Ken
Hey, remember when people were suddenly hyped about a Gurren Lagann project?
Ken
It's a pachinko game.
Ken
(I feel sad that I called this.)
Guardian Bear J
. . .
Ken
Konami 
Guardian Bear J
I hate Japan. :|
Guardian Bear J
And I hate Konami almost as much as I hate Capcom.
ShootingXC
Things I expected: this
Ken
Konami has exceeded any and all
Ken
In my book.
Guardian Bear J
I hate Konami marginally less because the only series of theirs I was really into was Castlevania.
Guardian Bear J
The only MGS I really enjoyed was Revengeance. XD
Ken
It's less about that than the sheer and utter gall
Ken
and circumstances that has led up to it
Awe
I saw that yeah it's just chinkos
Guardian Bear J
For THAT, I hate the game industry in general. Konami's only the first.
Guardian Bear J
Mark my words...
Ken
Oh, sure
Guardian Bear J
The corporatization of the gaming world is only going to get worst...
Ken
Capcom is just a mismanaged company that is now eating it for those mistakes
Guardian Bear J
*worse
Ken
Konami feels OUTRIGHT MALICIOUS
Guardian Bear J
Not malicious.
Ken
Konami's actions and bullfuckery feels like some kind of 80s Saturday Morning Cartoon villain.
Guardian Bear J
Japanese.
Guardian Bear J
It is TEXTBOOK Japanese Corporation.
Ken
Okay, yeah. Japanese Corporations are notoriously... yeah.
Guardian Bear J
Yeah.
Ken
Stories of salarymen chucking themselves out windows exist for a reason.
Guardian Bear J
It's horse shit either way, but...
Guardian Bear J
It's not unexpected from things going corporate.
Guardian Bear J
I well and truly cannot WAIT for the next gaming crash.
Guardian Bear J
It's coming. Sometime in the next ten years, things are going to crash and burn.
Beans
geeze....
Guardian Bear J
And the way things are going, maybe, MAYBE Nintendo will make it out in one piece. Everyone else?
Guardian Bear J
Nope.
Paldeahaveadime
Celebration of a crash now will vanish into the dust when you actually lay eyes on the form the crash takes.
Paldeahaveadime
You will not like it, you will not agree with it, you will lament it, and you will probably quit your hobby in bleak disgust.
Paldeahaveadime
Because no one you're aiming distaste at is really going to be the target of suffering. The ones under the fallout will be us, by and large.
Guardian Bear J
I'm ALREADY on the edge of leaving my hobby in disgust.
Guardian Bear J
The Crash of '83 was the best thing that could have happened to the game industry as a whole because it got RID of most of the players who were killing the industry.
Guardian Bear J
The Game Industry of today is a complete perversion of what it was, barring a handful of companies.
Paldeahaveadime
The Crash of '83 only looks good in hindsight.
Paldeahaveadime
We were kids.
Paldeahaveadime
We weren't affected. Our parents got an ass-ton of games for pennies on the dollar because the bottom fell out the gaming market.
Paldeahaveadime
People lost livelihoods, love for their careers, and I think even their lives in a few cases.
Paldeahaveadime
We don't have the shield of youth, anymore. That's why it's painful right now—because we can reasonably fathom just how and why all these turns and twists are occurring.
Paldeahaveadime
Heck, even back then the adults weren't affected if they weren't under direct employ of Atari and the like because they were a generation that grew up without electronic games as a main go-to for fun.
Paldeahaveadime
The TV still worked, if the games turned into garbage for them. The scrabble sets were right there. Paper & Pen games were right there.
Paldeahaveadime
Arcades still thrived even as a lot of third parties clung to them for life support until Nintendo & Sega came along.
Ken
While this all kind of goes outside the purview of me making a plurk to make fun of Konami, I don't think we're going to see something quite on that level anyhow.
Ken
Between the Internet and PC, there's a lot different now than then.
Paldeahaveadime
The market's (thankfully) spread and not all the voices are spoken for by one or two companies, yeah.
Ken
What we ARE going to see is a few more publishers go the way of Konami, or possibly even worse, THQ.
Guardian Bear J
I would argue that, if we see "A few more" publishers go the way of Konami, we will indeed be experiencing a crash.
Guardian Bear J
The market is dominated by a handful of companies that are basically swallowing up smaller companies that have any success left and right.
Ken
Sure, just not on the same level. There's a certain degree that consumers themselves will keep the industry afloat, even if it becomes a different industry
Ken
(This plurk got a lot more serious than I intended it to, hahaha...)
Ken
I think THAT is already leaking air
Guardian Bear J
Again, considering that that's what the majority of the market IS right now...
Guardian Bear J
Indie games are all well and good, but they're barely a drop in the bucket compared to the AAA Juggernaut lumbering along towards oblivion.
Ken
I dunno, I think this was a year we started to see more from upstart developers and indies.
Ken
Love them or hate them, Rocket League and Undertale have been HUGE and I've seen GOTY discussions dominated by those and more.
Guardian Bear J
I absolutely love them.
Guardian Bear J
I also know that they're being seriously eyeballed for acquisition.
Ken
Sigh. It wouldn't surprise me, yeah.
Ken
That's where the problem could lie, indeed.
Guardian Bear J
For every FN@F, Undertale, and Rocket League... there's the same two or three companies looking to snatch them up...
Guardian Bear J
And thousands of games that don't get attention, and many of those don't deserve the attention.
Ken
Either way, whatever happens, I don't think it'll be the SAME thing. You'll see some larger companies fold inward, but there is a drive outside them. If that makes sense?
Ken
I think it's more their SUCCESS is seen with some value, in the respect
Guardian Bear J
Let me tell you the ultimate in cautionary tales in that regard.
Guardian Bear J
/steps up to the podium.
Guardian Bear J
/lit up by a spotlight
Guardian Bear J
/leans forward towards the mic.
Guardian Bear J
Bioware.
Guardian Bear J
/leaves the stage.
Ken
Alas poor Bioware
Guardian Bear J
AND TO THAT END...
Guardian Bear J
/returns to the stage.
Guardian Bear J
/leans in towards the mic.
Guardian Bear J
Minecraft.
Guardian Bear J
/leaves the stage
Ken
Either way, Bioware has gotten much worse since EA
Guardian Bear J
...
Guardian Bear J
Raz.
Guardian Bear J
Bioware got their fame from BALDUR'S GATE.
Ken
Also that
Guardian Bear J
Star Wars came after the company got corporatized but before it got taken over.
Paldeahaveadime
Indie's already big, though
Paldeahaveadime
That's gonna burst, too
Paldeahaveadime
Except unlike corporate, where we won't know what happened for ages to come thanks to NDAs, the indie slide (Because burst is a bad word to use as a descriptor, there) will be live and televised.
RobotApocalypse
how would a non-corporate industry burst
Paldeahaveadime
On Twitter and Facebook.
RobotApocalypse
indie is a completely different business model
Paldeahaveadime
see also: Fez, Sunset, etc
Paldeahaveadime
And there's a hilarious amount of people in the indie scene who have no idea how that model works. They see it as a place of ideas instead of a place of business.
RobotApocalypse
yeah but those are independent creators fucking over their own independent projects
Paldeahaveadime
So they make their "game", present it to the public, and then get furious over social media when the game that the press praised is met with a resounding public "Meh."
RobotApocalypse
like. there's no industry of independent gaming
Paldeahaveadime
Which is also why I said "burst" is an incorrect descriptor. It implied that there's a grounded trend instead of what's really a nebulous fad.
Paldeahaveadime
At the least, though, it certainly has trained some talents to go further. Or get smart and drop out while the getting is good (Notch).
RobotApocalypse
how are you envisioning the indie gaming sector economically collapsing?
RobotApocalypse
i'm not trying to be confrontational, i'm just having trouble picturing whatever scenario you're proposing
Paldeahaveadime
Sorry stepped out for drink
Paldeahaveadime
Steam's Greenlight is notoriously chaotic and unregulated.
Paldeahaveadime
And Steam is where the vast majority of western indie games go for purchases. Anything can pass Greenlight's model as it exists, right now.
Paldeahaveadime
But that doesn't meant every game survives. I don't have the charts in front of me, but there's a few involved people on twitter who make their business tracking the download/sales numbers.
Paldeahaveadime
And while the boom on indie games released has skyrocketed since 2013, sales have gone the opposite direction. Save miracle success stories like Untertale or Super Meat Boy or Shovel Knight.
Paldeahaveadime
(Games good enough that they get through Microsoft's, Nintendo's and Sony's filter system).
Paldeahaveadime
It's kinda reminiscent to the Nintendo DS. As in, while there is a lot of really good software to be had in the indie scene, much like the DS, the amount of shovelware is astronomically high.
Paldeahaveadime
And, as I mentioned, more than just a few people go into games development not having a good business head. Or, at times, even a good game development idea (hence, shovelware).
Paldeahaveadime
We're going to see that get visibly worse this year.
Paldeahaveadime
This doesn't mean the indie scene will dry up. But it will mean that the fly-by-night bandwagon types who don't have strong or competitive drives & ideas are going to become irrelevant
Paldeahaveadime
Only, instead of 10 to 20 acts quickly replacing them, like what's been happening in the last 3 to 4 years, there will be more 1 or 2.
Paldeahaveadime
Plus side is that we're likely to see even better efforts as a result of that shift, and more games that are interesting to play more than just once.
RobotApocalypse
Okay
RobotApocalypse
Yeah, I can see that
RobotApocalypse
that's pretty different from the economic collapse being talked about w/r/t the AAA burst though
Paldeahaveadime
Well, it's because talking about that stuff is difficult because cutting through the fantasy of it is always a task in and of itself.
Paldeahaveadime
Like, right now, I couldn't give a clear prediction of what will happen to the industry. Sales numbers are often always masked, so reading trends is damn-near impossible.
Paldeahaveadime
VGChartz always exaggerates. And when news outlet reports usually mention numbers, they're talking about copies/units ordered, and not copies actually sold retail.
Paldeahaveadime
ie: number of units a merchant store orders.
Paldeahaveadime
Triple-A corps are quick to brag when they do sell retail in record-setting quantities, but otherwise it's a shell game for them.
Paldeahaveadime
And that's just sales. There's actual development, regional trends, what audiences buy vs what they think audiences will buy, games buried because they don't get advertisement budgets, etc.
Paldeahaveadime
swerving to topic, this whole TTGL pop up is a slap in the face of the west, but there are probably plenty of people happy about it in Japan.
Paldeahaveadime
Konami's out of the video game practice, it seems, but they're doing fine. There's going to be more of that from other companies, I'd think.
Paldeahaveadime
We'll cry about lost IPs, but they'll be doing fine in other goods & services markets.