The end of an industry.

Note! This post attacks capitalism. If you are a nut riding nationalistic bastard that supports the “AMERICAN WAY!”, then leave now.

It’s time to come clean. I am a prude.

Oh Nyame

I say this because there is a japanese-only game on the 3DS titled “Senran Kagura”. Its’ about underaged, overly developed girls in middle/high school who all dream of being the best ninjas ever. The game features half-naked transformation sequences, indiscriminately designed d-cups, panty shots, sexually suggestive scenes (Ikaruga for one looks like she’s humping something in a night gown), several groping scenes, and pointless beach episodes…..while sporting generic hack & slash gameplay.

Ironic how a game like that winds up on a Nintendo device, though it’s not the first. What is mind blowing is just how many games (and cartoons) are like this in Japan. It’s gotten to the point of stigmatization. Video games and cartoons are for perverts now. Is it any wonder why the Japanese berate and ostracize the Otaku? Especially at those jewish prices!?

Funny enough, the games industry itself is facing the same problems. Games are more expensive, but offer very little in the way of value and fun factor. Except maybe for the Ameritaku on the internet who find everything fun for some reason, but never the less, the majority of the world becomes alienated once more. Video games have become cheap thrills. Mere shadows of their former selves.  An intoxicating drug that we just buy over and over again to feel “high”. Especially when drugs are cheaper. Video games used to be just forms of entertainment. But now they’ve been reduced to a relief from the strife of reality, like cocaine you would kill for.

Which begs the question of how we got to this point. Why have video games become so stale and devoid of life? Why have they been reduced to trite pornography that people watch through once, get bored, and then forget it ever existed all after the fact? Why are people expected to pay more money just to get the full value of their product? It’s like $60 for a fucking demo!

There are many factors in which the industry has gone downhill.

1. Happy beginnings

2. Capitalist greed

3. Destruction

4. Savior from Italy

5. Iron Fist of licensing agreements

6. Console Wars and betrayals

7. Sony’s disruption of quality

8. Erosion of principals in design

9. 3rd parties in their arrogance

10. economic blindness

11. desperation.

This is a shitty timeline I made to try and chronicle just how in the hell we got on this track of destruction. Now, my explanation is going to be just as horrid, but bear with me on this. If we go into the history of any kind of entertainment industry, it usually gets to a point where you see a massive decline in popularity when capitalistic greed unleashes it’s parasitic tentacles. We saw this in Newspapers, we’re seeing it in music, tv, and movies. And hell, we see it even better in video games because no one can truly manipulate the video game market as easily as they can movies and music. Greed and arrogance are the main factors of why empires and businesses eventually collapse under it’s own weight.

1. Happy Beginnings.

Ah, the days of the arcades. While video games started back in the late 40s, the early 70s are when they truly kicked off. And that’s how anything starts off, really. Everything is nice and bubbly, nothing goes wrong. And Pong was considered the shit! Hell, everyone loved Pong back in the seventies. It was the first game with commercial success as well, pissing off the pretentious college bitch boys who were nerdy for Galaxy Game or some Space War title. So arcade gaming was considered ol’ fashioned good times.

Then you have the Magnavox Odyssey.

Consoles were being made with the intent of bringing the arcade experience to the living room (I think). The Odyssey sold at least 2 million units which, back in the 70s, seems pretty good for the first console ever made.

Around the same time we were getting consoles and arcades, there were college boys making their own games in their spare time using basic PC’s. In college, RPG’s were being made like Teleguard and Zork. Most of these games were never heard of because the students never told anyone about them (why would you want to be caught using school technology for anything other than school work anyway?). According to bloggers like Malstrom, most of these students were obsessed with games like Space War and Zork, and all the developed computer games. The thing was people were more into Pong, leaving the college boys weeping for why no one “appreciates” the almighty PC (I guess this is where the PC elitists spawned from)

2. Capitalist Greed and Destruction

Due to the uniqueness of the console and the success of Pong, Capitalism decided to rear it’s ugly head. By the end of the 70s, Atari and Magnavox were the 2 main bastards gunning for money. But see, the developers for the consoles were thinking of copying the successes of games like Pong and Pac Man. What resulted were… shitty games. I’m sure everyone knows about the video game crash resulting from Atari and Magnavox selling consoles at a lose (I still don’t know how that works. If anyone can enlighten me, I’d be happy to hear.) and having a load of customers pissed off at the games coming out. So what occured was a dying breed of video games and BLAH BLAH, yeah I know you know. The industry flew right into a CRASH!

This mostly occurred with the advent of publishing houses for video games (such as friggin EA. That’s right niggas, they’ve been fucking up people’s money since the golden age of gaming!) Some sources say that these publishing houses actually cheated devs out of their money. Capitalism don’t discriminate. On the other hand, Computer games had low publishing costs, which I guess made Trip Hawkins nut ride the fuck out of the PC.

3. Savior from Italy.

Then Nintendo came with monkeys and plumbers, saved the industry, made the Nintendo console where developers began to flock to. Hawkins was tripping balls.

Truth be known, Taito is the real hero as Space Invaders actually sparked a new interest in gaming back in 1978. At least… everywhere except Amerikkka. So Taito was a hero everywhere BUT in Amerikkka. See, NA is always late to the party when it comes to advancing in any way that is beneficial or significant to us. We had to wait until the early 80s to have Nintendo save our asses. But considering that game developers were hounded by publishers before, they flocked to Nintendo’s new haven for a chance at the big time.

So there were essentially 2 different video game crashes. The American one getting hit much worse than in 77

4. Tekken of licensing agreements

Then they all went “Aw shit!” See, Nintendo wasn’t so eager to have these “filthy heathens” just put shit up on their console. 2 things might’ve occured in Nintendo’s thought process.

1. They were power hungry.

2. Probably in response to the crash, they wanted to prevent games from flooding the console, decreasing in value as more were released (devaluation). So Nintendo took measures to prevent that.

We all KNOW about Nintendo’s licensing practices. And looking at how things are going now, Nintendo probably had the right idea considering that consoles now are flooded with PURE SHIT! Why is it that the majority of gamers can go back and play older games for far longer than they do with games today? Even though developers could crank them out much faster and at a much cheaper pace?

Well who cares. See, these licensing agreements pissed off EVERYONE. Well, mostly the american developers because it limited their power. And by their nature, Europeans (and their American counterparts) do not like being limited in what they can do in any industry. So obviously, Nintendo has made some grave enemies for the future.

5. Console wars and Betrayels.

So when we got Sega into the market, you wouldn’t believe how many developers wanted to jump ship from Nintendo. Only to find out Sega had the same mentality. Then they went “AWW FUCKING HELL!” So at first, developers decided to wait it out with Sega, then some jumped right back to Nintendo. Notably Capcom and Konami in regards to Street Fighter and the Castlevania games.

We also had the Neo Geo, but the high prices of games gave everybody a heart attack.

Now all of this went on while the licensing practices were still in effect, so even the games from the 16bit and 32bit era proved to be more enjoyable than most games in the future.

Now with Mortal Kombat, this game actually affected Nintendo and video gaming on a much bigger scale than how most people would think. See, the reason why Nintendo is mainly considered “kiddy” was because they censored MK1 for the SNES. The Genesis version actually SOLD MORE because the gore was preserved. Nintendo still didn’t want mature content on their system, but capitalism defeated Nintendo. So the industry’s thinking pattern started to shift back to “well why can’t we make more of these mature games!?”. Because of the controversy and success of Mortal Kombat, game developers started to think of the money and began making more gory games. But due to the controversy, they had to make them less sigificant… but just there. From this point on, developers would stop catering to the whole family, and start catering to teenagers. This has yet to end. Even then, developers did not go out of control with this gore craze…. until Sony entered the market.

Now all you crackas just cream yourselves at night at the thought of villifying Nintendo after their “tyrannical and deceptive” treatment of Sony when it was known that Sony was going to hep create a CD based Nintendo console. Problem was Sony wanted to have full rights/profits from all games developed. Nintendo wasn’t about to have that, so they told them… nothing. They just left and started a deal with Phillips. Sony gets pissed off and decides to use Nintendo’s ideas against them. What emerged was the rot of gaming.

6. Sony’s disruption of quality and an erosion of design principals.

See, Sony offered developers something that neither Nintendo or Sega gave them. Actual freedom in what games to develop. And American developers haven’t had this much freedom since the late 70s and early 80s. So while the PS1 wasn’t out of control with the recent gore craze, most of the popular titles that came out were Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Tekken, a huge wad of titles came out with mature themes that adults now cream themselves over. Nintendo themselves allowed devs to get in on that action with Killer instinct, Shadowman, Turok, and Goldeneye 64. These games were the heavy sellers of their systems (most of the time, at least), mainly because the taboo’s set by Mortal Kombat were no longer a problem (thank you ESRB). But something else occured.

With the advent of 3D graphics, developers became less intuned with making cohesive and workable video games… and decided to explore… “possibilities”. IE every new installment or new game that came out became an experiment to make games more realistic. Physics became more realistic, you could now fall from a high place and take damage or die (yes, I know there were games like that before the 64bit era, don’t come here trying to be a smart ass), inventory management became more prevalent (Resident Evil), and combat became more about defense and pacing rather than tapping B to stab enemies a million times. That and more games became about over-exaggerated adventure elements. Apparently, every developer’s idea of an adventure is making the players go on several thousand goddamn FETCH QUESTS! So what occurred during this period was where developers stopped giving a damn about quality and started going for mature content or “innovashun” that did nothing for video games and started the wave of teenage gaming. More complex controls, realism, and a desire for games to look like fucking art. And given that Sony would not restrain the developer’s power anymore, developers were like a caged beast being unleashed.

7. 3rd party arrogance.

Now, given Sony’s “freedom to developers” battlecry, developers gave the PSX some of the most memorable (I guess) games ever to come out, and made the Playstation brand a household name. Now, during the next generation where the Xbox and Gamecube came out, many 3rd party developers decided to skip out on Nintendo completely and gave the best games to Sony or Microsoft. Lets be real. Nintendo was ass raped this generation with the Gamecube. In sells, in game quality, and in 3rd Party trust. You know you’re fucked when the same company (Capcom) keeps withdrawing on their exclusivity deals for more money. Since gaming was still catered to teenagers, and this era saw the rising popularity of anime and RPGs, teenagers (as stupid as they are) went clinically insane and proclaimed “games as art” while also suggesting that “a console needs the best 3rd party developers to be in full support in order for a game console to be a success”. This was in response to Sega and Nintendo’s asswhippins during the Dreamcast and Gamecube runs. Unfortunately, this gave game designers a big head.

It was true in a sense considering that Sony and Microsoft’s success came almost directly from second hand development. They figured that they could just phase out any competitor they saw fit and use that as a footnote for terrorism in order to strong arm console developers to cater to their demands. Hell, there’s got to be some reason Sony patented tech to block out used games (but apparently decided not to use them for PS4).

So with this concept of 3rd parties being the determining factor behind a console’s success, it’s abnormal how they all got a mean taste in their mouths with the advent of the Nintendo Wii… for a little while. 3rd parties were going insane from all of their losses. They made incredibly bad decisions that led to many of them losing profits and closing down their doors. The problem with this is that developers allowed the teenagers to dictate that they are gods. But it’s amazing how soon gods can bleed…. in profits.

So with the Wii giving back what was lost from the 8 and 16bit era, the HD devs decided to go back to capitalist strategies by nickle and diming you for every $60 game you purchased by taking advantage of the teenager’s blind and professed love of Downloadable Content. The idea of buying a game that gets an update without your input, essentially giving you a “pseudosequel” every month or so, was so appealing and pervasive, developers (still catering to teenagers) decided to exploit this new and ignorant love of a game feature. It got so bad that people started protesting companies for this. And developers were still losing money. But they continued this practice, mainly due to…

8. economic blindness and desperation.

Lets face it. Sony’s $600 price tag fucked them. Microsoft’s poor design of the 360 (RROD) fucked them. Clearly, with an economy that is terrible, the cheaper price tag always wins. And given the value that most Wii games had over the bloated HD titles that didn’t feel like games at all, it was clear that developers themselves were losing big. But even with all the doom signs around them, they were still arrogant to the point that they deliberately refused to asses their problems. They still wanted to go the hollywood route and use high budgets for games that they couldn’t reasonably get a profitable return on, and continued to hound Nintendo to go the HD route. 1 thing was clear. Developers were starting to become selfish bastards. And the crash attributes that led to said crash were coming back in full force. Games are rushed, carbon copies of the most popular “teenage fad” at the time. Why is it now that gamers think every game is an FPS? That needs no answer. It’s clear that developers are starving for money. Why? When the economy is going into freefall, developers have to think about how to appeal to people who could hardly afford this shit. And that honestly starts by lowering the god damn prices! And a lot of gamers, for some fucked up reason, probably out of extreme high-class arrogance, proclaim that games shouldn’t be cheap because developers have to make money. Put it on Wii!? Naw, fuck the Wii! That’s casual bullshit!

It was clear that 3rd parties and “high-class” teenagers combined were destroying video games. You can see this with the rising costs of development due to HD technologies.

There’s something wrong here. Games were cheaper to develop for back in the 16bit era than they were in the 8bit era because parts used to make the games weren’t so expensive . They were harder to make, but cheaper essentially. And they got even cheaper using the CD format. The more technology progressed, the cheaper games got to produce. How in the green hell does it now take up to untold fucking millions to make 1 goddamn game!?

Deliberate devaluation of the currency! And you know what? The developers themselves…. they aren’t honestly economically blind. Play the new DMC game out, yes the one with the white-trash looking Dante. That game alone says how much developers honestly know how fucked up our economy is. And they still go out and make expensive visual experiences! But people wanted Wii games! Developers did what they wanted anyway! Because they stopped giving a shit. The moment you stop buying their shit is the moment they declare you the enemy. That is how capitalism works. When game developers like Iwata start suggesting that people don’t understand the value of the Wii U (none of which justifies the high price tag), he has declared the consumers as enemies. This speaks volumes of why developers do not change their courses of actions. See, Sony gave them too much freedom, and they became corrupt. Out of that corruption comes arrogance that their way is the right way, and nothing else can work.

This is the heart of why the industry is in decline. Capitalistic arrogance. Developers tried to exploit teenagers and failed. Now, because their grand master plans have failed, they dehumanize consumers of all age ranges of not “getting it”. When any manufacturer starts suggesting that their buyers don’t have a fucking clue of what they want or what they’re talking about to do damage control on their criticisms, then that manufacturer is going to close house. Because if you are not going to re-asses your customer complaints and treat them like shit, they will sooner or later detect this and stop coming to you. That means you’ve burned the bridge to your source of income, and eventually, you die. You can try to exploit teenagers all you want. Most future generations probably won’t even bother with a video game as most of the gaming market right now is in their 30s! The fuck are you trying to target teenagers for!? Because they’re stupid!? Of course!

Either way, seeing all the signs around us, it’s funny that people are still hyped up for the PS4. Even Malstrom is hinting at it’s success.