Jimquisition: Cloak and Dagger

[jmarquiso]

The reason is obvious, these are tech companies and tech companies have long practiced industrial espionage in order to stay aheadd of the competition, and this has unfortunately affecte PR. Case in point is MS's XB1 launch, in which 50 ddifferent messages came out because of a lack of control of their message resulting from - of all things - too much control exerted from different people, and not giving one cohesive message for the people interviewed.

Leaving everyone to grasp at straws.

Imagine if MS started with "digital lending", i.e. family sharing.

 

[Talvrae]

This video sounded like you took the subject matter a little personally. Given your recent leaving of Destructoid, is that all Sony was doing that was causing that ruckus? I know you don't like controlled review events, in general.

This video was actually written way before I resigned, and was inspired by all the mad rumors flying about. Nothing personal. To the best of my knowledge, the review event is the only issue with Sony.

My leaving Destructoid has nothing to do with the game industry at large, and everything to do with the reasons I gave.

Really your leaving destructoid? Well i won,t really complain, i felt that you where unfair in your review of batman Arkham origin... Sure it's a flawed game and have many default, but it's still a fun game, and it's working (most of the time... it didnt deserve a 3... trought not much more than a 6. Honestelly it really felt like you where in a crusade there and you where picking up on that game more to make a point than because it was a bad game.
And buggued game are sometimes great game anyway... look at Vampire the Mascarade Bloodlines

 

[hermes]

Looney Tunes is always relevant
<youtube=zKvhVssO348>

 

[EclipsiumRasa]

Jim,

I have to ask, as this is something you know that isn't common knowledge among game consumers: what parts of NDAs can be talked about by members of the gaming press that are not talked about? I'm not referring to the subjects that an NDA itself covers, but the discussion of the NDA itself.

Is the NDA itself something the gaming press can't discuss?

Does it prevent a gaming journalist like yourself maintaining a transparent and public archive of "companies who I have signed NDAs with", "dates these NDAs went into effect", and "all information from the NDA contract I am explicitly permitted to discuss" (admitably an archive that rather lean of facts), and a second archive detailing "companies I have had NDAs with, which have now expired", and "the full terms of the NDA".

Is there a real risk of any kind of chilling effect or blacklisting for anyone who'd criticise an NDA after it expired? Or for publishing the original draft of the NDA?

Because if there is no risk, its really the gaming presses job to take the first step towards getting rid of the excessive and pointless secrecy that the gaming industry has. Gaming journalism can exert a chilling effect on the needless privacy: does an otherwise unexceptional games publisher really want to only be described as "who are unremarkable, except for their consistent affection of NDAs", or other similar?

On the other hand, if this is a real risk then its topic needs to be discussed, because things will only go from bad to worse: what's stop it encouraging a wider culture of this bullshit in the industry, as companies with larger incomes and legal teams with NDA habits get copied by smaller companies looking to emulate their success and business model? As companies will already mimic everything in a competitors game to try and claim market share, it stands to reason they'd consider mimicking the underlying business model that supports the mimicked game's development.

So, does blacklisting happen, or is there a chilling effect preventing for discussion of game industry NDAs?

Maybe its paranoia or reading too many Shadowrun books but the discussion [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0] of fairly recent takedown of TotalBiscuit's "WTF is Garry's Incident" video (back online again here, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTa_x3rbJE], minus acknowledge of a few million views before takedown) has me wondering how much bullshit is happening that can't be discussed without consequences I'd never know about?

Also, love the fish mask, thought it was a Gyarados myself.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

How did the game industry become such a, excuse me, clusterfuck? I mean, it hasn't always been like this,has it? Instead of being about games it's now about absurd marketing strategies and huge publicity events and dubious multimedia crossovers. I mean, just make good games and funtionel and affordable devices to play these games on. I'm not asking for anything more.

 

[Sofus]

I don't care what publisher and developers hide or what "secrets" they make public.... although I would rather that they stopped telling us alot of stuff, because it's alot easier to make up stuff when there are no facts available. Besides, tall tales and lies are usually far more interesting than reality.

Did you know that EA sued one of their employees after he created a game for his 9 year old son? true story.

 

[minimacker]

Why is he showing so much footage from Deus Ex: Human Revolution? I never felt like they were withholding behind the scenes materials and information.

Or is it more in what the game is about? Corporate secrecy? I guess that works.

 

[1337mokro]

I am going to have to step in here and set a few things straight.

The movie industry is anything but transparent about it's figures. Sure it reports them to the consumer and estimates are made but did you for example know that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is considered an absolute colossal flop that ended up costing New Line several billions of dollars? Despite all the movies being made for roughly 300 million dollars and making over 6 billions in sales?

Strange isn't it how transparency works before the accountants get to do their work? There is a giant behind the curtain Hollywood shell game going on with the financials. Where actors and right-holders are screwed out of their royalties by simply inflating the expenditures so there are no profits left even on a movie trilogy that made the same amount of money as a small nation.

The same for Babylon 5 and Warner Bros, where basically JMS was screwed out of royalties because the show made an 80 million dollar loss despite making a gigantic amount of money in total. By his own quote they would basically charge any costs made at any station across the world they had through to the Babylon 5's profit line so they could pay him no money at all.

Just because it appears transparent where we seem to know what comes in and what comes out doesn't mean the industry isn't filled with bottom feeding scumbags that hire other bottom feeding scumbags to cook the books.

 

[bug_of_war]

Actually Jim I wasn't going to say anything about the mask although I was rather surprised when the video started up and there you were with a fish mask staring back at me.
No what I want to say was that it never ceases to amaze and depress me how low the industry has sunk these days. It's like the industry is living in a bubbled off dystopia.

Game industry is just going through it's high school years, EA and Ubisoft are the people who try and do everything, Activision is the self professed cool kid, Capcom is the school Douchebag, Valve is the nice kid in the corner, 2K are the sportos (Jocks, sportkids, what have you), Bethesda are the story tellers, so on so forth.

Give em a few decades, and some GUIDING(<-----Key word here) criticism.

 

[sadmac]

Could any of this have to do with FTC regulations on disclosure and insider trading? Many of these publishers are public, and IIUC if information is disclosed in the wrong way, and stock moves as a result, Very Bad Things(tm) happen to people.

 

[blackrave]

Calm down Jim that mask wasn't that bad.
It could be worse.
For example, you could do this episode without the mask.
ZING!!!
[I know, I know, I'm a fucking genius of comedy]

But back to the topic.
Watching at current fuss with next-gen consoles makes me glad that I am PC gamer
Now excuse me, I just upgraded my DeusEx:HR to Director's cut, so I must go- conspiracies wont unravel on their own...

 

[Shankity Stick]

Was...was that footage from Legendary? So I didn't dream that game up in a bout of adolescent fantasy. Man, what an unremarkable thing that turned out to be. Fantastic concept though.

 

[Strazdas]

very well said here. Openess and transparency is definitely a problem everywhere and even more so in gaming industry. The fact that they are allowed to hide their sales figures is ridiculous. Such things as how much copies the game sold should be public knowledge required by law to begin with.

 

[Spud of Doom]

Watch out for all those secret game industry chickens. Loved that line.

 

[Amakusa]

I liked your episode. I especially loved seeing footage from The Secret World since it's one of my favourite mmo's. If your planning to wear masks, i guess you could do a different mask every week with a different theme. Next one could be president Nixon or some demon monster one i guess.

Concerning the points with your video, yeah they make sense. But since companies like to operate on a information is power mentality. So i'm not surprised that companies would be restricting it. However i tend to agree with other posters that sales information should be make public, and published in an accessable way for the consumers to get a hold off. But getting companies to do that is another story.

 

[ironfist86]

I am especially tweaked when the people behind the scenes address rumors as just being rumors, not fact, without giving the facts that they know. *cough*MAJOR NELSON*cough* It's ridiculous and upsetting. The last game I pre-ordered was Diablo 3, and it very well be the last game I pre-order, ever.

A big shame the game companies don't at least help their reputation by confirming or denying rumors in a bit more of a timely fashion.

That was the last one I purchased on Day One and boy, do I ever regret that mistake. I ended up discovering Torchlight 2 on sale for like $10 two weeks later and it was the exact opposite of D3, as in, pure awesome. The last pre-order I made was Aliens : Colonial blah blah and THANKFULLY I cancelled that thing three days before it was released. If there was ever a sign, I took that dodged bullet as one!

 

[endplanets]

I can never really take "don't badmouth me because there was behinds the scenes stuff" at face value because there is no way for me to know it that is actually true.
Because it is really easy to just lie and say there was behind the scenes stuff and in reality its just a bad product.
Tell me what happened behind the scenes otherwise I won't believe you.