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Private Notes
The valiant knight Sir Jim Sterling has ventured into Hell to find his lost love, and takes some time to discuss the "Seven Deadly Sins" and their AAA Publisher Personifications.
What publisher is the greediest? Which one is the most gluttonous? Honestly, most of them work for every category, but that wouldn’t make for much of a video.
Loot boxes remain a touchy issue in the game industry, especially now that prospect of regulation has become very real. The defenses, the lies, and the propaganda in support of them has ramped up quite a bit.
The "AAA" industry is going along a rather expected path, hiding behind the concept of art to defend itself. If you regulate loot boxes, they argue, you're censoring art.
David Jaffe has been going off on this very point, and his voice joins others in equating gambling with art. Either naively, or deliberately. Are they right? They are not.
Electronic Arts has handled the Star Wars license terribly. They've screwed things up in ways that are embarrassing to watch.
Having only squirted out two Star Wars Battlefront games and made a mess of both, EA deserves to lose its exclusive hold over Star Wars games. EA also just deserves to lose in general.
Kingdom Hearts III is imminent, but we're not in the business of just letting you enjoy games around here. Let's talk about how awful Kingdom Hearts is.
I mean... it's a good game. A great game. But it is also awful, stupid, and utter gibberish.
As Electronic Arts produces a spreadsheet to let customers when they can play Anthem, The Jimquisition takes a look at the concept of the confusopoly, where companies try to befuddle their customers on purpose.
We also look at how they're exploiting FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - in order to guarantee those confusing sales.
Videogame publishers are greedy, exploitative predators for which no amount of money will ever be enough. While we know and loathe this, it is also by design that they are the way they are.
Layoffs, cutbacks, excessive monetization, it's all part of a system built on unsustainable, short-sighted growth. Now we're in the endgame, where we find out there IS no endgame.
But let's start with Buzzfeed...
Activision Blizzard let go of nearly 800 employees for short term financial gain. At the same time, CEO Bobby Kotick boasted of record revenues for the company.
The company's value has halved and profits are down, all while more money than ever flows through it. In any sensible world, Kotick would take the hit as leader of the publisher. He passed the buck.
Executives hand their failures down because they know they can do so without consequence. There should be consequences. Fire Bobby Kotick.
Anthem is out after months of unenthusiastic quasi-anticipation, and it's all anybody's talking about. Or rather, it would be if it had been good.
Instead, people are focused on everything surrounding Anthem. Controversies, speculations, debates, all of the circus around the game is more interesting than the game itself.
So anyway, let's add our own Anthem hot take, shall we?
THQ Nordic held an AMA this week. THQ Nordic apologized for the AMA about an hour later. If you've not heard why, prepare yourself for a wild ride!
This isn't the first apology a game publisher has had to make for social engagement gone horribly wrong. Why does it keep happening? Well, that "social" word may have something to do with it.
Whether companies are employing edgelords, believe all publicity is good, or just plain dumb, we're going to have a very late-2010s discussion about it.
February was ridiculous. Anthem, Apex Legends, Metro Exodus, Far Cry New Dawn, and Crackdown 3 all going head to head, and all of them demanding a silly amount of time.
The game industry is an uncoordinated mess of market saturation and nonexistent long-term planning. The industry wide adoption of "live services" with long content "roadmaps" is already at breaking point.
Companies have their hands around their own necks and we're supposed to believe everything is normal. This ain't normal.
Steam seems incapable of helping itself. Off the back of yet another deeply unpleasant game controversy, and with Epic Games snapping its heels, Steam needs to change but remains staunchly averse to the idea.
The association between Steam and utter trash has gotten so bad that politicians are starting to take notice. Meanwhile, Epic offers a generous revenue split, actual curation, and a dramatically reduced risk of appearing next to school shooting games.
It's a deal I can't blame anyone for taking. Screw Steam.
Ubisoft would have you believe that The Division 2 makes no political statements while it exploits political imagery for marketing purposes.
In another case of the game industry wanting it both ways, games claim to be apolitical but are more than happy to talk about governments, terrorists, and civil unrest.
It's dishonest and it's craven. Even a game desperately trying to say nothing is, through such desperation, saying something. In fact, it's saying a lot.
So, let's talk about the Epic Store. Controversial, hated, and rich enough to power through its ongoing controversies. For now, at least. Epic's dive into PC game distribution has earned it the ire of many, and while it offers a better deal for developers than Steam, it's got to seriously address its end-user problems if it wants lasting success.
We've touched on roadmaps a little before, but let's take a good ol' look at the concept in more detail. In tech, roadmaps can form crucial paths for development. In games, roadmaps have become a crutch - a buzzterm used to clothe the lack of content when a game is sold. Roadmaps are the latest disguise for what's been happening in "AAA" games for years - software being pushed out in a half-baked state to make as much money immediately, with a plan to add value to the product being relegated to a distant secondary concern. We know where we're going, but we can't say where we've been.
Kotaku published an instant hit of game journalism, How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong. It's must-read material, shining a light on mismanagement and indecision. More importantly, it details the stress and the overwork that companies like BioWare continue to put their workers through. So-called "BioWare Magic" - the concept that games like Anthem come together in the final few months - isn't actual magic, it's actual abuse. We need to stop saying game development is magic, because believing in sorcery sure as hell didn't help Anthem or Mass Effect Andromeda. Also, no company should have stress casualties.
Okay... let's wade into this debate again. It's raged for years and has only gotten more poisonous in that time, but we're gonna step in anyway and try to talk about difficulty options. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the latest From Software game to spark a debate over difficulty and the merits of an easy mode. We're gonna talk about how weird the discussion is, and maybe get some elite wisdom from gaming aristocracy! Sigh... here goes...
Some games get all of daddy's love, and some simply don't. There's a clear hierarchy of games in the "AAA" industry, with some getting more publisher support than others. As BioWare continues to flounder in this rut of an industry, it's time to look at which studios are the drama nerds and which are the football jocks. Because this is a football town, not a place where drama gets the resources. Also, The Faculty.
Epic Games has not slowed down its sniping of PC games, acquiring an almost ridiculous number of exclusive releases. It threatens to starve the PC digital distribution market with remarkable aggression. At the same time, the company has been accused of abusing its own workers, with people coming forward to speak of horrendously coerced overtime. Epic is showing an ugly side lately, even as it provides a genuinely good deal to game studios. An under CAAApitalism, it's all perfectly allowable.
The Sonic The Hedgehog movie looks dire, and the CGI monstrosity masquerading as Sonic himself makes me sick. Genuinely. As Paramount now scrabbles at the last minute to redesign him following intense backlash, let's pick Sonic the Manhog to shreds and chat about Hollywood's artistic arrogance. Historically, moviemakers love to exploit nerdy licenses while simultaneously being ashamed of them. But history is in the past, and we're in a new era of accepted pop culture geekery. The world has evolved, but Hollywood's take on Sonic the Hedgehog is rooted in the past.
I'd promise this is the last video I'm doing on Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, but I can't guarantee against His Royal Weirdness doing something else screwed up that merits more.
Randy Pitchford's pattern of erratic behavior and continued aggression might have made him a successful YouTuber, but as a CEO of a corporation, as a man who personally goes out of his way to represent the brand, it's beyond untenable.
From Colonial Marines to Borderlands 3, whenever there's a controversy involving Gearbox, Randy is almost always in the middle of it. It's time he just... stopped.
There's a culture of silence in the game industry, which pairs "nicely" with the unquestioning loyalty some companies expect from their workers. In the wake of Riot employees staging a walkout to protest suppressive forced arbitration, let's look at how abuse festers in an industry where the targets can't speak up.
When Game of Thrones was airing, every Monday morning made videogame websites look like HBO fansites. In the wake of the finale, game journalists couldn't wait to throw their hot takes up.
Game journalism will gladly talk about non-game topics if the requisite "link juice" is in place. I've made jokes about it and upset people in doing so, but I want to seriously talk about it.
Because I understand the reasons for it. It's why MTV isn't Music Television anymore, and why The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" is more relevant than ever.
In a special investigative Jimquisition, we collect horror stories from former Rockstar Games employees who worked under a brutal boot heel. Allegations of abuse, exploitation, and ritual indignity showcase how a company uses terror and anger to create some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. In particular, former VP of Product Development, Jeronimo Barrera, lies at the center of some of the most vile (and bizarre) accusations. By all accounts, he's a horrible man who perpetuated Rockstar's culture of fear. This industry cannot keep going like this. This cannot continue.
Fallout 76 is a cautionary tale for an industry that exercises no caution whatsoever. A wake-up call for an industry that remains asleep at the wheel. Bethesda's broken, unfinished, poorly received foray into the "live service" arena has been a neverending carnival of humiliating nonsense. A fine example of what happens when you play to none of your strengths for the sake of ill-gotten gains. With a big iron on our hips, let's take a look at the embarrassing, baffling, and often funny mess that is Fallout 76!
E3 2019 has been and gone, so it's time for our annual awards of arbitrary recognition! Who did good, who came away sore? Let's find out! From hecklers to Final Fantasy to Bethesda being Bethesda, we got the lot here! We got the LOT!
For longer than I've been covering games, publishers have dreamed of an all-digital future where they have complete control of the market. The cloud, and hardware like Google Stadia, bring their dream closer than ever to reality. There are multiple issues to discuss here. Streaming gameplay is interesting, but let's face it - the potential for subscription fees is what really excites publishers. Through Stadia, companies can become more platform than publisher, and their "live services" can evolve into evermore lucrative models. Then there's game ownership, and archival, and how Stadia threatens both. Frankly, none of it looks too hopeful to me.
Aggressive monetization tactics have undoubtedly lowered the quality for many so-called "AAA" games. The shameless number of microtransactions and loot boxes have made them grinding and shallow "services" instead of complete videogames. When we talk about the impact microtransactions and loot boxes have on players, however, we often argue in abstract terms. Not today. Today we look at the human cost of predatory monetization - the impact that exploitative business models have on their vulnerable targets. To really hammer it home, we'll have to meet Torulf Jernström, a mobile studio CEO whose tactics for hunting "whales" - the prime targets of microtransactions - sound scarily like instructions for selling drugs. From "Hook Habit Hobby" to the "IKEA Effect," you're about to learn just how low this industry's tricks get. This industry has truly sold its soul. Strap in, because this gets horrible. And if I'm to be remembered for any single Jimquisition, I'd like it to be this one.
A recent article shared the woes and tragedies of Electric Arts' great struggle - the "perception" that the company is a villain. The problem is, it's not so much a perception as it is a matter of historical record. While media articles publish unquestioning propaganda from EA's executives, we juxtapose the one good thing it does - EA Originals - against the negative impact of its less savory behavior. Funnily enough, the scales don't even out on this one.
G2A has been humiliating itself recently. After years of ducking criticism, the grey market key reseller is finally unable to dismiss accusations, and its response has been hilariously sad.
Let Sterling, the Super Heavyweight Supervillain, take you through G2A's shady practices and ridiculous deflections. Oh my... let the Star Eater show you.
The mainstream games industry is pushing harder and harder for social features to be an expected part of any major entertainment software release.
According to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, social networking is just as important to games as it is to Facebook or Twitter. A bold claim, but one that's part of a concerted effort to normalize the push.
Ultimately, however, it's a long con. "AAA" publishers want more social features because they make money, plain and simple. It's yet another way to rake in cash not just from whales, but from so-called "super whales" as well.
Because no amount of money is ever enough.
Grand Theft Auto Online's Diamond Casino and Resort does away with any ounce of subtlety to bring literal gambling games to GTA.
As loot boxes come under intense scrutiny after years of abuses, Rockstar's timing on this carries quite a lot of nerve. It also brings the whole in-game gambling debacle into sharp focus.
If this is where games are headed next, I'm not sure I could pick any "AAA" game over a visit to an actual, literal, real-life casino. At least they don't take real money in exchange for no real payout.
When a publisher adds microtransactions weeks, sometimes months, after a game is released, it always feels inherently sneaky. This is especially true when it's blatantly obvious they were always going to be there.
Crash Team Racing Nitro Re-Fueled is the latest game to smuggle microtransactions in after launch, as has been Activision's modus operandi lately.
So why do it? Why not just launch with the predatory economy immediately? Well, there are major benefits to publishers who delay the microtransactions. From ratings to reviews to good old fashioned manipulation.
Oh, and the ESA is a screwup!
In the wake of multiple mass shootings over a single weekend, politicians with vested interests in shifting the blame pulled their easiest, laziest trick - they blamed videogames.
Donald Trump accused games of glorifying violence in a way that encourages domestic terrorists to go out and commit mass murder. The game industry was rightly offended.
But it's all stupid nonsense, and it's designed to be stupid nonsense. The more we argue in circles about videogames, the less we talk about guns, or white nationalism, or whatever else might actually be causing the uniquely American problem of widespread mass murder.
The game industry is currently making a performance of tackling the loot box debacle, and a performance is what it is.
The ESA announced that console makers will require the odds for in-game gambling purchases to be disclosed. They only did this after the FTC got involved, and they're only doing it to make a show for the government.
While the ESA and game publishers pretend to be proactive, it's important to stress that the "AAA" game industry cannot be trusted to regulate itself. It had that chance, it's repeatedly blown that chance, and it won't ever take that chance seriously.
EDIT: Minor correction. For some reason I said "after" instead of "before" when talking about Metro Exodus going Epic exclusive. It went exclusive less than a month before launch.
The conversation surrounding the Epic Games Store has officially gotten effing nasty. People are mad at Epic's behavior, but that anger is spilling into areas it really shouldn't, and legit criticism of Epic is getting lost in the noise.
Ultimately, the problem with Epic Games is Epic Games. Well... that and the economics supporting Epic's business tactics. This is especially true knowing that Epic is enacting a double standard to pressure indie developers into taking its deal.
Indie devs deserve some slack here, for all the hate they're getting. Dumping on them isn't helping. Let's bring the focus back to Epic and the playground Epic's cavorting in.
Political intrigue is baked into the lore of Dark Souls. Class struggle, propaganda, a ruling elite manipulating those of lower status into serving their needs. There's more going on than just hitting monsters with swords.
Let's look at the political agenda of Dark Souls, the politics of its storyline, and the perpetuated cycles that keep its world of Lordran running. Also, let's talk about why Frampt is a jackass.
Let's talk about Gaming Disorder. A much ballyhooed classification by the World Health Organization, this official designation of gaming addiction is seen as unnecessary and alarmist in many gaming circles.
Is it, however, a genuinely problematic classification, or a misunderstood one? We're going to find out together!
Been planning this one for a while, and recent allegations toward Starbound developer Chucklefish provided the right avenue.
Young developers are often praised for their passion, and passion can be a wonderful thing. Chasing a vocation with gusto and energy is generally positive, but it can nonetheless be abused by more cynical wielders of power.
The game industry is of course no stranger to exploitation, and you'll often find the word "passion" thrown around liberally. Be wary of this word, honeyed that it is, for it may very well be a trap.
It behooves first party publishers to provide top quality productions that make their consoles worth buying. Nintendo and Sony have both produced amazing games to sell us on the PS4 and Switch.
Microsoft, however, is different. Microsoft has decided to act no better than a grasping third party "AAA" publisher. Even worse, it set the tone of a generation and contributed - perhaps more than any other company - to the nasty normalization of excessive monetization.
It's Microsoft's fault that videogames are bad.
The Entertainment Software Association represents the "AAA" game industry's interests in the US, and that alone qualifies it for side-eyes. Its recent pitch for E3 2020, however, is stunning in its awfulness.
So let's discuss the ESA and why the increasingly irrelevant E3 is set to become downright dreadful in the future.
Mario Kart Tour is total rubbish, which is par for the course when it comes to Nintendo's boring mobile games.
Loot boxes, frustration, bad controls, Mario Kart Tour has it all. More crucially, its glorified Battle Pass nonsense, the Gold Pass, looks absolutely abysmal next to the recent launch of Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass.
Nintendo doesn't really care about the mobile platform, but it's using the market to make tons of cash anyway.
Shall we talk about good games doing good things? Between Borderlands 3 and Code Vein, we have examples of cosmetic rewards and customization done right in the "AAA" space.
With the catalog of Focus Home Interactive games, we have mid-tier games providing complete experiences that the market's been starved of.
These are the titles totally humiliating the "AAA" industry.
Activision Blizzard has been mired in controversy since it punished professional Hearthstone player Blitzchung for his vocal support of Hong Kong. Seen as a move made to placate China, the decision to suspend and withhold money from Blitzchung was torn apart by critics.
As Hong Kong protesters fight for their continued autonomy from China, and as corporations across America cuddle up to an authoritarian Beijing government for money, Blizzard claims its actions had nothing to do with its own political relationships.
This is wrong. Even if Blizzard believes its decision was purely apolitical, it wasn't. Regardless of reason, the message is clear and the context is obvious. Blizzard chose tyranny, plain and simple.
Anthem. Oh, Anthem. BioWare's ill-fated attempt to jump aboard the "live service" bandwagon is yet another cautionary tale the "AAA" industry won't ever learn from.
With an obscenely troubled development, a handful of failed promises, and a legacy of embarrassing headlines, Anthem will go down in history, but not for the reasons BioWare hoped.
It certainly won't be spoke about with the same reverence as Bob Dylan... which is what BioWare actually expected.
Bethesda has spent so much goodwill these last few years it's practically bankrupt in the faith department. Fallout 76, as has been laboriously documented, is a cavalcade of humiliation and laughably bad corporate decisions.
Then we have Obsidian coming along with The Outer Worlds, just after Bethesda launched an expensive - and broken - subscription service for Fallout 76. The Outer Worlds is pretty much everything 76 isn't, and more besides. Hell, it's the best Fallout game since Fallout 2, and it isn't even a Fallout game.
Basically, we don't need Bethesda anymore. It has served its purpose - barely adequately - and we have something better now.
Fortnite recently introduced bots to its battle royaleBat ecosystem, a decision that certainly has some positive elements to it. It's also gotten people questioning their abilities and those of their opponents. These bots are not flagged as bots, instead posing as humans and mostly discernible through their odd behavior. It's led to some interesting paranoia.
Meanwhile, Nintendo has been pulling the wool over players' eyes by using similar bots to essentially fake an online multiplayer mode. Even worse, they passively advertise the game's loot box economy.
While the two games are quite different, and one is clearly more nefarious, both use bots for a very simple reason - engagement. The ultimate desire of modern entertainment, engagement rules all - and if players are engaged by an artificial sense of victory, so be it.
Blizzard went out of its way to make sure Blizzcon was marked by two major game announcements and sorrowful contrition. To anybody paying attention, it was really marked by insincerity and cowardice.
The company is a big pile of toss, and no amount of Diablo 4 or Overwatch 2 will actually change that. These game announcements are wallpaper over the cracks in Blizzard's facade, and we ought not forget it.
Pokémon Sword & Shield may very well go down in history as the most controversial release in the series, chiefly because of Dexit - the culling of over half the series' roster.
There's been a lot of ill will brewing over Sword & Shield for a number of reasons, but Game Freak's choice to cut hundreds of beloved Pokémon - including Ekans - has been firmly at the eye of the storm.
Is the backlash reasonable, or are people being babies? Was there a winning scenario for Game Freak in this? Why did ALL my favorites get screwed? I am Dexit Jesus! Hear my sermon!
Subscriptions for games are not new, but in the era of the "live service" they look set to make a major comeback. With television, music, and physical goods all offering subscriptions, companies want an endlessly drip-fed stream of cash.
The idea of in-game subscriptions that offer premium extras may very well become the new microtransactions - on top all the existing monetization techniques - and services like Fallout 1st or the Animal Crossing "Happy Helper" plan offer a glimpse at that potential future.
It's not a great future, so I'm going to be pissy about it.
Waterworld was a very, very, very expensive movie to make, and it was a flop. A very, very, very big flop. Anyway, let's talk about Shenmue!
Shenmue III is finally out, floating off the back of millions in crowdfunding, multiple publisher backers, and a wave of hype. Disproportionate hype, it would seem, given the game's market performance thus far.
The thing is, Shenmue isn't all that popular, despite being so requested, and so critically acclaimed. What's more, it's always been very, very, very expensive to make... and a flop.
I don't like the word "consumer."
Words have power, and even when two words mean the same thing, the history and implications attached can have a subtle effect on how we process them.
In today's video, I explain some of the baggage carried by the word "consumer," and why I've phased out my own usage of the word in favor of others when describing the game-buying public. While some may consider this to be splitting hairs, I had a lot of fun explaining my stance in today's video, and I hope you find it interesting!
With thanks to Conrad Zimmerman and Evil Uno... Join the Dark Order!
Videogame executives are getting very good at exploiting some peoples' aversion to political discussions, especially when it comes to covering their tracks and avoiding uncomfortable questions.
Take Bobby Kotick, for example, CEO of Activision. His company has stepped into some political messes this year, but by presenting himself as apolitical, he's avoiding talking about any of it.
What else does Bobby avoid answering for when we buy his snake oil about politics? Let's find out!
Award time at last! The Game Awards may have its industry recognition, production values, exclusive announcements, and viewers, but The Jimquisition Awards have a "woosh" sound effect.
Clearly we're winning.
Anyway, it's time to name the five best games that I played this year. Let's hand out some JGOTYAs!
2019 is rapidly nearing its bitter end, so it's time once more to smear grime on ourselves, lament loudly, and welcome Skeletor for our annual look at the shittiest games of the year!
From Anthem to Contra: Rogue Corps, there's been a lot of trash to sift through, but we've nailed it down. The most deficient, most insulting, most miserable games of the year! Let's look at the worst of the worst.
