Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

[Judge Dredd]

Stupid question, but now that Joe Biden is POTUS, does this mean that we’ll be experiencing a video game crash in a near future?

The last one we had was over 38 years ago.

The crash has been happening since the PS4, if not sooner.

But to answer your question, outside of a general US economic crash, I don't see anything happening to games specifically from the US government. We might see more censorship crack downs by banks across media in general, but I don't think games are a priority target for the far-left any more.

 

[XMassAllYearRound]

The crash has been happening since the PS4, if not sooner.

But to answer your question, outside of a general US economic crash, I don't see anything happening to games specifically from the US government. We might see more censorship crack downs by banks across media in general, but I don't think games are a priority target for the far-left any more.

I don't know if I agree with that, over the recent years I've noticed an aggressive and yet silent takeover of platforms pushing for western values.

Sony is the most obvious one as it has a set of policies not disclosed to the public nor developers on what is and isn't acceptable anymore, however Microsoft has been doing the same thing as of late and PC have been hammered with regulations and fines from local and foreign countries.

The only remotely free platform that I see right now is steam and they are still heavily inconcistent when it comes to moderation of japanese games.

 

[Aaa0aaa0]

I said it before and I'll say it again, the only good thing about an economic crash would be kicking video game journalist in the knees.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I don't know if I agree with that, over the recent years I've noticed an aggressive and yet silent takeover of platforms pushing for western values.

Sony is the most obvious one as it has a set of policies not disclosed to the public nor developers on what is and isn't acceptable anymore, however Microsoft has been doing the same thing as of late and PC have been hammered with regulations and fines from local and foreign countries.

The only remotely free platform that I see right now is steam and they are still heavily inconcistent when it comes to moderation of japanese games.

I agree. I'd say takeover has been far from silent, and consoles have been pushing western (ie. woke) values is still happening in localisation and Sony. There's still groups like ResetEra, and GamerGate is still brought up constantly, but those are within the gaming niche.

To clarify what I mean, compare it to 2012-2018. There's no feminist frequency. Gaming pundits are more concerned with Trump and capitalism than complaining about games having some -ism or -phobia. We haven't seen any organised "gamers are dead" style push for a long time. The mainstream media's boogieman seems to be YouTube and alt-tech, and it's been a long time since the last "I was raped in GTA" or "I was called a cunt in CS:GO, call the Bullyhunters!" style news story.

 

[Brain Problems]

I agree. I'd say takeover has been far from silent, and consoles have been pushing western (ie. woke) values is still happening in localisation and Sony. There's still groups like ResetEra, and GamerGate is still brought up constantly, but those are within the gaming niche.

To clarify what I mean, compare it to 2012-2018. There's no feminist frequency. Gaming pundits are more concerned with Trump and capitalism than complaining about games having some -ism or -phobia. We haven't seen any organised "gamers are dead" style push for a long time. The mainstream media's boogieman seems to be YouTube and alt-tech, and it's been a long time since the last "I was raped in GTA" or "I was called a cunt in CS:GO, call the Bullyhunters!" style news story.

It makes sense when you understand game journos as being failures in every aspect and embarrassed by their choice of profession, hence the need to bring "mature" subjects into the mix whenever possible regardless of suitability. Their esteemed peers don't know what the fuck a Cyberpunk is and why it's a buggy disaster, but they do know about the alt-right (scary!) and misogyny (bad!) so why not fuckin inject those things into every story possible and chase the leads that generate actual clout and eye-balls?

 

[Secret Asshole]

I mean, a lot of gaming journos have been losing their jobs lately so they're going after the most profitable stuff. Which was Trump. Now that Trump's gone, much like Gamer Gate, they're going to try to milk it as much as possible. The thing is most people just ignore them and journalist trust is pretty much at rock bottom. Most people consider them fucking liars anyway, so the biggest failures in journalism is like....fecal scum on the bottom of a toilet bowel. I mean, its really hard to go lower than gaming journos.

It makes sense when you understand game journos as being failures in every aspect and embarrassed by their choice of profession, hence the need to bring "mature" subjects into the mix whenever possible regardless of suitability. Their esteemed peers don't know what the fuck a Cyberpunk is and why it's a buggy disaster, but they do know about the alt-right (scary!) and misogyny (bad!) so why not fuckin inject those things into every story possible and chase the leads that generate actual clout and eye-balls?

Awhile ago, I read an article when gaming magazines switched to online, a lot of the people who ran the magazines left because the money dropped drastically. People who wrote for gaming mags typically were professionals in other areas (like there was this history prof who used to review grognard strategy games for PC Gamer way back). They were enthusiasts, mainly, who happily took a pay cut to basically engulf themselves in the gaming sphere. The thing was, the salaries dropped far too much once the magazine era ended, so all these professionals got other jobs.

During this period, you had some enthusiasts come on, who were younger and much less talented but still sacrificed pay. And then the glut of gaming websites drove prices down, so even these less talented writers left. And then the sites were just hiring at bargain basement prices, so you get shit like C- Sociology Majors or B- English majors who don't give a fuck about gaming but cannot get any other job. Or just trash writers who wanted to write for shit like 'The New Yorker' but were too fucking awful for that. Which made them INSANELY bitter. What continually makes them bitter is that their audience mocks and despises them and they're never listened to, so they're in this perpetual state of hating their jobs, being paid absolutely fucking nothing, forced to be a shill, having absolutely no influence on anything and 12 year olds on YouTube getting paid higher than they are. So the only minor 'joy' they get is shitting on the audience they hate and talking about subjects only relevant to them. For which gaming companies do not care about as long as they do their job and shill. And lately gaming companies have been steering away from Journos and paying influencers and YouTubers instead.

I mean, the only real gaming journalist is Jason Schrier, and that's only when he pulls his head out of his fucking asshole, which happens rarely. He's basically the only one to do anything remotely investigative and non-shill like (again, rarely). And he has that luxury because he's been in the business a long time and was an editor, so he was one of the few that were paid enough.

But journos basically are decreasing because of YouTube and Twitch. They're simply no longer useful to companies and nobody cares to read the 1,000th article on why women being sexy is bad or the 10,000,000th article on the legacy of gamer gate. So, they don't generate game sales. They don't influence the industry. The industry is using them less and less as time goes on. They're not producing the clicks they were anymore. Eventually people are going to start asking why do they even continue to exist when ResetEra is basically identical to a games journalist. And people already are.

 

[YoRHa No.2 Type B]

Sony by far is the biggest agitator when it comes to this. Particularly going hard on the eastern culture of gaming, censorship practices and stating that they will be recording you for "abusing others", though I imagine it serves as a nice excuse to monitor wrongthink. It really feels like they are regressing as a company, to me anyways.

 

[KokoroKoroki]

I mean, a lot of gaming journos have been losing their jobs lately so they're going after the most profitable stuff. Which was Trump. Now that Trump's gone, much like Gamer Gate, they're going to try to milk it as much as possible. The thing is most people just ignore them and journalist trust is pretty much at rock bottom. Most people consider them fucking liars anyway, so the biggest failures in journalism is like....fecal scum on the bottom of a toilet bowel. I mean, its really hard to go lower than gaming journos.

Awhile ago, I read an article when gaming magazines switched to online, a lot of the people who ran the magazines left because the money dropped drastically. People who wrote for gaming mags typically were professionals in other areas (like there was this history prof who used to review grognard strategy games for PC Gamer way back). They were enthusiasts, mainly, who happily took a pay cut to basically engulf themselves in the gaming sphere. The thing was, the salaries dropped far too much once the magazine era ended, so all these professionals got other jobs.

During this period, you had some enthusiasts come on, who were younger and much less talented but still sacrificed pay. And then the glut of gaming websites drove prices down, so even these less talented writers left. And then the sites were just hiring at bargain basement prices, so you get shit like C- Sociology Majors or B- English majors who don't give a fuck about gaming but cannot get any other job. Or just trash writers who wanted to write for shit like 'The New Yorker' but were too fucking awful for that. Which made them INSANELY bitter. What continually makes them bitter is that their audience mocks and despises them and they're never listened to, so they're in this perpetual state of hating their jobs, being paid absolutely fucking nothing, forced to be a shill, having absolutely no influence on anything and 12 year olds on YouTube getting paid higher than they are. So the only minor 'joy' they get is shitting on the audience they hate and talking about subjects only relevant to them. For which gaming companies do not care about as long as they do their job and shill. And lately gaming companies have been steering away from Journos and paying influencers and YouTubers instead.

I mean, the only real gaming journalist is Jason Schrier, and that's only when he pulls his head out of his fucking asshole, which happens rarely. He's basically the only one to do anything remotely investigative and non-shill like (again, rarely). And he has that luxury because he's been in the business a long time and was an editor, so he was one of the few that were paid enough.

But journos basically are decreasing because of YouTube and Twitch. They're simply no longer useful to companies and nobody cares to read the 1,000th article on why women being sexy is bad or the 10,000,000th article on the legacy of gamer gate. So, they don't generate game sales. They don't influence the industry. The industry is using them less and less as time goes on. They're not producing the clicks they were anymore. Eventually people are going to start asking why do they even continue to exist when ResetEra is basically identical to a games journalist. And people already are.

The only reason for gaming journos to exist in the current sphere is for us to point and laugh at them, that's the only kind of entertainment they're ever going to bring.

I miss the days of gaming magazines where you could tell a lot of the people writing the articles for them actually gave a shit about the articles they were writing, I remember some ads they gave to certain games like Driv3r where they gave it a fold-able double page spread that gave you the game's title and background info. Even if the game itself was nothing special, you will remember the game's title because of the unique approach they gave to it rather than just a small piece of flavor text with a promotional image, nowadays most ads are just ran on billboards and ad-space on various online spaces, just no soul whatsoever.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Sony by far is the biggest agitator when it comes to this. Particularly going hard on the eastern culture of gaming, censorship practices and stating that they will be recording you for "abusing others", though I imagine it serves as a nice excuse to monitor wrongthink. It really feels like they are regressing as a company, to me anyways.

Sony won't be recording you, they're just allowing players to record others which has happened since the PS3 and Xbox 360 era. Both Sony and Microsoft even allowed footage taken from third party sources if you could prove that you were being harassed by the account. All they did was streamline what they were doing already, it's jsut a bunch of clickbait stories misrepresented what was going on.

 

[BananaSplit]

Recent Famitsu numbers from yesterday (Famitsu source ) just revealed the PS5 sales continue to decrease, and Sony has apparently commented there were no abnormalities in production since December and they plan on continuing the pace. So the narrative of "Sony can't produce enough PS5s" is looking less true by the day while the current scenario of Sony actively screwing over the home JP market is getting more obvious, so in addition to the other reasons already revealed before, it's no surprise the public respond in kind

Although that won't stop certain english videogame news websites to start damage controlling the poor performances of the playstation console (out of sheer fanboyism), with for example Sal Romano who has recently added a line: "Next-generation consoles continue to arrive in low supply and sell out." in the recent Famitsu Sales article in Gematsu and certainly plan on adding it on the next articles for I wonder how long. Probably all year.

And the chart diagram continues to look like a japanese flag

 

[Judge Dredd]

then the glut of gaming websites drove prices down, so even these less talented writers left. And then the sites were just hiring at bargain basement prices, so you get shit like C- Sociology Majors or B- English majors who don't give a fuck about gaming but cannot get any other job.

Wasn't it revealed recently that Kotaku writers get 50k+? I don't remember if that was monthly or annually. I remember thinking it was a surprisingly high amount of money. On the other hand, California is apparently really expensive to live.

 

[KokoroKoroki]

Wasn't it revealed recently that Kotaku writers get 50k+? I don't remember if that was monthly or annually. I remember thinking it was a surprisingly high amount of money. On the other hand, California is apparently really expensive to live.

One gaming journo on Twitter revealed the salary he had for different workplaces, whether or not these are for senior positions I don't know, but it's still a lot of money.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Recent Famitsu numbers from yesterday (Famitsu source ) just revealed the PS5 sales continue to decrease, and Sony has apparently commented there were no abnormalities in production since December and they plan on continuing the pace. So the narrative of "Sony can't produce enough PS5s" is looking less true by the day while the current scenario of Sony actively screwing over the home JP market is getting more obvious, so in addition to the other reasons already revealed before, it's no surprise the public respond in kind

Although that won't stop certain english videogame news websites to start damage controlling the poor performances of the playstation console (out of sheer fanboyism), with for example Sal Romano who has recently added a line: "Next-generation consoles continue to arrive in low supply and sell out." in the recent Famitsu Sales article in Gematsu and certainly plan on adding it on the next articles for I wonder how long. Probably all year.

And the chart diagram continues to look like a japanese flag

There's no interruption in production because AMD just produced a fuckton of chips and they still are backorded to the point where demand trajectories can't be met, but all current PS5's are made and assembled in China, they're on the fucking boat. It's going to be weeks before they arrive in Japan much less America and Europe. Anything AMD relating has skyrocketed and them being the chip manufacturer for the Playstation has affected their output for normal CPUs.

if you try and contact enough places to pre-order them, both in the US and japan(hell they'll even appear in Thailand and Malaysia), eventually you might get a store owner or manager who can give you the exacts on the shipping time. The long and the short of it is, you can't buy them in stores or order them online like every other normal ass product yet.

I had an easier time pre-ordering and getting real nitche shit before, and it wasn't even this bad with either of the NES or SNES classics compared to this, and that was the last time something was a pain in the ass to get. The stores that I know of have zero of them in stock and there's still lotteries and lists. So anything that comes in gets immediately sold. If there somehow was a store that had sufficient overstock to the point where they're not selling, that's a rare find and there's about thousands of people looking for a haul like that. At most outside of hacker groups netting thousands from online retailers, all in store deliveries on average seem to be 3-5 systems at a time.

 

[Secret Asshole]

One gaming journo on Twitter revealed the salary he had for different workplaces, whether or not these are for senior positions I don't know, but it's still a lot of money.
View attachment 1864427

This fag has been in for years. I highly doubt any of these are starting salaries. and fucking LOL 90k from Waypoint, JFC, no wonder it folded like wet toilet paper.

 

[AnOminous]

I said it before and I'll say it again, the only good thing about an economic crash would be kicking video game journalist in the knees.

I wouldn't mind seeing the death of wokeshit as media companies in general are forced to make things people actually want to buy again instead of just pushing troon shit into everything.

This fag has been in for years. I highly doubt any of these are starting salaries. and fucking LOL 90k from Waypoint, JFC, no wonder it folded like wet toilet paper.

I wouldn't pay Klepek in literal peanuts.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I wouldn't pay Klepek in literal peanuts.

I would, as long as they were the ones coming out of an elephant's ass.

 

[Aaa0aaa0]

But journos basically are decreasing because of YouTube and Twitch. They're simply no longer useful to companies and nobody cares to read the 1,000th article on why women being sexy is bad or the 10,000,000th article on the legacy of gamer gate

Its like a really weird niche "video killed the radio star" phenomenon. People who can't convert their words into screen presence are fucked.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I wouldn't mind seeing the death of wokeshit as media companies in general are forced to make things people actually want to buy again instead of just pushing troon shit into everything.

I wouldn't pay Klepek in literal peanuts.

I also forgot to mention it is HIGHLY incestous in that all those publications are connected with people who all work together. So these people give their friends higher salaries. You think some random tranny writing about ranking the pokemon xhe wants to fuck is getting paid 50k a year? Fucking lol. Ad revenue is dead. Anyone thinking Klepek is worth 100k is a fucking retard. I don't even know how they make their money back.

Its like a really weird niche "video killed the radio star" phenomenon. People who can't convert their words into screen presence are fucked.

Most of these journos have no presence. They won't translate, who the fuck wants to look at that ugly fuck Klepek.

 

[SiccDicc]

I also forgot to mention it is HIGHLY incestous in that all those publications are connected with people who all work together. So these people give their friends higher salaries. You think some random tranny writing about ranking the pokemon xhe wants to fuck is getting paid 50k a year? Fucking lol. Ad revenue is dead. Anyone thinking Klepek is worth 100k is a fucking retard. I don't even know how they make their money back.

Not just limited to journos as Alison Rapp got into Treehouse by working with Game Informer and building connections that way. I think some of these idiots still manage to get writing jobs like Sam Maggs keeps getting despite how inadequate she is, but I haven't seen anything particularly egregious in a long while.

 

[Corn Flakes]

One gaming journo on Twitter revealed the salary he had for different workplaces, whether or not these are for senior positions I don't know, but it's still a lot of money.
View attachment 1864427

I find it telling that he specified "thanks to yearly union pay raises" there.

So, even if these websites were doing just peachy in terms of income, they would still bleed money out of every orifice due to wage floors imposed by unions. No wonder independent content producers are taking off instead.