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Lineage 2, WoW, CS, MO, East vs West argument and ......... Walmart
HebrewBomb
Member UncommonPosts: 520
Here is paradigm shift in US game industy dictated by union of media moguls with mass retailers.
The result is subordinate relationship between two pieces of the big puzzle: developers & Media-retailer union where the former ought to become subservient to the later. At the moment, you can't challenge this status-quo relationship since game-media/retailers minus publishers holds exclusive distribution right.
The logic goes like this:
a) Dorky Editorials feeds itself from congressional Ads which constitute near total budget of starting companies - Ads are holy icon of our church called Media.
b) Dorky Editorials somehow choose one title they see will serve them most as they need to jerk off occasionally if they intend to keep their "mainstream" appeal or was it?.
c) Retailer-Analyst-in-Chief picks up some lines from these icon preachers and makes recommendation.
d) Walmart goes in full gear and COMMAND developer/manufacturers to shift their design direction/specifics to meet their "casual-friendly", "anti-hardcore", "quasi-EA" commercialism ideal requirement since anything that goes against these termed ideals need to be boxed off and categorically be denied as "niche" and "anti-sale-figure".
(Not that I'm saying one game is more casual than other which is quite irrelevant notion to the point it actually becomes an insult to the intellect. It's more of invented notion that serves mass retailer's commercialism ideal)
Anyone trying to call "Counter-Strike", "Lineage 2", "WoW", "EQ2", "RYL", "Alice in wonderland", "US Army", etc by terms like "casual", "hardcore", "asian friendly", "american friendly", "too sexist", "too racial", "cheat free", "elitists", "money laundering scheme", etc need to shoot themselves.
e) "Casual" consumers fed with these Quasi-propaganda like ads keep asking themselves "what's the big deal? Everyone else is doing same. Why should I be any different? What's wrong with this scheme?, Why should I care?"
f) These "Casual" consumers feed back dorky editorials thus going back to a).
In this process, many outstanding creative works doesn't get the respect they deserve, get dismissed, largely get ignored and at worse get mocked at.
Comments
ohmygoggles....
I see what you're saying, but it took me three reads to finally understand your point. Next time, do not make a rant post look intellectual... you went through 3 different grammatical structures.
In any case, what he was saying is this:
1.) A small media company makes money off it's ads.
2.) The small media company focuses on one game.
3.) Marketing guy from a large retailer reads an article on this one game, and he likes it.
4.) The large retailer makes a large push to sell this one game.
5.) Normal people buy the game because it's in the big retailer's store.
6.) These normal people then talk about the game, and the small media company gets more ads.
And his rant is based off the fact that there are games that do not get promoted that are very good games, and do not do so well because they were not picked up by either the media or the retailers.
HebrewBomb, my response to this:
There are many films that "fall through the cracks" that are also good quality. Luckily, there are several film festivals for films without huge marketing budgets and/or popularity. These festivals are becoming increasingly popular, and thus the "small" films get a second chance. Maybe you can apply the same idea to similar computer games...
--Ha, Pwned--
Pvp = godliness
Playing: WoW
Waiting on: Gods and Heroes
That's not how marketing and retail works.
Retail companies are loathe to take on inventory that will not sell, and new products without a proven track record are an inherent risk.
The entire reason we have publishers in gaming is because these companies are responsible for pushing titles into retail stores. Publishers have the marketing and sales departments and they are tasked with leveraging their relationships with retail outlets to place their products on shelves. Preorders play a huge role in this since they provide empirical data to the likelihood of a release candidate being successful in the retail space.
Walmart has no clue whatsoever what a good game is, nor do most retail buying agents. They only care about maximizing profits. The greater the reliability of the success of a title in the retail space the greater their risk tolerance.
If you want to fault anyone for a "good" game not doing well, then the blame lays almost entirely on the publisher. Though I'll argue that most games that don't do well do so because they are simply not very good games.
http://www.gamezforumz.com/hussien/xfactor.jpg