Mass-Market Gam(bl)ing
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/12/17 at 04:51 PM CT
As time marches on and videogaming continues its move from niche hobby to mass-media industry, the one guarantee is that old revenue systems will be replaced by new ones, more profitable ones, more questionably-legal ones. Mobile gaming is, as we know, a darling of the folks at Forbes and The Wall Street Journal who don’t care about gaming as a hobby or as a cultural phenomenon, but are primarily interested in the games industry’s ability to generate profits. As faithful MeltedJoystick readers are aware, we don’t place mobile gaming and traditional videogames into the same bucket, partially because of things in mobile gaming that make it feel more like a quasi-criminal attempt at getting fools and their money to part. Hence why MeltedJoystick (and every other videogame site) doesn’t cover video slots, online poker, or any other forms of gambling.
Recently, I stumbled across a short, interesting article from 2012 about how Japanese mobile games make money. While it is true …
Gamers Divided
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/05/17 at 04:21 PM CT
With the election of Donald J. Trump as the current President of the United States, the divided nature of Western civilization has come to something of a head. Protests in the streets, abuse of power, cronyism: All of these things have been symptomatic of a problem for decades, but they are significantly worse right now.
“Why are you talking about political bull feathers in this column?! I come here to read about vidyagaemz!” you might say.
As a microcosm of society in general, and as one of the fastest growing forms of media in terms of visibility, popularity, and social justice pressure, gaming is something like the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Things seemed good in gaming for several decades. After the Videogame Crash of the early ‘80s, when gamers reunified, we were a fairly monolithic block of culture. The same games were generally well-regarded by players and critics alike. There were no overwhelmingly vocal, yet minisculely-niche groups demanding that every …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/29/17 at 04:45 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! February is still Winter, and it’s still horribly cold and unpleasant here at the MJ HQ, but that’s okay, because we can sit inside where it’s warm and play videogames… can’t we? Are there any new videogames coming in February that we’ll want to play? Let’s hope so!
Three pieces of licensed shovelware start us out this month. Chris can’t stop salivating over Telltale Games’ take on his favorite TV show, zombie-schlock “The Walking Dead,” which is getting a new installment. Anime fans are also getting yet another ‘Naruto Shippuden’ game as well as a new Musou game based on the ‘Berserk’ manga.
In the realm of ports and remasters, things are relatively sedate compared to how they have been recently. The PS4 is getting a physical release of “Pac-Man Championship Edition 2” (to go with last year’s physical release on XBONE) as well as a port of “Earthlock: Festival of Magic.” The 3DS is …
What are Japanese Gamers Playing?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/22/17 at 05:46 PM CT
Quite some time ago, I wrote an open letter to Japan’s gaming industry as a whole, asking, “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” Naturally, I never got a response, but in working with Chris and Nick on MeltedJoystick in the intervening years I’ve noticed some interesting trends that might actually help explain Japan’s problems.
First of all, the top selling games in Japan and the top selling games in the wider world look much, much different from each other. Handhelds, specifically the 3DS, dominate Japanese charts, as do exclusives, with but a single non-exclusive and Western-developed game among them. Western charts, on the other hand, are, predictably, shooters and sandboxes and sandbox shooters with one sports game (soccer, because Europe) and a number of double-listings for multi-platform titles that artificially make the list even more homogenized.
What’s interesting about the lack of Western games being played by Japanese gamers is the fact that a not-insignificant …
Bait and: Switch Reactions
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/15/17 at 02:57 PM CT
This week, Nintendo finally held their long-awaited Switch reveal event. Lasting just over an hour, Nintendo spent a lot of time painstakingly showing us what the Switch is, seemingly as an overcompensation for their confusing messages regarding the late WiiU around the time of its own launch. Unfortunately, despite all that showing and telling, Nintendo still failed to explain some of the core nuts-and-bolts features of the Switch, such as whether or not the (Western) games shipped on cartridges will download and patch the game ON the cartridge or whether the Switch’s official, meager 32GB of storage space will be used for 20GB patches like every other platform.
Regular readers of MeltedJoystick’s blog column will no doubt remember my list of 5 Ways the Switch Could Sink. After watching the Switch reveal event, I’m very saddened to report that Nintendo has managed to nail 3 of them. The gaming media is surprisingly even-handed regarding the Switch, though there is still …
Online Communities and the Size Thereof
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/08/17 at 02:25 PM CT
As a reformed console-exclusive gamer myself, I’m intimately familiar with all of the old pros and cons of console gaming vs. PC gaming. And as someone who is willing to reassess things as variables change, I no longer cling to any of those obsolete arguments for the sake of tradition.
The current breed of console-exclusive gamer needs to come up with new reasons to avoid the ever-more-difficult-to-deny superiority of PC gaming when compared to the current console situation. The latest fuel for the fire is something that never would have registered with me during my console-exclusive years even if it had been a significant factor at the time (between roughly 2002 and 2013).
Apparently, the online communities for multi-platform games with a heavy online multi-player element are much, much smaller on PC than they are on any given console. Adding the fact that console online communities are segregated from each other due to money grubbing on behalf of the console manufacturers, …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/01/17 at 02:55 PM CT
Happy 2017, dear MeltedJoystick readers and staff! And welcome back to another look into the near future! The dismal months of 2016 are in the past. Baby New Year has once again aged into Father Time, providing us – and, more importantly, the games industry – a chance for a symbolic fresh start. Will things improve in the coming year? I certainly hope so!
2017 is kicking off with a fresh dose of ‘high-quality’ shovelware. By that, I mean that the games are still based on licensed IPs, but they generally have a stronger reputation than shlock based on Burger King or Doritos. There’s a new ‘Digimon’ RPG (I’m really surprised that IP is still running, but if ‘Pokemon’ can do it…), a new game based on the ‘Fate’ anime/manga series, and an HD port of the last game in the Disney mash-up series, ‘Kingdom Hearts.’
That ‘Kingdom Hearts’ port isn’t alone, however. Square-Enix is starting out 2017 with a compilation of the episodic first season of their …
Year in Review: 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/25/16 at 05:50 PM CT
Happy Yule to all MeltedJoystick staff and readers alike! 2016 is on its way out the door, and I, for one, am glad to see another rather dismal year of gaming news move out of the way, allowing blind hope and baseless speculation to buoy us into the New Year. As usual, I’ve hand-picked the top 10 gaming-related events of the year, dividing the lot into stacks of 5 Fails and 5 Wins.
While 2016 was certainly better than the abysmal 2014, in which there were no wins, it was a difficult year to get excited about, especially when the Fails just kept coming. It was ultimately difficult to narrow down the Fails to merely 5 and equally difficult to find 5 unequivocal Wins, but I persevered and the results now await your reading pleasure.
Here’s hoping for a bigger and brighter 2017!
Top 5 Fails
5. WiiU Discontinued, World Says, “Meh.”
After a botched birth and short, painful life, the WiiU was officially discontinued by Nintendo in 2016… to the despair of nearly no …
Empty Nest: “Dragon Nest” MMO Switches Publishers, Murders Thousands of Characters
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/18/16 at 03:31 PM CT
With the general friendliness and reliability of services like Steam, GOG, and Netflix, it’s easy to become complacent and forget that online-only games, products, and services can vanish overnight and with little to no warning. Last week, I covered the disappearance of online Indie game marketplace/community, Desura. This week, I bring belated tidings of sadness and despair regarding one MMO – specifically the MMO into which the MeltedJoystick crew sank thousands of hours.
“Dragon Nest,” a Korean MMO regularly advertised as the ‘fastest’ MMO, recently changed publishers. While the game was always published by different parties in different parts of the world, from the time of its North American launch in 2011, it was published by one Nexon. Nexon never had a particularly great reputation with any of the online game servers it operates, but it seems that “Dragon Nest’s” developer, Eyedentity, finally got fed-up with them and decided to run the North American …
Bye-Bye, Desura! Hello… OnePlay?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/11/16 at 02:49 PM CT
That PC gaming client I love to hate is officially dead. No, not Uplay! No… not Origin either! Desura, the Indie client that I compared unfavorably to Linux way back in 2013, filed for bankruptcy back in June of 2015. After flailing around in limbo for over a year, all of Desura’s assets went offline earlier this Fall in September, 2016. For anyone who was heavily invested in Desura games (*chuckle*), the company’s disappearance serves as a cautionary tale about the ephemeral nature of digitally-distributed software. Of course, anyone who was heavily invested in Desura clearly had something wrong with them, mentally. The bright side is that Desura wasn’t DRM, so any Desura games one might have downloaded should still work. (Just remember to make a backup!)
I first noticed Desura’s absence during Black Friday, when I was checking around all of the PC gaming clients for amazing sales. When I went to Desura’s site, I was greeted with a full-screen message relating that …
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