Antsh said:
Erik Kain from Forbes must really like you, Jim.
Covered another one of your videos.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/03/31/why-buyer-beware-is-a-terrible-excuse-for-bad-video-games/
Sounds like he's just parroting or piggy-backing, but I'll give it a read...
Erik Kain said:
The video game industry is struggling, and part of its struggles stems from foisting badly made games on us, or breaking those games with DRM, or phoning it in with annualized titles, etc. Listening to criticism can help the industry figure out what it?s doing wrong.
I can see some parts that are struggling, but that's normal.
Not the ENTIRE game industry. Though I suppose you could interpret this to mean some of the largest/oldest firms.
But again, that's also normal. At some point, even the titans of industry are challenged, unless they have a monopoly or provide a unique, necessary good (like petrol), they're forced to change or fall.
We've seen that happen already. (THQ is gone, and others are looking to crack)
Anyway...
Criticism only works as long as a company feels that its reputation matters enough to impact sales.
If a company has historically ignored specific criticisms levied against it, it's because the sales numbers are telling a different story. That's consumer response ("voting with your wallet") in action.
Wal-Mart, for example, has a rock-bottom reputation. They're known for selling cheap junk and achieve that by overtaxing/abusing their employees and leveraging all manner of connections rather brutally.
Yet they remain one of the most consistently profitable companies on the planet because the masses, even when presented with those facts, will still buy Wal-Mart's shit and gladly.
Wal-Mart gives no fucks because they know public criticism has no impact on their performance.
Only when bad press coincides with bad sales figures, does a company bother to listen at all; especially big companies.
In that, "Caveat emptor" is completely valid and I can say that because company reputations don't exist in a vacuum; they grow and spread by consumer response.
I maintain that if someone cares enough to complain about something directly, they care enough to learn from their mistake and to do their research next time. Now I'm not heartless about this; we all get a freebie since we were all ignorant consumers once, but the important thing is to learn and move past that.
For whatever reason, the average consumer doesn't learn, and now Mr. Sterling insists that it shouldn't be their job to learn in the first place??? What?? How does that help anything? It certainly won't encourage producers to stop lying, scheming or otherwise jerking consumers around; they do those things SPECIFICALLY to prey upon consumer ignorance and laziness!
I mean, it's nice to imagine a world where the consumer is happy while companies turn a tidy but sensible profit.
But that's all we can do: imagine it. Bringing world that into reality requires more from both sides of the market.
Until that day comes, "Caveat Emptor" is and will remain true.
'Entitled' is a poor choice of words, still, but I think we can see a similarity between some types of gamers and the phenomenon of fanboyism.
It's a proper choice of words in the general sense, but not as a moral counter-argument against the consumer.
(which is the context most were using it in, in recent memory)
Mostly because as a moral argument, it assumes one side is -always- acting "unfair" in their evaluation of something; a unilateral argument that ignores the fact that BOTH sides are motivated by "greed" and thus both are assumed to be "acting entitled".
Which kinda undermines the "moral shaming" aspect of the argument completely.
So any sort of issues involving "False entitlement" is really just a conflict between the consumer and the producer, and whether the price was fair or unfair for a given product ("un/fair" being subjective). Personally, I think the consumer should be given more leeway since the quality or "true value" of a game can only be determined AFTER it's been purchased and played. (no refunds is a huge problem in this business)
This sort of unthinking, reactionary inability to let nuanced discussion take place around controversial subjects is just as bad and just as destructive as the press telling gamers to shut up and stop whining.
Agreed.
I don?t agree with everything Sarkeesian has to say, but I think some of her critique has pointed to shortcomings in video game storytelling that is important to take note of, and I think there?s an obvious problem with under-representation of women in both games and especially in the industry, where men vastly outnumber women.
Well, that particular can of worms has two separate issues:
1) Women are under-represented in games. That much has been obvious for decades.
The real question is why, and what do we do about it? Is increased representation of women something the game industry should enforce internally, or should it occur organically as a response to new-found demand?
(similarly to how there are now gobs of movies pandering to squishy "young adults" because Twilight make megabucks)
Those are both questions Sarkeesian does not, and probably cannot reliably approach in her series.
2) Sarkeesian's methodology is questionable at best. That's not an ad-hominem; it's an observation of her methods that I and MANY others have made. If you hold her work to academic standards, it crumbles. If you hold it up politically, it's just dated pandering. In short: I'd take anything she says or claims with a grain of salt.
We should be able to discuss Sarkeesian?s ideas without constantly reverting to ad hominem..
Agreed, but the Internet is not an inherently kind or rational place.