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• 19May 13

  Compromise - Least Bad Solution for Nintendo's YouTube Plans

  I would like to put forth my figurative two-cents on this particular issue concerning Nintendo's latest business plans.

  Personally, I would prefer that Nintendo of America and those opposed to it declare truces with each other, back off from their stances and sweep the issue under the rug until it rears its ugly head again - hopefully until after the unlikely event that human civilization as we know it no longer needs money.

  (I wish that I was completely joking about that, but I am digressing.)

  If they still want to be at loggerheads with each other then, then they, and anyone with a stake, such as the "Let's Play" video-making folks, should compromise and go for the win-win solution of sharing revenue.

  That is because any other outcome (barring that everyone just drops the issue and goes on business-as-usual) has everyone losing.

  IF THE OPPOSITION GETS ITS WAY...

  Before going further, I would remind people that the notion of property is one of the oldest lynchpins of human civilization. If the newer aspects of modern civilization, namely freedom rights, are allowed to trump it, then we are going backwards, just like we would if property is to ascend above freedom rights.

  That said, Nintendo is certainly thinking that it is entitled to revenue that is generated by YouTube videos that feature its properties. A legal argument against this will be terrifically difficult to formulate, but if litigation is pursued anyway, then we run the risk of having Nintendo harden itself, and a hardened Nintendo will very likely be an ugly Nintendo.

  You may want to be reminded that Nintendo of America had signed the letter to the Congress of USA in support of legislations that protect IPs. There is not any strong evidence that Nintendo had thrown its weight behind SOPA or withdrew support from it, but it just might think of having a more blatant official stance if the likes of Lamar Smith brings that bill out of the shelves again or creates a new similar bill while Nintendo is contesting a legal challenge against its attempts to claim all ad revenue for said YouTube videos.

  In other words, we risk having this issue being blown into something bigger if it escalates into a legal battle.

  If Nintendo loses, there is of course the old-but-difficult-to-dismiss expectation that a Nintendo bereft of a potential source of income becomes weaker and lousier at making games; money is how the likes of Nintendo gets the resources and ideas to make games after all. A weakened game-maker is rarely a good thing for anyone with a stake in the gaming industry, the people who make those Let's Play videos included.

  Of course, one can just say "f*ck Nintendo", but not everyone hates Nintendo, is it? We can look elsewhere other than Nintendo, but such antagonistic scenarios are likely to repeat with other game-makers instead of Nintendo until the involved parties learn to hand figurative olive branches to each other.

  IF NINTENDO GETS ITS WAY...

  That would be awful, because it would turn into a lose-lose outcome for certain.

  To elaborate, there could be a boycott of Nintendo's properties by YouTube content-makers, since they don't get any income from making videos featuring Nintendo's properties if Nintendo gets to eat all the advertising revenue. Barring die-hard Nintendo supporters, they have no incentive to make videos on the game-maker's products, especially if they depend on the ad revenue for their livelihood.

  Nintendo, and any other game-maker that has similar plans, can forget about being paid for marketing work that it does not fund.

  However, the ones that would lose out most are game consumers who are doing research into possible purchases. They may well lose the sources of information that those YouTube videos featuring games could have provided.

  In addition, such an outcome may well stall the advent of a new kind of career that is being formed in this Age of Information, namely that of people making a living making videos on the Internet.

  I am aware that some of you have more than enough scorn for such people to utter statements such as "Get a real job!" - among other far less courteous remarks - but some of us actually like seeing new kinds of careers coming into being.

  A COMPROMISE: SHARING REVENUE

  If Nintendo has any wisdom, it may want to consider proposing the sharing of revenues. It is more than likely to run into opposition anyway, of course - there will always be people who believe that they are fully entitled to all of the revenue from the advertisements that accompany their videos, as well as those who believe that Nintendo should be reamed.

  However, I like to believe that most of those opposing Nintendo's move to attempt to claim the ad revenue in their entirety would reciprocate if Nintendo was to propose sharing of revenues.

  If they could shake hands and work out the proportions of their shares, this agreement can even turn into a partnership of product promotion, e.g. Nintendo gives them preview builds of games to make videos with and such. That would give the likes of Nintendo more partners to highlight their products with, in addition to the established gaming sites.

  Most importantly, the regular game consumer would benefit from this, as there would be richer sources of information on games, upcoming or existing.

  Here's hoping that Nintendo and the opposition would come together for the win-win.

  P.S. My account is still afflicted with one of the glitches that have been reported here, so I won't be able to reply in any way in the LiveFyre thread below.

  • Posted May 19, 2013 9:31 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 18May 13

  Maybe Film-Makers Can Do Something with Games: A Remark about Wreck-It-Ralph

  

  Customary opening picture to let you know what I am really writing about. Picture includes insignificant cameos.
  

  IMPORTANT FOREWORD: This article is perhaps better directed at those who have seen and still remember the movie, as I am rather averse to describing scenes in a movie with anything more detailed than vague statements.

  Now, I have to admit something here, if you haven't heard this already: I am very jaded about film-watching.

  Perhaps I had been watching one too many films that I had once found awesome that everything else that came later felt bland to me - such as Brave, which I find to be filled with one too many story devices that I have seen before.

  ***SPOILER***

  

  At least, the sales-witch was entertaining to me.

  However, I am personally glad that once in a while there is a movie that slaps me silly for thinking that I have seen everything to see in movies. It so happens that the latest one is a game concerning movies.

  I mean movie concerning games. I am not going to edit this out.

  CLOSE-TO-MISLEADING MARKETING FOR WRECK-IT RALPH
  

  I have to admit here too that I am one of those people whose first thought that comes to mine when they hear about game-related movies is an expletive. I certainly have thought the same about Wreck-It Ralph. I suppose that I don't have to tell you much about movies with video game licenses that give the impression that they are only there to feed off their license sources' popularity.

  The irony that Fix-It Felix Jr. and many other games mentioned in the film are almost completely fictional could have made me less suspicious of Disney's product, but that Disney is jumping on the bandwagon of the dubious marketing stunt that is faking things about entertainment products of the past did not make me any less skeptical and cynical towards this film.

  Here's another thing that I have to admit: I had immediately despised Wreck-It Ralph when I heard that it "celebrates" games and video game characters. Such cameos seemed like yet more frivolous promotion and popularity-exploitation to me, and I would say that my impression of these cameos did not change after having watched the film.

  That gaming is now starting to become accepted culture (and thus profitable for the likes of Disney), barring attempts by some parties that are trying to demonize it, made me even more leery of this film.

  All of the above prejudiced me enough to forget about Wreck-It Ralph after I learned about it.

  SIDE NOTE: "SO HOW DID I COME ABOUT TO WATCHING IT?"

  Some almost-expiring 75%-discount coupons for a cinema franchise had me picking months-old Wreck-It Ralph out of the rest that the occasional anti-hipster in me could care less to name.

  I did not pick 3-D of course. To me, that's still a fad, though I suppose that some time into the future, there may be an astoundingly refreshing 3-D film that slaps me silly for thinking of it as a fad. This is not a joke, by the way.

  Another thing that I have to admit here is my bias towards animated films. I really don't want to see familiar faces in films anymore, as much as I like certain actors/actresses; familiar voices are alright to me. That is why I tend to pick animated films instead of the rest as they tend not to have characters looking like their voice talents.

  

  Yet there are exceptions.

  On a near-related matter, I have to say here that film-makers who are making films with game licenses don't seem to consider that some actors/actresses could never even come close to looking like the game characters that they are portraying. They tend to make live-action films anyway, and that irks me a lot.

  THE (REST OF THE) MOVIE SANS TWO POIGNANT MOMENTS (MORE ON THESE LATER)
  

  Most of the movie was dull to me; it was trope after trope.

  There is yet another "anonymous group" of conflicted people sitting on chairs in a circle. Fictional characters living in digital worlds that are visualized as facsimiles of the real one was done yet again in this film.

  Ralph was yet another initially villainous character turn jaded, and this coming a few years after a certain other animated movie.

  ***SPOILER***

  

  However, I do appreciate that movie just for this scene. Damn, the facial expressions!
  

  The appearances of cameo characters were ultimately inconsequential and at best little more than gags and nostalgia-bait. I certainly did not bother to spot this-and-that game character in the movie's scenes.

  The true antagonist of the film was perhaps easy for experienced movie-goers to pick out even before said villain was revealed due to the inclusion of a certain speed-related (and hazardous) past-time as a story element.

  The elements about the film that I appreciate the least are the inclusion of a femme fatale and her unlikely love interest and yet more savagely destructive bugs. I find these tropes very tiresome.

  Then, there are perhaps some pokes at gaming culture and its Internet-based half, specifically when one character misheard/mispronounced "Duty" as "Doodie". This is perhaps not a coincidence, and if it is indeed a poke at Activision's money-printing franchise as I suspect, I do not appreciate it as such poking is yet another tiresome, juvenile fad in the gaming community.

  I find it disappointing that the rest of the movie is so run-of-the-mill when compared to the two moments that will be explained shortly.

  THAT TWO POIGNANT MOMENTS

  ***SPOILER***

  I know the plot tool of having one's trusted friend betray oneself right in front of one's eyes and doing so with great regret is nothing new in stories, but this is encountered more in dark and dour stories, such as Games Workshop's very not-kid-friendly flagship franchises that are Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy.

  Even though I suspected what was going to happen when I watched a certain someone pass a certain MacGuffin over to Ralph and requesting a little chat, I was still doubting whether the story-writers could include such a dream-crushing scene in an otherwise kid-friendly movie.

  

  Surprisingly nasty scene coming up.

  After that, there was that quip by that certain betrayed character. It was just simple words, but I find that utterance tied into the game's video-game-related themes/tropes so well.

  Whoever wrote this scene, in my eye, wrote a master-stroke of a scenario.

  Most of what comes after that, in between this heart-wrenching scene and the very ending, would have diluted the strength of this moment for me, if not for some more simple words that Ralph himself utters right at the end.

  

  Who could have expected a brute like him to spout such philosophy?

  Again, these few lines, which I consider master-strokes too, tie into the video-game settings of the movie.

  I don't know who is credited with these two moments. However, I doubt it is Rich Moore as he is mainly an animator; Moore's student, Jim Reardon, is the kind that makes parodies out of popular works of fiction; I don't know who Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee is.

  If none of them can be credited with these two scenes, that would leave Clark Spencer, who is known for having been a producer for some animated films that would have been thoroughly run-of-the-mill if not for certain similarly heart-wrenching moments. Of course, it can be argued that the contribution of producers to their films are hard to trace.

  Now, if only the rest of the movie can be written in such ways.

  TAKE-AWAY: I wish that film-makers will just shed the tendency to exploit that other entertainment industry and focus more on what they do best: making films. Specifically, they should throw any tendency to make use of their licenses to market their films, and instead focus on creating what they believe would be particularly memorable moments - just like they would do for any other film, if they have the calibre to keep this in mind all the time.

  Whoever that thought of those two scenes in Wreck-It Ralph certainly had, and I would say that the sub-segment of films that concern video games is a lot better off with the likes of this movie being in it.

  P.S. I am aware that I haven't made a blog post for a long time; that is because I feel that it is pointless to do one when I cannot reply to any responses, which in turn is due to a glitch that prevents my posts from appearing in LiveFyre threads, including the one that you might write a post into below. However, I suppose that I was impressed quite a lot by these two moments in Wreck-It-Ralph that I was inspired to write this anyway.

  P.P.S. I recall that a certain GameSpot editor wrote an editorial about Wreck-It Ralph. Can anyone recall it exactly?

  • Posted May 18, 2013 10:03 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 23Dec 12

  Merry Christmas, 2012!

  Season's greeting to those who celebrate Christmas in whatever form!

  ***SPOILER***

  Shameless plug for art upload here.

  

  Oh, and I wish you a happy Gregorian new year too.

  • Posted Dec 23, 2012 4:18 am GMT
  • Category: Other
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