The overly-obvious, undeserving hype machine that is the video games review industry is at it again. PS3 supporters rejoice, your "savior" has arrived, and it looks like nothing more than something that should have just been a PSN title. The review industry has been giving the game completely over-the-top review scores (though nearly all of them have entire large sections of the review dedicated to negatives...) to make it seem like the best thing since sliced bread and/or something that will revolutionize video games for times to come. This game is Little Big Planet, if you haven't caught on yet.
Most of the reviews say the entire game on the disc is disappointing and short, and the controls are bad but that the levels you can download through the internet made by any random clown make the game worth a 10 out of 10 score. I had to read these things more than once to even let such an asinine idea get through my head. The "revolution" the game is supposed to cause is one that only exists through the internet? So this is like an... e-awesome game? I don't get it. And what about people who don't connect their console to the internet?
After touting the "create-a-level" system as being the greatest thing to grace interactive entertainment since the Atari 2600, the reviews largely end up saying that this same system is extremely difficult to use and clunky. Am I missing something here?
The over-used buzzword here is "user-created gaming," which is something that I don't think should even really exist in any official form, since you'd be essentially paying a company $60 so that you could do a bunch of work to see if it turned out fun. This seems extremely counter-active for the video games industry and something I want absolutely no part in. I'd rather play a game that an experienced developer has made instead of something Johnny Nobody from Debuke, Iowa made for the internets. At least with the other games in the past that encouraged user-modification (things like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Doom 3, etc.,) we had a great, powerful, and useful engine to play with, as well as a great developer-created game that went along with it. All things that this game does not have, apparently.
This is another step into the downward spiral that is the gaming industry. All some developers can think to do is try to change conventions because they've run out of interesting or fun ways to work with what they have. Reinventing the wheel is something they use to try and fool people into thinking that they've made something interesting and good just because its different from what you're used to seeing, when they almost always slack on the effort just because they think they have that cushion. And wow, I'm going into all of this based on the hypothetical situation in which this game did do something new or unique in some way besides the developers completely slacking off on development in order to have players make the game instead of themselves.
The game engine looks like an exact copy of a number of Xbox Live Arcade titles that quickly come to mind, with worse physics, yet they constantly cite this game as being "highly original" over and over again. Wik: Fable of Souls, Braid, Cloning Clyde, and well.....just about any game with a strict 2D platforming system come to mind, which easily can disqualify this game as being an original concept.
And how is this any different from those fantastic titles like RPG Maker or Fighter Maker that graced us on Sony's first console? Those flopped like a fish out of water, but now that you can share content online it makes it a game worth a perfect score? I'd like to ask, what can't you share online nowadays? You can share replays for games, there are dozens of other games on the market where you can share your own created content (like ANY PC GAME EVER, N+, and a few others in recent memory,) you can share your game accomplishments with achievements, you can share pictures, video, and audio online. What the hell is so important and "revolutionary" here?
Even past questioning the importance of this game in particular, it looks people are judging how good the game is by how "important" or "meaningful" it is. This sounds like pure hipster marketing talk to me.
This is just a small piece of my qualms with the review industry, but this is the most recent and relevant one, which deserved an article closer to its happenstance.
Read more on this article...
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Gaming in America: What Happened?
In continuation of the ideas Blast of Silence started with his anime-related series, I wish to start one on the same subject pertaining to the video game industry instead.
In my first foray, I'd like to ask a simple question that may seem rhetorical, but is, in fact, not.
What happened to all the hardcore gamers who take pride in gaming?
When I was growing up, everyone I knew was proud to say that they had beaten all the games in their collection (or at least come close.) They were proud to show others their skills in a non-competitive way and many others were happy to watch. People loved games even though there was no such thing as "online multiplayer." There were people who played games simply for the challenge of overcoming what the developers could come up with or getting a high score. What happened to all of these people? Am I the last of a dying breed here?
Many may take the obstinate route and say something like "they grew up" or "got a life," but in most cases, I'd hardly say working yourself until you're blue in the face and miserable or getting married at 20 and having kids before you're even personally stable would hardly qualify as having a good life, and that's what we all want, isn't it? Most people I know who still play video games into their post-teens are having a lot better time in life than many of those who choose to shun them and think of them as kids' toys. The industry has changed in such ways that most of the time, more games are made specifically for mature audiences than they are for anyone under the age of 10 (with the exception of Wii and DS..)
And being a hardcore gamer doesn't necessarily mean that you have to play games 30 hours a week, or even anywhere near that much, but just play the games that challenge you more than they do appease your senses, so you can actually get some self-fulfillment out of overcoming a challenge. And hell, I work over 40 hours a week and still have time to play at least 40 more hours of games a week, so I wouldn't take "because I work 40 hours a week, I can't play many video games anymore" as a valid counterpoint. I'm able to play as much as I do because that's what I enjoy doing and I can motivate myself to play them very easily, like any hardcore gamer should be able to.
I attribute a lot of (or all of) this decline in hardcore gamers on the laziness of this country as well as the marketing that is involved with casual gaming becoming the norm within the industry right now.
The laziness and disinterest of our countrymen is seen most clearly when any hardcore gamer attempts to talk to others about gaming, since the conversation will often turn to more specific details of the gameplay of the game in discussion at the time, and through a few questions, a hardcore gamer can quickly tell whether or not the other person actually played the game to any appreciable length. This becomes an issue because for whatever reason it may be, between having the attention span of a chipmunk or just feeling its not "worth it" to invest a lot of time and effort to progressing through a video game when you could be out eating junk food or smoking pot or something equally valuable, Americans just generally don't explore games to anywhere near their full potential. Someone will still say "yeah, I played _________" when they only played the first level or chapter. This can also lead me to another discussion pertaining to the video game site/magazine/review industry, which is a whole separate article for another time.
The marketing involved with this downfall didn't change overnight, but has been a steady process since around the mid-90's when Sony's original PlayStation was released. I don't know if it was just something about 3D graphics in general or if it was the games they were releasing at the time, many of which were tying into older franchises or sometimes even popular movies, but lots of people who never played games before ended up buying a PlayStation. It was likely a combination of both, since at that point, any random schmoe who loves sports could play their favorite stupid sport in 3D now. I don't know why this was such a difference, but there was clearly some kind of change that happened within the industry to where by the time Dreamcast came out, gaming was an epidemic in the US. Everybody wanted in on this "gaming" thing. All the kids who never talked to you through school instantly wanted to be your friend because you've been "the gamer kid" since kindergarten and now games are all of a sudden fashionable. This was not to Sega's fault in any way, since more than 75% of their games library was very centered towards traditional, hardcore gamers.
At this point, it also became evident that hardcore gamers were on a decline, since the Dreamcast, a system which catered to hardcore gamers from the start (even its mission statements defined the hardcore demographic,) died just barely a year and a half after its release to the public, despite the system still, arguably, being the greatest system that hardcore gamers would ever have. Piracy may have also lead to part of this downfall, since games are so easily manipulated to be playable from a burned CD without even modifying your console, but that's a whole other discussion as well.
When Sony's follow-up to PlayStation, PlayStation 2 was released in the US in late 2000, it was clear a major shift had happened in the industry. Not only had the core demographic already begun to be shunned by the industry, but the new phenomenon known as the "system wars" had been propagated seemingly by fans at first, but the industry began to take this as a serious situation. It soon became the "epic battle" between Sony, Nintendo, and whoever else may have been the competitor in any given generation. First it was Sega, who claimed they were withdrawing from console production for good after Dreamcast, then followed by the next big player with Microsoft's Xbox in 2001. This battle still rages on today between these same opposing forces, and still to no avail besides to alienate the hardcore gamer in most instances and to drive the market towards those people who previously wanted absolutely nothing to do with gaming, making for a huge war seeking to gain nothing more than money.
While trying to still remain as unbiased as I can, just by using pure facts, I can say that I still support Microsoft more than their competitors for not completely giving into the casual gaming market head over heels, though there are shades of it within their decisions, almost by necessity. If you look at any major game that comes out for Xbox 360 (as well as the other systems, for that matter..) and especially Western-developed games, they always have some kind of super-easy difficulty setting to adjust for those people who have no true interest in playing the game, but instead would rather just look at some pretty graphics and listen to the sound, while incurring no personal challenge whatsoever. This is just an unfortunate problem that plagues the industry right now, because people think everything has to be more "accessible." Thankfully, some Japanese developers still keep even their easiest difficulties above the new norm of easy difficulties (see: Ninja Gaiden 2, Dead or Alive 4, Mega Man 9, any CAVE shmup, etc.) and this always puts a smile on my face when it takes a lot of practice and learning just to get through the easiest difficulty.
In respect of keeping hardcore gaming subliminally at the core of the Xbox 360 experience, Microsoft has come up with the Achievement or Gamerscore system, where players can log their various accomplishments within games to a centralized handle or username, which can be viewed by anyone, anywhere around the world. This reinstates pride to those of us who love playing games and challenging our own abilities through these games, which is something that has been overlooked for far too long until now. It seems to be working wonders, since numerous, very large internet sites and forums have been dedicated solely to the process of obtaining these points and this, even if indirectly, helps to strengthen that bond between gamers, no matter where you are in the world, if you're working together to accomplish the same goals.
Xbox 360 has become what many consider to be a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, not only in its choice of color, but in the demographic it largely targets through its promotion and the games that get published for the system, be it through retail or online purchase outlets. For this reason of being similar to Dreamcast, I sometimes fear for the future of great systems like Xbox 360, since trying to target that core demographic has lead to failure in the past, but Microsoft has been careful about not treading too steadfastly into the hardcore territory, so they can still keep their head above water, but the other sides of the industry are quite the opposite, diving into whatever potential money pit they can, at whatever expense it may be to the hardcore gamers. We have been shunned by two-thirds of the industry that we love, for no better reason than the dollar sign.
The Nintendo Wii and its timely competitor, the PS3, have started what is a cyclone of hype, marketing, and empty promises in the gaming world when they both launched 2 years ago. The Wii is very specifically targeting the demographic of people who honestly probably don't even understand the concept of a video game, letalone being someone who has played them in the past, and the PS3 tried hard to match Nintendo, since they came out so close in time to each other, though PS3 has a little harder vendetta against Xbox 360, since they are closer in terms of hardware and games selection.
The problem with PS3's situation is that they fail to secure what may be some of the more important games of the near future to be released on their system, but try to offer a plethora of other, non-gaming services to make up for the lack of game quality and selection. There are still many games that are multi-platform and released on both PS3 as well as Xbox 360, but when any hardcore gamer makes a list of what games look good to them on either system, the list ends up about 3 times as long for Xbox 360 than it would for PS3. And as gamers, why else would we want anything besides games? We don't care that it can play a Blu-Ray disc or link up with our PSP. We have computers for internet access and playing videos. We could care less about how it can use Bluetooth technology or fry our hamburgers for us. We want to play games, and sadly, there is not enough substance to keep a non-casual gamer going on that console.
The Wii has it far worse in this aspect, since a majority of their games are specifically aimed at people who don't play games, and this ends up with most games containing only a fraction of the potential gameplay and depth that most modern titles have (or should have,) having an avalanche of games for children under the age of 10 and many games that border on not even being eligible to be called a video game in the first place. Games where you learn Spanish? Games where you exercise? I don't think so. They seem to be hard at work on keeping that American idea that video games are just children's toys firmly in place.
Nintendo promised to "do things right, this time" since many people were disgruntled with the decisions they made on the GameCube, but this has turned out to be the biggest of many in a series of empty promises from Nintendo. We won't get too far into the handheld market, since the DS is basically a handheld version of the Wii, taking gaming to lower depths of immersion with pecking on screens with sticks and waving our arms around in the air to accomplish a task, and the PSP is as rife with piracy problems as the Dreamcast ever was, even though they have a much better game selection than the DS. Both companies also feel the need to re-release their handheld systems every year with almost no new features besides some slight design changes and charge twice the price for the product. If this doesn't constitute as shitting on the consumer, I don't know what does.
There will always be the "fanboys" for every system or company out there, but gaming has gone far from its roots to be in the situation it is in right now with the neglect of non-casual gamers, and it doesn't seem to be getting better any time soon.
Read more on this article...
In my first foray, I'd like to ask a simple question that may seem rhetorical, but is, in fact, not.
What happened to all the hardcore gamers who take pride in gaming?
When I was growing up, everyone I knew was proud to say that they had beaten all the games in their collection (or at least come close.) They were proud to show others their skills in a non-competitive way and many others were happy to watch. People loved games even though there was no such thing as "online multiplayer." There were people who played games simply for the challenge of overcoming what the developers could come up with or getting a high score. What happened to all of these people? Am I the last of a dying breed here?
Many may take the obstinate route and say something like "they grew up" or "got a life," but in most cases, I'd hardly say working yourself until you're blue in the face and miserable or getting married at 20 and having kids before you're even personally stable would hardly qualify as having a good life, and that's what we all want, isn't it? Most people I know who still play video games into their post-teens are having a lot better time in life than many of those who choose to shun them and think of them as kids' toys. The industry has changed in such ways that most of the time, more games are made specifically for mature audiences than they are for anyone under the age of 10 (with the exception of Wii and DS..)
And being a hardcore gamer doesn't necessarily mean that you have to play games 30 hours a week, or even anywhere near that much, but just play the games that challenge you more than they do appease your senses, so you can actually get some self-fulfillment out of overcoming a challenge. And hell, I work over 40 hours a week and still have time to play at least 40 more hours of games a week, so I wouldn't take "because I work 40 hours a week, I can't play many video games anymore" as a valid counterpoint. I'm able to play as much as I do because that's what I enjoy doing and I can motivate myself to play them very easily, like any hardcore gamer should be able to.
I attribute a lot of (or all of) this decline in hardcore gamers on the laziness of this country as well as the marketing that is involved with casual gaming becoming the norm within the industry right now.
The laziness and disinterest of our countrymen is seen most clearly when any hardcore gamer attempts to talk to others about gaming, since the conversation will often turn to more specific details of the gameplay of the game in discussion at the time, and through a few questions, a hardcore gamer can quickly tell whether or not the other person actually played the game to any appreciable length. This becomes an issue because for whatever reason it may be, between having the attention span of a chipmunk or just feeling its not "worth it" to invest a lot of time and effort to progressing through a video game when you could be out eating junk food or smoking pot or something equally valuable, Americans just generally don't explore games to anywhere near their full potential. Someone will still say "yeah, I played _________" when they only played the first level or chapter. This can also lead me to another discussion pertaining to the video game site/magazine/review industry, which is a whole separate article for another time.
The marketing involved with this downfall didn't change overnight, but has been a steady process since around the mid-90's when Sony's original PlayStation was released. I don't know if it was just something about 3D graphics in general or if it was the games they were releasing at the time, many of which were tying into older franchises or sometimes even popular movies, but lots of people who never played games before ended up buying a PlayStation. It was likely a combination of both, since at that point, any random schmoe who loves sports could play their favorite stupid sport in 3D now. I don't know why this was such a difference, but there was clearly some kind of change that happened within the industry to where by the time Dreamcast came out, gaming was an epidemic in the US. Everybody wanted in on this "gaming" thing. All the kids who never talked to you through school instantly wanted to be your friend because you've been "the gamer kid" since kindergarten and now games are all of a sudden fashionable. This was not to Sega's fault in any way, since more than 75% of their games library was very centered towards traditional, hardcore gamers.
At this point, it also became evident that hardcore gamers were on a decline, since the Dreamcast, a system which catered to hardcore gamers from the start (even its mission statements defined the hardcore demographic,) died just barely a year and a half after its release to the public, despite the system still, arguably, being the greatest system that hardcore gamers would ever have. Piracy may have also lead to part of this downfall, since games are so easily manipulated to be playable from a burned CD without even modifying your console, but that's a whole other discussion as well.
When Sony's follow-up to PlayStation, PlayStation 2 was released in the US in late 2000, it was clear a major shift had happened in the industry. Not only had the core demographic already begun to be shunned by the industry, but the new phenomenon known as the "system wars" had been propagated seemingly by fans at first, but the industry began to take this as a serious situation. It soon became the "epic battle" between Sony, Nintendo, and whoever else may have been the competitor in any given generation. First it was Sega, who claimed they were withdrawing from console production for good after Dreamcast, then followed by the next big player with Microsoft's Xbox in 2001. This battle still rages on today between these same opposing forces, and still to no avail besides to alienate the hardcore gamer in most instances and to drive the market towards those people who previously wanted absolutely nothing to do with gaming, making for a huge war seeking to gain nothing more than money.
While trying to still remain as unbiased as I can, just by using pure facts, I can say that I still support Microsoft more than their competitors for not completely giving into the casual gaming market head over heels, though there are shades of it within their decisions, almost by necessity. If you look at any major game that comes out for Xbox 360 (as well as the other systems, for that matter..) and especially Western-developed games, they always have some kind of super-easy difficulty setting to adjust for those people who have no true interest in playing the game, but instead would rather just look at some pretty graphics and listen to the sound, while incurring no personal challenge whatsoever. This is just an unfortunate problem that plagues the industry right now, because people think everything has to be more "accessible." Thankfully, some Japanese developers still keep even their easiest difficulties above the new norm of easy difficulties (see: Ninja Gaiden 2, Dead or Alive 4, Mega Man 9, any CAVE shmup, etc.) and this always puts a smile on my face when it takes a lot of practice and learning just to get through the easiest difficulty.
In respect of keeping hardcore gaming subliminally at the core of the Xbox 360 experience, Microsoft has come up with the Achievement or Gamerscore system, where players can log their various accomplishments within games to a centralized handle or username, which can be viewed by anyone, anywhere around the world. This reinstates pride to those of us who love playing games and challenging our own abilities through these games, which is something that has been overlooked for far too long until now. It seems to be working wonders, since numerous, very large internet sites and forums have been dedicated solely to the process of obtaining these points and this, even if indirectly, helps to strengthen that bond between gamers, no matter where you are in the world, if you're working together to accomplish the same goals.
Xbox 360 has become what many consider to be a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, not only in its choice of color, but in the demographic it largely targets through its promotion and the games that get published for the system, be it through retail or online purchase outlets. For this reason of being similar to Dreamcast, I sometimes fear for the future of great systems like Xbox 360, since trying to target that core demographic has lead to failure in the past, but Microsoft has been careful about not treading too steadfastly into the hardcore territory, so they can still keep their head above water, but the other sides of the industry are quite the opposite, diving into whatever potential money pit they can, at whatever expense it may be to the hardcore gamers. We have been shunned by two-thirds of the industry that we love, for no better reason than the dollar sign.
The Nintendo Wii and its timely competitor, the PS3, have started what is a cyclone of hype, marketing, and empty promises in the gaming world when they both launched 2 years ago. The Wii is very specifically targeting the demographic of people who honestly probably don't even understand the concept of a video game, letalone being someone who has played them in the past, and the PS3 tried hard to match Nintendo, since they came out so close in time to each other, though PS3 has a little harder vendetta against Xbox 360, since they are closer in terms of hardware and games selection.
The problem with PS3's situation is that they fail to secure what may be some of the more important games of the near future to be released on their system, but try to offer a plethora of other, non-gaming services to make up for the lack of game quality and selection. There are still many games that are multi-platform and released on both PS3 as well as Xbox 360, but when any hardcore gamer makes a list of what games look good to them on either system, the list ends up about 3 times as long for Xbox 360 than it would for PS3. And as gamers, why else would we want anything besides games? We don't care that it can play a Blu-Ray disc or link up with our PSP. We have computers for internet access and playing videos. We could care less about how it can use Bluetooth technology or fry our hamburgers for us. We want to play games, and sadly, there is not enough substance to keep a non-casual gamer going on that console.
The Wii has it far worse in this aspect, since a majority of their games are specifically aimed at people who don't play games, and this ends up with most games containing only a fraction of the potential gameplay and depth that most modern titles have (or should have,) having an avalanche of games for children under the age of 10 and many games that border on not even being eligible to be called a video game in the first place. Games where you learn Spanish? Games where you exercise? I don't think so. They seem to be hard at work on keeping that American idea that video games are just children's toys firmly in place.
Nintendo promised to "do things right, this time" since many people were disgruntled with the decisions they made on the GameCube, but this has turned out to be the biggest of many in a series of empty promises from Nintendo. We won't get too far into the handheld market, since the DS is basically a handheld version of the Wii, taking gaming to lower depths of immersion with pecking on screens with sticks and waving our arms around in the air to accomplish a task, and the PSP is as rife with piracy problems as the Dreamcast ever was, even though they have a much better game selection than the DS. Both companies also feel the need to re-release their handheld systems every year with almost no new features besides some slight design changes and charge twice the price for the product. If this doesn't constitute as shitting on the consumer, I don't know what does.
There will always be the "fanboys" for every system or company out there, but gaming has gone far from its roots to be in the situation it is in right now with the neglect of non-casual gamers, and it doesn't seem to be getting better any time soon.
Read more on this article...
Anime in America: The Downward Spiral Pt. 1 - Crash and Burn Marketing
Whether or not you want to accept it, there’s no way one can turn away from the fact that anime, and more importantly the anime industry, is slowly falling apart with passing time. There was a time when the iron was hot, let’s say 4-5 years ago, but that time has come to an end and any way you want to play the blame game is acceptable when determining the causes.
By the time I discovered anime at the age of 12, the whole medium still felt like it was in the late stages of underground appreciation, that being it was catching on, but you couldn’t just walk into any major retail outlet like you can now and purchase whatever series is your current flavor of the month. It came to me on those late nights watching a public access channel that dare show the more violent and risqué offerings, that being a lot of Urban Vision horror/action/pseudo-hentai such as the likes of Wicked City, Biohunter, Pet Shop of Horrors, Vampire Hunter D, etc, and occasionally the likes of Crying Freeman or repeatedly airing the first half of Fist of the North Star. Of course, mosaic-censoring pixilated all the entertaining bits to death. But that was then, and now at twice my age I’ve seen it all come and go, swelling up like blister only to be popped by two opposing forces: the fans and the industry itself.
Let’s skip past the old debate of sub vs. dub because nobody even cares about that nonsense anymore in a world where both language choices are offered on the DVD. Right now the big problem from the industry is piracy, usually expressed via panels at conventions across the country where company reps and voice actors stand up, shake their fists at greedy otaku thieves, then proceed to ask all the “die-hards” to promise they’ll a) stop downloading DVD rips of current American-licensed series, b) stop downloading Japanese series that are currently unlicensed in America and/or in the process of being licensed for American distribution, and c) to buy legitimately released American DVDs. At the end of said panels everyone usually makes a lot of noise, they shout “Huzzah!” and free swag is given away in hopes of encouraging people to get their anime legit, because apparently giving fans chibi character magnets and other trinkets somehow equals a promise will be kept.
To their credit, these companies are right when it comes to the fact that they’re losing money every time someone downloads anime, and they should be mad about it. I can say I’ve never illegally downloaded any anime, but that’s more to do with caring less about the medium at this point to bother hunting for the “cool, hip, new” shows that are really just recycled takes on series I watched years ago. One has to play devil’s advocate, though, and my question for the industry side is: How can you actually act so surprised by all this theft?
As an entertainment medium, anime has never been a cheap media to purchase. Look back to the time when your best bet for finding the stuff was at your local Suncoast, when people still bought VHS, and one likely was paying $29.99 (minimum) for 2-3 episodes at a time. You skip forward to recent years and what has really changed? I’ll use a personal example that everyone who watches AND buys their anime can relate to whether it be five years ago or the present. The series Noir comes out and I buy Vol. 1 + art box to hold subsequent volumes for $39.99. I get a free t-shirt for kicks and judging from the box size I’m informed that it’ll be a seven volume series. Said subsequent volumes come out every month/every other month and are purchased generally between the prices of $19.99 and $29.99 (depending where purchase was made) until series completion and, at said point, I’ve spent somewhere between $160 and $220 (not including tax) for one anime series. The kicker? Half a year to a year past series completion I stroll into my local retailer and spot Noir on the shelves, only this time it’s in a smaller box with thin-pak cases and a price-tag that shouts at me $89.99 and that isn’t even a sale price - it’s the MSRP. Apparently all that extra money spent was so I could have the series right when it came out, you know, with bulkier packaging and an exclusive t-shirt…
The point is not much has changed between now and then. Where once it was an exclusive item with the first volume, now you can opt to get the latest copy of each [insert your favorite anime series] volume with a figurine! Or a soundtrack CD! Or even steelbook DVD packaging! Come on industry heads, you drove all these otaku to thievery with the same kind of idiotic marketing tactics you used years ago, and now when they want something bad enough, well they just steal it. You lose, they win, at least until a lawyer gets involved.
At the end of the day, sure the industry has the right to be upset - the legal right. A ton of “fans” are stealing money right out of their pockets. Everyone knows a company wants to maximize their profits on a product, hence why anime companies release these individual DVD volumes at costly prices, because they have licensing fees to recoup on top of cost manufacturing costs and the like. Once they’ve roped enough of the “die-hards” in at initial release, why not release the entire series down the road for a reduced price? After all, not everyone can afford to spend $100+ per series in the long run so you have to move all that product by whatever means necessary, even if it means putting a price on said product that slaps that anime fan/consumer in the face for supporting your company from day one.
Oh, and Noir today? Amazon.com lists individual volumes at $26.99. The complete series boxset? $80.99. Thanks ADV!
Next time: Anime in America: The Downward Spiral Pt. 2 - Over-saturation Overload!
(Anime in America is a continuing series on the rise and fall of one entertainment medium that has been ruined by corporate mistakes and fandom-related idiocy alike.)
Read more on this article...
By the time I discovered anime at the age of 12, the whole medium still felt like it was in the late stages of underground appreciation, that being it was catching on, but you couldn’t just walk into any major retail outlet like you can now and purchase whatever series is your current flavor of the month. It came to me on those late nights watching a public access channel that dare show the more violent and risqué offerings, that being a lot of Urban Vision horror/action/pseudo-hentai such as the likes of Wicked City, Biohunter, Pet Shop of Horrors, Vampire Hunter D, etc, and occasionally the likes of Crying Freeman or repeatedly airing the first half of Fist of the North Star. Of course, mosaic-censoring pixilated all the entertaining bits to death. But that was then, and now at twice my age I’ve seen it all come and go, swelling up like blister only to be popped by two opposing forces: the fans and the industry itself.
Let’s skip past the old debate of sub vs. dub because nobody even cares about that nonsense anymore in a world where both language choices are offered on the DVD. Right now the big problem from the industry is piracy, usually expressed via panels at conventions across the country where company reps and voice actors stand up, shake their fists at greedy otaku thieves, then proceed to ask all the “die-hards” to promise they’ll a) stop downloading DVD rips of current American-licensed series, b) stop downloading Japanese series that are currently unlicensed in America and/or in the process of being licensed for American distribution, and c) to buy legitimately released American DVDs. At the end of said panels everyone usually makes a lot of noise, they shout “Huzzah!” and free swag is given away in hopes of encouraging people to get their anime legit, because apparently giving fans chibi character magnets and other trinkets somehow equals a promise will be kept.
To their credit, these companies are right when it comes to the fact that they’re losing money every time someone downloads anime, and they should be mad about it. I can say I’ve never illegally downloaded any anime, but that’s more to do with caring less about the medium at this point to bother hunting for the “cool, hip, new” shows that are really just recycled takes on series I watched years ago. One has to play devil’s advocate, though, and my question for the industry side is: How can you actually act so surprised by all this theft?
As an entertainment medium, anime has never been a cheap media to purchase. Look back to the time when your best bet for finding the stuff was at your local Suncoast, when people still bought VHS, and one likely was paying $29.99 (minimum) for 2-3 episodes at a time. You skip forward to recent years and what has really changed? I’ll use a personal example that everyone who watches AND buys their anime can relate to whether it be five years ago or the present. The series Noir comes out and I buy Vol. 1 + art box to hold subsequent volumes for $39.99. I get a free t-shirt for kicks and judging from the box size I’m informed that it’ll be a seven volume series. Said subsequent volumes come out every month/every other month and are purchased generally between the prices of $19.99 and $29.99 (depending where purchase was made) until series completion and, at said point, I’ve spent somewhere between $160 and $220 (not including tax) for one anime series. The kicker? Half a year to a year past series completion I stroll into my local retailer and spot Noir on the shelves, only this time it’s in a smaller box with thin-pak cases and a price-tag that shouts at me $89.99 and that isn’t even a sale price - it’s the MSRP. Apparently all that extra money spent was so I could have the series right when it came out, you know, with bulkier packaging and an exclusive t-shirt…
The point is not much has changed between now and then. Where once it was an exclusive item with the first volume, now you can opt to get the latest copy of each [insert your favorite anime series] volume with a figurine! Or a soundtrack CD! Or even steelbook DVD packaging! Come on industry heads, you drove all these otaku to thievery with the same kind of idiotic marketing tactics you used years ago, and now when they want something bad enough, well they just steal it. You lose, they win, at least until a lawyer gets involved.
At the end of the day, sure the industry has the right to be upset - the legal right. A ton of “fans” are stealing money right out of their pockets. Everyone knows a company wants to maximize their profits on a product, hence why anime companies release these individual DVD volumes at costly prices, because they have licensing fees to recoup on top of cost manufacturing costs and the like. Once they’ve roped enough of the “die-hards” in at initial release, why not release the entire series down the road for a reduced price? After all, not everyone can afford to spend $100+ per series in the long run so you have to move all that product by whatever means necessary, even if it means putting a price on said product that slaps that anime fan/consumer in the face for supporting your company from day one.
Oh, and Noir today? Amazon.com lists individual volumes at $26.99. The complete series boxset? $80.99. Thanks ADV!
Next time: Anime in America: The Downward Spiral Pt. 2 - Over-saturation Overload!
(Anime in America is a continuing series on the rise and fall of one entertainment medium that has been ruined by corporate mistakes and fandom-related idiocy alike.)
Read more on this article...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Jpop to be mainstream in America? Probably not.
News has broken recently about Japanese record companies having meetings with their American counterparts talking about the possibilities of having some Japanese artists cross over into America's music market, and the focus seems to be on some groups that may already have a foot-in-the-door, so to speak, through the association of doing songs for anime series. This spawns because the Japanese music industry is dissatisfied with their mere 46 billion (sic) yen a year earnings and are looking to expand this number. (Have they checked with the other world music markets to compare?) One of the main ideas behind this is that, basically, since anime and video games have already broken the barrier of going overseas and being widely accepted or thrust into the mainstream of culture, that music should be the next successor to this trend. I'd beg to differ, given the large differences between the industries between the two countries, and even more so, the consumers in their prospective markets.
First of all, this idea has already been attempted at short length in America through a small company called Tofu Records. In the mid-2000's, Tofu was bringing over artists who were popular among the anime crowd because they did a lot of anime theme songs, etc. and released those groups' real albums for sale in America for about the regular American CD price, not $35 a pop, like the average imported Jpop CD. This was an interesting strategy, but I'm sure they were very unable to get a hold of a lot of the artists from avex and other larger production companies that dominate Japan's market, but I think the biggest they got were PUFFY (AmiYumi, to those who know their American handle..) and T.M. Revolution. The rest was mostly indie rock/visual artists or just re-releases of anime soundtracks. Hell, they even paid a lot for PUFFY to come over and do lots of promotion and tours in America, which definitely helped, on top of happening around the same time that they had their show on Cartoon Network, so if I really had to take a wager, I'd say they were probably the biggest attempt at actually breaking an artist into the US market from Japan so far, and it wasn't done at the expense of changing everything about their sound and image to fit a more American style, they just let them be who they are. The group was still far from achieving anywhere near mainstream success here and were largely, by gathered opinion, treated fairly as a novelty or passing fad and aren't spoken of much in America anymore.
We also should consider just how different releasing and promotion structure is for the music industry between the two countries. The US rarely releases single CDs, and even if they do, they're very hard to get a hold of, and albums only normally come out for a group every 2-4 years, where some Jpop artists have a single every 2 months and an album every year that is mostly composed of their previous singles since the last album with a few album-only tracks included. If there was someone trying to do what Jpop artists do over there in our market, I couldn't see people being very happy with that. If they only released the albums of Jpop groups here, most of us fans would probably get a little annoyed because they're not technically keeping up with the material they're releasing in their native land, but honestly, I don't know how they could keep up without releasing singles, which would never happen. Beside the factor of singles just not being an accepted format in the US, this would also mean they'd have to press however many CDs for each single release, when there is probably not much of a market for them, in all honesty, so the money to be invested would likely not be ruled as justified if it came down to a business discussion.
On the subject of promotion and marketing of music in America, we'll use some recent and long-standing examples of successful music promotion in the US in the context of if it were a Japanese artist. Over time, most of the only successful promotion of music has come from the time-tested methods of touring, selling merchandise on tour, appearing on radio and TV shows, etc., but in recent years a few new players have come into the fray, those being internet promotion of many kinds, digital downloads of the same kinds, and advertising through video games, and for the sake of more specific context, games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
While Rock Band developer, Harmonix, has been in talks to create a Japanese-centric version of their hyper-popular rhythm game for their audiences over there, this also poses the question of whether or not this could be beneficial in helping to promote some of these "crossover" artists in this country through downloadable songs or specialized mini-game releases that center around a certain genre or theme. The only reason so much faith is put into this method is that there have been proven, publicly announced results from this, showing that when an artist's music is in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, some record companies have seen nearly a 300% increase in sales of those artists' songs through iTunes and physical CD sales. Things like this could be done right if they're kept on a small enough scale, but aiming for foreign music to be truly "mainstream" in America is just setting itself up for failure. Foreign music outside of Europe's will always be a niche market here, but if they market this directly at that niche market in the right ways, it could be successful in its own way.
When more specifically talking of bands from Japan touring in the US, it brings a few concerns to mind. The fact that touring the US is very different from touring Japan, where you'd have to go for longer periods of time with only traveling, have to have a live band to have credibility to US audiences (many, many Japanese concerts only sing and dance to a karaoke track,) be much farther away from home, and other things of this nature would certainly be a shock to most of the groups who have toured Japan before. Some of the talks also involved specifically certain younger girl groups with girls from ages 13-16, where if you think of little girls going off to do months of touring at a time in a foreign country, there's a laundry list of potential disasters that could happen. These girls are also often still in school or studying while they're working their entertainment job, and it is quite a norm of their industry to be working on promotion and various other projects almost every day of the week and every week of the month, etc., so I imagine the management companies would be fairly reluctant to let them just take off half a year to go tour a foreign country with no guarantees for selling concert tickets in the first place when they could just stay at home and have a constant stream of income.
Price and distribution is another factor in the question of whether this might be "worth it," in business terms. As anyone who has bought authentic Japanese CDs before should know, the prices are pretty hard to swallow, even taking into consideration import or shipping prices in the mix. With my past knowledge of how their industry works, this makes me think Japan would have a hard time trying to stomach selling their products for less money, unless they could contract some of the American CD manufacturers to press and distribute the CDs for them so they wouldn't have to send them overseas and spend all that extra money. As previously mentioned, Tofu records did the same thing before, but they were very limited on the artists they had at their disposal and they were very specifically targeting the anime audience, though, at this point, that is probably the smart thing to do, since those people have already had some exposure to this type of thing, as opposed to the 90 some percent of Americans who wouldn't even give something in a foreign language a second look. I think if they also showed more anime on American TV, this would easily help with promotion, but that's probably even bigger of a beast to try and tackle the American TV networks than it would be the music industry.
At the very core of the issue is the factor that anyone who has been an open fan of Jpop before surely knows, and that is simply the closed-mindedness of the American public. This comes from the absurd American thought process that is so often associated with music, where people think that the lyrics of a song have to "make sense" or "speak to them" in some really shallow, self-fulfilling way to be valid as music, and obviously if they don't understand what's being said, it becomes instantly invalid, regardless of musical quality. Then you could always question someone who uses this process as to how much value classical music has, which usually has no lyrics or vocals, yet very clearly inspired every form of modern music around. But we're not going to get into that. This is definitely not a barrier that is going to be broken anytime soon, if ever, but it will be interesting to see if anything comes from this. Read more on this article...
First of all, this idea has already been attempted at short length in America through a small company called Tofu Records. In the mid-2000's, Tofu was bringing over artists who were popular among the anime crowd because they did a lot of anime theme songs, etc. and released those groups' real albums for sale in America for about the regular American CD price, not $35 a pop, like the average imported Jpop CD. This was an interesting strategy, but I'm sure they were very unable to get a hold of a lot of the artists from avex and other larger production companies that dominate Japan's market, but I think the biggest they got were PUFFY (AmiYumi, to those who know their American handle..) and T.M. Revolution. The rest was mostly indie rock/visual artists or just re-releases of anime soundtracks. Hell, they even paid a lot for PUFFY to come over and do lots of promotion and tours in America, which definitely helped, on top of happening around the same time that they had their show on Cartoon Network, so if I really had to take a wager, I'd say they were probably the biggest attempt at actually breaking an artist into the US market from Japan so far, and it wasn't done at the expense of changing everything about their sound and image to fit a more American style, they just let them be who they are. The group was still far from achieving anywhere near mainstream success here and were largely, by gathered opinion, treated fairly as a novelty or passing fad and aren't spoken of much in America anymore.
We also should consider just how different releasing and promotion structure is for the music industry between the two countries. The US rarely releases single CDs, and even if they do, they're very hard to get a hold of, and albums only normally come out for a group every 2-4 years, where some Jpop artists have a single every 2 months and an album every year that is mostly composed of their previous singles since the last album with a few album-only tracks included. If there was someone trying to do what Jpop artists do over there in our market, I couldn't see people being very happy with that. If they only released the albums of Jpop groups here, most of us fans would probably get a little annoyed because they're not technically keeping up with the material they're releasing in their native land, but honestly, I don't know how they could keep up without releasing singles, which would never happen. Beside the factor of singles just not being an accepted format in the US, this would also mean they'd have to press however many CDs for each single release, when there is probably not much of a market for them, in all honesty, so the money to be invested would likely not be ruled as justified if it came down to a business discussion.
On the subject of promotion and marketing of music in America, we'll use some recent and long-standing examples of successful music promotion in the US in the context of if it were a Japanese artist. Over time, most of the only successful promotion of music has come from the time-tested methods of touring, selling merchandise on tour, appearing on radio and TV shows, etc., but in recent years a few new players have come into the fray, those being internet promotion of many kinds, digital downloads of the same kinds, and advertising through video games, and for the sake of more specific context, games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
While Rock Band developer, Harmonix, has been in talks to create a Japanese-centric version of their hyper-popular rhythm game for their audiences over there, this also poses the question of whether or not this could be beneficial in helping to promote some of these "crossover" artists in this country through downloadable songs or specialized mini-game releases that center around a certain genre or theme. The only reason so much faith is put into this method is that there have been proven, publicly announced results from this, showing that when an artist's music is in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, some record companies have seen nearly a 300% increase in sales of those artists' songs through iTunes and physical CD sales. Things like this could be done right if they're kept on a small enough scale, but aiming for foreign music to be truly "mainstream" in America is just setting itself up for failure. Foreign music outside of Europe's will always be a niche market here, but if they market this directly at that niche market in the right ways, it could be successful in its own way.
When more specifically talking of bands from Japan touring in the US, it brings a few concerns to mind. The fact that touring the US is very different from touring Japan, where you'd have to go for longer periods of time with only traveling, have to have a live band to have credibility to US audiences (many, many Japanese concerts only sing and dance to a karaoke track,) be much farther away from home, and other things of this nature would certainly be a shock to most of the groups who have toured Japan before. Some of the talks also involved specifically certain younger girl groups with girls from ages 13-16, where if you think of little girls going off to do months of touring at a time in a foreign country, there's a laundry list of potential disasters that could happen. These girls are also often still in school or studying while they're working their entertainment job, and it is quite a norm of their industry to be working on promotion and various other projects almost every day of the week and every week of the month, etc., so I imagine the management companies would be fairly reluctant to let them just take off half a year to go tour a foreign country with no guarantees for selling concert tickets in the first place when they could just stay at home and have a constant stream of income.
Price and distribution is another factor in the question of whether this might be "worth it," in business terms. As anyone who has bought authentic Japanese CDs before should know, the prices are pretty hard to swallow, even taking into consideration import or shipping prices in the mix. With my past knowledge of how their industry works, this makes me think Japan would have a hard time trying to stomach selling their products for less money, unless they could contract some of the American CD manufacturers to press and distribute the CDs for them so they wouldn't have to send them overseas and spend all that extra money. As previously mentioned, Tofu records did the same thing before, but they were very limited on the artists they had at their disposal and they were very specifically targeting the anime audience, though, at this point, that is probably the smart thing to do, since those people have already had some exposure to this type of thing, as opposed to the 90 some percent of Americans who wouldn't even give something in a foreign language a second look. I think if they also showed more anime on American TV, this would easily help with promotion, but that's probably even bigger of a beast to try and tackle the American TV networks than it would be the music industry.
At the very core of the issue is the factor that anyone who has been an open fan of Jpop before surely knows, and that is simply the closed-mindedness of the American public. This comes from the absurd American thought process that is so often associated with music, where people think that the lyrics of a song have to "make sense" or "speak to them" in some really shallow, self-fulfilling way to be valid as music, and obviously if they don't understand what's being said, it becomes instantly invalid, regardless of musical quality. Then you could always question someone who uses this process as to how much value classical music has, which usually has no lyrics or vocals, yet very clearly inspired every form of modern music around. But we're not going to get into that. This is definitely not a barrier that is going to be broken anytime soon, if ever, but it will be interesting to see if anything comes from this. Read more on this article...
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