like" camp.
And, because we rarely mention it; Kojima's perfectionism wasted their resources so their actions-of which we only have a skewed perception of-are likely more deep than "Konami suits being dicks" there. Kojima is just as human as the suits, even if he makes a game people like.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
Eh, the subject of my post is his video and response, not other people's responses in the thread... or fans in general? Plus, there's already a Contra pachislot game... so, even that fell flat (this was mentioned earlier too). But yeah, the whole "Silent Hill on the console is cancelled but PACHINKO game" argument is weak to me given the facts surrounding licensed franchises appearing in Pachinko products: it's a thing independent of their console product... it's just noise that doesn't add anything meaningful to the argument as far as I'm concerned.
IJS, Konami has apparently killed off their AAA development because it's expensive and risky for them to keep churning those products out...But PACHINKO? No, making AAA games is still expensive and risky. Being upset or hurt about their legacy doesn't change this fact.
That said, I'd even venture to say that your remarks to the effects of shitty pachislot"/"pachishit" falls into the bucket of being a dick about a thing you don't like. Pachinko is ... a thing in Japan for some reason. I don't understand the appeal, but eh. It's a thing that some people do like and it evidently makes Konami enough money to warrant focusing on it further.
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
His presentation of that common failure of large corporate infrastructures is framed around the idea that the information that was provided before (the Gematsu article, etc) was sensationalized and in some cases not even from Konami. Then he says that he was dishing the real horrors from his "inside sources" and whatnot. Then he goes on to tell a story that is commonplace... and it's like. Okay. Troubled corporation faces same issues with user account management as other less troubled corporations. News at 11.
I'd also argue that the repeated string of commercial and reviewed failures on the part of Konami's console stuff that led to them deciding "hey, AAA games are expensive and risky so let's maybe not do them anymore when we can make make more money doing other stuff" is the opposite of acting in idiocy. It's good business that keeps the lights on although pretty much none of us here like it (or Pachinko). And really, framing the people who do like those other things as "mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism" again falls into the "being a dick about the things you don't like" camp.
And, because we rarely mention it; Kojima's perfectionism wasted their resources so their actions-of which we only have a skewed perception of-are likely more deep than "Konami suits being dicks" there. Kojima is just as human as the suits, even if he makes a game people like.
Not everyone subscribes to your... I'm going to say doctrine of industry nihilism since I still don't really know what point you're trying to make besides just complaining that other people are complaining. What "argument" do you think needs to be made? What argument are you imagining that you feel anyone needs to debate against? What argument do you think needs to be brought up that would make more of a difference to the situation than anything anyone else has brought up so far? Tell that to me, and then tell that to Jim. Or just tell that to Jim.
Call me a dick out of the blue all you want, but I want you to explain to me exactly what you're saying that isn't just "this guy's complaining about things that happen in other places therefore he shouldn't complain".
And yes, making AAA games is expensive and risky, especially if you make viciously overbudgeted AAA games like Konami did. But that isn't the only market option in video games, with the other choice being to burn all of your business bridges and withdraw from the market entirely. You know what's also expensive and risky? Overspecialization. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water to toss everything into an extremely specific market with an even more questionable future than video games. Yes, that's short-sighted and incompetent.
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
Eh, the subject of my post is his video and response, not other people's responses in the thread... or fans in general? Plus, there's already a Contra pachislot game... so, even that fell flat (this was mentioned earlier too). But yeah, the whole "Silent Hill on the console is cancelled but PACHINKO game" argument is weak to me given the facts surrounding licensed franchises appearing in Pachinko products: it's a thing independent of their console product... it's just noise that doesn't add anything meaningful to the argument as far as I'm concerned.
IJS, Konami has apparently killed off their AAA development because it's expensive and risky for them to keep churning those products out...But PACHINKO? No, making AAA games is still expensive and risky. Being upset or hurt about their legacy doesn't change this fact.
That said, I'd even venture to say that your remarks to the effects of shitty pachislot"/"pachishit" falls into the bucket of being a dick about a thing you don't like. Pachinko is ... a thing in Japan for some reason. I don't understand the appeal, but eh. It's a thing that some people do like and it evidently makes Konami enough money to warrant focusing on it further.
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
His presentation of that common failure of large corporate infrastructures is framed around the idea that the information that was provided before (the Gematsu article, etc) was sensationalized and in some cases not even from Konami. Then he says that he was dishing the real horrors from his "inside sources" and whatnot. Then he goes on to tell a story that is commonplace... and it's like. Okay. Troubled corporation faces same issues with user account management as other less troubled corporations. News at 11.
I'd also argue that the repeated string of commercial and reviewed failures on the part of Konami's console stuff that led to them deciding "hey, AAA games are expensive and risky so let's maybe not do them anymore when we can make make more money doing other stuff" is the opposite of acting in idiocy. It's good business that keeps the lights on although pretty much none of us here like it (or Pachinko). And really, framing the people who do like those other things as "mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism" again falls into the "being a dick about the things you don't like" camp.
And, because we rarely mention it; Kojima's perfectionism wasted their resources so their actions-of which we only have a skewed perception of-are likely more deep than "Konami suits being dicks" there. Kojima is just as human as the suits, even if he makes a game people like.
Not everyone subscribes to your... I'm going to say doctrine of industry nihilism since I still don't really know what point you're trying to make besides just complaining that other people are complaining. What "argument" do you think needs to be made? What argument are you imagining that you feel anyone needs to debate against? What argument do you think needs to be brought up that would make more of a difference to the situation than anything anyone else has brought up so far? Tell that to me, and then tell that to Jim. Or just tell that to Jim.
Call me a dick out of the blue all you want, but I want you to explain to me exactly what you're saying that isn't just "this guy's complaining about things that happen in other places therefore he shouldn't complain".
And yes, making AAA games is expensive and risky, especially if you make viciously overbudgeted AAA games like Konami did. But that isn't the only market option in video games, with the other choice being to burn all of your business bridges and withdraw from the market entirely. You know what's also expensive and risky? Overspecialization. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water to toss everything into an extremely specific market with an even more questionable future than video games. Yes, that's short-sighted and incompetent.
The thing Donuts is saying: the arguments presented in the Jim Sterling videos he's seen are kind of weak, and a person using his videos to support their opinion is using flaky material to do so to him. Going back to my first post:
- Doing more than laughing and saying "Soltaire subscriptions" would have helped his credibility to me. (The failure here being his not evaluating why is this the case.)
- Not pretending that licensing franchises to other products is horrible thing also would have helped. (The failure here being ignoring the context of how licenses work and their commonality).
- Dismissing/refuting accounts from other "sources" while fluffing gossip from your "sources" as being something more than another flavor of the same? (The failure here being over valuation of what he had, as the rest of his insider stories weren't all that significant either.)
That said, criticizing the components of an opinion isn't the same as saying someone shouldn't say something. I'm just saying why I don't think what's being said is meaningful to me. It absolutely works if "I'm annoyed at Konami and this thing that is in front of me supports why I should be annoyed" is the only thing you're looking for, but yeah. This is probably one of those things that we won't see eye to eye on.
The points in your post where you say "...of a shitty pachislot machine..." / "...mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism..." / "....e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up...." are the precise points where I say you're being a dick about both the situation/thing you don't like. It's not out of the blue. I don't know what more to say there, sorry if I offended you but yeah.
Even in decline, Pachinko is making lots of money. Mobile gaming, the primary place they're going and have said will be their primary focus going forward? Not in decline... particularly in the place that they've shifted their focus back toward: Japan. The great attempt to grab western audiences was a costly failure for many Japanese developers, and unlike Microsoft with the Xbox... they don't have the ability to play (and probably fail) the long game, It's that simple.
edit: gaming while typing is hard. will fix other typos later.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Why are people still asserting that Konami will fail at the pachislot business when we've read time and time again that they're doing quite well at the pachislot business? =/
Again, one company - UGT - owns over 90% of the market share for slots & video poker. This necessarily means that Konami is fighting it out over the remaining 10% of market share with every other slots & video poker manufacturer on the market.
That is a totally shit position to have as a multinational corporation. There's no room for growth.
Like, i don't know where you heard that they were doing well with slots, but they are not doing well with slots. It's a crap business, with terrible returns and no long term future.
Pachinko is weird, as far as I can tell it pretty much disappeared in the West the moment that the technology got good enough that it could be turned into a game of player skill.
Is the difference just that Japan was lax on treating them as gambling machines, while we weren't?
Pachinko, slots, and video poker are all completely different things.
What you're saying is something like "This one company controls all the poker tables, so there's no point in trying to set up a blackjack table".
That is a really poor analogy, but that aside:
If you ran a business, and one segment of your business had an annual return rate of about 2% while another had a return rate of about 15%, do you think it would be a good idea to jettison that 15% in favor of the 2%?
That is to say, even if Konami were to somehow grow their slots business by a factor of about 4 in order for it to make-up for the raw revenue generation of their Digital Entertainment, they would also have to somehow grow the margin on by a factor of 7 or more.
Pachinko is weird, as far as I can tell it pretty much disappeared in the West the moment that the technology got good enough that it could be turned into a game of player skill.
Is the difference just that Japan was lax on treating them as gambling machines, while we weren't?
Pretty much. This is an old article, but...
...Catering to different tastes to boost an industry that still sees some $185 billion wagered annually, machines in pachinko parlours now feature anime characters, games and idols, ranging from all-girl group AKB48 to Resident Evil, a video game blockbuster by Capcom Co that was made into a Hollywood film.
"We're trying to change the image of pachinko as loud, smoke-ridden and male-dominated," said Tomoko Murouchi, a spokeswoman for one of the largest operators, Dynam Japan Holdings...
This is why they're doing the Erotic Violence! And as to the state of pachinko itself:
Pachinko revenues are falling as Japan's population ages.
Gross revenue has shrunk to 19 trillion yen ($185.75 billion) from 31 trillion over the past two decades, and the number of players halved between 2002 and 2012, research by investment bank Morgan Stanley shows.
With mobile gaming being on the rise in general in Japan.
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
Eh, the subject of my post is his video and response, not other people's responses in the thread... or fans in general? Plus, there's already a Contra pachislot game... so, even that fell flat (this was mentioned earlier too). But yeah, the whole "Silent Hill on the console is cancelled but PACHINKO game" argument is weak to me given the facts surrounding licensed franchises appearing in Pachinko products: it's a thing independent of their console product... it's just noise that doesn't add anything meaningful to the argument as far as I'm concerned.
IJS, Konami has apparently killed off their AAA development because it's expensive and risky for them to keep churning those products out...But PACHINKO? No, making AAA games is still expensive and risky. Being upset or hurt about their legacy doesn't change this fact.
That said, I'd even venture to say that your remarks to the effects of shitty pachislot"/"pachishit" falls into the bucket of being a dick about a thing you don't like. Pachinko is ... a thing in Japan for some reason. I don't understand the appeal, but eh. It's a thing that some people do like and it evidently makes Konami enough money to warrant focusing on it further.
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
His presentation of that common failure of large corporate infrastructures is framed around the idea that the information that was provided before (the Gematsu article, etc) was sensationalized and in some cases not even from Konami. Then he says that he was dishing the real horrors from his "inside sources" and whatnot. Then he goes on to tell a story that is commonplace... and it's like. Okay. Troubled corporation faces same issues with user account management as other less troubled corporations. News at 11.
I'd also argue that the repeated string of commercial and reviewed failures on the part of Konami's console stuff that led to them deciding "hey, AAA games are expensive and risky so let's maybe not do them anymore when we can make make more money doing other stuff" is the opposite of acting in idiocy. It's good business that keeps the lights on although pretty much none of us here like it (or Pachinko). And really, framing the people who do like those other things as "mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism" again falls into the "being a dick about the things you don't like" camp.
And, because we rarely mention it; Kojima's perfectionism wasted their resources so their actions-of which we only have a skewed perception of-are likely more deep than "Konami suits being dicks" there. Kojima is just as human as the suits, even if he makes a game people like.
Not everyone subscribes to your... I'm going to say doctrine of industry nihilism since I still don't really know what point you're trying to make besides just complaining that other people are complaining. What "argument" do you think needs to be made? What argument are you imagining that you feel anyone needs to debate against? What argument do you think needs to be brought up that would make more of a difference to the situation than anything anyone else has brought up so far? Tell that to me, and then tell that to Jim. Or just tell that to Jim.
Call me a dick out of the blue all you want, but I want you to explain to me exactly what you're saying that isn't just "this guy's complaining about things that happen in other places therefore he shouldn't complain".
And yes, making AAA games is expensive and risky, especially if you make viciously overbudgeted AAA games like Konami did. But that isn't the only market option in video games, with the other choice being to burn all of your business bridges and withdraw from the market entirely. You know what's also expensive and risky? Overspecialization. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water to toss everything into an extremely specific market with an even more questionable future than video games. Yes, that's short-sighted and incompetent.
The thing Donuts is saying: the arguments presented in Jim Sterling's video are kind of weak, and a person using his videos to support their opinion is using flaky material to do so to him. Going back to my first post:
- Doing more than laughing and saying "Soltaire subscriptions" would have helped his credibility to me. (The failure here being his not evaluating why is this the case.)
- Not pretending that licensing franchises to other products is horrible thing? Also would have helped. (The failure here being ignoring the context of how licenses work and their commonality).
- Dismissing/refuting accounts from other sources while fluffing your gossip from your "sources" as being something more than another flavor of the same? (The failure here being over valuation of what he had, as the rest of his insider stories weren't all that significant either.)
That said, criticizing the components of an opinion isn't the same as saying someone shouldn't say something. I'm just saying why I don't think what's being said is meaningful to me. It absolutely works if "I'm annoyed at Konami and this thing that is in front of me supports why I should be annoyed" is the only thing you're looking for, but yeah. This is probably one of those things that we won't see eye to eye on.
The points in your post where you say "...of a shitty pachislot machine..." / "...mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism..." / "....e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up...." are the precise points where I say you're being a dick about both the situation/thing you don't like. It's not out of the blue. I don't know what more to say there, sorry if I offended you but yeah.
Even in decline, Pachinko is making lots of money. Mobile gaming, the primary place they're going and have said will be their primary focus going forward? Not in decline... particularly in the place that they've shifted their focus back toward: Japan. The great attempt to grab western audiences was a costly failure for many Japanese developers, and unlike Microsoft with the Xbox... they don't have the ability to play (and probably fail) the long game, It's that simple.
As I said before, since you have so much of an issue with what he's said, by all means bring your issues to Jim if you don't feel he's making a convincing enough argument to you or any other portion of his viewer base - he's not going to bite you unless you're into that kind of thing. He's a great guy outside of his Jimquisition persona. I've already told you some of my own opinion on matters but there's no reason to continue, as that doesn't have any impact on his content whereas actual feedback would.
And it's out of the blue because there is no reason for direct insults, and although you may not like my choice of words I've done nothing to you directly except disagree with you. As such, your wording makes me think you're certainly not actually sorry, but I'm not interested enough to pursue this topic further.
As far as mobile goes, it really depends on how long it takes for consumer cynicism to finally kick in and crash the market. Mountainous piles of mobile games flood the market every day, and the end is going to come with a combination of eroded customer confidence and an unnavigable sea of low quality. The likes of Konami and Square might be able to enjoy it more than others due to name recognition, but that swings both ways - their fuckups are more public than anyone else's. They're deluding themselves if they think they can continually release shit like All the Bravest and Dungeon Keeper Mobile and consumers won't eventually look at it and go "...what the hell is this?", and I guarantee you that none of Konami's IPs that hit mobile will remotely be the hallmark of quality. At best it will be a cynically-crafted microtransaction cash-in and at worst it will be another thinly-veiled "fuck you" to IGA and Kojima.
Or maybe if we're really lucky, a $3.99 mobile port of Metal Gear for the NES.
Pachinko, slots, and video poker are all completely different things.
What you're saying is something like "This one company controls all the poker tables, so there's no point in trying to set up a blackjack table".
That is a really poor analogy, but that aside:
If you ran a business, and one segment of your business had an annual return rate of about 2% while another had a return rate of about 15%, do you think it would be a good idea to jettison that 15% in favor of the 2%?
That is to say, even if Konami were to somehow grow their slots business by a factor of about 4 in order for it to make-up for the raw revenue generation of their Digital Entertainment, they would also have to somehow grow the margin on by a factor of 7 or more.
That 15% is also open to a shit ton more risk, and partial to factors not in your control, like console sales and whether there's even a large enough market to make a profit out of. And all that profit can be wiped out pretty damn fast with a few bad games.
100 billion yen is about 800 million US. MGSV's known budget so far is 100 million, likely higher. And everybody seems to now agree that that's an "average" budget. Now for the sake of argument, just entertain the notion that MGS5 were to flop (I don't care how "unlikely" that is, we're just dealing in the hypothetical). That's 12% of your yearly profit. Gone! On one game no less.
I can sympathize with Konami if they want to GTFO of that kind of high risk stakes. It's a bizarre state of affairs when a company choosing the lesser, but safer form of profits is initially seen as "fucking weird", yet here we are.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Dude, there is no business riskier than trying to get in on the already totally saturated gambling market! Video games do not have the involved licensing & regulation overhead, do not have the overhead of manufacturing hardware and have at least one primary benefit to the manufacturer that gambling does not have - brand loyalty. How many people are going to buy Metal Gear: Phantom Pain because it has the pedigree of the Metal Gear franchise & Kojima's name behind it? Now, how many people are going to plunk tokens into a slot machine and pull the handle because it has some video game that they've never even heard of before as branding?
Believe all you like that abandoning bid budget games in favor of gambling is a sure fire way to success. The numbers don't lie, and there is all kinds of precedent for disaster.
Posts
Fixed that for you (to show why it's not really fixable).
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Someone with decent editing skills needs to make a parody of that silent hill slot machine video, using Metal Gear.
Because raw wounds demand the finest salt.
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Honestly I wouldn't be surprised they make Pachinko machines out of everything.
Oh you sweet summer child. That pachislot machine's been around for awhile.
Yeah... if ever there was a video series that made me ponder the appeal of an internet talking head, it's that guy. Somebody linked another video elsewhere and the first thing it had was him laughing at Solitaire on windows 10 having a subscription and ads for like a minute with literally no rationalization or presentation of why (Windows 10 follows a free SaaS model, and the Solitaire app on windows 8.x was subscription along with minesweeper) and it's like... just. This is a person whose opinions you value?
Franchises have been licensed to other things forever... especially to Pachinko and Pinball. If the thing that was done (a licensed pachinko machine) was new or unprecedented, then maybe that argument would be stronger? Framing it around the outrage over PT and Silent Hill is weak reasoning though. (edit: Why? Because there's no evidence that Konami ditched PT/Silent Hill console to make the Pachinko version, and in all likelihood had both planned parallel to each other.)
He also seems to lack an understanding of basic corporate concepts especially in the area of departmental responsibilities and such. His "hypothetical" case at the ~9:00 mark is a thing that can happen anywhere. None of that is even remotely unique to Konami, but phrased around the context of "juicy gossip" or whatever, it's awful Konami?
Konami has obviously made decisions that I don't agree with, but Jim Sterling is the among the last people I'd want want to try and prop my opinions up on.
edit: english.
My guess would be software as a service
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I'd probably sit down and plug a few tokens in it.
Erotic Jackpot!
When it comes to Konami and Jim Sterling. You kinda got to realize he has a bit of a bias and grudge with the company. He gave one of their games a bad review back in his Destructoid days. Konami decided that they would blacklist him for it but never told him and Destructoid. He found out when he was at a convention and went to the Konami booth and their PR guy told him he can't be there because he was banned. Thus a grudge was born.
Jim Sterling is great! This particular thing you're referring to was just supposed to be a silly thing before his actual video began. There was really no rationalization needed for it outside of "the idea of subscription based solitaire is really silly.".
Eh, don't see the point of going back and forth on this yet again, but sans reductionist reasoning—as in, looking the actual thing being sold and not thinking that it's the same win32 solitaire/etc that's been prepacked with windows forever but instead features a few other gametypes, daily challenges, Xbox live achievements, etc—it's not blindly laughable. Are these things a person may not be interested in? Sure, absolutely! Wouldn't pay for it then (Win 8), won't pay for it now (Win 10). At its core though, you're simply paying to eliminate ads; not buy the thing. That said, it's been a dead horse debate to me long before Windows 10 made it relevant once more and the drive for manufactured outrage/clicks brought it to the fore again and it's OT... but yeah.
You guys like him and the presentation of his arguments may be appealing to you, but he's not all that entertaining to me and the arguments in the videos of his that I've seen are often flawed and weak as far as I'm concerned. IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess that explains why his remarks toward Konami had undertones of things being a little personal in the ones I've seen.
edit: Perhaps his other works are better, but as the only thing I've seen from him are the youtube videos, I'm not a fan.
They don't need to have any direct connection to eachother - that's not the point. The point is that the most promising Silent Hill game since 3 was cancelled(for reasons/drama already known), and this...thing is likely the last remaining legacy of a company that has abandoned the video game market and will likely never release another one of their IPs on anything outside of a shitty pachislot machine. There's nothing to be glad or accepting about there, and if you're a fan of the series, you're understandably upset. I'm having a hard time figuring why you seem to be implying his being upset over it is less valid than anyone else in the thread.
You stop short of saying it was good corporate practice - good, because it isn't. It's not competent and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but just because "it can happen anywhere" is poor reasoning for stating that it can't be brought up in any specific case.
It's brought up in the context of Konami to illustrate another part of a compound of incompetent, vindictive mismanagement of a company that has miraculously survived despite itself when every internal and external factor should have by all rights imploded it years ago.
But in my opinion this is also a fault of mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism that allows companies like this to survive despite gross...idiocy, for lack of a better term. i.e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up and give Konami their justification to never show us another console Silent Hill ever again.
But really, you can always bring up any concerns you have with his content to Jim directly, as long as you're polite about it. He's actually one of the most amicable dudes in the industry to people who aren't straight crooks(compared to someone like TotalBiscuit who will just tell you to shut up and you don't know what you're talking about - if he bothers to respond at all). He's pretty good about responding to most concerns about his content if they aren't approaching him like a raging douchebag.
Dude. I said this before, but: shifting to gambling machines is a poor decision, probably made in desperation. I couldn't recall the company name off of the top of my head, so I looked it up - IGT, the leader in slots & video poker, owns 90~ percent of the market share. That would be bad enough in any industry, but regular Casino customers are knee deep in Gambler's Fallacy land. Just like how most people will pick one brand of scratch tickets and buy them over and over again because they believe that somehow their odds will get better this way, people will tend to stick to one type of video poker cabinet or slot machine for the same reason. They don't give a shit about your theme; they want to win the jackpot and have deluded themselves into believing that the 'winning strategy' is to visit the same game over and over.
I don't know who sold Konami the slot machine snake oil, but they've pretty much guaranteed that - if nothing else - we'll be seeing Silent Hill and Metal Gear titles again, but only after the IPs have been auctioned-off in the wake of Konami's bankruptcy.
Anyway, I'm surprised no-one's posted this fantastic article which shines a light on Japanese corporations as a whole:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-08-07-konamis-draconian-workplace-raises-no-eyebrows-in-japan
For example, Canon: http://gizmodo.com/5273192/canon-employees-are-forbidden-to-sit-down-walk-at-normal-pace
Moral of the story: Never move to Japan.
The camera company that couldn't figure out how to survive even when fucking Kodak could.
Which probably would be the best result any kind of fan of the properties could hope for at this point.
I don't think he was positing that they were superior to your examples. I remember that video, he used Dead Space 3 as the counterexample, i think Witcher 3 and Splatoon got picked because they came out in the same window.
I wouldn't have an issue with that if the boss followed the same philosophy. I myself tend to believe standing at work is beneficial, unless the employee has physical difficulties doing so, and hustling isn't a bad thing (though the alarms are overkill). But if you demand your employees do something, you should show solidarity, like Iwata with his voluntary pay-cuts.
But Konami really seems to be worthy of the title...
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I like all of his videos about Konami, though, his personal experiences make his outrage much more entertaining
Yeah there is a lot of "Konami doesn't know what it's doing" in this thread. Konami knows exactly what it's doing, and that is focusing on an area that makes shitloads of money at low risk instead of an area that makes shitloads of money at high risk. Pachinko is hella money in Japan. A Pachinko company bought Sega, and they paid over a billion dollars to do so.
It sucks for people who like Konami games because outside of f2p microtransation'd out the ass mobile garbage some of videogaming's favorite franchises are officially deader than the parents on Party of Five, but Konami isn't an independent musician who jams in their basement and releases their stuff for free on soundcloud out of a love for sharing art with the masses, they're a business run by people who are interested in making as much money as possible to keep their company afloat and their wallets fat. This is a business decision, and a pretty safe one at that.
Eh, the subject of my post is his video and response, not other people's responses in the thread... or fans in general? Plus, there's already a Contra pachislot game... so, even that fell flat (this was mentioned earlier too). But yeah, the whole "Silent Hill on the console is cancelled but PACHINKO game" argument is weak to me given the facts surrounding licensed franchises appearing in Pachinko products: it's a thing independent of their console product... it's just noise that doesn't add anything meaningful to the argument as far as I'm concerned.
IJS, Konami has apparently killed off their AAA development because it's expensive and risky for them to keep churning those products out...But PACHINKO? No, making AAA games is still expensive and risky. Being upset or hurt about their legacy doesn't change this fact.
That said, I'd even venture to say that your remarks to the effects of shitty pachislot"/"pachishit" falls into the bucket of being a dick about a thing you don't like. Pachinko is ... a thing in Japan for some reason. I don't understand the appeal, but eh. It's a thing that some people do like and it evidently makes Konami enough money to warrant focusing on it further.
His presentation of that common failure of large corporate infrastructures is framed around the idea that the information that was provided before (the Gematsu article, etc) was sensationalized and in some cases not even from Konami. Then he says that he was dishing the real horrors from his "inside sources" and whatnot. Then he goes on to tell a story that is commonplace... and it's like. Okay. Troubled corporation faces same issues with user account management as other less troubled corporations. News at 11.
I'd also argue that the repeated string of commercial and reviewed failures on the part of Konami's console stuff that led to them deciding "hey, AAA games are expensive and risky so let's maybe not do them anymore when we can make make more money doing other stuff" is the opposite of acting in idiocy. It's good business that keeps the lights on although pretty much none of us here like it (or Pachinko). And really, framing the people who do like those other things as "mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism" again falls into the "being a dick about the things you don't like" camp.
And, because we rarely mention it; Kojima's perfectionism wasted their resources so their actions-of which we only have a skewed perception of-are likely more deep than "Konami suits being dicks" there. Kojima is just as human as the suits, even if he makes a game people like.
Not everyone subscribes to your... I'm going to say doctrine of industry nihilism since I still don't really know what point you're trying to make besides just complaining that other people are complaining. What "argument" do you think needs to be made? What argument are you imagining that you feel anyone needs to debate against? What argument do you think needs to be brought up that would make more of a difference to the situation than anything anyone else has brought up so far? Tell that to me, and then tell that to Jim. Or just tell that to Jim.
Call me a dick out of the blue all you want, but I want you to explain to me exactly what you're saying that isn't just "this guy's complaining about things that happen in other places therefore he shouldn't complain".
And yes, making AAA games is expensive and risky, especially if you make viciously overbudgeted AAA games like Konami did. But that isn't the only market option in video games, with the other choice being to burn all of your business bridges and withdraw from the market entirely. You know what's also expensive and risky? Overspecialization. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water to toss everything into an extremely specific market with an even more questionable future than video games. Yes, that's short-sighted and incompetent.
The thing Donuts is saying: the arguments presented in the Jim Sterling videos he's seen are kind of weak, and a person using his videos to support their opinion is using flaky material to do so to him. Going back to my first post:
- Doing more than laughing and saying "Soltaire subscriptions" would have helped his credibility to me. (The failure here being his not evaluating why is this the case.)
- Not pretending that licensing franchises to other products is horrible thing also would have helped. (The failure here being ignoring the context of how licenses work and their commonality).
- Dismissing/refuting accounts from other "sources" while fluffing gossip from your "sources" as being something more than another flavor of the same? (The failure here being over valuation of what he had, as the rest of his insider stories weren't all that significant either.)
That said, criticizing the components of an opinion isn't the same as saying someone shouldn't say something. I'm just saying why I don't think what's being said is meaningful to me. It absolutely works if "I'm annoyed at Konami and this thing that is in front of me supports why I should be annoyed" is the only thing you're looking for, but yeah. This is probably one of those things that we won't see eye to eye on.
The points in your post where you say "...of a shitty pachislot machine..." / "...mindless Japanese and Western fan consumerism..." / "....e. the Japanese will eat this pachishit up...." are the precise points where I say you're being a dick about both the situation/thing you don't like. It's not out of the blue. I don't know what more to say there, sorry if I offended you but yeah.
Even in decline, Pachinko is making lots of money. Mobile gaming, the primary place they're going and have said will be their primary focus going forward? Not in decline... particularly in the place that they've shifted their focus back toward: Japan. The great attempt to grab western audiences was a costly failure for many Japanese developers, and unlike Microsoft with the Xbox... they don't have the ability to play (and probably fail) the long game, It's that simple.
edit: gaming while typing is hard. will fix other typos later.
Again, one company - UGT - owns over 90% of the market share for slots & video poker. This necessarily means that Konami is fighting it out over the remaining 10% of market share with every other slots & video poker manufacturer on the market.
That is a totally shit position to have as a multinational corporation. There's no room for growth.
Look at their reported revenues per segment. In 2015, gambling accounted for 14.7 billion yen, of their total 218 billion (by contrast, Digital Entertainment represented over 97 billion yen; over half of their revenue!). What is their margin on gambling? It is just over 2 fucking percent. Compare that to their almost 14 percent margin on Digital Entertainment.
Like, i don't know where you heard that they were doing well with slots, but they are not doing well with slots. It's a crap business, with terrible returns and no long term future.
What you're saying is something like "This one company controls all the poker tables, so there's no point in trying to set up a blackjack table".
Is the difference just that Japan was lax on treating them as gambling machines, while we weren't?
That is a really poor analogy, but that aside:
If you ran a business, and one segment of your business had an annual return rate of about 2% while another had a return rate of about 15%, do you think it would be a good idea to jettison that 15% in favor of the 2%?
That is to say, even if Konami were to somehow grow their slots business by a factor of about 4 in order for it to make-up for the raw revenue generation of their Digital Entertainment, they would also have to somehow grow the margin on by a factor of 7 or more.
Pretty much. This is an old article, but...
This is why they're doing the Erotic Violence! And as to the state of pachinko itself:
With mobile gaming being on the rise in general in Japan.
Source
As I said before, since you have so much of an issue with what he's said, by all means bring your issues to Jim if you don't feel he's making a convincing enough argument to you or any other portion of his viewer base - he's not going to bite you unless you're into that kind of thing. He's a great guy outside of his Jimquisition persona. I've already told you some of my own opinion on matters but there's no reason to continue, as that doesn't have any impact on his content whereas actual feedback would.
And it's out of the blue because there is no reason for direct insults, and although you may not like my choice of words I've done nothing to you directly except disagree with you. As such, your wording makes me think you're certainly not actually sorry, but I'm not interested enough to pursue this topic further.
As far as mobile goes, it really depends on how long it takes for consumer cynicism to finally kick in and crash the market. Mountainous piles of mobile games flood the market every day, and the end is going to come with a combination of eroded customer confidence and an unnavigable sea of low quality. The likes of Konami and Square might be able to enjoy it more than others due to name recognition, but that swings both ways - their fuckups are more public than anyone else's. They're deluding themselves if they think they can continually release shit like All the Bravest and Dungeon Keeper Mobile and consumers won't eventually look at it and go "...what the hell is this?", and I guarantee you that none of Konami's IPs that hit mobile will remotely be the hallmark of quality. At best it will be a cynically-crafted microtransaction cash-in and at worst it will be another thinly-veiled "fuck you" to IGA and Kojima.
Or maybe if we're really lucky, a $3.99 mobile port of Metal Gear for the NES.
That 15% is also open to a shit ton more risk, and partial to factors not in your control, like console sales and whether there's even a large enough market to make a profit out of. And all that profit can be wiped out pretty damn fast with a few bad games.
100 billion yen is about 800 million US. MGSV's known budget so far is 100 million, likely higher. And everybody seems to now agree that that's an "average" budget. Now for the sake of argument, just entertain the notion that MGS5 were to flop (I don't care how "unlikely" that is, we're just dealing in the hypothetical). That's 12% of your yearly profit. Gone! On one game no less.
I can sympathize with Konami if they want to GTFO of that kind of high risk stakes. It's a bizarre state of affairs when a company choosing the lesser, but safer form of profits is initially seen as "fucking weird", yet here we are.
Believe all you like that abandoning bid budget games in favor of gambling is a sure fire way to success. The numbers don't lie, and there is all kinds of precedent for disaster.