Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX Thanks! I thought it was weird that it just disappeared!

@Matthew010 You're welcome. I suppose it was just a replaceable voucher for the mask...
Once you've read Zelda's letter, it has served it's purpose, so losing it doesn't matter.

I feel like the way the site went after TW left... it's left it's mark, and you can't just forget it. When I see a Talking Point article now I ignore them because I just get a sense that they're a bit forced (probably not the case for all, but an initial few I looked at gave me that feeling) and sometimes just extending a baity topic because bait.

I think there was a time where I felt I could trust the quality and integrity of the site's output, and then all the affiliate link ads posing as articles and baity articles came in, breaking that trust, and it's left its mark in the form of scepticism amongst several readers it seems.

In that environment, and with the site giving Astral Chain plenty of pre-release coverage (and was it hosting Astral Chain ads too?), some readers questioning their objectivity in the review is fairly understandable.

I disagree I think, because ultimately there's no proof either way, and it just turns into a slanging match. It's not a great look when dissenting comments get rounded on, as we saw. Doesn't matter who's doing it, and in some ways it's even worse when the pros are doing it.

The site should consider putting something in their community rules about slandering their work if they want. If a user beaches that, delete the comment; if it doesn't breach, let it go. But don't fuel the fire, unless of course... any fire is a good fire in the media...

@Anti-Matter Six-pack Link is looking great!

@gcunit Questioning things is fine, to some extent, and in general, you never have to take anything at face value, unless it's blindingly clear, but I draw the line at people calling reviewers liars. If someone would call me a liar to my face, he'd be eating a fist in the second that followed...

And if you put the whole Astral Chain review in the context of the rest of the world's reviews, which are also extremely positive, resulting in a 89% Metacritic score so far, then there definitely IS some proof that the review was valid and sincere, regardless of NLife having paraded around preview after preview of the game or not.

I fully agree with @bimmy-lee that Ant and Damo were well within their rights to defend their points and article, even though I do on the other hand feel that they maybe should not have let it get the better of them.

@HobbitGamer - Haha, you’re totally right. No matter the question, we know who could always provide the most useless answer. Trolling trollish trolls! They’re everywhere!

@ThanosReXXX - It was when I shut the door, and I have no idea! There was direct impact of some sort. It’s like a little gremlin was hiding in the door jam, and he gave me a hard straight right where it counts when I wasn’t looking. Some poor lady had to watch me turn red. She probably thought I was having a stroke.

@gcunit - I think you make all valid points in your response. Maybe the clickbait era had more of an effect on me than I realized, because I too don’t bother with most talking point pieces these days, nor do I look at main page comments anymore unless it’s a topic of high interest.

I don’t think a journalist should defend anything other than their integrity. I’d never go mucking around in the comments to defend my opinion. Only when my integrity is questioned would I step in, and I’d drop an absolute hammer at that point. I only skimmed the comments after the fact looking for staff responses. What I saw wasn’t out of line in my opinion. Maybe I’m not skeptical enough, but I assumed Astral Chain was getting pumped up here because it’s a Switch exclusive from Platinum that had 9/10 written all over it from the very first reveal.

@bimmy-lee Maybe it was a small kid with an air-zooka...

@ThanosReXXX Not questioning their rights to do it, just don't think it achieves anything:

A - "Liar!"
B - "Am not!"
A- "Are so!"
B - "Am not and how dare you!"
A - "Cos you're a liar"
B - "I'll have you know that's my integrity you're questioning!"
A - "Yeh, cos you're a liar!"

It just creates a popcorn moment for the rest of us, fans the flames for those too triggered to ignore it, and both sides come off negatively.

Assuming no-one has edited their posts since, what actually happened was that A started by saying "Not sure I believe the review", which to me is a fairly mild form of calling someone a liar. B latched onto it, 'fed the troll', to which A replied "I think he's lying a bit" and it cascaded from there.

@bimmy-lee "Only when my integrity is questioned would I step in, and I’d drop an absolute hammer"

But what would your 'hammer' be?

@ThanosReXXX - Ha! That’s an excellent theory I hadn’t yet considered.

@gcunit - Rage, indignation, and credentials. Have you ever seen a political or sports journalist react to their credibility being questioned? It’s a nuking. Maybe this is cultural, but I’m talking specifically about allegations of unethical journalism. I don’t think most journalists want to freak out, but what are you going to do when you post a 1,000 word piece and five minutes later someone is accusing you of payola? The journalist has to protect his integrity, and the editor needs to protect his investment. By any means necessary. Even if you turn off 100 existing readers with a response, a journalist in good standing can bring in thousands of new readers over time.

Ignore it? Take the high ground (it worked for Obi-Wan, mostly). Arguing back (with rage and indignation of you choose) does not protect integrity, it just undermines your professionalism, in my book.

Pretty much, yes.

@gcunit - Ha, good Obi Wan comparison. You’re right, that’s a reaction one could have. I think we’re talking about two sides of the same coin in this situation. You can make either play, but it’s not going to be popular with all of the readers. I personally think someone has to stick up for themselves in that specific situation. I can turn the other cheek in all kinds of situations, but not to flippant, public questioning of my ethics and integrity. Maybe in gaming journalism specifically the play is to just ignore it, but that’s only because these accusations seem to get flung about with regularity.

To me, it just kinda feels like watching a 40 year old teacher trying to sass back to the 12 year olds.

@NEStalgia I don't remember Yamauchi from a business perspective honestly as growing up I would not have cared about how Nintendo worked, so long as I had game to play. So I can't comment on that. I do think you are being a bit unfair to Iwata-denka though, as he in many ways function the way many Japanese businessmen did, in so much as the focus was Japan and if the rest of the world happened to like it, that was great too. However at the same time I think he worked very hard to be more transparent than the average CEO, and he went to bat for a number of games (Smash for instance) that we likely would not have gotten without him. I don't hold him responsible for marketing campaigns or naming conventions (Nintendo has a history of changing up its consoles each iteration and for good or for ill that can't be hung on one person's shoulders) I hold him responsible for keeping Nintendo in good standing even during turbulent times; which he did. And for keeping a coherent company vision; which he did. (half the time I don't know what MS and Sony ...MS more than Sony..are tying to be as companies. Nintendo has always been pretty plain.) I suppose he could be faulted for not trying to bully his way through partnerships but that did Nintendo no favors in the end anyway. I think he took risks in investing in new IPs, (sure he didn't bring back the vocal minority darlings but that was a sound financial decision) and I think he kept employee morale even when consumer morale is low. I don't blame a CEO/President if a product doesn't catch on, I blame marketing, and we saw the difference between Wii marketing, WiiU marketing and Switch marketing and consumer response followed. Having a good product doesn't cut it anymore, you have to beat consumers over the head with it to keep mindshare. I think that Iwata-denka had a "if you build it" mentality which as a programmer/dev by nature ....that makes sense. The naming convention worked for both the Wii and even the WiiU to the Japanese, but the marketing to show HOW the products were different didn't work too much of anywhere. The rest was partnerships imo (which only so much you can do with that without emptying the coffers and if you have to beg for a product you likely won't get a good one anyway. IE EA support), Considering all the focus on VC, the sequels to popular franchises such as Pikmin, new ips that had a more "core gamer" (still a stupid term) feel such as splatoon or entries such as Xenoblade Chronicles X I think that Nintendo tried very hard to cater to both camps. In fact I felt like the family was left behind in terms of marketing until about year 2 and a half. The problem is at this point "Nintendo" games (games that are for everyone but the challenge makes them core appealing) doesn't sit well with the mainstream gamer set in their teens and for the old people they either want sequels in to infinity of games that don't sell, old games to be darn near free, and for Nintendo to churn out 2-3 games a month (I'm coalescing complaints I saw during the WiiU era here) to make up for the lack of 3rd party support. I would say the other thing that Iwata-denka stood by but I don't think is his fault is that Nintendo views consoles as entertainment devices (Read toys) and they try to keep a certain price point for ROI, hence the "gimmicks" so we don't have 3 boxes and PC that are all alike. I think that was a fair reaction after the gamecube was second in terms of power but didn't do that well and never removed the Nintendo is for kids line that I still don't get (gaming is a pastime you do since childhood, it is not inherently adult even though there are games with content for adults/or really kids because who measures your maturity by seeing blood or naked women? I don't.) and after the wii took off (despite being more powerful than the Gamecube and so on and so forth as each new system came out) I don't think Nintendo had a reason to change that. They are still an Entertainment Company. They aren't trying to be bleeding edge and have to limp their way to profits hoping that a greedy consumer base will be obsessed with one uping their friends and buying the most expensive thing they can. So I don't think that will change even now. I do think Nintendo underestimates how quickly the tech cycle has increased (I blame Apple for that) when before they could have an generation/era and keep a certain viewpoint. So for instance waiting to see how online takes off, not a bad strategy if gaming remained in a semi holding pattern the way it used to, but as gaming became more social and fell into the annual franchise, push for more graphics/AAA movie games that strategy doesn't work. Yet it is hard to quick change when you have hardware/manufacturing in place already.

I don't see Sony as being particularly "western" or in touch. They just spent the money on the marketing.

Also did you refer to me as a PC gamer? I consider myself a console gamer first and foremost. Most of the games I play are multiplat...barring RTS games I play games on pc because they look the best, or have a better interface.

Sorry for the derail yall. I thought I hit post before I left for the day.

Also, QFT.

@bimmy-lee "nosedive" is polite. It had seriously become a trash rag to the point that I actually legit switched to Kotaku for gaming news for a while there. I mean it was that bad. The only way it could have gotten worse if if I had to switch to the Wall Street Journal for gaming news....

"45% of a journalism degree" well, at least you have 45% of something to wipe yourself with....

I've never even visited Kotaku

@gcunit A agree with your assessment of the site, though the affiliate link articles and such started in TWs time as well. I always suspected that's part of why he left was a general focus change while the site struggled to transition from "quaint family Nintendo fans site" to something a bit more mainstream like PushSquare when Switch came out. PS and NL have VEEERY different feels to them. But the problem is the PS forumla still didn't work for NL because where Sony and 3rd party has tons of continuous news, Nintendo's sphere still has blackouts.

Every 1st party Nintendo game gets tons of pre-hype, that's the whole point of a platform fan site, and advertising probably wasn't directly purchased by Nintendo, but was fed in by the ad engine as relevant ads (for good reason.) It's not like when IGN has a full-page wallpaper for a game they're reviewing on every page....

A lot of us including myself and you are skeptical of a lot of the articles like you mentioned. But Obvious Troll (OT) in that thread was doing something very different than that, and it was pretty clear in that first post, and the speed at which that post was posted. The follow-ups just kind of confirmed it. Not to mention for that specific game, the idea that a good review isn't to be believed makes no sense considering the pre-release hype of the game has been positive from all corners, and we've seen it ourselves at Treehouse that it's a very high quality looking game with a lot of depth from a known good studio in a game that plays to that studio's strength. From what was already available to us to make our own decisions I think it's clear that a score that wasn't high would have been a stunning and unexpected disappointment to a game that we all had every reason to believe was going to be either "very good for it's genre" or "amazing cult classic." And it was one of the most exciting surprises last E3 as well. So when one of the first posts to the review on that is basically "I don't trust this review, I think it's false" along with "I dislike this genre, and also dislike other very highly acclaimed games of the same genre" ....it's kinda obvious what's going on.

I mean that's one notch below "Talking Point: Why NSO Is Terrible."

This is a game that, is a high profile 2nd party exclusive from a beloved studio in their core genre, in a new IP with an expanded scope versus their prior games, that had huge press hype and E3 hype with fan and media availability across 2 E3s going into it, a high review was the expected default for every outlet (except IGN and Kotaku because Nintendo reasons), and giving it a middling score would have been the trashy click-bait option. Site posts a high score and a very lengthy text review, and within 5 minutes, someone posts "I think this review is false."

Obvious troll is obvious.

I agree that the back and forth made it look unprofessional on the staff's part, but that's only because they're so open and forgiving. Most other sites would have issued stern words, a TOS posting about staff interactions via PM and a ban warning on rebuttal #2, and by rebuttal #3 the user would have been banned.

@StableInvadeel Keep it that way. You'll live longer.

Kotaku is fine. They might occasionally try to stir the pot with an opinion piece, but, honestly, NL has done the same thing for years as well. They're no better or worse than the majority of mainstream gaming news outlets.

I mainly come to NL for the forums, since you can keep track of pretty much everything news-wise between Nintendo Everything and Siliconera.

With that said, I do like the openness, and how the writers and staff will actually just talk to you instead of threatening to ban you for posting a dissenting opinion. Is it unprofessional? Maybe, I don't know. I just know that I prefer communities where the people with the badges don't abuse their authority.

@Ryu_Niiyama Paragraphs, Ryu. Paragraphs.

Don't get me wrong, I love Iwata, I loved the Iwata era, and I terribly miss the Asks and "real " |DIRECT|s. At the same time, he got a lot of things wrong. The focus on Japan may be common for most Japanese CEOs, but Nintendo's not "most Japanese companies." They technically did more business in NA than Japan, by revenue, not by accident, but because that was Yamauchi's intent, and he leaned heavily on Arakawa for keeping a pulse on that. Arakawa doesn't get the respect he deserves, he really had a strong finger on the pulse of the NA business, and pushing back on Japan (and was the only man that could actually get away with doing so considering Yamauchi...) The Wii and DS era still had Yamauchi helming the board directly. Iwata gets a lot of credit, but he still had the sensei watching over his shoulder. Much as I love Iwata, and much as he was an essential figure for the Nintendo we love (and truthfully I'd probably have learned to hate Yamauchi's Nintendo...it was pretty nasty in the 80's...a better EA than EA.), you can see the trajectory of him struggling to find solid footing the more Yamauchi's influence diminished and then was lost. I think together they were solid leadership, but Yamauchi was still an anchor for the "business imperatives" side of Nintendo into the late Wii era. Arakawa leaving NoA to Kimishima, the "traditional" businessman, didn't really help either.

"If you build it" isn't inherently a bad strategy even today. The problem was few wanted what the WiiU was, it was a rough product that they seemed uncertain of even internally (a year before launch it still had a prototype gamepad, they forgot to show the console) and seemed really unsure what they actually wanted it to be. I don't think WiiU is a product they "wanted to build." I think they got caught flat footed that Switch wasn't possible yet, Wii was mismanaged and in free-fall, and 3DS wasn't picking up DS's torch. They needed something and had to run with it. I also think what they wanted it to be wasn't really sellable anymore because cheap tablets arrived just prior. I do think Iwata had faith in the WiiU as a product. I'm not convinced anyone else at all did. Everything good about it he made good. But I'm not sure even Miyamoto was too excited about it.

MS was directionless until Spencer. It was a bunch of corporate suits trying to figure out how to tap markets and synergize company priorities. But Spencer has a clear vision, and lives gaming. Don't rule him out. I see him as the Western Iwata. It's a rare treat to have two gaming leaders like that in one lifetime.

Sony OTOH just goes whatever way the winds are blowing, then tries to buy the wind. If they can't, they try to sue it out of existence.

There's like 10 other topics we could spend hours on in the rest so I'll have to restrain myself here

But the point is, I agree with most of your points about Iwata in terms of what I like about him. But I also think he kind of reverted to too local a focus versus Yamauchi's very Western focus (from the very start) and that, more than anything, set Nintendo back in the western market, and overall. I like the Nintendo approach as much as you, but one can't deny that not following the industry hurt their home consoles (every single console dropped in sales excluding Wii....not sure if Switch really counts since it rolls in their handheld business.) From a business point of view, it was clear that whatever they were doing wasn't working. And Wii may have been a huge success, commercially, but it was actually a total failure for their objectives. The goal was to "create new gamers" (Iwata's words) - and it failed catastrophically, it did nothing of the sort, except for maybe creating the phone gaming business. It hit huge numbers as a fad. That was very good for giving Nintendo the money it needed to endure....it didn't actually fulfill business objectives for building out their future market, thus another part of WiiU's result. Switch on the other hand, didn't aim to rebuild a new market but to re-attract their old market, pre-Wii. And that's been very successful.