A Girl’s Gotta Do What a Girl’s Gotta Do.

Anyone who is shocked at Squenix move to release on the Xbox 360 with their marquis title is operating under the lovesick notion that business and loyalty are two intertwined things, and that Sony was caught off-guard by the notion that their title was going to go.

I’d disagree. I think they knew, but importantly they knew and kept quiet about it. As delays go, Square has given up on all methods of timeliness. They have grown beasts, with budgets and stomachs to match. They knew the options, and they knew that their chances of financial stability are hindered by exclusivity. Sony has merely to be quiet during the whole preceding. If Sony, in fact, got owned, it was something they were quite aware of, and their E3 showing of tight, game-centric focused announcements gives ample argument that they knew they would be embarrassed. If they want solace, they merely look at the Wii’s sophomoric offerings.

No, the real group that got owned were fanboys. Sony fanboys. FF Fanboys. Chocotards. Cloudtards.

As all fanboys must come to grips before slavishly planning out purchases years ahead of an actual release date, videogames are ultimately commissioned artists. You may love the art, you may love what it does, but ultimately the art exists as a medium by which to make money. And if you do not account for the economic side every step of the way, you will find no end of surprises and disappointment.

While the greatest success of Square resided on the Playstation, they have been no strangers to multiple releases. Final Fantasy 11, for example, was on the Xbox 360, and maintained a longer and more flexible shelf life. Every older Final Fantasy has gravitated, in some form, to the Nintendo DS. Final Fantasy 7 was released on the PC, back when that was a viable medium.

Exclusives, such as Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and My Life As a King… Square Enix is not a Sony company. You associated it with Sony because of your experience, but this company has never shied from the quick, shrewd dollar. They would partner with anyone and everyone. Be it an American film studio, to a friend-turned-adversary, they simply do not say no. If they were

And with their bad bookkeeping and design philosophy, you can’t really blame them. Japanese studios seem notoriously bad at keeping robust portfolios and books. Capcom’s stock is an option for an American takeover, to give you an idea how bad it must suck if our fail-centric dollar can buy them out. Square seems constantly sidelined with debt and delays. Team Ninja is inadequately ran, and will suffer extreme consequences by result. Sega … well there’s a reason they don’t make anything other than Sonic and fanboy requests anymore.

Fanboys tend to overlook the financial side of things to their own detriment. They tend to overlook these statistics because they see the side of their goal that produced a ray of light in their entertainment experiences. This is not bad business or improper Japanese etiquette, it is simply how Japanese game companies rationalize spiraling development costs. It was when they took a sequel for FF6 and turned that into FF7. It will happen again.

There are no reasons to be surprised by the coup of non-exclusivity. It is standard, and has been the industry’s direction for the past 8 years.

I will let you fanboys in on the secret of how games stay exclusive. With this in hand, you can keep your favorite developer with you on your controller and logo of choice for all eternity. It is the one factor that ensures fanboyism, and the continuation of your particular poison in your preferred medium.

Long Term Financial stability

This is the sole, and I do mean sole factor in staying with a particular gaming system for an extended period of time. A few contrasting cases-

Nintendo has
A. A long history of continued console profitability, game license fees, and even in its missteps manages levels of profitability that are difficult for their competition to match. When all else fails, they own the handheld market with a near-iron fist.
B. A large wealth of games that turn a profit and have a longer than average shelf life.
C. Nintendo seldom loses money.
D. Nintendo only plays on Nintendo.

Bungie has
A. A long history of continued profitability, licensing, and even in its missteps manages levels of profitability that are difficult for their competition to match. When all else fails, their franchise’s marketing produces enough hype and enough quality to gloss any shortcomings.
B. A consistent lineup of best-selling games that turn a profit and have a longer than average shelf life.
C. Bungie seldom loses money
D. Bungie hasn’t made a non-Xbox game in over a decade.

Blizzard has
A. A VERY long history of continued profitability, licensing, and even in their missteps… scratch that. This is the company that made Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. They invented and reinvented the idea of gaming crack addict. They have more money than any company has any right to, and their quality control, even to non-fans, is unparalleled.
B. THE consistent lineups of best-selling games that turn a profit and have an obscenely longer shelf life than is average.
C. Blizzard prints money.
D. Blizzard IS pc gaming.

Now compare the fortunes of those three with 3 fanboy-favorite companies: Capcom, Squenix, and Sega. The top 3 companies, and the bottom three companies, both have had games whose budget has ran amok. But whatever the reason, it is my argument that continued success and financial management has more to do with gamer and medium loyalty than any bit of Japanese etiquette or fan outcry.

Which makes fanboys, in their current state, completely useless internet twaddle.

Want to know the future of fanboyism, fanboys? Look at Trekkies today. They have absolutely zero say in the last 4 movies and 2 TV series. Only a hiatus, and an edgy reinterpretation are its only hopes, and Trekkies keep a machine afloat that for all intents and purposes has been diuretic for the past decade.

The Fanboy Revolution.

As much as I deride the fanboy, not all of their traits are bad. Indeed, their slavish attention to detail, company loyalty, and internet-addiction are all a strange brew that could be utilized towards better companies, more stream-lined management and a savvier economy.

Ultimately, fanboyism blunts the razor’s edge of failure from dancing along the throat of companies who deserve the scarlet neck fountain treatment. I think, long-term, it can work in reverse.

1. Boycott all gaming movies.
Why: Gaming movies are about taking a brand that is in the public eye and expanding on it. It’s Chex Mix: The Movie. Take something anyone is vaguely familiar with, and market it to death. But fanboys, don’t give in. Instead, ignore its existence. Don’t even compare it to the game. Don’t even talk about it. Let it slide off of you. Does that mean you won’t get to see Mila Jovovitch in all her ass-kicking glory?
End Result: Rent the Fifth Element and Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, and learn how movies are fun and how movies laugh at you and your steal your wallet. At the end of the night, you’ll have some perspective about the value of ideas over branding.

2. Buy Final Fantasy 13 for the Xbox 360.
Why: Sony made a system that is famously hard to program, on a controller that needs some reworking to be more modern, at a price which is unfeasible. Microsoft made a system that is a lot easier to program and adapt, has similar horsepower, and runs at a higher resolution than most PS3 games.
End Result- An embarrassed Sony would be a marvelous thing. Gone is their marquis franchise, with higher numbers. The money handlers would have an incentive to push for easier dev kits, and developer support, lowering the cost of game development and encouraging a rebirth. Buy now on the PS3, and you support an idea that really hurt game developers, artists, and gamers alike. There is no incentive to the PS3 game other than fanboyism, and Squenix will hurt as a result of your slavish decision.

3. Skew the demographics on Party Games.
How: I am going to describe two Gamer parties: The first has booze, Mario Kart, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Dance Revolution. Sounds fun, right?

The second party has lights rigged to the dance machine, other lights to the floor, a giant game projector that plays techno-themed music to the game of the moment, be it Tetris, Asteroids, DDR, Rez, or some random Japanese fighter. The small TV by the bathroom has Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES by the men’s, Puyo Puyo Pop by the ladies.

Now I can assure you, with utter certaintly, that you can tell which one kicks more ass. Too often do we let shiny, new, and populist take over the wealth of imagination and…well, wealth that our generation possesses. If we’re going to kick ass, we need to kick ass differently.
End Result: Companies with a vested interest in your continued purchase of peripherals have to up their game, not their microtransactions.

4. Put your money where your mouth is.
How: This has little to do with games and more to do with investments. The quickest and most effective way to have input in a decision is to own a piece of the company. If you believe in a company’s continued success enough to fag out for its every release, you should at least get a return on that love. If you feel your company has set itself adrift on a bad idea, your refined sense of quality gaming will allow you to detect trouble before the suits do, and you can get out while the getting is good and invest otherwise.
End Result: The executives answer to YOU. Ya know what’s more revealing than E3? A shareholder meeting.

5. Avoid Special Edition Gaming Boxes
How: Buy the regular edition. This strategy is working phenomenally with the movie industry. There will be less and less of a divide between the two, and with Blu Ray’s eventual succession, very little difference. Collecting them is a matter of oddness: As of this writing there are two unopened N64 Gold editions of Ocarina of Time going for above $200. The other hundred Gold Ocarinas? 99 cents. These are not investments so much as they are static versions of Warcraft armor or Xbox Live Achievement points. In other words, they matter to nobody that matters. The sixty some dollars, properly invested, would not have yielded a $333% return of the top two items, but certainly gained more than the -.01666% return yielded by the hundreds left over. Nothing “collector’s” is ever valued by collectors. They value the obscure, the broken, the woops.
End Result: More features at a lower price. Zero incentive for limiting supplies. More shelf space for more video games, not space taken up by a “making of” DVD that you watched half of once.

6. Let them fail… from a distance.
How: Mario Sunshine sucked. It made a lot of money, but not the usual megaton of money that Mario is usually known for. Result? A return to fundamentals and innovation, the cessation of the backpack and the freaky Jell-O creatures. Enough people stayed away. Imagine what Galaxy would have looked like if no one had bought Sunshine. It wouldn’t have ceased Mario, not with his brand strength. But THAT. GAME. WOULD. OWN. YOU. Now imagine if enough people had the courage to ignore Sonic… oh wait. You bought almost every recent Sonic game! Enjoy your knighthood!
End Result: Only the best survive. The bad will live on, but in ironic T Shirt form. You play better games, are less disappointed, and are stylin’. How do you not win???

None of the above suggestions take away from the essential love of (insert here) that makes a fanboy. But it is savvier fanboyism that leaves its mark upon the company, the series, and the industry. I purposefully avoided the typical fanboy suggestions while giving full in to one of them.

I avoided…
Suggesting you work for a video game company.
Cutting all ties with a company.
Buy small-budget games with the same fervor you buy the AAA games.

I could not avoid…
Blogging about it.

Still, avoiding 75% of the clichés will have to be sufficient. The only question is when/if will a real change take place. It will be a lot harder for your favorite company to ignore you. The world begins with you.

Another Futile Internet Letter

Dear Nintendo,

This is a hard letter for me to write. We’ve been through so much together. But honey, darling, you need to seek help.

Let me open by saying I’m so, so proud of how far you’ve come. You have a hot console, a deliriously successful portable device, but your ego has spun out of control. I can’t imagine the sacrifices that it took to deliver such innovation to the market place. But you’re frankly looking a bit burnt out. In a moment I can only imagine was exhilarating, you changed your life for the better. There was a twinkle I haven’t seen in your eye since… well, since 2D.

I missed you.

But we never talk. You release Zelda after Zelda with no innovation in a decade. Sure, the games are prettier and the enemies bigger, but you’ve never retained the scope. And Mario? He’s good, but there was such an intensity in games like Mario World, in Mario 3, that spoke of absolute, impossible peril. He’s… cutesy wootsy, now, and it’s hard to look at him for very long. The edges are softened, and the giant realm of Mario has conflated to theme games. Galaxy’s theme was range controlling, and flying in an “open realm”. Sunshine’s theme was that damn backpack. Now look at Super Mario World; it gave you frenetic flight, a dinosaur, swarms of new enemies. But let’s not dwell on the past.

The point is, I think you forget what loyalty is. Loyalty is exciting. It does mean sequels. But sequels, and new things, are good! We love Mario, we love Link, we LOVE sequels. It’s important to have variety, too, but you should never forget your roots. It’s what made the Gamecube profitable.

I was there, Nintendo. I was there when the Xbox, the frigging XBOX!, was kicking your butt graphically. I held out when Square left you for lying to Sony, for when your games cost 20 dollars more than the others on the market for what was actually a worse graphics processor. I stuck with you when you unveiled a controller that looked, with no trace of subtlety, a woman’s uterus. I stuck with you. Not Sony, not Xbox. You. Not even Sega, whom I admit was cute, could draw my attention away from your pill-shaped logo, your charming fantasies.

But at E3, you embarrassed me. You brought out Shawn White. Shawn White! I don’t think there’s anyone left in this generation who considers Shawn White as anything but our happy go lucky ambassador to the suits to make them appear edgy. The rest of us? He reminds us of Carrot Top. Not his fault I know, but the fact is that if you exchanged goofy props for goofy endorsements, you’re just left with a creepy redheaded stickboy who really, really shouldn’t get as much work as he does.

Wii Music’s a cute idea, but see, this is the problem with consequences. Watching people play something? It’s not that fun. It’s not even close to fun, we see people acting like retards holding Nintendo products. And it’s not the bulwark of innovation. Games like Rez and Samba De Amigo were doing this before anyone made a Hero out of a Guitar.

I think I knew this conversation would happen when I took a look at Microsoft. There it is, it forced its way into the market, and has a product that the Japanese are A. Belligerent, and B. Indifferent towards. But here they are, the hot system, the best selling system, the system that can run anything, and releases (and steals) games that tickle gamer’s fancy. I took a look at the proud, gleaming (it gibes off a lot of heat) system, and wondered, where had our magic gone?

It’s not with Shawn White. Is he going to take you out and play with you when Square Enix won’t play with you and the new Game of the Year isn’t on you? What’s that? Shawn’s going to be on Halo, Nintendo, teabagging some son of a bitch that got between his base and his flag some 20 game yards away. You might not like to think about it, but that’s just who Shawn is.

Or maybe you’ll enjoy your little downloadable teensy Final Fantasy castle game. Would you like that? I admit I’m not the biggest fan, but I’ll be damned if I have to spend 35 dollars to play a game whereas I have not one but two choices on where to play the prettiest bit of render this side of Crysis. Which you cannot and will never run.

Oh, think the graphics joke was a cheap shot? Well let me tell you, Nintendo. I grew up. I grew up like the world grew up and we gained money. I don’t rely on my parents to give me money. I make my own, and I wasn’t content to watch you on a 27 inch tv with no right sound channel. No, Nintendo, I bought something pretty. It makes games beautiful again. And you? You pout on it. The writing was on the wall, and you couldn’t be bothered to do even a little upconversion.

Would it have killed you to put on a little HD? It would make you look a lot prettier, and I, I just don’t know what to say. Looks aren’t everything, but you just seem to only care what everyone else thinks about you. You attract your casual gamers and yes you’re making a lot of money. But you know what? Someday little Billy Wii Music’s going to grow up and make a ton of money. And he’s going to buy an Xbox because he wants to shoot some bastard upside his head and save the world? And you, Nintendo?

YOU’RE GOING TO BE AT HOME, COOKING. AND DOING YOGA, AND PLAYING RACE CARS WITH THE GODDAMN MARSHMALLOW STAR FROM MARIO GALAXY THAT NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT! Why won’t you grow up, Nintendo!?!? GROW UP AND LET’S GROW OLD TOGETHER!!!!

I shouldn’t have yelled. I just want a commitment, Nintendo. And today, on that stage, I think I found out where your heart lies. I think it’d be best if we distance ourselves. Maybe, we could be friends, and someday we’ll laugh about this.

But where I stand, it just can’t be the same way. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. This has been a hard letter for me to write. I want you to love me for me, not me for Mii.